by Ann Lambert
Five
ROMÉO LEDUC rifled through his top dresser drawer, looking for a pair of clean underwear. He couldn’t remember whether he’d left some at Marie’s or not. He could, of course, bring a few pairs to throw in with her laundry, but he did not want to show up like some dumb college kid on school break with his dirty clothes for maman to wash. He finally found an old but still serviceable set of boxer briefs and threw them in his small duffel bag along with a fresh shirt and the sweater Marie had bought him for Christmas. He didn’t like it much and hadn’t worn it after the holidays ended, but he suspected it would be a welcome gesture tonight. Roméo downed the dregs of his single malt as he stepped into his bathroom and peered at his reflection in the mirror over the sink. As he examined the stubble of beard, he thought about shaving—but then he’d never make it in time. He had to get ahead of the imminent snowstorm, or he wouldn’t make it to Marie’s at all, and his window of opportunity was closing fast. He examined his left then his right profile, and thought he saw the beginnings of a double chin. He was definitely not shaving now. Marie always told him he looked like her childhood heartthrob, Gregory Peck, as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Despite being the healthiest of the cops he knew—all of whom seemed to eat nothing but McDonald’s and Tim Hortons—he couldn’t help but notice he seemed to have aged since he turned fifty. Had he taken a coup de vieux? He scratched at his beard and noted how much grayer it was than just a few months ago. Marie often pointed out yet another gendered injustice of aging: male gray was distinguished and female gray was just old and over the hill. He had to admit that men certainly got the better deal when it came to—well, practically everything. Still, what was a barely noticeable thickening when he quit smoking was now definitely a paunch, despite how many sit- ups he did. His once perfect vision was perfect no longer. He’d become one of those people who peered at a book or newspaper an arm’s length from his face but refused to buy glasses.
Roméo quickly ran a comb through his still mostly dark brown hair, and then checked his watch. He would be there in forty minutes if he left right now. As he passed through his small and spartan living room, he glanced at the two thick sets of files on his kitchen table. He had been looking through his new case load that morning and debated bringing them along. As Chief Inspector for Homicide in the district of St. Jerome, a bedroom community in the lower Laurentians, the good news was there hadn’t been a homicide in his largely rural district for almost three months. The bad news was there hadn’t been a homicide in his largely rural district for almost three months, so in the interim he had been put in charge of the Sûreté du Québec’s Cold Case squad for the greater Montreal region. Roméo was tasked with tackling a backlog of unsolved murders dating back almost fifty years, focusing on cases involving women and children, especially. Roméo had never worked cold cases before, and he couldn’t help but think this was the SQ’s way of telling him retirement wasn’t so far off.
The other good news was that he was now head of a team of about seventeen officers, and one of them was Nicole LaFramboise, finally returning after a one-year maternity leave, and a one-year transfer to Labelle, two hours north of Montreal. Nicole was his best officer. Despite the very drunken sex they’d had one night several years earlier, they were still very good partners as detectives, and now that Nicole’s baby was in daycare and she had lost that disaster of a boyfriend, things were looking up. Roméo remembered when Nicole first told him she was pregnant, and how for one terrifying moment he had thought the baby was his. But it wasn’t. Nicole was so thrilled to find a good man, who was so doting and so in love with her and the baby. Or the idea of a baby. But he quickly became a liability. He flew into rages when the baby kept them up all night. Left Nicole for hours and then days at a time. She finally threw him out when the baby was only eight months old, and she discovered he had a new girlfriend. Nicole was too angry and disappointed to be heartbroken. She just wanted him gone. Now the father saw the baby one weekend a month, which seemed to be what he wanted all along. Poor Nicole. It was a constant source of amazement to Roméo how often people totally misjudged each other. Or in her case, invented an entire person who didn’t actually exist. They were doomed to fail.
