Hunting Houses Read online

  So I’d brought my pillow and purple and green sleeping bag, ridiculous under the Spectrum lights, filled my backpack, knotted my plaid shirt around my waist, pulled on my army surplus boots, and followed Sophie. It was a quarter past midnight when Olivier offered us our first sip of gin, half past midnight when I managed to lay my pillow and sleeping bag on the ground behind Sophie, and 12:40 when Nico, Olivier’s friend, asked for my name.

  “Tessa.”

  “Tessa? Are you Jewish?”

  “No.”

  “We used to have a cleaning woman whose name was Tessa. She was Jewish. From Poland.”

  “Cool.”

  “So you’re not Jewish.”

  “No, I’m nothing.”

  “It’s an original name for a Quebecer.”

  “It’s a ruse.”

  “What?”

  “A ruse.”

  Nico pretended he had to tie his shoelace and turned his back on me. My mom had always said that sarcasm and irony are signs of intelligence. Maybe that was her way of making herself feel better about me. But she forgot to add that in Montreal in 1993, neither irony nor sarcasm worked with boys from the good neighbourhoods. At any rate, I wasn’t interested in Nico. His hair did nothing for me, and I was sure he didn’t play bass in a grunge band, whereas Raph and his band Sad Dolphin amped up our high-school dances; each band member had an engraved dolphin on his instrument case, Raph’s dolphin was the most beautiful of all, and I had never been so head over heels in love.

  Two dreadlocked college students stepped behind us with their cannabis-induced good humour and Hacky Sacks. They formed a circle with the Anglos and their game lasted for a good portion of the night. No one else showed up. Despite my excitement at the prospect of seeing Eddie Vedder and my determination to experience something exceptional, in all truth, that night outside was a real bore. I thought of the dog-eared page in my copy of Wuthering Heights waiting for me on my nightstand and I was sorry I hadn’t brought it along. Sophie was smoking with the private-school boys, already friends; she peppered them with questions about everything — their lives, their parents, their travel plans, their cult movies, their favourite chocolate — and the already marked contrast between her luminosity and my shitload of gloom was blinding. Every two hours, I offered to make a run to Dunkin’ Donuts next door for coffee. The second time, around four, Sophie came with me. “Olivier’s falling for you,” I pointed out. Sophie rolled her eyes and knit her brow, something only she can do, irresistibly so, meaning, I don’t agree, but I do agree, and I won’t say so, but I like it. It was genuine, everything about Sophie was genuine — her bravery, her loyalty, her goodness, her nonchalance, her pain, her pleasure. I had never had, never would have, a better friend. That she had chosen me to accompany her through her days, through the dull classes (which I quite liked actually), deliriously wacky parties (that terrified me), silent cottages (where I lay awake wide-eyed listening to her snore and thanking the heavens because hearing her next to me kept me from drowning in anxiety), that she had chosen me, me, when any of the other girls would have loved to be her best friend, was the greatest and most exquisite mystery of all. Sophie had stayed true to me from that very first day in high school when we ended up at the same cafeteria table. I offered her half my bag of Doritos, she asked if it was me who sang Ferré’s “Avec le temps” at the choir audition. I stammered, embarrassed and ecstatic that a moment so pivotal in my mapping of the world lived on in someone else’s memory. Yeah, that was me. It was an idiotic choice.

  She told me the only idiotic thing was to talk about it that way; after that she listened to and loved John Lennon’s tunes on my Walkman. “Woman Is the Nigger of the World.” That’s one that spoke to Sophie. I never thanked my brother for recording those songs in the exact order they were heard by Sophie that lunch hour in the cafeteria. In an act of generosity, Étienne had agreed to let me lend it to her, despite its being his favourite. I should have thanked him, because that tape was what brought Sophie to me and transformed my life.

  Fortunately, my repeated doughnut-buying runs gave me an opportunity to loathe myself in peace. Despite all my usual tricks to discreetly avoid their joints, their gin, and their blotters, I was convinced they all knew. All you had to do was swallow something questionable in a dark place with loud music and you were cool. But I was always afraid. I was never cool. Sophie couldn’t care less; she thought I was naturally funny, You don’t need anything else, you’re already crazy. Still, it was so lame, I was so lame, everyone knew. My heart pounded as I stared at the spread of cream-filled doughnuts. “Half a dozen or a dozen?” My ears rang, I couldn’t hear anymore, I was about to faint, and the only thing that mattered was that it not happen in front of everyone else. I mumbled some feeble excuse, ran to the washroom and did the only thing my body demanded: I lay down on the floor, its tiles dirty but cold.

