Finding Alice Read online

  Praise for

  Finding Alice

  “Kudos aplenty for Melody Carlson’s latest, Finding Alice. We tumble down the dark hole with Alice and hope against hope that the voices she sorts through on her otherworld journey will take her at last to a peaceful place. All the while we wonder: How do we make sense of the sometimes competing voices that bombard us each day, voices of news and neighborhood, charity and church? Is that person a friend or foe? How will we know? And most important, will we find the one voice we’re meant to listen to before someone like Alice’s friend Amelia threatens and turns us away? This is a compelling story filled with insights not only about mental illness but about what passes for normal in a sometimes crazy world. I kept reading, knowing that in finding Melody Carlson’s Alice safe at last, I’d be finding a part of myself.”

  —JANE KIRKPATRICK, a licensed clinical social worker and best-selling author of A Name of Her Own and Every Fixed Star

  “Finding Alice is a journey to one of the most unusual places I’ve ever been. Melody addresses the complex issues of mental illness with wisdom and compassion, painting a subtle portrait of healing grace. I believed every word.”

  —LISA SAMSON, author of The Church Ladies and Women’s Intuition

  “Finding Alice takes us down the rabbit hole of mental illness and gives us a looking-glass view of the pain of schizophrenia mixed lovingly into the grace and mercy of God’s love. Melody Carlson’s style is mature and bitingly funny, and her gift for connecting our heart to the character’s plight also connects us to the complicated human condition and our need for one another.”

  —PATRICIA HICKMAN, best-selling author of Fallen Angels and Sandpebbles

  “Melody has crafted a superb story that takes readers into Alice’s mind and world. I was captured from the first page and filled with a deep sense of hope by the last page. This book will bring insight and courage to anyone who has an Alice in their life.”

  —ROBIN JONES GUNN, best-selling author of the Glenbrooke series and the Sisterchick novels

  “Finding Alice offers the riveting journey of a young woman teetering on the edge of reality. Melody Carlson skillfully creates Alice’s schizophrenic world and then brings this endearing character to a place of genuine hope. I laughed and cried and cared deeply for Alice. Thank you, Melody, for an enlightened and compassionate story!”

  —LESLIE GOULD, author of Garden of Dreams

  “The Christian community has not often known what to do with the very real and deeply complex issue of mental illness. In Finding Alice, Melody Carlson confronts it in an insightful and creative way, providing clues to its nature and treatment and reminding us that Hope lives even in the dark worlds of such illnesses.”

  —JO KADLECEK, author of Fear: A Spiritual Navigation

  FINDING ALICE

  PUBLISHED BY WATERBROOK PRESS

  12265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200

  Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921

  The characters and events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2003 by Melody Carlson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc., New York.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Carlson, Melody.

  Finding Alice : a novel / Melody Carlson.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-55283-9

  1. Women college students—Fiction. 2. Schizophrenics—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3553.A73257F56 2003

  813′.54—dc21

  2003014018

  v3.1

  Dedicated with love to Gabriel Douglas Carlson,

  one of the bravest men I know.

  Without your help and expertise, this book would not exist.

  Thank you for sharing your life and experience with me.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One - Down the Rabbit Hole

  Chapter Two - Drink Me

  Chapter Three - The Golden Key

  Chapter Four - The Pool of Tears

  Chapter Five - Off with Her Head!

  Chapter Six - The Golden Scissors

  Chapter Seven - The Tiny Door

  Chapter Eight - Advice from a Caterpillar

  Chapter Nine - The Queen’s Prison

  Chapter Ten - Adventures in Wonderland

  Chapter Eleven - A Narrow Escape

  Chapter Twelve - The Pig Baby

  Chapter Thirteen - The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party

  Chapter Fourteen - The Mock Turtle’s Story

  Chapter Fifteen - Neither Here nor There

  Chapter Sixteen - Tweedle Dweeb and Tweedle Dumb

  Chapter Seventeen - Tangled Mess

  Chapter Eighteen - In the Mean Time

  Chapter Nineteen - The Cheshire Cat

  Chapter Twenty - Bubbles and Bones

  Chapter Twenty-one - Through the Looking Glass

  Chapter Twenty-two - A Christmas Maze

  Chapter Twenty-three - Simon Says

  Chapter Twenty-four - A Princess Story

  Chapter Twenty-five - Another Mad Tea Party

  Chapter Twenty-six - Another Rabbit Hole

  Chapter Twenty-seven - Jack and Jill

  Chapter Twenty-eight - Ties that Bind

  Chapter Twenty-nine - A Golden Moment

  Chapter Thirty - The White Knight

  Chapter Thirty-one - A Disagreeable Agreement

  Chapter Thirty-two - I’m Late, I’m Late

  Chapter Thirty-three - The Garden of Live Flowers

  Chapter Thirty-four - Another Golden Key

  Chapter Thirty-five - My Own Invention

  Chapter Thirty-six - Waking

  Chapter Thirty-seven - Finding Alice

  Chapter Thirty-eight - Further Adventures

  Resources

  A Word from the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  chapter ONE

  Down the Rabbit Hole

  I’m not sure how it all started or even why. I was simply walking through my life, minding my own business, when someone pulled the earth out from under me. And I began to fall, down, down, down. Yet I don’t think I even realized I was falling, at least not in the beginning. It felt more like a curious adventure. Not so unlike another Alice I once knew.

