by Eric Dupont
“You don’t want me to play Scotland the Brave?”
“No, no. I can hear quite clearly that you’re in complete control of your, uh, instrument.”
“But I practiced so hard!”
“Okay then. Go ahead. But are there other students waiting outside?”
“No, there’s no one left, I’m the last one,” I replied, not sure if that was true or not.
“Okay then. I’d like to hear Scotland the Brave.”
The main thing was to make sure he felt safe, that he understood it would stay between us. Caroline had made that clear to me. So I played him the second tune, maintaining my erection the whole time. I saw his lips lift into a smile. I haven’t touched the tuba since. The last one was my homeroom teacher, you know, Mrs. Boulay, the one Mom always sent the restaurant coupons to? Things almost went south with her. I stayed behind one afternoon to clean the blackboards. The other teachers were in their empty classrooms, doing the same thing. Then I asked Mrs. Boulay if she was married. She laughed.
“Oh, I was once. But things change.”
“Was he older or younger than you?”
The question unsettled her.
“Uh, a little younger. Seven years younger,” she admitted.
I’d got it in one.
“He left you?”
“No, I left him. But aren’t you full of questions, young man!”
“He must have been so sad when you left,” I was bold enough to reply, with the conviction of a newsreader.
She looked at me for a moment, her pen hovering in the air, her mouth open. Mrs. Boulay was forty-two, she’d told us before. She lived on Avenue Van Horne. We’d see her grocery shopping on Saturdays and sometimes we’d run into her at Le Bilboquet when Suzuki took us there for ice cream. Mrs. Boulay was an attractive woman, she’d taken good care of herself and did cardio workouts three times a week. I know because I’d seen her jumping up and down with the other women through the windows of the sports center on Avenue du Parc.
She took her sweet time; it took me three goes. So I decided to use my way with women.
“You’re crying, Gabriel?”
“Y-y-yes,” I whimpered.
“A good-looking young thing like you. Why on earth are you crying?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
We were all alone in the classroom. She came over to me.
“Let me give you a hug, my little Gabriel. I’m your girl friend,” she said, and to this day I still don’t know exactly what she meant by that. As she held me in her arms, I slipped my hand between her thighs. She froze, then stared hard at me, stunned. She went over to grab her bag and left the school as fast as she could. I was still in the classroom while she scurried off toward Avenue Van Horne. I watched her from the window. I’d been sure she’d head straight to the principal’s office to file a complaint. I could already picture Mom and Suzuki looking distraught, the inevitable visit to Father Huot, and probably to a psychologist or two. But it didn’t go any further than that. I didn’t have much time before Mrs. Boulay would hand out the grades that would be used to apply to Brébeuf. She made sure she didn’t find herself alone with me, kicked me out of the classroom at every opportunity: “Gabriel, I think it’ll be quieter for you in the library.” Since Caroline had left, the library had become very quiet indeed, its silence interrupted only by the librarian, Mrs. Bilodeau, humming to herself as she tidied up shelves full of books that no one other than I would ever read.
I was still reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea when a heaven-sent window opened for me. Mrs. Boulay couldn’t come to work one day that winter. I happened to be in the secretary’s office when she called, something about papers she had to correct and couldn’t come in for because she didn’t have the time. The secretary—you remember Laura, don’t you?—reassured her.
“I’ll bring them over to you, darling. You take care of yourself. Don’t you worry.”
Then she hung up. The principal came charging in just then, yanking some poor brat by the ear. It was Fat Guillaume, who’d once again been caught feeling up a little Mexican girl, now outside crying in the hallway.
“Laura, I need you right now. I need you to call Guillaume’s parents for me.”
I was often to be found in the secretary’s office for all sorts of reasons. Top of the list had to be Laura’s bosom of apocalyptic proportions, and she didn’t seem to have any objections to me coming to sit beside her once a week. She would always ask me about Mom’s restaurants. I think she was also a bit too curious for her own good.
“My cousin’s a waitress at Mado’s in Trois-Rivières!” she told me proudly.
“There’s two. Which one?”
“Uh . . . It’s on the west side.”
