The Fall of Alice K. Read Online Free PDF

clearly. She was the canary that went down into the dark well of their family’s misery, into the mysteries of the turmoil they tried to deny with silence but which came out sideways, in murky or twisted distortions of what they really meant to say. Alice’s parents probably knew their own feelings, but they had never practiced a language that would express them. Aldah didn’t have the language either, but when she pulled her head down into her shoulders, her message of distress should have been clear to everyone. The corners of her mouth sagged, and her eyes grew dim. The voice of her whole body said, “Stop. Just stop.”
    Alice’s mother finally did break into actual speech with her usual
sense of bad timing: “We are worried about Aldah. She’s shutting down more and more.”
    The trouble with her mother and with the dreadful words that often did bubble out of her mouth was that she was often close to the truth. This may have been one of those moments. If Aldah was a canary measuring the toxins in the atmosphere around the table, she was, as her mother cruelly pointed out, shutting down. She could sit like a frozen icon of something no one could explain.
    But after her mother’s comment, Alice had to wonder: was Aldah absorbing their moods and showing them what they looked like, or was she developing a new problem? Alice was only two and a half when Aldah was born so she had missed Aldah’s early health problems. Alice remembered that Aldah was taking digitalis as a child, and she had terrible ear infections. Alice remembered the screaming and how Aldah held her little hands over her ears. She was a wobbly kid and could hardly walk when Alice started school. By the time Alice was a teenager, her mother had given up on Aldah. Alice hadn’t. She did some reading and knew that their family wasn’t alone in this journey. Alice would crunch up zinc and selenium and pretend to put some in a glass for herself and some in a glass for Aldah. When Aldah saw her older sister drinking hers, she’d drink too. She’d do anything that she saw Alice doing, so long as Alice smiled at her first. She would have walked over a cliff behind Alice if Alice smiled at her first.
    Her parents went on talking about Aldah as if she weren’t there. Aldah gave no hints that she was listening or that she understood. Alice knew better: Aldah heard and understood every word. Even her father spoke as if Aldah weren’t there.
    â€œMaybe it’s time,” he said.
    â€œI think so,” said her mother.
    â€œWe’re not specialists,” said her father.
    â€œThere’s state money,” said her mother.
    â€œI know,” said her father. “I checked that out.”
    Aldah picked at her food, then reached for the sugar bowl and sprinkled two teaspoons of sugar over the Hamburger Helper. No one stopped her.
    The discussion, such as it was, dropped off a cliff. Her father said a
quick closing prayer that asked for strength and for the forgiveness of their sins. It was one of his autopilot prayers, predictable and brief. He stood up. Her mother stood up too while Aldah went on eating. They evidently weren’t going to talk about Aldah any more—they weren’t going to talk about anything. Alice could hear the unspoken message that trickled down through the generations: Zeg maar niks. Don’t say anything. It was away of dealing with problems by keeping your mouth shut.
    When her mother walked outside to the screen porch after closing devotions, Alice followed her, leaving Aldah alone to digest the sugary hotdish and what had been said about her.
    Alice stepped into the porch to find her mother sitting in a metal lawn chair. Alice stood off to the side, not close—but she was there. No matter how much her mother repulsed her much of the time, Alice took the first step in making amends. She had come to smooth things over, to find that little window of hope