Chapter Text
Fear not then, said the Angel
Let nothing you affright
This day is born a Savior
Of a pure Virgin bright
To free all those who trust in Him
From Satan's pow'r and might
Oh tidings of comfort and joy
Fred Andrews loses weight the way other people lose car keys. In the week after he comes home from his impromptu road trip to Toledo with FP Jones, Alice Cooper watches him shrink in his holiday sweaters, his ribs visible through the fabric and the wool hanging loose on his scrawny frame. She watches this through her binoculars, diligently, in between setting bread dough and mashing potatoes and shoving a full roast in the oven in between sheets of gingerbread cookies.
Hal’s face lights up when he gets home from work and walks into the smell of baking roast. Alice slaps his hand away from the trays of not-yet-cooled cookies with a frown.
“Don’t get too excited,” she lectures him. “It’s for Fred. We’re eating leftover ham and sweet potatoes from last night.”
“Fred,” Hal protests, confused - pot roast is his favourite- “Did you marry him while I was at work?” But Alice is undeterred, turning her attention to icing the gingerbread cookies in green and red with such fervour that Hal eventually picks up another icing tube and joins in. For the second time, Alice slaps his hand away, gentle this time. Hal has a habit of globbing too much icing on.
“Get the second sheet out of the oven for me,” she asks instead, and Hal tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and kisses her on the back of the neck before obeying, a motion that makes her think all the more of Fred - Fred in his kitchen, in the dark, completely alone.
Alice bundles herself up at the front door, leaving Betty with strict instructions to layer the remaining cookies in wax paper and stack them in containers in the downstairs freezer. She wraps a good portion of them in Christmas cellophane, tying it with a silver ribbon and whipping scissors through it until it springs into bright, sparkly ringlets. This she loads on top of the box with the roast, potatoes, and vegetables and heads down the steps in her sensibly heeled boots, her mouth set with determination.
For the first time since they’d moved in ten years ago, the Andrews house is free of decoration. No menorah glints in the window, no Christmas lights deck out the upstairs, no inflatable Santa Claus graces the roof. The lights are off inside, the whole place as dull and as shut-down as an empty home on Halloween. Despite the bright buttercup yellow of the exterior, the house fades into the gloom, sucked from the street by the brilliance of the Christmas lights that surround it. Fred hated all-one-colour houses, but he had yet to say a word about Alice’s home, done entirely in splendid white. With Archie gone, Fred had simply ceased to care, or even pretend.
Fred’s eyes are red when he opens the door, blinking in dull surprise at her appearance. He looks worse close-up, and Alice bites her tongue so she won’t tell him how close he looks to the grave. She thrusts the box at him instead.
“This should feed you for at least a week. 375 in the oven for the pot roast, and you can microwave the potatoes. And don’t even think about throwing it out.” Her breath makes clouds between them in the frigid air. “I will be going through your bins.”
In another lifetime, Fred would have spared her an exasperated grimace, or at least had the decency to act irritated. Instead, he just looks at her with an expression on his face Alice can’t quite read, his eyes dull and unfocused, not-quite-there.
“You’re not doping up, are you?” asks Alice abruptly, planting her red-fingernailed hands on her hips. “Because if you are, I have no trouble calling Mary. And the rehab centre in Greendale.”
“I’m not,” says Fred hoarsely, his voice as thin as his small neck, swallowed by the collar of his rumpled green sweater. He looks down at the box as though first registering its presence, the gingerbread cookies smiling up at him through the cellophane, and seems to remember his manners at last. “Thank you, Alice.” His hands tremble. “This was nice of you.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t cry,” she snaps, frightened by the tears that gloss over his eyes, the lack of Fred that she can see in him, the brokenness of his fragile state. She cranes her neck to look into the house behind him, but naturally, there’s no Christmas tree - nothing but dark, and a single light on in the kitchen.
Fred mumbles a sorry and wipes his eyes with his bony shoulder, putting on the brave face she knows well: all tension in the jaw, his lips pressed together. Alice can’t help herself reaching out for him, placing a hand on the back of his neck and smoothing the hair there with her thumb.
