Hunting Houses Read online

  “I thought so. I thought it might be you.”

  “Because of the sign?”

  “You could have included a picture. Then I’d have known for sure.”

  “No way. It’s my last holdout against vanity.”

  “Says the girl in high heels.”

  “Mired-in-mud heels.”

  “Anyhow, I thought it might be you.”

  “But my last name’s so common.”

  “There’s no mistaking your first name.”

  “I’ve always said my first name is a ruse.”

  “Would you like a drink?”

  “No, thanks. Why did you let her do it?”

  “What?”

  “Why did you let your wife hire an agent with my name?”

  “Because I liked the idea.”

  “You liked the idea!”

  “I didn’t know it was you. But I like having your name in front of the house. It makes me happy.”

  “It ‘makes you happy.’”

  “Didn’t the thought cross your mind?”

  “No. I heard your name. I mean your first name. Évelyne brought it up several times, ‘Francis built the bookcase, Francis knows more about the plumbing, Francis doesn’t always answer my messages.’”

  “But the thought didn’t cross your mind?”

  There is a sting to it every time. For years, even in a context that has nothing to do with him, with me, the name has still held its sting. Francis, the restaurant owner. Francis, my cousin’s baby. Francis, Boris’s friend in second grade. Francis Ford Coppola. A needle prick. Nothing more. Then life would go on as before. So no: “It never crossed my mind.”

  “And now here you are.”

  “And now, here I am. On the threshold of your house.”

  “The house I’ve put up for sale.”

  “The house your wife has put up for sale, yes.”

  “Évelyne’s at a seminar in Toronto. She’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “I’ll call her.”

  “Are you going to tell her?”

  “Tell her what?”

  “Oh, sorry, I really think I should offer you something to drink.”

  “You did. I said no.”

  “We could have a seat.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “To talk. Just to talk.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “When was the last time?”

  “I don’t know, around the end of the century.”

  “You and your way with words.”

  “November 30, 1999.”

  “You do know then.”

  “I was waiting to see whether you did too.”

  “I don’t remember the exact date, no.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “A real estate agent.”

  “That surprises you.”

  “Yes. I don’t know, I imagined you in a university in Scotland teaching baroque vocals.”

  “Quite the imagination.”

  “But you saw yourself as a real estate agent.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “So what then? What happened?”

  “You’ve always been a tad stuck-up.”

  “That’s true.”

  “A stuck-up engineer.”

  “An exhausted engineer right now.”

  “I came for the key.”

  “Right. The key.”

  “It’ll wait till I can talk to Évelyne.”

  “Take the key.”

  “Mind you, I won’t hide anything from her either.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you don’t break a woman who’s already broken, especially not when you’re broken yourself. It’s an unwritten rule. Solidarity among the ruins.”

  “We’ll have to find another agent.”

  “Could be.”

  “How’s business for you? Can you afford to lose a client?”

  “No worries, bonehead. I’m thirty-seven. I’ve got three kids. Three. And lots of drooping skin.”

  “Oh well, I mostly drooped too.”

  “Ugh, how awful, what did I just say? I’m so sorry.”

  “No, it’s me.”

  “God, Francis, what in the hell kind of conversation is this?”

  “I know. One of our best.”

  “It’s not funny.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”

  “You never meant it in a bad way.”

  “You say that like it was some kind of problem.”

  “I’ve got to run. I have a bridge in my car.”

  The thing about Jim’s hands is that they’re miraculous. Large and padded like bear’s paws, with bitten-down nails. Paddles. Early on, upon waking, I’d often find one of those big hands lodged under my hip where it had spent the night, a mooring of flesh. His hands surround me, engulf me, and in his hands, all moist space complies.

  Jim is what could be called, when clichés don’t turn you off, a man of few words. He slaves and strives and hammers away at life, his bear paws his only armour. The wild desire they inspire in me has never faltered.

  His hands lay on my sweating brow when I was in labour. They stroke and knead my flat Irish ass. They lift Oscar up by his feet and carry him to the tub. His hands smell of wood and glue. In the orchestra, they glide back and forth on the trombone’s slide, happy in their element. At ordinary times, his hands feed change into parking meters, spin the steering wheel, tie bootlaces. His hands have thrust me into a love bath and they keep me there, a welcome drowning.

  Tonight, after I’ve brought my youngest home and done a load of laundry, I will hit social media to try to crush the pulsating memory of Francis’s face. Then Jim will come home. I’m ready to give my life to feel his hand on the nape of my neck when he sidles up to me in the kitchen; I want it to leave its mark on me for the thousandth time and silence the churning that has been building in my blood for hours. But I won’t be called on to give my life. Jim has never been stingy.

  He comes home and his hands do my bidding, as on any other day. And yet. It seems to me that death from sorrow is a distinct possibility.

