Hunting Houses Read online

  “The market’s slow, and the condo’s been up for sale since last fall.”

  “Yes, but there are other showings planned.”

  “That’s true, but the only other offer was lower than yours. And it was accepted.”

  “Why didn’t it work out?”

  “The buyer backed out. He couldn’t get his financing.”

  Tanya studies Marc’s face, looking for peace of mind. “I don’t know. I really want this to work.”

  “Even if you offer ten thousand less than the asking price, I’m pretty sure they’ll accept.”

  “Pretty sure, but not positive.”

  “Right.”

  “We could take that sun vacation, babe.”

  Marc wants to believe; his eyes on me are those of a boy asking his dad if roller coasters really are safe. But Tanya is terrified; another disappointment and, worse, one she could have avoided, would do her in.

  “Okay, we’ll stick to five thousand. We just won’t go as far for our holiday.”

  “The condo’ll be a holiday! It’s got an indoor pool!”

  Tanya takes a deep breath (How unfair, really, with her toned body and camp counsellor tan, that she’s having such trouble conceiving when pale, old, flabby-skinned me got pregnant in no time at all, who can believe there’s some intelligent plan out there in the face of such an obvious screw-up?), her face lights up, and she quickly signs. “This is what we need, love. I can feel it.”

  I’m cursing myself. I have to admit that I didn’t pick either the best time or place, but it is what it is. It was my great idea to wait till now to buy myself a swimsuit, scarcely two hours before my first mommy-and-me swimming lesson with Oscar. No big deal, just a minor detail, I kept telling myself to avoid the issue, five minutes and I’ll be done. But I’ve been wandering like a ghost through the aisles of Sports Experts in Rockland Centre for over forty minutes wearing a pathetic expression at the sorry displays of one-piece bathing suits offered up for my consideration. For anyone the least bit concerned with modesty (by modesty, I mean simple courtesy), the selection is depressingly austere. Suits with wide reinforced straps and flesh-coloured lining. Suits with unforgiving necklines that hearken back to another time. Hibiscus and pineapple patterns as wretched as rain. Obviously, I hadn’t expected any given suit to call out to me — I haven’t expected as much for a very long time — but the offering is so catastrophic, so demoralizing, that I think I just might collapse right here and now, stretched out between the racks on Sports Experts’ geometrically patterned carpet and wait to die. Instead, I make a supreme effort and turn to the selection of two-piece swimsuits — whether out of sheer bravado or madness, it’s hard to say.

  That’s when I catch sight of her. She has a few years on me as is apparent by the care she’s taken with her makeup; she’s past the stage where a woman can leave the house with no makeup on. She’s standing in front of the bikini section, a cute striped bikini bottom between her fingers, imagining wearing it in public. A wicked flash of glee in her eye is immediately followed by a small tic as she hastily returns the bottom to the hanger before a salesclerk can suggest she take it to a changeroom. Then she sees me watching. In that fraction of a second, her shame and mine conjoin; we are one and the same, and I curse her as much as I curse myself for exposing myself once again. What should we have done to avoid the ordeal? Where should it have started? Should I have had a beauty queen for a mother, sacrificing her weekends to drag me from ballet class to aerobics so that, from my youngest years, I would learn that my body was a temple to swimsuits? Should she have snatched her daughter’s beloved books from her hands, all the better to send her off swimming, diving, running, skipping until she developed an athlete’s firm, discreet breasts? Had we not been attentive enough, had we no conception of everything that needed doing to ensure that today, under Sports Experts’ neon lights and the syrupy, pitying gaze of saleswomen who, themselves, knew what needed to be done, we could take hold of the teensy two-piece suit without shame or fear?

  In a rush, the stranger chooses a brown suit with gold trim. Like me, she has understood that to be coquettish a swimsuit must forego severity, and that, by and large, an aging bourgeois version is preferable to a priggish version. I nod imperceptibly at her choice, giving silent assent, and feel she does the same when she sees my choice of a black rather sporty suit whose crossed straps manage to hint at a semblance of joie de vivre. But there’ll be no revelatory moment. The great reconciliation between women and their bodies will not take place here, in the heart of Rockland Centre.

