Alligator - Lisa Moore [111]
In paper, like you might wrap a piece of meat, the body of Christ. For days there’d been a tingling in her arm, the side of her face. And a mild paralysis she mentioned to no one. Not now. Fleming, florid with passion, his yellow teeth, he is shouting at her in Latin. Why shouting?
She’s in the grip of a pain that won’t let her catch her breath and she dials Marty’s number. Maybe she has to go to the hospital this time. She wants to talk to Marty.
She wants regret on the screen, and Isobel could do regret. If the film doesn’t get finished, Isobel will turn her hand to something else. The phone rings but there’s no answer. Perhaps Marty is out walking the new baby. The baby has made him ten years younger.
Madeleine, he’d said. You should see her.
This giving in to the darkness of a nap, but she can’t afford it right now. She has to stay alert for the phone. If the phone rings she will hear it. She is waiting to hear about the horses; no, the horses have arrived. She is waiting for Marty. She has completed the winter shoot and Isobel was perfect. The horses galloped out of a squall. They disappeared; they ate their own tails. Marty will ring and she’ll tell him she needs an ambulance. The young girl sat up in bed. She has to get those horses off the freighter, someone said a helicopter. The film will be a monument.
The trouble is to stay alive until the shoot is over. Then she’ll go to Cuba and rest. She’ll drink her face off and turn black on the beach. Just let her get through the shoot. She will rest, act her age.
I want to love Colleen again, Beverly had said.
And you can’t? Can’t you love Colleen?
Beverly crossed her arms under her chest and dug her fists into her sides.
I want to, she said. Of course I do. I love her.
She is telling the archbishop. She is giving him this much, since he won’t leave. They can both wait for the phone. No, the animals have arrived already. They’ve completed the winter shoot.
The great monuments, she tells him. You go out of your way to see them but they never stick in your memory.
She’d visited the Taj Mahal, arriving at sunset as she was advised. But she rarely thinks of the Taj Mahal. A particular alley is what comes back to her as vividly as if she were standing there now. The dusty alley persists, returns briefly, sweeping through her, like a current tossing some old shell at the bottom of the ocean where it’s pitch black; a lost afternoon from forty years ago. And yes, she admits to Fleming, this might very well be a heart attack. She’s dying in a chair she bought at the Salvation Army and refinished herself.
The archbishop raised his arms. The horses come by helicopter, pawing the clouds with their great hooves, a snowfall of moths. The city is covered in fluttering white snow. Moths on their hands, on their arms, on their upturned faces.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FIRST, I WOULD like to thank my husband, Stephen Crocker, basically for everything, everything.
My big, extended family makes writing possible for me and I want to thank them all. I would especially like to thank Eva Crocker, Theo Crocker, and Emily Pickard.
I would like to thank everyone at Anansi for the tremendous effort that went into the creation of Alligator. Sarah MacLachlan has been extremely supportive throughout the process of writing this novel. She goes at every aspect of publishing with uplifting gusto and I am very fortunate to have her energy and experience behind this book.
Martha Sharpe is a very gifted editor and working with her was a privilege. Heather Sangster and Kevin Linder were also exacting, eagle-eyed, and generous with their editing skills, for which I am thankful.
Laura Repas is an excellent publicist, and I am grateful for her work on Alligator. Thank you also to Matt Williams.