Falling Read Online Free PDF Page B

this, finally, clearly, but Ingrid knew it was coming. She heard herself gasping. She found herself saying, in a voice she knew but didn’t know, that she’d be there as soon as she could.
    And then she slumped to the floor with the phone in her hand.
    One minute she’d been staring out at that summery street, with a purple Hula Hoop on someone’s lawn, purple on green. And then –
    It was as though someone had thrown an axe, thrown it right into her chest, breaking the bones. She cried out. She had the feeling that the horrible sound wasn’t coming from her mouth, and she wished it would stop.
    Oh,
God
. Oh, God, oh, God.
    She got up and staggered around the living room, bumping into chairs, crashing into things. Who was spinning her around and around? She threw down the phone, breakingsomething. She lurched around the room with her arms wrapped around herself. Was she up? Down? She didn’t know. At one point she was on her knees, the full weight of the axe deep in her chest. There was no pulling it out.
    She tried to think clearly. She put one hand on the couch to steady herself.
    It could not have happened. It simply could not have happened. Lisa could not have drowned.
    She returned to herself, floating down into her body. Here she was at the threshold of the pantry in the house where she’d grown up. When Roger came into the kitchen, she was standing with her back to him, twisting her hands together.
    I don’t know where Damian’s got to, she said.
    You asked him to take the books to the second-hand store at the mall.
    Oh yes, I did. Let’s go somewhere, she suggested. Let’s go for a walk.
    What about sitting on the lawn chairs? said Roger reasonably. Under the tree. It’s hot – we could have a gin and tonic, if you like.
    I’d like to go for a walk.
    Well, we could. It’s about thirty degrees out there.
    They went down the porch steps at the front, along the flagstone path, and crossed the road to the sidewalk that ran next to the Niagara Gorge. It was laboriously slow. He took her arm near the elbow, and when they walked, close together, he was half a step behind her.
    I have my cane, he said. If you get tired of this.
    No, she said, no.
    Up until a few years ago I had some peripheral vision, he said, as if she’d asked a question. But I couldn’t see anything in the centre except a tight circle of sparkling colours. Now the circle has grown so much it fills the whole field of vision. They told me it would happen.
    What if you fall?
    I don’t know. If I fall, I fall.
    Ingrid thought of her mother coming home to find their father. Their father, who’d fallen on the kitchen floor. He’d fallen headlong as he came in from gardening. Her mother had come home to find him there, his shoes sticking out the back door. She’d told Ingrid that she stood by the hedge that ran along the driveway, letting the bags drop from her arms when she saw those shoes. She didn’t remember getting from the driveway to the kitchen. And there was the cat stepping delicately over his arm: the cat, mewing for all it was worth. She forgot about the groceries, so things were all over the driveway when the ambulance came. The box of butterscotch ice cream had come open, and there was a little puddle of melted ice cream, cans of mandarin oranges and tuna had gone rolling under the car, and a crow was pecking at the roast. It was pecking at the roast, and she kept saying how much it upset her to see a crow pecking at a good three-pound sirloin tip roast. Just like a vulture.
    You must think of them, Ingrid said.
    Who?
    Mum and Dad – living in that house, I mean. You must miss them more than I do.
    Sometimes, Roger said, but they’re a long way off. It’s as if they both got into a little boat and started rowing away. I can hardly see them now.
    Ingrid thought of Lisa in a rowboat. But she didn’t want to think of her in a rowboat.
    They go away from us, he said gently. It’s what they do.
    But they didn’t go