“Ah.”
“And your mom?”
“Yeah?”
“I mean . . . you boys live with the woman who comes to pick you up sometimes, right?”
“Suzuki?”
“She’s called Suzuki?”
“No. Her real name’s Solange, but Michel and I call her that because she likes Japanese motorcycles.”
“Ah, so she rides motorcycles . . .”
She didn’t ask me about Mom and Suzuki again after that. She had the satisfied look of someone who’s just solved an especially tough equation. People are simple, Michel. Too simple. At any rate, once she snapped to attention to deal with Guillaume, she suddenly realized she wouldn’t be able to run over to Avenue Van Horne with Mrs. Boulay’s exam papers. And that, my dear Michel, is precisely the moment I decided to make myself useful.
“I can bring the papers over to Mrs. Boulay, if you give me her address.”
“Oh! You’d do that for me, my little Gabriel? You’re not just a pretty face. You’re a sweetheart!”
“It’s not far, it’s on my way home,” I lied.
“Hang on. Her address is . . . 1272 Van Horne. Thanks so much! And be sure to tell your Mom her cretons are to die for!”
She handed me the exam papers in a plastic bag. It must have been twenty-five below outside, a frigid January day. I distinctly recall it wasn’t a Friday afternoon, because there were Orthodox Jews everywhere on Van Horne, their black silhouettes cut out against the white snow like granite tombstones in a wintry graveyard. Clouds of steam escaped from their mouths. Do you remember when Mom took us to the synagogue once to talk to the rabbi? I’ve always wondered why. She who’s never shown an interest in anything other than running a restaurant . . . I saw you that night on Avenue Van Horne. You must have left school just before me, and you were about to take the bus to your singing lesson in Villeray. You were getting onto the bus when I saw you. It was too late to shout out and you wouldn’t have heard me anyway, not over the noise of the snowblowers. That winter we were calf deep in snow until the end of March. Now that it’s all far behind us, it seems I can still hear the noise Montreal makes in winter. It’s hard to describe. Sounds are at once clearer and more infrequent. Fewer people venture outdoors, and the sounds are muffled by the snow. And it must have been snowing, because I could hear something being dropped into an empty dump truck. I’d recognize that sound anywhere. Like a giant bag of potatoes being emptied onto a tin rooftop. My boots had a hole in them, but I didn’t want to ask Mom for a new pair because I was boycotting her that particular week; I’d only talk to Suzuki. If I hurried, I might have time to make it home, go for a skate at the rink, and hit the weight room before supper. As I walked, I thought to myself that Mrs. Boulay couldn’t be sick. She must be depressed, or simply hiding away from the cold.
She lived above a dry cleaner’s. I rang and she opened the door. She must have been expecting Laura to deliver the exams in person because her apartment door was open at the top of a wooden staircase painted a greyish shade of blue. She had left her shoes and boots outside the door on the landing. There were women’s boots and boots belonging to a boy who would have been about our age. I didn’t know Mrs. Boulay had any children. Perhaps he wen
t to a different school. Do you remember? Did she ever mention a son?
“Come in, Laura. I’m in the kitchen.”
I hoped and prayed I’d find her alone. God heard me. But she almost fainted when she saw me. She stubbed out the cigarette she’d just lit and scowled at me.
“What are you doing here?”
“Miss Laura asked me to bring you the exam papers. She was too busy to come.”
Mrs. Boulay was wearing only pants and some sort of satin tunic that went almost all the way down to her knees. She didn’t look remotely ill. I must have been rosy-cheeked with the cold. She looked me up and down for a good thirty seconds, not sure what was going to happen next. Then she pulled herself together.
“Are you cold?”
“Yes,” I told her, hoping she’d feel sorry for me.
“Would you like some tea? I just made some.”
“Yes, please.”
She sat me down in the living room at the other end of the apartment. I looked at the walls while she made the tea. They were covered in floral wallpaper and framed family photos, some of them very old. She’d put a china vase of dried red roses on a pedestal table and the pattern on the vase went with the cup, saucer, and teapot. There were lace doilies everywhere. She had a bird in a cage. Not a budgie or a parrot, but a much smaller bird, a beautiful creature with brightly colored plumage, a red head and a pale purple and yellow body. I’d never seen anything so lovely.
