My October

by Claire Holden Rothman

  Luc gestured dismissively. “I know what he say.”

  “What I’m hearing,” Manny Mandelbaum broke in, turning his clear, calm gaze on Hugo, “is that loyalty is really important to you right now. Loyalty and honour. In some cases, these values might be more important than honesty, especially at school.”

  Hugo was staring at the rug, but his body language suddenly changed. His arms loosened. His shoulders released and dropped an inch or two.

  “He lied,” Luc said angrily. “To me. To his father. Not just to some teacher at the school.”

  “No,” said Mandelbaum, unfazed. “The adults he spoke to first, right after being caught with the gun, were at the school, if I understand correctly. From then on, Mr. Lévesque, the story was set. By the time he spoke to you, he couldn’t have changed it if he’d wanted to.”

  Mandelbaum’s point was a sound one. Hugo spoke again.

  “He’s Russian.”

  “Who is?” said Mandelbaum. “Vladimir, you mean?”

  Hugo nodded. “He’s not French.”

  Luc made a noise with his throat. “It is not important where he comes from. He is a troublemaker, Vladimir. A thief. And a liar, like you.”

  “That’s enough,” said Mandelbaum sharply.

  “But it’s the truth,” said Luc. His face was flushed, his eyes sparking. The d’Aulaires’ Zeus, thought Hannah. Lightning bolts were about to fly. “Truth is good, no?” he thundered. “It’s better than a lie?”

  “Not necessarily,” said Mandelbaum. “In Hugo’s case, at least, lying was understandable.”

  Hannah glanced at Luc, who looked ready to explode.

  “Understandable?” he cried. “I don’t believe what I am hearing! He lied to me. To his own father!”

  “Yes,” said Manny Mandelbaum.

  “It is unacceptable.”

  “You find it unacceptable?”

  “This is what I just say. Yes.”

  “And why is that?”

  Hannah winced. Either Mandelbaum failed to see how angry Luc was, or he had a strategy she could not fathom. She’d rarely seen her husband so irate.

  “Do you always repeat the words of others like an echo?” Luc asked coldly.

  “And you, Mr. Lévesque,” Mandelbaum answered, “do you always speak so loudly, interrupting the words of others?”

  There was a pause during which time seemed to stop. Mandelbaum’s chin was jutting aggressively. Hannah didn’t dare look at Luc.

  “I didn’t interrupt you,” Luc said, his voice cool. Almost nonchalant.

  “Not me,” Mandelbaum said. “Your wife and son. You’ve cut them off repeatedly.”

  “You mean I did not have the stick.”

  Hannah felt sick. She couldn’t take much more.

  “I do not care about the stick,” Luc said. “The stick is entièrement idiot.”

  Mandelbaum’s hands made a birdlike movement as if they were wings. He waved them at Hannah. “Aren’t you even curious to hear what Hannah has to say?”

  “I know what she will say,” said Luc. “We are married. We talk all the time. We do not need a third party to help with this.”

  Hannah shook her head.

  “Your wife appears not to agree,” said Mandelbaum.

  “So you speak for her now?” He turned to her. “He speaks for you? Vas-y. Parle.”

  But Hannah couldn’t. Even with her husband so obviously in the wrong, she couldn’t open her mouth.

  Luc began to speak in French. Rapidly. Not caring if Mandelbaum could follow; hoping, probably, that he couldn’t. He looked straight at the psychologist and in a cold rage let the words fly.

  Honesty was one of his foremost values. How could it not be? He was a writer. He had dedicated his entire life to the truth. You couldn’t be ambivalent about something like this if you were an artist, but even as a plain human being it was the same. Either it was important or it was not. When a person lied, either that was a bad thing or it was okay. Never both, as Mandelbaum seemed to imply. That was the trouble with the world today. People no longer believed in things. There were no values anymore, nothing was absolute. Luc had absolute values, and honesty was one of them. Always and everywhere, truth was better than falsehood. Any other way of seeing things was contemptible. Dr. Mandelbaum held truth to be a relative value? That was his prerogative as a thinking member of the human race, so long as he kept this thought to himself. But he wasn’t capable of that, was he? No, Dr. Mandelbaum felt entitled to share his views with the world. No, not share them, impose them. He had the gall to preach his moral relativism to a fourteen-year-old boy. What kind of therapy was that?

