Alice's Last Ride

Alice could feel the cold in her bones today. Her rather old bones, she thought bitterly to herself as she slowly made her way from her small bedroom to her even smaller kitchen to put on some hot water. 

From her kitchen window, Alice could see nothing but a wide expanse of white snow in the morning light. It was still falling quickly from the sky, blanketing the fields around her small farmhouse in a thick, quiet layer of winter. Alice had always loved the snow when she was young; even now, she thought back on fond memories of racing down the hill in her childhood neighborhood in Chicago on the toboggan she has gotten for Hannukah one year, building snow villages with her young friends while their noses turned bright pink in the cold, making snow cones with sugary syrup her mother had cooked in a pan over the stove. She smiled gently to herself, pouring hot water from the kettle into her mug with shaky hands, remembering her first kiss in the snow with the first boy she had ever loved. They had been sixteen and full to the brim with dreams of a future they would never know. Alice still remembered how the boy, Jamal, she recalled, had had the longest eyelashes she had ever seen, how snowflakes had clung to them and melted onto her cheeks.

Now, Alice could only watch the snow fall from the comfort of her small, warm home, far from the neighborhoods of Chicago that no doubt looked nothing like they had 70 years before. She had no toboggan to race down the hills of the farm, and no friends to race with; her friends from all those years before were long gone, lost to distance and time and old age.

It was times like these that Alice wanted to curse her own unexplainable longevity. What was the point of living to be almost 90 years of age if she had nobody to spend her old age with? Her husband, Vincent, had passed away eight years ago, and at the end of his life she wished they had made more time for building a family together. She was fragile, alone, and always cold. 

Alice shuffled from the kitchen into the sitting room, holding her mug of steaming tea precariously. She eased herself down onto her favorite overstuffed armchair, the one with the Alice-sized indent in the center, and was just about to turn on the old television when there was a knock at the door. 

Alice started, almost spilling her scalding drink down her thick sweater front. She had not been expecting anyone. She hadn’t expected anyone for a long, long time. She placed the drink on the side table, and slowly (the only speed she could manage these days), she made her way, cautiously, to the door. 

Alice tried to look through the peephole on the door, only to find that she could no longer stand straight enough to see out of it. How long ago did that happen? She wondered to herself, massaging her back with a soft, wrinkled hand. With the other hand, she unlocked the door and slowly cracked it open. 

The bright light of the morning shone through the slot made between the door and the outside world as cold, fresh air rushed in. How strange, Alice thought briefly. It had been overcast when she had woken a half an hour ago. You never could tell with the weather these days. She peered through the crack, squinting her milky eyes behind her thick glasses against the light.

Before her stood a young man. She opened the door a little wider.

“Hello?” she said, her voice cracking and quaking due to lack of use. Alice was stunned to hear how old she sounded now.

“Hey Alice!” the young man replied cheerfully. He was bundled up against the cold, wrapped in a coat and scarf with a bright red wool cap barely concealing his thick black curls. The sunlight framed him like a vision. He beamed at Alice, who was at a loss for words. “Are you ready to go?”

“Go?” Alice asked slowly, very confused by it all but opening the door a bit wider. “I’m sorry young man, do I know you?”

“Young man? Who are you calling a young man, missy? I’m three and a half months older than you, and don’t you ever forget it!” the boy (for Alice could now see that he was indeed still a boy) laughed.

For a moment, Alice thought she might be dreaming. The boy was so familiar, and the sight of him through her now open door had sent her mind reeling, her memory working hard and fast to place him. She felt as if she was whooshing back in time, all the clocks in the world turning back, their hands a whir as the years flew by in reverse.

Standing in front of her was Jamal. He was exactly how she had remembered him, tall and dark skinned with a mile-wide smile, those long, long lashes framing his big brown eyes. Even the red cap he wore was familiar, and she realized that he had been wearing it on the day they had kissed, that she had pulled it off his head and jammed it onto her own, laughing as he had pulled her towards him.

“Jamal?” she whispered.

“That’s my name darlin’, don’t wear it out! Now, are you coming, or not?” Alice looked behind him and realized that he was pulling a sled. She blinked hard.

“Are we going sledding?” she asked.

“Of course!” Jamal replied with a grin. Snowflakes were sticking to his hat, to his eyelashes. “Get your coat on, you know the snow is always best first thing in the morning.”

Without thinking, for fear that her logic would get in the way of what was turning into a lovely dream, Alice turned and donned her coat and boots. Before she could wonder if she was finally going crazy, she was closing the front door behind her and joining Jamal in the snow that now reached her knees. She laughed, bending down to scoop some of the powder into her hand, and her voice sounded different than it had just minutes before, more youthful, somehow. Alice was no longer cold, she realized, and she felt her warm cheeks. They felt plump with youth and blood and life.

Jamal took her hand, pulling the sled with the other, and together they trudged up the field and away from the house. Alice didn’t bother wondering how it was that she could walk through the drifts without feeling the pain in her hip and the creak in her knees. She just wanted the moment to last forever. 

They finally reached the top of the hill in the middle of the east field. The little farmhouse looked tiny from all the way up on that hill, as if they had walked all day. Alice and Jamal were out of breath, but in the exhilarated way that young people lose their breath, puffing hard into the air but ready to keep going. They grinned at each other in the sun, under the drifting crystals of snow, their breath swirling around them in clouds. Alice reached up, took Jamal’s red hat off his head, freeing his dense curls, and plopped it on her own. Jamal kissed her cold cheek, then sat on the back of the sled.

“You sit in front, and I’ll hold on to you nice and tight,” he said to Alice, gesturing to the spot in front of him. Alice felt no fear as she sat and felt Jamal’s arms encircle her, warming her from the inside out. “This is such a big hill,” she said breathlessly, turning to look into Jamal’s deep eyes.

“It’s gonna be a long ride, but it’s gonna take you home,” he smiled back at her, his eyes looking deep into hers. “One last, perfect ride, just you and me. We’ll ride our way to freedom, baby.”

Alice laughed out loud, feeling joyfully at peace for the first time in years looking up at the snow as it fell from that bright sky. “Take me home, Jamal. It’s time.”

And they went.