Fall from Grace

by L. R. Wright

  Diana was taking notes, absorbed in the material Cassandra had helped her find. Cassandra thought she looked very young, even though she’d graduated from university several months earlier.

  They didn’t know each other well, yet. Cassandra had found Diana to be intelligent; opinionated; impatient. She had a sense of humor. And a healthy curiosity about the world.

  And what, I wonder, thought Cassandra, gazing at Karl Alberg’s younger daughter, does Diana think of me?

  After a while Diana closed the books, piled the magazines and pamphlets on top of them, picked them up, and went back into the stacks.

  Cassandra followed her. “You don’t have to do that,” she said. “Here, give them to me, I’ll put them away.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Diana politely. “You’ve been a great help.”

  Cassandra took the material from her. “Are you doing research for an article?”

  “Sort of,” said Diana. She glanced quickly at Cassandra. “Have you any opinion,” she said, “about animal rights?”

  Cassandra looked thoughtfully at the three Ficus benjamina, each seven or eight feet tall, that stood near the floor-to-ceiling windows. “I believe that they have some,” she said carefully.

  “Do you wear fur?” said Diana.

  Cassandra shook her head. “I eat meat, though,” she admitted.

  “Yeah,” said Diana.

  Cassandra thought for a while. “I wear leather, too, I’m afraid.”

  “Yeah,” said Diana. “How depressing. So do I.”

  Cassandra thought some more. “I only buy cosmetics from The Body Shop,” she said. “You know. No experiments on animals.”

  “That’s good,” said Diana, nodding. “Me, too.” She looked at Cassandra and said, “I think people should take action, when they believe in something.”

  “I think so, too.”

  Diana glanced toward the door. “Well, I’d better go. Thanks again,” she said, turning away.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Diana hesitated, then faced her again. “You and my dad,” she said.

  Cassandra’s heartbeat became faster, lighter. She lifted her chin slightly, and straightened her shoulders.

  “What—uh—,” said Diana, flushing. She stopped and lifted her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “My mom’s getting married.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you think Dad will go to the wedding?”

  “Do you want him to go?”

  “I just want—I wish it were possible for everybody to be friends.”

  Cassandra nodded. “That would be good, wouldn’t it,” she said gently.

  Chapter 11

  “JESUS CHRIST.” There was more weariness than anger in his voice this time.

  “I just want to talk to you,” Steven said quickly. “That’s all.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want to talk to you. What are you, asshole, some kind of retard? Don’t you understand English, or what?”

  “It’s not so much to ask, is it?”

  “It’s a helluva lot to ask, you creep. I never want to lay eyes on you again.”

  “Look,” Steven pleaded. “Just once. Just for ten minutes. Maybe only five. Let me say my piece, and give you this—this package I’ve got for you, and then I’ll never bother you again. I promise.”

  Bobby didn’t hang up. Finally, “Shit,” he said.

  “Okay?”

  “Damn you.”

  “Okay?”

  “You’ll have to come to where I’ll be.”

  Steven rested his forehead against the wall and closed his eyes. His relief was so great he thought he might weep. “Anywhere,” he said. “I’ll go anywhere.”

  Chapter 12

  WARREN GOT HOME from work at the usual time on Friday but he didn’t go to work on the siding, he changed his clothes and then he just sat in a chair in the living room for two solid hours and worried, and fretted, and agonized. By the time he heard Wanda coming up the steps he was damn near frantic. He knew it would probably be a good idea to pour her a ginger ale and let her sit down first, but he just couldn’t wait.

  He rushed to the door. “Wanda,” he said, blurting it out, “I saw you today.”

  “Oh?” she said, putting down her purse on the little table in the hall.

  “Yeah,” said Warren miserably. “I saw you with Bobby.”

  He didn’t know what would happen now. He was relieved to have it out in the open, but he was terrified, too.

  “At the coffee shop, you mean?” said Wanda, taking off her high-heeled shoes one at a time, putting them side by side in the hall closet.

  “Yeah,” said Warren, who ached all over.

  “Well why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you sit down with us?”

  He’d gone in there with Norman, from work, and Norman had spotted them right away. “Don’t look now,” he’d said out of the side of his mouth to Warren, “but there’s your lady all cozy with her ex.” And it had cut Warren to the quick to hear this, and then to see it.

  “Oh Wanda,” he cried, “don’t lie to me; you’re seeing him, aren’t you—you’re seeing Bobby.”

  There was such astonishment on Wanda’s face that he knew instantly how wrong he’d been. And first he felt relief, a torrential amount of relief, and then he felt so stupid he could have died from it.

  And of course Wanda got mad. She put her hands on her hips and glared up at him. “You are such a jerk, Warren Kettleman. I don’t know how I ever let myself get mixed up with such a total jerk.” She stomped off down the hall, her bare feet banging on the hardwood floor.

  He sat down in the living room again, and waited. Patiently, for once.

  And finally she emerged from the bedroom, wearing a red dress with her hair all soft and curly, looking like some kind of a flower. This was a big relief to Warren. It meant they were still going out for dinner.

  He wished he hadn’t said anything to her. But he knew that if he hadn’t, it would have eaten away at him.

  “You look real good,” he said, in apology, and took hold of her hands. He’d planned to kiss her, but she turned her head away.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’m hungry.” She swished past him and out the door and he followed, locking the door after him, hurrying to catch up with her.

  When they were in the van, driving, Wanda said, “It’s your sister you ought to be keeping an eye on.” She gave her hair a shake. “Not me.”

  Warren damn near drove off the road.

  “I don’t know anything,” Wanda said quickly. “Not for sure.”

  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.

  Chapter 13

  LATE 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 c
amping 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.