Emancipating Alice

  ABOUT EMANCIPATING ALICE

  Now that her husband George is dead, middle-aged homemaker Alice Owens thinks his oppressive reign over her life has ended--but she is wrong. George thwarts her attempts at freedom, mentally and physically, from beyond the grave.

  Homemaker Alice Owens returns from a routine grocery-shopping trip to find her husband George slumped over their kitchen table, as dead as her love for him. Hoping it's the beginning of bringing her strangled life to an end, she starts preparing for the arrival of her adult children--a daughter who hates her and a needy son--who will inevitably show up for the funeral. But while cleaning out George's belongings, Alice stumbles across enigmatic documents linking him to an African-American charity and a heinous crime committed over thirty years prior. Alice finds herself grappling not only with memories of her marriage's turbulent past, but with murder and infidelity from George's secret double life pushing themselves into her present. Will Alice finally gain the freedom she's always desired? Or will George's secrets take her over the edge?

  EMANCIPATING ALICE

  By

  Ada Winder

  A NOVEL

  Poison Arrow Publishing

  Copyright © 2012 by T.N.Collie

  All rights reserved.

  First Kindle Edition: November 2012

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted or circulated in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be e-mailed to poisonarrowpublications@live.com.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover image courtesy of Gabana.

  Cover design by PAPDesign.

  Praise for Emancipating Alice from the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award:

  From Publisher's Weekly:

  “...calls to mind the wild satires of Fay Weldon...recalls the work of Alix Kates Shulman.”

  From Amazon Vine reviewers:

  “This is written with very good imagery and descriptiveness. I love the writing style, the author gets your attention right from the beginning.”

  “A very well written piece of work...A very good story indeed.”

  “Compelling, sparse prose.”

  “There are two kinds of light—the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.”

  —James Thurber

  “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster…when you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes back.”

  —Friedrich Nietzsche

  For my husband.

  PART ONE: ALICE

  “You have become like oxygen to me. I wish I could be your amniotic sac—to protect you, keep you safe from the world.”

  —George (birthday note to Alice—01/13/1972)

  CHAPTER ONE

  Tuesday, June 27, 2006

  Bloomington, Illinois

  Alice knew the moment her husband’s heart stopped beating.

  She was in the cereal aisle of the grocery store, reaching for a container of oatmeal, when she felt the energy change within her, felt him slipping away.

  By the time the oatmeal dropped into her cart, he was dead; she felt it.

  She stared at the Quaker fellow on the oatmeal container for a few seconds, wondering what to do next, half expecting him to tell her.

  She didn’t want to betray her secret knowledge in any way, couldn’t risk someone recalling the old lady with the auburn and gray-streaked hair and frightened hazel eyes acting strangely. So she kept her eyes down, switching between looking at the other groceries in her cart and the list in her left hand, deciding to mentally check off the items she’d gotten in order to calm herself with the task.

  She felt as if the life and energy that had left him had jumped into her, making her feel overexcited, almost ready to jump out of her skin.

  Brown sugar. Brown rice.

  She thought for a moment that perhaps she should leave the cart right there and rush straight home. That was the best thing to do, wasn’t it? In order to at least make it seem like she had tried to save him, that her “woman’s intuition” had led her to it?

  Yogurt, milk.

  But did intuition hold up in court? As his wife, and probably the initial prime suspect, wouldn’t rushing home on a whim make her even more suspect? Plus, she was almost finished shopping. And if she remembered correctly, there was just one more item to go and it would take only a minute to get it and perhaps a few more to hurry out of the store.

  Whole-wheat bread, whole-wheat flour.

  That last item was just one aisle over too; she could easily grab it and cash out.

  Chicken breasts, turkey slices.

  Besides, suppose she was imagining things after all? What good would it do to rush out of the store, leaving her cart behind only to find out that it wasn’t time? That he was fine and wondering why she looked so anxious and had come home empty-handed?

  Eggs, tuna.

  She would have wasted a perfectly good shopping trip.

  Pasta, tomato sauce.

  Not to mention gas.

  Ketchup.

  She put one hand to her chest as she felt her heart push rhythmically against it, the second-to-last words of her list swirling around her mind, dancing to its steady beat:

  Blue cheese. Blue cheese. Blue cheese.

  She thought about Amber then, how her granddaughter had tried to convince her of the usefulness of cell phones. Alice realized one would have come in handy at that moment; a single phone call could have cleared everything up and she would have been able to continue shopping without worry. Or been able to leave right away. But she always felt that cell phones were for the young, the social: people who had friends, family members, perhaps even coworkers clamoring for their attention. As far as she was concerned, there was no one who would be in dire need of reaching her, nor her them. No one except, perhaps, her husband, a few moments ago as he was dying. And even then his first call would have been to 911.

