He walked through town toward the former bunkhouse where his room was on the second floor. All the rooms were small, no more than cubicles, and while he couldn’t imagine how men had lived there day after day, there was a certain charm to the place now. And who was he to judge what would have been perceived as adequate for miners who went underground, he with a veneer that had grown over his years of lucrative practice? To the men in those days, these rooms likely had all they needed. Even though the frame building had been a fire trap, and who knew how many men smoked and drank in their beds? The conscience that sometimes surged up demanded to be heard, the voice of his father. Who would have taken the needs of miners into account? Before unions especially? Some distant managers in Toronto or New York were probably responsible. How could they know about the men who slept in their underwear like his father had, so angry all the time that if Nick so much as made a sound the belt came out. Roman Petranovich wasn’t like that when Nick was very young, but after he saw a man killed underground he changed.

  Walking the familiar streets, Nick peered into store windows. It was a distraction to try to figure out which ones were there when he was growing up and what might have disappeared. Woolworth’s was gone. Or was it Kresge’s? The dairy had been turned into a hardware store, the pharmacy was familiar, Pharmacie Dion. He’d have to go in before he left and see who the owner was now. Maybe whoever it was would also remember that fearful night when the sirens had gone off and everyone on the property had heard the news of an accident underground. Gradually people had gathered at the mine gates for the cage to come up, hoping to find a husband or father or brother emerging safe from the deep chill of the earth. Nick hadn’t really understood much, except that his mother cried when she saw his father come down the path.

  “Oh, Mollie,” he said.

  Later Nick heard sounds through the thin walls of their log cabin. The groans of his mother and father making love. He wondered where the boy lived, then felt irritated that even when his recollections were most intense and focused on what he’d needed to come here to face, he couldn’t stop thinking about Marcel Blouin.

  22.

  AS HE COUNTED out pills and scraped them into a small plastic container, Lucien’s mind wandered. He wondered if Michelle knew Susan had left him. It seemed that everyone in town knew so she likely did. After he put a top on the bottle, he slipped it into a bag on a tray among an array of other small, white bags arranged in rows in alphabetical order. On his way for lunch, he would deliver it although he knew he should probably visit his mother. Madame Dion, as she was known in the community, still lived in the house he had grown up in. It was on rue Champlain down the street from what had been the Muir’s house, close to the war memorial.

  “Monsieur Dion,” Charmaine said.

  She had the order form already filled out for the cosmetics. He’d have to remember to give her a raise soon, he thought. Before she decided to leave and go to Montreal like so many of the young girls did. He hoped she would find a reason to stay. He thought Jacques Paquin had been in and out of the pharmacy so often lately that it was likely to see Charmaine, although neither of them gave any sign anything was going on. If they had started to see each other, he expected he would have heard about it.

  “Thanks, Charmaine. You do good work.”

  A smile lit up her entire face, the bright pink lipstick on her mouth glistening.

  “What time do you want to go for lunch today?” he asked.

  “One o’clock?”

  “I’m going to deliver a prescription. I’ll be back before that.”

  The address Dr. Cloutier had given was at the end of town and he recalled Michelle lived in Paradis du Nord, the permanent mobile home area. He should be able to drive there, drop it off, and still have time to pick up a hamburger. He slipped on his jacket and tucked the white bag into his pocket.

  At the door to Michelle’s place, Lucien hesitated. Some Christmas decorations already hung in the window, gold and red streamers crossing in the middle and a red cardboard poinsettia with a gold ribbon stuck to the glass. What would he say to Michelle about bringing the medication himself? Although they ran into each other on the street or in the pharmacy from time to time, he had never really gotten to know her all that well. Susan used to go to Chic Choc and afterwards had told him how well the shop was doing, that Michelle had given it a new vitality. They’d all known each other as children, but Michelle had gone to a different school than he and Guy had, a Catholic one like theirs, but hers was English. And she hung out with a different crowd on the property, the ones Guy’s age. She had left town just when those kinds of age differences were ceasing to matter. Hanging between them had also always been the knowledge that if he’d driven Francine home that night, she might still be alive.

