Alligator - Lisa Moore [21]
I think I’m very discouraged, Beverly said.
You may just have to cheer up, said the officer.
She came to after only a minute but she felt chilly and had broken a sweat. She heard vandalism and bulldozers. Apparently Colleen had not been hurt. There had been a car accident, she’d got a good crack across the nose, but that was it. Her nose wasn’t even broken. She deserved a broken nose at least, Beverly thought. Thank God her beautiful little nose was okay.
The male officer was in the kitchen checking the cupboards for a glass. He came back out with a beer stein full of ice cubes and orange juice.
Electrolytes, the officer said, and Beverly closed her eyes and saw fireworks on her eyelids. She imagined killing her daughter. She imagined putting her hands around her throat and squeezing tight. She imagined the cartilage of Colleen’s windpipe snapping under her thumbs. How dare Colleen frighten her like that?
Colleen had been saying eco-terrorism, but Beverly had not been listening. Colleen had been saying change the world, the plight of animals, the environment, radioactive waste, the World Trade Organization. She had said Seattle, she had said Quebec City. She had been going on, but Beverly had not listened.
Are you listening? Colleen kept asking.
Beverly had said about new shoes.
We should get you a nice pair of shoes, Beverly had said.
Of course she’s a minor so the complainant has no way to recoup costs of the damage, the male officer said. The sun came out at that instant and hit the prisms in front of Beverly’s window and a rainbow fell on the officer’s cheek and another on the front of his blue shirt. The glass of orange juice flared with sunlight as if it were a fire in his hand.
I have a daughter, the female cop said. They’re nothing but trouble.
Colleen was wilful and lovely. She had become beautiful overnight, large blue eyes and full lips, long, shiny hair. Her trembling, towering empathy, her insistence that the world play fair. She would not allow injustice; she would not stand for it. Beverly had seen the colour rush to her cheeks and tears brighten her eyes over nothing, over some insult visited randomly on one classmate or another — a girl disfigured by acne who had been teased, someone left out, someone who was poor, the kids who had no lunch. And then came the animals. She could never stand the immense unfairness to animals, the chicken factories, cows led to slaughter, even fish. As a four-year-old she had worked herself into an inconsolable rage when Beverly flushed a dead goldfish. She could not bear the indignity of the funeral, her little fists white at her sides, the stamp of her small foot on the bathroom tiles.
How did you catch her? Beverly asked. The worst was how thoroughly she had been betrayed, how befuddled and old she felt. She felt dangerously foolish.
We had a call from a gentleman who picked her up hitchhiking, the male officer said. The officer had been distracted by the crystals. He gave one of the spears of glass a little flick with his finger.
She dropped her knapsack at the scene of the crime, he said. We found the address in there. A rainbow jittered over the wall like a new butterfly.
She’ll have to come down to court, he said. Your daughter will have to admit she’s sorry for what she’s done and then she can avail of the youth diversion program.
You’re thinking of diverting her, Beverly said. She thought of rivers in the developing world that were diverted for hydro-electric power, how plains were flooded and birds had to abandon their nests and whole villages were made to move with their belongings on their backs. She had seen this on the documentary channel.
We have a very good program, the kids do community work, said the female cop.
COLLEEN
BEVERLY HAD MADE crustless sandwiches for the funeral home three days in a row when David died. Colleen remembers her leaning over the bathroom sink applying mascara, her eyeball very