PART ONE: ALICE Chapter 1 Alice woke up feeling tired, which was normal now. Even though she slept almost ten hours a night it didn’t seem to matter. She always woke up tired. She put her young daughter, Deborah to bed at 8 and went to bed herself right after that and slept until dawn. Her nighttime sleep was deep and without any dreams now, and she wondered why that was. She thought she should be happy. After all, she had a husband, David, who loved her, it seemed, a beautiful daughter, a cute little apartment, and in-laws who were very supportive of her. They had started out hating her, but when their grandchild was born and it was a girl, everything had changed. That child became their reason for living and since she had birthed her, she became important too. She dragged herself out of the bed and went to the bathroom. She hated the bathroom, blue with a shower curtain that had pictures of sailboats, something she would never have picked. Her mother-in-law had bought it for her and she felt obligated to hang it. She really didn’t like the color blue at all and it was everywhere in her little home. There were so many times when she was out voted, or she simply didn’t fight things any longer. They just didn’t seem important anymore. Things like the color of a shower curtain. She lifted up her nightgown and sat on the toilet. She could hear Deborah in the bedroom and knew she had a busy day ahead, as usual. Somehow, though, it seemed she really didn’t do much. Just cook and read to her daughter and try occasionally to do something creative, although those projects were becoming a thing of the past. Once she had covered a picture frame with red tissue paper trying to make it look like decoupage, but when her husband came home, he asked her if that was her biggest accomplishment during that day. It made her feel small, but he did compliment her often on dinner. And breakfast was easy. Bacon and eggs over medium and buttered white toast. He wanted the same meal every morning. And she never forgot the Tang, the beverage of astronauts. He probably fancied himself an astronaut. I’m sure he thought he could’ve done a lot of things if he hadn’t got a girl pregnant in high school. Oh, he loved her, which was certain. But, still. Both of their lives could’ve been different. But she never thought about that. She had too much else to do. After Deborah woke up, her day started as usual. That famous breakfast and David was off to work with a goodbye kiss. She always felt lonely as soon as he left. She did the morning dishes and then thought about the day that loomed ahead as she drank her third cup of coffee. Her daughter’s birthday was the next day and she had promised her a party for her fourth birthday, complete with a big, chocolate cake that she would make and grandparents laden down with presents. Her older sister, Bea, would come, too, and bring a present with her world famous wrapping. She always wrapped presents so beautifully no one wanted to open them. She felt sure her daughter, Deborah, would have no problem with that. After Captain Kangaroo was over, she gathered Deborah up on the couch for book time. She always read to her before lunch and then again before their afternoon nap. She enjoyed it and knew it was fun for her children and she wanted them to be happy and smart. After lunch of pb and j sandwiches it was naptime. Deborah climbed into her trundle bed, closed her eyes and was out. What a good sleeper she was. And she was as mellow as any child could be. Deborah was willing to wait for things patiently, which was not a trait she got from her mother. It was time for her afternoon soap opera. She only watched one show, The Guiding Stars, and would criticize women who watched these shows all afternoon. That day Tess, the young daughter of Ron and Kathy of The Guiding Stars fame, was having a big fight with her mom about her new boyfriend. She was threatening to leave home if her family didn’t accept him. Her mother yelled at her about the fact that he had recently gotten out of prison where he was serving time for armed robbery and couldn’t she find a better boyfriend. Tess yelled back (explaining) that he wasn’t in the store with the gun. He was just driving the car and didn’t know that his friend was planning a robbery. Her mother, of course, didn’t believe a word of it, while Tess believed all of it. Alice wasn’t sure if Tess’s boyfriend could be trusted either, but she liked him. She always liked bad boys and it really could’ve happened that way. It happens all the time that people are waiting for someone outside of a store in the car and their friend runs outside with a bag of money and a gun flying around and you had no earthly idea that that was going to happen. We don’t really know our friends, we just think we do. After the show was over with no resolution of course, or there wouldn’t be an episode tomorrow, Alice fell asleep quickly on the couch and fell into a dream, She was in Atlantic City walking on the boardwalk sitting at a fortune teller’s table. She was a woman of about fifty with a gold turban on her head and they were inside a silky tent of some kind. Alice was just a teenager in the dream. It seemed a long time ago that she was a teenager. She certainly wasn’t the old 20 year old she was now. The woman took her hand gently in hers, looked straight in her eyes and said, “You will be the mother of many many children.” She woke up suddenly to see Deborah standing beside her brushing her thick auburn hair away from her forehead. What a wonderful,sweet child.