Open (23 page)
That boyfriend, she says.
Um, that’s never happened to me, Amelia says. Sadie puts her arm around Amelia and gives her a squeeze.
I think what my friend is trying to say is stay away from her husband. He’s a little confused right now, but they have a kid and a really great marriage and you don’t want to inadvertently fuck that up, now, do you?
At four-thirty in the morning everyone forms a circle around the bride and groom on the beer-soaked dance floor. They hold hands and sway violently, some of them fall over and the other side of the circle drags them up from their knees. Then that side, because of the exertion, topples and they must be hauled back on their feet. They rush into the centre of the dance floor, joined hands raised over their heads. The circle rushes in and pulls out. The bright dresses like bits of glass and sparkle in a kaleidoscope that fall to the centre with each twist of the lens and drop away. Blue stage lights splash over them, up the walls, across the ceiling, the floor. The bride and groom hug the guests, making their way around the circle.
Constance holds Eleanor’s head in her hands tightly, she presses her cheek against Eleanor’s cheek, and her face is wet
and hot. She draws back and the red light falls over her, splinters of purple searing from the sequins in her veil, on the bodice of her dress.
I love you, Eleanor, she says, I love you. And I love your husband too. And I love my husband. I love everybody’s husband.
She lets go of Eleanor’s face and falls into the arms of the man next to Eleanor. Ted grabs Eleanor and holds her. He has a beer in each hand and the bottles chink behind her back.
Eleanor tugs Philip’s shirtsleeve.
Come home with me?
Not yet, he yells.
She is lying in bed waiting for him. It’s 7:32 a.m. She lies still. There is a fear rushing around in her body. She remembers her mother calling a few years ago about the weasel. Eleanor can feel that mink fear rippling through her body because she fell in love the first night she slept with Philip and after that she fixed on him.
A body slams against a wall and falls onto the opposite wall of the porch. It’s either Philip or the three Norwegian sailors who rent the attached house. The angry saints with their haloes of white hair and steady brawling.
Philip lurches to the banister, wraps his arms around it as if it were the mast of a capsizing ship.
He looks up at her.
He says, I went to Signal Hill in a Cadillac.
Eleanor is standing at the top of the stairs.
We stopped at the Fountain Spray to buy candy necklaces and we had a giant bottle of wine. I bit the necklaces off all the women’s necks. He burps.
Glenn Marshall’s neck too. Spectacular Sam was there. That guy who dances on broken glass. Do you remember that guy? He does a lounge lizard thing, and the Caribbean drums.
He lunges past her and she follows him to the bedroom.
He says, Spectacular Sam poured cognac over broken beer bottles on the parking lot of Signal Hill. Lots of smashed glass. He lit it, fell into a trance, and danced on it with his bare feet. Then he knelt and scooped the glass up in his hands and splashed his face with it, and drops of blood came up all over his face. You know, there was the sun too, coming up.
Philip struggles for a long moment with the buttons of his shirt, tipping slowly on his heels like a punching clown in a breeze. He sighs and rips the shirt open. Buttons hit the wall above the lamp. He falls onto the bed.
She gets up to turn off the light, but he grabs her arm.
Stay here, he says. Stay here.
Acknowledgements
This book is for Steve.
I am grateful to the following people who read these stories with love in one fist and a hatchet in the other. Thank you all for the sound and cacophonous advice: Ramona Dearing, Steve Crocker, Susan Crocker, Michael Crummey, Jack Eastwood, Mark Ferguson, Michael Jones, Mary Lewis, Nan Love, Beth Ryan, Medina Stacey, Larry Mathews, Lynn Moore, Claire Wilkshire, Michael Winter.
For being as exacting and generous an editor as one could possibly hope for, I am grateful to Martha Sharpe.
Thank you to my big, gorgeous, rowdy, loving family.
Versions of these stories first appeared in the literary journals
Best Canadian Fiction, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, The Journey Prize Anthology, This Magazine, TickleAce
, and the anthologies
Hearts Larry Broke
(Killick) and
Turn of the Story
(Anansi). Thanks to the editors of these publications.
Thank you to the Canada Council and The Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council whose support made this book possible.
About the Author
LISA MOORE
is the acclaimed author of the novels
Alligator
, which was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, winner of the Commonwealth Prize for Canada and the Caribbean, and a national bestseller; and
February
, which was a national bestseller and a
Globe and Mail
Top 100 Book. Her story collection
Open
was also a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a national bestseller, and it won the Canadian Authors Association Jubilee Award. Lisa Moore lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
About the Publisher
House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007 and 2009 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”
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