Grave Concern Read Online Free Page B

incarnation, well enough to hazard conversational topics beyond the weather and the national debt. Kate reflected on the weirdness of this. It’s not as if she hadn’t shared dramatic confidences, bodily secrets, even spittle with these same people when they, all of them, were young.
    For instance, over there by the food table, standing with his daughter — his daughter — and a man Kate didn’t know, was Foxy Raymond, for whom Kate had carried a torch in Grade 2. Even then, Foxy had a gift of cracking jokes in a naturally hoarse voice that was somehow eminently attractive to Kate and to Greta, her best friend at the time. Not that either of them understood the source of the attraction. They just knew they loved Foxy, and they wanted Foxy to love them. One day, Kate and Greta staged an ambush of Foxy, Kate holding him down with a full body press while Greta tore down his pants. Kate still could recall the faintly poopy smell of his bum. But the girls hadn’t known what to do next, and Foxy, lying there in his underpants, far from getting upset, cracked a joke, pushed them off, pulled up his pants, and walked away.
    And there, by the fireplace, with, oh my, Nicholas Enderby , stood lanky Kathleen Buller, holding court in a gorgeous green dress. In contrast to Kate’s slightly-above-average looks, as a kid Kathleen had been downright homely. Big-boned, greasy-headed, pimply as sin. An ugly duckling. But womanhood had turned that around. Had it ever. Whereas Kate had gone the way of the crone, Kathleen had somehow managed an indisputable beauty, even radiance. Her flesh had come to shapely terms with the womanly bones, her hair’s oily straggles exhibited a lustre worthy of Pantene. Miraculously unmarred by the acne, Kathleen’s skin positively glowed.
    And was that, could it be, Amanda, Foxy’s older sister, the one who got herself pregnant? That’s what people said. At first, before Kate understood how things stood for girls and women, she was amazed. Got herself pregnant. How did she do that?
    â€œOh, don’t be stupid,” said Nancy O’Brien, Kate’s classmate in Grade 6. “No one can. It was Marty Sorensen, everyone knows that.” And Kate had marvelled at how adults turned things about with a twist of the tongue. It was this marvelling at the power of language that Kate’s Grade 7 English teacher had noticed. That teacher, bless him, had led Kate to literature and eventually the fun but perhaps frivolous pursuit of a baccalaureate in English … all of which had led back to Pine Rapids and the graveyard. Wasn’t the circle of life grand, thought Kate, and poured herself another drink.
    She leaned back against a doorframe and allowed her gaze to linger on Nicholas. All of him. Still lovely, even if he was off limits. Her very first kiss, in Grade 9, up against a cold chain-link fence. He lived somewhere down south, near Toronto. So what was he doing back here? Well, it was Christmas.
    â€œKate Smithers! Little Katy Smithers! We see you around town, but you’re always in a hurry! Glad you could come.”
    We? Kate glanced around. The speaker appeared to be alone. Ron, Ron somebody. The surname escaped her, though she remembered clearly his walking across the gym toward her in junior high to ask her for the first dance of her life. The trouble was, her grateful acceptance of his offer prompted its frequent repetition through that year and the next. Semi-grateful to have been asked at all, she would wonder what other partners she was missing. What cost his saving her from wallflower-hood?
    â€œWell, it has been a few years, I’ll admit.”
    â€œMore like thirty, Kate,” said Ron. Was that a chiding tone?
    â€œMaybe, but who’s counting?” said Kate and looked about nervously for help. Ron was one of the few males of her age to whom Kate had never been the least bit attracted, even as a friend. In fact, there had always