  I still remember that rainy day back in the fifth grade when my mother caught me reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It was during spring break, and I was bored silly and had decided to snoop around our musty attic while my mother went to the store. I discovered this book, along with a few others, packed neatly into an olive drab metal footlocker that appeared to have survived some ancient war. I’m guessing it had belonged to my grandfather who served in the Pacific during World War II. My mother’s maiden name was written in a childish script inside the book cover, so I assumed this book must’ve belonged to her at one time—another lifetime ago. Although I felt certain she would never admit as much, not to me anyway. I also suspected this was not a book that our fundamentalist church would approve, since it was neither historical nor biographical and definitely not biblical. I could imagine Miss Finley, my teacher at the conservative Christian school, raising her eyebrows in dismay to see her star pupil resorting to such “worldly trash,” as I’m sure she would have called it. But I was drawn to it anyway.


  For one thing, the odd looking young heroine’s name was the same as my own. Plus we both had curly blond hair, only hers was much longer and cut bluntly across the ends, similar to a broom, I remember thinking. And I’ll admit that the story seemed a bit strange as I first started reading, unlike anything I’d ever seen before, but I was quickly pulled in and had just reached the part where the Duchess throws her howling baby (really a pig) at a confused Alice when my mother walked in and startled me.

  “What are you doing up here, Alice?”

  “Reading.” I closed the book and placed it facedown in my lap.

  My mother stepped closer with a worried expression drawing her brows together in a way that creased her forehead. “Oh, dear, you’re not reading that, are you?”

  “It’s good, Mom. Did you read it when you were a girl?”

  “Well …” She shook her head, flustered I’m sure because she didn’t want to lie—that would be a sin—but she didn’t want to admit it either.

  “I like it.”

  Mom moved a step closer. “They say the author was on drugs when he wrote it,” she announced in a flat voice.

  I frowned. Even in my sheltered little world, I knew that drugs were bad. “How do you know he was on drugs?”

  “Everyone knows that.” Then she held out her hand for the book.

  Feeling cheated and wondering what would become of poor Alice, I relinquished my prize. It wasn’t until I was seventeen, when I was finally allowed to attend public school, that I finished reading that book as well as its sequel, Through the Looking Glass. But the stories, although intriguing, had lost some of their magic by then. Somehow they just didn’t seem quite the same. Or maybe it was me. I read them again for an English literature project just last year. My theory was that a secret code was contained within the rhythmic text, and I did manage to unwind something or other, or so I thought at the time. Although my professor told me I was “stretching things a bit.” I think those were his exact words too. Of course, he didn’t seem to have much imagination either.

  But back to falling down my rabbit hole. Back to when my own strange “adventures in wonderland” began. So there I was just starting my senior year of college, maintaining a fairly decent GPA, dating someone I thought I loved, and basically keeping my life on track. But the next thing I knew I was getting locked in the hospital by an old coot in a stained lab coat.

  Now, other than my grandmother, I never really knew anyone who’d been labeled crazy before. And I never really knew her that well. She’s mostly a vague childhood memory that has faded over the years. The only times I ever actually saw the poor woman were at various mental institutions, and that was between her brief escapades when she’d managed to live on the city streets until someone tracked her down and brought her back to “the home,” which was anything but. However, the few times I did go to visit her with my mother, who was always edgy and nervous and never stayed longer than thirty minutes, my grandmother was so drugged up that she didn’t recognize either of us anyway.

  To this day I despise the smell in those institutions—a mixture of overcooked green beans, stale urine, and Lysol disinfectant that combine to emit an odor reminiscent of something dead and rotting. As a child I assumed it was probably the stench of the unlucky residents confined there. But despite the putrid smell, something about those places did engage my childish curiosity, and I stared unashamedly, in fascination, at the variety of people sitting around on sagging sofas or in molded plastic chairs or stainless steel wheelchairs, many of them with their heads hanging limply, discarded marionettes with their strings cut.

  “Alice,” my mother would hiss at me as she clutched the handle of her purse tighter, “don’t stare!”

  But I did anyway. And I thought to myself, No wonder these people are here. Why, it’s plain to see that they’re all flipping mad. But I never, never in a thousand years dreamed I would find myself residing in a place like that someday. But as it turns out, I’ve been wrong about a number of things.

  chapter TWO

  Drink Me

  So here I am, several weeks into my fall term at Portland State. It’s my senior year, and I am lugging my stuff up the stairs to my new studio apartment on the edge of campus. It’s raining sheets of bullet-size drops outside, which doesn’t help the hideous cold I’ve been fighting all week. I cough and hack as I dig through my backpack until I locate my precious Robitussin, which I guzzle straight from the bottle as if it’s labeled “drink me,” like the bottle for that other Alice. But this helps to numb my aching throat as well as to dull my senses. Anyway, this is what I tell myself as I replace the childproof lid and survey my dismal new surroundings. The apartment is small and dark, with only one window, and it smells as if the last tenant smoked heavily.

