AIK: Chapter 1 - Nice to Meet You Alice
- Henry Livingston
- Dec 3, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 10
Alice Tandy was born Doris Elizabeth Terry, exceptionally gifted and bright right from the start. She began walking at three months old, said her first word three months later, and at one year, she could speak complete full sentences with ease. Six months soon after Doris, or Beth to her father, could run and tumble like a seasoned gymnast, surpassing the talent of girls triple her age. She could speak, write, and understand multiple languages by her tenth year. As per her schooling, she excelled at math, English, art, science and received letters of acceptance into several Ivy league campuses by her first year of high school.
Seeing no end to what she could accomplish, she began transcending into that of a skilled young adult, readying to become the next big thing the world was longing for. Unfortunately, not everyone was onboard or prepared for that. Doris Terry was indeed an extraordinary child in the eyes of everyone, but her immediate family. Her exceptional talents attracted the media which inconvenienced her parents and siblings on a day-to-day basis. They saw her as a wonderous burden and a thorn in their side, which brought unwanted attention to her loved ones. So, to understand Miss Terry, we must take a closer look into her past, ten years ago to be precise. That is when it all began.
The year is 2011 and young Beth is having her eighteenth birthday celebration with her father James, step-mom Ruth, half-sister Bailey, half-brother William and her Aunt Sylvia. The party is more for her family than for her, but it did not seem to bother Beth in the least. Gifts are given with little-to-no thought in them: money, an ugly dress, more money, a gawd-awful pink flamingo hairpin, and a small, locked wooden box.
She blew out her candles and pretended like she wanted to be there, until it was all over. When everyone went about their own way, she made her way upstairs to her room. In her sanctuary, she pocketed the loot, tossed the dress and hairpin on her ‘decide later what to do with this’ ottoman, before sitting down to figure out how to open the little wooden box.
A knock comes to the door and Beth’s shoulders sink deeply. She exhales, “who is it?”
“It’s Aunt Sylvia dear. May I come in?”
Beth perks up because the one person that wanted to be at her party, was asking permission to enter her sanctuary, “yes please,” she spoke cheerfully.
The door opens and her aunt comes in with another gift. It is a small ring box.
“I did not want to give you this in front of the others. What is in that box is only for you to see.”
“Do you know what is in it?”
“I am not sure, but” she pauses sliding a letter out of her fancy dress pocket, “I know this is from your mother.”
Sylvia hands the letter to Beth, then smiles and sits on the edge of the bed, “don’t worry about the wooden box, because I have no earthly idea where the key to it is in the slightest. It was there pretty much as a distraction.”
Beth puts the wooden box down and reads the envelope, “There seems to be a mix up Aunt Sylvia, this letter is for someone named Alice?”
“I know sweetie. Just open it and read it okay.”
“Who is Alice?”
Sylvia smiles but remains silent.
“Okay,” Beth speaks softly. She is nervous and excited, and her hands are shaking. Still, she opens the letter. A small mailbox key drops out when she unfolds the letter. She lifts the key, “what does this go to?”
Sylvia smiles then speaks up, this time a bit softer. However, her words sound as if her actions were that of a soldier following a general’s orders, instead of a sister simply doing a favor, “your mother was specific about how I went about giving you this letter. I was told and sworn to never open it. That it was to be well preserved and had to be given to you alone on your eighteenth birthday. I do not know what the letter says, or what the contents are inside the envelope. The answers are in her message to you.”
Beth nods.
In the letter she learns that her first name was supposed to be Alice, given to her by her mother. A few weeks before, she and her father had an updated discussion on what her name should be. He wanted her name to be Doris Elizabeth after the grandmother he loved so much. Sophia, her mother, thought the name of her first child should be the one she wanted it to be.
“She knew from the very start that you were going to be a girl and that your name would be Alice,” Sylvia said looking into Beth’s eyes, “shortly after your mother died, a nurse approach me and said that there were complications during birthing process, and they had to do an immediate c-section to ensure your survival. Also, that your mother didn’t suffer long.”
“Where was my father?”
“Not sure, I believe he was off getting coffee.”
“So, he wasn’t in the room? Did he not want to see me born?”
