by Anne Degrace
But Henri had been away five days in Fort Garry installing new switches for the railway. He would be home tomorrow, and I thought: if I make the dough today and keep it cool in the ice box, then tomorrow I can make the spicy pork filling. A bit at a time, that was the way, because I would get so tired. I imagined Henri, he would come in the door with snow on his cap and coat, and stamp his boots and say “ahhhhhh” when he smelled the salty, savoury smell, and he would hug his arms around himself like he had been cold for a very long time and now wanted to wrap himself in that warm, warm smell like a fat blanket. And then he’d wrap his arms around me and make me feel safe, and so happy to have him home.
Yes, I was making the dough for the tourtière crust, and at first I thought I had — well, I am embarrassed to say I thought I had gone to the toilet right there in the kitchen, and then came a tightening all over, and I held onto the table with both my hands, watching my knuckles go white. And there was just me, and no phone, yet, and all of that space between our small house and the Bouchers’ much bigger one. The Bouchers had nine children. Mme Boucher had said to me: If you need anything, come and get me.
When the first pain stopped I took several steps to the door and managed to put my feet into Henri’s extra pair of boots, which were so big I could step right in. I could not close my camel coat, which Henri had given me for Christmas, over my big stomach. I started across the dry grass, because it was November, before the first snow but cold so that the grass crunched under Henri’s big boots. It was strange: the ground looked very close, as if I were crawling, and yet I was up on my two feet. And the branches on the trees looked sharp, like knives. And the sun, too, broken the way it looks through the crack in the windshield of our Ford truck, the one we drove west in with all of our things from Rivière-du-Loup piled in the back just seven months before. I was wet where the water had come, surprising and warm when it did, but now cold, clammy, a big patch on my dress and I felt ashamed to be arriving at the Bouchers’ like that. What if M. Boucher came to the door?
Another pain came, so hard that I fell to my knees in the sharp grass, and then I didn’t care who might answer the door so long as somebody did, and that I managed to get there. It seemed so far away! But then I saw little Solange running towards me. She had been playing outside, and so her cheeks were bright with cold, and her hands, when they touched my own cheeks were like ice, for her mittens swung from their strings inside her sleeves. Do all children not notice the cold, and let their mittens dangle, forgotten? Solange, only five, put both of her cold, small hands on my cheeks and said to me: Jouez-vous au chien?
She thought I was pretending to be a puppy! I suppose I must have been panting like a dog. My mother, when she told me about these things that happen to women, said that sometimes a woman will labour many hours, sometimes days, a thought that frightened me when I was fifteen years old. But how much more frightening was this, so fast?
Solange had stepped back, looking at me with wide blue eyes. I gripped both of her elbows, unable to speak at that moment, and I suppose I frightened the poor child, who wrenched her arms from my grip and spun away to run for her mama.
Of course, Mme Boucher quickly guessed the story and ran to meet me, and I’ll tell you, I never felt such gratitude as I did at the sight of her running across the grass towards me, growing bigger in my vision as she came nearer until she was there and I was crying and she said: Come, now, it will be fine. And I knew it would.
Lucien was born two hours later; Cecil Boucher, who was the oldest, had gone on his bicycle almost a mile to get the midwife, and she came just in time. All of my children came like that, so fast. No time to prepare, each one took me by surprise: a rush of water, me submerged in the birth so all I could do was swim or drown. By the time Emilie was born, I was a good swimmer! If things had been different, I might have had as many children as Mme Boucher, bang-bang-bang.
There was no way to reach Henri where he was working. Henri arrived home to find the house cold, and my half-made dough a shrivelled, floury ball on the table. What might he have thought in that moment? That I had run home to my parents in Rivière-du-Loup? Or been swept away by some force de nature? Of course, he found me at the Boucher home with Lucien swaddled at my breast, the two of us surrounded by the noise and commotion of a house full of children and merriment, with talk and laughter and play, and the smells of cooking.
