Alligator - Lisa Moore [19]
If Colleen was not dead, why were two police officers coming up the walk? Colleen could not be dead because Beverly couldn’t live without her.
She had come to think of life not as a progression of days full of minor dramas, some tragedy, small joys, and carefully won accomplishments, as she figures most people think of life — but rather a stillness that would occasionally be interrupted with blasts of chaos.
The wine was the last of the batch David had bottled just before he died. David was — had been — a short, pudgy man with fine silver hair and a lot of cufflinks. Beverly keeps a brown velvet box with a stiff hinge under her pillow. She gives it a shake, listening to the cufflinks rattle around, before she drifts off to sleep.
He’d had a thing for cufflinks. He’d believed in finishing touches, nice soaps, napkin rings that had some heft to them. He’d smoothed eye gel under his eyes every morning because it felt cool and helped him wake up. He’d clipped his toenails with his foot resting on the toilet seat. The wine was surprisingly right for homemade wine. The trick was real fruit juice. He’d squashed the blueberries himself, with his knuckles. What she missed most were his eccentricities. The weird constellation of qualities she would never find in anyone else. She didn’t want anyone else.
The wine was potent, full of the four lost summers and suspended sediment. She had been saving the bottle for a special occasion. But the day had been unbearably forlorn, the weather windy and sunny, all the trees finally in bud. Daffodils whipped back and forth. David had never cleaned the sink after he shaved. The porcelain peppered with bristles is something she misses, though it had always mildly shocked her when she came upon it before he died. She had never expected it; now she misses it like a stab with a sewing needle right through her heart. How white and cold a sink can look when you live without a man. How sterile. She misses the smell of sex, is what she misses, a shadowy smell, full of lapsing time and cut grass and seaweed.
The alcohol slammed like a door, perhaps because she was dieting. She had decided David’s death would not destroy her entirely. Here was her prescription: behave as if you are unaffected and never stop behaving that way.
There had been a lot of cottage cheese, iceberg lettuce.
In yoga class she lay on her mat, allowing the smell of socks to be a form of comfort, and let tears stream from the corners of her eyes over her temples and into her ears. She was fifty-eight and kept her house very clean and always set a formal table, even when she was eating alone.
A badge or decorative square of metal on the policeman’s cap flared with light. They were standing near her tulips. The man looked up and Beverly could see he was young and she saw her bungalow in his mirror sunglasses. She had bought the bungalow two weeks after David was buried. It had been cowardice that had made her sell their house. She sold their house because she was brave beyond measure. She drove past it almost every evening trying to peer through the curtains. She had once seen the silhouette of a woman with oven mitts carrying a giant pot aloft and there were people around a table and candlelight. It had provided her with stores of comfort. Whoever they were they were young and celebrating. She wanted it to go on until dawn.
The officer touched the row of buttons on his shirt before starting forward.
Beverly wrote her sister, Madeleine, occasional e-mails, though they spoke on the phone once or twice a day. Madeleine had a headset she wore while driving.
I like to get my emotional work done on the move, Madeleine said. Beverly could hear squeals from the tires, as though Madeleine were taking the bends recklessly.
Is it work? Beverly had asked. Madeleine, the eldest by six years, had always been vigilant and uncompromising about Beverly’s well-being. Often there were car horns in the background; Madeleine running red lights or pulling U-turns, absent-mindedly enraging other drivers.