I'le Dor, page 21
“Someone threw a rock at the roof,” Madame Dufresne told the policeman.
“This little fellow couldn’t have done that,” Jutras said. “But maybe he knows something.”
Wally cried, so Jutras took him home to the white house next to the bush.
Libby nodded. “C’est vrai.” She conceded she had been there. “Poor Jutras. He never caught us, but we were much more careful after he caught Wally.”
Lucien chuckled. “I’ll warm up the car,” he said.
When Libby got in, he told her he would stop just long enough to pick up some papers at his place. After that, they headed into town.
“How old were you when your father came back from outre-mer?” Lucien asked.
“Eight.”
“Most of the guys who went were younger. And single.” The names on the monument were brothers of men who were now fathers and grandfathers. Most of them had not been married.
“What a waste,” Lucien said.
“My father didn’t think so.”
“Yeah, but your father was an Anglo.”
42.
WALTER MUIR’S LETTERS had started to mention Japs before the war in Europe ended, warning his family they were still some kind of danger. He wrote he might not get to Ile d’Or as soon as he had thought he would. What Libby knew was that people who came from a place somewhere far away had bombed Pearl Harbour before her father left to go overseas, a place out in the middle of an ocean, and that her father said maybe the ones in British Columbia were spies. In his letters, there was something about going to fight them in some theatre when the Jerries were all cleaned up. But he didn’t have to and instead before too much longer he arrived back home.
Libby knew there was something not right about what he was saying about the people in the west who might be dangerous and so were moved away from the ocean into towns in the interior. It confused her. Weren’t they all Canadians? But because she still thought her father knew just about everything, she couldn’t figure it out for a long time. She did know when he talked about dividing things between his children some day that Wally getting half of everything because he was a boy did not make any sense. As if boys were better than girls somehow. But it was a lot longer before she figured out her father thought whites were better than anyone else in subtle ways also. The picture on her bedroom wall with the black nanny had made her squeamish. There was her father like a small prince sitting on his pillow beside her. Libby wondered as a child if this woman, known only as his nanny, was another grandmother. And when her father went overseas, she thought at first he might have gone back to Africa.
“Lots of changes,” Lucien said. “Since your time.”
“Still seems familiar.”
Libby knew the route into town and the pharmacy as if it were embedded in her consciousness. They drove past the supermarket, Mulholland’s long gone now, then a Sony dealer.
“Could I use the telephone in your office?” she asked as Lucien opened the car door.
“Of course.” Bien sur.
She went to the back of the pharmacy where his desk was covered with papers. There was a photograph of Susan in a gold frame on one side. Surprised at Susan’s greying hair and the lines around her mouth, only the dark eyes and knowing smile told her who the woman was. She supposed she would always think of Susan as somewhere between twelve and seventeen.
She picked up the receiver and started to dial Dan’s number at City Hall. One digit escaped her and she decided to call his apartment instead. She noticed that the poster of a winter scene on the wall in front of her was a Krieghoff.
“This is Dan Robinson speaking,” the familiar voice greeted her on Dan’s answering machine.
Relieved not to have to speak to him, Libby left a message that she did not have a telephone and would call him when she returned to Toronto in a couple of weeks. When she stepped out of the office, Lucien watched her walk down the aisle where bottles of shampoo were lined up neatly on shelves on one side and tubes of toothpaste, dental floss, and mouthwash on the other.
“What time do you want me to pick you up?” she asked. Much to her own surprise, she was enjoying the time they spent together. As if Dan didn’t exist, as if Lucien had accepted Susan would never return. Even thoughts of Guy couldn’t make her feel guilty about the easy camaraderie that had developed with his older brother.
“Five. Six. Whenever you arrive is fine.”
On the highway, she drove past the graveyard again, onto a road that led past deserted shacks to an old mine site. The ground was frozen and the buildings were all empty. The gold was gone. The copper and zinc, too. Some day the town would disappear. A willow tree leaned over the ice at the edge of a creek nearby, as if claiming the territory now that people had left it.
On the car radio, an announcer began to read the news and she tried to understand what was happening in the world beyond her. Israel and Lebanon were still at loggerheads. War in the Middle East seemed inevitable. She waited for the weather forecast. In November it was bound to prove she had been foolhardy to decide to stay in Guy’s cabin where the only heat came from a small propane heater she found difficult to use or the wood stove that needed to be stoked and fed constantly. She might have grown up in this place, but she lacked the skills to survive in the outdoors any more. Were she really stranded, she might not have enough wood to heat the cabin nor a man who would come over and keep her from lying awake terrified that every small noise meant imminent disaster.
Surveying the area, Libby remembered swimming with Guy in the creek near the mine site. This was also where the Native people had lived in shacks. She had never known any of them, had scarcely seen them, except as shapes at the edge of this road, miles from town. As a child, she had asked a lot of questions, but it was only recently that she began to find out about the schools Native children were forced to go where much worse things happened than anything she could have imagined. She thought that was why there had been so few of them hanging out in town when she was growing up.
