On the sidewalk, against a car angle-parked on the wide street, Lucien stood with his jacket up around his neck and lit a cigarette. Across the roadway, the priest walked from the rectory down to the side door of the church. Both buildings, perched on a slight rise where they looked out over the town, were still among the most substantial in the area. This priest, Father Jean, was a small, unimposing man, not one given to oratory as Father Chicoine had been. Lucien had not been to confession for a long time, or to church. Susan had, though. Not French, she had surprised him by converting to Catholicism before their children were born. And until recently, when she left him without warning, she had done all the things the mother of a good French Canadian Catholic family was supposed to do. Except for the abortion and he did not know what the priest had said when she’d confessed. Or even if she had confessed. He had never asked her.

  A car honked. He turned to see Michelle in her Chevy. He exhaled slowly, watching as the car drove past. It was the local gossip that Maurice DuFresne, Michelle’s father, had amassed quite a fortune by the time he died, but how would anyone know for sure? Unless Michelle’s lifestyle had changed dramatically after her mother died also. And it hadn’t or he would have heard about it or noticed. She continued to live in the mobile home she had moved into soon after she returned to Ile d’Or. At the most, he supposed she might have used her inheritance to pay off the mortgage.

  When he had settled back into his chair, in his office, he noticed Madame Frechette at the cash register, holding a bottle of shampoo. Even from his office, Lucien could see that it was one to get rid of dandruff. While Charmaine rang in the purchase, he looked over an order for one of the large drug companies. Nearly everyone who came into the store called out a greeting to him. Madame Frechette had already smiled in his direction. Lisette Charlebois, Jacques Paquin, Hélène from the hairdresser’s, René from the bank.

  “Bonjour, Lucien.”

  As they waved, their gestures flickering across his vision, he nodded and smiled in return. Usually he would have gone out to speak to them, but so far today he had done so only with Madame Robichaud. She wore her fur coat already, fitting tightly across her hips like the skin of a moose. She was still standing at the magazine rack, trying to decide what she wanted. Or perhaps she was just reading the covers. There was a white streak down the part of her dyed red hair and her lipstick was smeared at the edges of her lips. If he hadn’t spoken to her, she would have said something to his mother. Then Maman would ask if he were worried about Susan and if he had heard from her. It was enough that he dreamed about Susan, saying to him plaintively that she was tired of the city and wanted to come back. In the dream, he found a way to ask her to return without either of them losing face.

  “Such a good idea you have my love, to arrange a party for our son’s birthday. Everyone will come.”

  Then he woke up, disappointed to find nothing had changed. He knew if he suggested she return, it would make her furious. Quite probably she would never speak to him again. Then he drifted off into another dream that he couldn’t fathom. There were divots of grass all along the walk beside his house in Ile d’Or, as if someone was going to replace his front lawn. As he awakened, he was baffled that at the same time as he hoped desperately that Susan would return, he was angry with her for making a fool of him. And with Guy for leaving him alone to take care of their mother when he would never be good enough for Maman. His mother had never said so, but he knew it. Since he was old enough to know, Guy had always done everything better as far as his mother was concerned. Guy had even played with the Muir kids and Jeannie Petranovich. He had heard Madame Muir tell his mother she wanted Libby to learn French.

  “Oh, non,” Maman said. “It’s for Guy a chance to speak English.”

  “The Hinglish Polacks,” Lucien sneered under his breath. He’d wanted his mother to hear him, but was nervous that she might have.

  Libby must have overheard though. She’d said as much when he babysat the Muir children. And had told him the story again when they’d been recalling events that bound their histories together. This time her story had not been laced with a sense of triumph as it had been when he was the babysitter. Then she’d enjoyed telling him about the time his father stumbled into the Muir’s house. Apparently he sat down at the kitchen table as if he were in a restaurant.

  “A sandwich,” he said to Madame Muir, thinking she was a waitress. “Roast beef.” Usually they referred to each other politely as Madame Muir and Monsieur Dion.

  “He was too drunk even for that,” Libby said. “He ate the sandwich, then stumbled out again. ‘Taxi,’ he said. ‘Je veux un taxi.’”

  Lucien had glared at her when she’d told him for the first time, his face twisted into an angry knot, a pink flush across his cheeks. “You stupid English bitch,” he whispered. “Tête carrée.”

  He waited for her to call him a Frog, but she didn’t.

  “I’ll tell my mother,” she said.

  “What?” he asked quietly. “What will you tell her?” Pursing his lips, he went to the refrigerator and took out a beer. He sat on the stool at the kitchen counter and flipped off the cap, startled to hear the back door open. Before he could even get up, Walter Muir came stumbling in. He headed toward the door to the basement where he went down two steps and stopped abruptly. Another step, more tentatively. Then a sudden loud crash, followed by a yell as he hit the bottom.

  Libby raced down the stairs. Lucien was right behind her. Walter Muir was lying on his face on the floor, like an animal hit by a car on the highway.

  “Lucien,” she screamed.

  A gash on her father’s forehead was oozing blood that ran down his cheek. He did not move.

  “Call the doctor,” Lucien said.

  “You call.” Her voice was low and shaky.