  I’m in charge of goodies. Every year since Philémon turned six, I’ve prepared an assortment of sweets for the school’s science fair. Last year, we sold six hundred items: cakes, cookies, Rice Krispie squares, small bags of caramel popcorn, and fudge. There’s the organizing committee and its numerous meetings, the first one usually held on a dark windy Wednesday November evening during which no one has anything to say about an event to be held months later, but it’s the main source of social interaction for some parents, so I go (one out of every three times) since I don’t want to lose my kingdom. Philémon finishes elementary school this year, Boris will follow two years later, another six years down the road for Oscar. Then it’ll be on to secondary school and they’ll make a show of turning up their nose at my treats, especially in front of friends; their old mother will be relegated to her bedroom while her children are kept busy French kissing in the basement and speaking in a code only they are privy to, immersed in the mystery of youth and its hormones; in other words, one day, I will no longer be young again and I dread that moment, so I’m in charge of goodies for now, which gives me an inordinate amount of pleasure. I have singlehandedly whipped up six dozen homemade Oreo cookies. As I set up the sales table, I make crisp, straight lines with my cookies, Danh Ly’s mother’s macaroons on one side and Joséphine’s mother’s scones on the other. The pride I feel seeing my sons’ friends pounce on the desserts I’ve prepared is as profound as it is ridiculous.

  “I’m your shadow.”

  The girl is anything but a shadow: sixteen, taller than most boys her age, bright yellow jeans and a c
rocheted toque, she wears the forbidding expression of a comic book heroine. Next to her, my arms loaded down with boxes of apple juice, I look like a wet dog, and if you had to choose one of us as the other’s shadow, there would be no contest.

  “Excuse me?”

  “My mother told me to come see you. I’m supposed to give you a hand. With the goodies.”

  She gives her name. Simone. Karine’s daughter, yes — Karine offered to have her eldest give me a hand. Simone plunges her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and looks around with a certain preoccupied boredom. I assure her that I have often manned the goodies table on my own, and that she’s free to leave if she wants to. But Simone shakes her head. I point at the small cash box; each item costs a dollar, and any whiner who thinks that’s too expensive should be reminded that “The bake sale helps fund student activities like field trips and the purchase of computers, and that if their heart is really that dark, they’d do better to eat a few cookies and lighten up.” Simone gives a polite little laugh. We set to work, and nothing exists outside the taking of cash and the handing out of baking; it feels good to move, to forget, and Francis’s grey, stormy, older face barely surfaces anymore. Fat and skinny, visiting grandparents and sweet-toothed teachers alike, they all hold out a hand and take, hold out a hand and take. Soon Simone slows down, trips up over the change, gets things wrong. “No, I told you a plain scone, not a fruit one!” Simone apologizes and adjusts her toque nervously. I turn to her, her cheeks are burning, “Are you okay?” She shakes her head as though to say Don’t talk about it, okay, just don’t. Then she says, so softly I have to lean in close to hear her, “I just saw someone.” She searches him out again to see how far away he is, both afraid that she’ll find him there and find him gone, and I say, “Take a break, go drink some water, Simone.” She scurries off without giving Mehdi’s family their change, so I look after it. I see her grab a friend by the sleeve and disappear into the gym washroom of this school that saw her grow up and where she probably fell in love with the boy she’s just seen and has loved (in silence?) ever since. I think I spot him with his cocky smile and hopelessly banal fashion sense; then she returns a few minutes later, stony faced but determined and alive, and starts selling with renewed energy. To each her own end of the world.

  He phones, not me. Some complicated number I’ve never seen before. A poll.

  I’ve just closed the trunk, the plastic boxes that carried the haul of goodies piled up by the bridge, which Philémon insists on keeping as a souvenir. Next year, when his friends scatter to different high schools, they’ll write every day to begin with, send each other videos, take open-armed selfies. Then one of them will stop responding to the chain of emails, another will announce he can’t get together with the gang that weekend — he’s meeting up with his new friends — and soon their orbits will shift, for better or worse, and childhood friendships will take on the delicate tint of a yellowing memento. Philémon, who unfortunately has inherited my propensity for nostalgia, still believes that the bridge from his last science fair will help cement his friendship with the other innocent, well-fed boys, and who am I to tell him otherwise?

  In the back seat, Philémon and Boris are going through a play-by-play of the day’s highlights (the explosion of Nicolas’s beaker is in a near tie for first place with the escape of Léa’s cat-cum-guinea pig). It’s late, we are the last to leave the school. First, we had to count all the money, collapse the table, and pack everything up. Oscar wanted to stay, too, eager as he is to be in school like his brothers. But in the end, the sugar overdose did him in, and Jim took him home an hour before closing time. By now, he must be fast asleep, a few damp strands of hair clinging to his fighting spirit’s brow. So the phone rings just as I close the trunk; if I dismiss the possibility it’s a poll, the unknown number becomes more worrisome, Jim’s at the hospital with our youngest. He did look kind of glassy eyed when he left. I had chalked it up to the sugar high, but maybe it’s a case of encephalitis. How would we survive if we were to lose Oscar? And what about Philémon and Boris, living with the knowledge that they’d been spared, carrying the hideous burden of their own good luck?