  Not for the first time today, I wonder why on earth I am doing this. I know I never would’ve left the security of my dorm room if I hadn’t planned to share this particular space with my boyfriend, Shay Reynolds. Naturally, I haven’t divulged this information to my mom since I know she’ll freak. Not that we talk much, but I figured I should let her know about my change of address. This is especially important due to the fact that she’s still helping with my college expenses since my dad’s Social Security doesn’t quite cover everything. But in the case of my mom, ignorance really is bliss.

  Anyway, I had decided, with Shay’s loving encouragement, that since this was my senior year, it was about time for me to experience a little freedom, a little autonomy, maybe even a little fun. Besides, with graduation not too far off, I knew I could get a job if my mom eventually found out and pulled the plug on me.

  Then, less than a week after I’d paid my nonrefundable deposit and signed the six-month lease, Shay decided to break up with me. I guess I should’ve suspected something when he informed me that he didn’t want to sign the lease since his credit rating was in the toilet. For a “smarter than average girl,” I can be awfully gullible.

  “It’s not you,” he kindly assured me just a few days ago. As if that’s not the oldest line in the book. Then he pushed a lock of sandy hair off his forehead and tossed me one of his famous smiles. “It’s me, Alice. I’m just not ready for that kind of commitment yet. I hope you can understand.”

  “Understand?” I echoed meekly, although I wanted to cry out, Why are you doing this to me? “No, I guess not. It’s probably for the best.”

  He patted me on the back. “You’re so cool, Alice. I really hope we can keep being friends.”

  I nodded and said, “Sure,” then turned away in time to escape being seen with two streams of tears running down my face. I don’t like to cry in public. But I did cry myself to sleep for the next two nights. Last night I didn’t cry. But I didn’t sleep either. I just kept replaying every single scene of our relationship through my head. Shay and I had been together for nearly a year, and I guess I really thought it would last forever. Besides Tommy Randall back in fifth grade, I suppose this was my first real boyfriend, and I felt as if someone had punched me and drained the very breath of life out of me.

  But I suppose that’s being overly melodramatic. Anyway, I’m sure that’s what my mom would say. Naturally, I’ve never told her anything about Shay. Why would I? I knew she would not approve of my dating a boy who didn’t go to church, not to mention “fornicating” with him, which is how I’m sure she and her church friends would refer to the idea of the two of us sharing accommodations, regardless of whether it’s true. But by the same token, she would have little compassion for my aching heart now. I’m sure she would say that it’s my own fault and God’s way of chastising me for my folly. Folly is a word that is liberally volleyed around at Salvation Center. Naturally, they have an entire vocabulary that members are required to know. I used to think the word folly was simply their attempt at levity when discussing sin issues. Not that they think sin is funny. No, not on your life! But I try not to think about those things anymore.

  Of course, I realize my relationship with Shay
had its flaws. It’s not that I’m stupid or blind even. I was well aware that Shay took me too much for granted. And it always bothered me when his gaze casually wandered off to check out other girls. But even so, it was a low blow to be dumped for a freshman who giggles like a thirteen-year-old. Her name is Kiki, of all things, and she reminds me of Britney Spears. I saw them holding hands and laughing near the soccer fields close to campus. I was on my way to class but couldn’t bear to sit through the French Revolution. I try to quit thinking about Shay. Why torture myself? I attempt to distract myself from him as I pry open a cardboard box, but I am interrupted by a neighbor who has wandered into my apartment. I assume I’ve left the door ajar and am not terribly surprised by this woman’s appearance since people tend to come and go as they please back at the dorm. I figure she’s simply being friendly. I smile at her and say “hey” as I stoop over the box, struggling to remove a heavy stack of English lit books. Did I ever finish unpacking that box? Come to think of it, I’m not sure I ever unpacked much of anything that fall.

  “You should scoot your bed up against that wall over there, away from the door and the window,” she instructs me with a serene confidence that catches my attention. She sounds like a veteran helping the new kid learn the ropes. For a moment I question this kind of interference. But something about her soothing voice with its soft Southern drawl sounds quite comforting to me, and in some ways familiar, like I’ve known her all along. And so I am not bothered by this, and for whatever reason, her advice makes sense.

  So, without questioning my new friend, I obediently drag my futon over to the windowless wall and away from the door. And to my surprise it does feel safer there. And feeling secure seems important today, especially in light of how empty I’ve felt since Shay dumped me. She nods her approval, wanders around my tiny apartment, and then disappears. Strange, she didn’t even introduce herself. Oh well, I figure. She’ll turn up again, or I’ll run into her in the elevator or the laundry room.