I'le Dor, page 23
“Only Libby married a stranger,” he said, as Libby nodded in answer to Mme. Dion’s question.
“The maverick in the family,” Libby said with a wry smile. “Something I was always proud of until my life turned into a disaster.”
“A disaster,” Madame Dion said. “Oh, non. Or you wouldn’t be here now. Looking for les racines. I think the English word is roots, isn’t it? Finding people here after all these years who care about you.”
“La vie,” Lucien said. “You never know.”
“There’s more coffee,” Mme Dion said.
She reached for the coffee pot and poured the steaming brew into their cups, gesturing at the same time at a plate of brown sugar tarts made with nuts and currants. Lucien instead took a slice of chocolate cake from the edge of the plate.
It was almost eleven when they stopped talking. Every so often, Mme. Dion sighed and Libby bit her lip as she followed the older woman’s eyes that would linger on a photograph of Guy or his trophy of antlers, something that reminded her of him and stopped her in mid-sentence.
When they said good night to Mme. Dion, they drove through town to the highway out to the lake. Lucien pointed toward a couple coming out of The Flamingo.
“Look,” he said. “Michelle.”
“Who’s the man?” Libby asked, thinking he looked vaguely familiar.
“I think we talked about the coincidence of Nick Petranovich being in town at the same time as you, didn’t we?”
“Oh, yes, Nick Petranovich. Practically a relative,” she said. “Of course. Why don’t we stop and say hello?”
As Lucien honked and waved at them, Michelle waved back. He rolled down his window and pulled up closer to the sidewalk. “Now, here’s a strange thing,” he said. “A reunion. Do you folks have time for a coffee? Or a drink?”
“Hey, Libby,” Nick said as he leaned over and spoke across Lucien. “What a surprise! It’s been a while. And you haven’t changed a bit.”
“Gee, thanks Nick,” she said. “It’s great to see you, too.” It was strange that she hadn’t seen him since his sister married her brother. Maybe he had as little contact with Jeannie as she had with Wally.
“Are you still living in Toronto?” Nick asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I am. What about you?”
“That’s still where I live, too. Crazy world that I never run into you there and here we are in Ile d’Or at the same time.”
Michelle looked at her watch. “It’s late. What about a rain check?” she asked.
“Michelle’s daughter arrived in town more or less unexpectedly,” Nick said. “I’m taking her home early so they can continue their visit.”
Lucien took Nick’s local number and said he’d plan something. “It will have to be before either you or Libby leave.”
As Lucien headed out of town on the highway to the lake, he drove with one hand on the wheel, his other elbow resting on the windowsill. There were two bags of food on the back seat, bread his mother had baked along with the remaining cold meats, half a chocolate cake, a few tarts, and a bag of carrots.
“I drove out to that creek where Guy and I used to swim,” Libby said. “You know the one down the road from an old mine site, near the shacks.”
“You have to be careful, Libby. It’s not like it used to be.”
She wasn’t sure what he might be referring to, but she didn’t ask, not wanting to hear of men who might jump out of bushes or come along in rickety trucks and scoop up lone women wandering in the bush. When they arrived at the cabin, he fell asleep quickly while Libby sat at the window staring out at the trees and the sky. Mme. Dion had showered them with warmth and food at the same time as she was suffering Guy’s descent into the booze and finally into taking his own life. She heard Lucien flailing in his sleep and then shout loudly. When she went to the door of the bedroom to check on him, he was punching his pillow hard.
“Maudit,” he said. And something about a goddamned tramp. Who the hell did she think she was? He would kill her.
“Lucien,” Libby said. “Lucien.”
“Q’est-qu’il y a?” he said. What is it? He rolled over and stared at her. His eyes were wide open, but she could tell he was still asleep.
“Lucien,” she murmured. “You’re dreaming.”
“Shut up,” he said.
Libby shook his shoulders until he sat up and looked at her. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Lucien, I’m Libby. Elizabeth Muir. Don’t you remember?” She was suddenly frightened.
Oh, yes, he remembered. “The one who was supposed to marry Guy and didn’t. The bitch. I’d still have a brother if it hadn’t been for you. It’s all your fault,” he said. “Maudite anglaise.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Guy.”
“What about Guy?”
“He went nuts later,” he said. “He never would have if it hadn’t been for you. He joined the FLQ. He went around flashing. He wasn’t the same.”
“It’s not my fault what your brother did with his life,” Libby shouted. “That’s garbage. Sheer, utter garbage.” Libby was stunned, and angry. What was happening to him?
Lucien shook his head. “What did I say?” he asked, his voice concerned. He was confused. He’d suddenly recognized where he was, in the cabin. Everything else had been part of his nightmare.
“Guy was in the FLQ. He…” Libby tried to explain. She was still shaking.
“I dreamed it,” Lucien said. “There was some bitch with a gun to Guy’s head. They were going to bomb something. She wore yellow. She spoke English. Oh, calice. I can’t stand many more of these dreams.” He put his head in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve had a dream like this before. I’m sorry if I frightened you.”
“It was a nightmare,” Libby said. “I know about nightmares.”
“Oh mon Dieu,” he sighed. “What am I going to do?”