  At the pool, the contact between our cold feet and the ceramic tile doesn’t take our mind off the looming need to get undressed. Wearing our coats, our spring boots, our earrings, and, for a few of us, our tailored suits bestowing a semblance of importance, a desire for elegance, in no time we find ourselves confined to badly locked stalls where we wriggle into our bathing suits, relics of our disappointment, while trying not to let our clothes get wet on the floor. At the same time, we must keep our children from opening the door to the stall before we’re ready since the one thing worse than having to wriggle into a swimsuit one April evening is doing so in full view. Elastics snapping on thighs. Straps digging into flesh. Repositioning, levelling of breasts, creating symmetry. Oscar has been ready for ages and waits for me in his plaid swimsuit, too tight since last winter. The rubber strap to his goggles is twisted; patiently he straightens it out. His small belly with its folds, as pale as mine, that expands and empties to the rhythm of his little boy breath — my heart breaks for the thousandth time at his beauty and nonchalance. His total lack of self-consciousness shatters me; how I regret my self-condemnation. How much time have I wasted railing against this body that created Oscar’s? In a sudden desire for redemption, I long to loll in serenity, take stock of my strengths and all the wonder in my life, reflect on it, why not start a blog, be done with the devil, pulverize him with kindness!

  I step out of the stall and run into Ève, who greets me as she drags her twins to the pool, her white bikini snug against the tanned washboard of her abdomen and her shock of hair that can only be described as sexually active; yes, she’s insufferable. I pull at the elastic to my suit to be sure half a buttock isn’t hanging out, my body and its constellation of winter rashes reminding me that kindness has never erased a single stretchmark. Moron. How could you have thought for one second that, in less than forty-eight hours from now, you would be able to take your clothes off in front of Francis? Because that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? When you try on a swimsuit in a store that you then buy, when you look at yourself in a mirror on the way into the pool, then at your reflection in the glass in the lifeguards’ office, and then in the window’s reflection, it’s him you’re thinking of. You imagine him scrutinizing the body he once knew, a body now altered, wilted, a body that was far from a rose to begin with, a cheap daisy at best or that purple flower that grows along the ditches in Amos, the kind we chewed on for its sweetness — a useful flower, what was its name, it doesn’t matter, you get my drift. Is that what this is, moron? Yes, it is, this horrible, crass desire to commit adultery as you hold the flutter board for your son and he paddles his feet in the water.

  Jim’s away at a concert. Whenever he’s gone, the boys never ask where he is. He often travels, it’s true; his profession involves some forty concerts every year, not counting all the tours and festivals. It’s all written down on the scout calendar. All three know their dad’s routine: he shows up at 6:30 p.m. at the concert hall carrying his trombone in one hand and his pressed tuxedo in the other. He greets his colleagues, Gerry the percussionist, Bernard the bassoonist, and Sophia the violist. They joke around to calm their nerves, and then Jim warms up among his fellow musicians in the cacophony typical of any orchestra tuning up. At 7:15, he changes, ties his bowtie, laces his shoes, smooths back his hair. At 7:45 or so, he calls us. He rarely talks about the orchestra’s programme.
Jim has no need for compliments. He calls and asks whether Boris’s oral presentation is ready, “Is Oscar’s teacher still on sick leave, did Philémon eat his lunch?” He wants to know how I’m doing. How it went at the pool today. I choose not to mention my excursion to Sports Experts. As with yesterday and the day before that, I choose not to say a word about Francis. I’m not accustomed to lying to Jim. But before this, there was no reason to lie. I pour the contents of a package of linguine into boiling water (pasta for the third time this week) and the cloud of steam serves to dissipate, somewhat, the cloud of my guilt.

  “Nervous?”

  “No, I’m okay. By now, we could play with our eyes closed.”

  “Me, too, I know the evening’s program off by heart. That doesn’t stop me from freaking out.”

  Jim’s sigh. Not in irritation, just empathy. The man loves me.

  “The boys acting up?”

