Pastoral by Andre Alexis

Author:Andre Alexis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Coach House Books
Published: 2014-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

IV

JULY, AUGUST AND AFTER

Jane had spent Barrow Day alone, for the most part. She’d watched the revellers from inside her parents’ house, ashamed of what she took to be the town’s puerile ways. Barrow Day was an embarrassment and for a number of years now she had taken to spending June 15th at home, usually alone, usually with a book.

This year, she read Breakfast at Tiffany’s for the fourth time and dreamed of New York and London, Paris and Amsterdam. She almost always enjoyed her solitude, but this year it was charged with something. Something was on its way. Something or someone would come into her life to save her from the louts and boors of Barrow. She could feel it. She sat in the living room, in a chair that had been made by her great-grandfather, the floor lamp with its floral shade beside her, the house smelling of Barrow bread, the noise of the world dimmed by closed doors and shut windows. She left the curtains open, however, and from time to time she could see groups of revellers as they passed.

Robbie had refused to walk naked into Atkinson’s.

After the fire-hall dinner and dance, Jane’s parents returned. They were childishly happy about something. Mrs. Keynes, one of their neighbours, had inhaled an olive pit and had needed the Heimlich to clear her windpipe. That wasn’t the amusing part. What was amusing was the sight of Mr. Chester, a man thin as a whippet and half Dora Keynes’s size, trying desperately to squeeze Dora’s ‘thorax’ (her mother’s word). The definition of futility. Mrs. Keynes had flung him around from side to side in her struggles for breath, until Jane’s father snuck up behind her and, with poor Mr. Chester between them, squeezed the olive out of the exhausted woman.

– Shucks, it was nothing, said her father, smirking.

– It was too, said her mother. And it’s too bad you weren’t there, Jane. You should come out to Petersen’s tonight. It wouldn’t hurt you to be sociable and maybe meet someone other than Robbie Myers.

– Mom, my private life’s none of your business, said Jane.

– It’s my business when everybody in town is talking about my daughter like she’s a scarlet woman.

– No, said Jane. It’s not your business. And who cares what other people are saying?

– Well, just remember, said her father, don’t go kissin’ by the garden gate. ’Cause love is blind but the neighbours ain’t.

Exasperated by her giggling parents, Jane got up and, with a show of annoyance, flounced from the room. Her mother’s words stayed with her, though.

– It wouldn’t hurt you to be sociable and maybe meet someone other than Robbie Myers.

The words made her want to see Robbie. So, shortly after her parents left for the gravel pit, Jane took a flashlight and went out to Petersen’s on her own.

The sky was clear. There were a trillion stars and it was warm enough that her sweater was too much. She took it off, tied it around her waist and then found she was cold.

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