After Alice
AFTER ALICE
a novel
KAREN HOFMANN
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EST
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Copyright © Karen Hofmann 2014
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication â reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system â without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law. In the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying of the material, a licence must be obtained from Access Copyright before proceeding.
After Alice
is available as an ebook: 978-1-927063-47-7
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Hofmann, Karen Marie, 1961â, author
After Alice / Karen Hofmann.
(Nunatak first fiction series : 37) Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN
978-1-927063-46-0 (pbk.). â
ISBN
978-1-927063-47-7 (epub). â
ISBN
978-1-927063-55-2 (mobi)
I. Title. II. Series: Nunatak first fiction 37
PS
8615.O365
A
37 2014Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
C
813'.6Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
C
2013-906950-
X
                                                                  Â
C
2013-906951-8
Editor for the Board: Anne Nothof
Cover and Interior Design: Natalie Olsen, Kisscut Design
Author Photo: Julia Tomkins
First Edition: April 2014
NeWest Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Edmonton Arts Council for support of our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.
NeWest Press
#201, 8540 â 109 Street
Edmonton, Alberta
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www.newestpress.com
No bison were harmed in the making of this book.
Printed and bound in Canada
This book is for my maternal grandparents,
Ikey and Lillian Hillaby.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The 5:40 from Calgary,
descending to the runway a kilometre to the south, rattles her roof and screams, all throat and flash, over the little frozen lake. Explosions of scarlet and green light track down the lake, pulse through the ice. The leafless aspens flare silver, copper, and are reabsorbed into darkness. The jet's scream drops an octave, glissando. A spectacle of dragons, a kind of Valkyrie ride.
It's her signal to close her laptop, abandon her work for the day.
She stretches and blinks, tumbles from the tight interlocking puzzle of her mental work, of her reading and writing, into the jet's destruction of silence, into the late afternoon of her empty house, as some component might peel from a shuttle and spin out into the void.
She had not thought, signing the papers for the house purchase, about the runway. Had not thought â entranced by the house, which in August had been full of light and space; entranced by the green and breeziness of the valley, a long slip of light, air, shade, and Montreal sultry and crowded; entranced by the real estate agent's phrases: deer, ducks, lake path â she had not thought. She had seen only the lake, sparkling; the bobbing waterfowl.
She had forgotten how, even as a child, she had thought this area a bleak pinch of the landscape, a dark and dismal passage. The hills in this stretch of the valley low, blocky, not pleasing. A sort of rocky knob, just to the south and west of the lake, scattered now with dead and dying pines, blocking the light, the sun setting behind it by early afternoon. The least desirable land in the whole of the valley.
Reserve land, of course: what was given back to the original inhabitants as least valuable. Rocky, boggy land; the little lake, shallow and muddy, an afterthought in a valley famous for its lakes. Given back in treaties, this unprepossessing twist of the valley. A shameful illiberality. And now she has bought a house here, a bargain because on leased land.
Normally at this time, she begins to prepare her evening meal, to dress a little salad, slice cheese, heat up a prepared dinner. But tonight she is going out. The invitation is for seven. She had forgotten, returning to the valley, how early people in this western part of the country dine. It's inconvenient, at the least. Not really time to eat before, though she doesn't remember a mention of dinner in the invitation. She is not confident that there will be dinner. And yet, there is scarcely time to eat now, before the children collect her. She must change her clothes, find the bottle of wine she has bought to take along as a gift.
She has not wanted to go out, anyway. She had not wanted to go to this party. It's our family, her niece Cynthia had argued. She had pointed out to Cynthia, reasonably, she thought, that family relationships were arbitrary, that a few congenial friends always made better company. But Cynthia had insisted, showing some temper, retreating into an assumed or real inability to understand her. And the boy had seemed to want to go, to want her to accompany them. So now she must go: she will hope that there is something to eat. No time to eat now: no time to eat properly.
She puts on her black wool trousers and a black turtleneck pullover, combs her hair. Adds her good gold chain with its locket, then takes it off. Too showy; too festive.
The wine is on the built-in rack in her kitchen. A good local red. Is that appropriate? She hopes so. She has not yet developed a sense of the local opinions about the valley vintners. Should she have bought Italian? Chilean, perhaps? But this wine proclaims itself award-winning, and cost thirty dollars. It must be an acceptable gift.
Unless, of course, Stephen and Debbie are not wine-drinkers. But she'd have heard that, wouldn't she, from Cynthia?
She finds a long, narrow paper bag for the wine â one bought for the purpose, dark purple, with a cord handle. It had been difficult to find, in the heaps of holiday-themed packaging. She had not wanted to bring her wine in a bag decorated with either snowmen or gilt stars.
The Feast of the Epiphany. That's what today is, January 6th. Is the party a religious celebration? She recalls now that Debbie's family name was Ukrainian. Is it a Ukrainian Christmas party that she is going to? Have Stephen and Debbie reverted to some tradition?
Surely Cynthia would have said. But now she is doubly uneasy. Why had she agreed to go along? And why had she not insisted on driving herself? She does not like waiting for rides. People are rarely punctual.
At 6:45, she is waiting in her basement-entry vestibule, coat and boots on, wine bottle in its purple bag dangling from her gloved hand.
On either side
of the highway, the orchards, the rows of trees gnarled and fingery in the vapour lights, casting blue shadows. For a few days there was hoarfrost, and the trees were transformed, ethereal. Now they are merely skeletal, bereft of their leaves and fruit. The trees have cauterized black sockets around themselves in the patchy snow. Skeleton trees, ghost trees. Familiar, and yet not, seen now after so many years away. Familiar in the way of something lost and then rediscovered, something whose appearance no longer matches the image in the memory.
In a clearing along the highway, where the trees have been cut and not yet replanted, figures are silhouetted against bonfire flames. An atavistic scene: the hair rises, slightly, on the back of her neck. But it's only pruning time, and the prunings, the small lopped-off limbs, being burned. She knows that: while the trees are dormant, the last year's growth is trimmed to channel the tree's sap more efficiently into the fruit, to make picking fruit more efficient.
Now woodsmoke in the air, insinuating itself through the car's heating system. Apple smoke. Her smell-memory conjures Mr. Tanaka climbing down from the tractor, his big iron fork lifting the tangles of twigs, of suckers, onto the trailer. Herself and her sister Alice and the other children, made to pick up the prunings. Her fingers numbing inside the ice-stiffened mittens, her nostrils raw under their mucous crusts as she tramped and scrambled and bent in the snow. (Was it deeper then?) The crackle of green twigs, burning; the scented smoke. The apricot tinge of the sky on days when the sun barely broke over the horizon. The gloss on the white tread marks left by the tractor wheels; the blue light in boot prints left in deep snow.
It's a short trip, much shorter than she remembers. They are already nearing the little village, now. “Turn left at the lights,” Cynthia, who has been to Stephen's before, directs from between the seats. Justin is driving, gracefully, alert but relaxed. Too relaxed? He has only his N license, and the highway is slick in patches, with black ice twinkling back the orange glow of the streetlights. After a New Year's chinook, a thawing and dispersal of snow, there has been a sudden freeze. The highway is likely unsafe.
