I'le Dor, page 20
“I’ll call Elise tomorrow,” Dawn had said before she fell exhausted into the bed. “I’ll wait ’til you come in from the shop in the evening so both of us can talk to her.”
What surprised Michelle most was that she could accept Dawn’s story of her long absence. Not even angry anymore that Dawn had found her father. What a bastard he was, trying to enlist his daughter to convince some new woman he was a decent father. He also couldn’t resist dumping on her, telling Dawn that it was because of her mother that he had left. Elise had stayed away; she had no use for him either.
The next morning when Michelle awakened, Dawn was still sleeping so she left a note on the table beside a fresh baguette. She propped it against a glass dish with raspberry jam in it — Call when you wake up, chérie.
Dawn had said that as a child she was continuously trying to figure out what was going on when she’d overheard conversations her mother had on the telephone with friends. Sometimes when Dominic — she refused to call him her father any longer — was out at work or having a beer with his buddies, she would hear her mother talk about escaping. Escape was a word Dawn didn’t understand then; it was something captured princesses did, not her mother.
“What about me?” she’d asked her mother once, visualizing being left behind. She said something about a castle where she was afraid she would be left and Elise, listening to them, told her they lived in a house like all their friends and that castles only existed in books.
“Except in England and France,” Elise had added knowingly, although she was only six or seven at the time and only knew about castles in places where they had ancestors.
“We lived in an apartment then, not a house or a castle anyway,” Dawn had said when she was older.
It must have been terrifying for her, Michelle thought.
Michelle moved a rack out to the front of the store where the large “sale” sign on it could be seen from the street. The policeman, Gustave, waved at her as he headed toward the pharmacy. Michelle waved back, recalling that when she’d arrived in Ile d’Or he’d been kind to her. Her mother had known him and he’d come to call, with the promise of whatever police protection he could make available. When later he wanted to date her, she’d allowed some distance to develop in their relationship.
“Gustave is a good man,” her mother had said. Obviously disappointed. For Michelle who did not want a man in her life at that time, it was awkward for a while. He was not only kind to her, but rather handsome. Although his nose looked as if it had been broken at some point. Maybe in a fight. Now Gustave was married and that made ongoing conversation easier.
The telephone rang and Michelle jumped to answer it. Dawn, she thought, but it wasn’t her daughter. Instead it was information about stock that would arrive later that morning. She was disappointed not to have heard yet from Dawn. Surely she wasn’t still sleeping. Not wanting to appear demanding, Michelle decided to wait a bit longer to call her daughter. There was always plenty to do in the store.
“I wanted to take a long run before phoning,” Dawn said half an hour later.
Michelle knew how annoying Dawn had found her in her teen years. Often she would retreat to the room she and Elise shared. There she would bang her pillow against her bed, in the top bunk above Elise’s lair. Or she’d put on a parka and head outside to hurl snowballs at signs and trees. As a teenager she’d often made sharp comments to her mother, and to her sister.
“I had a call from Elise asking if I can go back to Montreal for an interview on Monday. A woman phoned in response to my résumé,” Dawn said. “She’s looking for someone fluent in French, English and Italian.”
“I didn’t know you spoke Italian.” There was so much she didn’t know about this daughter, so much that must have occurred during her three years of absence. It felt as if she’d lost that time entirely, but now that Dawn was back she hoped they would be able to share more.
“I’ll tell you about it some other time,” Dawn said. “I need to think about this interview. I do know I’d like to start working soon.”
Later she told Michelle she’d managed to stay footloose for quite a long time with her knowledge of three languages, the Italian acquired in Siena where she’d spent a few months taking a course and sitting in small cafés. In one café across from the square, she’d met a man called Rocco. It took her longer than she would have liked to recognize his bravado concealed the same arrogance as her father’s did. But a few weeks later, she’d figured it out, left him and moved on.
In the end, a mother can protect her daughter for only so long, Michelle thought. But, it seemed as though Dawn had learned a lot during this time.
“I’ll confirm that appointment for next week,” Dawn said. “No matter what happens, I won’t go off again without warning. Elise made me promise I’d leave forwarding addresses if there’s a next time.”
“And?”
“I promised. What else? You know, I’m anxious to see Elise, but I don’t understand her. Moving up the ladder at the bank is one thing. And being married suits her. But, why would anyone want to bring a child into the world now? The threat of the Soviet Union. War in the Middle East. Pollution getting worse every day.”
She sat back on the small sofa Michelle had in the back of the store. When Michelle was tired, she could sit and close her eyes for a moment, still aware if anyone came in the front door.
“Elise sure let me know how worried both of you were, not warming up at all until she had a chance to say so. She knows that won’t happen again now and we did talk about how good it would be for both of us if Aunt Moi could live not too far away in Montreal.”
“I could babysit,” Dawn said. “Elise was pleased when I suggested that. And have a mailbox downstairs in the lobby of some apartment building near Elise where I pull out letters addressed to Dawn St. Cyr. There’ll be stamps from far-flung places that I’ll save for the baby’s collection. I’ll even start a stamp book for the kid. Oh, and when I go out to work in the mornings, I’ll wear an outfit from Chic Choc.”