  The cold eased my nausea. But not my fear of dying. It took several minutes of self-talk to bring myself down. It’s five in the morning, but even so, you’re tired, yeah but, you ate too much sugar, that’s true, you’ve had too much coffee, I always drink coffee, you’re not having a heart attack, how do you know? You’re just tired, maybe, you won’t throw up, but what if, you’re not going to die, you think so? You won’t die, okay, you won’t die.

  I’d experienced the same thing before, fleetingly, after eating a big piece of sugar pie, a sickness in the pit of my stomach that felt cataclysmic, like after a sleepless, anxiety-ridden night or the Chernobyl disaster or the kidnapping of that little boy in Hochelaga. But an end-of-the-world feeling like this one, that was a first. Then it too passed. My body settled into its natural rhythm. I held my finger to my wrist all the same, taking my pulse for what seemed like hours. When I returned to my spot by the campers carrying the box of doughnuts I’d managed to buy after the washroom incident (if I can buy this boxful, that means I won’t die), I had no trouble picking up my conversation with Sophie right where we’d left off.

  “I’m just a fat, ugly girl with no future, let’s be honest here. That’s all I am.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Tess.”

  “No, but take a good, hard look. If you stick to scientific facts, it’s all true.”

  “It’s all false.”

  “You’re just saying that because you’re nice. And you’re my friend.”

  “I’m saying that because it’s true. You’re being an idiot. Not fat, not ugly, and for sure not without a future. But idiotic.”

  “Idiotic ugly fat no future.”

  “Hold your tongue, woman.”

  When the sun rose over Sainte-Catherine, we were playing tic-tac-toe on my sleeping bag. I felt better. “I had some kind of blood pressure thing in that washroom, too many doughnuts,” I said nonchalantly, testing the waters. Was I a good liar? If Sophie thought otherwise, she had enough class not to dig any deeper, and since Olivier had thrown up his 4 a.m. pizza in front of everyone else, I had no trouble giving him the sick prize and letting my episode go unmentioned.

  Ten o’clock rolled around in no time. At dawn, the line grew longer and by the time the box office opened, it snaked down the street and around the corner almost to René-Lévesque. A bit shakily, Sophie and I pocketed our tickets and headed home. After a comatose nap of four to five hours, we called each other. I told her, “The whole show sold out in twenty-two minutes. Can you believe it? Twenty-two minutes!” She said, “You see, good thing we were there!”

  She knew, or maybe not, that our all-nighter outdoors was a heroic act on my part. Some link had been made, a sailor’s knot tied between my heart and my feet, something like courage, and I would revel in the memory of my daring for weeks to come.

  We should have left early Friday instead, as Dad kept telling us while we baked in the back seat of his car. At the Lacolle border crossing, we’d been waiting in line for two hours already. He and Monique should have taken Friday o
ff. Everyone knows that the first Saturday of the July construction holiday is a traffic nightmare. But her working conditions weren’t the same as his. All morning, Monique kept saying, “Anyhow, Yves, if everyone had been ready for six thirty like they were supposed to be, customs would have been a breeze.” I waited for her to finish her thought, forming the words in my head a few seconds before she uttered them, Anthony and I were ready.

  Anthony, twelve, an only child, his forehead forever glistening, uncomfortable in his own skin, jerked his head away, as he did every time he was included in his mother’s grousing, embarrassed by her lack of street smarts. He said nothing, but the angle of his neck gave him away, and Étienne and I shared a look. She’s too tough. He’s too soft. Who cares? I turned my attention to the hundreds of unmoving cars.

  People came and went, some to the washrooms, others for a smoke break, others still to the Pepsi machine. I scanned the tide of pastel T-shirts and golf shorts, trying to spot, by some unlikely stroke of luck, Raph’s family off for their holiday on the same day as us. But Raph probably didn’t spend his summers on Maine’s packed beaches. His parents collected books on the history of India and vegetarian cuisine, their living room was furnished with Moroccan poufs — not a single sofa, only poufs. They were probably in an ashram or a music camp. His family was undeniably cooler than mine.

