Page 69 of Alice Rue Evades the Truth
“Yeah,” Hazel says.
“Yeah,” Van says, coming up behind Alice and grabbing Hazel out of her arms, flipping her upside down, and making her shriek with laughter. The kids really like Alice, but they don’t love anyone—not even their parents, Alice admits ruefully—the way they love Van.
Alice gets it. Van is the fucking best.
The instructor quickly wraps up the class. Alice spends a relatively chaotic twenty minutes helping both kids pee, saying goodbye to all of the existing clients, booking two new-patient appointments, and high-fiving Stephanie about said new patients. Alice steps out into the parking lot to load all of Frank’s supplies into Isabella’s car, but she gets distracted by drooling at the way Van manhandles the dummies into the back of the joyless instructor’s truck. God, Alice’s girlfriend really is devastatingly sexy, isn’t she.
Alice finally wrenches her gaze away from Van’s muscles. Or, more honestly, Van finishes loading the dummies, so it’s easier for Alice to shift her attention back to the car. “We’ll pick Frank up Sunday morning,” Alice says to Isabella, helping strap a very wiggly Hazel into her car seat.
“I CAN DO IT,” Hazel yells, which is untrue.
“Perfect,” Bella says. “Just text me when you’re leaving Corvallis.”
Alice nods.
“Remind me, what’s the play?”
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Alice says. “But set underwater? Marie’s playing the donkey, but it’s a seahorse? I don’t know.”
“Gonna be a loooong couple of hours,” Bella cackles, and Alice swats at her.
Bella laughs so loudly that Van looks over from where she seems to be trapped in conversation with the CPR instructor. “I have to say goodbye to my family,” Van says, way too loudly. “If you’ll excuse me.”
She stomps over to Alice and Bella, giving Alice a kiss that’s significantly too long and wet for her work parking lot in front of two preschoolers and her business partner, but Alice certainly isn’t complaining. Anytime Van wants to shove her tongue inside Alice’s mouth, wants to hold her hips in a deathly tight grip, wants to make Alice remember why last night she’d panted and moaned loudly enough that the upstairs tenants gave her dirty looks this morning—that works for Alice.
When Van finally lets go, the instructor is already inside her truck, pulling out of the parking lot with what looks like a lot of pent-up aggression at the mistreatment of her dummies by the devastating combination of Hazel and Sebastian, Frank’s enthusiasm, and Alice’s general ineptitude. And also maybe the kiss.
Alice drops her head onto Van’s collarbone, laughing, as Bella waves goodbye, closing the car doors on Frank and her spawn and taking all of them home with her. Alice locks the front door of North Portland PT, they say goodbye to Stephanie, and then she and Van climb into the station wagon for the trip down to Oregon State.
Van drives and Alice puts on a podcast about the sinking of theTitanic. They hold hands the whole drive.
There’s an accident outside Salem that almost doubles the two-hour drive to Corvallis. Alice learns more about theTitanicthan she’d ever wanted to. They meant to have drinks with the family beforehand, but they barely have time to slide into their seats in the theater before the lights go down and a bunch of college students do their best to bring Shakespeare to life.
Underwater.
Alice hasn’t seen much theater, but she and Van read the play out loud in preparation for this, and boy. As Alice’s dad always said about a truly terrible school performance: It’s really something.
At intermission, Aunt Sheila grabs Alice into a hug and yells, “How are you liking it so far?” Van keeps trying to make her an audiologist appointment, but Alice is convinced her volume has nothing to do with hearing loss and everything to do with enthusiasm.
“It’s…really something,” Alice says. “Very creative. Not…um, what I’d pictured.”
“No,” Aunt Sheila agrees, positively shouting now. “But Marina is radiant!”
Now that, Alice can agree with.
“Hello, dear,” Babs says, and Alice slips out from Aunt Sheila’s clutches long enough to give Babs a hug. Things haven’t been entirely smooth since Alice came clean, since she and Van decided to make a real go of it. The shock of Alice’s lie hit Babs hard, which of course Alice doesn’t blame her for, and the reality of Van actually being a gay adult who is planning to marry a woman seems to have only recently sunk in. Steve and Uncle Joe seem to be in a similar boat—while all three of them are nothing but polite and welcoming to Alice, it lackssome of the effusive love from before—but Aunt Sheila has been on board since that first morning at Isabella’s house. Alice wouldn’t be surprised if she and Marie had matchingTeam VanaliceT-shirts.
It’s more than Alice deserves, an aunt and a little sister, and Van is convinced Babs will come around. “We just need to be patient,” she says, and Alice can do that.
Alice can be patient.
Alice has Van, the luminous, solid, shockingly handsome woman next to her, who loves her and takes care of her and falls asleep holding her every night. Alice has Van, and Frank, and Isabella’s family, and weird experimental theater, and a spot on Van’s couch that is perfectly contoured to Alice’s butt, and her job at the PT clinic.
She’s good. When the rest of the Altmans come around she’ll be even better, but yeah. She’s good.
Seventy minutes and several questionable theatrical decisions later, the play mercifully ends. They meet up at a restaurant for a very late dinner after Marie has had a chance to shower off her seahorse makeup, Alice and Van arriving a few minutes late due to a poorly timed but essential make-out session in the parking lot. What can Alice say—high culture turns her on.
Inside the restaurant, the host, who can’t be over twelve years old, with enormous pimples and an adorably cracking voice, leads them to a big table in the back. Marie jumps up, throwing herself into first Van’s and then Alice’s arms. “Hi,” she squeals. “You guys! What did you think?”
