Hunting Houses Read online

  That show hadn’t aired for ages by then, but Chantal had to have grasped my mother’s meaning — she was a dancer lacking in class — and for a woman so proud to teach modern dance to little girls, the remark was an obvious insult. I was overcome with pride and shame — we never mentioned the incident again, and I never asked to take dance again either.

  Mandy was our ticket into Montreal’s Anglophone world. She knew everyone west of Atwater, not to mention all the names of the comedians on Saturday Night Live. She liked Buddy Holly and Patsy Cline and had already sung karaoke in a bar in Nashville, Tennessee. With her Jane Birkin–ish accent, Mandy called us Sophie, l’intrépide and Tessa, la tordue, the bold and the twisted. She shone to the tips of her platinum hair, and Sophie and I adored her. It was unthinkable for me to show up in front of Mandy and her friends — surely as magical as she — in poor girl or, worse yet, good girl clothes. My mother’s closet wasn’t well-stocked. Her single state and thirty-plus years had thickened her waist, but she did have a few interesting vests, including a men’s cut in a houndstooth motif that she sewed from modified patterns. The girls in Singles wore the same kind of thing: flowery dresses topped with a man’s vest and workmen’s boots, and Singles was a good movie, wasn’t it? Hadn’t Mandy said she liked it? Really, who hadn’t liked Singles? Even Eddie Vedder had a role. What about adding a burgundy felt hat? Paule had a small one that lay forgotten in the front hall closet; it didn’t quite fit my look, it was cloche-shaped and reminiscent of the twenties, but if I took out the feather she’d added, it would do. Sophie had been waiting at the Rosemont metro station for fifteen minutes by the time I arrived wearing my dress and boots, a vest under my arm, but no hat because, really, not everyone has it in them to be Bridget Fonda. The upshot was that I was a barely improved version of myself compared to any other day of the year. She embraced me effusively, kept saying, “I love your dress!” As for Sophie, she wore her usual uniform: jeans, espadrilles, and a sailor stripe top. Sophie in a dress was a rare and unsettling event, but whatever she wore, she always carried herself like a queen. When you’ve got it, you’ve got it and Sophie’s got it, I used to sing to the tune of the France Gall song Ella, Elle L’a. She’d say enough already and I’d ignore her.

  As soon as we got to Hannah’s, it was clear we were dealing with an entirely different race of human being. The guests may have looked like us (a few ballcaps, a lot of Converse runners, two or three retro army jackets, and a set of dreadlocks), the music was the same as anywhere else (on our arrival, “Groove Is in the Heart”; by evening’s end, “No Woman, No Cry”), and the liquor smelled like the punch we spiked at school dances. The difference was that everything took place in a huge mansion on white marble floors. Large windows covered one whole living room wall or, at least, the part of that room we had access to, and French doors led to a Better Homes and Gardens garden. A staircase took up a good part of the entranceway and spiralled upward to the bedroom floor. Hannah’s bedroom, which Mandy led us to on our arrival, was as big as my living room at home. Her bed: a canopy bed. Posters of her idols: framed. Hannah herself gave no clue as to her social class. Only a few niceties showed her wealth: tiny diamond earrings and well-manicured nails. A subtle perfume wafted from her, evocative of lemons and rosemary. There was no way it could have come from a Jean Coutu drugstore. I tried to remember if I’d put on any deodorant before leaving; if not, my synthetic dress would be far from forgiving. I decided to wait until I was alone in the bathroom (“double-paned shower and gold faucets”) to check my armpits. Hannah greeted us warmly, albeit in sketchy French. No problem — the insane number of hours I’d spent in front of American TV shows had done wonders for my English, and I jumped at the opportunity to show off. Nice room! Awesome outfit! This party rocks! The way I saw it, knowing the expressions used by real people — or at least, by teens in American sitcoms — was of the utmost importance.

