Alligator

by Lisa Moore

  On the January day when Frank got the sugar bowl, Gert had pulled a chair across the floor and was leaning with a long pole to unhook a wedding dress from the ceiling. The dress was swathed in plastic and the plastic was covered in dust and Gert had to lean out too far and had lifted one foot in the air like a ballerina and Johnny, the groom-to-be, took her hand.

  Frank saw how firmly he held her hand, saying, Hold on to me, Gert girl, before you break your neck. Everyone in the store was watching the hook sway slightly here and there around the wedding dress hanger, which was hooked over a waterpipe hanging just below the ceiling.

  Gert lowered the wedding dress and shook off the plastic, clawing at it, and without the dusty plastic, the wedding dress, they all saw, was covered in sequins and it crackled with light and the girl with the misaligned face had covered her mouth with both her hands.

  This dress was never worn, Gert whispered. She had fished a pricetag out of the froth and it said the dress was worth $1,500.

  The girl gathered the dress up in her arms and went into the tiny dressing room and Gert and Shirley turned at once and started clucking and waving their arms at Johnny, telling him to turn around for the love of God and close his eyes.

  After a few moments Shirley called out, Does it fit?

  The door of the dressing room creaked open and the bride came out, and she was a scalded red with embarrassment and pride. She ducked her head into her shoulder and the beauty of the dress seemed more than she could bear. The red in her face made her eyes a dark, dark brown. Her misaligned face was lit up by her blushing and for a minute she looked weirdly beautiful.

  Frank thought that maybe in the future this Johnny guy would beat the shit out of her, or they’d just live on welfare for the rest of their lives, or they wouldn’t know about Canada’s four food groups and the kids would be eating cake with blue icing blocked with sugar and chemicals and chips and cola and they’d be saucy and out of control all the time, and the parents would get something like cancer or they’d be alcoholics or have gambling addictions, but for now, in the middle of a snowstorm with the dress on, the girl, Frank saw, was ecstatic.

  Frank saw her shoulders and neck were covered in deep brown freckles but below her neck the skin looked creamy and her body was pretty nice. Then he found the lid to the sugar bowl, his fingers had just brushed against it. It wasn’t chipped and there was a small dip to fit a spoon in.

  This sugar bowl, now in the cupboard in front of him, on the yellow mactac is shimmering, struck as it is by the light from the window and he takes it down and puts it on the counter and is humiliated as he remembers that he thought he would marry Colleen after a one-night stand.

  He thought he would marry her.

  From one night of making love he thought they were going to get married and everything he gathered together from that night on would be for her too. If he found a sugar bowl, it would be for her. If he bought an exercise bike or took cooking lessons or if they got into yoga or signed a mortgage, it would be for her.

  He had allowed himself to be duped on such a grand scale that it made him light-headed.

  He looked at the sugar bowl and this is what he thought: And I still love her. Because he thought of taking the strawberries from the fridge that were very cold and he had squashed one in his fist and tried to get the juice that ran over his knuckles to drip into her mouth but instead it ran down her chin and onto her neck and the smell of it on her skin when he licked it, and she liked what he was doing, which amazed him.

  She licked his knuckles that were sticky with juice and she took his finger in her mouth and sucked it and he thought he was having the love tugged out of him. Tugging every single drop of love and loss and sexual-wanting-to-fuck and aloneness up out of his body through his finger with her gorgeous hot wet mouth, the way a magician tugs an unending line of knotted silk scarves from a gloved fist. Her mouth was a fist and he wanted it elsewhere. Her eyelashes were sooty and thick and her cheekbones and the strawberry smell was full of summer and when he lifted her up against the wall was she ever light.

  And when she came, which he had never made a girl come before, he saw her eyes fly open and how startled she was, and that look was love he was pretty sure.

  Even if she did take the goddamn money, which he knew she didn’t need for anything, she just took it.

  He took down the coffee jar and scooped out five spoonfuls. Then he tore back the bedsheets to check for a note.

