ALMAOld, nearly ninety years. Left Austria with her mother, a former artists' model and party girl, in 1919, after her father, an expressionist painter inducted by the army, was killed during the closing days of World War I. During the sea passage to the USA her mother died of influenza.
Upon arrival at Ellis Island, with no one to claim her, Alma was consigned to an orphanage. She was an angry child, too old to be cute; skinny and unattractive; with all the competition, she was never adopted by any family. Alma grew to hate the orphanage with a passion. Finally, at age 13, able to stand it no longer, she escaped. She quickly found her way, as if by instinct, to Greenwich Village, where, much to her initial good fortune she was befriended by a group of proto-feminist bohemians who took her into their fold.
Her development somehow accelerated by the stress of her life at the orphanage, Alma both acted and appeared older than her 13 years, and had little difficulty convincing those around her that she was "actually" 16 years of age. Aided by her new found friends, Alma managed to find work as an artists' model and actually made a go of it for nearly a year, during the course of which she admirably played the difficult role of the "experienced" virgin. While it did not take her long to discover the "free love" ethos that pervaded the village at that time, Alma had no desire to partake in its rituals herself, most especially due to the fact that her life there gave her little opportunity to meet anyone close to her own age; and the thought of becoming the concubine of any one of the various artists who hinted at that possibility while she was on the job repelled her.
Coming, as it did, on the heels of her years of cloistered existence at the orphanage, Alma thrilled to the relative freedom provided by her life in the Village. For the first, and perhaps only, time in her life, Alma believed she was in charge of her destiny.
This belief was cruelly shattered when, not long after her fourteenth birthday, Alma was raped by an artist who had hired her. Compounding Alma's trauma was the revelation that the artist who had raped her was the lover of the leader of the group who had befriended her. Alma greeted this news-- which she received immediately upon informing her benefactresses of the crime committed against her-- with confusion, both as to how this fact had escaped her notice and as to what significance it bore to the situation. This feeling of confusion quickly gave way to hot feelings of betrayal and rage when Alma learned that the woman in question had chosen to take her lover's account of the event, in which Alma played the role of cunning seductress, to be the truthful one. Despite the fact that Alma received some heartfelt (and some not so heartfelt) commiseration from some of those around her (out of earshot, of course, of the other concerned parties) she was so upset and disheartened by this turn of events that she abandoned the Village to seek her fortune elsewhere.
As anyone would have told her had she cared to ask-- which, of course, she did not-- the world we live in rarely has anything to offer a fourteen year old girl all on her own, except one form of abject servitude or another. But Alma was determined to avoid returning to the orphanage at any cost.
At the moment when her desperation was greatest, Alma had an epiphany of hallucinatory intensity which made clear to her that her one way out was to transform herself. It was to be done from the inside to the outside: starting with a mental conception that she would nurture until it was strong enough to emerge as a physical reality, her reality. She could see now that it was her failure to realize this that had kept her in the orphanage while the other children found homes: once a subjective being, Alma became a desirable, and hence, it was hoped, a desired, object.
With the intense conviction of a fresh convert certain of possessing the Truth, Alma pursued her course of action with a determination that bordered on, and at times overlapped with, vengeance. Seeking a hard and fast confirmation of her status as object of desire, Alma decided to bring herself to the zone where desire reigned supreme. Following her newly attuned instincts led her in short order to the nightlife of the underworld. Once arrived she quickly found her way to its beating heart. Located in Harlem, the corner of 7th Avenue and 131st Street, to be precise.
Once there she took up with a series of raffish rakes, taking from each whatever she could get before moving on. Gradually Alma became a fixture on the scene, recognizing and recognized by the other regulars who populated her new world. With the dancers and musicians who powered the engine that drove the nightlife where she plied her trade, Alma felt a special kinship, sensing that they too had made decisions similar to her own. On those rare occasions when circumstances conspired to cause the great weight of anxiety that pressed down on all their lives to lift, however briefly, in a time and place when and where Alma was present, allowing the masks that all had assumed to be doffed, Alma saw clearly the paradox of the situation they had all agreed to: that of coming to the conclusion that the only way to hang on to yourself is to become what somebody else, the others, the world, wants you to be.