  How can I tell him the boys have nothing to do with it? That the only person acting up here is me?

  “No, I’m just joking. Everything’s fine.”

  A few months ago, in a downtown boutique, the kind of place that camouflages the mediocrity of its merchandise behind a “rustic” decor, I found a distressed T-shirt inscribed with the words, Everything’s fine. The irony, intentional or not, amused me. I bought it and often wear it. As for Jim, my hard edge amuses him, invigorates him, attracts him. He maintains the T-shirt is free of irony. Everything really is fine. He often says, Everything’s going so much better than I could have imagined.

  “I love you, you know. Sit them down in front of the TV if things get worse.”

  “Been there, done that, captain.”

  “See you later, honey.”

  The water rises, boils over, spreads starch over the glass-ceramic stovetop burners, which begin to smoke. I curse and hurry to pour the contents into a colander in the sink. Another blast of steam, another sigh leading me to squeeze my eyes shut. Is this when everything changes? Is this when my story falls apart?

  As I was saying, the boys don’t really notice when Jim’s away. What if I were the one who didn’t come home? At first, my disappearances would be fleeting; generally speaking, I’d be here except for one or two nights a week. Would they notice? At first, probably. Oscar would wander through the house, call my name, not understand. But he’d get used to it. It’s possible to get used to anything. One evening, two, five, a whole week.

  A whole month.

  Everyone would get used to it. Therein lies the tragedy.

  After eight, the house’s rhythm changes. Only Philémon stays up till nine o’clock, and the silent lull — both of us careful not to rouse Boris and Oscar — reminds me of another time. The two of us, Philémon and I, alone. Born as Jim was finishing his studies, Philémon quickly became our third roommate. I took him everywhere, determined not to let myself be cut off from the world, and we’d sit, he in his stroller, me on benches in parks I visited on a rotating basis — Laurier, Jarry, Jeanne-Mance, Maisonneuve, Westmount, La Fontaine. We watched the seasons unfold. Philémon was a serious, attentive baby, extremely diligent in the business of living. He slept, drank, watched, and cried with the same painstaking attention, as though fulfilling an arduous task. The force of my unrelenting love for him during those first months both revived and terrified me. Now, on evenings when Jim is at work, Philémon sits in the living room wearing his big red headphones and playing his favourite songs. From time to time, he taps on the touch screen, texts with friends, maybe a girl or two. I leave him to his secrets. Because, despite the headphones and the dizzying speed with which he has grown since the day he was born, he is still the same, beside me on the couch, and although I start reading an article on Obama’s second term and Philémon listens to his music, we’re just as before. Watching the seasons unfold together.

  I wake with a start when Jim comes home just before midnight. The familiar sound of the key in the door, his trombone being set down on the floor, and the flush of the toilet, everything I normally find so reassuring now instills panic, nausea, and I turn on the bedside lamp. Have I forgotten anything? I know I remembered to erase the search history on my laptop after an hour spent trying to track down first Francis then Évelyne and their children. I wanted to see pictures of him. Articles on her. Have their — adorable — children done any commercials? Been part of charming documentaries on Montreal, the PTA, or their school’s Christmas traditions? Is their family famous for something, are they keeping an exceptional past a secret, did they ever make the news? I didn’t come up with much. Évelyne trained as a psychologist, contributed articles to several research papers on pediatric mental health, and teaches a course on psychoeducation at the Université de Montréal. Her course this year is entitled Assessing Developmental Delays. In 2013, a women’s magazine interviewed her in her expert capacity for an article on disciplining autistic children. “You mustn’t forget that autistic children experience emotions too but have difficulty expressing them in the way we do. You must be particularly mindful of what their tantrums are telling you.” Reading her words, I saw her again, her tears streaming and her hand working at the corkscrew. Évelyne, helpless, lost — worse yet, that image had no trouble superimposing itself onto the image of Évelyne the expert, shining hair, firm handshake. I found nothing on him, other than his name in a group picture: “Once again, RBQ’s team of engineers wins this year’s golf tournament, congratulations!” followed by the word absent in brackets. He has no online presence; it’s as though he’s still living back in 1998, just as I’ve been picturing him all these years. My search left me frustrated and distressed. Évelyne’s suffering, I keep telling myself. Évelyne will suffer from all this. The realization hits me as Jim walks down the hall to our bedroom and to me, my face bathed in the glow of the laptop, checking for the third time that I’ve erased all traces.