“To be completely honest, he genuinely wanted a boy. When he learned you were not, he started making himself scarce when it came to anything that had to do with your mom’s pregnancy. I went to all the Lamaze classes with her. She called me when her water broke. I informed him that we were at the hospital. He showed up an hour after she was in the labor room,” Sylvia pauses and looks out of the window, “Anyways, Sophia, according to the nurse, was only aware of her surroundings for just a few seconds, but during that awareness she heard her say, ‘Alice, my beautiful Alice,’ then nothing, she was gone." When Sylvia looks back, she sees that Beth is in tears and so she reaches out to hug her tightly, “there-there sweetie, in the end her thoughts were only of you.”
“What about dad? What did he do when he learned that mom had died?”
“I think that we should wait for another day to talk of this. It’s your eighteenth birthday. This is supposed to be a happy time for you, and I fear I have ruined it with too much family history.”
“No Aunt Sylvia, you told me the truth and I respect that as much as I have always respected you. Please, may we continue?”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Alright. Your father…, well, he did the unexpected. James destroyed anything that reminded him of your mother. Shortly after her death, not more than two months, he married again to Ruth, who was more interested in spending James' money and not caring that he needed to make more to support her impulse shopping. Six months later she gave birth to a bouncing baby boy. Another year or so later, your sister was born.”
“So, Ruth was...”
“Yes, pregnant the same time your mother was.”
Beth begins to tear up again, these more out of anger and resentment toward her father.
“Luckily,” Sylvia adds before Beth can say another word, “Three days before she went into labor, Sophia hands me a letter and has me swear and pinky promise to deliver it to you on this day. I could tell she had been crying, but I never asked why. I recall her being uncharacteristically solemn when she demanded that I keep it safe until this very moment in time.”
Continuing the letter, Beth reads that the key is to a safety deposit box, but in reading further she stops again. Tears flow once more, then she hands the letter to her aunt.
‘I was told by the doctor that I will not be able to have you my dear Alice, and that in doing so would jeopardize my life. They are 98% sure I will die if I have you. If you are reading this, then I have died for sure, but I am happy because you got to live. You were meant for this world as I was meant to bring you into it. I did it because I love you and although I will never get a chance to meet you in this life, my story will live on because I am a part of you. Live for us both and remember me.
I will forever love you.
Love, your mother,
Sophia Tandy’
Sylvia begins to tear up as well, “she never even told me that. Sophia was always ensuring we were happy, all the while hiding this from everyone.”
Together they sit in silence until Sylvia gets up and kisses her niece on the forehead. Gently wiping the tears from Beth’s face, she adds, “I will be back tomorrow to drive you to the bank to open your safety deposit box. Okay?”
Beth nods.
The next day, the two of them open her safety deposit box. Inside there is $76,000 in cash, US bonds, Apple, and Bellsouth Stock purchases, a hermetically sealed, see-through box containing an original printed fantasy novel from 1865 entitled Alice's Adventures Under Ground. Another letter explaining why her mother named her Alice was attached to the clear box. When she opened the letter, it read that Sophia loved a book her grandmother left her by a man she called Reverend Dodgson. Reverend Dodgson ended up being Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the man that wrote by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. The same book contained in the clear box. The only thing out of place was ten cases of tattoo ink.
“Tattoo ink?”
“You got me. She didn’t have any tattoos that I have ever saw,” she stops and pulls something out of her purse, “now because you are my favorite niece.”
“I’m actually your only niece.”
“Still…,” she then hands Beth a flash drive who looks a bit confused at the age of the flash drive.
“That thing looks like it has seen better days.”
“It will. It’s a cold storage wallet of 2000 bitcoin that I mined early on in bitcoin’s life back in 2010.”
“Wait, is that your savings? I can’t take your savings. Do you know how much that is?”
“About ninety million dollars. Give, or take. Don’t worry about me, I have two of them,” she smiles.
“Wow, thank…, thank you, Aunt Sylvia.”
“Happy birthday Sweetie.”
They hug.
“Now, take it, gather your things, and never look back. I’ll be here if you need me.”
So, Beth did just that, and when she was old enough, she legally changed her name to Alice Sophia Tandy, choosing her mother's given name over her father's. She invested some money in a local kava/kratom bar and devoted some time, with ink from the deposit box, for a tattoo of Alice from Alice in Wonderland, because it reminded her of the mother. She did not anticipate that the ink may have had special properties, some would even say enchanted, something her mother may have omitted. So from time to time, when she gets too rooted from drinking kava, things have a tendency to get very, very interesting.
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