Alligator - Lisa Moore [87]
She’d had the thought falling asleep last night: a knack. She spoke the word out loud because it occurred to her that it might not be a word.
Knack, she said. But she was entirely unaware that she had spoken.
Colleen’s christening had taken place on a Monday afternoon in late March. The snow had been creeping back off the sidewalks; crocuses pushing up through the wet earth like an army of bayonets on the banks of the Waterford River, ragged ice tumbling in the current. The streams spilling over the cliffs of the South Side Hills were still frozen, covering the rock like candle wax on the sides of a wine bottle.
The cod was poached. It was supposed to be poached in champagne but Beverly had used water. There was fresh parsley on her plate, and three wedges of lemon.
Beverly had worn a raw silk, bubblegum-pink miniskirt and matching jacket to the christening. She bought it at Bowring’s and had paid a lot and was proud of her legs, but Father O’Brien made an unpleasant comment about the length.
That skirt is not an appropriate garment for a new mother, especially in the house of the Lord, he’d said.
He took off his heavy, black-rimmed glasses and screwed his eyes shut, and moved the smudged glasses in concentric circles outward, outward elucidating the pedantic, inevitable feelings of the church, the positions they held, how they must be firm, now more than ever, the churches in Latin America breaking away, the evils of birth control. Then he put his glasses back on, opened his eyes and blinked, as though he had been an unwilling vessel for the nasty message and he was just coming back to himself. He put a warty hand on Beverly’s shoulder and pushed her into the dark coolness of the church.
The snug cap that went with the christening gown — Beverly’s favourite part of the outfit — was covered in mother-of-pearl beads, the beads so tightly bunched that the cap was as hard as a helmet, and the gown’s train was spread over the hard-wood floor around Beverly’s high heels. Madeleine and Marty were Colleen’s godparents even though they were atheists. David stood beside Beverly, holding a bottle full of expressed breast milk. She had wanted Colleen christened because she believed in ceremony and in God. She believed welcoming a child into the world required enlisting the sacred — incense and prayers.
Beverly had packed a picnic of Kentucky Fried Chicken and potato salad and wine they were going to enjoy at Bowring Park with plastic utensils and paper cups, but the weather had changed while they were inside the church — lightning had cracked and there was a roll of thunder in the distance — and they ended up eating in the car while rain drilled the roof. They passed the bucket of chicken back and forth over the front seat, wiping the grease off their faces with paper napkins while the baby slept.
The rain rushed down the windshield and the duck pond was stirred up and brown. A swan lifted its impossibly large white wings against a sudden wind and was blown across the pond with such dramatic force that Beverly felt her milk spurt through her nipples in a great gush. The raw silk jacket was stained forever.
Three years ago, Beverly had run into Helen French in the bakery section of Dominion on Ropewalk Lane. Colleen had turned fourteen and Beverly was picking up a birthday cake. She had been standing with her arms folded tightly over her chest, tapping her foot on the tiles while the girl behind the counter worked a squeeze bag of pink icing through a plastic nozzle. That morning someone had defaced Beverly’s home with shaving cream.
Helen gave Beverly a light smack on the arm and Beverly had been startled by the touch. She had been frightened by the graffiti on her windows — but when she saw Helen she was overjoyed.
Helen, who had given birth to six children, and her husband had taken up with a woman from the mainland, and there had followed a commission