But you are never trapped, Alice. You hear me? There is always a way around.”
* * *
• • •
I don’t believe it.”
“What?” Bennett was examining the creases in his new trousers. Mr. Van Cleve, who had been standing with his arms outstretched, being pinned for a new waistcoat, gestured abruptly toward the door, so that a pin caught him in his armpit and made him curse. “Goddamn it! Out there, Bennett!”
Bennett looked up and through the tailor’s shop window. To his astonishment, there was Alice, arm in arm with Margery O’Hare, walking out of Todd’s Bar, a spit and sawdust establishment that advertised “BUCKEYE BEER ON SALE HERE” on a rusty sign outside the door. They had their heads tilted together and were laughing fit to bust.
“O’Hare,” said Van Cleve, shaking his head.
“She said she wanted to do some shopping, Pop,” Bennett said wearily.
“Does that look like Christmas shopping to you? She’s being corrupted by the O’Hare girl! Didn’t I tell you she was made of the same stuff as her no-good daddy? Goodness knows what she’s encouraging Alice to get up to. Take the pins out, Arthur. We’ll fetch her home.”
“No,” said Bennett.
Van Cleve’s head swiveled. “What? Your wife’s been drinking in a goddamn honky-tonk! You have to start taking control of the situation, son!”
“Just leave her.”
“Has that girl ripped the damn balls off you?” Van Cleve bellowed into the silent shop.
Bennett flashed a look at the tailor, whose expression betrayed the kind of nothing that would be discussed feverishly among his colleagues afterward. “I’ll talk to her. Let’s just . . . go home.”
“That girl is causing chaos. You think it does this family’s standing any good for her to be dragging your wife into a low-life bar? She needs sorting out, and if you won’t do it, Bennett, I will.”
* * *
• • •
Alice lay on the daybed in the dressing room, staring up at the ceiling, as Annie prepared the evening meal downstairs. She had long since given up offering to help, as whatever she had done—peeling, chopping, frying—had been met with barely concealed disapproval, and she was weary of Annie’s sly comments.
Alice no longer cared that Annie knew she was sleeping in the dressing room and had no doubt told half of Baileyville, too. She no longer cared that it was obvious she still had her monthlies. What was the point in trying to pretend? Outside the library there were few people she cared about impressing anyway. She heard the sound of the men returning, the exuberant roar of Mr. Van Cleve’s Ford as it ground to a halt in the gravel drive, the slamming of the screen door that he plainly felt unable to close quietly, and she let out a quiet sigh. She closed her eyes for a moment. Then she raised herself, and walked into the bathroom ready to make herself look nice for the evening meal.
* * *
• • •
They were already seated when Alice came downstairs, the two men opposite each other at the dining table, their plates and cutlery laid neatly in front of them. Small bursts of steam escaped through the swinging door, and inside the kitchen Annie’s clattering pan lids suggested the imminence of food. Both men looked up as Alice entered the room, and the thought occurred to her that it might be because she had made a little extra effort: she was wearing the same dress she had worn when Bennett had proposed to her, her hair neatly brushed and pinned back. But their expressions were unfriendly.
“Is it true?”
“Is what true?” Her mind raced with all the things she might have got wrong today. Drinking in bars. Talking to strange men. Discussing the Married Love book with Margery O’Hare. Writing to her mother to ask if she might come home.
“Where is Miss Christina?”
She blinked. “Miss who?”
“Miss Christina!”
She looked at Bennett and back again at his father. “I—I have no idea what you are talking about.”
Mr. Van Cleve shook his head, as if she were mentally deficient. “Miss Christina. And Miss Evangeline. My wife’s dolls. Annie says they’re missing.”
Alice relaxed. She pulled out a seat, as nobody else was going to, and sat down at the table. “Oh. Those. I . . . took them.”
“What do you mean you ‘took’ them? Where’d you take them?”
“There are two sweet little girls on my rounds who lost their mother not long back. They didn’t have any gifts coming at Christmas and I knew that passing them on would