Hunting Houses Page 10

  I was rehearsing for the end-of-term recital that I harboured such great hopes for, categorically refusing to settle for less. I would sing Beim Schlafengehen, one of Strauss’s last lieder, a superb, well-known piece that I was sure to screw up. Hadn’t I gauged how thin my voice was when I tried it out in class? My soprano register, devoid of any vibrato, was really only good enough for medieval madrigals. But I stuck to my decision. I would be lyrical or nothing at all. Rehearsals, laborious and steeped in discomfort, got me nowhere. The morning of the recital, I woke up exhausted after a restless night’s sleep peopled with dreams of Francis and Étienne, my departed, my despair, swimming together in a summer’s lake, shouting, Great water for the dead! Come give it a try! I stuck to the shore, yelling at Francis that he wasn’t even dead yet and that there was no worse half-assed excuse, decamping from life just to get away from a girl, goddamn coward, but no words left my lips, my head felt woolly and my eyelids heavy and, when I next opened my eyes, I realized that Étienne had disappeared beneath the water, I had spent so long focused on Francis that Étienne had slipped away once again. When I awoke, the pain was so sharp my first thought was, Someone’s cut off my arm. I was wracked by sobs, thirty-five minutes of bawling, then the alarm clock brought me back to my senses. I would be lyrical or nothing at all. The command followed me into the washroom where I sought refuge a few minutes before my turn came up, perspiring profusely despite the snow outside, convinced I was making the worst mistake of my life and that this last humiliation in the series I’d endured since I dared to show any ambition would be the one to finally do me in. I stumbled in the hall outside the washroom, my legs gave way, they knew what was coming, I was too big a coward to make my escape, then a pair of arms caught me in extremis before I hit the floor. Arms hugged me tight, You are here, you are alive, you are here, and, in surrendering, all I could say was that I needed to get outside, it was a matter of life or death, and the arms acquiesced, Yes, out we go, I’m here with you. At one point, I managed to look up at the face speaking those words, squinting the way one does to distinguish between sea and sky, You’re in the master’s program, you play trombone. “My name’s Jim, keep going, Tessa,” and when the cold December air bit into me as we stepped outside, I was surprised to hear that Jim knew my name.

  In a flash of lucidity, I understood I would not be lyrical. But then, what would I be?

  One night, my mother came to pick up Philémon and me, and we went for a drive to lull him to sleep. Summer had given way to fall, and at night the ground froze over. Concerts kept Jim out of town in Quebec City; it was the first time he hadn’t been home since Philémon’s birth. I adapted with delight. One day followed another, each deliciously repetitive, on top of which, I was so busy. I had to feed Philémon, rock him to sleep, change him, take him out for fresh air, feed him again, bathe him, and rock him to sleep. We needed no words and our silence was a thread uniting us.

  On the third day, Philémon refused to sleep and his cries rang out in the apartment for two whole hours. We’d soon discovered that long car rides, preferably down an open road, were extremely effective. The ribbon of asphalt, the predictable pace, the familiar lights, and our confinement all served to calm both me and him. But Jim had taken the car, and the fierce resolve I’d exhibited in caring for Philémon alone (Wasn’t my role paramount, supplanting all other issues?) suddenly weakened. I called my mother.

  She arrived twenty minutes later. Philémon wailed as we put him in his car seat. His cries morphed into hiccups of despair. His forehead had turned a purplish red, except for an orb of flesh about the size of a nickel that stayed white even in the throes of anger, as though the spot had been blessed.

  We took the road up the mountain where it was easier to drive without having to stop for traffic lights. In twenty minutes, it would be midnight. Philémon stopped crying almost immediately. “Do you want to go home?” my mother asked. “You must be exhausted.” She seemed wide awake, as though her day had just begun. I was rocked by the car’s motion, and a lilting rain sprinkled the windows. “Better to wait a bit longer, let him drift off for good.” Philémon was sound asleep; I knew his slightest breath by heart and the slow, low rumbling, surprising coming from such a small resonance chamber, didn’t lie. But Paule’s hands guided the steering wheel with, yes, that’s what it was, hope, and the rain falling over the city, the Mount Royal cemetery appearing through the window, gave permission to be both accompanied and silent. “Let’s drive a bit longer.” She radiated joy. I settled back in my seat, laid my head against the headrest and closed my eyes. Where was Francis tonight? What was he doing? At the top of the mountain sat a girl whose bed he’d shared five years earlier, a girl no longer a girl but a mother, her shredded heart slowly beginning to beat again for a man other than him, and she was grateful. Did he know she was loved?

  Would it have changed anything?