  Lucien went to the phone in the kitchen and dialled the hospital number. When he explained what had happened and that Monsieur Muir was still lying on the floor, the nurse said the doctor would come right over. When he arrived, Dr. Pierrefonds helped Walter Muir come to his feet, then draped one arm over his shoulder. Together they moved slowly and awkwardly upstairs. Everything was quiet overhead for a while. When the doctor left, he said Monsieur Muir would sleep through the night and in the morning he might be quite sore. “But there doesn’t seem to be a concussion and nothing broken either.” Dr. Pierrefonds left Lucien and Libby sitting at the kitchen table. Libby stared straight ahead.

  “Do you want to play ping pong?” Lucien asked, knowing she would likely beat him.

  “Okay.”

  When they went down into the basement, there was still blood where Libby’s father had fallen. Libby walked carefully around it, and then threw up on the floor. He still marvelled that Sheila and Wally had slept through everything. Or maybe they were just too frightened to come out to see what was happening.

  “Yoo-hoo,” Charlotte Muir’s voice called from the front door. “Where is everybody? Are you still up, Libby?”

  “She’s down here,” Lucien said.

  “Everybody happy?” the voice sang out.

  Lucien had found Libby was still very solemn when she’d told him the story again, but she’d been somewhat amused about Charlotte.

  “That was what Mum always wanted, no matter what,” Libby had said thoughtfully. And then laughing, she added, “She always wanted everybody to be happy.”

  Lucien thought their overlapping histories created an interesting tapestry that hadn’t previously occurred to him in this way. If he raised some of these memories again with Libby, he would do so more delicately than he might have previously with an Anglo. Even with Susan, for that matter.

  36.

  THE LOBBY OF the hotel was quiet in the early afternoon, especially now that tourist season was over. An occasional hunter still came through, but most came earlier in the season, before the onset of winter. They came to shoot moose and to take home their trophies, the antlers and a trunk full of the meat packed in ice.

  Sun shone through a window beside the front desk and turned the receptionist’s dark hair auburn. Libby sat in an armchair off to the side, waiting for her taxi. She listened to the woman’s telephone conversation about a homework assignment in algebra. At the same time, through the window she saw Al Desjardins park and get out of his cab. As he came through the front door, he was puffing. A paunch around his middle defined his shape and tiny red veins laced his nose and his chin.

  “Bonjour, Elizabet’,” he said. “I hear you’ll be staying at Guy’s cabin.” He picked up her bag and carried it out to the street.

  “How do you know?” Libby asked, surprised. She had not given her destination when she phoned for the taxi. It felt as if the entire town was wired.

  “Oh, it’s easy,” he said. “People say things around me all the time as if I’m not even there. I heard Lucien make a phone call about turning on the hydro for Guy’s cabin. He said a friend from Toronto was going to use it. Things like that. But I don’t gossip. Don’t worry.”

  “Sounds like it’s too late to worry,” Libby said, her smile wary.

  Al opened the trunk and put her suitcase in next to the spare tire. There was a case of Molson’s on the other side.

  “I’d like to go to the pharmacy,” Libby said. “I was going to drive out with Lucien later.”

  “I can take you,” Al said. “Flat rate. Not expensive.”

  “Thanks,” Libby said. “Still I’d like to let Lucien know.”

  “Pas de problème,” Al said.

  When Libby arrived at the pharmacy, Lucien was in the back. When he saw her, he came and stood next to her at the end of the aisle with cough medicine and headache remedies lined up on the shelves. There was a nasal spray in green and white packages beside them.

  “My suitcase is in Al’s taxi,” she said. “He said he could take me to the lake, but I’d rather go to Guy’s cabin with you.”

  “Go to my place with Al if you want. I’ll meet you there when I leave the store to show you how things work in the cabin. I have some propane in the car for the heater and I already turned on the water. The place is clean. There are sheets and a couple of sleeping bags.”

  “I’ll pick up food at the supermarket.”

  “Don’t worry about tonight. You can have my car tomorrow to shop. You’ll know by then what you need.”

  Al was at the curb when she went outside. “After I drop you off, I’ll go to the airport for the last flight from Montreal,” he said.

  As they started toward the road to the airport, Al pointed out the house he lived in, one of the original log cabins near the mine site. The door was now painted orange.

  “They started selling them a few years ago,” he said. “So we bought ours. What you can do is limited. The town wants to retain the original log cabins as much as possible so they can promote Ile d’Or as a historical village. But they let you paint the trim.”

  His wife, Blanche, usually had coffee for him at this time of day, he told Libby. If he didn’t have a fare, he would drop by.

  “Gives me a chance to stretch,” he said.

  “You must need it, sitting behind the wheel so much.”

  “My wife tells me that her sister worked for a Madame Muir when she came here as a teenager. Probably your mother.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Thérèse Drouin,”

  “Thérèse,” Libby said. “That’s amazing. I always wondered what happened to her.”

  “She’s in Montreal now,” Al said. “She was seventeen when she worked in Ile d’Or. She worked for your mother after the last baby was born. She said a few weeks later your father left to join the army.”