Roméo’s thoughts wandered back to the first time he and Marie had had sex—or tried to. They had planned a romantic evening at a hotel in Old Montreal. They booked supper at l’Epicurien—a restaurant that was so upscale and soigné that it didn’t even have a sign. Marie ate an enormous surf and turfish thing. Roméo couldn’t even remember what he had—he was not such a fan of high-end anything, and as a vegan, there were few options on the menu. He just remembered Marie’s beaming face, how much she enjoyed teasing the obsequious waiter, their mutual nervousness over the expectation of intimacy—the knowledge that they were going to soon cross that romantic Rubicon. By the time they got to their very chic and tasteful room, Marie was already feeling queasy. By the time Roméo emerged from the bathroom ready to romance, Marie had thrown up all over the bed. Then she projectile vomited all over the bathroom. When it was all over twenty-four hours later, he joked about the lengths women would go to not to have sex with him. Marie was as weak as a newborn and smelled pretty awful. But still, he could not get over how lovely she was. Roméo smiled as he thought about how they finally did the deed the next day. At first they were so nervous, they couldn’t stop laughing. Then Marie just took his face in her hands and kissed him with such tenderness it was the most erotic experience he’d ever had. Roméo wondered if moving in together could ruin their relationship. In fact, he was quite nervous about it, and sometimes he felt like they should just leave things as they are. On ne réveille pas le chat qui dort.
Roméo picked up the files and then dropped them back on the table. He would be too tempted not to pore over them, and he and Marie’s Saturday evenings together were sacred—they permitted no phone or email checking, no texting, no communication with the outside world—unless Roméo got called to an emergency. Suddenly, Roméo heard a rush of wind at his front door, which actually seemed to blow his daughter, Sophie, into his tiny foyer.
“Sophie? What’re you doing here? I wasn’t expecting you—”
“Papa—Can I stay with you? I am not going back to that apartment. With. Him. I am not.” She gasped the words out between sobs.
Roméo watched as she dropped her coat on the floor and kicked off her boots.
“Sophie, I was just literally heading out the door—”
“In this? I just drove here from the city—it’s starting to get bad out there.” Her voice drooped in disappointment. “Oh. You’re going to Marie’s place.”
She dropped onto Roméo’s sofa and collapsed into tears again. “He’s just become a different person—a real asshole. I don’t know what happened!”
Roméo had warned her about moving in with him. Her mother and stepfather had not opposed it, but Roméo had. She was too young, and from what Roméo witnessed, his great passions were video games and bottomless bowls of spaghetti with meat sauce. He had often wanted to smack the boy’s baseball cap off his head when he wouldn’t even look up from a game long enough to say a proper hello. They were like two kids playing adults, and that rarely ended well. Even adults playing adults often didn’t pull it off.
“Why didn’t you go stay chez maman?”
“They’re in Mexico, remember?”
Roméo couldn’t keep up with the life of Riley his ex-wife, Elyse, had found for herself with her smug and perpetually partying husband, Guy. Sophie returned from the bathroom with a roll of toilet paper and loudly blew her nose. “I needed you, Papa.”
“Sophie, you can stay here, but I have to leave now. Will you be okay? I think there’s some pizza in the freezer. I’ll be back tomorrow evening, okay?” He hated being caught between his daughter and Marie. Still, Roméo could see Sophie was suffering and couldn’t bear it. He never could. But he would have to this time. He grabbed his
car keys and headed for the door.
“He pushed me.”
Roméo stopped in his tracks. “Quoi?”
“He pushed me. Up against the wall. Hard. I thought he was gonna hit me, Papa.”
Her admission prompted another burst of tears. He felt like he’d been punched. In the heart. Roméo dropped his bag and returned the keys to the antique Gauloise ashtray where he kept them. He sat down next to Sophie on the sofa and held his sobbing child in his arms. He’d have to let Marie know he’d miss supper and their Saturday night together. Now why did he feel a bit relieved?
