Alligator - Lisa Moore [31]
They were one table away from Mr. John Harvey, a downtown vagrant who had settled into his seat and had bent over and unzipped the rubber boots he wore, exposing ankles so pale and veined and bluish white they looked opalescent.
Mr. John Harvey wore an army-surplus parka done up to his chin. Beverly could only imagine how hot he was. Looking out at the harbour, she found she suddenly felt like talking.
This time you’ve gone too far, young lady, she said.
And then a moment later, One day I suppose you’ll be able to say you’re sorry for all this.
A cruise ship crept into the window frame. There were thousands of black portals and the ship was fiercely white, even through the tinted glass. It was a monstrous vessel casting a cool shadow over the families walking along the harbourfront.
Mr. John Harvey thumped his chest several times with his fist and eventually, raucously, coughed up something he folded into a paper napkin and put in his pocket.
Colleen suddenly wanted her mother to accompany her to the youth diversion meeting. She would give anything to have her mother there. This was what mothers were for: to swoop in and rescue.
Tough love, her mother said.
The cops on the other side of the room burst into laughter. One of them removed his cap and hit the female cop on the shoulder with it. She pretended to topple off her chair. They were just people, these cops.
Beverly asked, Have you ever given me a thought?
I wanted to change things, Colleen said. When she said this phrase she saw the planet earth from a great distance. It was so far away it appeared to be dislodged from the present, a part of some distant future. They had all lived past this moment: the police, Mr. John Harvey, her mother. The world was still the world but they weren’t in it any more. They had long since died and been replaced with new, better people.
Once, her mother said, I left you in a basket on the kitchen table and went upstairs to get something. And when I came back downstairs fifteen minutes later the kitchen was full of smoke. I’d put potatoes on to boil and burned the bottom out of the pot. I’d almost asphyxiated you. Why am I feeling so sentimental?
I’m sorry this happened, Colleen blurted. She wanted to be rewarded with her mother’s forgiveness, and then the sun would fire all the prisms in their empty kitchen, the cruise ship would pass, and the arms of the sun would reach beyond its massive, gliding bulk.
Colleen was willing to accept the consequences of her actions — in imagining them she had seen a beer-bellied developer stomping his foot with impotent rage — but she hadn’t imagined getting caught.
David had always said, Goodness prevails. He was like a mason laying bricks. There was a right and honest way; things must stack up.
So few things are worth doing, he’d once said. It was after the construction business failed and he’d spent a week in bed. He said he had contracted some virus, more than likely contagious. He’d come out of the bedroom only to smoke in front of Canada AM, wearing pyjamas — the buttons done up wrong — and a terry-cloth housecoat of maroon and grey stripes with the belt dragging on the carpet behind him.
David had once organized a benefit to raise money for teenage rugby players. He’d spent weeks selling tickets for a gala dinner and dance so that children from lower income families could go to Sweden with the St. John’s rugby team. Colleen had heard him on the radio — he’d spoken with emotion in his voice, seemingly overcome with conviction — Every kid on this team gets to play ball.
How different is that from pouring sugar into bulldozers? David had e-mailed photographs of himself and the team. In one picture David stood in front of a butcher’s window with several goats’ heads hanging upside down behind him, white against the blackness of the shop’s interior; there was