I always wished our home had been more like the Boucher home. Loud, and happy, and full to bursting with children, and with M. Boucher always home after work, not like Henri, who was gone so much. The Bouchers’ home was like my own home when I was growing up. Did I tell you? I had seven brothers and sisters myself: Adele, Alain, Anne-Marie, Armand, Antoine, Aurélien, and Andrée. I was the youngest. Brigitte. My parents, they ran out of names beginning with A when they came to me. Later, when I told my mother that Henri and I were moving to Manitoba, she said: “That’s because you have a different letter. If I’d thought of Anouk or Aurelie or even Anastasie, you wouldn’t be leaving me now.” Making me feel terrible, of course. It is always hard to be away from your children, no matter if they are grown up and have children of their own.
THE CHILDREN. I must get back. It is terrible to be away from the children, especially now. Because the water is rising, the Red is already overflowing its banks! The St. Vital Firehall, that is where we must go. Please. Ben doesn’t always listen to his older brother. Emilie, she might be hiding. Lucien is a good boy, a smart boy, and so much like his father. Will he know what to do?
And Henri, Henri is gone.
Daniel
CHANTAL AND I weren’t always like this. We met at a Rush concert in ’86. She was beautiful, and charming, and when the band played “Closer to the Heart” she looked at me and said something, and of course I couldn’t hear one word, so I just nodded. And then she kissed me, and I guess that’s when I fell in love. I don’t know; now, I wonder what she did say. Or what I agreed to.
Once I heard my mother tell my father that “Daniel’s girlfriend is a little — foolish, don’t you think, Lucien?” But it was way too late by that time: I loved her, everything about her, especially her laugh. I don’t hear her laugh so much, now, but she is still beautiful, and sometimes I look at her and see the girl that she was.
I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t been perfect. I drink too much, and I’ve put on a little weight. There were times I could have asked what was wrong, and I didn’t. Times I should have stayed to talk things out, and instead I met a few buddies at the bar. They seem like small things at the time, but I suppose they add up.
What is it about a New Year that makes us dwell on past regrets? Twenty-twenty hindsight makes everything so clear, but it wasn’t clear when I met Ginette. Josslyne was two-and-a-half and Marcel just a few months, and it seemed to me it was all about the children. Don’t get me wrong: I love my children. But there was always someone crying, always the house was a mess, and Chantal was tired all the time, and bitchy. I’m not kidding you, from the moment I came in the door she was at me: “It’s so easy for you, you just go to work and you play with your staple guns and tell your staff how high to stack the paint cans. And here I am —” but I didn’t get the rest, I remember, because she stomped off to our room, leaving me with Marcel, who was smearing mashed bananas all over his high chair and himself, and Josslyne, who was whining for attention.
And so Ginette, when she came looking for a job, well of course at first I was just happy to have such a smart young girl want to work at the store, and I put her straightaway at the till. And then came the day Sandy went home early and Joe and Brent gave me a wave and locked behind them, and Ginette was still trying to balance the cash, and almost in tears because she couldn’t get it to balance. It was her first time, she said; Sandy had shown her how but she’d never done it on her own. So we went up to the office with the cash sheets and the drawer and I showed her how. And, you kn
ow, one thing led to another.
I am still an attractive man at thirty-four, even with a bit of a belly, and I was not thirty, then — and Ginette, she was not so much younger really. Maybe twenty-two? Twenty-one? I don’t remember. But for a little while, she made me feel like I felt at that Rush concert, you know? When I was young, and the future was this big blank slate. Anything could happen.
My dad used to carp about how hard things used to be, and how easy kids have it now. My mum never forgot the story of her ancestors — the potato famine, the trip over in steerage — and she never let us forget it, either, especially at dinnertime. And when I was a teenager I didn’t care, I’d just tell them yeah, yeah, and I’d go out and listen to music with my friends. I remember I told my father once: “Isn’t that the point, Papa? The older generation works hard so the next generation has it easier, and then what does the older generation do? Complain we have it too easy!”
He just looked disgusted. “You have no idea,” he told me.
