A Dream for Alice Bane

by Liz Zuercher

Tuesday Night

“You can wash the damn dishes in the sink,” Harold Bane said.

All Alice had said was that the dishwasher was broken, that the water wasn’t draining right and could he take a look at it when he had a chance. She should have known not to bother her husband when he was sitting at his desk, rifling through his papers, sharpening his pencils. That meant he was getting ready to pay the farm bills and she knew better than to even come in the room. She backed out of the den, saying she was sorry, she hadn’t meant to bother him.

“Shut the door behind you,” he growled.

She obeyed and went back to the kitchen to finish up the dishes and wipe down the counters. She straightened the chairs at the kitchen table, making sure the one closest to the door was pushed in as far as it could go so Harold wouldn’t run into it when he came in to get a can of beer later on. With everything in order Alice turned out the light, picked up her cherry Coke and went to the family room to watch her reality shows. She liked “Dancing With the Stars” and “American Idol”, but their seasons were over. Now she was getting into “America’s Got Talent”. She switched on the TV and sat in her recliner, settling in for the evening.

Wednesday Morning

After she got Harold off to the fields and cleaned up the breakfast dishes, Alice read her horoscope in the Chronicle.

Time to make a change, it said, to fulfill your dreams. That stumped her. What were her dreams? When you got to be in your late sixties what was there to dream about? The only dream she’d ever had was to get married and raise a houseful of children. She was on track with that until her first baby, Charlie, died in his crib. Harold was so distraught that he swore never to have another child, and that was the end of that.

Last night she had listened to a big fat man with an innocent face tell the judges on “America’s Got Talent” that he always dreamed of having a singing career. He worked for the Postal Service and he sang in his mail truck on his rural route. He told himself one day that he had to go for it – chase his dream – and now here he was, living his dream. The judges said let’s hear you sing, and the music started – opera music. When he opened his mouth, it was like Pavarotti was singing and Alice wondered if the mailman was lip-syncing. But the usually grim judges were in tears and the audience was crying, then leaping to their feet applauding.

She should have a dream, Alice thought, something to work toward, to expand her horizons. But right now she had a more pressing issue. She had to decide what to take to the First Christian Church Women’s Missionary Society meeting at Ida’s that night.

She wanted something new and different, so she leafed through the cookbook she’d bought from the Methodist Ladies Auxiliary. She wondered if it would be considered blasphemy for her to have supported the Methodists by buying this cookbook. There was a longstanding rivalry between the Methodists and the First Christians, which sometimes got a little heated, with people turning their backs on one another or trying to convert a member from one congregation to the other. Alice could never quite figure that out. They were all Christians, weren’t they? Jesus for the First Christians was the same Jesus the Methodists worshipped. For heaven’s sake, what was all the fuss about? Even the recipes were the same, she noticed, as she closed the cookbook and decided to go with the strawberry bread recipe her cousin in Iowa had sent her.

Wednesday Night

A few early evening stars peeked through a thin layer of wispy clouds as she drove to town for the Missionary meeting at Ida’s house. All day she’d tried to think of a dream for herself and she had decided she was a pretty dull, ordinary person who didn’t have a talent to make her shine like a star. She couldn’t sing, except for an off-key “Holy, Holy, Holy” in church. She couldn’t dance. She couldn’t paint. As a girl she played piano, and the teacher said she had promise. But now the old spinet gathered dust in the front room. Harold complained of the mistakes when she played, so she’d eventually given it up. The only talent she could come up with was her baking. She made the best cinnamon rolls and pies and cakes and cookies in town – everyone said so – but how could she make a dream out of that?

She pulled up in front of Ida’s house and sat for a while looking at the not-so-starry sky before she picked up her strawberry bread from the passenger seat and went into Ida’s for the Missionary meeting. She hoped everyone would like this new recipe. She had a reputation to maintain after all.

At the back of the room Helen Murphy was arranging all the goodies on a table covered with a pink flowered tablecloth. The way she acted you’d think she was the hostess instead of Ida. But that was Helen, always trying to be something she wasn’t. The “home made” pecan pie she’d brought was a fake, too. Alice could tell a Food for Less pecan pie anywhere, even reheated in a fancy glass pie dish on a sterling silver trivet.

Alice unwrapped her plate of strawberry bread and put it next to Helen’s pie.

“What’s that?” Helen asked, as if Alice had put a pile of dung down on the table.

“Strawberry bread, fresh out of the oven,” Alice said. “What did you bring?” she asked Helen, even though she knew exactly what she’d brought and where she’d bought it.

“This pecan pie, also fresh from the oven,” Helen replied.

“Make it yourself?” Alice said, looking Helen straight in the eye.

Helen looked straight back at Alice and said, “You bet.”

“I’d love the recipe,” Alice said, just to see what Helen would say.

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Helen replied. “It’s an old family secret.”

Alice smiled sweetly and said, “Well, we wouldn’t want to let those family secrets out of the bag.” But all she could think of was how big a liar Helen Murphy was, and how she hoped no one would eat her pie. Not a very charitable thought for a Missionary meeting, but Alice couldn’t help it.

The program for the evening was a presentation by EllaMay Roloff’s niece, Jessica, who was just back from a mission in Haiti to rebuild an orphanage destroyed in the earthquake. Everyone filled their plates with goodies and sat down to watch the video Jessica had brought about the project.

“Parents are desperate for their children to be taken care of,” the narrator said. “They line up for blocks to leave their babies at the orphanage. We don’t have enough room for all of them.”

Little black children stood holding bowls almost as big as they were, waiting for aid workers to scoop food into the bowls.

Alice put her fork down. Nothing tasted very good to her anymore, not even her strawberry bread. The babies and toddlers and the forlorn parents gazed out at her from the television screen. She felt tears well up as she thought about all those parents giving up their babies. That was just the saddest thing she’d ever heard.

When the video was over Jessica made a plea for donations of money or clothing.

“God has called me to help these children,” she said. “Anything you can give is appreciated.”

The meeting wrapped up after that, without the usual exchange of gossip. Alice left the rest of the strawberry bread with Ida and didn’t even bother to look at Helen’s pie to see how much had been eaten. It didn’t really seem to matter after all.

The house was dark when Alice got home at 9:30. She stood at the kitchen sink for a while and looked out at the starry sky and the glint of moonlight on the grain bin. All those people in Haiti without a home or food for their babies must dream of being in a place like this, of being able to eat strawberry bread or store-bought pie anytime they wanted, of being able to care for their children. She felt a wave of guilt and decided that if she had to be stuck without a dream, there could be way worse places to be stuck. She resolved to count her blessings.

Thursday Morning

The day’s horoscope said not to try too hard, to be patient and take a step at a time toward the goal. Alice was mulling that over while she cleaned the front room. She still didn’t know what her goal was, but she was thinking that maybe if she just did one little thing different it would be like taking a step forward. If she could go forward with something – anything - maybe she would see the goal once she got closer to it.

This was on her mind as she dusted the old spinet. She lifted the keyboard cover and ran the dust rag over the keys, listening to the random clinking sounds she made. Before she knew it she was sitting down with her hands poised in position to play “Solfeggietto”, the piece she always used to play first because she knew it by heart. She was rusty, and she hit some sour notes, but as she gained confidence, her hands glided more easily over the keys. She felt good, like she did indeed still have promise.