  For a minute he thought she might have left a note. He opened the door to the fire escape, half expecting to find the girl there.

  When she wasn’t there he felt the room behind him beat like a heart, thumpthump, thumpthump, and it was a very empty room and he realized that no matter how much it was clear she had duped him, he couldn’t get it through his head.

  COLLEEN

  FRANK HAD FALLEN in love with her while they were having sex; she watched it happen. She fully expected to be caught and perhaps beaten up for taking his money. She had just met this guy in a bar and she went home with him and what happened was her eyes flew open and his eyes were already open and she’d had an orgasm, which was something that had never happened to her before.

  And it had happened to her, unbidden and unexpected; her eyes flew open and his were already open.

  He’d looked proud and shy. She’d been swallowing Jell-O shooters at the bar, layered globs of vodka and tequila and crème de menthe with a tiny wizened mushroom in the centre of each layer. She’d found herself convulsed with weeping after the orgasm: a wrung-out, lust-fuelled loss of self, an expulsion of her soul through her eyes and sweat glands and vagina and ears such as usually only happens in dreams.

  Frank dealt with her crying the way one might treat a runover cat. He moved her gingerly and with lavish care until her forehead was resting on his collarbone; he kept very still. He smoothed her hair, which was full of static from his sweater; he didn’t actually touch her hair but patted down the brittle aura of electricity that circled her head.

  Get it all out of you, he’d said. The bed rocked and gurgled with her sobs. He had hummed “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” with such gravity and profound lack of tempo that it took her a long time to recognize it. She was almost asleep when she heard him say, I love you.

  He told her he loved her and the words tumbled down the drunken, bottomless well of her with a sombre finality.

  As a thirteen-year-old she’d started drinking and smoking dope in the parking lot behind her school among broken beer bottles and cigarette butts and the hopscotch games drawn on the pavement with coloured chalk. There were bushes at the edge of the lot and she’d gone in there and allowed boys to grope her and put hickeys on her neck and eventually to do whatever they liked, sometimes two at a time. It had all happened in a haze of camaraderie and coercion that everybody forgot, as best they could, the next day. Maybe she was crying for all of that.

  Or she was crying because of a glimmer of self-doubt concerning the bulldozers. Maybe she’d been wrong about the bulldozers. Or she was crying because Frank had no idea how vulnerable he was. Frank’s innocence was jolting and sensual and she felt the need to destroy it as quickly as possible.

  In the morning, while Frank slept, she quietly put on her socks and reached under the bedside table for her shoes. She had the first mural painting meeting for juvenile delinquents in a couple of hours and she was still a little drunk. Her hand brushed against a cobweb and then a fat white envelope that she pulled out and opened. There were twenty-five hundred-dollar bills inside it. She counted them, careful not to let the paper rustle.

  She tucked the envelope down the front of her jeans, one sharp corner digging into her hip. She bent to pick up her shoes and the room swayed. She stood up fast, holding the shoes near her chest. The room was mildly swaying in circles. It lurched and settled down and behaved itself.

  The deadbolt made a screech. Frank’s face was turned toward her and his eyelashes were very dark and he was engaged in a
sleep full of trust. He was thoroughly spent and his cheeks were flushed and she thought of him as a solitary boy, more solitary than any young man she’d ever met.

  He’d listened so intently while she talked during the night. She’d flopped onto his bed and it wobbled violently. She spanked the waterbed with both arms and felt the swells.

  Once, I was nearly decapitated, she said brightly. She told Frank about being at the Confederation Building when she was seven or eight, one in a phalanx of overheated Brownies and Cubs, during an official occasion of some sort and an elderly gentleman, a former soldier in full regalia, had drawn a ceremonial sword, but it was too heavy for him and it came down over his shoulder and would have probably cut her head off cleanly — she was standing directly behind the old man in her little brown dress with all its splendid badges — except her mother, who had always been overprotective and doting, had pulled her out of its path.

