By Lucie Pagé
She was the eldest child, long-legged like her dad had been if you went by the old pictures of him which is all Alice had. She had fine brown hair that flew straight up in light breeze and a cowlick where the part in her hair started. She liked purple tees with happy faces and skirts that she could spin in. She was a ‘bit of everything and a lot of noise’ her mom used to say but you could feel that all Alice wanted to be, was grown.
Most summer afternoons, you’d see her running wild through a patchy yard with the neighborhood kids, kicking up dirt, hollering nonsense and sharing cherry popsicles. But that year, something changed. She’d been told she’d have to turn into a young lady soon and she’d begun to suspect she was not up to the task. So she’d started turning a blind eye to cloudless summer skies to watch her mother preparing for her evenings out.
Alice would trail after her, crisscrossing back and forth from the bedroom to the bathroom, getting in the way of the mirror, the closet door and the jewelry box, dropping questions like breadcrumbs. She never got any good answers though, at least none that satisfied her curiosity, but that was because Alice hadn’t got to where she was going yet.
Alice watched her mamma daub perfume on the inside of her wrists and noted how she carefully brushed powder over her cheeks as though it was precious as stardust. She drank in every ritual like Kool-Aid – as if the keys to being grown up were hidden in what her mother applied to her face and how. Truth be told, the consequences of failure laid heavy on Alice’s mind – like the inept application of a lip liner might change the tides and hasten the end of the world.
“Now the eyeliner?” she’d ask, because she felt she should know.
Her mother would nod reassuringly but worry always crept back. Then, men in suits with bright white shirts would come and collect her, their voices friendly and warm and Alice would wonder what it was all about. It seemed to Alice that something remained unsaid.
In comparison to her mother’s carefully crafted beauty, the babysitter’s aesthetic was wilderness untamed. Holly was wide-legged jeans, crazy blonde hair and a brown wooly poncho. Sometimes, she’d bring her guitar and sing songs about regret. She had eyes the colour of a hazy summer sky and she wore mascara like an addict as if she needed to prove that her pale eyelashes existed. Alice’s little sister Emily said it made her look like she had spiders stuffed into her eye sockets when she blinked but Alice didn’t care because Holly had confided she’d once kissed a boy on a dare.
One Saturday night, long after their mom had left on her date, Holly asked the girls if her boyfriend could come over. Emily went quiet which Alice knew meant she had misgivings. It was against the rules but Alice, who was desperate to get what being grown up was all about, nodded yes enough for both of them. Holly picked up the phone and called her boyfriend straight away.
While they waited for his arrival, Holly offered to put makeup on them both. She did their eyes and lips then coloured their cheekbones a tender shade of pink. A flowery scarf was tied around Alice’s head which hung like a sideways ponytail. Alice, who was not permitted to have long hair, adored it. She gazed at her reflection in the hall mirror, turning her head from side to side with wonder. For the first time, she believed she could be other than how she was.
Twenty minutes later, Holly’s beau knocked at the door. The girls fell quiet as he stalked in. He was the promise of a rainstorm: dark and broody and Holly swirled around him like a candy wrapper in a gale. He sat in the wing chair which commanded the room. He did not talk. He did not smile. He merely contemplated them all.
“We had a date tonight,” Holly confessed as she brought him soda, “but I forgot I was coming over to watch you.” She asked whether Alice and Emily might like to go see a movie and immediately put any concerns to rest. Her boyfriend would pay for everyone. They would all wear their makeup to the theatre. It would be fun.
The girls stood shivering around the black Mustang watching Holly’s boyfriend casually stuff his hand into all the pockets of his leather jacket as he searched for his keys. Eventually, he ran out of pockets and started over with a sigh which made Holly smile. He seemed to appreciate this, though his expression remained serious.
He slid the key into the lock and pulled the long car door open, all the while scrutinizing the horizon like he was expecting trouble. When he felt it was time, he flipped the seat forward. The girls climbed into the back of his cavernous car, discovering the rear seat in near darkness, settling when they’d imagined they’d found the places where they were supposed to sit.
He’d gone around, opened and closed the door for Holly, then he got in behind the wheel. His eyes momentarily lit on the girls in the back seat, as though he’d forgotten about them awaiting departure, the third and fourth wheels, breaths quietly rising up in the air.
The keys jangled. The engine sputtered then roared to life, the girls’ eyes widening at its loud gurgling sound. The boyfriend leaned over and spoke closely into Holly’s ear. Whatever he said made Holly’s features soften again.
“What movie are we going to see?” asked Alice.
The boyfriend turned on the radio. All answers, if any were made, were well and truly buried. The car pulled away sharply from the curb. Alice and Emily fell back into their seats with a soft plop.
The Mustang dove through the velvet folds of night, fleeting across long roads and desolate bridges. Street lights streaked over the windows leaving comet tails impressions in the glass, making it seem as though they were traveling at the speed of light toward the unknown. Gradually, the comet tails shortened and the stars turned into corner stores and hair salons. By the time the car had slowed to a crawl, Alice knew she wasn’t anywhere she’d been before. She felt both frightened and excited at the same time and wondered whether it was a sign she was growing up.
Holly pointed to a spot on the opposite side of the street, shouting “There!” and her boyfriend cranked the steering wheel left. In the rear of the car, Alice and Emily slid across the long leather seat, squealing as they hit the side panel and smashed into one another. Alice was still trying to right herself when the radio cut off mid-song. The car was parked.
“Okay,” said the boyfriend tearing the keys out of the ignition, “Let’s go.”
Indicating to him to wait a moment, Holly looked into the back seat and told the girls that if anyone at the theatre asked how old they were, they should answer they were fourteen. This of course precipitated a torrent of questions and concerns the boyfriend said they didn’t have time for. “Okay!” exclaimed Holly, “Okay,” and threw up her hands like she’d accept whatever outcome was in store. She told the girls not to worry.