Michelle laughed.
Dawn hadn’t met Elise’s husband, Yves, as her sister had begun to date him after she went incommunicado. Michelle was glad to hear that they had invited Dawn to stay with them when she returned to Montreal. If she’d kept in touch, she would have been her sister’s attendant and witness. It was a very small wedding, Elise had said, expressing disappointment that Dawn had missed it. Dawn hadn’t even known about it until afterward.
“He likes you,” Elise had said after she’d met him just before coming north. “It’s a chance for you to get to know each other.”
Nonetheless, Dawn had told Elise she wanted to find her own apartment quickly. Even though Elise said there was no hurry. “Even so, Mom, I want a place where I can hang my clothes in a closet and have my toothbrush and cosmetics in a bathroom that I don’t have to share. A refrigerator where none of the food is labelled with the names of different people. Where I won’t find something I bought has been eaten by a stranger.”
“I’m going to close the shop and go down to help out when his or her majesty arrives,” Michelle said. “This lucky baby will be surrounded by love.”
“Wow,” Dawn said. “How can you manage that with the store?”
“Oh, I’m sure I can close Chic Choc for a week, even two, at the end of January. I’ll probably be able to do some shopping for the store when I’m there as well. There’s a young woman who sometimes helps out and I can ask her to come in if I decide I want to keep it open.”
“Are you doing some designing, too?” Dawn asked. “The mannequin looks quite elegant in that red chiffon and satin.”
“I am,” Michelle said.
“When I went for my run, the air felt so clean,” Dawn said.
Michelle could visualize her leaning against the gatepost while she stretched out the muscles in her calves. At first she would have run slowly, building up speed gradually.
“I could almost smell the difference. No fumes. Nothing. I ran by Grandma’s house. She would never have left it like that. Peeling paint. Then I ran down near the lake.”
“You always liked that run.”
“I’d like to come back in the summer and canoe here,” Dawn said.
“Any time, chérie.” As a teenager she’d rushed in to tell Michelle about the men in canoes heading toward James Bay on routes that had been used by early voyageurs and trappers. Probably before them by Native people.
“It would be bliss to live in solitude like that for a few days.” She’d pitch a tent on a secluded rocky point and make a fire. After eating, she’d hang the bags of food on ropes from branches high enough to keep the bears out of it.
Michelle listened to her daughter talk, almost afraid she was asleep and would wake up to find she had been dreaming.
“When I was out on my run, that boy leapt out from the bushes at the side of the path and startled me. The one who came to the house.” Dawn sighed. “He started to run alongside me, his short legs almost spinning so he could keep up. At first I ignored him, but he was like a shadow.” She’d asked him why he wasn’t in school. “He said it was none of my business.”
“That’s Marcel,” Michelle said.
“What an arrogant brat. Why do you put up with him?”
Michelle smiled.
“I suppose he reminds you of me,” Dawn said, a cheeky smile on her face.
“Not really,” Michelle said. Although as a teenager Dawn had been as mercurial as the weather. Even on into her twenties when she’d graduated from CEGEP and felt she needed to contact her father.
They were startled by a loud noise overhead and, running to the window, were surprised to discover an airplane flying so low over the centre of the town that Michelle could almost see the Cree Air symbol painted on its side. Likely it was coming in from the area of the hydroelectric dam, she thought. Once Dawn had flown into Montreal with a plane being taken in for repairs by one of the pilots who flew that northern route. She’d met him on a bus up from the city. Michelle had objected, but Dawn said she would go anyway, that it would be safe. And that she was old enough and no one could do anything about it.
It was during one of Dawn’s vacations from school. “Anyway, he probably won’t call,” she’d said. But on New Year’s Day, the phone had rung. There was a plane he had to take south to the city, could she make it out to the airport in three hours? Dawn’s eyes were bleary from a dance at The Flamingo the night before, but she’d drawn in a deep breath and said nonchalantly, “Sure, I could do that.” Michelle had overheard her, starting to shiver with apprehension
When Dawn got off the telephone, she started to pack frantically. She didn’t tell her mother about the repairs until after she’d landed in Montreal. It was enough for Michelle to absorb that she’d hitched a ride on an airplane. Later Dawn recounted tales of the flight, that on the trip south she’d sat in the cockpit behind the pilot. After it took four hours to get the plane started. Flying over snow-covered forest, sitting in the cockpit where she had the wide span of the pilot’s view, was an adventure that ranked as high as later ones in Europe, she’d said. “Even more so than bazaars in North Africa and Turkey.” Cold air had circulated through the plane, the heating system one of the broken things, and she was sure she would have frostbite before they landed.
“Marcel asked if he could come to Montreal with me.” He was like a thorn picked up from a bush that was hard to extricate from one’s clothing.
“I told him of course not,” Dawn said “Where are his mother and father anyway?”
“No father. Mother drinks.”
“Poor kid,” Dawn said. She was thoughtful for a few moments, and then said she’d pick up something for their lunch. “I’ll probably go down on Saturday or Sunday,” she added. “Once I’m sure the interview is on Monday.”
