After Alice Read Online Free PDF Page A

know.”
    Justin laughs. “This old stuff? I thought it was your music.”
    How strange, that a whole generation could lie between them.
    â€œNo good rock after 1973, right?” Justin asks.
    Standing there in his pullover and tie, his short shining hair, he seems suddenly a little smug. Is there something a little precious about him?
    But no. He’s just young.
    â€œMaybe not after 1969,” she says.
    She had hoped they’d leave early, but she can see that Cynthia is determined to see the party to its end. They linger and linger while the other guests are disgorged from the house. She wanders into the kitchen, where Justin is surreptitiously reading the spines of cookbooks on a shelf. There don’t seem to be many books in the house. His cousins have also retreated to the kitchen; Alex is making himself a sandwich out of the buffet skewers, while his sister picks the strawberries out of the half-full punch bowl.
    She recalls other parties she has attended where the hosts’ grown children and their friends were a lively presence. Why has neither Alex nor the girl invited any of their own friends? They seem so uncomfortable, displaced.
    Stephen comes into the kitchen, rubbing his hands together like a cartoon maître d’. “Are you kids hungry? Can I make you something else?”
    No, they both say.
    Stephen, she thinks, looks sad. Or perhaps just tired, disappointed. But when Stephen leaves the room, Alex looks directly at her. “Dad says you still have some land, an orchard, here in Marshall’s Landing,” Alex says.
    She nods.
    â€œI’d like to see it,” Alex says. His eyes are shining; his teeth flash white under his sandy beard. Of whom does he remind her? “I’ve asked Dad, but he isn’t interested. Can you tell me which orchard it is? I’ve been all along the road, but I can’t figure it out.”
    â€œYou’re interested in orcharding?” Sidonie asks. His enthusiasm is a pleasant change from the earlier diffidence.
    â€œMy great-grandparents were orchardists,” he says. “Both sets, on Dad’s side.”
    Well. That’s true, in a way. But she wouldn’t have put the Kleinholz’s smallholding in the same category as her father’s estate.
    â€œAnd my great-grandparents on my mother’s side were orchardists, in the Ukraine,” Alex adds.
    She had not known that, and it’s interesting, in a way, to put Debbie’s family into historical context.
    â€œIt’s on the left, around the first bend, after you crest the hill,” she says.
    â€œDo you know the street number?”
    She doesn’t. There had not been street numbers in her time. She has not visited the orchard since her return.
    Justin says, “I didn’t know you still owned land here. And I can’t believe you haven’t been out to see it in twenty years.”
    She doesn’t want to see it. It is being taken care of. She doesn’t need to go back.
    â€œWhat do you do with it?” Alex asks, speaking at the same time as Justin. (Or has he said, “What are you doing with it?” which would have meant something different, less innocent?)
    She decides to answer him as if it has been the first question.
    â€œThe orchard is leased out. The house itself is empty. It’s not habitable.”
    â€œYou’re an absentee landlord, Auntie Sid,” Justin says, smirking.
    Now that is annoying. She is getting so tired of the new versions of the local history that she has been hearing since she moved back from Montreal. It sounds almost colonial: British investors, a stratified society, indigenous and Asian labourers working for pennies a day. It wasn’t quite like that.
    And the land, her land — it’s almost worthless. There’s not enough left to be called an estate, even, now. She’s just holding onto it.
    Holding onto it in hopes that one day it will be worth selling,