Hunting Houses Read online

  If I have time before noon, I’ll go to Beaubien to buy tulips. I’ll place one bunch on Voula’s desk and another in the shared kitchen. An appeasement of sorts, a consolation prize for those whose lives won’t change today or tomorrow or next year. My way of telling them, You don’t have my courage, but even cowards should be entitled to things of beauty.

  It’s eleven thirty when I set foot in the house again. I ruled out wearing my star-motif dress first thing in the morning. Not that Jim would have been suspicious. He’d have thought it looked beautiful or rather he’d have thought I looked beautiful, me in my dress, and said, Oscar, look at how beautiful Mom is. Oscar would have given a Nutella-smeared smile and wrapped his arms around my neck; no way did I want to witness that display. So I followed my usual routine: no eye makeup, no curling my hair. A morning like any other when I did what I always do, got up, got dressed, ate, got ready, and said goodbye on the landing, in front of the school bus or the daycare worker.

  At half past eleven I return home — nothing unusual about that either, up to now my life is as it always has been and it doesn’t faze me, just the opposite in fact. I feel something akin to amusement at how conscious the gestures have become and, turning the key in the door, think, I’m saying my goodbyes. I do make sure that Jim has left though. Last night, just before sinking into a fitful sleep, he told me about the next day’s rehearsal and how the meeting afterwards hung over him; things could get ugly because of the announced cutbacks, he’d have to be the referee. Jim had a tough day at work ahead of him, and I urged him to get right to sleep so he’d be at his best. He dozed off, his hand on my thigh. I didn’t give a second thought to his worries. After all, I had the end of a world to get ready for. I am the one who has set out to hijack his plane and who locked the cockpit when the co-pilot stepped out to go to the washroom; I turn off the automatic pilot and let my desire or my despair decide what’s to come. I won’t look back, no matter how much the innocent beg.

  The star dress waits patiently in the closet. I pull on my black panties and bra, nothing exceptional — I’m not about to pretend I’m more than I am. I slip into my gold ballerina flats. I take care with my makeup, not overdoing it. The woman he knew has aged; it was only four days ago that we last saw each other, but today reunites us. I’ll not touch my hair. It does what it wants anyway and I don’t have enough time for the curling iron. In forty minutes, I’ll be outside Lenny’s with Francis, and the birds will sing the Pet Shop Boys version of “Always on My Mind” as they drape us in pink and blue spring ribbons once and for all.

  Before leaving, I stop in the kitchen and open the fridge. Bread, cheese, ham, mustard, a bit of leftover rice, some chicken, half a red cabbage. Enough to make croque-monsieurs, a soup, or coleslaw with. Or they can order in, if what’s here isn’t to their liking. At any rate, my eclipse is only temporary — I’ll return transformed, isn’t that what everyone says? You have to be happy to make others happy, you have to love yourself to be loved? The children’s mother will be transformed and they will say, Thank you, Mom, for transforming yourself, we are happy.

  Francis and I never really did visit Lenny’s. The night we ventured over, he was out. September had the same effect as that first night in June when Francis wore a fawning look. Truth be told, he’d had more to drink than usual. We’d downed a cheap bottle of wine in a restaurant a few blocks away and felt like drinking some more once we sat down on the park bench across from Lenny’s. Francis ran to the corner store, his unsteadiness tripping him up endearingly, only to return with something acidic and sweet, the kind of wine that, with one whiff, can bring on a migraine, but in those days, we drank it like water. It was a Friday, Saint-Laurent was teeming with crowds, and we enjoyed watching the cars and stores light up as the night advanced. No lights on at Lenny’s though.

  “Is this really it?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Any self-respecting girl from Montreal knows.”

  “Scorn suits you.”

  “Paternalism suits you.”

  Francis laughed, then popped the rim of the bottle in my mouth to shut me up. Wine dribbled down my chin, a few drops landing on my pale blue linen dress. The next day, the dress trailing on my bedroom floor ended up on a hanger, forgotten in the closet. I only found it again months later, after we broke up, the dried wine stains looking like blood from a wound, and I cried all night long.

