The Geranium Girls by Alison Preston Read Free Book Online

know.”
    “And you said ‘no.’ Why did you say ‘no’?”
    “I don’t know, Dhani. I guess I wanted it to run its natural course.”
    “Hmm.”
    “What do you mean, hmm?”
    “Just hmm.”
    “That sounds like kind of a judgmental hmm to me,” Beryl said.
    “Well, it probably is,” Dhani said, draining his glass. “Come on, let’s walk you home.” He picked up his brownie in its large Styrofoam container.
    Beryl began to wish she hadn’t confided in Dhani about the mushroom girl. She left her pizza at the bar on purpose. It was probably spoiled by now anyway.
    They crossed the foot bridge and the Norwood Bridge and walked all the way down Lyndale Drive to Beryl’s street without saying a word. Dhani threw his brownie into a public waste container on the drive.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, and Beryl didn’t know if he was talking to her or the metal garbage can.
    She wondered when they parted at her door if she would ever see him again outside his capacity as a pharmacist.
    But then he touched her cheek before he turned away and said, “What are you up to tomorrow?”
    “I don’t know,” she said.
    “Do you want to do something with me?”
    “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do.”

Chapter 10
     
    Beryl awoke, stunned that she could be capable of such violence, even in a dream. Why hadn’t she stopped when the girl was beaten into unconsciousness and certain death? Why had she kept on? Her stomach heaved and she sat up.
    Sweat bathed her naked body and she shivered in the light breeze from the open window.
In the dream she sees the options before her, not to start on the girl or to deal with her differently — with words maybe — or silence. Or at least to stop sooner and save herself from having to live with what she is doing. She sees the progression as she connects with that pale smooth face, over and over again, feels in her gut the bloody hell that she’ll never be rid of. She is snuffing out her own life in a sense, with that stubby baseball bat. But she rages on. It is bigger than the part of her that says no.
     
    Only in dreams, thought Beryl. Whose face was that anyhow?
    She put on her summer robe and went out into the warm night. She had the best deck east of the Red River. Smooth with good wide steps all around.
    A siren soared down Main Street and Beryl’s hands shook as she lit her cigarette.
    The siren is not for me.
    She inhaled deeply. The dream probably wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for that business on Lyndale Drive with the man named Menno. And anyway, if she was perfectly honest with herself, she didn’t completely hate the dream.
    More sirens: they’re not for me.

Chapter 11
     
    Fucking geraniums! He wants to avoid them. But they’re always there when he walks down Taché: to the bank, to the barber, the shoemaker, any Christly place he goes. He decides to try a different route, maybe down back lanes, to get where he is going. Then he changes his mind. Why the fuck should he!
    She even has them in hanging pots along the side stairs that lead up to what Boyo suspects is her apartment. At night when he walks by he sees those tiny white lights, like the ones that decorate the trees on Broadway. They wind up the stairs, light up the pots.
    He thinks he can smell the geraniums at night. And it’s always different. Just like the ones he used to work on with Auntie Cunt. Lemony sometimes, sometimes like nutmeg. That’s why he hates eggnog so much. The thought of it makes him gag. They smell like pepper, too, at times. But worst of all is the rose scent; the sickly old-lady smell of roses.
    Some of the geraniums are the colour of blood. His mother’s blood.
    “Your ma bled to death, if you must know,” Aunt Hort said, “birthing you.”
    If you must know, she always said, as though it wasn’t his business. He wished that it wasn’t.
    “If it weren’t for you, she would probably still be alive,” she said and grabbed his wrist and dragged him to the