“I’ll make some tea,” she said. “No, I’ll heat up some milk. That would be better.”
“Guy was just a drunk in the end,” he said. “He had no politics. No vision.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Whether you believe it or not, that’s how it was,” Lucien said.
An hour later, when he was snoring, Libby sat at the window watching the dark branches of trees and stars against the sky. It was almost dawn before she fell asleep on the couch.
When Lucien woke up, he could scarcely look at her. “I’m sorry about last night,” he said.
“It was a dream,” she said. “Dreams happen.”
“I’m still sorry.”
“Okay,” she sighed. “It was pretty scary. Do you mind if I ask you not to stay here tonight?”
“Je comprends,” he said.
“If I want to say hello, I’ll come over. But I may not until tomorrow,” Libby added. The prospect of listening to the noises of animals in the dark no longer bothered her.
“Do you want the car?” he asked.
“I’m not going anywhere today,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow. Or the next day.”
“Comme tu veux.” As you wish.
46.
WHEN THE NOISE of the car engine faded, Libby lay down on the couch and fell asleep. It was noon when she woke up feeling peckish. After eating some of the leftovers from the previous evening’s bounty, she went outside for the first time that day. Walking along a trail in front of the cabins, she threw some pebbles out onto the ice. Then stopped to look at some of the places that were shut for the winter. She listened to the crunch of her boots on the frozen ground and watched her breath turn white. She was glad she had come. The geography of the north was so ingrained in her that she’d needed to satisfy the hunger to return.
Libby wondered what it was that also bound her to Toronto. It was une grande ville, no doubt about that, but she had never planned to live her life out in a city. As she came around a bend in the path, she almost ran into a tall man in a red jacket. His back to her, he stood looking out over the lake. When he heard her gasp, he turned around.
“Bonjour,” he said. It was Jacques Paquin. “I took the day off,” he said. “And I had a call from my father. I was going to come and see you, but I thought I might be intruding.”
“Well, here I am,” Libby said.
“I told Papa you were here, that you’re staying in Guy’s cabin. He said he has to come up this way to look over one of the mines. It’s out near the river on the way to the Ontario border. He asked me to see if you’d have dinner with him.”
“I’d like to.”
“Can I pick you up when he’s here, next Monday, after work? He won’t want to come to the cabin.”
The thought that her time might be entirely filled sometimes made Libby feel claustrophobic. It might interfere with the work she needed to do while in this place. Drawings and paintings that would recapture something she’d lost. But she’d learned that one of the baffling aspects of making art was that everything that appeared to be in the way later became essential. This invitation was like that, she thought. Not that there had been any doubt about her accepting it, just the sense of time collapsing on her again, not leaving space for reverie. Yet, she felt that in seeing Paul there might be something she would understand that could lead to new beginnings. Sometimes, that new inspiration took a long time to come. She’d thought that when she was finished with her Paris series, some new clarity would emerge. It hadn’t.
“Of course,” she said. Bien sur.
“So,” Jacques said. “That’s settled. Six o’clock?” He turned toward a cabin she had not noticed as she came upon him on the path. “Our family’s place.”
“Je me souviens.” Yes, she remembered well a loose screen on the Paquin cabin’s front porch. She’d removed it once to crawl through and step down onto a bench underneath the window. She had not known what she was looking for or whether she was doing it simply because she knew she should not. There was no one at the lake that day except herself and Guy, and Guy had gone off to fish in the river. He was annoyed that she had not wanted to go with him.
“Paul would have come,” he said disparagingly as he paddled away from the shore.
“He’s not here,” she said. “I don’t feel like it, Guy. Not today.”
So there she was, in the Paquin’s cabin. But aside from a room filled with bright colours that her mother probably would not even have imagined using together, there was nothing else remarkable. She left hurriedly by the same window when she realized what she was doing. She had walked into someone’s cabin as if it belonged to her. Not a thief, but the closest thing to it.
When Guy came back, he showed her the trout he had caught before he started to clean and fillet it. Libby could not stand the sight of blood and had even fainted once when she watched the doctor give Wally a needle. When Guy came inside, he said he would light the wood stove and cook the fish before her father came to take her back to town.
“It’ll be my mother,” she said.
They were fifteen by then and often lay down together, but they never took their clothes off.
“You want to come in,” Jacques said now.
“Thanks,” she said. “I just woke up. I need to get some exercise. Je vais te voir lundi prochâine, n’est-ce pas?” I’ll see you next Monday, won’t I?
“Mais oui.”
Continuing along the shore just above the rocks at the edge of the water, she stopped from time to time to look at the frozen lake, scrunching up her eyes as she tried to figure out how to paint the vibrant mauves and yellows of winter ice and snow. The greys and blues. The miracle of what shone through what appeared on first sight to be pure white. When she returned an hour later, Jacques was gone, the silence broken only by branches shifting and cracking in a slight breeze.