  But back then, Francis and I sat staring at a stone house nestled between a triplex and an alley across from Parc du Portugal, and tried to guess which room went with which window.

  “That must be the living room there.”

  “Or his bedroom.”

  “I’m sure his bedroom doesn’t look out onto the street.”

  “Unless it’s up top.”

  “Do you think his children still have theirs?”

  “How old are they?”

  “I don’t know. Your age.”

  “‘Your age’? The claws are out.”

  “Ha, ha. Watch your blood pressure, Grandpa.”

  “At any rate. Lenny’s not one for going out.”

  “For years I’ve walked by his place as often as I could, but I’ve never seen him. I must have eaten eight hundred times at Bagel, Etc., hoping to cross paths with him. They say he goes to Beauty’s too. But I never saw him there either, nothing. Sophie and I made it our mission.”

  “What would you say to him if you did see him?”

  I shrugged. That’s not the point, I thought, surprised he hadn’t figured it out from the start. I didn’t explain. We drained the bottle and tottered back to my apartment where we made half-hearted, spark-free love. It was hot, we were drunk.

  Doubled up over my stained dress, what I remembered was a sublime, perfect evening and, at its core, the howling pain of being expelled from paradise.

  Today the stone house seems smaller but straighter. On the facing bench, two men wearing grey golf caps and windbreakers chat in Portugese. A coughing spell interrupts their conversation, but they soon pick up again where they’d left off.

  I shouldn’t call him Lenny. Over the phone on Tuesday, the expression sounded out of place, almost embarrassing to my ears. I don’t know the man, after all. And I’m past the age where I could be that brazen. As I sit on the steps to the pavilion in Portugal Park staring at the ceramic tilework, my eyes don’t know where to look, not at the street, if he comes he’ll see me searching him out and it’ll make me look like some crazy person, why didn’t I bring something to read, why did I want to be here before him, at the time it seemed like a good idea, a way of protecting myself, giving me time to stake out my territory: come if you dare, Francis, I’m here and I’m not afraid. It’s still ten minutes before the appointed hour and I consider walking around the block, no one will know, the two old Portugese men won’t say a word, what would they have to say to some matron in a dress made for summer? I tell myself to stand up, but my legs won’t obey. Blame it on the chilly weather — What were you thinking, stupid, going out without tights in April — or the shadow of an idea that has just popped into my head, as dark as it is clear, None of this makes any sense, whispering that this will solve nothing, that my star-motif dress is the height of absurdity and that no one, not even Francis, and even less so Lenny, can escape the inescapable. Then there he is, in the park, shading his eyes with his hand, any second now he’ll have spotted me, it’s too late to leave, but you wanted to come, you bought a dress, what were you expecting, imbecile? and now he’s approaching with the smile of the little boy he used to be, and all else vanishes — my certainties and fears, the park that’s nothing but a square, the old Portugese men, the ceramic tilework, and Leonard Cohen’s lovely stone house.

  I’m freezing all of a sudden. My perforated flats let air in between my toes, and I’m still as cold even after I button my coat and raise the collar. As for Francis, he
came in his winter clothes. He’s wearing a teal padded jacket, his look halfway between a CEO on holiday and a comely horticulturist in uniform. He has forgotten neither his gloves nor his scarf. Jim always forgets his scarf. I realize that this failing of his fills me with pride; I must be more twisted than I’m ready to admit. I set my purse on my lap to create another barrier between the wind and me.

  “You could see the cold snap coming.”

  It’s all there, the glint in his eye, the ironic lilt to his voice: Francis teasing. But something in his words doesn’t bounce back, and I’m surprised at having to grope for an answer.

  “April showers bring May flowers.”

