The American Fiancee

by Eric Dupont

  “Dry your hair and get out!” I said, a little irritated.

  The girls went all quiet and solemn when we reached my twentieth-floor apartment, like archaeologists who have just uncovered a lost tomb in the sand and knocked down the last remaining slab that stands between them and the mummy they’ve spent the past fifty years searching for. They walked into my three-room apartment, their hair still dripping wet, in tomb-like silence.

  “Wow! What a great view of the CN Tower!”

  “You can even see the SkyDome!”

  They sat quietly on the sofa while I rummaged around for my hair dryer in the bathroom. I could hear them laughing. Kayla was holding a framed photo of Claudia.

  “Who’s this? Mrs. Lamontagne?”

  I snatched it from her and set it back on the bookshelf.

  “A German friend.”

  “That’s why you’ve so many German books?” Melikah inquired.

  They flipped through the textbooks from the Goethe-Institut, trying to read the German words out loud. They were so cute!

  “She’s pretty, your Fräulein. She’s lucky,” Melikah sighed.

  Candice was the first to use the hair dryer. Don’t ask me why but she’d taken off her blouse to dry her hair in front of the bathroom mirror. Meanwhile, I tried to get Melikah and Kayla interested in German grammar. I told them about courtly love, Claudia, the adversity we must put ourselves through to earn our sweetheart’s love. They were enthralled by the idea.

  “She won’t believe you’ve gone and learned German just for her, Mr. Lamontagne,” Melikah said.

  “She’ll fall into your arms just like Stella Thanatopoulos did!” Kayla teased.

  “Leave Stella out of this, Kayla.”

  “But she’s such an idiot. And her mom—”

  It was at that very moment, dear brother, that the phone rang twice to let me know someone was downstairs and wanted to come up. Who could it be on a Sunday? A woman’s voice told me it was a delivery. But I hadn’t ordered anything. Flowers? I began to shake like a leaf. Who was about to knock on my door and find me with three eighteen-year-old students, one of them drying her hair in her bra in my bathroom, the other two still dripping wet and giggling on my sofa? My throat went dry. A century went by. The elevator must have been full of people coming back from mass or from walking their dog in Queen’s Park. The girls didn’t seem to grasp the seriousness of the situation. Three knocks on the door. Like Louis XVI walking to the scaffold, I opened up, my head held high. Horror of horrors! It was Mrs. Thanatopoulos! She was wearing a long, Arctic fox fur coat and hat. She stepped forward and thrust a Pyrex dish under my nose. Imagine, Michel, that Nana Mouskouri in Furs shows up at your door one January afternoon, bearing a Greek dessert.

  “Do you like galaktoboureko, Meesterrr Lamontagne?”

  I thought I might faint. The girls had bounded up off the sofa, electrified. They said hello to Mrs. Thanatopoulos and of course she recognized them. They tried to look calm. And that’s when Candice decided to saunter out of the bathroom, blouse unbuttoned, her black bra on display for all to see. With the hair dryer on, she hadn’t heard what was happening in the living room. Not realizing Mrs. Thanatopoulos was there, she called out:

  “Girls, you have to see it, Mr. Lamontagne’s thing is absolutely enormous,” she told her friends. “You practically have to hold it with both hands—but does it ever get the job done! You won’t be disappointed. I don’t know about you girls, but I’m exhausted! My thighs are on fire!”

  Mrs. Thanatopoulos cleared her throat and looked irritated.

  “I can come back later, Meesterrr Lamontagne, if you prefer. You seem a little busy,” she said, pursing her lips.

  “No, no, the girls were just leaving. Please, stay,” I stammered.

  Realizing that all four of us were well and truly up shit creek without a paddle, the girls quickly gathered together their things. Candice had buttoned up her blouse faster than you can say “corruption of a minor.” They put their winter boots on without saying a word. The little hussies could barely say good-bye with a straight face. The door closed. Mrs. Thanatopoulos waited for me to ask her to take off her coat, still holding the dish of galaktoboureko.

  “I . . . I took them to the pool and they came back to dry their hair.”

  “Yes, of course. Please take the dish, it’s verrry heavy.”

  “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “Please. I made you a Greek dessert. It’s full of protein. It should help you get your strength back.”

