Alligator - Lisa Moore [93]
Beverly stops playing. The piano bench creaks. There are forbidden chocolates in an enamel bowl and Madeleine can see Beverly reach for a chocolate. Madeleine is startled by the audacity. The chocolate melts in Beverly’s mouth. Then tires crunch on the gravel. Beverly tentatively touches the keys, the music is more viscous, the cherry centre and the sour liqueur, dark chocolate.
A man has come to the door, snow whirls in around his pant legs and there is Madeleine’s mother, her hand on the door and the smell of fresh snow, the frigid air, the wind crashing through the branches outside. This is the end of Madeleine’s childhood. She holds the spindle of the stair rail, from here she will lose faith, she will go hungry, she will be fuelled by anger and sex and a desire to make every moment tangible; she isn’t thinking about making films, of course, she has never heard of making films, she’s not quite a teenager, this is St. John’s — the light passing through each raindrop on the window in the stairwell — but she decides she will make films.
It is decided, whoever decides.
Madeleine watches the man speak to her mother, the brim of his hat, and her mother’s shoulders crumple. She hugs herself and her shoulders quake with little shudders. Their father has finally died.
Madeleine has been making films ever since. She has made industrial films to support documentaries with radical political slants. She has made television cooking shows and political campaign ads. She has made films in India and Africa and Australia. She has made films about the Yanomami and the Inuit and the Andaman Islanders and the more obscure members of the royal family.
The film she is making now will be better than any film ever made by anyone. Better than Bergman. This film will contain everything. It will contain everything. It will contain everything.
COLLEEN
I CHECKED THE sheets and they were clean, but there was a musty smell. The door was rickety but there was a lock. There was a single toothbrush in the holder over the sink and it was stiff and crusted with toothpaste. I smelled it and it smelled like toothpaste. I ran my thumb over the bristles and the toothpaste came off in a little cloud of powder. I opened the medicine cabinet and there was a tube of toothpaste and dental floss and a bottle of Aspirin.
I heard him go back along the path and I heard the screen door.
I brushed my teeth and I put the cap back on the toothpaste and put it back on the shelf and closed the door to the medicine cabinet. I stood there looking at myself in the mirror.
If you look at yourself for a long time without blinking your face starts to change shape. I looked at myself that way and I felt afraid of the ride through the swamp tomorrow and I blinked hard. Then I just looked at myself and something black and fast ran from my nose to my lips and it was blood.
I tried tilting my head back but then I could taste it.
After a while the nosebleed stopped and I lay awake for a long time and the sounds of the swamp didn’t frighten me as much but I was wide awake.
His face was shredded and flaps of skin overlapped other flaps and there was a loose web of lines all over his face and head. He was almost bald and I saw where the teeth had punctured his skull. His hands had a constant shake, he nearly spilled his beer. At supper there was a moment, maybe thirty seconds, when he stared into space and didn’t seem to hear me.
He has a compound for the alligators, and there are bridges all through it where the tourists can walk for five bucks and the whole compound is surrounded by a chain link fence and there are more than a hundred animals.
At first you don’t see them and then you see them. You see them on the bank and just a strip of their backs breaking the water and they look like floating logs in the green algae. The algae are luminous and there’s a dank smell and they don’t