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Body Language
James Hall
For Evelyn,maker of vivid memories
O! It comes over my memory as doth the raven over the infected house, boding to all…
SHAKESPEARE, Othello
To look back is to relax one’s vigil.
– BETTE DAVIS, The Lonely Life
Table of Contents
Her memory of that day never lost clarity. Eighteen years later, it was still there, every odor, every word and image, the exact heft of the pistol, each decibel of the explosion detonating again and again in the soft tissues of memory.
The loop of tape replayed unexpectedly, while she was driving the car, drifting off to sleep, in the middle of conversation: seeing again the boy sprawled on his bedroom floor, his face blown away, hearing the deafening echo.
Like transparencies overlaid, that time and this one continually mingled. The terrified girl she’d been and the resolute woman she had become, inhabiting, forever, the same body.
Alexandra Collins aimed the .38 Smith & Wesson revolver at the rear window of her parents’ bedroom. Eleven years old, a tall, thin child with straight black hair and bangs that brushed her eyebrows. The revolver belonged to her father. It had a four-inch barrel and was too heavy for her to hold in a shooting position for