  That’s all I managed to come up with. And I said it out loud. April showers bring May flowers. Christ. Must be nerves. It will take time and liquor for my tongue to loosen up. Meanwhile we can talk about the weather, our only glue being increasingly vague memories of a past in each other’s arms.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

  “Me neither.”

  “But you did.”

  “You too.”

  “We both did.”

  “To Lenny’s house.”

  The expression still irritates me. Even my mother would have raised an eyebrow, Is that what the happy few call him? And I’d pull a face, No one says Lenny, Mom, but they don’t say happy few either.

  “He isn’t home, you know.”

  “Such is life.”

  Whatever happened to my gift for repartee? Where’s the witty banter that, just three days ago on his doorstep, welled up like water through the breach in a dike?

  “Should we go for a drink?”

  “Probably a good idea.”

  He suggests, I agree, disguising my nerves under a singsong tone. The two old Portugese men glance at us as we walk past their bench. I could flatter myself thinking they’re looking at my bare legs. But I could also tell myself these are far from the first they’ve seen, experts as they are in lovers’ trysts in Portugal Park. They can already tell that ours will end in a catastrophe. You could tell by the way the gentleman leaned away from her, one will say in Portugese. More by the way the lady looped a strand of hair behind her ear, like a child fiddling to relieve her boredom, the other will say, in Portugese as well.

  I haven’t come here for years. I don’t often go to bars anyway, but the ones I do go to tend to not let customers drop peanut shells on the floor, whereas this establishment has maintained, from day one, the right for people to do just that, while insisting on serving nothing but beer, cheap and strong. It’s a bar, what do you expect? I don’t know, but as I sit down by the window (wouldn’t it have been better to sit discreetly at the back by the pool tables like the lovers we would soon be?), I’m surprised to notice that, despite the envy I’d felt catching sight of its idle clientele as I drove by on my way from one appointment to another, from daycare to school or from the liquor store to the butcher’s, the bar no longer evokes the least bit of excitement. The black paint on the walls doesn’t hide their age or disrepair. The scattered patrons sit hunched over, their conversations banal.

  “I spent one evening here.”

  “Only one.”

  “I mean, a memorable one. Didn’t I ever tell you?”

  Francis has his eye out for the waiter, who has his back to us and is busy shelving bottles of beer. “Want me to order at the bar?” Francis sounds confident, almost eager, his hands already on the table ready to push him to his feet.

  “He’ll see us eventually.” My tone is curt, like fingers snapping. I hadn’t meant it to come across as a reproach, seriously, I need a beer too, but the echo of my brusqueness hovers briefly between us. “I want to tell my story.”

  I give him my winning smile, a charmer’s trick I’ve basically never used on anyone other than Jim after a glass of bubbly. Today I refuse to be the bad guy. Francis inches forward on his chair, the furrows in his brow disappear. I’ve got him.

  “I was sixteen but looked twenty.”

  I have a sudden urge to add, Like today, I’m thirty-seven but I look forty, and not today’s forty but a 1960s forty. But that would break my enchantress spell, wouldn’t it?

  “You hung out in bars when you were sixteen?”

  “Everyone did, Francis. That’s not the interesting part.”

  He turns toward the bar again. The waiter still has his back to us.

  “I had a crush on a guy a lot older than me.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Twenty-four? Twenty-six?”

  “You were sixteen?”

  “That’s not the interesting part either.”

  “Oh, it isn’t?”

  “Are you sure I never told you the story?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  A picture comes to mind. Francis and I nestled in the bed I had as a young adult. It’s July, the air is thick and humid, I tell him the anecdote, laughing, he finds me adorable, and I dare add — in fact, that’s probably why I remember it — I find myself adorable, so nice to have a story to tell.

  “I met him at my father’s company Christmas party. He was the waiter. All I knew about him was his name and what he was studying. When I left to get my coat on my way out, he drew me into a corner of the cloakroom and kissed me open mouthed.”

  “Shit, that’s terrible.”