  Luc leaned toward the therapist. Nonviolence? Was there not violence in encouraging a boy to lie?

  “These are lives you are playing with, Dr. Mandelbaum,” Luc said, “not just hypothetical cases. Your words have consequences.”

  Mandelbaum’s silence was like a goad to Luc. Therapists were parasites, he continued. They were the real liars. Fraudsters, all of them, preying on the sick and the troubled, the credulous. They were the false priests of a false god at whose altar weak people knelt down and rose up again relieved of their money, not their troubles.

  Hannah knew where this was coming from. In the aftermath of Roland Lévesque’s suicide, Lyse had taken her sons to a succession of psychotherapists. All were well-meaning; all did what they could. But none could extinguish the fire of humiliation and rage burning in Luc. If anything, their efforts, like his mother’s despair, stoked the flames. That fire had turned him into an artist. She had never pointed this out to him, of course. But in her mind, it wasn’t an entirely bad thing.

  Mandelbaum listened in silence to Luc’s tirade. After it finished, he asked, straight-faced, if Luc would repeat it again for him … in English.

  Luc’s jaw went slack.

  “I am sorry,” Mandelbaum said. “I want to understand.”

  Luc cleared his throat. “How long have you lived here, may I ask, Dr. Mandelbaum?” He was still speaking French. When there was no answer, he repeated the question a second time, his voice very quiet and low. “How long have you made your life in this city?” Then he stood up, looming over them. His face was pale and composed, deeply regal.

  “Did you fail to notice that the language we speak here is French? You are not a prisoner, after all. You can go back to California any time you wish. You can move to New York, or Toronto, or Halifax, or Calgary, all very pleasant locations. But if you stay in this one, if you choose to live in my city, in my nation, you will have the courtesy to speak to me in my language. Or you will not speak to me at all.”

  Luc nodded curtly at Mandelbaum and then, without a glance at his wife or son, walked out of the room. They listened to his proud footsteps descending the stairs, neither hurried nor slow; they heard the front door open and close. And then there was silence.

  “Well,” said Manny Mandelbaum.

  “It’s a sensitive issue,” Hannah replied. She was about to say more when Hugo got to his feet.

  “It’s not sensitive. It’s bullshit.” He hitched up his oversized pants and shuffled to the door.

  Hannah opened her mouth to say something, but Mandelbaum raised a hand to stop her. And Hugo went out, following in his father’s footsteps.

  “That’s that, I guess,” Mandelbaum said as the front door shut once more.

  “I’m sorry,” said Hannah.

  “I’m the one who should apologize. That really got away from me.”

  “I should have warned you. It’s an issue right now,” she said, thinking of Hugo’s recent embrace of all things English.

  “I kind of figured that out.” He paused to place the mahogany stick on his desk. “How do you guys manage it at home, if I might ask? You’re an Anglo, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Hugo too.”

  “No,” she said, and then changed her mind. “He was brought up in French, but of course he speaks English. It’s impossible to avoid in M
ontreal.”

  “You’d want him to avoid it?”

  “No,” she said. But the truth was too complicated to reduce to a simple yes or no. She saw Mandelbaum waiting for her to explain, but fatigue seized her: deep fatigue that made it impossible to think, let alone explain something as complex as being an English-speaking woman married to Luc Lévesque.

  She gazed at him hopelessly. The real truth was that she was feeling sick with regret. She’d come here hoping to set things right again. Or at least to take a stab at it. To reopen communications with her husband, to patch up relations with her son. To undo, in other words, the damage she’d caused at the hearing. Instead, she’d made it worse.

  “Hannah?”

  Her eyelids opened. Manny Mandelbaum was kneeling on the floor beside her chair, a concerned expression on his face. What had just happened? Had she drifted to sleep?

  He repeated her name, his voice strangely slow, as if he were distorting it with one of those gimmicky sound-altering machines. “Are you okay?” He got to his feet and went to fetch her a glass of water. After a few sips, she surprised herself by talking again. She talked about the hearing, recounting her version of what had happened, including all the bits Luc had left out.