We have never been so very close, my father and me. But I think I’ll call tomorrow. Just to wish them a Happy New Year. It’s good for families to stay in touch. You never know what might happen, they’re not so young, and then —
I should have stayed with Chantal and the kids tonight. I was going to, even though I’d told her I was going to see Mémére, that the Home had called to say she was upset and confused, that she wouldn’t settle down. What am I to do? I’m her only family here. This turn-of-the millennium stuff is all in Chantal’s head, just like the flood is in Mémére’s. Still, I think now I could have been a little kinder, a little more sympathetic.
It was because Chantal pulled the Ginette card that I guess I just snapped.
“Sure, you’ll see your precious Mémére and then you’ll go meet up with that woman —”
“Chantal, that was over years ago. It was nothing. I swear —”
“You think I can just forget? You think I can trust you now? I hope the riots do come, and they call out the army, and you both get run over with a tank.”
I started to laugh, then, because it was ridiculous. There was a time when Chantal would have laughed with me, and then we’d kiss and make up and maybe go to bed. But not for a long time, and not this time. She said: “I’ve got news for you, Daniel. When we get through this, I want a divorce, and you can bet I’ll be bringing up —” Chantal’s pretty mouth turned ugly, “— Ginette. The kids and I, we’re going back to Ste Agathe —”
“Over my dead body, Chantal!” I told her, but she just looked at me, her face contorted. She didn’t look like the girl I knew in college.
“I fucking hope so,” she said, and if she said any more I missed it, because I was out the door and in the car and when I turned the key in the ignition the radio was blaring some stupid rock station Chantal likes, and do you know what they were playing? That song by REM, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.”
. . . and I feel fine, I joined in, singing to the dashboard, and then put the car in gear. As I hit the gas the loose fan belt screamed, which was pretty much exactly how I felt.
Brigitte
WHEN THE TELEGRAM came about Henri, about the accident, I stood at the door in my housedress and I screamed. Because a telegram, it can only mean bad news. Do you remember in the war? Everyone was afraid of the telegram.
The poor man in the blue uniform with the cap, he stood not knowing where to look. After a while Lucien came and said to me: Maman, come, and the man at the door turned to go, but I clutched at his sleeve. Wait, I said. I must know more. Tell me.
But the man shook his head again. I just deliver the telegrams, ma’am, he said. I don’t write them. I don’t even know what’s in them. And then he was down the walk, and Lucien was pulling at me, with the cold air blowing in through the open door.
I sat on the couch. It was like a dream; nothing seemed real. Lucien closed the door quietly, as if something would break, and stood with his hands at his sides, as though he didn’t know how to move, what to do. I can still see his face, too serious for his years. Ben curled up next to me and put his thumb in his mouth, even though he was too old for such a thing. Emilie, she climbed up into my lap and touched my tears when they ran down my face, and said: Maman pleut.
Mother is raining.
Daniel
WHEN MÉMÉRE TALKS about my grandfather Henri, I think: that’s the man I’d like to be. Or at least, I’d like to be the man that Mémére thinks my grandfather was. Because who’s to know, really? Every family has its secrets. My grandfather was often away from the family, working. A lot of men did that in those days. Sure enough, there’s been more than a few times I’ve wished for a bit of road time. Just for a break, you know? But the kids. How could Chantal even think of taking the kids back to her hometown?
I think about Marcel, what a little imp he is, with his mother’s dimples and those black, black eyes. He has every toy truck we carry in the toy section we introduced last year, and he knows the names of all of them. For Christmas I gave him a big book of every working machine, and he already knew most of them! I promised him that for his birthday in May he’ll get to ride in a real front-end loader, and get to work the controls. I have a buddy down at the public works yard. That’s if Chantal will let him.
That’s if the kids are here.
I think about Josslyne, what a beautiful girl she’s becoming. At nine, she is so much more sophisticated than I remember girls being when I was nine. She has this way of saying Dad-dy in this affectionate way when she thinks I’m being ridiculous, and it breaks my heart.