  “You mean wonderful. It was the kind of thrill I’d been waiting for since grade nine. I relived it for weeks afterwards. So much so that I set out to find him. I knew his university and faculty. I actually wrote to his professor, who was the department director, a very polite letter claiming that I was a distant relative of the fellow and I tucked another sealed letter into the envelope for him. I told him I wanted to see him again, even though he’d probably make fun of me, but I would regret it if I hadn’t at least tried. One month later, he called!”

  “He would have been crazy not to.”

  “He suggested we meet here, so I told my mom I had to study with Sophie at her house, and everything was set.”

  “Weren’t you afraid he’d be some kind of maniac?”

  “I was the maniac.”

  “What happened?”

  “Kurt Cobain had just died. Sophie and I wrote an article on his death for the school paper. You remember my friend Sophie, don’t you? A real tearjerker of an article, heartfelt, super awkward. I was so proud of it that I brought it with me to show him. ‘Kurt Cobain wrote “I love and feel sorry for people too much,” in the note he left for his wife Courtney Love. For our part, we promise to honour him by listening to his music for the rest of our lives.’”

  “You showed the guy the article for your high-school paper?”

  “I know. Not the best seduction ploy. All of a sudden, he felt really old and started casting nervous glances all around, panic stricken at the thought he might be arrested for statutory rape. A bit like you right now.”

  “Me? I’m not glancing around. Other than at the waiter who’s ignoring us.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What, hmm?”

  “Hmm.”

  “You women don’t play fair. You say you’re all for communication but love nothing more than a bit of mystery.”

  “I’ll go order. You want a beer?”

  You women. You women this. You women that. Walking over to the deserted bar, I try to think of a retort to the sweeping statement Francis just made. Back in the day, I’d have had no trouble countering him, stirring the pot, making him laugh with my unerring gift for repartee. The game is part of who we are. So why don’t wisecracks come to me anymore? We women thank you for your remark. We women thank you men for this remark that fosters an evolution in gender relationships. I will call UQAM’s chair for feminist studies at once so we can hold a colloquium on the groundbreaking discovery. Why not? Why jump up to order something at the bar instead? Coul
d I — the very question breaks my heart — be bored?

  What’s weird is that I’ve been having conversations with Francis in my head for the past fifteen years. He was present as I resolved many an inner conflict. I had only to call on him for my rapier-like wit to don its smartest sequin-studded suit and grab the mic. I imagined his laughter at my provocative tirades and his delight in the way I virtually tore into my opponents — the crazy driver on Highway 40, the gung-ho mother on the school foundation board, former friends who continued on as artists, whose star, despite their mediocrity, stubbornly refused to fade — I spared no one and my audience loved every minute of it. Francis told me so often how he loved my twisted mind. He and I against the sorry world peopled with sheep and sellouts, blah blah, blah blah. But those versions of us no longer exist.

  Isn’t it blindingly clear? Can this still be my heartthrob lover? His greying and, worse yet, straggly hair — actually, not so much straggly as downy, the tragicomedy of men as they age, who end up looking like ducklings for a while, as harmless as cotton candy — his altered hair, at any rate, and then the clothes, the same kind he went in for back then, but that now give him a sad air, this flesh-and-bones Francis, in short, what has he been doing in my fantasies? Isn’t he as ridiculous as me in my depressed, getting-on-in-years garb?

  Is he as painfully ashamed as I am?

  Aren’t we just a couple of sadsack clowns in a time-worn skit?

  “For your boyfriend it’s full price, for you it’s free.”

  With the light behind him, I have trouble seeing the barman at his till. Tall and thin, his delivery slow and playful. I frown. How lame.

  “Hi, Tessa.”

  I shift to the left to see him in the light. Anthony. That glistening, jumpy kid from my dad’s Camry has grown up — he’s closing in on thirty-five — and is now a head taller than me. His smile still harbours something of a child, and he still wears a baseball cap pulled down low on his brow, but an outsider looking in would make no mistake: these two who have just recognized each other have both left their younger years behind.