The Dogs of Winter

by Ann Lambert

  Twenty-Nine

  Wednesday afternoon

  TI-COUNE COUSINEAU SUNK HIS TEETH into the doughy sesame seed bagel that was still warm from the wood oven at Fairmount Bagel. They had been baking their bagels exactly the same way for almost 100 years. Each one was cut from a batch of dough, hand pulled and rolled, dropped in a water-and-honey infusion, and then rolled in any one of several savory toppings. Then they lined them up on a long wooden board and baked them in a wood-burning oven that was perfectly calibrated to produce a bagel crispy on the outside, and soft on the inside. Some people liked them best with lox, cream cheese, and a bit of onion. But Ti-Coune loved them like this, unadorned and eaten straight from the paper bag they came in. He remembered reading in an Anglo newspaper that there were heated debates about New York versus Montreal bagels—but everybody knew that Montreal’s were the best. The rivalry between Fairmount Bagel and St.Viateur Bagel barely two blocks away, however, was one that the Montréalais would never allow to end. He walked west along Fairmount, his boots crunching in the hard packed snow of the sidewalk. By the time he hit Park Avenue and crossed over into Outremont, he had started his second bagel—this time a poppy seed, his second favorite—and he realized his feet were somehow taking him to the place he hadn’t been to in more than twenty-five years. Everything was different now, and somehow nothing was. There were fewer Greek restaurants now, as they had moved out of the area to Park Extension about fifteen blocks north. There were many more cafés and some swankier shops—the kind Ti-Coune would never have dreamed of going to as a kid, and would be too intimidated to even think of stepping into now. But as he approached his old street, the same orthodox Jewish guys whose ancestors arrived 100 years ago were still hustling from one place to another, wearing those the big furry hats covered in plastic to protect them from the winter. Girls who barely looked old enough to be mothers were still pushing their kids in strollers, three or four more kids hanging off of them.

  He took one final bite and crumpled the empty bag into his pocket. The bagel was the taste of his childhood—or one taste of his childhood, anyway. The other was Kraft dinner. The dirty feet smell of that orange powder cheese mixed in with the noodles, and his mother made it with water, not milk, and almost no margarine. Cigarettes blended with his mother’s Charlie perfume. Hélène’s patchouli oil. And infusing it all, the ammonia smell of cat pee. And suddenly, there it was. The building where Ti-Coune grew up. Or down. It was much nicer, now. The façade had been sandblasted and the red brick almost sparkled in the winter sun. The black wrought-iron balconies looked freshly painted, and all the windows looked quite new. There were no sheets in the windows, but proper curtains and blinds. Even their shitty basement apartment had a brand new red door and an address with a number he could actually see. For a few brief seconds, Ti-Coune thought he might knock on the door and ask to see the place. But what would that do? Probably some rich kids lived there now, and the place would be all fixed up with Ikea furniture or something.

  Instead, he lit a cigarette from the packet of rollies he kept in his jacket and took deep drags off it as that day came back to him. He was coming home from school, and he walked right into Hélène and his mother going at it again. He remembered blocking his ears and running to the room he and his sister shared, but the screaming was so loud he came back out to see Hélène get backhanded right across the kitchen. She hit her head so hard on the corner of the table, a cut above her eye opened and was bleeding terribly. His mother just stared at her, trying to catch her breath, and then started warning Hélène to stay away from her man or she’d kill her the next time. Then his mother grabbed her coat and took off out the door, first grabbing her smokes and this green vinyl purse that he and Hélène had saved up several months to buy her from the little jobs they did in the neighborhood.

  Ti-Coune helped his sister to the bathroom and tried to clean her cut as best he could. She obviously needed stitches—but she shook him off her and went to start packing her things. It wasn’t the first time she’d been hit; in fact, this time was pretty tame compared to others, but Hélène had had enough. Ti-Coune kept insisting their mother would come home and suck up to her like she usually did—either with fresh bagels, or a new candy Pez, or the promise of going to a movie. When she wasn’t drinking she could be very nice—especially to Ti-Coune. Hélène was really the object of her hatred and resentment. Maybe because Hélène had interrupted the party life their mother still wanted and thought she deserved.

  He lit a second cigarette off the first one and closed his eyes for a few seconds. In all the years they’d lived there, he had not once stood up for Hélène. He was ten years old the first time she ran away—old enough to help her—but he was too scared. He did nothing. The next thing he knew Hélène was gone and he was left to take care of his mother alone.

  Ti-Coune abruptly turned away from the building and started back east towards Park Avenue. He could hop on the #80 bus and head south. Then he would start heading west go to the place where everybody used to know his fucking name, like that show les anglais liked so much on TV. If Hélène was alive and here in Montreal, then he would find her. He would find her and ask her how she could walk out on her little brother. He would find her and ask for her forgiveness.

