Alice
My skin smells salty and like pine needles. It’s hot to the touch and peels when I scratch at it, but the calamine lotion I put on ought to help. The smell reminds me of how Alice used to cover me in it from head to toe—how we’d come back inside just before sundown, completely drained by the sun but still full of youth, and how we’d laugh as she’d paint thin, pink layers of calamine lotion onto my skin with cotton balls. I’d paint her next, her shoulders, her smooth neck, and we would laugh because of how the cool lotion felt on our burned skin—our bubbling gasps and screams were the truest, most involuntary form of laughter there was, the kind that is so akin to crying. But we were also laughing at the day itself, and how we had extracted from it everything we could: the foam, the sun, the bright blue air—we’d gather its sights and sounds and smells throughout the day, our hearts swelling with them until they could no longer, at which point we’d return home and catalogue everything that we’d collected together, and as if squeezing a sponge, the day burst out from our hearts in reverse, and we’d get to experience it all a second time—our laughter was simply a consequence of this bursting; an instinctual, victorious cry that signaled our triumph over the day, over the very passage of time.
And so in this manner we spent every summer out east—there, we concerned ourselves only with the present; to us, there was no past or future, and nothing mattered aside from pure experience, pure perception. One day (and I assure you reader, there are infinitely more memories from these summers that I can conjure up for you at will, and also some of which I cannot, nor will I try to, as they are not mine to conjure) stands out to me as a particularly relevant example. It was my twenty-first birthday, and a friend was throwing me a party in the evening—I was excited and terrified; excited because I hadn’t seen my friends in so long, but terrified because I had ignored them in my pursuits with Alice, and I felt it would be impossible to introduce them back into my new life with Alice; the gap between it and my old one was simply too large. Regardless of whether or not that perceived distance was actually there, I would have rather spent the entire day with Alice instead. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself I needed to be around other people in order to feel fulfilled, there was no one whom I felt could give me as much satisfaction out of life as she did. Our time together taught me everything I needed to know about the world—in her was reflected the souls of all of humanity, and our relationship a wellspring for every possible emotion or thought that could ever be had.
But we had agreed to go, and so despite our mutual disinterest, we returned from the beach early to get ready. We weren’t used to wearing much other than bathing suits (the idea of covering ourselves completely as foreign to us as to Adam and Eve), but I managed to look somewhat presentable: I put on my least sun-bleached button down and a pair of light blue shorts that I had found somewhere in the back of my dresser. Alice on the other hand, had a natural talent for public appearances, and was still somehow able to create the illusion that we cared about what others thought of us. She put on lipstick (which I had never seen her do before that night) and a red floral dress that while still somewhat ragged and torn, gave her the appearance, at least in my mind, of an opera singer or movie star who devoted every second of her life to existing in the public eye.
We arrived around eight o’clock, which at this point in the season was just barely dusk, and as we walked through the house’s brass front gates (this was at a time in our lives when all of my friends and I lived at our parent’s houses, all sprawling summer mansions that gave the illusion of release from the constraints and realities of the real world, giving us a freedom to explore our burgeoning lives with a clarity and excitement I haven’t known since) we both knew that we had made a grave mistake. The grounds were beautiful, and one was instantly struck by its age and the importance that it must have held at some point in time. It looked like a modern Hamptons home, and with all the string lights and luxury cars parked in the driveway you could have mistaken it as such, but it was obvious that the property was actually quite old, and most likely built for an extremely prominent and wealthy family—aside from the mansion itself, which must have been one of the most expansive and beautiful homes I had ever seen, the grounds were had an old, abandoned amphitheater, stable, and servants quarters, and was surrounded on all sides by an extremely well-kept English garden. Only now the whole thing was littered with plastic cups and empty liquor bottles, and covered almost completely by a huge, undulating mass of people, all dancing and screaming, most of whom I assume knew nothing about me or the fact that it was my birthday.
Friends surrounded us immediately on all sides—people who although were not strangers, were nonetheless complete foreigners to us. At that point in my life, whether it was because of my relationship with Alice or not, I was obsessed with the idea of empathy, and how difficult it was to truly understand another person—Alice and I, it seemed, shared this obsession, and recently had been trying to get as close as you could to an absolutely perfect understanding of each other. Each night, we would sit cross-legged opposite from each other in bed and relay each and every thought we’d had during the day to each other—no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, we told each other everything: every emotion and feeling that we had experienced was expounded upon until we understood each others’ days as well as we did our own. We’d ask questions whenever something was unclear, and clarify confusions and miscommunications that may have been left unsaid during the day. Nothing was left untouched, and so we often stayed up until three or four in the morning going about this process, until there was nothing left to share, or we fell asleep, whichever came first.