While the men amongst whom Alma moved in earning her daily bread were all too ready to believe her when she stated her age as eighteen, the rest never believed it for a second, although some respected her derring-do nonetheless. The life Alma had chosen was a balancing act and juggling act rolled into one wherein only the nimble in both mind and body survived. Alma survived. Just before turning seventeen (at which point she routinely referred to herself as twenty-one) she caught the eye of bootlegging gangster named Oskar. A ruthless gunsel on his way up, he became obsessively fixated on her. For her part, Alma, recognizing his ruthlessness, suspected Oskar of a desperation similar to her own and felt that, perhaps, in their own different ways, they were two of a kind. She yielded to his desire to possess her entirely, hitching her wagon to his star, corrupt and venal though it was.
Alma's cohorts on the scene were wary of Oskar from the moment he first made his appearance. When it became clear that Alma had thrown in with him, those who were once glad to pass the time in Alma's company were less and less likely to do so. The gradual removal of her peer support forced Alma to derive ever greater amounts of emotional sustenance from her central relationship. Slowly but surely the illusions with which Alma had supplied herself for her life together with Oskar were depleted by the rigors of her trek through the harsh reality of the relationship. Alma finally came to see her initial vision of Oskar as one of willful denial. She saw that her self transformation into an object of desire had, in her relationship with Oskar, reached an apotheosis that had erased the last vestiges of her humanity. All that remained was fear and a sense of imminent collapse.
With the passage of time her fear only increased, yet collapse did not come. As her actual twenty-first birthday loomed ever closer, Alma felt a mortal dread creep ever nearer the surface of her consciousness. The fact that her adult status was a fictional creation of her own making had always kept one last barrier between herself and reality. The realization that even that too must go filled her with an overwhelming desire to escape. But escape was not an option. Alma was quite aware that her knowledge of Oskar's past acts and present operations was such that he would never allow her out of his grasp, never mind that his obsessive desire of her was as strong as ever. Oskar was practically a public figure at this point and there existed a near universal fear of him that extended to Alma as well. No one would come near her, there was no place she could go, unless so authorized by Oskar.
At the moment of greatest tension, finally, everything broke. At the giant birthday bash organized by Oskar for Alma (Oskar thought it was her 25th) on her 21st birthday, the police staged a raid, arresting everyone in attendance. The raid was part of a giant sweep that took place during campaign season as part of the mayor's re-election strategy in a hotly contested race in which the number one issue was crime, which was seen by the electorate as exceeding its traditional (and therefore acceptable) boundaries. Back at the station house Alma was interrogated by police and pounded with threats that she would be "sent up river for ten to twenty" unless she "spilled her guts". On the other hand she was offered "a clean slate" and "a fresh start" in exchange for "testimony". At first Alma found their threats laughable in contrast to the certain death that she believed awaited her should she "rat" on Oskar. But gradually, as the hours wore on, she began to imagine jail as the orphanage, only worse. The thought of going to jail, or as her mind began to see it, of going back to the orphanage, as it grew and took on form in her mind became a fate worse than death, became an utter refutation of her life as she had chosen to live it. Knowing how successful Oskar and his brethren had been at corrupting the police force, Alma gave little credence to and received even less assurance from the repeated promises of "protection" given to her by her interrogators. Nevertheless she finally agreed to "cooperate with the authorities", feeling that she'd rather be murdered by Oskar than die of a broken heart in prison.
The police sequestered Alma in a safe house. It was while there, awaiting the trial where she was supposed to testify, that she realized that she was pregnant. During the months preceding her twenty-first birthday, as she sunk ever deeper into despair, Alma had, half consciously half- unconsciously, accidentally-on-purpose, as though in a sleep walking semi-trance, stopped taking any measures to prevent conception. Alma didn't know what to think. She knew that some part of her wanted this, had seen pregnancy as the fulfillment of her deepest wish, as the way out of her bind and into a life of her own. Yet she had been quite aware that Oskar would have none of it, that he wanted her entirely for himself and would never tolerate the rivalry for his attentions that a child would represent. For her to discover her pregnancy now, while secreted away from Oskar provided her with brief moments of fervent hope, but for the most part seemed like an absurd joke in the blackest of black comedies: that she should discover the presence of new life now, just when she was preparing her self for certain death at the hands of one of Oskar's minions.
