Alice’s Diary
Alice Shields, in her seventies, finds her peaceful life shattered when a stranger forces her to surrender her old diaries, which contain explosive secrets about powerful politician, Tommy Duncan. After this harrowing encounter, Alice contemplates exposing Duncan, but tragically dies before she can act. Her husband, Ricky, later discovers the truth about her past and confesses it to a writer, leaving behind a chilling warning about the dangers of unchecked power.
The following story was dictated to me by Alice’s husband, Ricky. I have taken the liberty to change and embellish his language in order to make his words more readable. Please remember while reading this story that the truth is always difficult and possibly even dangerous.
Alice Shields was a girl with secrets, a prep school girl with looks to match – tall and lanky with pale blond hair, a swan-like neck and bright blue combative eyes fringed with colorless lashes that could look innocent one minute, and stony and harsh the next. She had grown up on an estate in the suburbs of New York, and on this particular day, when she was eighteen years old and about to go to college (Bryn Mar), she was in a department store not far from her local town. She had just seen a beautiful dangly gold bracelet that she immediately coveted. She looked around – no one there to see what she was about to do. With quick, sneaky fingers, she grabbed the bracelet from its rack and deposited it in her skirt pocket. Her plan was to quietly and inconspicuously leave the store, but before she could do that she was accosted by a neighbor boy, Tommy Duncan, whom she had known since grade school and always detested. “I saw what you just did,” he said in a mocking voice.
“Hunh?”
“That bracelet you just stuffed in your pocket.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alice said without guile.
“Yes, you do. Show me the bracelet or I’ll call the manager.”
There was a scuffle, Alice trying to get away from him, and Tommy grabbing hold of her arm, which he gripped so tightly there was later a thumb-shaped bruise. In the end, Tommy, who was destined to become a much-reviled and powerful political figure (actually, he would run for president forty-seven years hence), prevailed, forcing Alice to empty her pocket and show him the bracelet. “Ah hah,” he said. “Just as I thought.”
Alice stood there glaring at him, defiance in her stony blue eyes.
“You have two choices. Either you do as I say, or I’ll get the manager who’ll contact your father and you know what a big fucking mess that would be.”
Alice’s father, Harold Shields, was a prominent investment banker who was very staid in his ways and never suffered fools lightly. The last thing Alice would ever wish was for him to learn about her theft. “What do you want me to do?” she asked uneasily.
“Have sex with me,” Tommy announced.
“No way!” screeched Alice.
“Okay, then I’ll call for the manager right now and you can enjoy being caught red handed.”
Alice knew she had to back down. Lord knows she didn’t want to. This was in 1963 when girls weren’t quite so free as they are nowadays and tended to remain virgins until marriage, or at least until college. Alice was still a virgin, fiercely protective of her body. She may have had sexual fantasies about Paul Newman or Marlon Brando, but in reality the idea of a man thrusting his penis into her most private of places made her want to vomit. And the idea of a boy like Tommy doing it to her made her want to grab her mother’s butcher knife and scream bloody murder.
She had long hated Tommy whom she considered a crass, malevolent bully. He was handsome, she had to give him that, but it was a handsomeness that was icky, with light blond gelled hair and angry, smart alec eyes the same color as hers. They lived on neighboring properties, so she had known him from an early age, a loud obnoxious boy who carried rocks in his pockets to throw at people and was always yelling curse words. One of her first memories of him was when they were both six years old and he had climbed the fence and started lobbing stones at her golden retriever puppy. She had badly wanted the dog to attack and bite him but that didn’t happen because the poor thing was only three months old and still pretty wobbly. At the time, she had considered telling her father about the incident, but Harold Shields was a cold and unapproachable middle-aged man who wouldn’t have taken her seriously, and who was, besides, a fairly close associate of Tommy’s father, Kirk Duncan, a wealthy builder of tract houses that had mushroomed all over Long Island. So Alice remained mum, swallowing her fury and vowing to stay as far away from loutish Tommy as she could. When her whole fourth grade class was invited to his house for a birthday party, Alice refused to go, feigning a sore throat, nausea and extreme fatigue. If her mother had tried to force her, she would have thrown herself down on the living room floor and played dead, limbs as heavy and immovable as fifty pound bags of flour. But her mother had no fondness for Tommy either, and allowed her to stay home.