“You’re invited to my house for Christmas Dinner,” she says sharply, hoping the it’s all right, archie will be all right , comes through without speaking it. “Christmas Eve dinner as well, and any dinner in between. But those two are non-negotiable. I expect you at seven o’ clock sharp. You don’t have to bring anything but yourself.”
He nods, trying for a watery smile - Fred knows well by now that this is her way of caring. Alice looks down at her roast, the package balanced between them, and it feels inadequate in the worst way. She sets her lips together and for a moment they look like mirror images of each other, both tense and unhappy, cold on the icy stoop.
Finally, Fred shivers and tries to hide it, shrinking his thin shoulders in slightly further and dropping the mask of bravery so that sadness swims in his eyes again. “Go back next door,” he says politely, his hands curling tighter on the box, the smiling gingerbread men. “It’s cold. I’ll see you on Christmas Eve,”
She pats his hollow cheek as tenderly as if she’d kissed it and steps back off the stoop with a nod, mostly to get him out of the cold. “Eat some of that,” she demands, the brook-no-nonsense tone she’d once saved for substituting at Riverdale elementary. “Tonight. The rest will keep in the fridge. And don’t you dare stand me up on Monday.”
Fred nods and shuts the door as she walks down the steps- there’s no wreath to swing against it so the sound of the seal is final, swallowed by the winter air. Alice turns back to look at it, winding her red scarf higher against her earrings, the overwhelming need to fix something already itching in her fingertips.
She could send Hal over with Christmas lights - Lord knew she’d had to send him over to take Fred’s lights down enough times, because usually Fred’s went up before Thanksgiving and lasted until Easter. Only there’s a nagging feeling in her chest that this time it was different. That this time, Fred needs more help than she can give.
“I don’t understand,” Hal says as Alice is folding shirts out of her dresser drawer, passing in front of him every so often to deposit them in a suitcase. “You’re leaving? Four days before Christmas?”
Alice lifts her hair off the back of her neck, tying it back in a red scrunchie. “You can tell Betty I’m at a very important journalism retreat. Or anything you like, as long as it’s believable.”
He passes her a folded stack of pyjamas. “But-”
“You’ll be fine, Hal,” she argues. “Betty’s old enough to be left on her own, and I have enough frozen meals in the freezer to last until New Year. I’ll have my cell phone, and I’ll be home for Christmas Eve dinner if I can.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Hal replies, watching her stuff socks in the top compartment of the suitcase. “This could be dangerous, Alice. What do you think the odds are of you bringing Archie home? This is a job for the police.”
Alice stops folding stockings, her hands on her hips. “I can handle myself, Hal.”
“I know,” whispers Hal, gripping her by her arms. “And I know your mind’s made up. But please, just think-”
She kisses him on the lips. “Keep the light on for me. And don’t forget the turkey in the freezer.”
To her surprise Hal only pulls her in against him, his heart beating warm and fast against her own. One of his hands gently tousles the back of her hair, tucking her into the warmth of his neck as he shuts his eyes against the hug. Alice ducks her head into his chest, enjoying being held.
“I need to do this, Hal.”
“Come home safe,” Hal whispers, tipping her head up and catching her lips in a kiss. “Promise me?”
She draws back gently and stares into the endless blue of his eyes, her thumbs stroking each side of his pulse point, the places she loved to kiss when they were alone together. She slides her thumb upward to his jaw, his lips, his cheeks, tracing every inch of the face of the man she’d loved for almost thirty years. He closes his eyes and lets her do it, breathing out slowly.
“Hal,” she says gently, prying his fingers off of her skin so she can finish packing. “I promise.”
She drives to Toledo first, leaving before the sun is even up, when the morning frost still glitters beautifully over the doors of her car and the icy pavement. The drive is a nine-hour endeavour, made bearable by the stack of Christmas CDs she keeps in the middle compartment beside the driver’s seat and a cooler stocked with her homemade pasta salad. She pulls over obligingly at the five-hour mark to text Hal and tell him that she’s safe, but doesn’t stop again until she’s an hour from the right highway exit, to fill up the car and to double-check her map. Alice can hold it like a camel.