“That doesn’t give us long,” Michelle said. “We’ll have to make good use of the time.”
The smile on Dawn’s face disappeared and she tightened her lips. But then she took in a long breath and let it out.
“Je t’aime, Mama.” Dawn said quietly. “I’ll come north again soon. And you’ll be in Montreal in January.”
“Ah oui, mon enfant,” Michelle said, aware that something had shifted. “Je t’aime aussi.”
41.
WHEN LUCIEN WOKE up, he lay listening for a sound that would tell him where he was. It sometimes took him a few minutes to figure out he was not in town. In the summer he awakened early to the morning light and the sound of birds chirping was all it took to know he was at the lake. Now it was the whistle from the mine, which had a different sound from this distance, that told him it was also time to get up.
He turned to one side and was momentarily surprised to see Libby. Creeping quietly from the bed so as not to disturb her, he went to shave in front of the mirror in the small bathroom. He was shocked at the appearance of his face, so much older than he expected. Each morning, he was surprised at the proliferation of lines that mapped his face. And at the increasing grey hairs mixed in with the darker ones in his sideburns, and in the fuzz around his cheeks and chin.
He hoped Libby would wake up soon, that he would not have to make loud noises or shake her gently. He always felt better if he was up before the long jarring buzz of the alarm clock. If she wanted the car, she would have to drive him into town. He did not have to wait long to hear her yawn and roll over. Then, the light tap of stockings across the cold floor as she headed to the kitchen. Shortly after, he smelled coffee brewing on the propane stove.
“I’m going to let the dog out,” Lucien said. “Let her run a while.” Figaro. What a name for a retriever. Of course he would feed her. Susan had not had to say so. Didn’t she remember what was good about their marriage? He could have complained when she had gone to scale logs. Even when she went camping in the bush, he had not minded that she had as usual not taken any of the children. She liked to canoe on silent lakes where the sound of loons awakened her, where an occasional plane flying high above over the northern route to Europe, over northern Quebec and the tip of Greenland, was the only reminder of civilization. He wondered what this vast barren land looked like from the moon.
“Notre pays,” Susan would say. “Québec.” But did she mean it? In an imagined conversation with her that continued an argument they had engaged in for the whole time they’d known each other, she would maintain there wasn’t something called the rest of Canada.
“Ah oui,” he’d mocked her. “In a city like Toronto, the language of the streets might as easily be Portuguese or Italian.” It took generations for the French to find their voice. Even though the vote had been ‘No’ in the referendum, he knew that had not settled the aspirations of a whole people who saw themselves as a nation. Aspirations that were not understood in the rest of Canada. Whatever the rest of Canada was.
“A la prochaine,” René had said.
It was certain there would be a next time.
“I’ll get dressed and drive in with you,” Libby said. “I could use the car today. I am going to drive around and take some photographs. Of the mine, of houses. Things I might draw and paint later. Get groceries.”
“I’d like to see some of your work.”
“I could show you sketches,” she said. “And I have a magazine with an article in it my son gave me to read. It shows a painting. I’m after different images now, but I can show you the magazine later. I have this notion now of putting the Eiffel Tower in the same composition as a mine shaft. Something about the shapes of the two structures.”
Lucien opened the door to let Figaro nudge past him and run across the snow toward the lake. Libby seemed oblivious.
“I remember teenage summers. One when I spent a few days in Paris, others when I went on the shift bus out to Manitou. I ran tests on samples to see whether the men underground were mining the right deposits. On the graveyard shift, I slept on the counter between the two sets of samples. A man brought them over from the mill in small brown paper bags, the first set around midnight, the other just after four in the morning.”
“I’ll be back soon,” Lucien said, noticing Libby nod, lost in reverie. He did not think she would notice his absence. Almost thirty years separated them from the times they recalled in their conversations, thirty years of time when their lives had not overlapped at all. And now Susan was gone. His throat, head and stomach ached.
Figaro ran toward him and jumped up, almost knocking him over with his exuberance. Lucien tossed a stick and the dog bounded after it, bringing it back and dropping it a few inches from his feet, wagging its tail. They played for a while before Lucien returned to the cabin, leaving the dog outside to run.
Libby sat at the table, drinking coffee. There was jam and toast on a plate set down in the middle. Lucien took a cup of the steaming dark coffee, poured milk into it, and stood at the window.
“Do you remember the beach that joined the two islands at MacNac?” he asked. “The grey sand was like clay. We parked on it. Or at least Susan and I did. You were part of the crowd from the mine site, too. The kids who lived near the highway.”
“I suppose,” she said. “Although I remember sitting alone in the bush and drawing pictures more than being part of any gang.”
“Nicky Nicky Nine Doors!” Lucien exclaimed. “Knocking on doors and running away.”
“Oh, that,” she said.
“You and Guy and some of the other kids on rue Champlain did that,” he said. “The next street over, too.” He remembered Wally almost waddling along behind them, so young he could scarcely keep up. One time Jutras was called. All the older kids, including Libby and Guy, had vanished and Jutras had found little Wally, only three or four then, hidden under the porch of the Dufresne’s house.
