"David," Carol called, eliciting a wince from her daughter's be-hatted suitor. It always sounded that way lately, as if she didn't quite believe that was his name. The cheek! It most certainly was! Well, at least it was a part of his actual name though it had not been used by anyone for centuries, but there was no way the wretched woman could know that, now was there?
"Alice said she'll be about an hour late. One of her students suffered a minor injury in class, and Alice wanted to stay with him at the emergency room until his family arrives. You're welcome to stay here and wait for her."
Carol finished this speech as she walked into the room where he was sitting, somehow giving him the impression that he was not quite so welcome as she said. Where, oh where had he gone wrong? He'd made such a good first impression on her when he'd telephoned from the hospital, where he'd reluctantly taken Alice after she'd failed to wake up after coming through the looking glass. He'd sounded so lost and earnest and full of concern for her daughter that Carol had graciously asked him to come round to visit Alice once she'd been moved home.
He'd tried so hard to look presentable and like an actual human person. Before coming through the looking glass to visit Alice's home, he'd glamoured himself around the eyes and hair a bit to get a more conventional human appearance going, and had even forgone a hat, partly because he couldn't decide which twenty-first century hat suited him the best, but partly because he wanted to seem respectful. Meeting Carol at the door had frankly been a blur--everything until holding Alice in his arms, kissing her, telling her how he'd missed her. It was lovely, everything he'd hoped, and yet, in that honest moment of heartfelt revelation, it seemed he'd lost the respect of her mother.
"David," she'd said when they came up for air, "Why didn't you tell me you and Alice knew each other?"
He'd been a bit too blitzed to come up with one of his patented fix-all stories. It was totally true about human emotions coming over strong on the folk of Wonderland. The frail masses could hardly take a drop of contentment and still remain standing, and though Hatter was one of the more solid denizens of Wonderland, able to hold his tea as it were, being this close to such an amazing array of emotions, being the target of them even, it was all he could do to keep conscious. Relief, elation, surprise, adoration, all washed over him in a dizzying rush. Alice's emotions, he told himself, were better than just any oyster's. They were genuine, and strong, and full of conviction.
While he was thinking all of these rather important thoughts, however, Alice was stuttering out some lame excuse about having met him on her trip to England last summer not thinking she would ever see him again. Her face was red, and it did not take someone who knew her as well as her own mother to know that this story was rather fishy. Hatter caught the tail end of it and wished she'd given him a moment to recover, as he was a much better liar than she would ever be, but the damage was done. At that moment, holding Alice and looking into her blushing face, he couldn't have cared less.
Now, however, he was really wishing he'd built up a bit more of a tolerance to happy-Alice before experiencing it in front of her mother. It had been about two weeks, Alice-time, since the reunion in her apartment and as he had no place to stay in her world, he'd been shuttling back and forth between worlds, causing the suits to grumble that they might as well make him queen what with the way he seemed to hold complete control over the ring, somehow strong-arming the king into delivering the ring to the looking glass to charge it up whenever he wanted to go through. Though he'd never admit it, Hatter was very grateful to Jack Heart for allowing him to get his tea shop back up and running (albeit in a more legitimate form) while dashing back to court Alice on the other side. The biggest problem with the situation, from Hatter's perspective, was that there was no way to definitely pinpoint the time exchange between Wonderland and Alice's world. First of all there was the threat that there would be a sudden shift in the link and Hatter would get to one side or the other hundreds of years after he'd left. This hadn't happened for centuries, but it was still a frightening thought. More pressingly though, at the present rate a week or so in Wonderland was roughly an hour on the other side, but there seemed to be all sorts of extraneous factors that interfered with this. For example, whenever it was raining in Alice's world, Hatter was always several hours to a day earlier than he intended, forcing him to wander about in the rain until Alice was awake or done with classes, or whatever it was that was keeping her from him. He'd used this time to make a quick buck amusing tourists in cafes with sleight of hand and other simple tricks, allowing him to take Alice out in style. Still, the inconvenience was considerable.
At other times he was quite late, whether due to meteorological effects or the price of tea in China he knew not, and this was apparently a black mark against him in Carol's eyes. He wasn't a bloody White Rabbit for goodness sake, yet Carol seemed to hold him up to a rabbit-like standard of punctuality. It seemed like Alice being late would make a nice change, but Carol seemed to consider his presence in her home as further evidence of his unsuitability.
Hatter felt quite irritated at the disapproval lurking in her eyes despite the pleasant expression on the rest of her face. It just wasn't fair that this woman who was so important to Alice refused to accept him. After sulking for a moment or two as Carol gracefully turned to straighten something or other on the mantle, Hatter forced himself to calm down a bit. Much as he wished he got on a little better with Carol, he could see where she was coming from. He lifted his newsboy-style cap to tug at his hair a bit. Her life hadn't been easy. He'd heard bits here and there from Alice, and had started to put the pieces together.
Carol had been a stay-at-home mother when her husband had disappeared on his way home from teaching class at the University ten years ago. She had loved her husband, and was as devastated as Alice when he'd disappeared. Though they'd had a hefty life-insurance policy, she hadn't been able to draw on it because the leeches at the insurance company had "proof" that he hadn't died. They told Carol that Robert Hamilton had just skipped out on his wife and daughter after withdrawing almost all the funds from their joint savings account and buying a plane ticket to Argentina. After this information had gotten around the neighborhood, it was all Carol could do to hold her head up.
