I'le Dor, page 13
“Make sure there are a lot of black people at my funeral,” she had said.
“What are you doing, Mum?” Libby asked.
“I’m very busy dying, dear.”
The next morning, she talked again about her funeral, naming specific people, some of them friends of Libby’s, who were black.
“I don’t think you’re going to die this time, Mum,” Libby said.
Lucien scanned the menu. “I feel like onion soup. And maybe steak again. What about you?”
“The soup,” she said. “With a salad.”
After he had ordered, Lucien looked at the booths around them. “Qu’est-ce que tu as fait aujourd’hui?”
“Walked around. When I got tired, I took a cab. Al Desjardins’ taxi. He already knew I knew you.”
“Oh, mon Dieu,” Lucien said. “Sometimes I think that man knows everything. And what a raconteur, eh? But Elizabeth, you don’t need to take a cab. I don’t need my car when I’m in the store.” He pushed a strand of hair off his forehead. “You can come in and pick up the keys any time.”
“That’s very kind.” Then, “What about you? How was your day?”
“Flu season,” he said. “Antibiotics. Cough drops. Not much call for ice cream in November.”
“I used to like chocolate best. After that, strawberry.”
“And now?”
“Oh, German chocolate cake, jamoca almond fudge, strawberry shortcake. If they’d all been around when I worked for your father, I’d have weighed a ton by the end of the summer.” She laughed with her head thrown back slightly and her eyes sparkling. “I enjoyed that summer so much.”
“I saw your brother a few years ago,” he said.
“Wally?”
“Oui.” He proceeded to tell the story. Wally had invited him up to the cockpit where he had seen the light change as they had flown across the continent, from day on the west coast to brilliant rose over the mountains, then to darkness somewhere over the midwestern states. Lucien had changed planes in Chicago.
“Tell me, Elizabeth,” he said then. “Were you a happy child?”
“What a question.”
“You always looked as if you were.”
“Were you?”
“Not very. I think Guy was Maman’s favourite. Papa was too busy with McNab’s secretary.”
Her eyes widened and Libby took a while to reply. “I didn’t know you knew,” she said finally.
“Everyone knew.” His voice was low, his lips a thin line.
Smoke from the next booth wafted in a spiral over them. The music from the jukebox stopped. The two women looked at them curiously, and then went on talking.
“Like my father’s drinking,” Libby said.
Looking at her hands, she saw a small bump in the finger that had once held her wedding band. She hoped it was not the beginning of the arthritis that had plagued her mother. As Lucien drank a second cup of coffee, he leaned against the back of the booth, and draped his arm over the ledge behind him. When Libby glanced up, she saw his eyes were on her. She was surprised at how easy it would be to smile at him, gaze steady, to let him know what was on her mind, the softening she felt that wanted him to touch her. If she did, would his body move with hers later until the dam broke inside her, until she began to moan? She saw Dan’s face, the tilt of his head, the frown that formed on his forehead, the lines on his cheeks that became deep funnels above his beard. His loping, restless stride stopped and his large dark hands with the pale palms reached for her. But in that moment, it was Lucien’s voice that caressed her.
“Elizabeth,” Lucien said softly, eyeing her thoughtfully.
“Did Susan ever tell you about the horse?” she asked.
“Susan loved horses.” Lucien said. “She groomed the harness horses out at the track for years hoping to get a chance to drive them.”
“Once we stole a horse.”
“C’est vrai?” Is that true?
He looked doubtful, but he waited expectantly.
“Susan took Cathy and me to that field on the other side of the railroad tracks. She used to ride the horse there.”
As they’d walked downtown past St. Luc’s and the movie theatre, Susan gave away chocolate bars and gum she had stolen to younger children they met along the way. Looking away, Cathy had pretended nothing was happening. I was mad at her, Libby thought, but she’d already told him about that. And she had chewed some of the Chiclets anyway. Then felt guilty. As usual.
The traffic light in front of the church, the one Father Chicoine had ignored, was new then. On the other side of the street was the A&P store, built around the time the light went in. On the hill at the edge of town, the water tower was visible for miles. The sun glinted off the letters of Ile d’Or and a lake glimmered in the distance. Between the railway tracks at the edge of town and the lake were a few open fields, land carved from the unrelenting bush, dotted with granite.
“Sounds like Susan.”
“I was afraid. I didn’t want to ride it.”
“I would’ve been afraid, too,” he said. “I sometimes think Susan wasn’t afraid of anything.”
“When we got to the field, there was an old, grey horse grazing on…”
“Tell me another time,” he said, his voice a caress.
She looked down at the table, feeling as she had that day when she realized that Susan really thought she, Libby, would ride that horse.
“Elizabeth,” Lucien said. “You’re a beautiful woman.”