Alma was guarded around the clock, in three shifts, by two officers each. Immediately following her decision to break with Oskar and side with the Law, Alma, figuring that she had signed her own death warrant, resolved to enjoy what she imagined would in all likelihood be her last days. As a result of this decision, Alma was gay and light-hearted in her exchanges with the officers who were, with the exception of regular visits from the DA and his assistants, who came to pump her for specific facts or to ask her to verify information obtained from other sources while building their case against Oskar and his associates, her only companions. With one of these officers, Alma developed a rapport that was something more. One of the officers on the eleven to seven shift and so present as Alma prepared to retire each night, Andy Mulligan was a hot shot rookie practically the same age as Alma. Despite his rookie status, Andy was quite aware of the ways of the world in which he and Alma lived; he had grown up on the streets of the city and had no illusions as to the kind of life Alma must have led to be in the position she was in. Yet there began to form between them something he could not name, something he had never experienced before. He found himself looking forward to his shift as her guardian more and more; anticipating it, distracted by it, until finally even dreaming about it. Alma, feeling she had nothing to lose, and Andy, feeling-- although in those rare moments when he managed to collect himself enough to stop and think couldn't make it add up and couldn't understand why-- he had everything to gain, opened up to each other as they sat together on the couch while the other officer on duty seemed content to while away the hours sitting and smoking and reading crime novels in the kitchen. Even in this, her most unguarded moments, while certainly revealing more of herself to Andy than to anyone else ever before, there were still things she could not bear to bare. For his part, Andy found that he seemed to please Alma most when regaling her with embroidered anecdotes of his childhood, and so mined his memory again and again, never failing to come up with a fresh nugget for her amusement.
With the trial set to start in less than a week and Andy just barely starting to realize that his sanctioned time with Alma was nearing its ordained conclusion, Andy was stunned to discover upon reporting for duty as usual that he had been reassigned to a patrol beat. Hit full on with no advance warning, before he had even begun to order his thoughts on the matter, the intensity of Andy's reaction shocked him into a conscious awareness of the fact that he had lost control of his emotions and desperately desired her; the intensity of his feelings surpassed what he had previously conceived to be their natural limits. He railed at the Desk Sergeant, refusing to accept his new assignment, demanding to know what was going on. The sergeant, having to idea as to the source of Andy's tirade, and being by nature an easy-going character, simply reminded Andy that neither of them had any say in the matter, that orders, simply, are orders. Andy just snatched the piece of paper bearing his new assignment and stormed out of the offices, leaving in his wake a sea of quizzical faces.
The disappointment Alma felt upon seeing Andy's replacement and being informed of Andy's reassignment shortly gave way to an anxious feeling that quickly dissolved the barriers that she had erected to keep at bay the terror of the end that she had known was coming but had managed often in Andy's presence to imagine might be but a bad dream. Complaining of a headache, she retired minutes later. Although she could not have explained how she knew, one look into the eyes of the new man had made her certain that he was the harbinger of her imminent murder. Entering her darkened bedroom she refused to allow the terror to overtake her. Knowing that she had not a second to lose she slipped off her shoes and went to the window which was already open as it was a hot summer night. She looked down. She was on the third floor and the fire escape was off the kitchen, on the opposite side of both her apartment and the building. Her window looked out on the street upon which there flowed a slight vehicular and pedestrian traffic. She stifled the urge to scream. Waiting for a break in the traffic, she stepped out of the window, and grasping its ledge lowered her body until she hung full length out of the window along the building's side. Then she let go.