  Hannah offered us a joint, which Sophie happily accepted. I pretended to take a toke, which led to a full twenty minutes of self-monitoring, is my heart racing, am I sweating, I feel dizzy, it’s so hot, I’ll be okay, but boy I really am sweating, I’ll take off my boots, the cold’ll do me good, thank God for cool marble floors, okay, no, everything’s okay, you didn’t even inhale, chill out, you weirdo, during which I only half listened to the conversation. In a framed picture on Hannah’s bedside table, I caught a glimpse of a woman, a brunette, in the sun, squinting to look at whoever was taking the picture, already delighted to see it’s her beloved daughter.

  Two cooing redheads, one tall, the other fat, walked in and dragged Hannah back downstairs. “Jon C. just showed up with Jon B., oh my God, Hannah, where’s my gloss!”

  “That’s her mother.”

  “She looks like her.”

  Mandy leaned closer and mouthed, “She died last spring. Ovarian cancer.”

  I looked again at the nightstand, at the woman without a single grey hair, young despite her motherly outfit (a flowered La Cache dress, straw hat, designer jewellry), and felt an urgent need to know when the picture had been taken. Had she known she was ill that day and what awaited her? Did she smile for her daughter because she knew that smile would outlast her? Did she rail against the atrocity of death, her face smothered in her pillow at night? Did she feel that forty-some years was acceptable for one lifetime? To comfort Hannah near the end, did she tell her daughter that she’d had a rich, beautiful, full, sufficient life? And if so, how could she truly believe that? Maybe mothers tell lies on their deathbeds.

  “How long ago was the picture taken?”

  “Dunno. Come see, there’s a patio on the roof.”

  Mandy got up from the bed and motioned for us to follow her. Sophie hooked her pinkie into mine. Get out of your head.

  I didn’t sleep over at Sophie’s as planned that night. At ten past midnight, I pretended I had to catch the last train and fled. Sophie didn’t insist. She knew my need to be alone, I knew her desire to get the hell out, and don’t get in the way was the motto that summed up our friendship.

  At forty-eight past midnight, after an endless metro ride peopled with drunks and hockey fans, I opened the door to our house. Étienne wasn’t home yet. That summer, sometimes we’d cross paths only once or twice a week. He was about to start college, and then we’d see even less of him. That was the way it was.

  The door to Paule’s bedroom stood open. She lay fast asleep under her thick handmade quilt, the one I so loved when I was little with its gold piping and large squares of raspberry silk charmeuse. Her still outline reminded me of the children’s book I’d read so often about the owl frightened by the shape of its own feet under the covers. Her breathing was loud and slow, regular and deep, its rhythm occasionally broken by a little snore. The minutes ticked by on the clock by her bed.

  Fifty past midnight. Sunk in her bed, my mother was immense and tiny and so alone. At the door sat a pair of old running shoes flecked with green, blue, and yellow, the ones she wore to paint in. A pair of socks was stuffed into one of the runners. She’d begun painting an old church pew she’d scavenged from a friend’s garage; that was how she’d spent her day. I wanted to wake her up, tell her about Hannah’s mother, tell her she had to live forever. I would never be ready to let her go. I’d promise to help her paint the pew on Sunday. We could go for ice cream afterwards and, most of all, I’d tell her that no one was stronger than she was.

  I didn’t though. It was the middle of the night and, anyhow, we weren’t a sentimental kind of family.

  Tomorrow

  “I can’t guarantee it, but I’m almost sure it gave her a thrill.”

  “She’s despicable, we’ve known that for a long time.”

  “She literally said, ‘Aww.’ As in Aww…poor you.”

  “Like I said, despicable.”

  “She said, ‘Aww…I don’t know how you do it. I’d die if I didn’t have children.’”

  “S
tupid idiot.”

  “She wasn’t trying to be mean.”

  “I’m sure she wasn’t trying to be a stupid idiot either, but she is one.”

  “Who does that? Who says that to someone who’s just had a miscarriage, goddammit!”

  “I’m so sorry, Sophie.”

  “You’re such a sweetheart.”

  “Have you two decided what’s next?”

  “Not yet. I’ve never liked the idea of a clinic, you know that. Maybe I’ve waited too long.”

  “Do you want me to give you one of mine? That is a possibility.”