“That’s Scarpia,” she told me.
“What type of bird is it?”
“A Gouldian finch.”
“Where’s it from?”
“Queensland, Australia.”
Mrs. Boulay knew Australia’s states and the birds that lived there. I was beginning to find her quite cool. The exotic bird and the overdone, old-fashioned décor made everything a little unreal. I remember wondering if Captain Nemo had been to the Southern Ocean. Probably. Almost certainly.
“Do you like bread pudding, Gabriel?”
“I love it.”
She went back into the kitchen, at the other end of the very long apartment so typical of Montreal, and came back with a gigantic helping of bread pudding in a china bowl with a floral pattern on it. I didn’t think I’d be able to finish it. She motioned me to sit beside her on the big red sofa. I’d underestimated my appetite. As I ate, she told me about her sister who lived in Gaspé, “where your mother has another one of her restaurants.” Of course she did. There was no getting away from them. Then she started asking about our dad.
“Your father never comes to pick up your report cards, Gabriel. It’s always that other lady . . . What’s her name?”
“Suzuki. Solange, I mean.”
“Yes, Solange. Is she your aunt?”
“No.”
“And your father?”
“We didn’t know him. We never saw him. He died before we were born.”
She looked sad. While it didn’t help answer her questions about Suzuki, at least now she knew about our father. She suddenly looked as though she pitied me. To make the most of the melancholic pause my reference to our father’s death had triggered, I asked about her father.
“Oh, he’s dead too! He was very ill.”
Her bread pudding was almost as spongy as Suzuki’s. For some reason or other, she’d brought me a silver soup spoon to eat it with, not a teaspoon.
“A big spoon for a big boy,” she’d said, holding it out to me.
She’d warmed the dessert for a few seconds in the microwave, and there was a pungent smell of sugar hanging over the room. The smell almost took on a form of its own, barking orders and controlling my senses. The warm caramel oozed down into my belly. I think she must have added maple sugar to the recipe. I winced at the contrast between the cold ice cream and the warm caramel, but continued to gobble up the huge portion she’d served me. Scarpia cheeped plaintively, as though, all alone in his cage, he envied our human treat. Outside, just below the living-room window, I could hear the tires scrunching across the packed snow on Avenue Van Horne. Evening had come. I heard someone shout, “Mordecai! Mordecai!” then a car horn moaned three times. A bus passed by, shaking the floor and drawing a sigh from Mrs. Boulay. The more I stuffed myself, the more apparent her talents in the kitchen became. She had plenty of experience; my taste buds weren’t deceiving me. I tried not to seem overly impressed or intimidated by the dessert. I’d downed the ice cream a little too quickly and was now clutching my forehead. While I gamely scooped away with my big spoon at her soft, sticky pudding, I couldn’t get the image of Captain Nemo out of my mind, battling giant squid with his harpoon. I wolfed down another huge mouthful. Mrs. Boulay let out a cry:
“Gabriel, you’ll choke!”
She put her hand on mine to slow me down, to stop me finishing too quickly.
“Let it melt in your mouth. Take your time. That way it doesn’t hurt,” she murmured.
I took her advice and scraped my oversized spoon against the sides of the hand-painted Moonlight Rose china bowl—when I’d turned it over, I’d seen it said Royal Albert, England on the bottom—before plunging into the heart of the matter. The dessert’s fleshy plumpness was no match for my appetite; I was always starving after school, like all boys. You know what it’s like, Michel: at that age, you don’t eat, you just shovel it down!
“You were hungry, Gabriel! Now have your tea. Slowly, gently. Don’t burn yourself.”
She had tea, too. I had practically licked the china bowl clean. Mrs. Boulay’s face was lit up with happiness; I’d never seen her like that. She lit a cigarette.
“Mind if I smoke?”
“No.”
“I won’t offer you one. You’re too young.”
“I know. And it’s not good for the lungs.”
“How right you are, Gabriel.”