Upon leaving the precinct house Andy's mind was racing so fast that the activity it was engaged in could not properly be termed thinking. An electro-chemical storm raged through his being. An explosive mixture of conscious memories, unconscious anticipations, anger and fear, driven by adrenaline and precipitated by an uncontrollable hormonal surge, the storm clouded his senses as well as his mind and he was not at all conscious of where his feet were taking him as they pounded the sidewalks. It was his peripheral vision, noting movement where normally there was none, namely three stories above street level, that triggered his automatic nervous response causing him to look up. Not even aware of where he was and with a consciousness still deeply mired, the sight of the falling body appeared profoundly unreal. The body's silent descent ended with a thud and a sharp cry of pain.
At the sound of Alma's voice, the clouds that enveloped Andy evaporated in one dazzling instant. In the next, his nerves and senses became razor sharp and his muscles taught as he sprung to her side and lifted her up off the sidewalk. Just as he did so the light went on in the window three floors above from which Alma had just dropped. Andy looked up to see a man leaning out and looking straight down at him. He was already racing towards the building's corner when the man withdrew his gun and began to fire. Safely making the corner he met Alma's pain-fogged eyes, searching for recognition, which he received, but in a form that was new to him. Not slackening his pace, he raced down the side street towards the busy thoroughfare that lay ahead. Not looking back, he plowed through the crowds jostling on the sidewalk and straight out into the street. Flashing his badge, he commandeered a passing cab over the protestations of its passengers and ordered the driver to the hospital.
Hearing this reawoke in Alma the terror that was such that it overrode her pain. She pleaded with Andy, tears flowing at last, that going to the hospital would end inevitably with her back in police hands, and being there was as good as being dead only worse, because once again she would be forced to wait for it, but now, after having felt it so near, to wait again would be unbearable, she couldn't stand it. Andy tried to calm her, saying over and over again that nothing would happen because he was there, and he would take care of her, he would protect her. She began to laugh hysterically before returning again to sobs. She had a vision of her mother laying dying aboard the vessel that took her to this city where she would now die. Suddenly a calm descended upon her. She turned to Andy and stated matter-of-factly that if he wanted to save her life there was only one thing to do: leave this city forever, without any hope of ever returning, find some place far away, some place small where no one would ever think of looking for them, go there with her and pledge to stay there forever with her, to never have any contact with anyone he had ever known, to start life all over again as though he had never before existed, do this and she would never leave his side. Their gazes locked, and then broke as Andy turned to stare out the window as the sights of the city streamed by. He told the driver to head to Grand Central Station.
Having long ago learned that money is a girl's best friend in emergencies, Alma had taken to making it a habit to always have a significant amount of it, in the form of $100 bills, secreted about her person at all times. On the night of Alma's arrest she had five such bills, sealed inside a condom, sown into the interior of each of her bra-pads, making for a total of $1000, the amount she was most comfortable with. She was wearing this bra when she and Andy pulled into Grand Central, and Andy, paying the cab fare, suddenly realized that the amount of money he had would not get them far, and so was able, by conveying to him this information, to somewhat assuage his anxiety, which at that moment was mounting further as he could not help but notice, as he lifted her from the cab, that her ankles were beginning to bear a strong resemblance to pineapples. Alma simply told Andy not to worry, that as soon as they were on board the train, he could obtain a large bucket of ice under some pretense and she would soak her legs. She was also certain that Andy could, with little effort, manage to procure a bottle of half decent booze from some enterprising individual on board, and that with that and the bucket of ice she would manage to make it to wherever they were going.
Andy commandeered a wheel-chair and while he pushed Alma through the station she managed to non-chalantly extricate one pad from her bra and hand it to Andy who took it into the first men's room he came across and, within the confines of a stall, slit it open with his pocket knife and removed the contents. When he came out he discovered that Alma had passed out from the pain. He headed straight for the ticket office, and looking up at the departure board, paying no attention whatsoever to the list of destinations, simply purchased two thru-tickets on the next train scheduled to leave the station, which was scheduled to leave in five minutes. Gripping the tickets between his teeth, Andy raced through the station to the departure platform and managed to cart Alma's unconscious form onto the train just seconds before the train lurched into motion.