  I helped her with her coat, wondering why she’d decided to drop by unannounced and how she managed to find me in such a huge city. Probably the same way as Melikah and her friends. There and then, I made up my mind to never again have my name in the phone book. Beneath her Arctic fox coat, she was wearing a figure-hugging purple dress with a plunging neckline and an amber necklace. It wasn’t like the one worn by the woman in the S-Bahn. This one must have cost thousands of dollars, and was made with big chunks of amber of all shades, from off-white and rusty red to ebony and caramel. She sat down on the sofa without me asking her to. Luckily I’d put Claudia’s photo face down on a shelf after I’d taken it off the girls. I didn’t want Mrs. Thanatopoulos staring at her.

  “Give me a plate too, would you? I’ll have some with you. I make a good galaktoboureko.”

  Truth is I was hungry after eighty lengths at the pool, but I would rather have eaten something healthier, by myself. Mrs. Thanatopoulos motioned for me to sit beside her. She served me a huge portion of the flan. It must have been at least twenty inches by eight. There had to have been a dozen eggs in it. The type of thing I don’t ever want to see you eating again, Michel. It wasn’t just a social call. Mrs. Thanatopoulos had something important to ask me. First she inquired what I’d been up to over the Christmas holidays. I made up a trip back to see my family in Montreal. I couldn’t very well tell her I’d spent the two weeks cruising women, piling up novels, poetry collections, and history books right, left, and center. As it happens, she was overjoyed to see my well-stocked bookcase.

  “They were right, I see, Meesterrr Lamontagne. You are an avid rrreader.”

  Her remark wasn’t without irony. She was making it clear she knew exactly where the books had come from.

  “I’m sure the same can’t be said of every gym teacher. Have you read them all?”

  Perhaps she was expecting a summary of each.

  “Of course,” I assured her.

  Which is true. I never swipe a book unless I intend to read the whole thing. Ill-gotten gains seldom prosper, as they say. But my books weren’t ill gotten, and they’re still prospering away. I’d wager, in fact, that most of the girls I took a book from never even noticed. And if they did, they were probably grateful for me freeing them of a burden. People are always reluctant to get rid of their books; they enjoy a strange sort of relationship with them. Once they’ve read a book, they let it clutter up their tiny apartment for years until they suddenly realize, when moving day comes around, just how heavy paper can be. And they swear as they carry their boxes down the stairs, cursing Simone de Beauvoir, telling Thomas Bernhard he can go to hell. But as soon as they get to their new place, there they are, patiently putting up their bookcases again, more often than not arranging the books in alphabetical order, like beavers rebuilding a dam after a flood. Truth be told, I’m doing these girls a favor.

  Mrs. Thanatopoulos definitely had a mean streak; I think Jodi the librarian was right and I was about to see for myself. While I poured her a cup of tea, she explained that her daughter, Stella, was to go to a make-or-break audition at a music school in New York in the fall of 1998.

  “The problem, Gabriel, is that I’m not at all happy with her figure.”

  “What about her voice?”

  “Her voice? Her voice is tremendous. But she’ll go nowhere if she keeps putting on weight. When you first came to Holy Canadian Martyrs, you were a big help to us. She lost ten kilos. But the poor da
rrrling has put five of them back on. We need you again, my dear Gabriel.”

  “Mrs. Thanatopoulos, I understand you’d rather your daughter’s body were different, but have you ever asked her what she thinks?”

  The eternal fire of the Olympic flame flared up in Mrs. Thanatopoulos’s pupils. For a second I thought she might be about to slit my carotid artery with the pie server she was holding in her right hand. I’d gone too far. You don’t want to upset the kind of woman who walks around Toronto draped in dead foxes on a Sunday afternoon.

  “Our agreement stands. A thousand dollars for every kilo.”

  “I won’t do it. Stella knows how to lose weight now. The rest has to come from her.”

  “Oh, so you feel sorry for her. You’re a kind soul, Gabriel. A man who likes to read, too.”

  “I read enough to know that your daughter has rights.”

  “Rrrights?”

  “It’s her body. That’s what I mean. She might not be an adult yet, but she should have the right to decide whether or not to lose weight.”

