Read After Alice for Free Online

chewy, acidic bread, which Sidonie tears into, wolf-like, when they have barely left.
    She is subjected to the indignity of Cynthia poking through her refrigerator and cupboards, scolding, not so much as a potato in here! But this officiousness is amusing, too: it seems only a few years ago that their roles had been reversed. She herself, or more likely Adam, scolding: how will you take care of yourself? Do you think food magically appears in the cupboards?
    Cynthia says, “I’ve signed you up for the local paper to be delivered.”
    No no no. “I don’t need it, thanks. I get The Globe and Mail .”
    But Cynthia has turned her face, pretending not to hear.
    Her neighbour knocks on her front door, the classic casserole dish in her hands. She has avoided this neighbour: the woman in the other half of the duplex, whom she sees often coming down her mirror-steps, carrying one of those flat-faced, owl-eyed, blonde dogs that look at you like autistic children. (Is it her imagination, or does this woman always leave her house just as she does herself? Does she watch from behind those sheer drapes for another human being to appear?)
    â€œBeef and noodle,” the woman says. “I hope you’re not vegetarian?”
    â€œNo,” Sidonie says. “I am not.”
    â€œI didn’t think so,” her neighbour says. “I can smell meat cooking sometimes.”
    The irritation of being watched: she feels herself grimace.
    â€œYour daughter and grandson, I see them come visit,” the woman says.
    â€œMy niece and grandnephew.”
    â€œOh? Right then. It looks like you have someone taking care of you.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWell, that’s good. Your grandnephew, he’s a nice-looking boy. I couldn’t think who he reminded me of. Then it came to me, in the checkout at Safeway. He’s the image of that young actor, what d’you call him, that Leonardo.”
    Sidonie shifts her weight. She will need to put down her crutches to receive the casserole dish, but she will not invite her neighbour over the threshold if she can help it.
    â€œHe’s at the university, is he? What a nice-looking boy he is, and so polite.”
    â€œYes.” The exposure. She wonders perversely: is Justin too polite? Is it a bad sign?
    â€œHere,” her neighbour says. “I’ll just put it in your kitchen for you.” And she kicks off her rubber clogs, moves through the doorway and past Sidonie, jostling the door open a little as she goes with her elbow, bustling down the hallway in her stockinged feet to the kitchen, as if she knows exactly where it is. Of course she does. Her house is a mirror image of this one.
    Then she leaves, pulling the door shut behind her carefully, and Sidonie breathes again. There’s something almost too chipper about her neighbour. Too casual. A prairie accent. She is not used to the informality of the West, now. Familiar, that’s the word. She does not like having a stranger whisk through her house like that. She does not like the thought of someone making her way, on the other side of the walls, around a space that is a mirror-image of her house. She will admit this. It makes her occupancy of her semidetached house seem even more random, unintentional than it already does.
    But the casserole is tasty, laced with sour cream and paprika, juicy with mushrooms.
    The things she has had shipped from Montreal — the contents of her apartment — do not fill up the rooms of her new house, and neither do they seem to belong in it. Her odd bits of furniture, her rugs and pictures, which in her Montreal flat had seemed rich, layered, polyphonous, organic, seem here only unrelated and shabby. Light and openness have disconnected objects from one another, so that the effect has been unpacked, disassembled. Her tables and chairs and rugs are stranded; the house looks like a sparsely-stocked second-hand store. She hasn’t even hung