  “So you stood up for your son,” Mandelbaum said when she stopped for air. “Sounds right to me. Entirely appropriate.”

  “But you don’t understand,” she protested. “Luc was supposed to do the talking. That was what we’d agreed. He knows the school and the religious order that founded it. He used to be a student there himself, and besides, he’s good at that kind of thing. I’m not. And this was in French, don’t forget.”

  “Well, your speaking out doesn’t seem to have done any harm,” Mandelbaum observed. “Hugo was accepted back, wasn’t he?”

  She nodded, sniffling. To her embarrassment, her tears had returned.

  “I don’t understand,” said Mandelbaum. “What’s so wrong with what you did? A lot of parents would have done the same.”

  An image of Alfred Stern flashed before her, not old and shrunken as he was now, but the way he’d been before, back when they’d been living under the same roof. She shook her head, trying to chase the spectre away.

  Mandelbaum shook his head too, his eyes full of questions. “What is it, Hannah?”

  She looked away.

  “If ever you want to …” he said, but he let the sentence trail off, searching her face. “I don’t just work with teenagers, you know.”

  She hadn’t known. But she was feeling more solid now, solid enough to know that certain stories must stay where they belonged. She reached for her purse. “Don’t take this personally, Dr. Mandelbaum, but I’ve got to leave now too.” She scrabbled at the purse’s bottom in search of her chequebook. “Eighty dollars, right?”

  Mandelbaum waved his hand. “Forget it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Under the circumstances.”

  “No,” said Hannah. “We’ve taken your time.”

  “It’s really okay.”

  She put the chequebook away. He felt as bad as she did, just as responsible. Luc had been wrong. Despite his funny-sounding name, this was a good man.

  “I could refer you to someone else,” he said as she got up. “A francophone, if that would help with Luc. She also practises NVC. She’s very good.”

  Hannah took down the name of the French-speaking therapist, knowing she’d never call her.

  “Listen,” Mandelbaum said as he walked her to the door, “if you ever need to talk—you alone, Hannah—you have my number.” From his cluttered desktop he picked up the book he had held up earlier. “And please take this along,” he said, pressing it into her hands. “There’s stuff in here that might help.”

  Hannah slipped it into her bag. She didn’t have the energy to refuse.

  PART TWO

  11

  T he corridors were empty as Hugo made his way up from the lockers in the school’s basement. Bits of paper and debris littered the floor. He swung his foot and kicked a brown paper lunch bag that someone had scrunched into a ball. It flew down the corridor and rolled along the tiles as far as his homeroom door. He sighed. School was a weird place at this time of the day. An urge to shout rose up in him, but he repressed it, pursing his lips and forcing his feet to move.

  The door to the classroom was partially open—Vien’s sign that he should enter—but Hugo didn’t do this right away. He peeked through the crack. He knew he was late, he knew Vien would be pissed. Vien didn’t notice him right off. He was totally engrossed in a mural he was making out of spray-painted cornflakes. In it, a gigantic Iroquois hunter was holding out a fur pelt—a real one—to an equally gigantic coureur de bois. All the kids in Hugo’s homeroom had joked about the cornflakes today. The mural looked impressive, though. The cornflakes actually gave the figures texture and substance. Open House was coming up on Friday, and this bizarre breakfast-cereal creation was the history department’s contribution. The whole event made Hugo sad. All these hopeful little kids swarming through the school while Bonnaire (Boner, in Hugo’s private lexicon) and Vien and the rest of them smiled their fake smiles, trying to entice them to enroll. It was all such a show.

  Vien finally turned and saw him. He frowned. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, walking to the door, his eyes gazing in two directions at once. “I almost left.”

  Hugo glanced up at the clock. Classes had ended over an hour ago. He’d made the mistake of stepping outside for air. A guy from his homeroom had offered him a smoke.

  “You’re lucky I had things to do.” Vien pointed at the mural. He had glued the pelt to the Iroquois hunter’s hand.

  “You can touch it if you want,” he said.