The system was far from perfect, but over the past few months, we had grown inextricably close—and so in encountering that mass of people, we had inadvertently exposed our relationship to the scrutiny of others, and it being so unaccustomed to new people, as it was so acutely focused on just us two, we feared it would somehow collapse under the weight of all those being introduced to it.
Knowing this, we tried to stay by each other, only leaving the other’s side to use the bathroom or get a quick drink, but we were ill equipped to handle this many people at once, and it wasn’t long before we were dragged apart from each other completely. We were pulled apart in the rough and loving way that friends do, and among much screaming and cheering (mostly revolving around cries like: ‘do you two ever leave each others’ sides?’ and ‘where have you both been all this time?’) Alice and I exchanged worried glances, unsure of what was to come of us next. As her friends dragged her deeper into the crowd, she gave me an half-smile, one that seemed to try and assure me of her safety and willingness to separate from me, but instead revealing her doubts and fears about that very same willingness. Looking back, I would like to think that that smile’s intended purpose was to reassure me, but it sometimes pains me to think (this thought resurfacing in my mind more often than I would like to admit) that she most likely knew of the danger she was in, and somehow aware of the chain of events that were to unfold, was trying to signal me for help. That face still stands out in my mind from that night—her lipstick-red lips pursed together in a smile that seemed oddly foreign to me, her hazel eyes burning with a prophetic understanding of the night to come.
But before I could respond, I too was dragged away, only in the opposite direction, and towards one of the very outer corners of the immense garden. There I remained for much of the night, half-listening to what my friends were telling me, and only half-responding to their inquiries. Rather, I could only think about where Alice was, or what she might have been feeling at that very moment. In losing her I felt like part of me had been removed, or that half of my soul had fallen into a deep sleep, and could only be reawakened by finding her—yet my every attempt to leave was met by another friend or stranger who claimed to have known me forever (at that point the two were very hard to distinguish from one another), and who was invariably very worried about my absence from their life. Yet in their attempts to re-introduce themselves into it, and in their endeavors to learn more about the time I was spending with Alice, they would only push themselves farther away, as they were preventing me from finding Alice not only in-person, but also mentally, as I felt compelled to at least somewhat engage them in meaningless conversation, and could not spend as much thought as I would’ve liked thinking about her or what she might be doing.
It’s worth explaining the strange sickness that I now find myself plagued with. Often while walking down the beach or the boardwalk in my usual manner, I will briefly close and open my eyes, and for a minute or two, suddenly and momentarily experience the terror of falling into a dream in which I am the only participant, and one from which I cannot escape or change the course of. Instead, I simply watch myself from afar, as if all the present is lapsing instantly into my memory, making it seem as distant and abstract as any other far-off period in my life. From this strange vantage point I always return, but for a few minutes, my existence is reduced to a viewing gallery composed of images and scenes collected over the course my life—I am eventually thrust back into my body, and continue on my way down the beach or otherwise, but an acute sense of awareness of the past will remain for the rest of the day, and as I continue walking, the stories and scenes that had appeared before me seem as real and as tangible as the sand or boardwalk in front of me.
It is quite a strange phenomenon, and it is worth explaining to you only now because during these episodes, this story recurs with the highest frequency, and often feels the most tangible of all my memories. One moment I will be walking out my front door, or even sometimes simply sitting at my writing desk, and the next, completely and utterly transposed into this very memory, with not the slightest idea of my arrival; instead, I am trapped to watch this very unfortunate series of events play through to its end. During these bouts of sickness, it always feels so real, and losing all qualities that usually accompany a normal memory (those being the usual haziness and dreamlike translucency that separate them in our minds from actuality), it overtakes my senses, and constructs a new reality that is indistinguishable from the one I had known just minutes prior, until I am no longer certain which is which. But let us now return to that memory, as I wish to share with you what I am so often forced to witness against my will.