She shook her head, glanced at the purse on her lap.
“So beautiful.”
Please. She could already hear him telling her he liked her breasts. Please stop. She was like a tinder box ready to burst into flames, afraid she would begin to rock in her chair to the rhythm of the throbbing inside her.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “I’ll go pay the bill.” When he returned, he held her coat for her.
“Thank you,” she said.
Lucien put a dark scarf around his neck, pulled on his coat, and guided her gently toward the door. On the steps, he looked up at the sky and inhaled deeply. Above them the northern lights shone through the smoke from his cigarette that curled upward in the dark. When he wheeled out of the parking lot, she leaned back and watched the swaying tops of trees against the stars and the pink streaks of the northern night sky.
“I remember driving along this road with Guy,” she said. “I was supposed to get home before midnight. Mum would lie awake until I came in. She’d ask what time it was the moment I stepped in the house. Even before I could start to creep up the stairs. I’d say, ‘Oh, it’s just a little after midnight,’ and she’d say, ‘That’s funny. I thought I heard the blasting.’”
“‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ I’d say. ‘It can’t be that late.’”
“‘We’ll talk about it in the morning, Elizabeth,’ she’d say.”
Her mother’s voice was firm, with an edge, and when she said Elizabeth, Libby knew she was in trouble, that she really had heard the blasting. You could hear it all over town. It came from so far down that the house acted like an echo chamber. You could almost set your clock by it. Twice a day. The blasts were all set for the same time. You could hear it walking home from school in the afternoon. You would sense a shudder and hear something. And again at night, at precisely two in the morning, you could not miss it, the dull thudding louder when everything was quiet.
“Ah oui.” He smiled. “The sound of the dynamite underground was the curfew for all the girls. And with good reason, n’est-ce pas?”
They were driving away from Ile d’Or. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“I thought I’d show you the lake. Qu’est-ce-que tu penses?”
“It’s late.”
“We’re almost there.”
The moon and stars glistened on Lac Leboeuf as Lucien parked the car beside a small log cabin. As he turned off the engine, he leaned forward and rested his arms on the wheel.
“Susan loved it here,” he said.
“I can see why.”
There was a rustle in the bush and Libby saw eyes in the dark, peering at them. A fox, she thought, but there was no way of knowing. Then the eyes vanished.
“Maybe Susan will come back,” she said.
“She’d be like a wild animal caught in a trap. I think she only stayed as long as she did because of the children.” He pushed against the door, came around the car and helped her out onto the rocky ground. “Come down to the water.”
On the beach, he stood with his hands in his pockets. She listened to the sound of the waves against the shore. When she shivered, he put his arm around her.
“Would you be angry if I asked you to stay with me tonight?” he asked softly.
“No,” she said. “But I’m not sure…” Her voice drifted off as she thought of all the things she could say now. There was Dan. But then there was also Daphne, wasn’t there? What about having been Lucien’s brother’s girlfriend? It made this sudden attraction feel strange to her. “Guy,” she said. “What about Guy?”
“Guy,” Lucien sighed. “I can’t see how that matters now.” He looked tired as he removed his arm from her shoulder. “I’d like you to stay, Elizabeth,” he said. “But if you want to go back to town, I’ll take you.” He walked up the slope to the cabin and opened the door. He turned a light on, and then turned it off again. “Allons-y.”
“I remember the time you ran into my sister in Montreal,” she said.
“Years ago.”
“Sheila told me you wouldn’t speak to her in English. When you saw me the other day, you did though.” She did not add that during the referendum, she had felt almost as if she wore a banner, “Mon non est Québecois,” even in Toronto, the vote she would have marked on her ballot in the referendum had she still lived there.
“Oh, maybe. It probably has to do with Susan leaving. I feel as if my life’s been wasted. And I turn fifty next month.”
Fifty still felt a bit remote to her, even though she knew it was the next major milestone she’d have to face also.
“Lucien, I’d like to stay,” Libby said, walking toward him.
“It’s all right. I shouldn’t have asked. It just seemed like…”
“I’d like to stay.”
26.
AS SHE PULLED down the duvet on her bed that night, Michelle felt peaceful in a way she could scarcely remember having experienced before. Underneath the fluffed up pillow, she’d left a light flannel nightgown, embroidered at the collar. Memories of Dawn at various ages flooded her mind. The toddler on the handlebars of a tricycle Elise was sitting on, the two faces uplifted toward the camera. Dawn playing with little, brightly-coloured cars and trucks in a sandbox. In her first skirt and blouse for school, carrying a tiny backpack, trying to keep up with Elise.