The whole setup seemed like a bit more work than the usual oyster-abduction, but Hatter supposed that the doctors and suits who'd dug up Robert Hamilton, Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA, might have noticed the name of his daughter and figured better safe than sorry. There was nothing to suggest abduction or foul play, only a mundane occurrence of a man fed up with his life, leaving to start afresh on another continent.
Carol had moved Alice to their present apartment, then a crumbling factory loft, all that they could afford with what was left of their savings and the sale of the little yellow house while still keeping Alice in the karate classes she loved. Carol started work in a shop, taking classes at night until she got her degree in interior decorating. It was rather admirable, Hatter thought, but all the same her husband's supposed abandonment seemed to have left her unhealthily focused on her daughter. There had been no men in Carol's life for the past ten years, and few enough female friends, only Alice, who she had managed to keep close to her through it all. When Alice proclaimed that she wasn't ready to go to college and instead wanted to stay at home and teach classes at the dojo, Carol had voiced token protests about her needing to "spread her wings" and "see the world" but had secretly rejoiced at holding onto her daughter for just a little longer. Though Alice seemed to believe that Carol had been pushing her to date, Hatter got the impression that this was a bit of reverse psychology in action. It was hard to believe that cynical, skeptical Alice could fall for such a simple trick, but, Hatter reasoned, these things were most insidious close to home.
Carol was ever more forcefully straightening coasters and picture frames, and Hatter shook himself free of his reverie with a little cough.
"I suppose I'd best be uh...shoving off. Maybe I'll go by the hospital, see if I can walk Alice home." He treated Carol to a rather charming smile and rose from the couch.
Carol sighed and straightened. She put on a smile that seemed even more forced than ever.
"I suppose it must be boring for you here, David. I don't blame you for running off."
"Oh no Mrs. Hamilton, there's nothing I'd like more than to keep you company, I just thought I might catch Alice..."
Hatter trailed off as he reached the door, surprised at Carol's frosty attitude. She'd been increasingly displeased with his presence, but always kept her disapproval strictly under wraps. Today, it seemed to be leaking through. Briefly, Hatter wondered if it was some sort of unpleasant anniversary. It was June, nowhere near her husband's March 23rd disappearance.
"Hmph."
This was beginning to tick Hatter off. He turned abruptly to face her.
"Excuse me?"
Though he used a mild tone it was more than clear that he was not pleased with Carol's attitude.
"You heard me, if you're bored here don't let me keep you." She rounded on Hatter, pointing at him as though she were driving him from the building and her daughter's life. She walked briskly toward Hatter, causing him to back up as he retreated from the barrage of Carol's unstable emotions. "Just let me tell you, if you get bored with my daughter and just run off, I won't be held responsible--she should never find out what that feels like!"
At this, Carol broke down, kneeling on the floor and sobbing. My my, thought Hatter, she's mad! He laughed a little before he clamped down on himself, remembering that momentarily mad or not, Carol would likely judge any of his behavior that seemed off and use it against him to Alice later on. With a silent sigh, Hatter knelt and tried to do the noble thing. He tentatively patted Carol on the back.
"Hey there, it's okay, yeah? Nothing to worry about. You're fine, Alice is fine."
At this Carol only sobbed harder.
"Hey now, none of that. What's the matter then?"
Hatter continued to pat Carol's back in what he hoped was a soothing way. Suddenly, as though a dam burst, words burst out of Carol in a torrent.
"I can't help it...ever since Robert left...I just wanted to keep her safe, happy--it's so hard, being left behind. I just don't want her to feel that pain."
"Hoh...so this is about your husband!" Hatter said, perhaps a shade too brightly. Somehow it was a weight off his mind that this animosity wasn't personal.
"Him! That bastard! Leaving us and running off to," --sob--, "Argentina! How could he? I trusted him, and he abandoned us! If I ever find him, I'll kill him!"
With this forceful statement Carol pounded on the ground and broke into a fresh wave of angry tears.
"Ah, well, Carol, that's perhaps a little harsh. It's not like he abandoned you really, at least, not on purpose--and you know, it's not good to speak ill of the dead."
Hatter placed his hands to his lips as he realized what he'd said and hoped the woman was too distraught to have understood what he was saying.
"Anyway, I'm not leaving Alice. I know I'm not always on time to dinner and such, but let me tell you it's not easy running a business on a different temporospatial plane than your girlfriend. Always jetting back and forth, no way to take into account the rain..." he sighed. "But the point is, I lo--l-like Alice a whole lot--bunches--and I would never leave her. Certainly not after what we've been through. And I'm not going to stop coming round just because you're worried I'm not suitable. Why, if I gave up every time someone called me unsuitable, I'd be me before I met Alice, and we all saw how far that got me, so. Yeah."
Hatter's eyes widened. Had that been...the truth? Where had his considerable powers of lies and deceit got off to when he needed them? He groaned as he realized that this was probably an effect of Carol's righteous indignation and hurt at being--she believed--deceived and abandoned. He should have stayed across the room. What possessed him to try to comfort a distressed human? It's a wonder he hadn't burst into tears himself.
As far as calming Carol went, his speech seemed to have done the trick. She now seemed perfectly collected, quiet, and certain that he was a psychopath.
"Damn damn damn," he chanted under his breath. This day was just not going well at all.
***
What do you think? Should I write more, not bother?
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