  When Lucien rang the bell, there was no sound of footsteps or a knob being turned from the inside. He remembered that her two daughters had both left Ile d’Or. He rang again. Pulling the prescription from his pocket, he studied the address. There was no mistake; he was in the right place. Then he remembered that Dr. Cloutier had said Michelle would pick up the pills the first chance she had. She was probably in her store. He could just as easily have gone there. Why had he come rushing out to her home? He hardly understood his own reactions these days, so often did they arise from a sudden impulse that later struck him as verging on desperation.

  Alors, Michelle. He would see her in the pharmacy. He would have to go right back to the store in case she came during her lunch hour. These pills were sedatives or tranquillizers that he assumed meant she must be having a hard time, too. Maybe that was why he’d acted so quickly, aware of his long hours awake in the night, the endless tossing and turning, sleep elusive.

  “That was quick,” Charmaine said.

  A glance at the clock told him he had been gone only about fifteen minutes. Nodding at Charmaine, he placed the prescription in the tray under D and hung up his jacket. Rather than engage in conversation, he headed for the back where he started to look again at the accounts and unpaid bills and at his bank statement, at the confusion that had crept in since Susan’s departure. He despaired of ever being able to sort out the mess on his desk, like a garden that had become so overgrown that even a large scythe would have difficulty carving through it. Maybe he would drop in on Maman after all. No, there wasn’t time for that now. He could go after work if he called Libby to let her know he would pick her up a little later. A memory rose to the surface of seeing Wally Muir on an airplane from Los Angeles to Chicago when he’d been out to California for a convention. Susan hadn’t come to that one. On the way back, he’d asked the steward about the score of a hockey game, one between the Habs and the Leafs. The man looked at him strangely, obviously baffled. But next thing he knew the pilot was standing beside him.

  “The Habs won. Three to one,” he said. “I knew you had to be Canadian. But someone from Ile d’Or? I can’t believe it. Do you remember me? I’m Wally Muir.”

  “You’re the pilot?” Lucien said. Wally was younger than Libby, so considerably younger than he himself was. Too young, he felt uneasily, to be at the controls of the airplane.

  “I dreamed about flying ever since I was a little kid,” Wally said. “Mum always had some kind of thing about airplanes, too. Do you remember when she was a volunteer spotter for the government and counted planes for the Distant Early Warning Line. So did Mrs. Dufresne. You know she came from England?” He didn’t wait for Lucien to answer any of his questions. “I used to go out with Mum to spot. She pointed out C-46’s, the whole shebang. I used to shout whenever I saw one. It seems bizarre now, but it’s a good memory.”

  “She was probably counting Canadian and American planes,” Lucien agreed. In those days, a Russian bomber would have run out of fuel long before it got that far.

  It surprised him that he hadn’t thought of this encounter with Wally before as it would have been natural to tell Libby about it. I saw a Muir not all that long ago. I saw Wally. “Oh, yes,” Libby would have said. “My brother, the pilot.” Or something like that. So much had happened in the intervening three or four years that Lucien had forgotten until now. At the time, it had been an isolated incident, one of those unexpected meetings of two people that makes a good story for a couple of weeks. Now it connected to everything else about the Muir family and the white house on rue Champlain, just up the street from the Dion bungalow. It was around the curve and past the house on the corner where Jeannie Petranovich had lived. Until he told Susan about seeing Wally that time, he hadn’t remembered that Jeannie had married Wally. Susan had then told him that they lived in southern California. Now he remembered when Wally had thrown a rock at the scarecrow in the Petranovich’s garden. The rock had hit Jeannie hard in the face and Mrs. Petranovich had rushed out onto the street and marched toward the Muir’s house. All she could say when she got there was “Wally, Wally, Baloney, Baloney.” Madame Muir took both Jeannie and her mother to the hospital, then spent a day in Mrs. Petranovich’s kitchen a week or so later learning to make cabbage rolls. The story filtered out in bits and pieces until just about everyone knew about it. Even if the two women hadn’t said anything, as they probably hadn’t, it was a story that gradually became legendary.