And now here they were, face to face, arguing about a pretty golden bracelet she had just stolen.
She knew for a fact that Tommy would have no qualms about going to her father with news of the theft. And once Harold was apprised, there would be no end of punishment: loss of Harold’s esteem, loss of his trust, loss of freedom, loss of any kind of privilege. Forget about driving her car or going to the movies with friends or traveling to Europe that summer with Carol Cushing, her best buddy since the ninth grade at Miss Porter’s. She would be done-for, doomed, isolated for months.
So which was worse: total isolation for a long period of time, or sex with Tommy? She decided if she closed her eyes and pretended not to be there, sex with Tommy might just be the lesser of two evils.
“Okaay,” she said now.
“You’ll have sex with me?”
Alice nodded mutely.
“We’ll do it on the beach. In fact, let's go right now.”
Both of their houses bordered the Long Island Sound where the beach was stony and narrow. Alice felt sick to her stomach, but agreed to meet him there.
Even though it was a warm day, there weren’t many people on the beach. Tommy, who was wearing khakis and a red polo shirt, led her to the far end where there were steep cliffs and a group of slimy, mollusk-encrusted boulders the size of elephants. There he made her lie down on the pebbles and raise her skirt. “Ooh,” he said as he yanked off her panties and stared at her pubis and the thin, closed line of her vagina. He wasn’t grubby, but he seemed that way, pulling apart her labia and sticking a finger into the dark little orifice.
Alice winced and jammed her eyes shut. “I don’t think we should do this!” she yelped.
“Oh yeah? But we’re gonna. Otherwise …” He let the words trail.
“Okay, okay,” Alice whimpered, tears flowing unchecked from beneath clenched lids. “Just hurry up and get it over with.” His finger inside her felt like a thorny branch abriding the tender flesh. She didn’t look as he unzipped his fly, but she heard the sound of breaking foil and said – unnecessarily – “You’d better have a condom.”
“I’m not stupid,” he answered, pushing the tip of his rubber-clad penis through the taut membrane that sealed her vagina. Alice screamed because it hurt so much, and then she screamed harder because it hurt even worse as he started moving clumsily up and down. The ordeal seemed to go on forever. At the end, he gasped and yelled, “Yes! Oh my god, yes!” as he gave a final thrust that was so deeply penetrating Alice could feel it in her buttocks. Then he went inert, body slumped heavily over hers.
“Get off me!” she shrieked.
He took his time, but when he rolled off, he muttered, “Uh oh, we might have a problem.”
“What are you talking about?” Alice said tersely..
“The condom burst.”
Alice grabbed for her panties which were scrunched up on the sand. “What? Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.” He sat up and rubbed sand from his face. “Hopefully, it’ll be okay.”
Hopefully? thought Alice. She was the one who’d be in trouble if the thing had burst.
“That was great, wasn’t it?” Tommy said then, as if he were some sort of hero.
Alice stared at him in disgust. His face was red and sweaty and triumphant. She’d never hated anyone so much. “I’m going home,” she said, pulling on her panties.
“No, wait. Stay here a minute.”
“What for?”
He smiled lazily. His mouth was shaped like a pretty pink rosebud that would have looked good on a homo boy, but was mean and self-loving on Tommy. “That was one for the books, hunh?”
Alice smoothed her skirt over her legs and tried to stand up. Her crotch felt as if someone had punched her there repeatedly. All she wanted to do was get away from this creep.
“I think you should write about it in your diary,” he said. “You still keep one, don’t you?”
Everyone knew Alice kept a diary. She’d scribbled in it since grade school and now she was on her sixth copy, a soft, thick, leather bound journal in which she wrote down every single detail of her life. In time, she would wish she hadn’t.
Virgin though she was – or had been – Alice kept close track of her periods, always noting the day in her journal, proud that her body was as predictable as a clock. When, after her encounter with Tommy on the beach, she was a day late, she grew worried; when seven days passed without a period, she knew she was in trouble. She couldn’t go to her mother, who would have thrown a fit and threatened to kick her out of the house. Forget about her father – no way could she talk to him about such things. So she went to Tommy, who was working for his father that summer and not, thank god, off on a trip somewhere (as she was supposed to be, three weeks from now, with her friend Carol). She waylaid Tommy in his driveway as he was getting out of his car. “I think I’m pregnant,” she said.