It’s late-afternoon when she eases her reliable station wagon through the gates of the wintry chop shop lot and parks it at the edge of a fence. Fetching her leather purse from the floor of the passenger side, she double-locks the car doors beside her, wipes her fingers clean on some wet-naps, and sets off at a brisk walk toward the main building. A few lost-looking souls in leather jackets do double-takes at her crisp green wool coat and matching hat, but they direct her to where she needs to go. Her ultimate destination turns out to be a little wooden shed with a Christmas wreath on the door.
Alice slams her fist against the wood, and the door swings open on the first knock.
“Alice Cooper.”
Gladys Jones stands silhouetted in the doorway, looking fearsomely sexy in black plaid and a corduroy cap, holding a wrench in her hand the way one would hold a gun. She tilts her chin up toward the heavens in a confident mockery of Alice’s most condescending stare, her feet planted confidently on either side of the doorframe.
“Did you fuck my husband?” Gladys asks.
Alice’s hands land firmly on her hips, her lips pursed together and her chin tilting fearsomely higher. “Absolutely not,” she declares icily. “I’d rather make love to that fish you have your wall.”
Gladys grins at that, showing a flash of her perfect white teeth, and opens the door a little wider. Her dominant posture doesn’t shift, though her face loosens into a smile. “Then what is it you want?”
A little girl has appeared from behind Gladys, her hair pulled into a tight french braid, squinting out at the intruder. Gladys’ hand lands on the girl’s head, tousling her hair. Alice keeps her eyes trained on Jellybean as she replies.
“I want Archie.”
Gladys shakes her head. “He’s long gone. No chance of finding him unless you know your way around the Canadian wilderness, and even then.” She shrugs. “He could be anywhere.”
“You must have some idea. You must know people up there.” Jellybean tugs on her mother’s hand and Alice can sense Gladys wavering. “I’m not here about FP,” she speaks up. “I’m here about Fred.”
“He’s the one who dropped his son off up there.” Gladys tips her head to one side, her brown hair falling across her cheek. “I saw them leave.”
“And now he needs him back.”
“Mom-” speaks up Jellybean loudly, stamping her foot, but Gladys silences her with a finger to her lips. She opens the door wider and tosses her head at Alice.
“Come in. You look like you need a cigarette.”
Gladys packs in a hurry, because it’s important that they leave before nightfall. She swings her black suitcase into the back of Alice’s car and crouches down until she’s level with her daughter, resting a hand on Jellybean’s shoulder.
“You be good while I’m gone. Call me any time. Mama will see you in time for Christmas.” She smooches each of Jellybean’s cheeks and her forehead for good measure. “I have to bring Archie home to his dad.”
The drive is surprisingly painless. They bicker, predictably, over the music - Gladys wants to dial the radio for the nearest rock station, and offers to pitch Alice’s Josh Groban CD into a snowbank - but for the most part they get along, a mismatched Thelma and Louise. They make good time up toward the border, and by ten PM, they’re pulling up to the border crossing, where a tired-looking security officer peers into the immaculate interior of Alice’s car.
He gives the backseat a once-over and then scrutinizes the women themselves - Alice blonde and dressed in her colour-coordinated Christmas best, Gladys dark and dynamic and exciting in her leather and plaid.
“Sunglasses off, please.”
Gladys obediently lowers her shades, though it’s been dark for hours already.
“How many people?”
“Just two of us.” Alice replies.
“Any livestock, liquor, firearms, or dangerous goods?”
“None.”
“Are where are you going?”
“Toronto,” Alice lies again, leaning her head toward Gladys and flashing her pearly whites as though they were no more than two girlfriends on a getaway. Gladys plays up the part, beaming at him and twirling a strand of her hair.
The officer softens considerably. He has a tiny Canadian flag pinned to his lapel. “For how long, ma’am?”
“We’ve booked the hotel for three nights.”
“Business or pleasure?”
“Christmas shopping,” Alice declares, and the Christmas baubles on her earrings must persuade him, or else the expensive cashmere of the new sweater Hal had just given her because he cracks a smile at last and gives their IDs no more than a cursory glance before waving them through.
Gladys grins at her when the border is in the rearview - they’re driving past a huge flagpole and a duty-free store, set against the backdrop of a gorgeous expanse of woods.
