The Geranium Girls Read Online Free

to phone me anymore.”
    “Who?”
    “Joe!”
    Stan smiled. “Don’t worry, Beryl. He’s a veterinarian.”
    “What’s that got to do with anything?”
    Beryl watched him lope off towards The Bay, noticing the stoop of his shoulders for the first time. She was sure he was smaller than he used to be and she worried that what he said might be true, about not living long enough to be sorry. Please don’t die, Stan. But she could imagine it happening; she could picture herself at his funeral.
    He turned around just then, as if he knew she was looking and gave a little one-finger wave. Beryl wanted to run after him, hug him to her chest. But they didn’t have a hugging-type relationship.
    So she began the walk down Edmonton Street, fixed tightly and sensibly into her bag, like a parachutist.

Chapter 5
     
    Beryl was stung by a wasp on a Saturday in the middle of June, one week exactly after she tripped over the girl in St. Vital Park. The wasp bumbled its way between her sandal and her freshly bathed foot. A prick that could have been a pine needle or a tiny shard of glass, and then the long sting that could have been nothing else.
    “Fuck!” she cried. “What is it with me and my feet!”
    The last time she had been stung her foot had swelled up like a foot balloon. She had feared it would keep on till it exploded.
    Sitting down where she stood, in the middle of the sidewalk on Taché Avenue, she removed her sandal and the crippled wasp fumbled away to certain death. Three golden drops of poison balanced on the tender flesh of Beryl’s instep next to the white circle where the wasp had stuck the stinger in. He’d have been fighting for his life at that point, she knew. Or was it a she wasp? Was it only the females who stung, like mosquitoes? Beryl always felt slightly embarrassed when she heard scientific information like that, that cast the female of the species in an unpleasant light. As though she and female mosquitoes were part of a giant sisterhood whose sole purpose was to inflict discomfort. And pain, if wasps belonged.
    Beryl figured the sight of three tiny globules of liquid pain was a good sign. They weren’t inside her. She brushed them away and decided not to try to squeeze out the poison that had entered her foot. In the Free Press the other day there had been a wasp article that said that squeezing sometimes makes the sting worse.
    She put her shoe back on and continued her walk to the drugstore: a good destination under the circumstances. One of the pharmacists would be sure to give her some good advice. They were a lot more forthcoming than they used to be. Maybe the handsome one with skin the colour of creamy coffee would be there. Beryl had admired him from a distance since the first time she saw him there, several months ago.
    Her friend Hermione’s shop was just across the road and Beryl had planned to visit her today, but that would have to wait.
    The pain wavered a bit and after a few minutes settled a notch or two below the worst. Another good sign. Her foot was reddening for sure, but not growing bigger. She favoured it as she walked and worried about movement making it worse.
    It was the handsome pharmacist who served her.
    “I’ve been stung by a wasp,” she told him. “I’m a bit nervous because the last time it happened my foot swelled up to seven times its normal size.”
    The pharmacist left his perch behind the counter and hurried around to her side.
    “When were you stung?” he asked.
    “Just a few minutes ago,” Beryl said.
    The pharmacist, whose name tag said “Dhani Tata” guided her — pushed her really — to a bench where an elderly couple sat waiting for their prescriptions.
    “Excuse us!” he announced and edged Beryl onto the bench next to them. The pharmacist seemed unsure on his feet, but he fell purposefully to his knees in front of Beryl.
    The old woman began struggling to her feet but Dhani encouraged the couple to stay put.
    “Where were you stung?”