Consent by Annabel Lyon

Author:Annabel Lyon [Lyon, Annabel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2020-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

CHAPTER SIX

August 2017

High above the cathedral doors, Sara sees or thinks she sees (she is drunk), a gargoyle: hands working between withered frog-legs, wings spread, head thrown back. She imagines some red velvet hell, some masturbatorium where he suffers with his kind. She is in Paris, finally, again, and Mattie has been dead for a year. Sweet Mattie is with the worms, and Sara would like a drink please. Europeans drink; it’s elegant. It’s not a problem.

* * *

—

The joke being that she has been to Paris only once before, with her mother and sister; drunk Stella Artois in the Galeries Lafayette, the drinks counter overlooking the perfume floor, while her mother bought Mattie clothes, and everyone so nice. She had been drinking even then, she realizes, ten years ago. Agnès b., her mother’s taste: wool, cashmere. Navy, charcoal, black. Everyone so kind. And why not? What did it cost anyone to be kind? Mattie was hardly a unicorn. Retarded girls wore clothes in Paris too. She had got her mother drunk on that trip, and Mattie tipsy. She was going to hell. This was on their last night, at a restaurant around the corner from their rental flat. You are not driving, their waiter kept saying. No, we’re not driving. The fish was exquisite, the beef bloody, heavenly. Her tongue came. Mattie giggled. Maybe her tongue came too.

An alcoholic, Sara. Everyone knew, no one knew. A red-wine drunk, Sara, and the occasional cognac. That was all. The French, she would say to Mattie, trying to explain, and Mattie would smile expectantly. Certainly, the French. Sara was a drunk.

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