  I felt the swoosh, she told him. The breeze from the blade. She closed her eyes and imagined her seven-year-old head with its smart little Brownie tam still perched at an angle, rolling over the floor of the Confederation Building, Brownies everywhere stepping out of its path.

  I think the mushrooms are kicking in, she’d whispered.

  She opened the door very slowly, still clutching her shoes to her chest. The hinges yelped. She heard a slosh from the mattress behind her and froze, not even breathing, and then she was out in the hallway and down the stairs. She had put herself in peril, Colleen thought, and then retrieved herself from peril. She liked to see what she could get away with, how far she could go. This time you’ve gone too far, young lady. What she wanted was bacon and eggs. She didn’t put her shoes on until she was around the street corner.

  She headed for The Bagel Café and the cruise ship was still docked in the harbour and she saw a party hat lying in the gutter. It was a cone of silver cardboard with a print of birthday cakes all over it. It was rolling back and forth in the breeze and the sun sent a white flare running down its side. It looked like a dunce cap and she was seized instantly with remorse for taking Frank’s money. A consuming self-hatred, a wish for instant annihilation, the sort of swoosh that would leave no trace. There seemed to be no getting beyond it. She had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and the people in the cars driving past saw a bedraggled, washed-out girl staring at the ground in front of her, arrested, still as a statue, clutching her hair with two fists.

  She withstood the remorse. She closed her eyes as she had seen her mother do when facing her own moral failings. If she had learned anything from her mother it was not to wallow in self-doubt. Doubt was a luxury, according to her mother, and it was always better to act, however unsure you might be. She would eat a big breakfast, she was starving, and find the mural painters at the Murphy Centre. She couldn’t think of Frank or the pine martens or anything else until she was completely sober.

  FRANK

  IT WAS ALMOST midnight when Carol showed up at the hotdog stand. She was wearing sweatpants and a cardigan and a black baseball cap; a pink curler hung behind each ear. Her fists were jammed into the pockets of her cardigan. He could see her knuckles pressing against the knit.

  He’d never seen her on George Street before.

  Frank, you’ve got to come home, she said. Frank handed the man in front of him his hot dog.

  There’s water everywhere, Carol said. Frank watched as the man tried to get some bacon bits. He was weaving slightly and wore a look of deep thought. Carol was pulling on Frank’s sleeve.

  Don’t mix up the spoons, sir, Frank said. The man held the plastic spoon from the corn relish in the air; he was blinking in disbelief.

  The different condiments each got their own spoon, Frank said.

  Can’t I have bacon? the man asked.

  The plaster is after cracking off the ceiling, Carol said.

  You can have bacon, just could you use the spoon for the bacon, Frank said.

  There’s an inch of water, Carol said. I’m afraid to turn on a lamp I’ll be electrocuted. It’s coming from your apartment, Frank. Could you have maybe put something down the toilet?

  Go ahead, Frank said. The man was still holding the spoon in the air as if he were paralyzed by it.

  Go ahead what?

  Whatever spoon you want, Frank said.

  A tampon or something, Carol said.

  Is it real bacon? the man asked.

  The girl you had up there the other night, I thought maybe a tampon is the first thing I thought.

  It’s bacon bits, said Frank. The man dug the spoon in deep and the bacon bits danced and hopped all over the spoon and mostly spilled on the sidewalk before he got the spoon to the hot dog. Then he put the hot dog down on the chrome ledge and staggered off without it.

  Frank’s apartment door was open when he got there and he stood in the hallway and listened. Carol stood beside him.

  He turned on the light and saw everything was soaking wet. He pulled the covers off the waterbed and saw it had been slashed from the headboard to the footboard. One long gash.

  His mother’s urn was overturned on the wet carpet; the ashes had been dumped onto the floor and walked on. He saw the partial print of the boot treads. Carol stood just behind him and they both stared at the pile of ashes and she was still holding on to the sleeve of his shirt. Then she pushed past him.