“And Mom wouldn’t approve.”
Her face clouded over again at the mention of Mom. I wanted to reassure her: everyone reacted the same way every time her name was brought up.
“So what school do you want to go to next year, Gabriel?”
“Mom wants me to go to Brébeuf.”
“Brébeuf? But you need excellent grades to get in there!”
“I know . . .”
I knew exactly what Mrs. Boulay was thinking at that very moment. “Brébeuf, here I come!” I wanted to cry, but it was mainly so that Mom wouldn’t disown me that I wanted to get in. And I had to follow in your footsteps to protect you, Michel. I frankly couldn’t care one way or the other about Brébeuf. Honestly, I considered myself tough enough to survive public school. But you were another story: they’d have eaten you alive. A tenor! A little on the pudgy side! With a lisp! Who walked like a turkey!
Poor old Michel, the gods weren’t kind to you, were they! What you needed was a private college away from the plebs. Somewhere to go unnoticed. Mrs. Boulay stubbed out her cigarette. Her phone rang. She went into the kitchen to answer it. The conversation was muffled; the kitchen was too far away. I took the chance to look through her bookcase.
By the looks of things, Mrs. Boulay had studied literature before resigning herself to a career as an elementary school teacher. There were lots of classics, books from the same authors Mom had bought in Pléiade editions by the yard to decorate the winter lounge with. There was an old paperback, Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier, at nose height, on its cover a picture of a beautiful, stately home with a blue roof, surrounded by an inviting forest. There was something very French about the picture, like a postcard sent from the old country. Without knowing why, I grabbed the book. Mrs. Boulay had written her name on the first page: Lucie Boulay, Chicoutimi, 1963. I felt like I was holding an antique, a saintly relic. I stuffed it into my bag. It was the second in a whole bookcase of stolen books. You’d be impressed by their number, dear brother. All acquired in similar circumstances. Nothing is free. Mrs. Boulay came back from the kitchen smiling.
“My dear Gabriel, I have to go. I’m going to have to show you the door, a
nd it’s so cold outside . . . Would you like me to call you a taxi?”
“No thank you. I only live ten minutes away.”
As she walked me to the door, Mrs. Boulay grew more serious.
“It’s almost five o’clock and I’ve ruined your appetite. You won’t be hungry for supper. What will your mother think?”
“I don’t have to tell her. I’ll still be able to eat.”
“Then the bread pudding will be our little secret. I don’t want to be competing with Mado’s! Haha!”
“I promise I won’t say a word to Mom.”
“Or anyone else, my little pet. Otherwise all the boys from school will be turning up here for a helping of bread pudding!”
“It will be our secret.”
“You have to promise me, Gabriel.”
And I made my first real promise. May God forgive me for breaking it now, Michel.
She kissed me on the cheek and closed the door. Outside, thick snow had begun to fall. The Hasidic Jews walking in tight clusters along Avenue Van Horne hurried home. The cold had eased a bit, so I took off my gloves with my teeth. My gloves, like my fingers, were imbued with Mrs. Boulay’s sweet smell. I couldn’t wait to get home to wash them.
Only Suzuki was home. You were still at your music lesson, and Mom was out opening one of her restaurants in who knows what godforsaken hole. Suzuki was in the kitchen. I think she must have smelled the bread pudding.
“Pasta for dinner, Gabriel,” she snapped. “Go wash your hands. It’ll be ready in five minutes.”
We ate without either of us saying a word. Then, I’m not sure why, and this is to remain between us, I saw Suzuki shed a tear. It was the only time. You mustn’t breathe a word. You know how proud she is of the thick shell she’s built around herself.
There was no dessert.
You came home late that night. After your lesson with your teacher in Villeray. Do you remember? The one who lived near Jean Talon market? She had you sing Schubert’s Ständchen at your first recital. I was all alone, lying on my bed after supper. Still reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. I was just at the bit where “red with blood, motionless by the beacon, Captain Nemo stared at the sea that had swallowed one of his companions, and large tears streamed from his eyes.” We both achieve the same end, Michel. You, with money. Me, with what God gave me.