Tommy’s smart alec face went slack. “And you think it’s me?” he said after a minute.
“Who else would it be?” Alice said indignantly.
He folded his arms defensively across his chest. “I’m not gonna marry you,” he said as if this were even a possibility.
“No one’s talking about marriage, asshole!” Alice retorted, forcing herself to look steadily into his mean blue eyes. “I’m going to need an abortion.”
Abortions were a dangerous proposition in those days. Girls in trouble had to find back door doctors willing to help for large sums of money, or, if they didn’t have the means, resort to solving the problem on their own, using knitting needles or wire from hangers. Alice, who was terrified, didn’t want to risk her health doing either of those things. “You’re gonna have to help me,” she said.
“I don’t know what to do,” snapped Tommy.
“Well, you’d better figure something out,” Alice snapped back. “Otherwise …” She hesitated. “Otherwise I’m going to your father.”
Tommy’s face, usually so belligerent, went as flat as a wet piece of paper. “You can’t do that!” he cried.
“Try me,” Alice said, enjoying his misery. “I’d have no problem telling him the whole goddamn story.”
Six days later she was in an abortionist’s office a few dingy blocks away from Columbia University in the upper reaches of Manhattan. She made Tommy go with her, watching closely as he counted out five crisp hundred dollar bills, money that would have been worth four thousand dollars these days. The doctor, who was from Italy, told him to go sit in the waiting room. He told Alice to follow him into the examination room where he gestured for her to take off her clothes from the waist down, and lie on the table. He didn’t give her any medication before slipping the speculum into her birth canal and gently scraping out her womb. It took only about five minutes. Afterwards he said: “Okay signora, all done.” The signora was said without a hint of sarcasm.
A week passed. It was only another eight days before Alice was scheduled to travel to Europe, when her mother opened the morning paper and exclaimed: “Oh my goodness, look at what we have here!”
“What?” Alice said, not really listening.
“A man’s body was found with his throat slit in a canal in Brooklyn.”
“So? I’m sure that’s not the first one.”
“Don’t be so cynical, young lady. This guy was identified as a doctor who performed abortions. I’ll bet someone who used his services wanted to shut his mouth for good.”
Alice, who’d been recuperating well from her recent procedure, felt as if a bucket of ice had been thrown over her limbs. For a moment she couldn’t speak and had to concentrate very hard to keep her body from shaking. “Does it say what his name was?” she murmured.
“Why?” her mother laughed. “Do you think he’d be someone you would’ve known?”
Alice knew that was supposed to be a joke, and struggled to stay calm and maintain an ordinary expression on her face. “Well, does it?” she repeated.
Her mother peered at the paper. “Dr. Luigi Grasso. Ha! Probably a mafia thing.”
“Probably,” Alice muttered, quickly rising from the table. Luigi Grasso was the doctor who’d scraped out her womb. She raced from the kitchen to her upstairs bathroom where she vomited repeatedly into the toilet. When she felt a little calmer, she sat down on her bed and tried to piece things together. The word mafia kept ringing in her head. Perhaps her mother was right. And then more terrible ideas started coming to her. Those crisp hundred dollar bills. Tommy had never said where the money came from, but his father was a builder and builders were often connected to seamy characters in the mafia and if that were true, then Kirk Duncan, with his well-cut suits and garage full of expensive cars, was probably personally acquainted with quite a number of them, and had – oh god just like in a crime movie – called in a favor. Once Alice thought that, she knew it was true, and also knew she had to get out of her family’s Long Island home as quickly as possible. She would go stay with a friend in Connecticut. Her mother, with whom she constantly locked horns, would be happy to have her out of the house, and she could say she wanted to spend the last weekend before leaving for Europe riding horses on her friend’s farm in Litchfield. She would never tell anyone about this. All she could do was write about it in her diary.
The loss of her virginity and the abortion and horrifying murder that followed it affected Alice profoundly.