They hurried down the street, past taverns and smoke shops towards the theatre, the sound of Holly’s worn boot heels setting the pace until they joined an already lurching queue.
As they stood shivering on the sidewalk, Alice started to reverse engineer a fourteen year old’s year of birth –in case – and concluded that she couldn’t do math in her head. Then, her panic tripled: she’d reached the head of the line.
An older woman sat inside the dimly lit ticket booth, smoking a cigarette. She reminded Alice of a wrinkly iguana in a basement aquarium. Under her gaze, Alice could feel her inept lies revealing themselves, pushing their way to the surface: a mom’s haircut being obviously hidden by a scarf, green eyeshadow revealing rather than disguising her youth. The woman seemed to be waiting for Alice to say something. As Alice opened her mouth, Holly quickly dipped in toward the window and asked for two adult and two young adult tickets. The ticket lady gestured at Holly to move aside. She’d zeroed in on Emily. “You,” she said. “What year were you born?” Emily smiled, squinting and answered. The ticket lady stared at her several moments longer than necessary. With no other way to disprove Emily’s claim, she just held out her long gnarled toes and waited for the money, her lips slung in a snarl.
Alice and Emily followed Holly past the concession stand, through the swinging upholstered doors, into a dark theatre. There were radiator pipes that ran up the wall on either side of the auditorium which feebly clanked and hissed as they walked down the aisle. Holly pointed out seats and the girls followed her down the row. Alice saw a few men turn to watch them take off their coats in silence. She checked her scarf was still in place and then started to unbutton her coat, pretending she hadn’t noticed them watching although it was pretty obvious. She didn’t understand what they were looking at, only that it felt strange. Every gesture she made felt like the wrong thing to do. She just wanted to sit.
It started to dawn on her that most of the people in the auditorium were old. Many seemed to have come alone or sat by themselves. There were no kids. Just then, Holly’s boyfriend returned from the concession stand carrying two pops and a popcorn which he handed to Holly so he could remove his coat. Smiling, he leaned towards the girls and told them he wanted them to move across the aisle, one row down. When they reacted with bewildered silence, he turned towards Holly who leapt to her feet and offered to resituate them.
Her bunched-up coat held tightly against her, Alice followed Holly and her sister down the aisle until she judged there was enough distance between here and there. The girls set down their coats on their new seats, wondering whether they were being punished.
Holly read the question on their faces. “He just wants to have a bit of time alone with me,” she said. “I’ll be right over there if you need me.” It sounded very reasonable and yet none of her words made them feel better about the situation.
Alice tracked Holly’s return to her seat, counting the number of rows that separated them and noting where she’d crossed the aisle. She glanced worriedly at Emily who shrugged. Moments later, a stranger sat at the end of their row and put his coat in his lap. He had oily hair and his shirt collar was sewn into his sweater. Then, a man with long hair sat in front of their seats and lit a cigarette as two more people sat a few rows behind them. Alice and Emily had never been alone among so many strangers. Alice kept hoping Holly would see how everything had changed and would come to collect them but the lights dimmed and Holly did not.
The movie started.
The main actress wore dark eyeliner, thick false eyelashes and a mini skirt with silver buttons. She looked hard and sad at the same time, even when she smiled. Probably because her husband was sloppy and vaguely revolting. Had Alice’s mother been watching the film, she was certain she’d have remarked the woman could have done much better.
The woman said she was going out because her husband didn’t make her happy anymore. He was angry and called her trashy so she slapped him. Then he called her a worse name but this time, he caught her hand when she tried to hit him again. He pushed her against a wall and told her he knew how he could make her stay. He ripped her blouse and she shoved him off and dared him to try. They tumbled over one another like cowboys in a bar brawl. He was holding her hair like a rope. Unzipping his pants, he told her she deserved what she had coming.
Alice looked away from the screen, not sure what to do. To think. Emily had fallen asleep under her coat. Everybody else in the auditorium was more silent than church. Alice could hear the woman on screen yowl and moan and gasp and when she looked back to see what on earth was happening, the man was –
Alice looked at her hands. She looked at her knees. She looked at the back of the tall man’s neck who sat in front of her. She heard the sounds of fucking without understanding them, without wanting to, until she wished she could not hear.
When it was over and the lights came back on in the theatre, Alice shook her little sister awake. She zipped up her coat, found her mittens and started up the aisle staring at the grimy red carpet because she felt too ashamed to look at see anyone who knew what she’d just seen, look disappointed in her. She kept her eyes glued on the carpet and walked past Holly’s row, walked through the lobby, wanting more than anything to be outside. The iguana had been liberated from her aquarium and Alice was thankful because she couldn’t have bared to feel more shame.
They ambled back to the car, Alice lagging behind because she didn’t know how to feel anymore. She didn’t know what to want. She wished she could bury the pictures and sounds that kept returning to her. She wanted to escape them, to destroy them, to throw them under the passing cars or lose them in the laughter of rowdy pedestrians.
“How did you like the movie?” Holly’s boyfriend asked.
Alice felt her cheeks burn. Resolutely, she pulled off her scarf.
No comet tails appeared on the Mustang’s frosty windows on the drive home. All magic had left the air. Alice sat in the rear seat, thinking about perfume, about shame, about desire. All the answers of the universe had finally been laid bare for her but Alice no longer wanted to know.
Lucie’s Pagé’s fiction has appeared in literary magazines such as carte blanche and This Magazine. Her debut novel, Lost Dogs (Cormorant Books 2023) was long-listed for the Stephen Leacock Award. She writes for television series like Slasher and Another Life. Lucie lives with her husband on Vancouver Island in BC, Canada and is always positive she is surrounded by bears.