  Once her heartbeat returned to normal, she headed over to the prune section. She felt calmer—thinking about her grandchildren always made her feel serene, happy. She felt no guilt about continuing her shopping now; in fact, she felt almost silly for her moment of panic—she was never going to rush out of the store. Deliberation was an illusion anyway, wasn’t it? She examined the prune package before dropping it into the cart.

  Would you like to taste it? she had asked Amber once, holding the aubergine-colored, wrinkled fruit down to her. Amber had scrunched up her little face in disgust. Only old people eat those, she said. This tickled Alice, and through her laughter, she told Amber: But I have always liked these, and I wasn’t always old!

  Amber had looked at her skeptically, one eyebrow raised as she studied her face.

  Alice made her way to the front of the store where the cashiers awaited. At this day and time the lines were not so bad, but she decided to go into the express lane anyway, even though she had a little more than ten items. She smiled at the express-lane cashier, a young woman with a blond bang cut straight across her forehead and several silver earrings lining one ear. Perhaps she was a teen—Alice could no longer tell the difference between the teenagers and the twenty-somethings. The cashier reminded Alice of her own daughter a little—Amber’s mother, Elaine—although she did not know why exactly; they did not share the same hair color or facial features. Perhaps it
was the cold blue eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said to the cashier after her groceries had been bagged up. Everything fit neatly into two bags, just the way she liked it. She walked through the automatic doors toward her Volkswagen.

  ***

  She knew he was dead when she saw him—bent over the dining table, blue eyes staring at nothing, a trail of saliva leading from his mouth to a small pool on the table. His right arm was stretched out across the table, as if reaching out for the glass of water just at his fingertips; his other arm hung over the edge of the table, limp.

  She knew he was dead, but she called to him anyway, her voice escaping in a thin, shaky line. She didn’t know if she had screamed when she first walked in, but her vocal cords indicated that she had not; she felt no strain when she forced her voice out.

  “George?”

  She stepped forward, past the grocery bags she had dropped when she first walked in to get closer. He did not move.

  Alice dropped her keys on the table softly, then felt silly for trying not to wake him. After studying him for a few more seconds, she tore her eyes away and ran to use the nearest telephone, just outside of the kitchen. She heard a tone similar to a busy tone, but knew it meant another phone in the household was off its hook. She ran upstairs to their bedroom telephone, replacing the handset to get a dial tone, then picked it up again to dial 911.

  The answering 911 operator sounded a little bored.

  Alice’s own words came out frantic, panicked.

  “Hello? Yes, it’s my husband I...I think he’s dead!...Well he’s not moving, he’s not breathing, his face is...yes...no, I have no idea, he’s just slumped over the table, no blood or anything!...Yes, yes of course: 1242 Mockingbird Avenue. Brown and beige split level. Beautiful flowers on the sides. Yes, please hurry! Please help!”

  Alice hung the receiver back up, ignoring the operator’s request for her to stay on the line.

  She made her way back downstairs to the dining room.

  With her back against the wall, she slid down it until her hands reached her knees, her bones protesting only a little. She tried to keep herself together, but her thoughts assaulted her, memories finding their way to the front of her mind, already tickling her into reminiscence. She put her hands over her face, partially to block out the image of George sitting there, slumped over the table, his back to her now. She noticed he was wearing his favorite light blue shirt. It had a few sweat marks on it. Some of his grey hair was sticking up in the air, away from his slight bald spot.

  She almost laughed then—not only did George have the misfortune to go bald early, he also went grey early. Alice had known a girl who had one or two grey strands at age nineteen, but George, his whole head was grey by twenty-five.

  She wondered how long he’d been dead. It certainly was not long enough for rigor mortis to set in; not even George could bring that on early.

  She then wondered if he had thought about her in his final moments, then realized she was being silly—of course he had, and most likely, for more reasons than one.

  Then she thought about how the kids would take it, Elaine and Drew. His funeral would bring them all together once again at last, after all these years.

  She heard the ambulance draw near, its sirens blazing. She would think about funeral preparations and her children later. Right now she had to deal with the medics, the police.

  She stood up.

  ***

  She stood up as he came toward her, his friends tying off their conversation and banter with him with goodbyes or one last verbal jab, knowing looks on their faces.

  George’s face lit up the moment he saw her and she imagined her face mirrored his, her smile wide.

  “Aren’t you glad we exchanged schedules? Now we can find each other pretty much anytime!” he said. He was so handsome like that, his face alight with affection. She shifted her backpack on her shoulders as they headed for the cafeteria.

  “So, how was your business class?” she asked him.

  “Oh, the usual. You know, this is really what I want to do. My dad’s friend said I could work in his company as soon as I’m done.”