Inside the cabin, she spread her pencils out on a table at the window and looked through her sketchbook. As she began to sketch, she was unaware of anything but the lines on the paper and the images appearing as she drew. When she finally glanced at her watch, it was almost dark. On the page in front of her was an almost finished drawing of a horse, emerging from earth and water. The juxtaposition of a horse bursting forth in what had begun as a landscape painting of the cabin and the lake in the colours of winter seemed incongruous. Yet at the same time it felt just right to her. In her imagination, all these images belonged together. She could as easily incorporate the Eiffel Tower. A mine shaft. The fleur-de-lys. Maybe even the Union Jack. It had flown on the flagpole in their front yard when her father returned from overseas. It had no place anywhere in Canada now except as a relic.
Libby stood up, hips and legs aching, and started to do some stretches. With her body at an angle, she noticed again the notebook where she had found some of Guy’s notes. Opening it at random, she noticed that for the most part it had been written in years earlier. But there was one entry dated the previous year, one entry that must have been written not long before Guy died. He wrote about how lonely he was, that he had ruined his life, that he should have been a better father. He was sorry about the drinking. About the fight with Paul. He wanted to apologize to everyone he’d hurt. He hadn’t meant anyone any harm. Especially not his children. His handwriting was difficult to decipher and she had to translate the French into English. Toward the end he wrote that he was going to a hotel room where he would spend his last night.
So he knew, Libby thought. He planned it.
But he didn’t know when someone would find him. He didn’t know it would take a while and that he would no longer be recognizable.
47.
AS NICK WALKED out of the converted bunkhouse, he shivered in the chill air. Everything was transformed sooner or later in these mining towns, he thought, ultimately falling into disrepair when the resource ran out. Searching for something he recognized in the clear starlit sky, the Big Dipper, the North star, he pulled up the zipper of his jacket, pulling the collar up around his neck.
Surprised to find the main street empty, he looked at his watch. It was well past midnight. What did he expect? If no sounds disturbed the silence, soon enough the blasting would do that. In this moment, he was pleased not to hear the screech of a distant siren or streetcar. Or the throbbing drone of cars and trucks on the 401 in the distance from his house in Toronto. It didn’t matter that he lived on a ravine miles from the highway. At night, lying in bed, he could always hear the underlying hum of traffic.
He found a bar that was open just beyond St. Luc’s. It was almost empty except for two men at a table in the corner, a woman slouched precariously on a stool at the end of the bar, and the bartender with his sleeves rolled up so that the dark hair on his arms showed.
“A beer,” Nick said, leaning on the counter. “Draft.”
He was aware of the woman at the other end of the bar making a gurgling sound and he turned to look at her. Her dyed reddish hair looked greasy and unkempt. Turning away, he took out a ten-dollar bill from the recesses of his wallet. One beer and he would return to his room and fall into bed, ready to sleep for a few hours. What he was doing back in Ile D’Or was still a mystery to him. He felt as though he were following a script that he might understand later. He had never imagined that he would come here and meet people he’d known in his childhood. He hadn’t considered the possibility that anyone he knew would still be here. Even when a mining town survived, you wouldn’t necessarily expect that. People went to other jobs in other mines and their children followed opportunities across the continent. Even in other countries. Meeting Michelle, and Lucien, then Libby, gave him a chance to do something more than just reclaim a sense of that earlier community. He hoped Lucien would arrange a get-together.
A party at The Flamingo, Nick thought. Coincidence, fate, or whatever it was that had created these unlikely circumstances, ought to be honoured. Michelle, Libby, Lucien. It seemed incredible. A girl he’d kissed at a dance once. The hockey player he had tried hardest to beat in scrimmages on the ice. The daughter of the woman who had been consistently kind to him as a youngster. His sister married her brother. And Libby had moved to Toronto, too. It was odd that he hadn’t run into her there long before, that he would have to come to Ile d’Or to see her again.
His motives might be questionable. Perhaps he wanted to see what would happen when all these people were in the same room with whatever raw edges still survived. Maybe he was just gathering fodder for his novel, doing what he’d seen patients who were artists do, steal material, use people ruthlessly. And he’d encouraged them.
“That’s the role of an artist or writer,” he’d said.
To take what he or she needs for purposes of creation, to develop images and symbols for a society. For a culture. How arrogant he was after all. But this was an opportunity that his practise didn’t afford him. He couldn’t use any of that material, which had client privilege, and he a professional with a grave responsibility. It was too much sometimes. He would explode if he had to contain everything. Or was it only his own life he couldn’t deal with? Texas. Imagine. The woman who had always maintained her love of Montreal, living in a place like Texas. What a hypocrite Marie was. Or was he, Nick, the hypocrite, still trying to come to terms with what had eventually happened to his father? Roman’s lungs coated with silicone dust. His painful death when Nick was in his early twenties. Why hadn’t some doctor diagnosed Roman’s condition and told him to stop working underground? Or recommended him for compensation? He began to feel there was no moral high ground in this town. Or maybe his father who had worked blasting out the gold underground, knowing too well the dangers, could claim it. The father who had been exploited, the father who had beaten his son. Each of the people he’d encountered in Ile d’Or had a different experience of growing up on this frontier and likely a differing perspective. Maybe all they could do as children of this place was to go on trying to deal with the paradoxes. But he really didn’t think he wanted to write a novel about it.