  “I’m sorry for calling so late.”

  Francis’s voice is distant, and the line crackles as though the call were coming from James Bay.

  “You have a funny number.”

  “What?”

  “Your number. Your phone number.”

  “Oh. I’m calling from the office, that’s why.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m interrupting something.”

  “I’ve got a bridge in the car.”

  “Still?”

  “The same one. It’s come back.”

  Words are superfluous. Francis called. He is here, that’s what counts. Words mean nothing, they don’t fill the void, there is no void anyway, no air, nothing. Pure weightlessness. I lean back against the car. Philémon’s eyes sweep over me, but he doesn’t seem concerned. Thank God he can’t see my expression, both relieved and confounded.

  “I haven’t had time to talk to your wife. It’s been busy around here lately.”

  “No big deal.”

  “What about you? Did you talk to her?”

  Clearly the question is whether he talked to her about me — for how many years have I wanted to hear him talk about me, no matter the reason? The wish seems so silly now that it’s coming true. It all feels petty and pitiful — I’m thirty-seven now and have two sons sitting in the car, plus a third one asleep at home. (He’s not in the hospital! This call has nothing to do with him!), damn it all to hell, am I not entitled to some semblance of dignity?

  “No. I didn’t tell her about you.”

  Francis didn’t need any clarification; he’s always been good at answering his own questions, don’t forget, don’t forget, you idiot.

  “Listen, my boys are waiting.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Was there something in particular you wanted to say?”

  “I wanted to…”

  The wait. As you realize with terror and exultation that your expectations are as high as that very first day, a fever that never subsides, a candle stub consumed, the power has always and will always be in others’ hands, and nothing, not time or children or bricks laid so fiercely, will dampen the dark desire to say yes to this man who’s been gone for so long. I wanted to what?

  “I wanted to see you. Not at my place. Just see you.”

  How long has it been since he left? Sixteen going on seventeen years? How many hours spent moaning that I longed to see him, just see him? Do we ever stop wanting what we desired so ardently at the age of twenty?

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t want to pressure you.”

  “No.”

  “Take your time.”

  “Yes.”

  “Friday, let’s say at half past twelve, maybe out in front of Lenny’s.”

  “Lenny’s?”

  “Remember?”

  “Honestly.”

  “Okay then. Friday, half past twelve, in front of Lenny’s.”

  “Francis.”

  “Yes.”

  “I might not show up.”

  “I know.”

  I have to hang up. I drop the phone into my pocket, pull out the keys to the car, open the door. I sit down and turn on the ignition. Stay alert to Philémon’s and Boris’s voices sharing stories of their day for the tenth time, asking if I’ve kept any Oreos for them. We drive past one of my listings and Boris says, “Yo, Mom, you’re like a rock star agent now.” I laugh, and it’s not hard to laugh because Boris is funny and fabulous and Philémon is funny and fabulous. We pull up at the house, the boys carry the bridge inside without dropping it, and I send them off to make toast and honey before bedtime, with the usual instructions, “teeth, dirty clothes in the hamper, lights out in ten minutes.” I act n
ormal around Jim, kiss his forehead and complain about the parents on the committee. We watch the ten o’clock news. Then, blaming the smell of sugar and grease, I slip away to jump into the shower, locking the door behind me. The uproar of water pounding against the porcelain tub seems like permission, my heart now free to race off the charts, my hands to shake, as I murmur over and over, an obstinate ringing, FridayFridayFriday.

  I have to remind myself that I’m thirty-seven years old with three children, and that all of this is ludicrous.

  1982

  In my eyes and for the longest time, my mother shone. Not like a princess, nothing diamond studded or golden about her — Paule was all assymetrical strands of hair and skinny men’s old T-shirts. Her shine emanated from her cavalier attitude, delinquency dressed in boys’ clothes. She was Joan Jett but listened to Handel.

  At thirty-two, my mother left Abitibi behind with her two children in tow. She formed a feral attachment to the city. Paule had always had and would always have black spruce where her bones should be. No, what she left behind was my father and a ten-year marriage, his spineless cruelty, the accumulation of broken promises — the narrow-mindedness of the place, scandalous, she would often say afterwards, the small-mindedness so paradoxical compared to the vastness of the Abitibi sky. She would be separated from my father for nearly twenty years before filing for divorce. She would never live in Abitibi again.

  In Montreal, she felt surrounded by her own people. I would often grab for a stranger’s leg in public places, wrap my arms tight, only to realize that the paint-­spattered pants, the workman’s boots, and perfume with its whiff of Craven A and sandalwood did not belong to my mother. Another woman in the city exuded the same mystery, the same beauty, despite her fingers strangled by too-heavy grocery bags, weighed down by the fatigue of those who don’t have time to hope for more. When we arrived in 1982, Montreal was full of other my-mothers.

  Mornings, she hurried as we walked to daycare, her pace brisk, already annoyed.