Hunting Houses Read online

  “Anthony. It’s been a long time.”

  “Our parents broke up the day I turned fourteen. Going on twenty-one years ago.”

  “I forgot it happened on your birthday. That’s awful.”

  “Yes, it wasn’t that classy a move on your dad’s part.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “He did remember to buy chips for my party. Then my mom tried to make it better by tripling the number of presents I got. It wasn’t all bad.”

  Anthony flashes a glimpse of his teeth. He’s bitter now, like us all.

  “What would you like?”

  “Two beers, thanks.”

  “I heard about your brother.”

  “Yes.”

  He pulls out two bottles of lager, Dutch or Belgian, it doesn’t matter to either of us. I didn’t think to ask Francis what he wanted.

  “I saw your name up on a sign.”

  “Ha. Yes. Famous me.”

  “I’m happy for you.”

  “How are you doing?”

  He tells me about his little family, pulls out his cellphone to show me pictures — a boy a girl a woman to love, karate and ballet lessons, plans to move to the south shore, holidays up north. Anthony is happy. I tell him about my boys, the science fair, life in Villeray, Jim’s orchestra, my parents who are doing well, thanks. Back at the table, Francis’s phone is keeping him busy. Anthony holds the beer out to me, won’t hear of me paying. I insist; so does he. Both of us know the conversation is languishing and that it’s best to stop here. I take the beer.

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  Anthony holds my gaze an instant. I don’t leave quite yet, just back up a step, a passenger steadying herself as the bus hits the brakes. Do I think he has something to teach me? That he can reveal what he saw looking at me seated at a table in my girly dress with a man who’s not my husband on a Friday afternoon in the spring? Of course, Anthony hasn’t seen me for twenty years — maybe he thinks I wear star dresses every day and maybe he sees what I see in the mirror: a bellyaching kid who’s grown older. Maybe he’s already in a hurry to get home and tell his wife, Remember that little brat I told you about, her dad Yves is the guy my mom lived with in the nineties, that girl who spent the whole summer holiday in ’93 trying to humiliate me and then bitched about my mom’s presents? She turned up today in the bar dressed like a piñata and sat with a man who couldn’t stop looking at his watch. Maybe there is some justice after all.

  “Let me know if you need anything.”

  That’s all he says. No spite, no scorn in his voice, no clue that might make me think he wishes me ill, Let me know, that’s all. He even smiles, a generous something in his pupil. Don’t lose your way, is what he may be thinking. Your home is north after the underpass, after Little Italy, not far from Jarry Park. Take Saint-Laurent then keep on walking all the way home in a straight line, no big deal, you think that adventure lies around here? Adventure lies with your feet. Grab your coat, leave this place, start walking, pass Mont-Royal, Laurier, Bernard, Beaubien, Dante, pass De Castelnau, it’s straight ahead, Tessa.

  No, that’s me thinking.

  I bring the beer back to our table, give Francis his, we take a few sips, our tongues loosen somewhat, laughter rings out after all, and the game, the waltz, is okay. But that’s probably because I know that, within the hour, I’ll have said goodbye to Francis and started walking north. I know that for a fact, and I can hardly wait.

  He polishes off his beer in next to no time. Some nervous — or violent — edge has him drinking in great gulps, never setting his bottle down. I take long swigs, as though I’d just finished the traditional July move to a new place and expected nothing more from the day. I’m going to have to tell him, and I dread that moment. The same way I’d dread calling our neighbourhood school to announce that a select institution had accepted our child’s application and so he wouldn’t be back to class, sorry, goodbye. A brief stab of guilt followed by near indecent euphoria. Now that’s over and done with. I’m rid of the shadow that’s hung over me for a week, the ghost of misfortune to come, holding out some cursed parallel universe, but Francis and I live in the same universe, in the same city, and my life with him would only have been a variation on the life I have led up to now, what wouldn’t have changed is me, I’ll never escape myself. Although that thought may weigh me down enough to grasp at dresses and sentimental recollections, it no longer crushes me as much as having sought refuge in a rundown bar on Saint-Laurent Boulevard one Friday afternoon.