In college, when all the other girls gushed about their dates with boys and analyzed their sexual escapades in full blown detail, Alice mentally withdrew from the discussion and shook her head when asked about her own romances. “I’m just not that interested in dating or sex right now,” she would say. “I need to focus on my studies.”
Indeed, her lack of interest in men made her wonder if she was frigid, or worse: a lesbian. But she wasn’t drawn to women, either, and when a girl in her dorm made a drunken pass at her one night, Alice’s body locked up and she shrieked, “Don’t touch me!” in a voice that was louder than she had intended.
She had become an ‘odd girl,’ still very pretty, but pinched and thin, with a remoteness to her manner that put people at bay. After college (where she majored in anthropology), she took a job as a teacher’s assistant in a private school in Manhattan. That was fine for a while, but didn’t really satisfy her desire to do something selfless and important, like organizing a charity for orphaned children, or feeding starving babies in a war zone (Vietnam came to mind, but was too complicated and dangerous, plus her father might have disinherited her). In the end, after much thought and deliberation, she decided – whether her father liked it or not – to offer her services as a volunteer in some desperately impoverished and disease-ridden outpost in the wilds of Africa or southeast Asia. She signed up with several organizations, but, to her chagrin, was turned down for health reasons – she had a tricky heart, had suffered a bout of endocarditis due to not taking antibiotics before dental work, two deep cavities that had to be drilled down almost to the bone.
In time, Alice would consider this a blessing. She had to reduce stress in her life, which for Alice meant paring down her ambitions to travel the world as a major doer of good deeds. Instead she joined a nonprofit – Caritas, Inc. – whose mission was to address poverty and mental illness in groups that had fallen between the cracks, basically derelicts and bums (though Alice didn’t like to use those words). Her home base was New York, and she was surprised and happy to find purpose in staying put and helping the neediest in the slums of her own city. In August, 1973, when Alice was twenty-eight years old, she went on a week-long retreat for Caritas workers in upstate New York. By now, her body had filled out, was stronger and sturdier from assisting with repairs – hammering boards and climbing ladders to replace light bulbs – in clients’ squalid apartments. Despite her heart issues, she was a chain smoker, fingertips stained yellow from tobacco. She kept her pale blond hair short and curly, and went around in faded T-shirts and loose-fitting overalls that hid any curves in her tall, overworked body. Her eyes were still very blue in a tight-lipped, freckled face, and even though she wanted – always! – to blend into the background, her severe looks turned her into a striking and much stared at woman.
At the retreat there was a problem – too many people and too few cabins for them to sleep in. Alice was unhappy to find herself paired with a thin young man from Schenectady who’d been in a car accident many years before and had a permanently twisted foot. His name was Ricky Shroder, and he was a tousled-looking guy who’d grown up in a church-going family he’d become estranged from because he was no longer a believer. At first, Alice was horrified at the prospect of spending seven whole nights in the same cabin as a man, no matter how proper he might be. But Ricky turned out to be something of a long lost brother. In their twin beds, they would lie awake for hours discussing their lives – debilitating shyness, fear of the opposite sex, distance from their families of origin. Alice didn’t tell Ricky about her abortion – that was something that would forever remain buried. But she told him she’d been groped by a man at a party (partially true) and that she’d once been held at gunpoint by a crazy person in one of the apartments she visited. Both of them admitted to being virgins, and both slowly and nervously became aware of a growing attraction between them. It took a while before they actually had sex, but they hugged and kissed one another timidly, and eventually Ricky slipped into Alice’s bed and put his arms around her. The sex they had was awkward and fumbling – neither of them knew exactly what to do. But in time, their lovemaking grew more vigorous and they continued as partners, Alice moving to Mexico with Ricky where they lived in a poor community, teaching English and helping provide food to the most destitute. And then, without planning to, Alice fell pregnant.
