Fall from Grace (10 page)

Warren was shaking his head disbelievingly.

“But I heard he went out to her place the other day.”

“He wouldn't,” Warren protested. “He wouldn't get mixed up with Annabelle. She's a married woman, for Pete's sake.”

“Oh don't be stupid, Warren. He doesn't care if she's married or not.” She looked out the side window. “Bobby'll do whatever he wants.”

“Yeah, but Annabelle…”

He felt Wanda's gaze on his cheek, and felt himself flushing.

L
ATE SATURDAY MORNING Annabelle went to the Super-Valu store for groceries, and she saw Bobby in the lineup next to hers.

She ignored him. But her body didn't. She felt fluid, as though she'd been turned into a mountain stream, clear and savory. As she moved groceries from her basket onto the countertop she knew that this was how dancers moved their arms, leading with the elbows and the wrists, making intricate, alluring patterns in the air.

He hadn't seen her yet.

When he did see her he was reaching to put a can of soup on the counter and because he was looking at Annabelle he missed, and the soup fell and hit his foot. He leapt backward and exclaimed in pain, and Annabelle laughed.

They went out of the store and into the parking lot together, she trundling her shopping cart in front of her, he carrying a paper bag of groceries he said were for a camping trip.

“This is my truck,” she said when they reached it, and turned to face him. The sun was very bright. She started lifting bags out of the shopping cart. Bobby put a hand on her arm.

“Wait,” he said. “I'll do it.”

She looked at his hand, very brown against her bare arm. Her whole body was extremely warm, because it was, again, such a hot day. Where his hand rested, her skin was at first cool, then even warmer than the rest of her. He was wearing denim cut-offs and a dark blue tank top.

“Okay,” she said. She stepped back, easing her arm out from under the touch of his hand, and gestured at the shopping cart. “Go ahead,” she said.

When he'd loaded her bags into the back of the truck she said, “Well, thank you,” but he stood between her and the driver's door.

“How about a coffee, Annabelle?”

She shaded her eyes with her hand, looking up at him.

“Christ, Annabelle,” he said after a minute. “We're old friends, remember?” He leaned close to her. “I thought you might write to me,” he said sadly. “But you never did.”

“Oh don't you give me any of that tripe, Bobby Ransome,” said Annabelle. “You were a married man. At least at first. Old friend or no old friend, I don't correspond with other people's husbands.”

“So how about it?” said Bobby, leaning against the back of the truck. “A coffee at Earl's can't do you any harm.”

Annabelle sighed, and frowned. “Oh, well,” she said. “All right.”

From a table next to the window Diana watched them enter the café, and she gave Annabelle a tentative smile when their eyes met. Then she turned to Alberg. “Your garden's wilting, you know.”

“What garden?” said Alberg, studying the menu. “I don't have a garden.”

“You've got rosebushes in your backyard,” said Diana, fanning herself with her hand, “and hydrangeas in your front yard. They're all wilting. Because you haven't been watering them.”

“You don't water things around here, Diana,” he explained patiently. “This isn't Calgary. Nature takes care of itself out here. The rain will come, and then things will stop wilting.”

“I've been here for weeks now and it hasn't rained. There isn't a cloud in the sky. Face it, Pop; it isn't going to rain.”

Earl, the Chinese proprietor, came over to take their order. When he'd left, Diana said, “I've got something bothering me, Pop.”

Alberg looked at her hopefully. He always welcomed an opportunity to provide his daughters with sage advice. “What is it?”

“There's a place near the highway that's got animals,” she said, leaning closer to Alberg, keeping her voice down. “Mr. Moran sent me out there to write a story about it.”

“Uh-huh,” said Alberg, noncommittal.

“It's supposed to be a tourist attraction, I guess. Or at least that's what Mr. Moran thought. But it's an awful place, Pop.”

“Uh-huh,” said Alberg again. He felt trouble looming.

“Just awful. The animals are in these little cages.” Diana shrugged. “I don't know what I expected. There's this game farm near Edmonton; maybe that's what I expected. Big fields for them to run in. I don't know.”

When Diana was a child, she had often brought home stray dogs and cats. Her mother, exasperated but tolerant, had always allowed her to feed them until their owners could be located. But Maura had brought this practice to a halt the day Diana appeared with a black Afghan, female, whose owner banged on the Albergs' door only minutes later complaining loudly of theft.

“I mean it's ridiculous,” Diana went on. “Squirrels. Raccoons. Foxes. You can't call that a zoo. He should let them all go, that's what he should do. It's really very upsetting, Pop.” She sat back and took a sip from a tall glass of diet ginger ale.

Alberg wanted to be sympathetic and useful. But he was worried about the time; he was supposed to pick up Cassandra at one o'clock, and it was already past noon.

He wondered if Diana knew about the missing skunks.

Diana leaned closer again. “You paid for me to go to school. So you ought to know that I actually learned a few things there.”

“Good,” said Alberg warily.

“A couple of times something happened to make me see the world differently. Do you know what I mean?”

He nodded.

“Once was in a third-year philosophy course. Ethics.”

She was looking at him intently, so he nodded again.

