ALLIGATOR, By Lisa Moore
Excerpt

Beverly was waiting in the food court on the ground floor of Atlantic Place, having watched Colleen get into the elevator near the bank. Before the doors closed Beverly had called out, There’s nothing shameful about being wrong.

They were not speaking very much these days. Beverly had taken the vandalism as a personal affront. Colleen was trying to protect the Newfoundland pine marten, an endangered species.

A whole species wiped off the face of the earth, she had screamed at her mother.

Pine martens, Beverly had said. She could not fathom what Colleen might mean by trying to save them.

They’re rodents, her mother said.

They’re dying out forever, Mother, Colleen said. Somehow Beverly had raised a daughter whose voice could be as shrill as a fire alarm.Was that genetic? Does it skip generations? Beverly had never even seen a picture of a pine marten. There was a whole subgroup of animals — squirrels, badgers, beavers, rats, mostly grey-haired or brown, flicking through peripheral vision if seen at all — in whom Beverly had no interest. Why not albino tigers?

I’m sure we can manage without them, she’d answered. She wondered what David would have thought.

Beverly had met David, Colleen’s stepfather, at a prenatal class. David was with a downtown barmaid whose husband had left her during the pregnancy. The barmaid had asked him to accompany her to the classes — be her birth coach — because she was afraid to do it alone.

She’d served David a martini with a twist during happy hour at the bar he’d been drinking in since he’d turned nineteen. Then she put her fingers over her mouth as if to hold the words back.They’d known each other since high school.

What’s wrong? he’d asked. She told him about the pregnancy, working her wedding ring off her finger as she spoke. She came out from behind the bar and went into the bathroom and he heard the toilet flush and she was out again without the ring. When she asked him to attend the birth he’d blushed deeply.

We’re friends, right? she’d asked. He said he would be honoured.

Beverly was attending the prenatal class alone, having broken up with her lover the weekend before discovering she was pregnant. She could not consider abortion; she had been overtaken, swiftly, with a passion for the idea of a baby. The pregnancy heightened her senses, gave her extra glow, softened her. She became more graceful and deliberate.

She’d told the father, a tepid Catholic lawyer who lived with his mother, over lunch, downtown.

He’d scrunched his napkin into a tight ball and raised his fist and released the napkin. They both watched it unscrunch on the table. The napkin opened like a flower blooming in a timelapse film.

How could you let this happen? he’d hissed. What she’d imagined to be gentleness — his quiet, unassuming demeanour — had been complacency. Tepid, and given to petulance, she decided. She waited for what she knew was coming. She watched the thought light up his face with rude, desperate hope.

Are you sure it’s mine? he’d said. His voice was weak. Hardly a whisper.

She had thought to include him out of a sense of obligation. She was astonished and relieved to discover he was terrified about what she would demand.

David had made jokes throughout the prenatal classes, brought the barmaid tea during the break, waited while she took the first sip, consulted, and then trotted back to the cafeteria to get her more milk or sugar. He misted up while watching the videos of births, and rubbed the barmaid’s belly with vigour when the lights snapped back on, as if he couldn’t wait to get started.

Many of the men kept their eyes riveted to the floor, Beverly said, but David was watching intently, along with all the women. She found herself in the lineup behind him at the Tim Hortons counter one evening. They spoke about the rain and traffic and then Beverly’s eyes flew open from a kick in her belly — a look of undiluted awe spread over her face — and David fell in love for the first time in his life.

Your mother was so damn beautiful, he’d often said to Colleen. Colleen loved him with a loyalty that kept her from asking too many questions about her real father. They had met several times and he seemed elderly and foreign. She thought of it this way: David had chosen her.