Ricky was delighted. He insisted on the baby being born in the States and talked Alice into moving to California, where they could work in downtrodden neighborhoods in the inner city of Los Angeles. Alice wasn’t quite as delighted, but agreed to marry Ricky in a small ceremony on the beach in Santa Monica, neither set of parents invited. The birth, seven months later, was easier than Alice had anticipated. It was a home birth, with a midwife present, and Ricky, suited in a white gown, was in awe as he watched his wife’s vagina stretch wide as the mouth of a small tunnel (he tuned out Alice’s screams), and as the baby’s round bald head appeared in the opening. It was a girl. Ricky got to cut the cord and was the first one to hold the baby and, as he later told Alice, the whole experience, start to finish, was as breathtaking and stupendous as catching sight of God in the sky after a brutal thunderstorm. Instantly and without hesitation, he became a believer again.
From the time Alice had met him, Ricky had been very set in his opposition to women having abortions.
If the woman’s life was at risk, that was one thing, but if the woman just wanted to get rid of the baby because the timing was inconvenient, or because she was single and couldn’t endure the ostracism that would come with an unwanted pregnancy, that was a heresy that was akin to slapping God directly in the face. Even a deformed child, or one who had neural tube deficiencies and might never be able to see or think or speak, had a right to life and would be cheerfully and selflessly welcomed by Ricky. After his daughter’s birth, that belief grew more steadfast. For Ricky, the sight of his child being born was a miracle that couldn’t be explained and should be revered in the same way as witnessing the skies open and angels drifting down. Nothing could reverse that opinion.
The years passed, and the Shroders had two more children. By now, Ricky had a steady – but difficult – job as a math teacher in a high school in the community of Boyle Heights, Los Angeles. Alice, who’d gone back to school for an associates degree in nursing, worked as a caregiver for people who were dying or who were elderly and very sick. She had inherited a great deal of money from her father; part of her fortune was donated to charity, and part was invested in trusts for her children. She did not stray from her ambition to lead a simple, honest, hard-working life, and encouraged her family – by example – to do the same. In this, she and her husband were extremely well-matched. Over the years, Ricky became known as an outspoken personality in the anti-abortion movement and would go to rallies with Alice and their children at his side, all of them waving banners that read: I AM A PERSON, NOT A CHOICE! Alice didn’t mind this, although she definitely wasn’t in the same camp and did her best to conceal her opinions.
And then, much to Alice’s shock and disgust, Tommy Duncan was elected president.
Ricky had voted for him while Alice had voted for a female candidate named Hazel Christie, whom she considered a much more worthy candidate. They didn’t argue about this; in fact, Ricky told Alice he understood why she might want a woman for president and joked with her that her fondness for Hazel was “kind of cute.” In all this time, there had been no contact between Alice and Tommy Duncan. She had vaguely been aware of his climb to power, but rarely paid attention to him, thinking only that he was the same vile creature as he had been when they were growing up: loud-mouthed, vengeful, transactional. Only now he was worse, a petty man who played favorites and wouldn’t accept any kind of resistance to his boorish and vulgar politics. In Alice’s mind, Tommy had always been a jerk. But with his ascent to the presidency, she began to worry that he might remember her and the things that had happened in their past. Out of caution, she gathered her many journals and locked them in a safety deposit box, giving the extra key not to Ricky, but to a midwife she knew from one of the clinics.
She hoped there would be no trouble, but around the time Tommy declared that he intended to ban abortion, strange things began to happen. Alice’s cell phone would ring, but when she answered there was silence, just the sound of someone breathing at the other end. The house phone, which they kept for emergencies, would ring too, and once Ricky picked up and someone whispered, “Better watch out!”
“Wonder what that was about,” Ricky said nervously to Alice, who shook it off as a prank call.
But of course Alice knew what it really was. Tommy Duncan, with his long memory, was aware of her journals and the threat they posed. He wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever was necessary to get rid of her and the secret knowledge she had about his hypocrisy regarding abortion. As a result, Alice began to grow more and more fearful. She remembered the murder that had followed her long-ago abortion and understood that Tommy was no one to play around with; she would have to figure out a way to vanish into thin air lest Tommy send one of his goons after her.
“I think we should take a vacation and travel somewhere special, like Thailand or maybe even Vietnam,” she told Ricky.
“That’s a great idea, honey, but we’ll have to wait a few months until I finish the campaign.” (He was helping a local politician who was running for Congress.)
“Okay, then maybe I’ll go on my own.”
“What? You can’t do that!” Ricky said a little anxiously.