“We had a unit about animal rights.”

Alberg sighed, without having meant to. He looked longingly out the window.

“Oh Pop just listen, will you?”

“I'm listening,” Alberg protested.

“And keep your damn mind open.”

“My damn mind is always open.”

She threw him such a filthy look that he flinched.

“Ajar, then,” he said, and although she didn't smile, he thought she softened. “Go on, honey. Please.”

“The prof asked us to make lists,” said Diana. “First we made a list of the things that animals can do better than us. Then we made another list, of the things we can do better than animals.”

Alberg looked around for Earl, but Earl was busy at the cash register.

“And once we'd done that,” said Diana, “and they were up on the board where we could all see them, we started talking about what things were more important. You know, thinking, for instance, as opposed to running fast.”

Diana had hair like Cassandra's, Alberg realized. It got all frizzy in this heat. Diana's hair was very long, and she was wearing it in some kind of knot that was pinned on top of her head, but bits of it were coming loose and curling around her face in little spirals. Like Alberg, she didn't tan; but unlike Alberg, who burned easily, Diana's skin when touched by the sun glowed like the skin of a peach.

“Are you listening?” she demanded.

“Yes, of course I'm listening.”

“And up until then I'd always just assumed that it was better to be able to think, and create things, and have a sense of right and wrong, and a complicated memory—” She looked around the café, as if seeking explanations there. “I'd just
assumed
that those things were the most important things, and therefore humans were more important than animals. I just
assumed
it, Pop. Without even thinking about it.”

Alberg, who had heard this stuff before, was nevertheless respectful. He enjoyed Diana's passions, and was proud of her because she was stern and uncompromising. He also found her slightly intimidating. He was glad she was his daughter, and young. He was sure he would have sometimes quailed before Diana, if she'd been his contemporary.

“Here,” said Earl, setting down a hamburger platter for Alberg, and a shrimp salad for Diana. “Enjoy.”

“We're so arrogant, Pop,” said Diana when he'd left. “You know?”

Alberg nodded dutifully. He wondered if it would be okay to start eating.

“And right then a whole bunch of things looked entirely different to me,” said Diana. “It was like I was considering—the world, and life—from an entirely new point of reference.”

What would his life be like right now, Alberg asked himself, if both his daughters had come to Sechelt for the whole summer, as they had originally intended? Maybe they would have been too much for him, both of them together.

“I figure that's why people go to school, really,” said Diana, as Alberg picked up his fork and speared a French fry. “That's the bottom line of it. To see things differently, and then to think about life differently. Act differently, too.”

Alberg nodded again, munching, feeling slightly stupefied.

Diana studied him for a moment. “Pop,” she said.

“Yes?” said Alberg. He took another surreptitious glance at his watch.

“Animals have the right not to live in cages.”

Alberg thought about this. “If you're speaking philosophically,” he said, “I guess I'd have to agree.”

“The day is coming,” said Diana, looking into her shrimp salad, “when I'm going to have to become a vegetarian.”

Alberg wondered if Hetty Willis was a vegetarian. He picked up his hamburger.

“I've been doing some research,” said Diana.

“Oh yeah?” said Alberg politely. He took a bite.

“I'm going to try to get that place closed down, Pop,” said his daughter, looking across the café at Annabelle Ferguson.

Alberg stared at her. He felt a fierce pride, which astonished him. And even as he registered this fact: “Shit,” he said, with a sinking heart.

Bobby had offered her lunch, but Annabelle declined. She was bored and impatient all of a sudden, and wanted to get home before the milk she'd bought with her groceries turned sour in the heat. She looked fretfully around the café listening with one ear to Bobby talking about his stepdad's heart attack. She crossed her legs, bare beneath her blue-and-white sundress, tapped her sandaled foot in the air, uncrossed her legs, crossed them again. She nodded, and sipped coffee, and nodded some more. She watched lunch orders being delivered to the surrounding tables. She heard very little of what Bobby was saying. Why on earth had she agreed to come here? She felt odd. Awkward and resentful. She wanted to be in her garden.

“Excuse me,” she said finally. “I have to go now.” She stood up.

He stood, also, and left money on the table.

Annabelle walked toward the door. He was right behind her. When they reached the door he placed his left hand flat against the small of her back. Annabelle shivered.

Out on the street, half a block away from the café, he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around so that he could look into her face. She looked back at him, at his green eyes. I wonder if anybody I know is seeing this, thought Annabelle, but she didn't try to move away from him, and her pulse felt like the thrumming of a bird's wings.

“I'll walk you back to your truck,” he said, and she nodded. Halfway there he said, “My mom'll be at the hospital. Do you want to come to the house for a minute?” His voice sounded perfectly normal. Annabelle nodded again. He took her by the elbow and led her around a corner, up a hill, and through a gate.

They went into a small house with a sun porch. Inside there was a little hall, a stairway on the left, a living room on the right, and at the end of the hall Annabelle could see part of a kitchen. It was cool and quiet. There were venetian blinds in the living room and they were mostly closed, letting in little slivers of sunlight. Annabelle stood in the hallway looking at the floor, which was made of wood, probably oak.