  Hugo reached out, but the glue hadn’t dried yet and the pelt came off in his hands.

  “Damn,” said Monsieur Vien. “It’s too heavy, that’s the problem.” He began rummaging in his desk while Hugo stood beside the mural, clutching the animal skin. The fur on it was long and surprisingly coarse. “It’s goat, not beaver,” Vien said. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  His tone was friendly, at least.

  “It’s the only skin I own,” he said, and then smiled. “Except this.” He pinched a fold of his own hairy forearm below his rolled-up sleeve. “My ex’s uncle has a farm near Rigaud,” he explained. “Goats and maple syrup.”

  He had found a box of tacks, the kind with round coloured tops resembling Smarties. “White’s best, I guess. Less eye-catching.” He took the pelt and tacked it to the wall, and once again the hunter held it out to the white man. One of the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling began to flicker. Hugo and Monsieur Vien both looked up.

  “Got to fix that,” Vien said, frowning. “I read somewhere that they disrupt your brainwaves.” He made a goonish face and laughed—a honking laugh.

  Hugo looked away. Vien was trying too hard.

  “How’s your father?” he asked after a few awkward seconds.

  Hugo didn’t respond.

  “Okaaaay,” said Vien. “Clearly, you think it’s acceptable to show up an hour late on your first day back. No apology, no explanation. Not even a pretense of manners. You think I’m going to put up with that?” He reached out quickly and took hold of Hugo’s chin. Bits of glue that had hardened on his fingertips now dug into Hugo’s face. “Think again.”

  Hugo jerked himself free. Vien wasn’t supposed to touch him: another of Saint-Jean’s many rules. “What are you going to do?” he said, moving out of his teacher’s reach. “Call my father?”

  Vien smiled disagreeably. “Good plan. I can say I’ve washed my hands of you and you’ve been expelled. Like Vladimir. Would you prefer that?”

  Hugo’s face reddened. Heat shot upward from his neck to his hairline.

  “I thought not.”

  But part of Hugo wished he had been kicked out. Certainly after what they’d done to Vlad. “It isn’t fair,” he said.

  “What? That Vladimir got turfed
out and you didn’t? There were other considerations with that boy, believe me.”

  “Right,” said Hugo indignantly. “Like his foreign name.”

  Vien frowned. “You can’t possibly believe we’re that small-minded.”

  Hugo kept his mouth shut this time. He wouldn’t fall into Vien’s trap. He crossed his arms defensively.

  “Vladimir wasn’t expelled because he was Russian, Hugo. He was expelled because he’s a troublemaker. This wasn’t the first time he’d been called in for disciplinary action, as you surely know. And you weren’t spared because of your father.” He paused. “Or not only because of your father. I’ll admit that knowing him made it easier for me to vouch for you.”

  Hugo looked away. The way Vien was talking made him feel physically sick. It was as if prejudice were all right, something Saint-Jean-Baptiste could allow to happen with a clear conscience. He hated this place. Downstairs, near the front entrance, there was a huge crucifix with a plaster Christ hanging off it. A bogus Jesus for a bogus school.

  Vien wasn’t looking at him anymore. He was rummaging through the clutter on his desk.

  He handed three sheets of small print to Hugo, now seated beside him. “For you.” It was a contrat social in triplicate. “Sit down,” he said, motioning beside him at a chair. Finally he found what he was looking for. The contract was one of Bonnaire’s clever ideas for improving the school—or at least for making its students more obedient. Whenever a kid was found guilty of an offence, he had to sign one.

  Hugo looked over the first copy. A list of don’ts, followed by a list of dos, laid out in bullet form. First, the don’ts. Henceforth, Hugo would have to

  ~ refrain from committing acts of violence of any kind for the remainder of his studies at Collège Saint-Jean-Baptiste;

  ~ refrain from bringing weapons onto, or carrying weapons on, school premises at any time for the remainder of his studies;

  ~ refrain from contacting former Saint-Jean-Baptiste student Vladimir Petrofsky;

  ~ refrain from getting into trouble of any kind for the remainder of the academic year.

  And then the dos. Hugo would have to