  Francis sets his bottle on the table just as I take my fourth swig.

  “Another round?”

  His question is hurried, his eyes searching for Anthony, who’s chatting with customers. I note his hands on the bottle. He has a boy’s short, slender fingers, smooth skin almost free of flaws. No freckles, no hair, no red patches from work or the weather. His hands fascinate me, hands of plaster. All of a sudden, I miss Jim and my need to see and touch him becomes acute, imperative.

  A little over a year ago, Boris tore open his knee jumping off the diving board during a school outing. The pain was so great he passed out in the water. Someone got him out right away, but he had to be transported to the hospital and for several hours — horrific, helpless hours — the fear of losing him had us paralyzed.

  Staff at the school managed to get through to Jim first. I was on an appointment, a deed of sale for an overpriced property on Gouin Boulevard. I checked my messages on my way out, and my fingers went numb the way they used to when I’d sit on my hands as a child then take them out again from under my thighs.

  Jim was waiting at the hospital. I kept looking for Boris everywhere and Jim had to hold me with both hands to stop me from turning in circles. He described the accident and then sat me down on a straight-backed chair in the hallway, went for some chocolate and, when I turned to look, I saw my mother at my side, her two hands clutching her purse, like a little old lady, My mother has shrunk. I don’t know who called her. Most likely Jim.

  I couldn’t bear thinking of possible scenarios. I focused on my mother’s hands, their lined veins, speckles of light brown, agile, not the slightest trembling, but nevertheless clutching her leather purse by the seam where the red dye had worn away from years of handling. She’d had the purse for a long time; maybe I gave it to her one Mother’s Day or birthday, Christmas, I didn’t remember, but a long time ago whenever it was; the purse was well-worn. I was seized by a sudden desire to grab it, empty its contents on the floor, throw it into the garbage can. Go buy a new purse, Mom. Your ghost purse weighs on me. One of her hands reached over to cover mine — I’d been rubbing the fabric of my pants endlessly — and her touch made me stop. “Boris is made to last. He’ll pull through.”

  When your mother tells you your son is made to last and that he’ll pull through, you don’t argue, you nod, you believe. But I wasn’t as sure that Boris was made to last. He had to be, I guess, to be the second child of such a sad woman, caught as he was in the vice between a stellar elder son and a sun-filled youngest, he had to be in order not to miss a single day of school. Of course, Boris had had the occasional cold, a wintertime fever or two, but I had never received that call from school. Ma’am? This is the secretary here. Your son isn’t feeling well. Your son threw up in the hall, the teacher thinks he’s running a temperature. Your son has a nasty cough. Could you come and pick him up? No, not Boris. Boris left his dirty clothes lying around everywhere, soaked in his young athlete’s sweat. He kept his Lego blocks for months on his bedside table. He was an expert on Marvel and DC Comics. He had a voracious, insatiable appetite. At the age of seven, he eats like a teenager. What will it be like when he’s fifteen? Secretive, an island unto himself, he would soon be eight, and it was with a feeling of absolute horror, as he lay in intensive care, that I realized I barely knew my son.

  “You know him better than anyone. You know he’ll pull
through.”

  Had she heard my thoughts? Paule patted my thigh, two or three weak taps, the way you absentmindedly caress the head of a child who’s been speaking for too long. I know absolutely nothing, Mom. I’ve been wrong so often. I know nothing of what it takes to raise children and keep them from dying. I don’t know what this life is I’m leading or why.

  Jim reappeared, holding the chocolate out to me, and hugged my mother. They spoke softly, as though I were sleeping or we were in church. Yet Sainte-Justine Hospital’s PA system showed no such decency; there was no sotto voce, no lilt to the squeal of cart wheels. No beauty worthy of silence. So I too spoke, loudly, “Why can’t we wait by his room?”

  Jim turned to me — my outburst gave them a start — with fury in his eye, a look I’d seen before on days I’d been unfair. “Because we’d disturb them. Because they’ve got a job to do. I’m not going to stop them from doing their job just as they’re saving my son’s life.”