  “That’s the one in Illinois right?”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked so excited. Alice did not know what to say next; her plans were so very different from his.

  “You’re coming with me right?” he said as they joined the cafeteria line.

  ***

  George entered the ambulance covered in a black sheet. The paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene, and from what she overheard, their current guess was a heart attack. They questioned her, and she had told them and the law enforcement officers who had shown up what she could—that when she left home, all was well. George had been reading the news. That she had gone out to visit with some friends, then went shopping. That she had come home from the grocery store to a dead body. She also told them about his mild heart attack just two months ago; that his doctor had ordered a change in diet. She retrieved the oatmeal and showed it to them as an example.

  Had he been depressed? they asked. Could he have committed suicide? they didn’t ask.

  No, he loved life; just had a bad heart—a good one emotionally, but physically bad, she’d said.

  As far as she could tell from the manner of all those present, the initial ruling would not change—his death would ultimately be chalked up to natural causes; it was an easy way out—he was rather old—culturally at least—and had already suffered a heart attack before. She almost had to stop a smile from forming at the thought. All deaths were of natural causes as far as she saw it. The heart stopping? That was as natural as it got no matter what brought it on.

  She wondered when the autopsy would be complete if required, how quickly he’d get worked on and when they’d know for sure what happened and how. When she could have him sent to the funeral home for preparation. But she did not have to wait to tell their children: she could tell them when to come. The funeral would most likely take place within a week—a few days, in fact. Then her daughter would have to talk to her. Maybe this was the time they could work things out. Maybe she could make things up to her. Maybe it all led up to this.

  As the officers were getting ready to leave she thought about what to do next. Should she call the children right away? Suppose they came down before she and the house were ready? She wanted to clear everything up, go through George’s belongings, put things in their proper places. But she was being silly again—of course they wouldn’t come early; they needed to prepare their own children and other aspects of their lives first. While she doubted Elaine would be able to get there immediately, she knew there was a large possibility Drew might. He would think she would need support, and he would be right. He would want to be there for her. Still, she decided to wait a little—just one day to get herself together, get everything together. She needed to be strong.

  ***

  George bench-pressed three-hundred pounds. He was athletic; played rugby and football. He was even a good dancer—so she’d heard. How could she not be attracted to him? His skills plus his somewhat handsome face with those beautiful baby blue eyes, dirty blond hair that always seemed messy yet sexy, and his strong, muscular body made him magnetic. It was all shallow, but who wasn’t? She would make no apologies for that. Besides, she did not go after him for those reasons alone; in fact, he had come after her.

  She was hesitant to get involved with him because she’d heard he had a girlfriend but he must have recently broken up with her. Alice wanted to think he did it for her.

  Word on campus was that his eyes were set on her and from the way she’d caught him looking at her a few times, it had to be true; after all, she wasn’t exactly the most beautiful creature on campus, so stunning that he had to look at her that way. He definitely wanted something, and whatever it was, that something was encompassed in her.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to get involved with him however; although intrigued, she was also a little afra
id of his intensity, his intentions. Besides, she had a slight interest in someone else and she wanted to see how that relationship could go. But she barely had time to express her interest before George came along. He stepped in in a way that made it clear he was not fond of competition, and even if such a thing existed for him, he would annihilate his competitors. He meant to get her, and he meant to keep her.

  ***

  Alice attempted once more to shake the memories away while trying not to look at the saliva on the table nearby. She looked around the kitchen. She had managed to pack away all of her groceries while the strangers were there. Everyone had allowed her to do it—she could feel their eyes on her. When she had declared her intentions, a few of them looked at her in confusion, while others looked at each other, then at her in pity. They all decided to leave the poor old lady alone, letting her do whatever she felt she needed to do. She is losing it, they must have been thinking. A little mad with grief; trying to restore a sense of normality in the midst of shock, chaos.

  She did not fancy herself poor, nor old, nor crazy, but they could think what they wanted. She was fine, although a little shaken. His death was not a surprise—she had expected it. How could she not have?

  CHAPTER TWO

  October 12th, 1970

  Indianapolis, Indiana

  Never judge a book by its cover, people liked to say, yet Alice knew it happened all the time, this judging by appearances, first impressions. The cover was the first thing one saw, sight generally the first sense to provide information. One could not help making an initial judgment based on the physical, especially if the other person’s aura wasn’t particularly strong. Like the first time she noticed Betty in her first year of college. She thought Betty a gluttonous, greedy girl for a long time because, well, Betty had to be at least two hundred pounds and about five feet four inches tall. But as Alice got to know her through a shared class, then observation, Alice realized that Betty did not actually eat everything in sight—she tried to be very careful with her diet, ate with great caution. Alice eventually learned Betty had diabetes.