Alligator - Lisa Moore [86]
He’d said, Lady, lady, lady. In that accent they have down there. He raised a fist in the air, flung the water from his hair, and made a whooping noise. She had nearly been swallowed by malevolent death to leave no remains, but instead — she could not believe. Here was a man, muscled, lean, young, everything she loved, and he was paddling them back to shore. She didn’t get off the board until her dragging feet touched the sandy bottom and she was knee-deep in water. She saw he was winded but pleased with himself and they made arrangements for dinner because he had saved her life.
Later she sat in front of a big window looking onto Bondi Beach waiting for him. People were still surfing though it was dark but there was a moon and big lamps like those in ballparks. She drank her wine and waited and he didn’t show up. How simply he had shown up before, and now, with comparatively few impediments, he did not make it at all.
She decided to call Trevor Barker upstairs and see if he felt like going to a play on the weekend. There was a new production at the Hall and she had tickets. And if the evening was still warm they could walk along the harbourfront afterwards. Maybe get invited on the cruise ship for a look.
BEVERLY
SUNLIGHT BOUNCED THROUGH the patio windows onto the high polish of Beverly’s cherry-wood dining table. There was a white crocheted doily in the centre of the table. She placed the portable phone on her napkin. She was waiting for the phone to ring.
Helen French had made the doily — a high-school friend who specialized in christening gowns. Helen had sold christening gowns — it said on the tags that came with each purchase — to royalty in Germany and Malta. Colleen had worn one of Helen’s gowns when Beverly had her christened at Corpus Christi, seventeen years before, by Father O’Brien. The backs of his pale, bony hands were covered in warts.
Beverly touched the cod with her fork and a flake fell away from the fillet. She’d put salsa on her plate in the kitchen, unable to stand jars on the table. She’d turned off the radio before sitting down, and the house became utterly silent. She braced against the silence the way a downhill skier might draw a breath before starting down a hill. She found silence both frightening and thrilling, and lately, more luxury than deprivation.
She’d picked up the phone once and checked the dial tone. The dial tone was loud. She hung up and put it down. Afraid she had not hung up properly she picked it up again and it was off and she turned it on. She turned it on to make sure the battery wasn’t low. She turned it off and put it next to her plate. She was certain Colleen would phone. There had been a message three days before: Mom, I’m in some Louisiana backwater, heading for New Orleans, and I love you and I’m sorry for always letting you down.
She picked up her fork with the flake of cod but was transfixed by the garden. She had put out the sprinkler while the carrots were boiling. She watched as the water from the sprinkler lifted itself out of the shade of the maple tree, straight into the air, pattering the leaves for a moment before it began to topple over. The fan of spray stretched into the sunlight beyond the maple and became a semi-transparent, shimmering veil lowering itself gently over the grass and Beverly thought about how loving required a knack.
You had to have a knack for it, she thought. Without the knack it was exhausting. Love couldn’t be forced. She had loved David. It was her greatest achievement, that effortless love, she thought, and the sprinkler raised its sun-flickered fan upward again, pattering loudly against the leaves of the maple like applause.
Colleen was an effort. She was an effort, but the love was definitive and instinctual and full of fear and need and the sprinkler tipped into the shade and stained the bark of the tree.
The grass had been mowed that afternoon while she was at work but it had not been raked. She could smell the wet, mowed grass from the open patio window. Closer to the glass she