  With the first snowfall came shorter afternoons. Philémon’s life took on the shape of the ordinary. Night was night, day was day, and his presence felt like a foreign city where you’d lived just long enough to know where to go to buy bread. Sophie, who I’d met up with on Laurier for an omelette and a walk with Philémon, was planning a trip to Thailand and quickly reassured me that Nathan, whom she’d just met and with whom she meant to travel, was reliable. This ritual dated back to the days when Sophie would head out on a whim, either by bus or hitchhiking, for adventure-filled weekends, sometimes with a guy she was interested in, sometimes with a girlfriend more game than me, and she would ask me to cover for her with her parents. She’d tell them she was invited over to a friend’s cottage (usually Élise’s or Marie-Joëlle’s, or Jeanne’s, whose hippyish parents never called other parents to inquire about their offspring), careful to point out that, given the rustic location, there’d be no phone or electricity. I was the only one who knew that she was actually headed to the bus terminal where she’d pick a destination at random. (Kingston, Ontario. Kingston, like in Bob Marley’s songs! Let me tell you, Tessa, it was no Jamaica). I made her promise to call every day, tell me where she was sleeping and with whom. If she didn’t come back as planned, it was up to me to fly to her rescue. As a bonus, I liked the bravado I felt by proxy without having to leave the comfort of Mozart’s Requiem score that I had to learn for the next concert.

  Now that we were grown, Sophie no longer had to lie to her parents. But the habit remained.

  “Didn’t Nathan give you shit the other night for not calling when you were supposed to call?”

  “Everyone gives me shit for that.”

  “Not me.”

  “But you’re my friend.”

  “Shouldn’t the guy you’re sleeping with be your friend too?”

  “Okay. It may not be ideal.”

  “You have no business flying to the other side of the world with someone who’s going to blow a fuse whenever you show an interest in something other than him.”

  “He’s not like that.”

  “He’s a little like that. Write in code if you think he’s reading your emails.”

  “I should have met up with you closer to your place. It’ll take you an hour to walk home pushing that stroller.”

  “It puts the baby to sleep, no worries. I could make a career out of it. Baby walker. There must be a market, mustn’t there?”

  “You can make a career out of whatever you want, my friend.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Back at you.”

  Evening was upon us and it felt good to be surrounded by men rushing home from work and women shivering in high heels. At this time of day, any other strollers I saw were returning from daycare. Tired-­looking mothers shoved half-croissants into their screaming toddlers’ pudgy fingers to take the edge off their hunger or maybe just to shut them up. I knew that my pace and the absence of a briefcase gave me away. That one’s still on maternity leave. They didn’t know that I’d dropped out of university
just three months before my degree to sell books on Côte-des-Neiges for two years before I got pregnant and that my leave was, in fact, dragging on. I wondered what would happen if I decided to stay on maternity leave forever, whether the stroller would become a scooter, then a bicycle, and whether the woman the windows reflected back at me would always walk at the same leisurely pace. Who would care?

  It was the blessed hour when lights go on in houses and curtains have not yet been drawn. I could walk the streets around our house — the nap could last a bit longer, I didn’t want to go home yet, Jim would be at rehearsals until late this evening — and spy on other people’s lives. Here a living room with an old kitschy chandelier and one whole wall made of bookcases. There a motley arrangement of two beds squeezed into a child’s tiny bedroom. A bright ceiling light, dimmerless, illuminating a set of sofas in burnt orange velvet. And TVs. Lots of TVs, a chain of blue-tinted, flickering living rooms facing screens broadcasting the news or a game show. Private disasters and empty shells, mired in conformity. Taking the alley to the back door, my eyes met those of a young teen. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen, and her eyes gazed outward just as mine had shifted inward. I thought, I know them all.

  At that moment, there was nothing more I needed.

  Lenny

  “Are we still on for tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “You’re going to a party, no?”

  “Oh. Yes. A party. Charles’s fortieth.”

  “When would you like me to be there?”

  “Tomorrow, Charles’s fortieth.”

  “What?”

  “Saturday, tomorrow.”

  “Could you quit mumbling? You know how hard of hearing your old mother is.”

  “Yes, uh. Yes. Let’s say six. Six o’clock, how does that sound? You could come earlier too.”

  “If I come earlier, I could look after dinner.”

  “That’s not your job, you know.”

  “Look, I don’t mind making supper for my grandsons. I can make them fries, they like fries.”

  “That’s true.”

  “But if you’d rather have me come later…”

  “No. Let’s say five. Let me.”

  “Is your deep fryer still broken?”

  “It wasn’t broken. It was just dirty.”

  “No need to bring mine then?”

  “No, no need.”

  “Do you have any canola oil?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s gone bad.”

  “You think everything’s gone bad.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “I’ll bring mine. I just bought it. It hasn’t gone bad.”

  “I believe you.”

  “You can smell it if you like.”

  “I said I believe you.”

  “I’ll make them some fish too. They don’t eat enough fish.”

  “I make fish at least once a week.”

  “Not enough white fish. You only make salmon.”

  “Let me get back to you to confirm.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll confirm it with you on Saturday morning. Jim’s been getting migraines lately. He might cancel.”

  “I could come anyway. Especially if he’s getting migraines. That way he can rest.”

  “We’ll see. We’ll see.”

  “You sound strange. Are you talking and driving at the same time?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m hanging up.”