  Thirty

  Thursday evening

  February 7, 2019

  MARIE TRIED NOT TO BREATHE or make any sound that could possibly wake him up as she tiptoed backwards out of the room. She slowly dimmed the light to darkness and cringed as she heard the floor groan under her. She paused and waited a few seconds. She took another step and then another and quietly clicked the door shut behind her. Finally. Marie had played the same disappearing animal game with that boy for one solid hour. Then she had read him the same book ten times. Each time she finished it he would look at her with those brown eyes that made her feel like weeping for love, clap his hands, and say “Encore?” Then she tried to feed him the supper Ben and Maya had left for him, which became an epic journey of soaring hope and crushing defeat. By the time she wrapped his squirmy, sweetly soapy smelling body into a towel, he had soaked the bathroom walls, the floor mat, and Marie herself. She got him into his pajamas, the gender-

  neutral yellow ones with the red penguins on them—penguins weren’t red and that annoyed her—and lay him into his crib with a heartbreakingly hopeful, “Bonne nuit, mon amour.”

  She was positive he was sound asleep until the first time she headed for his door, and she heard a little voice say “Encore?” Hence the eleventh reading of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and the whole routine all over again. Marie quietly checked that the baby monitor was on and made a brief prayer to the sleeping baby gods that he would stay that way for the next ten hours. That way Marie and Roméo could have a little time together, and Noah’s mom and dad might get some relief from their sleep deprivation.

  Marie tiptoed down the hallway to Ben and Maya’s kitchen and immediately went to the fridge. There was a tiny bit of Pinot Grigio left in a bottle squeezed into the back. She popped the cork and smelled it. Marie didn’t like white wine, but this would have to do. She poured herself a glass and returned to the living room where the flotsam and jetsam of her playdate with Noah lay strewn on the floor. She took a gulp of the wine, and then settled on the floor to pick everything up. She knew she was supposed to get Noah to help her before he went to bed—they had a little clean-up song that he sang in his garbled baby language—but this time she forgot. Noah. She knew the name meant “he who seeks safe landing,” but Noah was also a famous biblical drunk. As far as traditional Old Testament names, Marie liked Isaac. Or Ethan. Or Ben, of course. But Noah? Marie considered her empty wine glass and headed to the kitchen for a bit more. Just one more small glass. As she emptied the remains of the bottle into it, her phone buzzed with a new text message. It was Ruby. A meeting she had in the neighborhood was canceled at the last minute, and she was just around the corner. Marie’s beautiful, complica
ted daughter was going to pop by for a quick visit.

  There was a little squeak and shriek and they both immediately stared at the screen. Noah had moved from his side and now was sleeping on his stomach, his bum up in the air. Then he was quiet again. They both watched for a few seconds.

  “Noah TV can be pretty riveting.”

  Marie turned away from the baby monitor screen and laughed. “I’m sorry, Ruby. But sometimes I could just watch him for hours. Isn’t he the most delicious thing you’ve ever seen?”

  “Yes, Mother. He most certainly is.” Ruby had brought a six-pack of beer and cracked one open. She took a pretty healthy swig from the bottle.

  “But, wow. He is an active child. I mean, I save that kid’s life every two minutes. Like tonight? I turned my back on him—I swear for maybe one minute while I ran to the kitchen for something. He was just playing with his little train set and singing sweetly to himself. The next thing I know, he was climbing, I mean he was scaling that bookcase. He was almost to the top when I pulled him off it, and he howled at me in protest. He is exactly like Ben. A bloody perpetual motion machine.”

  “And you wouldn’t have him any other way, would you Mum?”

  Marie sunk lower into the sofa and crossed her long legs up on the coffee table.

  “I am exhausted. Flattened. How did I ever do this? I mean day in, day out—not like kamikaze grandmaman I am now. I forgot what eighteen months old is like. They’re complete maniacs.”

  “And you want me to have one of those?” Ruby asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Do you think a boyfriend might be a good first step, though? Or should I go directly to the sperm bank?”

  Ruby hadn’t dated anyone seriously in two years, since she dumped the perfect guy. At least Marie thought he was. Ruby felt differently. But that was the heartbreak of being a parent—they actually do have to live their own lives and learn from their own mistakes—as much as Marie wanted to take them by the shoulders and shake them into seeing what was obvious to everyone else.

  Marie leaned forward and took a handful of Ruby’s thick auburn hair. She began to weave it into one long braid down her daughter’s back. “So. Have you met any—”

  Ruby wriggled out of her mother’s grasp and moved to the other end of the sofa.

  “Don’t even think about going there, Mother. I’m not discussing that subject tonight.”

  Marie had promised herself she wouldn’t raise the issue of Ruby’s dating again, and she’d barely made it past the ten-minute mark. But now that she’d opened the window a crack, she decided to go for it. “Surely there are some…nice, smart, worthy guys at school?”

  “Please don’t call me Shirley.” It was an old joke from an old movie, and they both pulled a face at each other. Ruby got up to fetch another beer from the fridge. Then she plumped down on the floor beside Noah’s toy box and started to play with a tractor. “They’re all such wannabee lawyers.”

  Marie snorted. “Well. You are in law school. Maybe they can’t help themselves.”

  Ruby shook her head at her mother. “You know what I mean. You can smell the burning ambition on most of them. It’s nauseating.”