  My mother took a deep breath then held it, a habit I’ve seen since childhood, a sort of backwards sigh, filling up with air then never letting it out, usually to my intense irritation, imprisoning me with her aborted breath. This time I followed suit, I swallowed Jim’s words and his stern short-lived tone, and just then, a physician arrived to take us to our son.

  The banality of our surroundings surprised me at first. I had spent the past few hours imagining a green, windowless, ceramic-tiled room, the way operating rooms used to be, and Boris lying on a hard, cold metal table, his small bare shoulders drained of all colour by the light of a too-harsh lamp. Instead the room had the same pink walls as the maternity wing and an almost inviting-looking bed placed by a window. Boris lay beneath several blankets, his head turned to face the outdoors. The sun was setting and the room was bathed in an orange-hued light and his hair looked red (it’s so short, I’d begged him to wear his hair long in all its copper splendour, but Boris hates having to brush hair off his face, since the age of five he’s kept it short the way a professional athlete would). He took a slow breath, his arms buried in warmth, and blinked regularly as though following instructions.

  The last time he’d been in this hospital was for Oscar’s birth. He’d drawn a picture of a family on construction paper with his fruit-scented felt markers. The page was slightly ripped and Boris had scribbled our names under our likenesses: “Papa, Maman, Philémon, Boris, baby.” Jim, Philémon, and I were giants; Boris was a bird on Jim’s shoulder. Oscar, in the middle, was a flea whose extra-long arms surrounded us all.

  The time before that had been for his own birth.

  “Boris?”

  He turned his head slowly, and his lips quivered. For an instant, it felt as if he didn’t recognize us, as if we had become strangers to him — well-meaning ones of course, but strangers all the same. Terror stricken, I thought, He’s seen that look before, in my own eyes. But soon enough his eyes opened wide, and the irresistible light he’d inherited from Jim shone on his face. “Mom.” The word had the effect of a detonator; l leaned over to shower him with kisses, suppressing my questions, but then no, I asked if he was hungry, if he was thirsty, if he was warm enough, if he was afraid. Jim laid a hand on my shoulder and I stopped, even though his hand wasn’t there to tell me to be quiet, but to hold back the tide. I closed my eyes and the air trapped in my lungs for hours finally escaped.

  “I’m sorry.” Boris, so tiny in his hospital bed, was apologizing. Jim’s reaction was immediate: he shed tears on Boris’s forehead as he swore Boris had no reason to apologize. Boris nodded but he, too, was crying, he explained he hadn’t wanted to do anything dumb. “Mehdi and Paul said I was too chicken to jump off the third board, and maybe it was true but what do you do when you’re too chicken, I thought I didn’t have a choice, I banged my knee on the diving board, I don’t even remember hitting the water, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”

  Jim wrapped his arms around his son, told him again there was no need to be sorry, and what I heard was anger. What I heard was the indignation of a good man

  railing against the hours he’d spent beating himself up over not having spoken up or being too loyal, over being nothing more than good old Jim, a trombonist in a well-reputed orchestra, a good father and colleague, a good husband and neighbour, who had cultivated humility and a sense of responsibility throughout his life, Christ, since childhood, and had reaped the honorable fruit, he loved, he loved, I love you, Tessa, I love you so much, but every morning he continued to wake up with a ball of fear in his gut and an irrepressible urge to apologize. That Jim no longer existed.

  Father and son continued to surrender to the rapture of tears and now, in the bar, looking at Francis’s hands, hands so clean they seem to be gloves, his nails white from holding the bottle so tight, everything becomes perfectly clear.

  My words materialize of their own accord: “I don’t think so, no. I’ll be leaving soon.”

  Francis doesn’t insist. In fact, I suspect he’s relieved. His fingers loosen their grip on the bottle, and he hurries off to pay.

  “My treat, it’s the least I can do.”

  The least, yes, not that that changes anything; Anthony already said it was his treat. I head for the washroom. Sitting in the cubicle with its twenty years’ worth of graffiti, my eyes locked on my golden ballerina flats and my hiked-up dress, I give a strangled chirp, the cry of a startled bird. How about that. What a good story I’ll have for Sophie. I carefully wash my hands, the bubblegum scent of the soap both repels and attracts me. A glance in the mirror, but a fleeting glance, nothing more. I no longer care what Francis sees when he looks at me.