  “I’m hands free, Mom.”

  “I’m still going to hang up. Was there anything else you wanted to tell me?”

  For a fraction of a second, I think of telling her everything. Mom, I’m going to see my old boyfriend, no, boyfriend may be too strong a word, more like a glorified lover. I’m to meet him out in front of Lenny’s at half past twelve, then I’ll follow him downtown, most likely to a hotel room, at first I thought we’d do it in the car, but then I remembered we’re grown-ups now, he’ll soon be forty-five. Forty-five-year-olds don’t get it on in cars, they pay for a hotel room and wash their hands after peeing, so I’ll follow him to a hotel room, like the love that’s followed me and inhabited me and defined me for so long — yes, Mom, it defined me, even though I never told you about him and you don’t know either his name or his face, but you can’t hold it against me, did you tell that kind of stuff to your mother? No, just what I thought, it’s much too fragile and precious to be brought up between the main course and dessert, but believe you me, being possessed this way, I may very well never come back from this love affair. I’ll throw myself headlong beneath those sheets with him, only to emerge weeks later or perhaps never, because why leave the bed of a man you’ve spent so long waiting for? Not to take people out to visit a few houses, right, Mom? In other words, you won’t be babysitting this Saturday because I won’t be there anymore and Jim won’t feel like going out, although, come to think of it, he might need to go on a bender, screw the first woman he meets, down one shooter after another, who knows, you’ll probably babysit the kids after all, just let me get back and confirm.

  “No, that’s all.”

  “Okay. Have a good day then.”

  “You too.”

  Have a good day — those were my words to Philémon and Boris this morning as I watched them step onto the school bus. Boris has soccer today; he was thrilled. He loves to swim, run, climb. He won’t need me much longer. I could see the boys’ profiles backlit by the sun; they’d found their seats on the bus and exchanged manly handshakes with their friends. I gave a discreet wave. For the last time before.

  It’s a glorious day out, a day for snow to melt, for leather and leafbuds, a day for undressing with the window wide open. Oscar whistled as he trotted to daycare, his neck curved just like Jim’s, my three boys are carbon copies of their father, and he giggled at the sight of his friends — Édouard, Milos, Nana, the ones he sees every day, yet his joy never wavers; he has also inherited Jim’s unfailing love. Have a good day, I told Jim, he kissed me again, a long, insistent kiss, and if I hadn’t already known that he lavishes affection as freely as newspapers are handed out at subway entrances, I would have thought, He knows.

  Everything’s normal, I keep telling myself. Everything’s normal, but soon it won’t be.

  Guylaine is happy. She can’t figure out why I’m offering her a listing on a silver platter.

  “Oh my God, West Ahuntsic, that’s magic, houses are kept up around there, they bring in great clients, people who know the real value of things ’cause there’s all kinds of rich people who buy McManors across the river, but West Ahuntsic is somethin’ else again, it’s people with taste who look to live there. D’you mind if I fiddle with the listing description?”

  I told Guylaine that I was getting rid of certain listings because I wanted a relaxing summer, my last one before my eldest heads off to secondary school, and we wanted to go on tour with Jim. Guylaine believed me. She has a twenty-two-year-old daughter and they’re super close (regular trips to the spa, clothes swapping, and double-dates with their boyfriends). My feeling is that she’s found a friend in her daughter more than anything else. My tribe both alarms her and elicits her admiration. She makes a big deal about all the sacrifices I’ve made. Oh! You’re such a good mom, Tessa. I don’t contradict her since it comes in handy when I want to skip some evening reception or pass off a compromising listing in West Ahuntsic.

  I don’t go into the office very often. Even though I manage to collect juicy anecdotes there for Jim about Agostino’s conquests or Jacques’s body odour (spaghetti sweat à la Eau Sauvage), the fact is that with its soundproof panels, harsh lighting, and dismally patterned carpets, the place feels like my tomb. Even though I’m a realtor, I don’t need a daily reminder.

  Today the office seems different. It’s as though the windows, which can’t be opened for lo
ve or money, have let spring air into the cubicles, and several times I ask Voula, the receptionist, if someone’s changed the lighting. “No, it’s just a gorgeous day.” This gorgeous day brimming with the promise of my secret rendezvous suddenly makes me want to buy everyone flowers. Don’t they deserve something, these hardworking co-workers, with their silk ties and synthetic jackets, reasonably heeled shoes and layered haircuts? After concerts, soloists are buried in flowers. From time to time, Jim brings home a bouquet left behind by an overladen diva. But the soloists sang to hundreds of already charmed people, experienced the incomparable pleasure of hearing their voices reverberate within the confines of a rapt room, sent notes soaring on the exquisite, textured layers produced by their supporting musicians, so they had already received both the best and the most. Why offer them flowers too? Flowers are for realtors and their receptionists holed away in some franchise’s wan offices, people who elicit distrust and are loved by no one really. They have it easy, they rake in the big bucks — that’s true at times, but doesn’t make the work any less burdensome.