Six
ROSIE HAD TO GET AWAY from the road. Pulling herself along by her one good hand, she managed to crawl and drag herself over the low concrete barrier and rest against the steep embankment. The snow and wind whipped around her, and at first she hadn’t felt much. But now, the pain somewhere in her hip and right leg snatched her breath from her. She desperately tried to get air into her lungs, but the pain was so excruciating she could only gulp small, shallow breaths. As she dragged herself up the embankment, she felt the wind tear at her body again. She had to move a bit more—if she could get out of the wind she might survive the night until she could get help. When she turned on her stomach to crawl, her head exploded in pain. She lay on her back. No. Her side. No, her back. She had to keep breathing. Stay awake. Stay awake. Stay awake. She tried to pull her legs up in the fetal position to keep the heat in, but the pain was so intense and shocking she felt herself losing consciousness. She tried to open her eyes, but she couldn’t seem to. She tried to move her legs, but now she couldn’t feel them at all. She clutched at her stomach. Was he still there? She couldn’t feel him. Nothing at all. And then, a warm and beautiful image came to her. The sea smell of the bay. Her grandmother’s hands plucking eider ducks. A few feathers lifting away in the gentle summer breeze that kept the bugs away but wasn’t too cold. Perfect. Just perfect. Her grandmother’s hands. Brown. Wrinkled. Skilled. So fast. Her mother lighting the fire. Delicious smell of dripping duck fat. The summer sun strong. Her sister, Maggie, playing the piano. No, that’s something else. Another day. Piano Day. The eighty-eighth day of the year, for the instrument’s eighty-eight keys. She and Maggie playing “Heart and Soul.” Rosie and Maggie. Maggie and Rosie. Maggie played the one-hand part, she played the two-hand. They did it real serious for the show, then after they were laughing and laughing, so pleased with themselves. People clapping. Maggie never played anymore, but she did. She could play a hundred songs. Make them up, too. Now she couldn’t breathe at all. Breathe. She didn’t want to die like this. Like a…like a dog. Her grandfather had to shoot them all—all his dogs. He couldn’t take them in the relocation because they couldn’t go in the canoe. Didn’t want the whites—the RCMP to do it, like they did all the others. Had to shoot them all. Grandmother still cried and cried when she told it. Everything changed after that. She didn’t want to die. Breathe. Maggie. They would get a piano, they promised each other. Play “Heart and Soul” every day.
“What happened to you?” A voice. Ecstasy of relief. A voice. A face. Not a face. Eyes and a mask. A scarf. A man. Was speaking to her, asking her if she was okay. She tried to move, but the pain was so knife-intense she retreated from it and tried to breathe again.
The voice was drowning now. Far away.
“Help me. I. Can’t.” Her voice now. She felt something under her head, holding her head. Something heavy over her. It was warm. Warmer. She tried to open her mouth to breathe, but there was no air. No air.
“I will help you. Don’t be scared. Help is coming. Help is on the way.”
And then. There was nothing.
Seven
Monday morning
January 28, 2019
MARIE QUICKLY CHECKED her watch. Two minutes left. Her timing was impeccable. She looked out at the forty or so faces and knew that almost every one of them was actually listening. Although she wished this was all due to her gifts as a teacher, she knew that in fact, it was the subject she was discussing. “In 1967, Roger Payne and Scott McVay recorded humpback whales singing—yes, singing—off the coast of Bermuda. Four years later, they released a record of those songs. Amazingly, it became a bestseller. More importantly, it altered the fate of the humpback whale, hopefully forever. Now. Can anyone think of why?”
A few tentative hands were slowly raised. Marie called on a very shy girl in the second row. It took a lot of courage for her to speak up in class at all, and she blushed a furious fuchsia. “Is it because they were able to talk to us?”
A few of her classmates erupted in laughter. Marie overheard one boy say, “I speak whale. Don’t you?” His cronies snickered again. The second-row girl wouldn’t answer another question for a long time now.
“Actually,” Marie hesitated as she tried to recall her name. “Katie. You are absolutely right.” Marie looked directly at the sniggering gang of four in the back. “Can any of you expand on that?” The class went silent, puzzling over the question. “The whale songs were so strangely beautiful and haunting, they completely captivated the public’s imagination. Although humpbacks were the ‘musicians,’ this fascination and urge to understand them carried over to most whale species. Suddenly, these animals that were hunted for over four-hundred years to near extinction for such things as lamp oil, soap, corset stays—I’ll explain what those are later—margarine, and even for perfume from whale poop, were seen as something we could relate to, to have compassion for, because as Richard Ellis explained—it was like they were singing their own dirge.” Marie checked her watch again. “Okay! That’s all for today. Please read and take notes on chapter four of your course pack on whale vocalization. See you all right back here on Thursday!”