Alma, who had returned to consciousness shortly after having her feet and ankles lowered into the bucket of ice obtained by Andy as per her instructions, self administered pain relief throughout the night from the bottle which Andy had also procured. Alma drifted in and out of consciousness while Andy brooded. He figured that it would not be long before the department picked up their trail; his race through the station with Alma in the wheelchair could not have escaped notice and would surely be mentioned in response to any inquiries, inquiries which Andy estimated would be being made any moment, as the couple were carried away through the night. As the sky began to lighten ever so subtly outside their window, Andy became ever more certain that it was only a matter of time before officers clambered aboard the train to take them into custody. Rousing Alma, he explained why they had to debark as soon as possible, preferably at the next stop. At first Alma was adamantly opposed, stating there was nowhere near enough distance between them and New York City. But as Andy continued to insist, declaring again and again his belief that they had no chance to get as far away as she would like, the sky around them continued to lighten until at last Alma, who in the ten years since her arrival in New York City had never before escaped its confines, could manage to discern the physical reality of the landscape through which they passed, and allowing herself to believe that perhaps difference could be just as important as distance when it came to escape, agreed to get off at the next stop, whatever it may be.
Not wanting anyone to be aware of their departure for fear of being traced, as soon as Andy felt the train beginning to slow he opened the window to their compartment as wide as it would go. Fortunately for them, their window faced opposite the station. The second the train came to a halt, Andy carried Alma to the window and carefully lowered her body out the window, and in an unwitting re-enactment of the scene only hours earlier but a lifetime ago left her hanging from the window ledge. Only this time he was already there. Leaving her to dangle for mere seconds, Andy scrambled out the window beside her stretched form and as soon as his feet hit the ground he reached up and grabbing her by the waist lowered her into his arms whereupon he carried her down into dew drenched grass beside the tracks where together they lay in the pre dawn twilight, watching the train disappear from sight. The winds of fate had carried them to the place where they were destined to live the rest of their lives: Fairvale.
The couple changed their appearances, names and identities. Andy grew a beard and Alma cut her hair short and dyed it black. Andy became Jack and Alma became Jill, a choice the inherent humor of which the couple decided-- correctly as it turned out-- would serve as a tension relieving ice-breaker in the many introductions they knew were to come. Whenever asked whereabouts they came from they simply answered "out west". There was no real choice but to state from the outset that they were married; Andy quickly locating a pair of wedding bands the purchase of which was accompanied by the announcement-- for the benefit of anyone within hearing who might be interested-- that he wanted a "new" set of rings to commemorate what was to be the couple's "fresh start" in Fairvale. Of the many sorrows the couple faced as a result of their exile in Fairvale, that of being unable to legally marry for fear of being traced lingered longest, although it too diminished in the changed perspectives brought by looking back through time passed.
Although never legal, the couple's marriage to one another was and continued to be very real to them, and was consummated almost immediately upon their arrival. It was a consummation in which each found all that they wished for in the other.
On top of the daily anxiety the couple shared that grew out of their fear of discovery, a fear that was quite intense at the outset, Alma had the private agony of the knowledge of her pre-existent pregnancy. When she had first become aware of her condition she had immediately decided that she would simply get an abortion at the first possible opportunity, if she even lived long enough to do so; and if she went to prison? Well, she always just stopped thinking about it at that point. But now, here in Fairvale, a small tight knit community in which she barely knew anyone, the thought that she would even be able to obtain an abortion, and that it would be safe and successful suddenly seemed but a dream. Most importantly, with Andy by her side she no longer felt despair, except at the thought that her pregnancy might somehow destroy the special something that they shared. Finally, after devoting every moment that she had to herself, moments that consisted almost entirely of those when she lay awake in bed beside Andy's sleeping form, to finding a solution to her dilemma, Alma decided that the only possibility was to say nothing and raise the child as Andy's. She convinced herself that the acting father could and would overcome the genetic one; even if Andy discovered the truth, if he believed, all would be well. Furthermore, she could not help but feel what sweet revenge it would be to have Oskar's offspring raised by Andy.