  “Yes,” Libby said. “A month later.” After Wally’s birth, her father was gone for three years. Thérèse stayed for a few months and then she left to get married. Libby did not remember the names of any of the girls who came after her, not even the one who accompanied them to Petawawa before her father went overseas. The young girl had opened a drawer in the Welsh dresser and taken out a silver spoon, which she then put in her pocket. Libby, watching her from behind an armchair, sneezed and the girl whirled around.

  “Sneak,” she said, moving toward Libby and slapping her.

  Running out of the room, Libby headed to the kitchen where her mother was making grilled cheese sandwiches.

  “You have such an imagination,” her mother sighed. “Please don’t make up stories. When something really happens, no one will believe you.”

  Libby was furious and stomped down the hall. Her mother never believed her, not even when the minister with grey hair and thin, sallow cheeks under his horn-rimmed glasses had reached under her smocked dress to stroke her leg and the edge of one cheek of her bottom. She was sandwiched between him and another girl as they stood learning about confirmation one afternoon after school, preparing for the ceremony that lay only a few weeks ahead of them. When she felt something touching her, Libby was so surprised she froze for a moment, then reached back as if she were going to slap a mosquito. The minister removed his fingers quickly. It all took place so fast that she wondered later if it had really happened.

  “How is Thérèse?” Libby asked.

  “Very well. Still married with three grown children. Grandchildren, too. She’ll be interested to hear about you.”

  “She called me Libby.”

  37.

  THE STREET IN front of the bed and breakfast, the former mine bunkhouse, was quiet, only in Nick’s imagination filled with the sounds of young men living there as in the days when the mine was in operation. He parked his car, his mind preoccupied with the thought that he was no longer a young man. He was forty-eight, getting close to the big five-oh. It surprised him that he suddenly felt nervous about taking Michelle out to dinner again. He’d behaved outlandishly the past couple of days, he thought, not used to being single.

  For many months after the separation and divorce, after Marie’s remarriage, he’d put all his energy into his practice. This trip was probably just another way of running away, but it was turning into something else as well. Until he’d met up again with Michelle, he hadn’t thought of himself as a “spoiled rich guy.” That’s what Michelle thought of him. Maybe she was right. Encountering people from his past, in this town where he grew up, caused him to come up against himself in unexpected ways.

  The woman who owned the bed and breakfast stood inside the door. Younger than he was, quite pretty with her light hair pulled back behind her ears, he already knew she spoke no English. A remarkable change from when he’d lived here when most people tried to speak English even if they had thick accents and couldn’t find the right words to describe something.

  “Pour vous,” she said, handing him a message.

  He thanked her and went to his room before looking at the slip of paper she’d given him. Only his daughter knew where he was so he wasn’t surprised to find Diana was the one who had called. He’d get back to her as soon as he’d made a few notes in his journal.

  Sometimes the only way he could clarify his thoughts was to write them down. If they seemed inclined at all, it was what he sometimes suggested to patients. “Keep a record for a while. You’ll be surprised at how helpful it can be.”

  He’d resisted keeping a journal himself for a long time. “But writers do that, don’t they?” he murmured, resist writing. One patient had described writer’s block as a blank page that would confront him whenever he sat down. “It’s almost like a conspiracy that prevents me writing at all some days.”

  Nick went upstairs and lay down on his bed, his hands resting behind his head. He was troubled by his inability to move on. His imagination had often saved him, his sense of potential where others saw only impossible challenge. Thinking he could reverse Marie’s decision even after she’d married Henri was getting in his way. Imagining an affair with Michelle perhaps suggested he was ready to finally get beyond Marie, but something deeper would be possible if he let go of the impossible hope that Marie might return.

  After a while, he stood up and went to the small writing table under the window, turned on the lamp and sat down. He’d left his notebook there and opened it now, but when he tried to think of what to write all he could do was note the weather. So plebian, he thought. Then he started to scrawl the first words that came into his head.

  Serge Bikadoroff came from Russia in the 1940s and found work in the mines of Abitibi.

  He didn’t find that sentence boring, but he hardly imagined one sentence would get him much closer to writing a novel. It would be a full-time job; he knew that. He thought about the old joke where the surgeon tells the writer that he too would write a novel if he had the time. The writer responds by saying, “Yes, and when I retire, I’ll become a surgeon!” He didn’t know why he was suddenly so interested in writing this book. He knew his character flaws, at least as they had been pointed out numerous times by Marie, and arrogance was not one of them. He knew it was ridiculous to think he could write a novel. He was under no illusions about his ability to do so. Maybe he just needed to write about his past. To understand the present. Diana had suggested that he might follow some of the advice he gave his own clients.

  “I forgot to call Diana,” he said to himself out loud, suddenly remembering the message he had just been given.

  When he reached her, Diana told him about the lasagna she’d cooked for dinner the previous night. “You would have loved it,” she said. “Full of vegetables like eggplant and zucchini and three kinds of cheese.” Then she asked him when he would be coming back to Toronto. “Any time soon, Dad?” It was partly because she needed to borrow some money. C’mon kid, I’ll give it to you. “And I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to say mean things about you. You’re a great Dad.”

 

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