“I’m really tired, Ricky. I need time off. Maybe I’ll take a solo trip to Paris and hang out for a while, see what’s going on there.”
But Ricky wouldn’t permit her to go, using all sorts of sob stories about why he needed her at home. In their seventies, he and Alice were still going strong, involved with charities and political work and demonstrations in their community. Ricky was confused by Alice’s wish to travel alone, but he let the matter drop and their days continued as they normally did – visits to their children, trips to the supermarket, dry cleaners, dog groomer, smoke shop (Alice was still smoking, but had traded cigarettes for vape pens). One morning when Alice was alone in the house, the doorbell rang. She squinted through the peephole and saw a nicely dressed man in a suit and tie on the front step. “Hi, I’m Joseph Gladstone here to drop off some papers for your husband,” he said as she opened the door a crack. He looked okay, so without thinking about it as much as she should have, Alice let him come in and stand in the hallway. “Would it be too much to ask for a glass of water?” he asked, handing her a sheaf of papers. “I’m parched.”
“Of course,” said Alice.
He looked like one of her sons, cleancut and handsome with short brown hair and a kind expression in his sparkling blue eyes. It never occurred to Alice, who prided herself on her intuition about people, to think he was anyone but who he said he was. She expected him to wait in the hallway and was a little surprised when he followed her to the kitchen and drank down a glass of water in one gulp. “Nice day,” he said when he’d finished.
“Uh huh,” agreed Alice.
“Beautiful flowers,” he said, nodding at the kitchen table.
“Yes, they are, aren’t they? I’ve become quite the gardener in my old age.”
“I think you still look pretty young, Mrs. Shroder,“ the man – Gladstone – said in a smooth voice. It was a kind remark, but there was something in his manner – the stiff set of his shoulders, a tightness around the mouth – that began to make Alice uneasy. It was clearly time for him to leave, but he just stood there. The dog, a poodle who was no threat to anyone, sniffed at his feet.
“Well, I’ve got some things to attend to,” Alice said, allowing her voice to trail.
“Yes, yes, of course. But first I need you to answer a few questions.”
Alice glanced at him quickly and saw that his eyes had hardened. She felt in her pocket for her cell phone, but it wasn’t there. She bit down hard on her lip. Was this the moment she had dreaded for so long?
“What happened to those diaries you used to keep?” Gladstone said amiably.
“Why would you want to know that?”
“I’m the one asking questions. I suggest you answer.”
Alice felt unnerved, but did her best to maintain her composure. No way was she going to let this guy frighten her. “Oh, you must be one of Tommy Duncan’s cronies,” she said, almost as if she didn’t give a damn.
“I need you to answer, Mrs. Shroder. Where are those diaries?”
Alice managed a shrill laugh. “Locked away somewhere safe,” she said through gritted teeth. “Along with a note that says if anything happens to me, it’s because of Tommy Duncan,” she added.
“Nothing’s gonna happen to you if you answer my questions. I don’t know about your children though.”
“Oh, so now you’re threatening me?”
“Call it what you will. We keep close tabs on you, your family and all your friends. Imagine what your husband would say if he found out you had an abortion?”
Alice fell silent. Then she said: “Imagine what the world would say if it was discovered that Tommy Duncan is a total hypocrite?”
“I have a gun, Mrs. Shroder.”
“Of course you do! That’s not gonna change anything.”
“It will if I go after your midwife friend. By the way, we have the intelligence and means to destroy your papers, including your will.”
“And yet, you can’t get your hands on my diaries?”
“In time we’ll get to those too, believe me.”
“I don’t give a shit,” Alice said, shrugging a shoulder.
“Well, you’d better. Otherwise there’s going to be a ton of destruction.”
Alice decided to relent. “All right, I have a copy of the key to the safety deposit box. I’ll give it to you if you promise never to bother me or my family again.”
“You’ll have to call the bank. Tell them I’m coming. My full name is Joseph P. Gladstone.”
Alice put in a call while Gladstone hovered over her. When she’d finished, he shoved his gun into the small of her back and forced her to walk slowly out of the house and into her old Honda sedan, which was parked at the curb. “Drive straight to the bank,” he said quietly. He kept the gun pointed at her the entire five minutes it took to drive there. When they arrived, he slid his gun into the glove compartment. “You try any funny business, there’ll be trouble and you know why?”