  In the front seat, Yves laid his hand on Monique’s thigh. Monique and her constant singing along to the radio’s soft-rock songs. Monique and her overpowering Anaïs Anaïs perfume. I thought of my mother, her expression when she buckled my bag after my dad’s call at 7:15. We’re on our way, make sure you’re ready. Ever since Yves moved to Montreal, he’d been the one in charge of our holidays. I could see Paule again, leaning over my worn canvas suitcase, one of the leather straps held together with a safety pin. Her grey hair under the henna dye.

  “What will you do while we’re away?”

  Paule’s eyes sought out her coffee, sitting on the sideboard at the front door, as though to put off her answer.

  “You already know. I’ll be working.”

  Her words came accompanied by a sigh, the sigh of my mother’s eternal fatigue, the sigh I heard wherever I went. Not that I could help. But I wanted to shout at her, Go somewhere with your girlfriends, escape with a lover to Charlevoix, buy a plane ticket to Paris, charge it to your credit card, go alone if you have to, just go, please, whatever you do, don’t work, not when your children are off to Wells, Maine, with their dad in a Camry reeking of perfume, not when everyone else in the world is entitled to have it all even when they make lame choices.

  I didn’t say a word.

  “Anyway, it’ll be boring. Monique’ll make us play minigolf again.”

  For a second, the desire to laugh shone in her eyes; I knew it, I saw it. She couldn’t stand Miss Prissy’s perfumes or her soft rock. The look switched to one of disappointment. For my mother, maliciousness was worse than tackiness. “Tessa, really, try harder.”

  Her words came back to me in the car just as I was about to insist on another radio station. I pulled out my Walkman and held out the left earbud to Étienne. Poor Anthony would be left with nothing, but I couldn’t help that. Monique should buy him his own Walkman.

  She’d promised our holidays would be exceptional. She already knew the Wells Seaside Cottages, having spent several summers there with her sisters and their children; in fact, we’d spend our evenings around the campfire with her nieces and nephews. The motel had a saltwater pool, it even had bikes for the guests.

  What Monique called exceptional, she, who at Christmas gave me a New Kids on the Block vinyl pencil case, would not necessarily fit my definition of the word.

  The only thing seaside about Wells Seaside Cottages was the name. The sea wasn’t even visible from the cabins — you had to cross the highway to get there. My main holiday fantasy (me, consumed with thoughts of Raph, strolling alone along the beach, away from the glittering lights of a rustic cottage, our cottage) collapsed. We caught a glimpse of the beach as we crossed the village, a small strip of flattened sand on which thousands of burnt sunbathers lay high and dry among the beach umbrellas and trash from their coolers. No tide, other than that of bloated flesh. The promise of a charming cottage and adorable nieces and nephews was shattered as quickly as my romantic imaginings. Monique’s nephews, two high-strung eleven-year-olds, both wore their hair in a rat’s tail, yes, both of them. Her niece, a bit older than me, was a zealous Bon Jovi fan, as evidenced by the T-shirt she wore tied above her navel. Her veneration even pushed her to copy Jon’s bouffant hairstyle. “It’s got that hairspray crunch,” I said to Étienne after the usual introductions as I watched her walk off. He glared to remind me how unfunny I was with my cheap shots and I grumbled; it was tough having a brother who was such a hippy.

  After five days spent on the burning beach and as many nights of hot dogs, I had run out of alternative scenarios (what if I stumble upon Raph’s dad’s car on my way to the gas station to buy Popsicles after supper? The door opens and my heart stops. Raph sets foot on the asphalt, I see the birthmark on his ankle, and he’s charmed stunned caught off guard, and we say something like, What a dump this place is! He invites me to meet him behind his cottage on a private beach, and I sneak over when everyone’s in bed, and Raph kneads my breasts behind a dune and starts to take my panties off, Keep going, I want it, I’ve wanted it for so long, I want it so bad that I cry out in my sleep. The pain would be exquisite. I’d carry a handful of sand from our dune away with me so as not to forget. The next day I’d call Sophie and wouldn’t even brag, I’d be discreet and brimming with wonderful secrets, then Raph would phone, I’ll be waiting for you tonight, and he’d really mean it.)