Waiting until the moment she had calculated was the earliest she could possibly do so, she announced her pregnancy to Andy. It sometimes seemed to Alma that the trepidation she felt about the path she had chosen grew right along with the child inside her. She spent her days trying to will herself to somehow slow down her pregnancy, and her nights praying that Andy would not discover her deception; on particularly dark nights praying that he would understand and believe along with her, should he learn the truth. As the day approached ever nearer Alma began to spend more and more time in bed, eventually coming to spend the entirety of her day there doing nothing but repeating over and over to herself, "not yet, not yet." Andy, for his part, was concerned, but not overly, as he had resigned himself to the fact that the entire process was beyond his ken; expressing his concern with repeated assurances that everything would be fine. When the baby was born it was-- either in reward for her willful determination or in answer to her prayers, depending on how one looked at it-- not only, by Alma's calculations, two weeks late, but was of low enough birth weight for it to be at least possible to consider as being premature, which Andy would have to believe it to be for him to think it his. It was a boy and they named it Andy.
If Andy had any doubts about the boy's paternity he never let them show, but Alma was never absolutely certain one way or the other. The topic never came up and Andy raised Andy (junior between themselves) as his own. Three years later Alma gave birth to another boy. The couple named him Jack (junior in public). Obviously, there were moments of confusion.
Slowly, very slowly, to be sure, but nonetheless surely, the fear and anxiety, as well as shame, that had dominated nearly every moment of Alma's life since the mid-Atlantic death of her mother, became transfigured, in her new identity, by the combination of parenthood, and her and "Jack's" acceptance by and subsequent integration with the Fairvale community, into a self acceptance and self confidence that she had never before known.
Alma's and Andy's arrival in Fairvale coincided, to the day, with the Wall Street Crash and their first years there were coeval with the community's slide into the depths of the Great Depression. For newly arrived unconnected out-of-towners such as themselves, paying work was non-existent. Alma's condom coated cash became the only thing between the family and starvation. Any curious local who inquired as to what the family was surviving on were told that it was the remains of their share of an oil strike "out west." Squeezed out a drop at a time at depression era prices, which were especially low in Fairvale-- 5¢ hamburgers and $5 rents-- that $1000, minus train fare, went a miraculously long way.
Neither the forces of the law nor those of crime ever found Alma and Andy in Fairvale. Eventually the couple began to call each other Jill and Jack even in private. Except for rare moments of reminiscence which both of them tried to avoid, the couple's past lives had ceased to exist.
Eventually the depression hit bottom. In the period that followed, as the dark cloud slowly lifted, "Jack", now part of the community, gradually began to find odd bits of work here and there. With no real skill to fall back on, other than that of policing, an option that despite the seeming success of their escape from the past still seemed far too fraught with risk to pursue, he fell into the habit of doing whatever he could with whatever came his way, until he at last became known in the community as the "Jack of all trades". Things being as they were "Jill" didn't even attempt to find work during her early years in Fairvale, devoting her energies instead, along with a large contingent of other local women, to tending a community garden on the outskirts of town. The potatoes, beets and carrots so raised were all that was seen at many a dinner on many a table. When the time came for the children to enter school the depression had lifted enough that she was able to find work assisting in the preparation of dough at the town's bakery. The job paid only, and literally, a daily bread but with her $1000 at last exhausted, she was grateful to be able to earn it.
The onset of World War Two, while bringing ominous tidings to much of the world, signaled the beginning of boom times for Fairvale as the idled steel mill that had provided the original impetus for the town's formation cranked into action and was soon pouring out steel twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. As a legal non-entity, "Jack" was never drafted, and with so many men off at war, the demand for his services-- fixing this, moving that, painting, shingle replacement, putting the door back on its hinges, etc. etc.-- quickly had him working around the clock as well. The owners of the bakery, needing to produce more of everything than ever before to meet the demand of the new workers coming, many from the south, to fill the new slots in the mill's unceasing schedule, and recognizing that "Jill" did not have the makings of a master baker, decided that she would be more effective in the front as a sales clerk. They were right, she was.