  He’s already outside. I walk through the bar and give Anthony a wave. Does he think we’re in a hurry to hole up in a hotel room together somewhere? I don’t care about that either. Did Francis even book a room? I won’t ask. Of course, I’d be flattered. But nothing more.

  I push on the door and step outside. Francis turns to me, a light spring breeze riffling his hair and, for the space of an instant, he looks as young as that day I first saw him on the work site in Ottawa. But nothing more.

  “Can I drop you off?”

  “No, I’ll walk.”

  “All the way to Villeray?”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  Our hug is brief and weary. I’ve imagined for days — actually, for years, to be honest — that we’d cleave together from the first second on, that our fingers would seek each other out, that there’d be no resistance possible once in his arms, the affair would play itself out as only it knew how, there’d be no going back, the fever on the phone, hands trembling as I swam, my sobs between the sheets. That’s what I expected. In his awkward hug, like some Lego block you’re struggling to fit into one of another make, all I can feel is Francis’s slippery jacket and the scent of melted ice on his scarf.

  “So long, Marianne.”

  I smile, not showing any teeth.

  “We’ll call?”

  I nod because we may well call each other, I’m selling his house after all, but even as I nod, my eyes say See you never, alligator, and he knows it, and I know it, and sometimes that’s the way love affairs end, even the most stubborn of them all.

  My first sale was a dilapidated duplex converted into condos on Drolet at Faillon. Nothing too ambitious. Two old apartments that had been remodeled to make three units. The people selling, a musician couple from the orchestra, had bought the building a year earlier to have it renovated. I’d got my licence two months before that and had just joined the ranks of a brokerage franchise. Our friends burst out laughing when I announced my plans. They pounded their thighs when I told them about the training I’d go through and rolled around on the floor when I dithered out loud between one banner and another. Give us a break! You’re going back to university at last, right? But I did take the courses and passed the final with flying colours. From that day on, they stopped laughing and only broached the su
bject, embarrassed and overly polite, as though I were some distant relative they felt they couldn’t ignore. No one ever spoke of music with me again. But Jim never laughed. He just said, “How about we hook up secretly in the empty apartments?”

  When he heard some colleagues were looking to sell their unit, he saw the perfect opportunity; the building was in our neighbourhood in a promising market. Philémon was five; Boris had just turned three. I had stayed at home with them since they were born. The time had come to get back in the saddle. No matter which saddle, or what it should have been or never would be.

  They showed me pictures of the original duplex. It was lopsided and fascinating, with its art deco bathroom (honeycomb ceramic tile, clawfoot bathtub, built-in soap dish) and its central gas furnace (a rarity that was also quite impractical). Stéphane and Josée had hired an unscrupulous contractor who had demolished the building and erected in its stead a beige brick box flanked by white PVC stairs and grey PVC windows. The result was appalling, but square. The old double rooms had been replaced by reasonably sized and aligned bedrooms. Prefabricated cabinets replaced the old kitchen cupboards so the indispensable open concept area could work its magic on potential buyers. Together time! Intimacy! Glasses of wine by the fireside! The living rooms had no fireplace, that would have been too expensive, and the city would have kicked up a fuss. But the contractor said an actual fire didn’t matter; you just needed to get the same feeling. He knew what he was talking about. The other two units sold in a few short weeks.

  After a year in their renovated building, Stéphane and Josée separated. Whether their desire frayed or the bathroom’s textured tiles spoiled it for them, I never knew. When they toured the apartment with me, they gave nothing away. They laughed remembering the catastrophic day a worker drilled a hole in the wall and straight into the new drainpipe installed just the week before; they tapped each other on the shoulder gently to tweak the other’s anecdote or memory. The morning of the first open house, Josée insisted on baking cookies since she’d read somewhere that it would make the apartment seem more appealing (they’ve all read that somewhere). Stéphane scarfed down all the cookies before the first visitors arrived, leaving an empty plate on the kitchen island. Josée wasn’t upset. She laughed, “Stéphane has a sweet tooth.” I remember thinking, Why on earth are they separating?