  He opens the door quietly, thinking I’m asleep, not wanting to disturb me since he knows what a light sleeper I am. Jim’s happy to see my eyes are open, not that he’d say as much, but I know he likes me to be awake when he comes home. He sits down next to me, one hand on my cheek, the other in my hair, his lips on my eyes, my nose. Jim’s infinite tenderness erases almost everything else. Concerts and hockey games charge him up, make him want me. Or maybe he chooses to relinquish that energy, to hand it over to me. Whether it’s desire he feels or the desire to desire me makes little difference; it’s still a prodigiously generous choice that makes him, quite simply, irresistible.

  I’m undressed in no time; he pulls off my panties without hesitation and it’s natural for me to open my thighs and invite him in. The power of his instrumentalist’s breath blocks out all other sounds, the boys could wake and come running and I wouldn’t hear them, there is nothing here but the wave we become, our breath, nothing but the concentrate we are, fifteen years of repeated, adored, necessary and mastered gestures, nothing else exists, he knows how to bring me back to life and make it possible for me to leave myself behind, these minutes are the gold of our existence to which I succumb, it feels so good so why are tears running onto the pillow, why these tears that you blot away with the sheet, moaning your pleasure even more, if not because this, too, is propelling you to Friday, to that other man, the one you have yet to finish with, and Jim will suffer. The one sentence playing over and over in my mind, devastating, inadmissible, inevitable, Jim will suffer, and I’m going to do it anyway.

  1993

  We were fourth in line. Ahead of us, an older Anglo couple, a ballcap-wearing scalper, and a group of boys from Notre-Dame. I wanted to turn and head back to where I’d come from. The two of us, Sophie and I, stood there on Sainte-Catherine Street and our parents had no idea where we were, each of us having sworn we were sleeping over at the other’s house, so if something bad happened to us (What? Weren’t private-school boys the most twisted of all? I’d just finished reading The Secret History, I knew all about it), no one would ever know. Or a
t least not for a very long time, not before we’d been dumped, butchered breasts and all, into the river, but Sophie said, “Stop.” She knew one of the boys, had met him at a Hallowe’en dance, and he was harmless. She sat on the sidewalk behind them and bummed a cigarette. I stayed standing. I had brought a sleeping bag and pillow, my backpack was chock full of provisions — nuts, two apples, a few 3 Musketeers bars, two Cokes — and I’d just figured out that I was the only one who brought anything. Summer was around the corner; we had only a few exams left before the holidays and the night air was mild. No one would need a jacket or a sleeping bag to keep warm. One of the private-school boys (he’d soon tell us his name was Olivier) handed around some gin; Sophie was already drinking from the metal canteen (one long swig), then it was my turn (an awkward fake sip). Naively, I had thought we’d be able to sleep. Wasn’t that the plan? “Tess, let’s sleep on the street to get tickets to Pearl Jam!” Sophie was determined we would be at the Verdun Auditorium come August and claimed there was no surer way than to sleep out front of the Spectrum; we would be the first at the box office as soon as it opened at ten. I offered to try phoning — I was ready to dial the same number a hundred times if necessary, and I was an early riser, really, it didn’t bother me. But Sophie had insisted, and Étienne agreed. My brother wouldn’t go to the trouble himself, not for Pearl Jam, too pop, but he assured me that if I really wanted to see Eddie Vedder in person, Sophie’s approach was the way to go. Raph would be at the show too. In the cafeteria the day before, he’d told me his dad — a journalist — would have a press pass and take him along. As he spoke, he tucked a strand of hair far too blond to be reasonable behind his ear, making me feel as if I might very well drop dead or rip off all my clothes, and I decided then and there that nothing, not even my own cowardice, would stop me from finding a way to be there with him in August in the Verdun Auditorium.