  “They’d miss you too much.”

  “That bloody bitch should eat shit.”

  “You bet.”

  “Not to mention that book of hers, pure drivel.”

  “Did you read it?”

  “Leafed through it in the store. You’ve never read anything as self-indulgent or embarrassing. In an interview, she called it a momvel. Seriously! You wouldn’t want to be her.”

  “I don’t want to be her.”

  “You wouldn’t want her husband either.”

  “Shit no.”

  “‘Mr. Hard-on’?”

  “He really lets her write that on her blog?”

  “It’s ’cause he gets such hard-ons. Not.”

  Sophie’s laugh.

  “I tell you Sophie, the more someone goes on about their great life with Mr. Hard-on, the fishier it sounds, everyone knows that. Mr. Soft-on. Mr. Anti-Hard-on.”

  “Thanks, Tess. It’s not her fault that she’s got kids.”

  “It’s entirely her fault. The problem is she thinks kids appear as if by magic to those who truly deserve them. When the truth is she’s just plain vulgar and has hyperactive ovaries, like me.”

  “You’re no vulgar hyperactive ovarian.”

  “Nothing is less certain.”

  “You’re such an idiot.”

  “Got time for lunch?”

  “No, I’ve got a million things to do.”

  “Shall we go anyway?”

  “You bet.”

  The four of them left early, all in a rush to give Philémon enough time to zip through the math homework he’d forgotten in his locker. His forgetfulness earned him his mother’s ire and then an extra cookie in his lunchbag because of the guilt brought on by the motherly ire. Up since six, Boris and Oscar were happy to follow their father. Neither knew the morning blues, a quality they inherited from Jim, who loves his sons as he loves his wife and life itself — boldly and with fierce resolve.

  The minute the door closes is usually one I cherish. It’s like when you wave a teatowel under a smoke detector and, after all the chaos and running around, the alarm finally stops. You’re left alone in the silence, your hair a mess. Today, the calm that prevails seems out of place, almost scandalous. My time is mine for a few hours before my lunch with Sophie; then I’ll accompany a couple in their forties to see a house on Île Bizard, I’ll pick up the children at school, and we’ll crowd the narrow entrance with our shoes and spring jackets. I’m alone, and what is normally a luxury and a well-deserved treat (if you go by all those yogurt and chocolate bar ads) is filled with foreboding. Is this my life from here on in? Once I’ve destroyed our world, will I keep waking up to this mute indifference?

  A Montreal spring, exuberant and unambiguous, is cruel for the unhappy among us. Everyone is wound up in the spring in Montreal; we are a herd returning to pasture after winter. During our seasonal retreat, only the flu bug makes it into our sealed shelters. Upon our release, the gates are thrown open, we’re flooded with sap and hope, and everyone knows too well that hope is never more heart-wrenching than for those of us who are sad. Those who venture outdoors risk even greater disappointment, face to face with those of us who are happy: Why don’t you try just a little? Go outside, the patios are open! So for the most part during Montreal’s spring, the unhappy among us keep our mouths shut and bob our heads like those car ornaments, the bobbleheads, taunting us during traffic jams. There is nothing sadder than being sad when you’re the only one.

  Looking for the outdoor café Sophie suggested for our meeting, I see among the seated diners — laughing, blustering, whispering, and chattering — a sad-eyed contingent. The man who barely takes time to sit down before ordering a beer. The woman whose gaze flits from one to another of her colleagues, her lips pressed together. The boy on a skateboard nearby, a taller version of Philémon, who never looks up, just keeps trying the same tricks over and over. Sophie, sitting in a secluded corner of the patio in the shade, her cheek resting on her balled-up fist, asking herself the same questions over and over: Will I ever have children? What if I don’t? For Sophie, there’s no question about where she belongs.

  “Nice day out. I hate it.”

  Sophie hears my voice and looks up with a smile. At some point between the long-gone days when we watched boys playing basketball in the schoolyard and today, she saw darkness descend on me. I’d call it lucidity since that’s the right word and one doesn’t exclude the other, but people don’t like to think their life won’t fulfill the promises made in the cradle or around the fire when they shone as only adolescents can, driven by the unshakeable certainty that everything will be fine. I was once like them.

