Alligator - Lisa Moore [44]
She was intent on making him feel bad, the hand on his arm, and he was irritated by it. He wanted to turn the full bulk and range of his considerable might against the daughter when he met her. She had not committed a peaceful intervention for ecology, she had pissed off Gerry Duffy, and he had every intention of impressing upon her the difference.
Minor my ass, he thought. At fifteen he was peddling salt fish on the harbourfront. He was supporting his widowed mother at fifteen. They thought she was widowed; she may not have been Jesus widowed; his father had wandered off in a snowstorm and not come back. Gerry was up at five making bread every morning when he was fifteen, he delivered groceries in the dark, cold winter evenings. He cleaned the Newfoundland Hotel during the night, and had never had a mark below ninety at school, until he dropped out in Grade 10 to work on a construction site. At seventeen, the girl’s age, he had a child on the way, the first of twelve.
Seventeen-year-old Colleen Clark would not be familiar with the nuanced understanding of limitation he had grown accustomed to by fifteen.
She’s shameless, he thought.
Gerry had come to believe that hard work and missed opportunities had made him invulnerable.
Coming over Garrison Hill in a Ford pickup some years ago he had gripped the wheel tightly — it was a Sunday morning and mass was getting out at the Basilica, his youngest daughter had given birth the night before and he’d delivered a dozen roses and had seen the infant in her little plastic cot beside her mother’s hospital bed. He had, earlier in the week, closed a deal for a subdivision that was three-quarters pre-sold and the church bells pealed and it occurred to him he was invulnerable.
Nothing would surprise him or overtake him. This is the thought he had going down Garrison Hill: he was equal to whatever came next.
Mrs. Duffy, Gerry’s mother, had been a willowy Catholic who had accepted poverty, saw the honour in it, and allowed it to make her hard-tempered, vehemently selfless, and reclusive. She almost never left the house. She had once slapped Gerry’s face for coming home from a card game with alcohol on his breath.
He used to cook for her each evening and hand over his paycheque. They had been sitting at the dining-room table over a meal of cod and mashed potato one evening when there was a knock at the front door.
Mr. and Mrs. Foley and their daughter, Mary, stood huddled on the sidewalk, rain falling like a string of rhinestones from Mr. Foley’s peaked cap. Gerry’s mother was standing in the doorway of the living room with her napkin clutched in her fist against her chest. Gerry saw that his mother was an old woman, much older than Mrs. Foley, who wore bright red lipstick and looked like she could be Mary’s sister.
Mr. Foley said he was wondering if they might come in and have a talk with Mrs. Duffy and her son.
We’ve interrupted your meal, Mrs. Foley said. She could see the plates abandoned on the dining-room table.
That certainly wasn’t our intention, Mr. Foley said. Once in the living room, he sat on the sofa but jumped up from it again. He tried to lean against the marble mantle, but it was the wrong height for him and he eventually stood in the shadows, in the corner of the room with his arms crossed over his chest. He worked at the post office on Water Street, and his face was grey and pocked like concrete.
We always eat at this hour, Gerry’s mother had answered grimly. She meant they could be trusted to follow through in all things. No matter what the Foleys wanted to throw at them they would rise to the occasion. She waved her hand with the napkin vaguely in the direction of the table as proof of their consistency.
Mary, we’d like you to tell Mrs. Duffy what you’ve told us, her father said. The girl was staring at her hands, which were on the lap of her navy coat and looked very white. Her fine blond hair had come free of the braid that hung down her back and her face was bright red. They were