He looked at her as if he expected an answer.
“Why?” squeaked Alice.
“Because I have identification on me that says I work for Tommy Duncan. One wrong move, and we’ll make sure your husband learns all about your abortion.”
He was so fucking snide. At this point, Alice didn’t care what Ricky would think, but kept her mouth shut. In his suit and tie, Gladstone looked normal, not like the freak he was. The bank manager, who wore a pink flower in his lapel, led them into the safety deposit vault. Alice wanted to signal to him that something was wrong, but didn’t dare with Gladstone scrutinizing her every movement.
Once the box was unlocked, the manager left them to their privacy. Alice felt as if the gray walls of the vault were closing in on her. If she screamed, no one would hear her. So she watched, every muscle in her body taut, as Gladstone ran his hands over her precious journals and then pulled a parachute material expandable bag from his pants pocket and bundled the journals into it. Alice wanted to kick him in the balls with all her might. She wanted to yell “Thief!” as they exited the bank, but her voice seemed stuck in her throat. She sucked in a large breath. “Help!” she croaked feebly. Then louder: “HELP!”
Gladstone was right behind her and thumped her so hard in the back she stumbled, falling to the ground where she lay sprawled out as if she’d been wounded. Immediately people came running to her assistance. Gladstone took the opportunity to flee, racing down the street with the bag of journals knocking against his thigh. ”GET THAT MAN!” Alice screamed.
Within seconds, the cops arrived, sirens blaring. They helped her up off the ground and she told them what had happened, that the man, Joseph Gladstone, had attacked and robbed her. She gave a full description, his dark suit, his blue eyes, his short brown hair. And she handed over the gun he’d left behind in her glove compartment. For the next hour, the cops searched the entire area, but were unable to find even a trace of Gladstone. What’s the difference? Alice thought glumly. If they did catch Gladstone, he’d smooth-talk them, showing his ID and saying he was a cohort of Tommy Duncan’s and that the whole thing was a fabrication on Alice’s part. There’d be a big fuss. Ricky would be notified and the story about her journals and long-ago abortion would become public – the last thing she needed right now, and probably the last thing Tommy Duncan needed either.
So she drove home, walking gratefully into her house and collapsing on the couch. Ricky was there, drinking a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. “What’s wrong?” he asked, following her into the living room.
“Nothing. Just tired.”
“You look as if you’ve had some sort of shock.”
Alice shook her head. “I fell down in the street, that’s all. I’m fine.”
“You fell? Oh Alice, I’m so sorry.”
Usually it was Ricky they worried about, his twisted foot that could lead to tripping and falling. “Really, I’m okay,” Alice said.
And really, aside from her terrible encounter with Gladstone, she was. Her body felt as if a truck had run over it, but that was nothing – all she needed was a little rest. She went upstairs to her bedroom to lie down. Now that her journals were gone, she wouldn’t have to worry anymore. Tommy had them, or at least he would shortly, and that was the end of the matter. She should be relieved, she told herself. But already she missed the soft leather feel of her diaries and the information that was stored in them, all the anecdotes she’d written from childhood on. She’d have to get them back somehow.
But that was impossible. The only thing she could do was make a lot of noise on social media. And if she did that, her secret would be out in the open and Ricky would learn all about it. Suddenly, she didn’t care. Her one goal now was to destroy Tommy Duncan, and if she died in the process … well, so what? She’d led a long, purposeful life that had brought her to this very moment, and perhaps the sole reason for her existence was to take a bad president down.
The idea comforted her, even brought joy. What Tommy didn’t know was that she’d photocopied every single page of her diaries – the material was there and she’d use it.
Lying on her bed, with the dog snuggled tightly to her side, she opened her phone and began to write. But before she could get very far, a headline popped up: TOMMY DUNCAN SUED BY PORN STAR.
Whoah. Perhaps she didn’t need to do anything and Tommy would fall all on his own. But Alice continued to write anyway. She didn’t feel very well – probably because of her fall in the street. But now her body was suddenly convulsed with nausea and before she could get off the bed, her whole breakfast came up – orange juice and bits of egg splattered on the comforter. She had a blinding headache and closed her eyes. “Ricky!” she called out.
