Chapter 7 - jan 2010 - finding alice

©2010 Tom Weathers

(Moving into January of the first year without Brenda - find myself missing not just Brenda but all female contact.)

Call her Alice – that’s what I called her character in the novel REDUX.

Our families lived in Baltimore during WWII in a development of beaver board houses (where men wore wide-brim hats and women wore broad-shoulder dresses with bold stripes and bands played John Philip Sousa and swing music in parks in the afternoon).

Both our fathers had jobs with Martin Aircraft. When the war ended we went back to Shelby and Alice returned to wherever she came from.

But every where I lived in the years that followed, the little black and white snapshots taken by her father were always nearby.

I grab Alice; she grabs my hand – holding me closer or maybe trying to pull me loose so she could get to the treats in the bag.

We sit close and gaze with wonder and maybe fear at something ahead.

Finding her again was prompted by the 50^th anniversary of the Greensboro lunch counter sit ins.

I had worked in the 1960’s at Celanese with Frank McCain, one of the four original participants in the sit ins. He was a chemist and I was technician. Even on our business trips together, he never mentioned his involvement in the civil rights movement.

After reading a commemorative article about Frank in the Charlotte Observer I Googled the events for more detail. One of the entries mentioned that Frank and the others had been joined on the third day of the sit ins by three white girls from Woman’s College at Greensboro. One was a sophomore from Florida who had the same name as Alice.

Googling that name and her town in Florida I found the high school’s 50^th anniversary web site. Searching the online annual for 1958, I found her picture. Grown up and lovely, but the same face. There was an email address for the 50^th anniversary coordinator. I contacted her. She contacted Alice. Alice contacted me. She knew who I was, still had the pictures.

I who do not believe in magic had performed magic. Brenda had died less than a month ago and now there was this. I did not know how to feel. Were greater forces at work? Was I in touch with God – or just the internet? I shed tears of – what?

Within a few days we were on the phone. Voices tremulous and uncertain we outlined 65 years of history –children, spouses, parents, jobs, towns.

(Maybe we had arrived at that place in the picture - just out of view, the place once regarded with fear and wonder. We were on the other side now, looking back, alone, no longer clutching at each other or anyone for comfort, seeing everything for what it was. )

We stayed in touch, exchanged pictures revealing, as Alice said, our “evolved visages”. We discovered protective carapaces and other constructions. Mr. Bob and I visited this summer on our trip Up North. Alice and I sat at her kitchen table late at night eating ice cream like the old couple we would never be. We still do the occasional email.

As she says, we are haunted by the little people we left behind.

(Eventually she stopped responding to my emails and at the time of this writing I find that I no longer care - finding myself unable to think much about anyone other than Brenda.)