by Eric Dupont
Solange pretended not to hear. She flicked through the little book, looking for the passage she was sure she’d find. “I confess to Almighty God,” she began. “And to blessed Mary ever-Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel and blessed John the Baptist, and to the holy apostles Peter and Paul, along with all the saints, and you Father, that I have sinned, in my thoughts and in my words.” Her voice barely rose above the shouts of pain, the doleful moans coming from the other observation rooms, and the messages over the intercom—“Dr. Hirsch, code blue. Dr. Hirsch, code blue,” “Orderly in Cardiology . . .”—ringing out so sadly less than twelve hours before the year 2000.
Venise Van Veen had blatantly ignored the hospital staff trying to keep her out of the area reserved for patients brought in by ambulance. A bossy nurse had, however, managed to attract her attention.
“There’s no way I’m leaving. I’ve been a personal friend of Madeleine Lamontagne’s for years. I really must know where she is.”
Only the French-speaking staff recognized Venise. The others took her to be a madwoman. And so it was thanks to Montreal’s linguistic divide that Venise’s mission proved successful. The domineering nurse realized she was probably the only person in the ER who knew who Venise Van Veen was and the only person who could take her to Madeleine. She also knew that Venise Van Veen and Madeleine Lamontagne really had been friends for years. It was hard not to: for the past week, the national television channel had been advertising a special program to be hosted by Venise on January 1, 2000, with Madeleine Lamontagne, a federal minister, and a host of other celebrities among the guests. The nurse took pity on the journalist she’d always admired.
“This way, Madame Van Veen. Follow me. I hope she’ll be okay for tomorrow!”
“What do you mean?”
“For tomorrow’s show. With you. Madame Lamontagne is one of the guests, isn’t she?”
“Yes, but we recorded it the day before yesterday. I almost never do live television nowadays. It’s terribly draining.”
“Well, in that case, she can go ahead and die if she likes!” the nurse said without thinking.
“Ahem. Let’s hope she makes it until New Year’s Day at least!”
Venise remembered an old saying. “If tact were for sale, only those who already have it would buy it.” Whoever said that? she wondered. She found Madeleine looking deathly pale and Solange all out of prayers.
“My God, Venise! How’d you find out so quickly?” Solange leaped to her feet, snapping to attention.
“I have sources everywhere. Sanschagrin called.”
The two women fell into each other’s arms.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t know. We found her lying face down on the table in her office. She’s been reading letters from Michel the past two days. He’s in Rome. He had plenty to say, at any rate! Look, he even sent some notebooks!”
While Madeleine slept, Venise took a look at the envelope, the letters, and the German notebooks. Of Madeleine’s two sons, Michel was the one she knew best. She’d often had the young singer on her show to plug his work when the critics had their knives out.
“But the notebooks are from Gabriel.”
“What do you mean from Gabriel?”
“Look, Solange: Magdalena Berg’s Notebook, translated from the German by Gabriel Lamontagne. Has your little Arnold been learning German?”
“He’s been living in Berlin for a year.”
Madeleine stirred at the sound of Gabriel’s name.
“He’ll be the death of me, that little ruffian.”
A relieved Venise and Solange ran off in search of a doctor.
“She’s talking!”
Madeleine spent twenty minutes alone with Dr. Hirsch before being released. He didn’t believe her for a second when she explained she’d inadvertently tripped over her brown leather wedge-heel Clarks. Hirsch knew Madeleine, a well-known donor to the hospital. He knew very well that nothing she did was ever inadvertent. Every move was calculated. He’d heard or read it somewhere before. Probably in the Fortune 100 article about her restaurant chain. The same article where he’d learned she hated anything that took her away from her business. Which explains why she didn’t have to work too hard to get released.
“I’d ask that you see your family doctor as quickly as possible. This week, ideally.”
“Absolutely.”
As she left the Jewish General’s Bernice and Morton Brownstein waiting room, Madeleine, flanked by Solange and Venise, didn’t make the mistake of walking into the arms of the other journalists who’d had the decency to wait outside the hospital.
“News travels even faster here than in Rivière-du-Loup, eh Solange?”
“Why bring up Rivière-du-Loup all of a sudden?”
