After Alice (19 page)

Only Alex seems ill at ease; he fumes, uncharacteristically, at the smell of barbecuing, the whine of lawnmowers, the shouts of children from the neighbouring houses (which are always so close, Sidonie thinks, in the newer subdivisions). During coffee and dessert, he clears his throat and leans forward.

“I stopped by the old place the other day, Auntie Sid. Your neighbour said he's giving up the lease. I wondered what you were — you know, planning to do.”

They are all quiet. Sidonie's foot, her mended foot, begins to throb.

“I've put ads out for a new lessee,” she says. “Walter and his son will work the orchard until I find someone suitable.”

In fact, the responses haven't been promising so far. One prospective tenant had wanted to rip out all of the mature trees, plant in slender spindle. She considers that factory farming: trees planted only a few feet from each other, pruned, essentially, to one vertical limb, quickly harvestable. She has heard that the method yields a high return, but it is not orcharding. Other prospective tenants have been discouraged by the information that the house is not habitable.

“Your neighbour said that,” Alex says. “What I mean is, well, in the long term.”

Debbie says, “Alex!”

“After I die, you mean,” Sidonie says.

“Well,” Alex says. “Yes. Or before, you know. I mean, why are you keeping the place? Your neighbour must not pay a lot for the lease, or it wouldn't be worth it to run.”

Here it is. She has not foreseen this, not worked out the details in her building of sky castles.

She swallows. “It's going to Justin, when he's older. As I have no children of my own, and as I raised Cynthia.” There. Logical enough.

Justin's jaw drops, literally.

“Fair enough,” Steve says. “I know that we got our mother's share already, that half the orchard has been sold off over the years, so we've had our share.”

It is true. Alice had been given land when she married, and Sidonie had sold more after Alice had died, put the money in a trust fund for Alice's sons to live on. But it's suddenly not enough; it's suddenly preposterously unfair.

Justin says, “I don't believe this.” He does not sound happy.

“It's not worth all that much,” Sidonie says. “The land is in the ALR, you know. It can't be subdivided and developed. It's not such a big thing.”

“And if I don't want to run an orchard?” Justin asks. Demands.

Cynthia says, “It's a decision you can make when you're older. You ought to appreciate this, Justin. It's very generous of Auntie Sid.”

But she can see that it is at once too generous, and too narrow. What has she done?

They're all talking at once, voices rising.

Justin waves his arm in the air like a fourth-grader. “Can I speak? Can I speak?”

“
May I
,” Cynthia says, but the others pause, look at Justin.

“I just want to say that we should all hear Alex out on this before we jump to conclusions,” Justin says.

Alex speaks. “I know you all won't go for this. It's just an idea, okay? But I've been thinking about it for a long time, and reading books on orcharding, and taking courses. Now that Auntie Sid's place is available, it seems like the time to start. I think it might work, with a few bugs ironed out. I'd like to take on the lease.”

It's impossible, of course. But brave boy, brave boy, son of Stephen and Debbie, grandson of Alice and Buck, great-grandson of Peter and Frances. Alex wants to turn Beauvoir into an organic orchard and market. He wants to live in the house, to renovate it, eventually. He thinks he can manage it on his own. He has thought it out: he wants three years to start turning a profit; then he'll start paying Sidonie.

“I don't think so,” Steve says. “You have no idea how hard orchard work is. You've never done it. I have. It kills you. And for what, if your cousin will inherit the lot.”

“I thought,” Alex says, “that it belonged to all of us.”

There's the insoluble problem, of course.

Justin says, “I don't want it! I'll share it with you and Tasha!”

Kevin clears his throat. They all look at him. He raises his eyebrows. Shrugs.

“Can I say something?” Tasha speaks now, putting up her hand like Justin. They are still children, Sidonie thinks. “I'd just like to say that I think Justin and Alex and I should have a say in this because it is our future, as Auntie Cynthia points out. You're all older, and you've made your choices. But this really affects us.”

“Are you planning to work on the farm with Alex?” Kevin asks.

“Yes,” Tasha says. “In the summers, at least. It's got to be better than waitressing in a crummy sports bar or selling cheap clothes in the mall.”

“You won't always be a student,” Debbie says. “You'll have a career in a few years. What then?”

Steve says, “You kids don't know how hard, I mean how really hard, farm work is. It's backbreaking and the sun and frost kill you. Kevin should know: he and I worked in the orchards when we were young.”

“I liked it,” Kevin says.

“Well, I didn't. I hated every minute. Prune, thin, spray, pick, all year round. An endless round of boredom. And Dad screaming at us every minute to hustle our butts.”

“It doesn't have to be like that,” Kevin says.

But Steve is wound up, and must continue. “Every second it was ‘get up that tree and do something.' You try pruning in minus-thirty weather, in the wind. Freeze your fingers off, and all your joints stiff with cold. At fourteen years old, I fell out of a tree because I was too cold to grip the ladder. Fourteen years old! Fell out of a goddamn tree and broke my goddamn arm. And the old man comes and kicks me in the ass. ‘Get up that ladder and finish your tree.'”

“It wouldn't be like that,” Alex says. “I'm nothing like my grandpa Buck.”

Tasha says, “You haven't said anything, Auntie Sid. What do you think?”

What does she think? She doesn't know. She's acutely aware, as she hasn't been in years, of her limitations, her inability to absorb a rush of new information and respond to it at the same time. She is acutely aware of what has been said: that it's a beautiful, grand, brave, impossible idea. That nothing can come of it, of course. That it can't work. But her mind is paralyzed as far as processing any of this.

