Beautiful and elegant Ellie Spire notices her best friend Alice Peatrunk isn’t happy these days. How can she be after losing her husband and son a year earlier? Life has become an unshielded and emotional blur for Alice as her grieving continues, even with Ellie’s help.
Alice currently resides with Ellie, a temporary arrangement until she can move into her newly-purchased condominium. Ellie’s romantically affected by Alice, though, and finds her more than kind, thoughtful, and extraordinary. Ellie watches Alice: reading, sleeping, and gardening, as summertime swiftly moves forward.
As Ellie’s tender and erotic emotions for her grieving guest heighten, she notes Alice relies on the next door neighbor’s abandoned dandelion garden for therapy. A week passes, then another. But something strange begins to unearth at the garden as the anniversary of Alice’s loss unfolds. Something unsettling, ominous, and troublesome occurs. Ellie notices Alice keeps digging and digging among the dandelions. But why? What’s happening at the garden? A single afternoon’s moment of necessary survival change their lives forever, but is it for better or worse?
Alice. Poor Alice. She’s been living with me for the last month. Getting by. Just as she has done for the last year. Always getting by. Fall. Winter. Spring. Now summer. I’ve seen her make baby steps during this process of recovery. Eating better. Drinking less. She smokes some pot to relax, but only when I do. She does yoga now and then, and takes long walks around the neighborhood. She’s painting some. Small canvases. Dandelions being the main theme, of course. Light hues -- splashes of purple and hints of blue -- of watercolor mixed together. Striking creations that she can probably sell on Fifth Street at Pip Yonlanda’s Art Studio for thirty or forty dollars, each.
The reason Alice lives with me is because she’s between houses. This is what she calls it. The saltbox on Buchman Street that she’s shared with Bishop and Coyne is no longer hers. A small family (mother, father, son) reside there these days. The son, Doyle (he’s around the same age as Coyne) plays in the tree house out back. The father, Jed, uses Bishop’s office on the second floor to write paperback mysteries. And Minnie, the wife, tends a small vegetable garden (tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, peas, a narrow row of corn) that Alice once tended. They seem like the happy American family who are making things better in the world. Unfortunately, they haven’t made Alice better. Nothing will these days, I predict. Listen more ...
Alice is trying to close on a condominium next to the lake. The place is approximately twelve hundred square feet and sits on Ash Lane. The view is tremendous: the green-blue lake, sea gulls, three piers, and a private beech call Sunshine Alley. I can’t see her being excited about moving into the two-bedroom place, but I hope she will be soon. A little jump in her life is exactly what she needs, just like the rest of us. A little flare or spark. For now, Luther Meadow is her paper guru, finalizing the sale, and leading Alice into her next chapter of life.
In the meantime, she isn’t the relentless pain that I tell myself she will be during her temporary stay. She’s tidy, goes to bed early, and keeps to herself. She reads tattered, paperback mysteries. Mostly anything by Ruth Ware and Shari Lapena. She hardly eats. It’s more like grazing. And when she does, it’s mostly salads thick in greens. Sometimes it’s like she isn’t even around, unless the police appear, scolding here (again and again and again) to stay off the property next door. We’ve decided she can live with me for as long as she needs. Luther says, “The condo’s paperwork should be finalized on September fifteen,” which means Alice will be my roommate for the next thirty days, if not longer, depending on closing day.
We’ve been friends for quite some time. Before she married Bishop Peatrunk eight years ago. Before she had Coyne five years ago. Before her life came tumbling down and around her like the Twin Towers, and before she needed me. We met through a group of friends. Arlene Hinder. Cathy Metzling. Judith Starling. And Harriett “Harry” Bowers. We are all members of the Templeton Book Club. Most of us are professors at West End College: physics, sociology, psychology, English. We meet approximately eight times a year. We read female-driven books like The Separation by Katie Kitamura, The Spare Room by Helen Garner, and Perfect by Rachel Joyce. Just to name a few. The members take turns hosting. Friends/readers are welcome. Even men, although we will probably be sexist concerning their acceptance within the group, become judgy, and frown; women are like this sometimes, very protective of their groups, preventing interlopers.
Anyway, Harry brought Alice to the group approximately six years ago. At that time we were reading Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women. Perhaps I had found Alice, my friend, not the famous author, extremely elegant, charming, and beautiful then more than now since she has had such an incomparable but compromised last year, but I’m not judging myself, or her. Fondness is fondness no matter what the conditions. You can’t have the goodies without the uglies. Everyone knows this. I included.
Harry introduced her to me and we shook hands, which caused a throttle of warmness inside my arm; something untamed and enriched of goodness. Our eyes and smiles connected rather simply. Something friendly happened between us, instantly. Perhaps we knew at the first introduction that we would care deeply for each other, as women do among groups; feminine junkies at work, becoming high off each other. True friendship from the beginning. Real friendship.