  “I’m going now,” Charmaine said.

  Surprised at the sound of her voice, Lucien looked up at the clock. It was one already. Reaching into his pocket and taking out his wallet, he asked if she would buy him a hamburger. He would take a coke from the cooler in the pharmacy.

  “Avec frites?” she asked. With fries?

  23.

  THE DARK SHADOWS of tree branches moved against the wall of the bedroom as Michelle took a container of pills out of the cupboard in the bathroom. The night felt eerie and it seemed to close in on her. Tired of her migraines and not sleeping very well, she had managed to forget to pick up her new prescription at the pharmacy. She hoped when she did the pills would make a difference. Sometimes when the sound of the blasting woke her up around two in the morning, she lay there for over an hour with her mind racing. Perhaps it was as long as two hours. Tonight it was almost midnight and she hadn’t yet gone to bed.

  She let the water run and filled a glass, then flipped one of the small white tablets into her mouth. The doctor had agreed to order the others, although he didn’t want her to become too used to them. Still, he was concerned that she wasn’t getting enough sleep.

  The telephone rang, startling her. She had no idea who it might be at this hour other than a wrong number.

  “Hi,” Nick said. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  “It’s all right,” she said, puzzled, waiting to hear why he’d called. She watched the shadows move on the wall.

  “Could I come over to your place?” he asked.

  He slurred a word. He’s been drinking, she thought.

  “What?” she asked, guarded now.

  “You can say no.”

  “Of course I can say no. I know that.” What did he take her for?

  “I’ll call again,” he said.

  Michelle noticed that he hadn’t mentioned dinner. It was too late tonight, but he could have invited her for another day. Did he drink a lot on an ongoing basis? Anything was possible since she really didn’t know him.

  “That kid asked me to take him to Toronto,” Nick said.

  “What kid?”

  “You know, the one I told you about who seems to be shadowing me around this place.”

  “Oh, you mean Marcel Blouin,” she sighed. This could have waited until morning. “Well, he’s harmless.”

  “I suppose. But he’s also a nuisance.”

  “Depends on how you happen to view it. Maybe he’s just hungry.”

  “I bought him something to eat again,” he said in a defensive tone. “It didn’t end there. He keeps on trying to find a prostitute for me.”

  What did he expect her to say? Nick didn’t sound drunk now, but she knew he’d had something, his voice a little louder than it needed to be.

  “So what did you say?” Michelle asked.

  “What kind of man do you think I am?”

  “I actually don’t know,” she said. “Someone who’s ready to rush off to Africa and find some trophies.”

  “You think I’m a spoiled rich guy, don’t you?”

  “Well, I would if I didn’t know you from way back.”

  “Can I come over?” he asked again. He sounded like an adolescent who wanted to see someone but couldn’t figure out why himself.

  “Didn’t we go through this already?” Michelle tried to think of a way to end the conversation short of hanging up on him. She was afraid if she didn’t that she might actually agree to let him come over and she knew that was a bad idea at the moment.

  “I’ve started to meditate,” he said. “I could show you how.”

  “You didn’t ask if I already know how. But that’s beside the point. Why would I ask you to come around to meditate at almost midnight? You can tell me about it when we go out to dinner.” She heard a beep on the line. “I have another call,” she said, surprised someone else was also calling at this hour. “I’m going to take it.”

  “Oh well,” he said. “Good night.”

  Michelle pressed a button and said hello. It could be Elise in early labour. It could be anyone. All she knew was that she rarely received calls this late unless there was a crisis somewhere.

  “Mom, are you there?” Dawn’s voice asked.

  “Dawn? My goodness, chérie,” Michelle said, her spirit rising at the sound of the familiar voice she hadn’t heard in such a long time. Then she began to worry that this call had been prompted by some calamity. “Are you all right? Where are you?”