  She pursed her lips.

  “It’s strange to see a gym teacher who’s only starting out turn down easy money. Especially since you don’t seem to come from a particularly well-to-do family, judging by the way you talk. I mean it’s perfectly nice and everything, but . . .”

  “Now you’re being nasty, Mrs. Thanatopoulos.”

  “As nasty as the CEO of Mado Group Inc., Gabriel?”

  My heart stopped beating. How could this harpy from hell have found out I was Madeleine Lamontagne’s son?

  “And yet she’s got plenty of money. Why doesn’t she help you find a better place to live? Does she know you’re in this miserable tower block? Oh, I’m so sorrry! It’s probably none of my business! I talk too much. It’s a bad habit of mine. I just don’t know when to keep quiet. And people take me for an idiot. But not you, Gabriel, isn’t that rrright?”

  “I . . .”

  “I just can’t keep my mouth shut! But I’m working on it. We Greeks, we just go on and on and on, you know. We’re almost as bad as the Northern Irish! I happen to know the young girl’s parents. What’s her name again? Candice? The one in the black bra. Do you remember? The one that thinks you have an absolutely enorrrmous thingamijig.”

  “It’s not what you think. She was just drrrying . . . errr . . . drying her hair.”

  “Gabriel,” she concluded, her voice ice-cold now. “Tell that to the crown prosecutor. I’m sure the Ontario courts will even let you defend yourself in French. Even in prison, I’m sure they’ll find someone to do the body search in French. That, too, I believe is one of your . . . rrrights. Another slice?”

  I was speechless. God had just provided me with irrefutable proof that there is in this world a thing, an entity, a force more wicked than our mother. But I wasn’t out of the woods yet, dear brother.

  “You seem rather fond of unrrripened fruit, Gabriel, but I intend to show you that fruit tastes even better once it’s been given time to mature.”

  “You really are a horrible woman.”

  “Go on . . . Won’t you have a little? Eat it all up now.”

  She handed me a huge slice of flan.

  Galaktoboureko is a milky dessert, a more generous version of Portuguese nata tarts. It’s made with filo pastry like the kind they use in those spinach appetizers, only stuffed with a denser version of custard. They serve it cold. Mrs. Thanatopoulos’s had been made that morning. If I hadn’t spent two hours swimming with the girls before Stella’s mother showed up, I wouldn’t have managed a single bite. But the Gorgon insisted. “Go on, just a little more!” she murmured. She took forever to finish her serving. “Isn’t it delicious, Gabriel? Tell me it’s delicious!” And I had to tell her I’d never had such a creamy dessert, that the pastry was at once light and firm, that it was a meal for the gods. I had to have three more helpings. “Go on, you can do it. You’re so big and strrrong!” I was going to vomit any minute. As I sunk my fork into the pastry, I thought about poor Lemon, the gym teacher Mrs. Thanatopoulos had sent packing from Holy Canadian Martyrs. The poor guy must have turned down her galaktoboureko and was now reduced to standing up for his rrrights. She wouldn’t think twice, I was sure of it, about turning me over to the police. She might well even have filmed me coming home with the girls. I’d be lucky to get away with a reprimand. I’d have my teaching license revoked and nothing short of divine intervention would spare me a dreadful trial. Mrs. Thanatopoulos sighed with pleasure as she swallowed the last of the custard. She slammed her plate down hard on the living-room coffee table, then disappeared into the bathroom. I heard running water then the hair dryer. She was in there for at least ten minutes. I poured myself a scotch.

  “It really is enorrrmous, but oh so effective. The young girl was rrright! It’s important to have the rrright tool for the job. We’re back to getting along famously, I see, Gabriel. I’m so happy. As proof of my good intentions, I brought you a little gift. Open it! Ah, what a beautiful Sunday! I feel like I’m twenty again! I don’t suppose an athlete like yourself would happen to have a little packet of cigarettes lying around?”

  I was onto my second scotch by now, desperate to wash down the custard that was sticking to the walls of my esophagus like glue. She passed me a book wrapped up in the paper Mado’s serves its cakes in. The pink tissue paper with the egg logo, you know the one I mean? I grabbed it and unwrapped it. It was Maria Callas. Portrait of a Diva. A biography. A Greek gift. As I put my hand on the book, I swore I would never read a word of it. Books are to be taken, not given. I thanked Mrs. Thanatopoulos, then she put on her coat and hat made of dead animals. Before she left, she took a brown envelope out of her bag and flung it on the coffee table beside the empty Pyrex dish.