A car horn honked and she looked up to see the driver’s friendly wave as he drove slowly by on the bumpy road. Although she might have been nervous in the city, it did not cross her mind in daylight that she might be in danger in this isolated place.
When she arrived back at the cabin, Libby looked for lard to make some pastry. All she could find were tins of pork and beans and an old package of spaghetti that looked as though mice had been at it. Pacing around the room, her eyes were drawn to the wood chopped and carefully piled in a box near the cabin’s old stove, just like the one they had used to heat hot chocolate as children. And the bright blue, yellow and red enamel cups hung in a row on hooks over the sink. She found a broom and began to sweep the floor and the brown twisted braid rug with bits of twig and leaves embedded in it. Always struggling to carve out time to paint, now that she’d found it she could not figure out how to use it. Sketch a tree or mine shaft? It was so easy to get side-tracked. Although when the images finally emerged, and a painting gradually became just the one she wanted to paint, she would know she was doing what it was she was meant to do. That sense of purpose usually lasted only as long as the images took over her life and it could wreak havoc with everything else for the duration. To give up art was to give up the underlying river that linked her life, tantamount to stopping breathing. Yet Barton had left her because of it, because what else so clearly defined who she was? He had tried to suggest it had something to do with her wanting to get her tubes tied, but Libby knew he had been looking for an excuse for a long time. Until he found one, she just hadn’t noticed.
Libby swept the bits of fluff, leaves and twigs into a yellow dustpan. When she opened the door to empty it outside, even this far away, she could hear the low rumbling sound from the mill that carried across town and water. Would she feel the earth tremble with the blasting underground in the middle of the night? She had not noticed when she had been with Lucien, but she might have missed it. How important those sounds had been through all her childhood, framing her sense of time and place. She might seem to be an urban creature now, but the appearance was deceiving. Just under the skin were all the memories. Of the night, for instance, when her mother finally locked the front door when her father did not come in even after the supper dishes were washed and put away and the table set for breakfast. When he did arrive, he pounded furiously.
“Why did you lock the damn door?” he shouted, his words slurred as he banged repeatedly on the wood and fumbled with the handle.
Her mother paced back and forth on the landing, her shoes loosening the grate in the floor where the warm air came up from the furnace. She wrung her hands, and muttered under her breath. “What am I to do?” was the only thing Libby had been able to make out.
“Open the damn door,” he’d shouted. “Charlotte. CHARLOTTE!”
As Libby stood frozen at the top of the stairs, waiting for the door to break and her father to come flailing through it, her mother went to the closet in the hall. Tears were streaming down her face as she reached beyond the coats to the shelf above. When Libby’s father’s footsteps staggered across the porch, her mother turned to face the door, a gun in her hands.
Libby started to shake. She had heard her father say the gun was never loaded and she knew her mother only touched it when she went hunting partridge. She trembled at the thought of what might happen. What was her mother doing? There was a loud crash against the outside wall.
“Charlotte,” the pounding began again.
Charlotte lifted the gun to her shoulder. “Don’t you dare step inside,” she shrieked, her hands shaking, her entire body shaking.
“Charlotte,” Walter Muir almost sobbed. “I love you.”
“How can I believe that?”
“Just let me in.”
Gradually, the shouting subsided, the pounding stopped. Her mother’s shoulders sagged as she put the gun back in the cupboard. “Oh, dear God,” she’d sobbed, her body heaving. “Have mercy upon us. Lord, have mercy upon us.” After a while, she continued. “The Lord is my shepherd.” Finally when there was quiet and her father might even have fallen asleep, Charlotte opened the front door.
Libby moved away from the stairs, not wanting her mother to see her. She heard her father crash to the floor as he lurched through the door and later a familiar litany.
“It won’t happen again.”
“You’ve promised before, Walter.”
“This time I mean it,” he said. Then there was silence, followed by a loud belch. “Please believe me,” he pleaded.
When the voices finally stopped, Libby heard the dull, steady throbbing from the vacuum pump at the mine and she wished her father had died in the war after all.
43.
MICHELLE STOOD IN the kitchen, watching her daughter cut up greens, relishing the time they’d had together in the shop that afternoon, talking at last. About where Dawn learned Italian, the new designs for winter dresses that hung on hangars in the display area of the store, Dawn’s interview the next week, Michelle’s date with Nick for that evening. She’d felt the need to run it by Dawn again.
“I hope you don’t mind that I’m going out to dinner,” Michelle said. “Nick won’t be here for much longer and since you and I had the time in the shop I thought when he called I’d see him again before he leaves.”
“Of course it’s fine,” Dawn said. “I’m happy to have some alone time. Is there time to call Elise before he picks you up?”
Michelle longed to know more about the months and years Dawn had been travelling. There seemed an endless period of time that she knew nothing about, that Dawn did not seem to want her to know about. Even as they’d relaxed in the shop when no customers were there, when she’d asked once without thinking about her whereabouts in the last year or so, Dawn had bristled and changed the subject.