  “Yes, I’m all right,” Dawn said. “I’m in Montreal.”

  “Are you staying with Elise?”

  “I haven’t called her yet. I just got here today. I’m at the Y. Could I come to see you?”

  Michelle breathed in deeply at the wistful, almost frightened, voice that came over the wires. Maybe she did need to learn how to meditate. “Of course,” she said. She’d been longing for Dawn’s return for what seemed like ages now. She didn’t understand why her daughter had become such a rebel. While Elise was immersed in a banking career and expecting her first child, Dawn had been angry for years and Michelle had never been able to break through that. At first, Dawn had left because she wanted to make contact with her father’s family. The man who abused them. The man they’d escaped from.

  “Well if you want to, go ahead,” Michelle had said warily. “I don’t think it’s wise, but it’s your life.”

  Dawn had decided it was her mother’s fault that the girls hadn’t known their father. Michelle hadn’t so much tried to prevent the girls from knowing him as she’d tried to protect them, the need for which there was surely enough evidence. The man had once kidnapped the girls and on another occasion had taken a knife and threatened to kill them and their mother.

  “I found my father,” Dawn said finally, her voice gruff.

  “Oh,” Michelle said, alert for an attack that seemed bound to follow.

  “You were right,” her daughter said. “He’s an asshole.”

  Michelle gripped the receiver. In the silence that followed, she could feel relief flow over her. Finally it seemed there was an opening.

  “I’m so glad to hear from you, Dawn,” she said.

  “I really am sorry,” her daughter said.

  “I know,” Michelle said, hearing the remorse in her daughter’s tone. All that mattered was that she was there now, at the other end of a telephone line, no longer running. “When did you say you’d like to come to see me?”

  “Soon. After the weekend.”

  Only a mother would understand the relief, the anticipation, the joy she now felt, Michelle thought. Her own mother would have understood. She had also worried about Dawn in those last months before she died, even though Michelle had protected her as much as she could. Pretending sometimes she knew where Dawn was, that Dawn would be coming home soon. It was all she could do for her frail and failing mother who had loved both Elise and Dawn with that special care of a grandmother who had a sense of continuity because of them.

  “I’ll come on Tuesday. I’ll take the bus,” Dawn said. “I’ll go and see Elise first. Maybe she’ll let me stay there for a couple of nights.”

  They’d been close as children, with the ordinary bickering of two sisters not far apart in age. The fabric of a family the three of them had built together was something she had seen Elise suffer at losing also. After a while, Elise had stopped asking about Dawn, had not wanted to talk about her at all. Michelle imagined that she would be surprised, and she hoped happy, to find Dawn reaching out to her. She supposed Elise might also be very angry, but Michelle hoped her relief would outweigh everything else.

  On the other end of the line, there was silence, the daughter who had not made contact in over two years seemed to wait for her mother to continue.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?” Michelle asked.

  “Some time, maybe,” Dawn said. “For now, I just want to apologize to you.” She’d seen her father soon after she left home, she said, and knew then that he was a loser who didn’t give a damn about her. And then she’d started running, as she put it. “You were right, but I guess I had to find out for myself.”

  There was nothing Michelle could add to that, her own mind racing.

  “It was all worth doing,” Dawn continued. “All the travelling. You learn so much. And gather stories as you go. But it took me a lot longer than it needed to.”

  Years, Michelle thought. It had taken years for this moment to arrive, times when she’d worried, cried, and spent nights awake. Anxious. Panic in the pit of her stomach, her body rigid. Not knowing where her child was, if she were safe. Or on a street somewhere. Hungry. This had been the hardest circumstance of her life, to have one of her children estranged from her and not be able to do anything about it. When she received an address, it was all she could do not to reserve a flight to wherever Dawn was. Once she had, and after flying to Paris had taken a train to a city in Provence. Dawn had been furious and refused to speak to her. Except to say if Michelle ever did anything like that again, she would never speak to her again. Never.

 

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