  “I’ll be expecting you next Saturday at 8 a.m. Now you understand the stakes. Yia sas, Gabriel.”

  I ran a bath when she left and poured in a half bottle of bleach. I wept. I dreamed that Suzuki, dressed up as a geisha, had come to scrub my back.

  The next day, the three girls stayed home from Holy Canadian Martyrs. Two claimed to have pneumonia, the third was apparently suffering from exhaustion. Stella recited her Hail Mary with fervor. In the gym, I kept having flashbacks of the day before as I struggled to explain the rules of handball to the Grade 9 boys. They kept giving me strange looks. I eventually cut my lesson short, strung up the volleyball net like Lemon would have done, and went to sit in the corner while the students played their game. I was worn out, Michel. That week, whenever I fell asleep at night, I’d dream that you and I were Arctic foxes, curled up and fast asleep in a den together in Ungava, far from Toronto. In the same dream, Claudia, a resplendent Ice Queen, found us, tamed us, and took us home as pets. Invariably, the dream turned into a nightmare when a furious Mrs. Thanatopoulos arrived on a sled pulled by a breathless Stella, her eyes rolled back in her head. She would attack Claudia and catch us in a net. That was when I would wake up screaming. I would shout out for Suzuki, just like before, when we were sick and had a fever.

  The girls came back to school. They were more distant, as though ashamed of their behavior at the pool. Candice came to apologize to me, then Melikah brought me an old LP of German songs. “It’s been lying around our place for years. Perhaps you’ll put it to good use.” It was an old Mireille Mathieu record. She sang Acropolis Adieu and Santa Maria de la Mer. It was funny hearing German versions of songs we know by heart in French. Do you remember Suzuki would play records when we were little? It’s almost as strange as hearing Tosca in German. I had to use Jodi’s old record player in the library to listen to it. Stella caught me red-handed, nostalgic as can be.

  “What is that?”

  “Mireille Mathieu.”

  I had to tell her all about the Avignon sparrow, that Mireille Mathieu was a huge hit in France and even in Germany, where she sang in German. Because, you know, if it’s not on American TV, then young people in Ontario have never heard of it.

  “She needs to
work on her accent,” Stella said as she listened to her pronounce was ist geschehen.

  Stella must have taken pronunciation classes for her singing. Mireille Mathieu brought a smile to her lips. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there was some sort of bond between Stella Thanatopoulos and Mireille Mathieu, a line leading straight from one to the other, but I couldn’t tell you how or why.

  “I think the Germans liked her accent,” I reminded my little diva.

  In French, the song begins with “Ce soir le vent vient de la mer.” Tonight, the wind comes in from the sea. In German, the opening line is “Es war September in Athen . . .” September in Athens.

  Stella was back in training from January to September. Her mother greeted me as though nothing had happened the previous Sunday. This time there was no dessert, no threats. Just aerobics, weights, and a strict training regimen with Stella three times a week. Her mom had signed us up to the local fitness club, a sort of high-tech torture chamber for Toronto’s well-to-do. Some woman or other would try to pick me up every time I set foot in the place. Surprisingly enough, Stella threw herself into her training. She told me, between two stints on the stationary bike, that her mom had decided she’d sing Vissi d’arte from Tosca for her Juilliard audition that September. I was surprised by her choice. That’s not the type of thing people would usually choose. I’m no expert, but you need to be a first-rate singer to tackle such a difficult piece, if you ask me.

  “Maria Callas sang it, Mr. Lamontagne,” Stella explained.

  “But don’t you want to go with something a little simpler? You can’t afford to be average at a Juilliard audition.”

  “No, Mom wants me to knock their socks off. And I think she’s right. I need to work really hard! Did you know that Tosca was the last opera Callas ever sang? It was in 1965, at Covent Garden in London. She’d pulled out, but the Queen of England was coming to see her sing, and the opera director begged Callas to change her mind. Which she did.