“You’re kind of sexy when you’re playing the part,” says Gladys casually, her head tipped back against the headrest.
“What part?”
“Middle-aged suburban square.”
Alice sniffs heartily, pursing her lips and giving Gladys her best PTA glare. “Where did Fred drop Archie off?”
Gladys lifts her head back up, combing her fingers through her hair. “They were headed for a couple miles west of here.”
“Then that’s where we’re going.”
“Too dark. We should find a hotel, wait until morning.”
“Fine,” says Alice, her eyes flickering up and to the left, where a glowing INN sign looms, the back of it painted a mustard yellow for some hotel chain she recognizes from commercials, looking if not quite lovely, at least like it might have pillowcases and a shot at a continental breakfast. “That's what we'll do."
The hotel has one room left, and the one room has one bed.
In retrospect, she should have seen it coming.
“Didn’t realize you were such a prude,” says Gladys when Alice turns her back to her to undress, seating herself on the end of the bed with one arm outstretched to take some of her weight, fingers splayed on the scratchy hotel quilt. Alice pulls her creamy cashmere sweater up off over her head, facing the corner of the wall.
“What would you rather?” she asks dryly. “I undress on top of you?”
“Your bra matches your underwear, doesn’t it?” Gladys comments and Alice notes that she hadn’t exactly answered the question. “Leave it to Alice Cooper to own Christmas-specific lingerie.”
She’s referring to the pine-green lace bra and panty set Alice is wearing, a year-ago birthday gift, actually, from her husband. Alice purses her lips and steps out of her jeans, into her soft pyjama pants. “Just because it’s green, doesn’t make it Christmas-specific.”
“Right, because I’m sure you have the Christmas stuff too. A full Santa outfit, is that it?”
She’s not far off the mark, but Alice still turns around, fuming, her mouth drawn in a straight line, forgetting that she’s still shirtless. “Shouldn’t we be talking about Archie?”
Gladys just shrugs. “You look nice.” She stands up all at once, unbuttoning her plaid blouse, but pauses before it can fall open. “Do you want me to change in the bathroom?”
“Don’t bother,” says Alice cooly, and marches in there herself, head held high, her toothbrush and pyjama top in her hand, her breasts feeling airy and exposed in only her lace bra.
Glady’s bra had been black and lacy, with wide straps. Alice scrubs her teeth and does her best to forget this detail.
When she comes out Gladys has laid claim to the side of the bed closest to the window, which doesn’t bother her - Alice is used to sleeping on the left side at home. Gladys is in her pyjamas: an old T-shirt and black shorts that show off a jagged-looking scar on her inner thigh. Alice tugs her own pyjama shorts slightly down - pink, part of a matching set - and feels momentarily grateful that they’re long enough to cover her tattoo. Her eye keeps being drawn to the scar, and it occurs to her that if they were more friendly she might ask where it was from.
But they’re not, so she doesn’t.
She misses Hal as she tucks herself in, as she always does when she’s sleeping somewhere away from home. Alice has spent almost thirty years sleeping with his broad arm around her, his legs tangled with hers, his breath on her neck and the heavy rise and fall of his breathing. She hopes to spend thirty more. Gladys is a rustler - tosses and turns and stretches and yawns, bunching the sheets between her knees and periodically flopping from her side to her back. The bed is a decent size, and there’s a good stretch of space between them, enough that Alice feels oddly lonelier than if she were sleeping entirely alone.
They talk over the plan for a long time, get as far as deciding that Gladys might want to come back with her after their hypothetical success, bring Jellybean to see Jughead and FP for the holidays. Alice was right, Gladys had admitted begrudgingly, Christmas was for families to forgive one another. Alice feels oddly warm at her admission, grateful to have done something right. She’d never admit to Hal or Gladys how uncertain she had been in the drive up, the unknowns of this trip scattered in her mind like broken fragments of paper on the wind.
She’d remembered Gladys Jones in high school as smelling always of cigarette smoke, but the woman lying beside her smells like something pleasant and familiar, a scent she finally identifies as similar to vanilla extract. Gladys’ eyes keep straying to the front of Alice’s chest, and Alice is all too aware that the places where the buttons of her pyjama shirt come together have a habit of gaping open when she lays on her side. But she doesn’t move.