  Nothing happened, not love or a tan worthy of the name. We were leaving for home the next day, and I could hardly wait. That night, as on every other night, we crammed into the cottage belonging to Sonia — sister to Monique and mother to Bon Jovi, the girl Étienne managed to feel up because he didn’t discriminate and Bon Jovi looked like she’d be into it. At this lowest of lows in my state of boredom, I couldn’t blame him, although I did make fun of Anthony who, in his innocence, thought his cousin was busy teaching Étienne how to fish. So Étienne, Bon Jovi, Anthony, the two rat-tails, and I squeezed together in front of the TV set in Sonia’s cottage for the Miss America broadcast on ABC, a station we didn’t get at home, one my mom would never have let us watch. The adults were out having a cigarette by the fire.

  In Bon Jovi’s opinion, Miss Indiana’s tan was too fake. “Miss Georgia’s got such frog eyes. Wow, did you see Miss Texas’s hair? Miss Utah is the best of a bad lot.” “No, I like Miss Vermont better.” “Miss Vermont? You’re so granola, Étienne.” I’d like to have spoken up for Miss Vermont, too, to back up my brother, but in actual fact, I was mesmerized by Miss Washington, a tall brunette, the irises of her eyes verging on mauve, so calm she resembled a statue. Miss Washington didn’t say much — despite having the most beautiful voice of the lot, a warm, golden alto — but that was because anything she could say would have been superfluous. Who needs to hear from a millenia-old statue? “Anyone notice how all Miss Washington says is yes or no? I bet it’s because they’re the only words she knows,” I blurted out.

  After the brief burn caused by my own cruelty, I was safe. No one would ever guess that, deep down, I longed to be Miss Washington.

  Our mother had worked all week, just as she’d said. Exhausted as we were by the drive from Wells and Monique’s singalongs, she didn’t subject us to a detailed account of her week and didn’t have us talk about ours either. She asked if we were hungry, then served leftover roast chicken. It was covered in a honey-thyme rub, something Monique would have called special. It was good, of course. But only special if you’d never had anything else to eat before in your whole life. I wondered why Paule didn’t pester us with questions about Monique or any of the women who’d preceded her. Sh
e must hate them all, mustn’t she? She, too, would have enjoyed hearing about their major flaws, their prissy outfits and their tawdry jewellry. If she only knew that Renée, the woman just before Monique, used to wear barrettes to match her winter coat, and a purse to match her daughter’s dress! Wasn’t that incredible info?

  “You know, Dad’s girlfriend doesn’t think you should drink anything cold out of a cup.”

  “That’s her choice.”

  “Get a load of this, she’d never heard of tortellini before!”

  “You just found out what gelato is.”

  “But I’m only fifteen!”

  “That doesn’t give you the right to be rude.”

  A stone wall. My mother never played the game. Maybe she let loose with her friends, together tearing to shreds the women who’d taken their places with the men they’d cleaned up after through university and into their mid-thirties. Well within her rights to be pissed off, with her friends my mother again became the Gorgon I knew her to be. Maybe.

  I thought I might borrow something of my mother’s to wear to Hannah’s party. I didn’t know Hannah; she was a friend of Mandy’s, the only Anglo in the class. Hannah lived in Westmount and her parents taught medicine at McGill. That brief bio was intimidating enough; to have Mandy point out that Hannah had a “huge fucking mansion of a house” when she issued the invite did nothing to calm my nerves. How could I show up without giving away my inner working-class girl straight from Petite-Patrie and my inability to be gracious and graceful too? “Tessa’s a pretty name, but there’s nothing else remotely ballerina-like about you!” snickered Chantal, the director of the ballet school I went to for half a session in grade four. What stuck with me was my incurable lack of finesse and taste of bitterness at a first name that didn’t keep its promises. When I told Paule what Chantal had said, she was livid, grabbing the phone to tear a strip off the culprit, adding that the only thing the teacher’s name “brings to mind is the kind of dancer you’d see inside a cage on the teen show Jeunesse d’aujourd’hui.”