Free Dinner Along the Amazon by Timothy Findley Page A

husband’s mute umbrella for a moment, and then she saw Harper as he stood with his back to her at the foot of the driveway. She saw the mess of powder and blood on the rug, a furious kaleidoscope of colour that was perhaps the drapery, perhaps an overturned vase of flowers, perhaps only the vaguery of madness, and then she saw her own prone self stretched upon the floor.
    It occurred to her to wail, as a child would wail, from the midst of some self-created ruin of shattered glass or fallen cutlery, but suddenly anger rose in her, the anger of private degradation and the fury of her fallen pride.
    She crawled in a splurge of remembrance to her dressing table and took from beneath it the half-finished bottle of gin, which was the bottle that Harper had left behind in deference to its near emptiness.
    She took a mouthful straight from the bottle, which gave her the strength to rise and cross to the bathroom.
    “Everything else is broken,” she announced to herself.
    In the bathroom the stench of vomit on the floor nearly drove her out, but she threw a towel over it, grabbed the tooth glass from its shelf and ran into the bedroom slamming the door behind her. “They were all broken, I had to,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
    She poured a full glass of gin and crossed to the window. She swallowed two mouthfuls without stopping, and for a moment she thought that it would make her throw up again, but it gradually burnt its way into her bloodstream and her stomach relaxed. After a moment she felt better.
    She watched Harper.
    He was standing alone and silent, a little to one side of the group of children around Miss Kennedy, and he had his hands behind his back. He seemed not to be listening to them talking; he seemed, instead, to be thinking of something private and sad of his own.
    She smiled and spoke his name quietly to herself, “Harper.” It gave her no comfort. “Harper Dewey,” she said. “Harper Peter Dewey.”
    She pulled back the curtain with her free hand and shaded her eyes with the hand that held the glass of gin.
    She blinked and looked at her son.
    “Harper Dewey,” she said, as though in conclusion.
    After a moment she took another mouthful of gin and swallowed it slowly and deliberately, almost meditatively. Harper, below on the sidewalk, turned to look at the house and Mrs Dewey dropped the curtain slowly, hoping that he had seen her. He stared at her window for nearly a full minute, pulling at the green eye-shade of his sun hat.
    “Harper Dewey,” said Mrs Dewey and she waved at him. But she knew he hadn’t seen her, because he shifted his stance and looked back towards Miss Kennedy and the children.
    Desperately Mrs Dewey finished her glass of gin and poured another which emptied the bottle. She looked down at her bleeding foot and said, defeatedly, with a broken sigh, “Peter,” and she lifted her glass. “Success! He’s as blind as a bat.”
    She pulled the chair from the dressing table over to the window and sat down. The children were laughing again at something Miss Kennedy had said to them and they laughed for a long time as though it must have been something very funny indeed that she had said.
    Harper, however, aloof from their amusement, walked over to the driveway and picked up a stone. He stood with his back to the house, with his feet apart, apparently listening to the end of Miss Kennedy’s story. The others continued to laugh, but Harper turned around and gave his mother’s window a long, slow, tearful stare. His hand went to his eyes.
    “Harper Dewey,” said Mrs Dewey. “Harper Peter Dewey. Blind as a bat,” and she smiled.
    After a moment she looked down at her glass and had just put her head back with it held to her lips, prepared to take a long swallow of gin, when the window in front of her was shattered by a stone that fell at her feet.
    She was holding it in her hand when they found her.

    In his bed in the dark, no more a cave, no more a safe place alone, he sat