  Marie opened her mouth to respond, but Ruby continued. “And now I am changing the subject.” Ruby’s expression shifted to faux cheerful enthusiasm. “Hey, Mom! Did you hear?”

  “No, Ruby. I didn’t. What?”

  “Annique got a role in Nasty Women, that new Netflix series.”

  Annique was one of Ruby’s oldest friends. They had also been rivals since grade one, competing for every starring role through elementary and high school. Except Ruby had decided to give up acting for law school, and Annique had persevered.

  “Are you kidding me?? Good for her!!” Marie was gobsmacked. “I love that show. Who’s she gonna be?”

  “She can’t say anything yet, so don’t you. It’s still a secret. But she’s cast as some new girl. New storyline. Everything. She got the one good local part.”

  Marie lifted her glass. “Well, here’s to Annique. That’s wonderful.”

  Ruby tried hard to smile. “Yeah. It’s great.” Ruby pulled a truck out of the toy box and held it up. “What is going on here? I thought they were raising him gender neutral? I don’t see any dolls here.”

  Suddenly there was a little shriek from the baby monitor. Marie looked at Noah TV in alarm. He had flipped back to his side. “See? He wants a doll.”

  “Ruby, I was just remembering tonight what a lovely baby you were. When you were about…maybe three years old. You used to entertain yourself for hours by making up elaborate stories with all your animal figurines. I mean, you’d have them all gathered around you, and you’d narrate these amazing tales. I came into the living room one afternoon when you were completely in the thick of one of these epics, and I asked you if you’d like a glass of milk and a cookie. You looked up at me and said, ‘Yes, please’ in your sweet way. On my way back to the kitchen I heard you whisper to all your animal friends. ‘That was my mother.’”

  Ruby smiled and nodded her head. “I’ve only heard that one about a thousand times.”

  Marie was taken aback by the tears gathering in her eyes. “If I could, my love, I would do it all over again—exactly the way it was. With all the terror and joy and heartbreak and exhaustion. I wouldn’t change one moment of it.”

  “Really? How about the time I crawled into your bed and puked all over you and Dad didn’t even wake up?”

  Marie felt that ex-husband chill come over her. Daniel was legendary for sleeping through anything. People found it hilarious, but for Marie it meant she was the one who woke up for the fevers, the flus, the night terrors, and the good old-fashioned broken hearts. She was like so many women of her generation; she did so much of the emotional labor with their kids and the day-to-day heavy lifting that it became normalized.

  “Ruby! I forgot to ask you—how is the internship going?”

  “It’s going. I mean, they’re all very busy, so I don’t think they feel like babysitting an intern, you know, so I’m trying to get out of their way and learn as much as I can. All I can really do for them is offer legal advice with the major caveat that I am not in fact a lawyer yet.”

  “Do you find that hard?”

  “I mean, I’m trying to understand what they’re up against. It’s kind of unimaginable. The women are mostly Inuit—from Nunavik—the territory that makes up about one-third of Quebec—at the very top? Like waaay north. They come down here for medical care, or work or school, or…to look for a better life. And then they end up in a world they don’t know. I found out this week that the shelter many of the Inuit have been going to was closed down and moved to the other side of town—so now they have no place to go. I mean, how many times do these people have to be traumatized until we’re satisfied? Did you know that about forty percent of all homeless in Montreal are Inuit? I mean, isn’t that just unbelievable? Their life expectancy is fifteen years less than the national average. I mean, what is that? I’m also very aware that I am not one of them. I just feel like there but for the grace of winning the birth lottery, you know?”

  Marie nodded in agreement. Then she recounted to Ruby what she witnessed in the mall when the two cops roughed up the homeless women.

  “Did you report them?”

  Marie shook her head.

  “Maybe you should talk to your cop about it.”

  “I did. The problem is they’re not his cops.”

  “Well, that just sucks.” Ruby glanced at her phone to check the time. “Shit. I got to go. I’m meeting someone at seven a.m. to prepare for this mock trial.”

  Marie was startled by her phone actually ringing and checked the caller. “Speak of the devil.”

  Ruby could guess from her mother’s tone of voice that she wasn’t pleased. The conversation was brief. She turned back to
Ruby but didn’t look her in the eye.

  “He’s busy again. He’s only going to make it to my place later tonight.” Marie took a deep breath. “He’s interviewing someone for this new case he’s on. Or not really, because it’s not his case. Anyway. Last time he cancelled, Sophie was having some kind of crisis—”

  “So what’s new?”

  “He missed our Saturday date. I was pretty pissed off—”

  “What happened to her? Or rather, what did she do this time?”

  “Now, now, Ruby. Let’s be kind.”

  “Well, Mom. I am trying.”

  “Roméo just said, when your kid’s drowning, you don’t watch them drown. You throw them a life preserver.”

  Marie didn’t add that Roméo had said it in that beautiful baritone voice of his, and if swooning were still an option, she’d have swooned. Ruby gathered her coat and started lacing up her winter boots. “Deep. Pun intended.”