The years passed and they were good. The war ended. Whether it was intention, irony or destiny it cannot be stated, but Andy jr. and Jack jr. took after the respective attributes of their father's schizochronic existence, with Andy jr. receiving and responding to his father's exhortations that he should pursue a career in police work, and Jack jr. being intrigued by his father's tinkerings and as a result prone to taking apart and attempting to put back together again bits and pieces of this and that which he had brought home after finding in the garbage. Where Andy jr. prided himself on his excellence, Jack jr. was relaxed. Where Jack jr. was intrigued, Andy jr. was disinterested. Both children were aware that they did not know all there was to know about the lives of their parents before they were born, but having been raised with kindness and care both were respectful of their parents and unconcerned by their lack of knowledge in this area.
One after the other, both children graduated from high school and served in the armed forces; Andy jr. in the Army, Jack jr. in the Navy. Andy jr. learned about marksmanship, Jack jr. learned about marijuana. Both became men. Upon their returns home Andy jr. joined the Fairvale police force, Jack jr. became his father's partner, printing up business cards modeled after the jack of hearts from a standard playing card deck. Andy jr. moved out and got his own apartment, Jack jr. got a key and split his evenings between his brother's and his parents' places.
As Alma and Andy approached their 65th birthdays, with both contemplating the significance of the fact that neither would be eligible for social security as neither existed as far as the program was concerned, Andy died suddenly of a heart attack while removing the undertaker's waiting room air conditioner for repair. Andy was buried as Jack and Alma always cracked a wry smile whenever she saw the tombstone, but Alma was heartbroken; as much as she enjoyed the company of her children and prided herself in their strength of character, the center of her existence had always been the undying romance she shared with Andy. She continued with her job at the bakery and was genuinely cheered by the rapport she continued to share with the regular customers whom she had served through the years. Even if he didn't spend the night, Jack jr. always made a point of being at home to share breakfast and dinner with her, and Andy jr. always stopped in to see how she was and buy some donuts every day that Alma was at work. These attentions kept her going, but she still felt empty inside. She began to read novels in the evening, something she had never done before, and found Flannery to be a helpful guide through the world of literature; Saturday visits to the library became part of her routine. One day, about five years after Andy's death, on a whim she asked Flannery for some books on Viennese paintings. She knew what she was looking for but she was nonetheless stunned when she located several reproductions of her father's paintings. It seemed to her totally ludicrous to imagine that these paintings had any connection whatsoever with herself; it seemed to her that the paintings came from another world. She had absolutely no recollection of the paintings she saw reproduced, and only the dimmest outlines of her father's studio remained in her mind. Indeed, her father himself was but a phantom. Yet the seeing of the images in the book triggered in her a desire, and desire was something that had been entirely lacking in her life since Andy's death. Feeling foolish and self-conscious at first, but finally realizing she had no answer to the question, "why not?" she began to paint. Crude and untutored, but vibrant with the desire that still flowed through her, Alma painted. She painted her house, she painted her garden. She painted her sons and her neighbors. She painted the bakery and she even painted some donuts. But most of all she painted Andy, the act of creating his image on the canvas before her, often from old photographs, sometimes purely from memory, conjuring in the space between her and the image, the life they had shared.
The years continued to pass, yet Alma did not die. Sometimes she wondered to herself if she didn't want to go knowing that she would be lying under a tombstone that said "Jill". She laughed at those times knowing that couldn't be the case, knowing she would be happy because she would be next to "Jack".
Now she is approaching her 90th birthday. Her sight is too dim to read, her arms too unsteady to paint, her existence is confined to the first floor of her house, with an occasional outdoor foray. Jack jr. lives upstairs, and even though he is already collecting social security, he still keeps about his business, and is still known about town as the "Jack of all trades". Andy jr., although past retirement age has managed to convince the department to let him stay on as he is such fixture in town, having walked the beat for over forty years.
Alma spends her days, and most of her nights, as she is rarely able to truly sleep, holding conversations with eternity; asking questions, and sometimes, much to her surprise, getting answers.