There is the wood lot: a few acres of steep gully and dead pine and scrub. That would be easy, she thinks, to take out of the
ALR
. It's what's been done all over the valley, she sees: the housing developments are springing up on the non-arable land, the steep, rocky brush. View lots: a euphemism for houses with steep driveways and tiny, gabion-wall yards and a fortune in engineered foundations. The wood lot could be subdivided. The lots would likely sell for enough to work out some arrangement. To buy out the others.

But they have had their share.

And then there is Paul: Alice's youngest son, brother of Stephen and Kevin and Cynthia. Paul, who is rarely spoken of, who has been missing, or out of contact, for perhaps six or seven years. Last heard of on Hastings Street in Vancouver's Lower Eastside.

He has not been abandoned so much as abandoned them: Sidonie knows that all of the others have made attempts to find him, help him, bring him back. He evades them. It is a sad story. They did not leave him alone out of uncaring, but because there seemed little else to do. They do not speak of him, as they do not speak of their parents, of their murdered mother, of their dead deranged father.

When he had first gone to the streets in the early nineties, Sidonie, in Vancouver for a conference, had made a point of tracking him down — or nearly tracking him down. She had talked to a social worker, had managed to talk to Paul on the phone, had arranged a meeting. But he had not shown up. She had waited in the coffee shop for two hours, had gone back the next day at the same time. But he had not showed. Had he looked in through the windows, she wondered, and not liked the looks of her? She could not lose that thought, though it was irrelevant, a distraction.

Before flying back to Montreal, after that trip (eleven or twelve years ago) she had set up a fund for Paul: monthly installments for the rent on a small apartment, grocery money. Had given the social worker the means of letting Paul access the funds, only (as the social worker had suggested) a little at time. Had asked him to keep her updated. She'd made sure that way, through a succession of caseworkers, that Paul was still alive — though whenever one of his siblings had tried to find him at the apartment, he disappeared. But two or three years ago the current case worker had reported that Paul had not shown up to collect his funds, had not been seen at the apartment, though someone else was living there. And they had not heard of him since, though she had continued to rent the apartment for a year in the hope that the stream of occupants it had were sub-letting, were compensating Paul in some way.

She had let Paul's apartment go and kept a trust fund for him. But if she sells the wood lot, divides things up, she will have to include a portion for him. Wherever he is, he might need a home again some day.

No, the wood lot must not be sold now. She must keep it intact, a resource. Down the road, the cash might be needed to rebuild a house, develop or preserve the orchards. She cannot sell.

Steve says, “I'm nearly fifty. Once you're fifty, you don't get your life back. But I'd like to see Alex set up. If there was some capital, I might contribute. Take another mortgage out on my house. I have lots of equity.”

“And what about Tasha?” Debbie asks, with some fierceness.

“I don't know how you're going to buy me and Auntie Sid and Paul out as well,” Cynthia says. “Think about the amount we're looking at here, Steve. Millions. It'll be years before Alex turns a profit, and we all know that small-time farming doesn't exactly pay.”

“Oh my god, Ma, you're such a fuckin' capitalist!” Justin says.

Cynthia says, “It's about your future, Justin. You want to do things. You want to go to university and you want to travel, and some day you're going to want a house and a studio. This is how we're going to pay for them.”

“I don't need all of that shit paid for,” Justin says. “I'm willing to work my way. I want Alex to be able to set up his farm.” (When has Justin become so coarse in his speech? But he is furious with all of them, acting out some unexpected anger; even she can see that.)

She looks over at Alex. The setting sun back-lights his profile: he does have some of her father's features. His chin, receding a little, shaped finely as by a carver's chisel, under that pugnacious growth of hair.

He's a smart boy; he knows that he has lost. Good for him for trying, though.

She says, “There wouldn't be enough to put into Alex's idea, shared each way. And Alex is too young, too inexperienced, to take the orchard on. It's not practical. I want the orchard to run, not to be sold and broken up.”

There it is. It's not about Justin. It is Beauvoir that she cares about. That is suddenly transparent.

Justin gets up abruptly, shoving his chair so that it clatters against the others.

“You're all a lot of fuckin' hypocrites,” he says. “You don't see anything. You don't see
who you are
.” He slams through the house; they all — except Cynthia — hear Cynthia's car start, pull out of the driveway. As the car rounds the cul-de-sac, throwing up dust, Cynthia looks up.

“Was that my
car
?”

And, astonishingly, everyone laughs.

Kevin says, “I'm forty-five years old, and I' m still cooking for a franchise, and I don't own my own home. And you may not know this, but I'm also supporting a couple of kids. Frankly, if I don't get a bit of cash, I'm going to be pretty well destitute in ten or fifteen years.”

Cynthia says, “I do have a pension plan, and I own my own house, or part of it, such as it is. But I'd like to be able to pay for Justin's schooling, help him buy a first house when he's older.”

She could sell Beauvoir. The orchard would not bring in a huge amount, but with the wood lot subdivided, there would be enough for all of them. She could make all of their lives a little more secure. She is tempted. But it is not required of her; she has taken care of Alice's children. And Alice had received her share.

BABYLON

In the fall,
she books flights and hotels, restaurants and symphony tickets over the internet, consults with Clara and Anita by telephone and email. She is accomplishing things, moving forward. She is planning her escape. She prepares for a long absence: she stops her mail, throws out perishable groceries. She does not give a key to her neighbour. She washes her windows, which have been blasted, it seems, with dust. She stretches an old sock over a broom and winkles cobwebs from the high corners of her vaulted ceilings, from the upper cornices of window frames, from the hidden recesses above her pink kitchen cabinets.