  Carol went down on her knees and stood the urn up and scooped up the ashes with both her hands. The ashes were clumping and smelled strongly like wet ashes. They smelled like what they were. Carol dragged her hands over the wet carpet until she had gathered most of the ashes and then she saw the lid of the urn that had rolled on its rim into the corner of the closet. She crossed the floor still on her knees and picked up the lid and crawled back over to the urn and put the lid on. Then she got up, which caused her to groan because of her back, and she washed her hands at the sink.

  She used a squirt of the dishwashing liquid and then she dried her hands with a dishtowel. He had wanted to take the ashes to Signal Hill but he didn’t want to give them up, so he had put it off.

  Gradually the idea had occurred to him that he might keep the ashes. The idea made him afraid he was too much alone. It seemed to him the thinking of someone who was out of step.

  He didn’t imagine anything of his mother’s spirit remained in the ashes, he recognized them for exactly what they were — what was left of his mother’s body after it had been burned in the crematorium.

  He understood, or thought he understood, the modern-day ritual of handing the ashes on to a grieving relative so that they may be scattered. He had imagined the sort of weather and the location along the trail where he could scatter the ashes.

  The urn had cost $700. He doubted his mother had spent that much money on a luxury item ever in her life. The urn was solid brass and understated in design. For whatever reason he felt the urn was company.

  Now the ashes were soaking wet and it was a travesty. He could imagine Valentin getting the door open and destroying the waterbed without compunction. The waterbed he saw, now that it had been slashed, was nothing more than a vanity.

  But there was something so remote and alien about desecrating a grave that Frank felt weary beyond measure. He was also aware of the bald simplicity of the act.

  If Valentin wanted money Frank would give him money. He would give him whatever it took because he understood, plainly, Valentin was stronger than he was. He sank to his knees and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes until he saw flecks of light. First, he would see if money was enough. If not, then he would give him the hot-dog stand.

  COLLEEN

  COLLEEN HAD NOW attended the first meeting of juvenile delinquent mural painters who gathered at the Murphy Centre and the other delinquents were disgusting. They slouched, stank of body odour, and cigarettes, and they all wore velour pants from Zellers that hung down to reveal butt crack. They had chips and Pepsi for breakfast; their fathers were pimps and their mothers sniffed glue. They had the
look, each of them, of low-intelligence, which was the nicest way she could think to put it.

  Colleen felt very uncomfortable about spending August on a scaffold negotiating the class differences and flares of temper and social injustice that had created the divide between her and them, which was huge. They were assholes and she wasn’t.

  A huge divide, she figured.

  She recognized a girl from Grade 8. Kelly Fitzgerald, known at that time as Fitzy, who had once attacked Colleen behind the school with her gang of stringy-haired, raw-looking girls from Chalker Place.

  The girls taunted her and threw a few rocks and she had run but they were on top of her and had knocked the wind out of her. There were about ten of them and they held her arms and legs, though she writhed in the dirt below them and wheezed, desperate to get her breath back.

  Fitzy had a stick with a used condom on the end of it. She held the stick over Colleen’s head and told her to suck it or they’d beat the living shit out of her.

  She lowered the condom an inch at a time, and the girls held tightly, grunting with the effort, murmuring consoling noises, as if they were administering medicine.

  They asked her what she was going to do about it, and if she thought she was so hot now, and they said they’d heard she’d been doing the same thing Friday night with lots of guys and they’d heard she was good at it, and they promised it wasn’t going to hurt a bit if she just did what she was told.

  Fitzy had one of her knees pressed into Colleen’s forehead and she had Colleen’s jaw wrenched open with one hand and was leaning over her upside down and her face was red with exertion and her eyes sparkled. She was lowering the condom down toward Colleen’s mouth with little jerks and Colleen saw there was a milky white glob of sperm in the nub at the bottom of it.

  Colleen saw that Fitzy’s mouth was open too, unconsciously mimicking Colleen’s, the way a mother opens her mouth when spoon-feeding a baby.