He ran up the stairs as fast as he could with his problem foot dragging. By the time he arrived at Alice’s bedside, she’d passed out, or at least he thought she had until he saw that her face had entirely drained of color and realized she’d stopped breathing. It was her heart, the doctors said later, her tricky beautiful heart that had led her to fight for justice and fairness her whole adult life. She looked like a white-hired angel lying on the bed. Ricky couldn’t stop bawling, face so crowded with tears it was as if a faucet had opened. Somehow he had the sense to grab Alice’s cellphone before the EMTs arrived.
Later, when things had calmed down and Ricky had the time and quiet to go through Alice’s phone in an attempt to continue to feel close to her, he was shocked to come across an extremely disturbing unsent text. “I’m here to tell you that President Tommy Duncan is a total hypocrite. I was his neighbor growing up and when he caught me in a compromising situation, he blackmailed me into having sex with him. The sex led to a pregnancy and he sent me for an abortion. All this is meticulously described in my journals, which were stolen today by one of Duncan’s cohorts who held me at gunpoint to force …” The entry stopped there. It was dated January 12, 2018, the day of Alice’s death.
Ricky put his head in his hands. So Alice had lied to him all these years about her beliefs regarding abortion and the fact that she herself had had one when she got in trouble as a teenager. She had lied and intentionally deceived him, this woman he’d cherished and considered his soulmate for more than half his life! He thought long and hard about this, his stern-faced wife who’d kept bitter secrets she didn’t want him – or anyone – to know. In a way he understood her need to cover up shameful things that had happened in her past, and felt sorry for Alice, and even sorrier for himself, that she had been unable to confide in him. It was his fault, he thought, for campaigning so publicly against abortion. As a Christian, he should have had a softer heart. And now God had punished him for his selfish and egregious lack of understanding by taking his wife away.
He made up his mind to keep the story to himself, destroying Alice’s phone and any other evidence he could get his hands on. No one would ever read about this … at least not until now when Ricky’s Christian heart drove him to confess what had happened to a writer he found on the internet. Now, finally, it would be out in public for everyone to know. There’s a saying in AA that we’re only as sick as our secrets. Ricky was aware of this and wanted to remain strong and healthy. If anyone asked, he would say God had directed him to tell the whole horrible story. Refusing would have been sinful and an eternal blot against him in the life that was to come.
***
That was where the saga ended. Ricky contacted me online and traveled to Austin, where I live, to tell me the story in person. He was, by then, a knobby-knuckled, skinny old man in his late seventies. His voice was thin and I had to listen closely to hear him. When he was finished, he said: “Don’t publish this until you hear from me, understand? If anything should happen to me, publish it when the moment’s right. I leave that to your discretion.”
Grrr. I wasn’t sure how involved I wanted to be in such a messy situation. A few weeks went by and then I was aggrieved to learn that Ricky had passed away. To my mind, his death was suspicious. He’d jumped from a window, too lonely and bereft to continue his days without Alice. But I knew that couldn’t be true: Ricky was too much of a believer to sin against god by taking his own life. So I decided to follow his instructions and post the story when the moment was right.
That moment is now. If I should perish in some weird way, you will know why. I intend to make a big stink about Alice’s Diary and hope you, my cherished readers, will advise the police of the truth if my body’s found with my throat slit in a canal somewhere. We have to be very careful about the people we elect to govern our country. Most of them don’t really give a crap about us, and if someone like Tommy Duncan wins the next election, we’re doomed. So stay on your toes, readers, if you want to keep your freedom and live your lives as you wish. Otherwise, there will be hell to pay: your bank accounts frozen, your movements restricted, your beliefs challenged so that you will be forced to worship a god you don’t believe in. From one day to the next, you won’t recognize the country you’re living in, and realize – too late – that you’re in a nightmare from which there is no end. That would be pretty brutal, and all because we’re too brainwashed to dare look at what’s really going on. Remember the story of the emperor without clothes? That’s us right now, blinded and foolish and too involved with our own petty interests to acknowledge the horrors in front of us.
September 4, 2024