After Alice Read Free

flannel shirt, is possibly out of university already. But she has not heard that he has entered a profession.
    Stephen says, “Oh, Alex is taking a break from university.”
    â€œDropped out, you mean,” his sister says spitefully. Apparently she can hear them, in spite of the earplugs.
    â€œWell, now,” Stephen says, carefully, “Alex hasn’t found something he’s interested in yet.”
    â€œExcept sitting in his room all day downloading songs,” the girl says.
    Justin’s eyes widen; an only child, he has not experienced sibling hostility, she thinks. Sibling rivalry. The unconscious urge to destroy the nest-mate.
    Once, she remembers, as a child made to pick up stones in the garden, she had lobbed a fist-sized rock backward, underhand, meaning to hit the clothes-line post, but instead clipping her sister Alice squarely on the chin. She’d stood up straight, then, gaping. Couldn’t have done that again if she’d tried; she’d laughed out loud at the absurdity of it. Then Alice was on her, kneeling on her back, seizing her two braids like reins in one hand and whacking her face up and down into the mud. Alice, five years older than her, and much larger — there was no resisting Alice.
    Alice’d had three stitches, Dr. Knox driving out from town to do the job. A little white scar, ever after, in the von Täler chin-dimple.
    The appalling feeling of the grit in her teeth, of the clay-slime on her lips. Though when she was younger still, she had cheerfully eaten dirt, according to Alice.
    She thinks that Justin feels rather afraid of his older cousin, Alex, who has a beefy body, bushy hair and beard.
    Alex says, “I actually have a temporary job at the city recycling yard.” His voice is oddly high; he coughs and it drops an octave. “I work the chipper. Chip up the Christmas trees and prunings.”
    Again, the guarded eyes, the impression of withholding, of caution. Wary, like his sister.
    Debbie and Steve smile, stiffly. She realizes then that this is one of those social occasions — she has experienced them with her staff — in which the shy parents display the children as currency. Transactional.
    Perhaps not wariness, then, but ambivalence. As if their real lives might be going on elsewhere. As if they’re waiting for something worth their real attention.
    Or perhaps they’re just embarrassed.
    â€œIs it dangerous?” Justin asks, of the chipper, and then flushes, but Alex grins.
    â€œIf you’re stupid, it is,” he says.
    That comment seems to finish the conversation. What is wrong with these children — these not-really-children-anymore? They seem disconnected from something. Dependent, perhaps, and resenting the cage of their dependence.
    At the girl’s age, she had already been in university for a couple of years. By the time she was Alex’s age, she had finished her first degree, was married, working at her doctoral studies. Had settled to the business of life. It makes her anxious, this disconnection. This indirection.
    They move from the library into a roomful of strangers: just the sort of thing she likes to avoid. Stephen and Debbie hover near her a little nervously. Are they afraid of what she will say? She has nothing to say. The conversation is about cooking and house decorating, as it would be (to be fair) at a party given by one of her younger colleagues back in Montreal. Or rather, the conversation is about television shows about cooking and house decorating. The first names of celebrity decorators and builders and chefs are invoked. Someone tells an incident involving a friend who had her house revamped as part of a television series. There is much interest in this anecdote, as if this television personality were an important political or religious figure. (She remembers the Anglican Archbishop visiting Marshall’s Landing in the 50s. The general mood of self-improvement that had