Sighing contentedly, she crawled under the duvet and reached to turn off the lamp on the night table. She would sleep through this night without the shroud of angst that had troubled her for so long. But no sooner did she drift off when she was awakened by the telephone ringing. This is astounding, she thought, this series of unexpected calls, but then she noticed it was morning and the hands of the clock were moving toward seven. It was early, but she’d slept.
“Well, what about dinner?” Nick asked. “What about tonight?”
“Well, why not,” Michelle said. “But why call so early?”
“What time is it?” he asked.
When she told him, he was momentarily quiet. “I apologize,” he said then. “And for calling so late last night, too. Profusely.”
“Okay.”
“Think of where you’d like to go.”
“I’ll be celebrating,” she said. “I heard last night from my wandering daughter.”
“Then we’ll make it a special dinner.”
When she hung up, Michelle picked up a photo of her two daughters and looked at it intently. She could hear Nick saying, “The younger one looks like you.”
“She does. And the older like Francine, a bit. Don’t you think?”
“I don’t remember her that well really.”
Why did she need an imaginary conversation to think about her sister? It was still so difficult. Dawn’s absence had often reminded her of that earlier loss. The night Francine was killed, Michelle had been sleeping. A loud knock at the door awakened her and she heard whispers in the downstairs hall, then her mother’s agonized cry. Michelle could tell something terrible was going on and thought of the mine. But her father wasn’t working underground any more; he’d left the mine to run The Flamingo. She’d crept to the top of the stairs and watched Jutras touch her mother’s shoulder as he spoke quietly to her. What could a policeman, even one who knew the family well, have done to alleviate the pain her mother felt?
“Maman,” she’d called, but only Jutras had looked up to see her.
For days her parents’ eyes were veiled or filled with tears and Michelle moved around them feeling she was invisible. For a long time, her mother retreated into silence. Later Michelle became the focus of all their expectations. At times she hadn’t been able to bear it. No one understood how her whole world was reshaped forever by that accident. When the car her sister was in, on the way home from a party, crashed into a tree out on the highway. The road had become icy in the few hours since the party began and clearly the car had been going too fast. Francine and the boy were both under the influence of too much booze. Lucien had gone to that party to pick up his brother and drive him home. He could have brought Francine home too, but he hadn’t. Michelle couldn’t blame him. Francine had already crawled into the car ahead of him, although he knew she’d seen him. She had waved him away. Or so Lucien had told the policeman when he stopped at the accident, moments after it happened, because he recognized the car. Losing Francine was devastating, Michelle thought. Losing her only sister, her older sister, who had always been there — she couldn’t imagine anything worse. Until Dawn disappeared.
She looked out at the deck beyond the kitchen window to see if the Montreal Gazette was there, the newspaper her mother had read regularly. Sometimes the teenager from across the street who delivered it was late. Or even forgot. She put the Fair Trade coffee Elise had given her in the pot and plugged it in. Dawn would be here in a matter of days. That thought was enough to submerge memories about her sister and Michelle started to hum a few lines from the Hallelujah Chorus.
27.
ONLY THE STARS and moon lit the path to the cottage. From the porch, Lucien beckoned to Libby to follow him inside. She could hear a dog barking and as she entered a golden retriever leapt toward her.
“Down,” Lucien said sharply. Patting the dog with one hand, he reached with the other to plug in a small space heater. A couch with a red blanket thrown over it faced the window and he motioned toward it, inviting Libby to sit down. Before he joined her, he let the dog outside, noticing the tops of trees waving in the wind.
“It looks like we may be getting a storm,” he said.
Libby nodded. “What’s the dog’s name?” she asked.
“Figaro.”
“What made you think of that name?”
He shrugged. “Susan chose it.”
The dog scratched to come in again and circled the room, sniffing.
“Lie down, Figaro,” Lucien said in a low, firm voice. But the dog followed him as Lucien poured dry food into a large bowl on the floor. He picked up another bowl and took it over to the sink where he filled it with water.
“En voilà, chien.” He brought a bottle of wine over to the couch and sat down beside Libby.
“Tell me the rest of that story now,” he said as he handed a glass to her.
Taking a sip, she put it on the wooden table in front of her. “When we got to the field, Susan said we’d ride bareback,” she said.
“Trust Susan.”
Libby was quiet, but Lucien could feel her eyes on him. This hardly seemed like the time to kiss another woman, but he wanted to. He wanted to put his arms around her and press her breasts against him. He reached toward her and his whiskers scratched against her cheek.
“Libby,” he murmured.
She didn’t resist and as his tongue twisted around hers, he moaned. When he unzipped her sweater, she helped him ease it up over her shoulders. As he undid her bra, she moved so that her breasts tipped up to meet his lips. His mouth on her left breast, he groaned again as she pulled at his belt. Soon their clothes were flung around the room and he lifted her gently and guided her to the bedroom, stopping just long enough to turn off the lights.
