Alligator - Lisa Moore [11]
The crowd gathering around the wheelchair began to shout advice. A man in a tweed coat finally stepped forward and lifted Colleen free. Then with an easy move he disengaged the shopping cart.
The woman in the wheelchair shouted at Beverly, You are a piece of shit. She glared with a depthless hatred that, Colleen saw, had instantly diminished her mother.
Then the woman turned the wheelchair in a series of deft jolts and zoomed off down the aisle, swerving around customers and hitting the display of Aqua Velva, the uppermost boxes of which slid one after another to the floor with dull slow-motion plops until the entire tower seemed to bend in half and fall apart all over the aisle. The man in the tweed coat removed his glove and offered to shake Beverly’s hand.
You’re an absolute angel, Beverly said.
She closed her eyes and put her trembling hands over her ears and smoothed down her hair. She stood like that, eyes closed, hands on her head, while the ramifications of the woman’s rage beat against her.
And during the festive season, she whispered. Then her eyes opened and she was restored. She could make effortless recoveries. She could be dazzlingly bright after near collapse.
People have to watch where they’re going, she said.
I’m just trying to buy a microwave, the man blurted. I told my wife, whatever you want. But there’s not a single microwave to be found in the whole goddamn mall.
Of course everybody’s so fraught, Beverly said. She raised both her hands, asking the man to take in all the wreckage of Christmas. The man looked up and down the aisle. The scene made him draw back his lips from his teeth in a kind of parody of extreme merriment.
If I had my way there’d be no Christmas, the man said.
That’s exactly how I feel, why not some quiet, private celebration of life, Beverly said. This comment mystified the man.
I’m thinking about a dishwasher, he said shyly. That’s what I’ve got in my mind right now, but my wife said a microwave.
A dishwasher and a microwave amount to the same thing, Beverly announced.
A nice dishwasher, the man said.
Is she a stay-at-home mom? Beverly felt a mild disdain for women who gave up careers with the excuse of raising children when most normal people could do both, but she felt guilty about the opinion, and often claimed to be envious.
Never worked a day in her life, the man said proudly.
I’m telling you, a dishwasher.
She’d like a dishwasher, he said.
Imagine her face on Christmas morning.
Colleen wandered over to the Aqua Velva. She picked up a box, which was red with a print of holly leaves and had a clear plastic window on the front to show off the bottles inside. Each bottle of cologne was a different colour — turquoise, dark green, navy blue, and rust. Inside each bottle an oblong air bubble wobbled toward the lid. When she gave the box a shake the bubbles jiggled madly and burst into a thousand tiny bubbles and rushed toward the neck like foam and then slowly fizzled out to reform the single bubble. She tried to get the bubbles in each bottle to hang exactly in the centre of the glass. It was the perfect gift for David. One thing was for certain — he didn’t have it already. As far as she knew, he had never used cologne of any sort in his life.
Colleen had been promised the shopping trip for three weekends in a row, but something had come up on each occasion — her mother talked on the phone or studied a cookbook — and by the time her intense absorption with these tasks had worn off it would be too late to do anything. Colleen would try to catch her mother’s attention with a winning look. Sometimes she would whisper, Mom, reprimanding and pleading at once. But that only provoked; Beverly would hold up one finger and then turn her back on Colleen.
When she hung up the phone or snapped the book shut she would be awash with whatever world she had been dipping into, whatever had taken place there, and would seem to have no recollection