“Because a certain someone thought they were doing the right thing by suggesting Gabriel go see the stations of the cross in Rivière-du-Loup. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
The three women passed through the hospital in awkward silence.
“And then handsome young Gabriel went running off to the convent, full of himself, my dear Solange. And looked for all the family graves but couldn’t find Old Ma Madeleine’s!”
“Madeleine, please . . .”
Venise got her money’s worth. She now had an answer to every question she’d never dared ask. They passed through the Fannie and David Aberman Atrium, turned left, and walked out a door and past the Bloomfield Centre for Research in Aging in the Peter and Edward Bronfman Pavilion. Madeleine glanced distractedly at the gold plates engraved with the names of people who had donated to the hospital. In the column reserved for the most generous donors, those who had given over one million dollars, Madeleine’s name was there among the Steinbergs and Rosenblums. She reached out and touched the plate with her right hand.
They disappeared down a long hallway that brought them out onto De La Peltrie at 1:45 p.m. A strange calm hung over the freezing streets. Madeleine hailed a taxi, paying no heed to Venise as she protested she’d parked her car elsewhere. The Haitian driver immediately recognized Madeleine, a woman he admired devoutly.
“Take me home,” Madeleine demanded, slumping onto the back seat between Venise and Solange.
There had been so many articles published about her in the previous twenty years that she no longer needed to give her Outremont address when she stepped into a cab, although this happened rarely since she was always driven around by Solange. The taxi driver took her appearance to be a sign from above: the new century would bring him wealth. He felt compelled to tell Madeleine that his daughter waited tables at Mado’s on Papineau.
“Which one? There are three.”
“Papineau and Bélanger.”
“Ah, yes. Marie-Muriel. We took her on last fall after the expansion. She’s eighteen, works thirty hours a week. Never Sundays because she goes to church with you. I remember her.”
“Oh, that’s her all right,” the driver replied in amazement.
Madeleine loved surprising people by showing off her astounding memory. She knew every employee by name in each of her 112 restaurants across the province and could name the managers of her 422 restaurants in the rest of Canada and the United States, even the one in charge of the Mado’s Express at Atlanta International Airport, a certain Wanda Burns who couldn’t have been more than four foot six. The day Wanda Burns took the plane for the first time in her life to fly up to the compulsory Mado Group Inc. managers’ convention (the cost of the flight deducted from her monthly salary over the next two years), Madeleine walked up to her at the Palais des congrès in Montreal, shook her hand, and announced in a Quebec accent so thick you could have cut it with a knife:
“’Ello, Wanda Burns, welcome to Montreal. I ’ope you ’ad a nice trip.”
But Wanda had heard: “Hello Wanda. Come to Montreal. I hope you and I strip,” which had made her smile.
She still laughed about it all these years after that three-hour bilingual talk on “
Disinfecting and Cleaning Metallic Surfaces at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century.” Wanda had wondered how on earth that slip of a woman could have remembered her name. She’d only met her once in her life, the day she’d been hired in Atlanta, and her counter had only four employees, all girls from deepest Georgia, none of whom had ever set foot in Canada.
The taxi driver watched the three women in the rearview mirror. Hands shaking, eyes wide: they didn’t seem especially happy. A Creole prayer came onto the radio, but Madeleine could only make out the odd word. God . . . Forgive me . . . Eternity. She smelled her hands, which still gave off the stomach-churning whiff of the hospital.
“Can’t you hurry it up a little, sir?”
“And could you change the station?” asked Venise, who couldn’t have cared less about prayers in Creole.
The driver did what he was told and raced well above the speed limit through the residential streets of Outremont. Madeleine bounced three times as they hit a snow-covered speed bump. With his right hand, he searched for a radio station that was to his passengers’ liking. He settled on the news.
“Still no word of opera singer Anamaria di Napoli, who disappeared three days ago in Rome while on location for the filming of the latest Bruno-Karl D’Ambrosio movie, A Century with Tosca, in which she stars. The controversial director says he is certain the soprano will be found and is refusing to cancel shooting of the final act, set to wrap up today at Rome’s Castel Sant’Angelo. The director recently caused an uproar with his comments about the size of female opera singers’ waistlines and surprised everyone by picking Michel de la Montagne, a virtually unknown Canadian tenor, to star in his new film. De La Montagne is the son of Madeleine Lamontagne, the founding president of Mado Group Inc., who, we have just been told, has taken ill—”
“Turn it off, please. I’ve heard enough.”