  Sophie doesn’t age. She works, talks, laughs, sleeps a lot, sometimes travels. But she doesn’t age. You might think it’s because she’s worn the same uniform for the past twenty years, her runners and sailor stripe tops, her discreet European grace, her dark bob — but that’s not it. The reason Sophie doesn’t age is she doesn’t know how. Which doesn’t mean she can’t be in a bad mood occasionally.

  “That’s true, it is a nice day out.”

  It’s something worth pointing out, both for her and for me.

  “Also true that I hate it.”

  Spoken aloud, things take on real contours and are revealed in all their absurdity. Is it that implacable logic that leads me to say nothing to Sophie? A hundred minutes spent on the restaurant terrace together and none of them devoted to talk of Francis. We order, eat, laugh even more over Ms. Momvel, Sophie’s journalist colleague from a few years ago, her small-ish literary success and her lame book recounting the adventures of a mother blessed with four children (a boy, twin girls, another boy). Sophie is too classy to mock her openly, so I take up the baton with unabashed pleasure. Of course, my hostility is ugly and reeks of bitterness, but I’m on Sophie’s side and hold nothing back.

  So why not say a single word about Francis?

  Sophie knows everything about the man, from how much I’ve missed him to how that weighed me down. She knows about the years spent looking for him everywhere, in songs, in movies, in the thousands of steps taken on the sidewalks of my city. She knows that Jim knows next to nothing about that time because, for many years, even the mention of his name hurt. She knows everything. What I said, and what I didn’t say. She knows what hasn’t healed.

  So. Why not mention Francis?

  Maybe because I can guess that, despite our friendship and years of shared secrets, or maybe because of them, she wouldn’t believe — in either Francis’s steadfastness or my resolve. The light veil of disapproval that would drop down over her big blue eyes would only be a reflection of my own. I couldn’t stand that because, whatever the cost, I need something to relieve the grief I’ve been drunk on for years now. Hasn’t Francis resurfaced to sober me up? Knowing as much, how can I deprive myself?

  Tomorrow will be another nice day. The fourth consecutive day with clear skies. I could bring out the gold ballerina flats I bought off the Internet in a moment’s madness last summer and that I’ve only worn for a grand total of three times because the sight of my woman’s feet in young girl’s shoes sickened me. I stored them at the back of the closet with the swimsuits. But tomorrow will be no ordinary day. The circumstances call for gold flats and a new dress;
it’s a day to defy all conventions, a day to once again meet the man-who-changed-everything-and-revealed-me-to-myself. A woman in the throes of passion no longer has to comply with age or status-based rules, right? She becomes Charlotte Gainsbourg on the streets of Paris, Patti Smith in a recording session, or Emily Brontë taking charge of her own education. She’s free.

  On Villeray on my way back from my lunch with Sophie, I spot a dress in a store window. Klein blue fabric, dotted with grey stars so tiny they look like grains of sand. I step inside, grab the dress without trying it on. It has to fit, it will fit, I buy it. The salesclerk wraps the dress in tissue paper, I almost say no, no need, I’ll be wearing it tomorrow. But I let her. I can. For the pleasure of unwrapping it tonight, then hanging it in the closet, hidden between two real estate agent blouses.

  When I step outside with my little black bag, I follow two girls in T-shirts, their round thighs encased in leggings, laughing and singing a current pop hit, bouncy and light, even the chubbier of the two. Don’t they have a class to go to? would be my usual thought, but today I’m not their mother; I’m freedom and confidence. I’m their eyes alight with the future.

  A rare occurrence.

  One whispers into the other’s ear and both burst into flustered, triumphant laughter. They speak of the sacred, the salacious; they are wonderful and I smile so hard tears fill my eyes.

  Then the phone rings. The girls’ heads swivel; they see me staring and hurry away. My intensity sent chills down their spine. If a grown-up stares at you with a strange look in their eye, make a run for it. (Yes, the grown-up can be a woman.)