The sun had set, and the familiar warmth of a summer night had descended upon the house—still, the party continued with no sign of slowing, and I was still being introduced to strangers one by one against my will. The only reason that I hadn’t refused them to go and find Alice at that point was that it was such a beautiful night out, and after one or two drinks, and my worries about her had somewhat waned—my relative sobriety made me feel magnanimous towards my clearly very inebriated friends, and I felt that the least I could do was to let them wish me a happy birthday before I left—truthfully, I was feeling a little bit flattered by the fact that so many people wanted to see to me, despite me not having spoken to them in ages. I was also quite infatuated with the idea that after the party, Alice and I could go back home and go over what had happened in each other’s absence; I was extremely curious to discover what her thoughts about my friends had been, and so with these ideas in mind, I felt fine waiting another half-hour or so to go find her.
Instead, I took off for a walk around the property, stopping occasionally to enjoy a particular sight or sound—I wanted things to share with Alice later on, and so I soaked in everything that I could, tracing the lines of the trimmed hedges or the cobblestone paths to their ends, and counting the constellations slowly arrive from their blue-black backdrop one by one. All else aside, it was a gorgeous home, made even nicer by the warm weather; if I had been there under different circumstances, I would have made a whole day of exploring it in its entirety.
There was a whitewashed brick wall that surrounded the perimeter of the property, just behind which rose an even taller wall of sycamores and maples, and now that the crowd had thinned out slightly and the initial excitement of the event had worn off (the point at which the patterns and themes of any great night begin to appear, when the protagonists reveal themselves to the audience on the night’s stage), I could walk alongside it and look inwards at the crowd, watching the entire party unfold before me at once.
I walked in this manner for a while, trying to entertain myself while keeping an eye out for Alice—I made it a game to pick up on the small habits and tendencies people had, for example learning that one of my friends would only drink half a drink before setting it down somewhere and picking up a new one (I counted eleven or so half-drinks before I lost count). Or another, a particularly lonely character if I recall correctly, would approach large groups of people, never another individual, and trying to pretend like he had been part of the conversation the entire time, assuming no one would notice, pick up on their topic of conversation often mid-sentence; invariably overestimating his ability to fake either his knowledge of what had already been said, or any actual interest in the topic at hand, he would be shunned from the group, only to resume his search for social acceptance, and immediately seeking out the next largest group of people, repeat the very same process over again.
I watched him bounce from group to group, each time growing more and more miserable, but never any less willing or disheartened to try with the next one. This was the most curious aspect of the whole thing—the second before he approached a group, he would change his facial expression from one of sheer sorrow to one of elation and absolute interest. If I hadn’t been watching him for so long, I would’ve thought that he was actually happy to be there, it was so believable. It wasn’t the smile itself that was so strange to me, but rather the speed and reliability at which he was able to change his whole demeanor between groups.
It was then that I was struck with a feeling of great sadness for the entire party—this one person seemed to me a microcosm of the entire crowd, and from my point on the periphery I felt a certain sense of melancholy radiate out from everyone in it. Underneath each person’s feigned enthusiasm, there was nothing but pure disinterest, not only for each other and the conversations that were being held, but for themselves too—no one was there by choice, but rather they were there because they had nowhere else to go; it was glaringly obvious to me, whether through the sheer volume of alcohol that was being consumed, the sighs and blank stares, or the banality of conversation, that the vast majority of people there were dissatisfied with the gathering, and deeply wished that they had somewhere else to be. But no one had anywhere else to be, and the night continued on, my lonely friend still moving from group to group, stopping occasionally for a drink.
I began to worry that in leaving Alice I had subjected her to this great sadness, so I hastened my search and began to scan the entire property for her face—one by one I looked through the crowd, and with each face that wasn’t hers, I grew increasingly frantic in my searching, worried that something terrible might’ve happened to her.
Luckily it wasn’t much longer until I spotted her. She was in the middle of a large crowd circled around the lake, drinking and watching a few drunkards jump on and off a small stone bridge that ran over the water. I ran up to her, and immediately I could tell that something was wrong—namely, the few friends that knew her were nowhere to be found, and she was waving from side to side and slurring her words, clearly having had a lot more to drink than I had. Her half-smile that had worried me so much was now gone, and had instead been replaced by a despondent frown, and a pair of glassy eyes that seemed not to recognize me at all.
She was holding a half-full bottle of gin, and as soon as the crowd noticed that Alice and I had finally reconvened, and that there was something off between us, they circled around, hanging on in hushed whispers to our every word, hungry for a new drama to analyze, a new scene to take the sad and lonely focus off of themselves.