They both agree that they’re tired from driving, and Alice finally shuts her eyes, rolling over onto her other side and tugging a pillow into her chest to wrap her arms around. She can’t sleep without holding onto something and she blames Hal for it - the soft, warm, cozy plane of his chest has been her constant comfort since she was eighteen and sneaking in his bedroom window at night.
Yet it’s not Hal she’s thinking of for those last few moments before her consciousness gives way to dreams - it starts that way, but then she thinks of that scar again, the jagged white line of it, and the odd itchiness in her skin when she knew Gladys was looking at her, and then Gladys reaches across her, just for a moment, to turn the light off - her skin just barely brushing Alice’s forearm and yet in the dark of the motel room the touch burns and burns for hours.
There are Serpents in Canada, Alice learns, which she thinks is the stupidest thing she’s ever heard of. But Gladys knows where to find them, and so that’s where they start on Saturday morning when the stretch of desolate woods where Fred Andrews had abandoned his fugitive son proves empty and futile. Canadian Serpents look a lot like Riverdale ones, only the snake on the back of their jackets circles a burgundy maple leaf.
Alice has a lot she could goddamn say about it. But she holds her tongue.
The one they talk to is called Snow Tire, and he has an earring in the shape of a fang and hair so blonde that it’s white. He looks no older than twenty-five, though his hands are as sticky as a child’s. Alice douses hers in Purell when his back is turned.
“Yeah, he stopped here,” Snow Tire says. “We put him up for a while. Then he freaked out and headed off. Had a dog with him.”
“When was that?” asks Gladys. When Gladys talks, the Serpents listen, Alice notices. It used to be like that with her. Only God, was that supposed to be something to be proud of? The kid’s name was Snow Tire, for crying out loud.
“Two nights ago,” the kid answers. Gladys’ eyes light up.
“So he’s nearby. What direction?”
Snow Tire nods toward a patch of woods. “I doubt he got far.”
All the same, it takes them until the sun is sinking low in the winter sky on the second day to find him. They’re standing at the car, back to back in a clearing, hollering “Archie” into the woods they’ve been tramping through for hours when Alice hears the sound. Her parental senses are well-attuned to crying - years of losing Betty at the mall, or Polly at horse-riding practice. She smacks Gladys on the arm to silence her and takes several steps away from her, her heels sinking deep into the powdery snow.
“ARCHIE!” she hollers - the same bellow she’d use to call him and Betty home from the park at the end of the street on a hot summer evening. “ARCHIE ANDREWS!”
“Alice, do you think that’s prudent?” Gladys asks. “The kid is a fugitive.”
Alice ignores her, putting on her most fearsome PTA voice:
“ARCHIE ANDREWS, THIS IS ALICE COOPER, YOUR NEIGHBOUR. COME OUT HERE, RIGHT NOW! I AM GOING TO TAKE YOU HOME!”
The crying again, louder. Alice whirls around and crosses the clearing quickly, following the sound.
She finds her sixteen-year-old next-door neighbour sitting on a log in the middle of the snow, crying and hugging Vegas, who’s beside him. Relief and shock rush over her like a wave, and her hard heart sinks a bit at the display of affection. For as long as she could remember, Archie had adored that dog with his whole heart.
“Archie, sweetheart,” she says gently, drawing her coat tighter around her and sitting down next to him on the log. He turns his tear-stained face to her, his cheeks mottled as red as his hair, his trembling lips pressed together in misery. If he’s surprised to see her materialize from nothing out in the middle of Canadian nowhere, he doesn’t show it at all. Vegas whines and puts his head down on his paws.
“I want my dad,” Archie sobs, looking closer to six than sixteen, and buries his face in Alice’s shoulder. “I don’t even care if you’re real. I want my dad -”
She wraps an arm around his shoulders, unsurprised to feel his jacket is as cold as ice. “I know,” she says softly. “We’re going home. I’m real. And we’re going home.”
They spend one night in Toledo, mercifully in separate rooms. Archie curls up on the bed that’s usually Jellybean’s, and Jellybean bunks with her mother. This leaves Alice alone, her thoughts turned to Hal, as usual, tracing the inside of her thigh where the serpent tattoo was and where Hal liked to put his mouth.