“Chérie, I’m not prying. I’m just interested,” she’d said, wishing she hadn’t asked.
Of course there was time to call Elise. “Nick won’t be here for another half hour.” She wore a dark skirt that came to a point just below her knees with an ivory blouse and a bronze vest made of a slightly shiny taffeta-like material.
“You look terrific, Ma,” Dawn said.
Michelle smiled.
Dawn reached for the telephone. “You call, Ma,” she said.
Michelle wasn’t sure what Dawn expected. Maybe to create the small, happy family she’d always hoped for, something she knew was an unattainable dream for most people. But maybe with the new baby the glue that had been missing would make them all feel more connected.
They reached Elise just as she came in from work. Yves was starting dinner, she said, some fried potatoes with leftover cold beef. Yves enjoyed cooking. Michelle had bought a chef’s apron for him and tucked it away in a drawer she kept for gifts. She thought if she didn’t forget it was there, she would give it to him for his birthday or for Christmas. It was no more than a perfunctory conversation, but both Michelle and Dawn were pleased about it, their gestures and expressions calm in ways that were noticeable to each other.
Just after they hung up, there was a knock at the door and Nick’s face appeared on the other side of the glass, lit up by the yellow beams of the porch lamp. When he saw Dawn standing next to Michelle, he shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. When Michelle introduced them, he scrutinized the younger woman, taking her hand.
“Did you know your mother and I knew each other when we were younger than you are?”
“Well, not until an hour or so ago.” Dawn’s laugh was a trill of notes that rose and fell.
“Would you like to come to dinner with us?” Nick asked.
“Oh my goodness, no,” Dawn said. “But thanks for the invitation.” She looked relieved when Michelle reached for her jacket. Nick held it while she put her arms, first one, and then the other, into the sleeves.
“I won’t keep her out too late,” Nick said.
“I’m not a chaperone,” Dawn said, but she was smiling.
Michelle was embarrassed. “C’mon, you two,” she said. “That’s enough.”She stepped out through the door, into the evening, and waited for Nick to follow.
Outside, she arranged her scarf so it covered her neck and pulled her coat over it. “Take that road over there,” she said. “To the left.”
“Are you taking me by some new route?” he asked.
“I suppose this road wasn’t here when you lived in town, but it’s a shorter way to downtown than any you’d recognize.”
“I’ll just have to trust you,” he said lightly, casting a glance as she smoothed her skirt over her knees and tucked her purse down beside her feet.
As soon as they were on the main street, Michelle knew he would be on familiar territory and find a spot to park near The Flamingo.
“So, the famous night club,” he said.
“Ribs and wings,” Michelle said. “It’s a pretty limited menu. But for old time’s sake.”
When he reached the sidewalk on her side, she was already almost out of the car and he closed and locked the doors.
“Back in the old days, we never ate here, did we? I don’t recall people eating here.”
“No,” she said. “We didn’t. But it’s still symbolic of our childhood, isn’t it?” The outcome of underground labour. Although she wouldn’t ever say that. “Everyone came here then. Mostly to have a drink. There weren’t too many other choices. When did you have your first drink? Where did you have it?”
“You have a point,” he said and laughed.
At a dimly lit table toward the back, Michelle and Nick studied the list of cocktails, chatting and laughing as they talked about which wine to order with their meal. Eventually Nick ordered a bottle. Beer would probably be more appropriate to the occasion, they agreed, but they preferred a red wine. As they toasted each other and he admired her splendid cheekbones, he averted his eyes as they strayed downwards to the outline of her breasts under her blouse. Had he put the condoms in his pocket? What good would they do though, now that her daughter had arrived and his room was hardly more than a closet with thin walls and a creaky floor? She would never go there with him.
“Let this be the beginning of the rest of our lives,” he said.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“It sounds good,” he said. “I know I came here without a real sense of direction. I seem to have lost it. And I guess I must have thought that somehow I would find myself again by coming back. Now I’m trying to figure out when to go back to Toronto and what to do when I get there. I don’t know really what I want. Some new start would be welcome.”
“Don’t you want to resume your practice?”
“Well, yes, of course. I’ll be doing that. But for the last while I wasn’t able to offer my patients as much as I would have liked,” he said. “Maybe I’ll be able to after this. I do feel less depressed and less angry. My daughter keeps asking me what my passion is and I’ve been looking for an answer. It used to be psychiatry. Now, I am not so sure anymore.”
“Tell me about your daughter,” Michelle said, smiling at him.
“Diana,” he said. Oh, Diana. He could go on about the wonders of a young woman who never ceased to amaze him, but she wasn’t why he was here in this town or, for that matter, in this nightclub. He told Michelle enough about Diana to satisfy her and then asked her about her passion. “Is it the shop?”
“Oh, I do love the shop,” Michelle said. “But more than Chic Choc itself, I love fashion. I always have. It’s such a delight to see a woman come in the door and contemplate what would make her look dazzling. Sometimes it’s more than clothes, a new hairdo or something to do with cosmetics.”