It took her a minute or two, but she recognized who I was, and all of a sudden began to scream at me for leaving her alone. Egged on by the crowd, she berated me for not coming to find her sooner, and me being rash and so taken aback by her anger (we hardly ever had arguments with each other, certainly none that involved screaming or accusations like this, so the intensity of anger here was very new to us both) I screamed back and she started to cry. Immediately I recognized my mistake—there was no reason for either of us to be so incensed, and so in responding back as I did, I only validating her anger, and further fed the crowd’s hunger.
But even in her drunkenness, she saw that her arguments were being invented by the crowd around her for the sake of their entertainment, and realizing this, they quickly fell away, and instead were replaced by her actual feelings, which were much more fervent, and much more accurate in its appraisal of the situation. She wasn’t actually mad at me for leaving her alone, even though it might have appeared so on the surface, but instead in me doing so, I had allowed her to fall completely under the influence of her friends, and wasn’t there to stop her from drinking as much as she did.
It was the first time either of us would experience the consequences of our closeness, and the backfiring of our plan to understand each other as perfectly, and in as absolute terms as we did. What truly lied at the very center of our argument, it being the core from which all the invented excuses and rationales spiraled outwards, was that I had barely had anything to drink, and she was extremely drunk. Our reference frames were now completely irreconcilable, and everything that we had built, all of our understanding that we had gained over the last few months, could now be thrown away, as the alcohol had ripped away its very foundations, that being a worldview and state of consciousness that we no longer shared. It wasn’t so much a problem for me, as I understood the fact that we would eventually return to the same state of sobriety, but Alice, whose whole world for the past few hours had been centered around drinking and drunk people, was now under the assumaption that her current drunkenness was the default. Swimming in a mixture of her own regret at letting herself drink so much, and anger at me for not having the foresight to drink as much as she did, she saw our difference in mental status as a complete breakage of our relationship. Thus, the only rational way in her mind for it to be mended was not to wait, but rather to have me enter her new frame of reference by drinking as much as she did.
She handed me the half-empty bottle of gin—“here, please drink this.” Her voice was hoarse from tears and mucus, her eyes wide and scared. The drunken crowd cheered; they had no idea what the request really meant. Now, having relived this moment so many times, I would’ve drunk the rest without a single hesitation, but back then, I was just as blind as the crowd. I didn’t recognize the heart of the issue as I do now—only through years of scrutiny and analysis, and in trying to make sense of her final request did that realization come to me. Rather, I was still under the impression that she was mad because I hadn’t come to find her earlier, or that I had left her alone in the first place. And so completely unaware that this was not the case, I was too stubborn in my convictions to drink it, and so what I am forced to watch over and over, and what ails me so painfully to this day, is my silent refusal of the gin, instead trying to hug her, and as I go up do so, her running away in tears. As the crowd holds me back, berating me from all sides again, I hear the engine of my car start up and drive away.
~
The summers here are still as hot and bright as they were back then, the sand still as white, the foam still as blue. Only now I don’t care to collect them as I used to with Alice; I no longer live moment-to-moment like I did back then. Instead, I’m ruled by these strange episodes of memory, and the time in between I spend worrying about when the next one will come. They started a few years after that night, and slowly began to increase in frequency and magnitude, but I believe that they’re a direct consequence of the events that took place back then. Not everything about them is bad however, and when I am overrun by a bout of this sickness, there are some good parts. Like everything else in it, the memory of the feelings I had for Alice feel as real and as honest as they ever were—and sometimes these episodes lead me to believe that the memory of love is just as powerful as love itself.
These delusions have probably always been part of my nature, but I also believe partly that Alice was what kept me sane, for through our desire to collect and catalogue the present, and in our obsession with experience and perception, we were able to stave off the past, and forget about the inevitability of the future.
The police found Alice’s car back at the beach, halfway submerged under the waves, her body not far from it. I must’ve gotten there not soon after them, because they were just setting up the police tape when I arrived. Sometimes I think that I’m lucky that this was the case; I don’t know if I could’ve bared to see her there on the sand, but I’d like to think that she was headed there to wait for me, that somehow she knew I would follow her there and find her waiting like I were used to. But whether she knows it or not, we are still sitting on the beach as content and as full of youth as we used to be, and painting calamine lotion on our burned skin, we are still laughing at each other, the day, and the passage of time.