Read Online After Alice by Karen Hofmann - Free Book Online

promised to visit. He’s consulting on the new bridge, or claims to be, though she has not seen his name connected with the engineering companies mentioned in the newspaper articles. Still, Hugh is supposed to be retired.
    She wonders, though, what it is Hugh wants of her.
    â€œI am watching the news on the Internet,” Hugh says. “I tried to Skype you, but you aren’t online. Why don’t you leave the computer on like a normal person?”
    â€œDistraction,” she says. “What’s on the news, Hugh?”
    â€œHave you been paying any attention to what’s going on in Rhodesia?”
    â€œYou mean Zimbabwe?”
    He ignores this. “Three thousand percent inflation, for god’s sake. What do you think it’s like to live with that economy, Sidonie?”
    He sounds like he’s accusing her of something, but she knows him too well to take his tone personally. “I can’t imagine,” she says, “although my father could have told you.”
    Hugh is distracted for a moment. “Eh? Oh, yes. Well, that makes it worse, doesn’t it, seeing where it can lead. I’m just back from Harare, you know. What a mess. I tell you, I’m alarmed.”
    Why is he telling her all this? She feels it is nothing to do with her. Hugh is addicted to the Internet news.
    But she remembers then: his youngest daughter lives in Zimbabwe still, with her mother. Hugh likes to talk about his offspring; he has five or six. It is the kind of topic she finds boring, from friends or colleagues. Almost as bad as stories about dogs.
    She changes the subject. “How is the work on the bridge progressing?”
    He growls, and there’s a tirade against the other engineers, the city council, the province, and the whole bridge project. She doesn’t understand half of his terminology, but he isn’t paying much attention to whether she’s following him, anyway. She can picture him, pacing his apartment, wearing his headset, his lower jaw thrust out, his clipped ivory mustache, like an Eskimo carving, riding his lip, twitching. She can hear in the background what sounds like two competing voices; either he has two computer screens on or one and the television.
    â€œThe work seems to have started,” Sidonie says. “They’re building the on-ramp on the town side. I’ve seen photos on the news. Do you like the design?” she asks, and Hugh stops his rant abruptly.
    â€œYes. Very much!”
    She does not know why he should sound so surprised by her question.
    Surprising to her, still, that Hugh is part of her life again. Hugh, solid, blunt, grounded. She cannot remember not knowing Hugh, though he claims to remember a time before her advent. Not the same Hugh, of course: Hugh-the-boy, who is now erased by the white hair and leathery arms of Hugh-the-man.
    Her earliest memories must be of the back of Hugh: his tow head, his grey knit shirt and short pants ahead of her. She has always known him, and he has always taken charge of her. “No dawdling, now!” he’d always called to her, over his shoulder, as they’d trudged up and down the hills. “No faltering, men!”
    Hugh is the bridge to her earliest self. He is the only one left, she thinks, who knew her, who remembers growing up in the orchards, remembers the hills and the lakes as they were, remembers the small universe of their school and playmates, their childhood pleasures. Hugh remembers her parents and Alice — as she remembers his parents and Graham. She does not think about the past often, but she does not like to think that she alone remembers it. Hugh is necessary for that connection. But what does he want from her?
    She has kept her distance from him these past few months; it has been Hugh who has initiated all the conversations. But now, housebound, on crutches, in the cold dirty end of winter, the uncertain, messy beginning of spring, she finds herself taking