Brigitte
EMILIE, SHE LOVES to hide, and after a while we have come to know most of her places. She gave me a fright more than once, when darkness would fall, dinner growing cold on the table, and where was my little girl?
Once, when Henri came home late and I had been calling Emilie for an hour, myself sick with worry, and she ran to him as he came up the walk, I told him: you must spank her, Henri. She must learn to come home when she is called. But Henri, he is such a soft man, so tender. He could not strike a child. The boys, maybe, but never Emilie. But Emilie, that day, he swung her up on his shoulder and she laughed and put her fingers in his ears, and over his eyes, and he staggered towards the house pretending to be blind, one hand in front and the other clutching her stockinged foot. She’d lost a shoe somewhere. She was always losing things, that girl.
If Henri had punished Emilie that day, or if I had, with my wooden spoon the way my mother did with my sisters and brothers and I, perhaps she wouldn’t have played by the river one day a few weeks later, towards the end of summer. It had been a hot day, I remember, and the cicadas had sung into the evening, so loud I thought maybe they had multiplied to become thousands in the trees, ready to take over the whole world.
Even when the sun fell the air was still thick, sticky. It was dusk and there were fireflies out, and Lucien and Benoit were trying to catch them in jars, but the flies were faster than the boys. Still, they ran around the yard shrieking, the neighbourhood filled with their childish voices, and it was a nice sound. I remember I wished Henri had been home to hear it. I knew he would be out there too, diving for fireflies, like a big child himself.
I was listening to the CBC on the radio, and they were broadcasting a concert of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. Here was the sound of violins and cellos inside, and outside, the voices of children, and I remember thinking that those people playing those instruments had no idea the places their sounds might be heard, and what other sounds might become part of the music they played. It seemed as though the music got louder — crescendo, it’s called — the laughter of Lucien and Ben, joined by some of the Boucher children, got louder as well, and as the cymbals crashed I thought: Emilie.
When had I last seen Emilie?
I rushed to the door. I could see the shapes of my boy
s, and Solange and Mathieu from next door, four shapes running across the lawn. Is Emilie with you? I called. Solange called back: No, Mme Gauthier, she said. We haven’t seen her.
Emilie was small enough, then, to hide under a bed or in a closet, where she would make up games about caves or haunted castles. It was past her bedtime, I had lost track of time. I ran through the house, looking: inside the doors of the wardrobe, behind the curtain, under all of the beds. With each empty space my panic rose. It felt like moths in my chest fluttering, then swarming, hammering against my breastbone. Emilie! I called. As my cry became louder the children must have heard me, because when I ran to the door they were all standing, staring.
We spread out, running down the street, calling. It was becoming darker, now, but still light enough that shapes could be seen under bushes, beside sheds. At the bottom of the street was a dead end, and then a park where I would sometimes take the children, and then the river. I always told them, don’t play at the river. It was August so the river was big, but slow, not like now, a wild thing it has become. Every spring the Red floods, but this year —
She had never gone so far by herself, but my Emilie is an adventurous girl, and she doesn’t think, just like her brother Ben doesn’t think, except that with Emilie, she will be following a story in her head about dragons or fairies, or she might pretend she is a rabbit running from a fox or who knows what? And then she is far from home, her small, sturdy legs taking her through her story to happily-ever-after and then when we find her she is in a tree, or behind a woodpile, or once perched on someone’s freshly painted bench as if it were a throne and she a queen.
We are all running, now, down the street, calling. Myself, Ben, Lucien, Solange and Mathieu, and now M. Boucher, our voices small against the big, big night. Even the fireflies seemed to have fled.
I run to the river. I told her: don’t play near the river, but somehow, I just know. I stumble as I run down the path, because I can’t see the rocks under my feet, and once I fall and I can feel blood running warm down my leg as I pick myself up, all the time calling: Emilie! I hear nothing, not even the water, for the roar in my ears, and then I feel two big hands on my shoulders. I want to scream but there is M. Boucher’s voice in my ears: Shhhhhh. Arrêtez; écoutez.