Archie wanders into her room in the middle of the night, and she lets him curl up on the other side of the bed. All the childishness is gone from him - he seems older and leaner, cut from flint, almost adult in a way that saddens and frightens her. Vegas sleeps at the foot of the bed, a watchful ear cocked, and that makes her sad too - that the dog had been on guard duty since Fred had dropped them off together. None of them get a good deal of sleep, but Alice refuses to let Gladys drive the station wagon - that car is hers, dammit, and the insurance is in her name, and she doesn’t trust anyone else to do it right.
They set off in the morning after a hasty breakfast, Jellybean too, and with every mile closer to Riverdale she feels more and more triumphant, and the something that had sparked between her and Gladys feels smaller and less significant, like a star winking out. The important thing was Archie, she reminded herself, and Fred, and though she had no idea what would become of the whole situation once the blissful happiness of the holidays was over, she was prepared to do the work to figure it out.
Archie’s sobs have dried - he looks exuberant and terrified, the look Polly had had on the way to her first summer camp away from Hal and Alice, and later, to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy with Jason’s twins in her belly. Alice squeezes his one hand, and Gladys takes his other one. Jellybean had brought her favourite Pink Floyd album, and sings merrily along to it in the falling snow.
They bicker briefly when they pull up on Elm Street - is it safe to do it in daylight, should he be in disguise, should they have pulled up around back - and finally Gladys gets impatient and jams her corduroy cap over Archie’s eyes, and Alice maneuvers the station wagon up to the Andrews garage, and they enter the house that way, Vegas padding along behind. Fred, trusting soul that he was, had probably never locked the door separating the garage from the house in his life.
“FRED ANDREWS!” Alice hollers into the empty house, the absence of any Christmas decor even more glaringly visible in the daylight, with dust motes floating in the beams of sunlight from the windows. “FRED! COME DOWN HERE!”
Archie trembles in front of her, and she puts a hand gently on each of his arms. He keeps looking from left to right as though he’s never seen the place he grew up before. Gladys hangs back, waiting, her hands shoved in her pockets as soft footsteps above them slowly approach the stairs.
Fred walks down the stairs slowly, still in his robe and evidently coming off another crying jag. He’s wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, his head bowed. When he reaches the foot of the stairs he looks up.
Alice holds her breath.
The moment they see each other passes in an unreal sense of time, like a snowglobe suspended upside down. It goes on forever and yet lasts an instant, broken by Vegas - he barks and runs for Fred, leaps up at his pant leg with his paws outstretched and his tongue hanging, but Fred ignores him for the first time in his life, his eyes only for his child as he runs to Archie and buries him in an embrace. Archie wails with joy and misery, and Fred scoops his significantly heavier son up off the ground like he’s a sack of flour and lifts him in a hug, laughing and crying all at once.
She has never seen two people hold one another that tight - the mess of their embrace, heart and limbs and crumpled faces, pure joy and pure love the likes of which is indescribable to her. Vegas keeps barking, keeps leaping at Fred, but Fred is only gripping Archie and crying and speaking hurriedly to him so that Alice feels - a rare feeling for her - that she’s intruding. She drifts back toward Gladys, who links arms with her, and it doesn’t occur to Alice until later that she might have pulled away.
“Gladys and I have to make another stop,” Alice says to Fred, though she may as well have been speaking to a brick wall - his whole being is consumed by his son, his hands on each side of Archie’s face, Archie clutching them and crying. “We’ll be back.”
And maybe it’s the scene in front of them, the joy of that reunion, reminding her of the two kids she doesn’t have by her side that holiday season. Maybe it’s because she’s tired, because she’s just driven cross-country and all around the fucking Canadian wilderness in boots that really weren’t meant for walking. But she lets her hand slip lower, lets it find Glady’s warm one, and she laces their fingers together and Gladys squeezes and they stand there holding hands in front of Fred who will never know, because there’s no way he can see through the tears - lucky, miserable, wonderful, heartwrenching tears - because his son is home and in front of him and alive, something Alice will never have or understand.