With a scraping of forty chairs, her class began to gather their things and exit the room. Almost everyone was staring at their phones or madly thumbing a text. About a half a dozen of them hovered around her desk, still bristling with questions. This was often Marie’s favorite part of teaching. “Miss, what is a corset stay?” asked a girl named Zaynab. A boy standing beside her explained what it was. “That’s horrible!” the girl gasped. Marie nodded and asked, “Which? The corset or the slaughter of whales to make them?” Another boy, Francois, wanted to know what dirge meant. Marie spelled it for him and then told him to look it up. He checked his phone immediately and smiled. “Okay. That makes sense now.” One of the gang of four from the back of the class had surprisingly remained behind. “Miss!” Marie started to correct him—she had repeatedly reminded her students to call her Ms. Russell, Mrs. Russell, or Marie. Just not “Miss,” a holdover from high school and so much less respectful and commanding so much less authority than the “Sir” used to address her male colleagues. But he seemed so enthusiastic about his question, Marie cut herself off. He wore the uniform of his crowd—a backwards baseball cap, sweatpants, and a faded hoodie with some logo Marie didn’t understand. He had a little bit of dark hair over his lip, and a few more patches under his chin. No real beard yet. “Miss—whatddya mean they make perfume from like, whale poop?”
Marie laughed. “Okay, so short answer?” The boy nodded. “It’s called ambergris, and it’s a substance sperm whales make in their bellies to protect themselves from giant squid beaks that they can’t digest, which might puncture their intestinal tract. So, they coat the squid beaks with this substance, and poop them out. Only about one percent of sperm whales do this, so it’s very rare, and highly valued by famous perfume makers—because it fixes scent to human skin. It can be worth thousands of dollars. An ounce.”
The boy opened his mouth dramatically, then remarked “Holy shit!”
Marie laughed. “Exactly.”
Marie glanced out the window of her classroom door and noticed several students and an annoyed-looking teacher waiting. She gathered her papers and made for the exit. As she headed down the bustling between-class halls, most of the hangers-on wished her a good day a
nd disappeared into the crowds. Just one followed her, the one who’d written the brilliant paper. Michaela. “Professor Russell? You wrote on my paper you’d like to speak with me?”
Marie smiled. “Yes. I’d like you to present your paper to the class—you don’t have to read it, but just go over the main points. It’s outstanding.”
Michaela didn’t seem as enthusiastic as Marie had expected. “Am I the only one presenting my paper?” So that was it. Some students loved to be singled out to show off their work. Many more, especially the really smart ones, didn’t like it. They’d probably been teacher’s pet since kindergarten and had paid the price for it socially.
Marie shook her head. “No, there’ll be one or two others. How about two classes from now? Say, next Monday?”
Looking pleased in spite of herself, Michaela agreed. “I’ll do it if you promise to tell more stories about your life as a marine biologist—I’d like to hear the one about the time you got drenched in whale snot. You promised you’d tell it, but you never did.” Students loved personal stories. And Marie had many tales to tell. She agreed to Michaela’s conditions, but added, “Just cut me off when they get too self-indulgent and um…too personal.”
Michaela nodded. “It’s a deal.”
Marie arrived at her office door and waited to see if Michaela would follow her in, but she checked her phone instead, and gasped. “I’m late for anthropology. I’ll fail if I’m late more than twice. Thank you for the great class!” Marie watched as the diminutive young woman hastened down the hall. It was students like Michaela Cruz that made teaching such a privilege. It was a big cliché, but it was true. Marie could stand up in front of a class and discuss what she felt so passionately about to seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds forever—or until they dragged her out of the college feet first. This morning, Marie was feeling like she’d never retire.