Madeleine raised her eyes to the heavens. The taxi pulled up outside her home, skidding on the icy pavement.
“How much did you give him for his film, Madeleine?” Solange asked politely, trying to wash away the guilt she felt over her indiscretion with Gabriel.
“Solange, this is neither the time nor the place,” Madeleine hissed.
“Don’t tell me you sponsored that clown’s film, Madeleine?”
“I did, Venise. I gave him as much as he needed. And I don’t want to hear another word about it. Do I make myself clear?”
Venise followed the two women into their home on Rue Davaar. She knew it well; she had often been there for supper. They deliberated in the living room, by the glistening light of a magnificent Christmas tree. Madeleine had made a full recovery. All three were aware of Anamaria’s disappearance. Michel had called two days earlier, to reassure his mother in case she heard the news from someone else, managing to conceal both his concern and the real reasons behind his companion’s disappearance. When she’d asked why he’d mailed the letters from Berlin along with his own, there had been a long silence.
“Did you open the envelope, Mom?”
“Of course I did. It was addressed to me.”
“No, no. I sent you the Christmas card. The big envelope was for Gabriel. Put it away in my room until I’m back in Montreal, okay?”
He was practically shouting. Madeleine hadn’t cared for his tone. She hadn’t brought him up to speak to her like that. Given the circumstances, she’d forgiven the slip, but the incident had piqued her curiosity every bit as much as Attavanti’s had piqued Tosca’s. That very evening, Madeleine had gone back to reading the letters between her sons and Magdalena Berg’s story, thereby fulfilling every mother’s ambition: to know what her children said about her behind her back.
She got more than she bargained for.
Then it was D’Ambrosio’s turn to call. Madeleine had wanted to keep the disappearance quiet, but D’Ambrosio himself had let the Canadian newswires know, much to the despair of Anamaria’s mother, who was worried stiff.
“There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” he’d said.
That wasn’t the problem. Nothing could be done from Montreal to find the poor girl. She was probably hiding out in Rome, Michel explained. But Madeleine had other travel plans.
“I never thought I’d say this a second time, Solange, but you need to pack for both of us. We need to leave right now.”
“What? Where to? It’s twenty below outside! Where do you want to go in this cold?”
“We’re going to New York, Solange.”
“We agreed I’d go alone. You swore you’d never set foot there again, don’t you remember? I am perfectly capable of opening the restaurant by myself. It’s not the first time. I went to Calgary on my own. Seattle, too.”
Madeleine went up to her bedroom. She came back holding a tin box she’d kept since the 1950s. With her two friends looking on, she took out the contents:
—a wedding band stripped from a dead man’s hand at a boisterous wake where the grieving relatives had decided, just before closing the casket for the last time, to settle a few old scores over fisticuffs on Louis Lamontagne’s lawn. While Papa Louis separated the men, Madeleine had snuck up to the casket and pocketed the shiny ring that had been calling out to her with every ray it had for the past two days;
—a silver spoon given to her brother Luc and every other child in the Commonwealth who had been born on June 2, 1953, to commemorate the coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II;
—a cheap flower-shaped earring her brother Marc had found in the mud in spring 1957;
—a letter mailed from Potsdam, New York, addressed to Louis “The Horse” Lamontagne. Inside, the photo of Penelope Ironstone, the little American girl for whom any reply would now come too late;
—and a dozen little gold crosses stolen from Dr. David Beck in Manhattan, December 1968. The last of her spoils.
Solange and Venise looked on at the strange haul with no small amount of curiosity. Madeleine held up one of the little crosses between her thumb and index finger and handed it to Solange.
“Solange . . . Can you tell me what’s on this one? I don’t have my glasses with me.”
“LB 13.12.20. My God, the writing’s tiny!”
“Solange, we absolutely need to go to New York. I know who this cross belongs to. It belongs to a gentleman who lives in Berlin, or at least to one of his friends. I think he’s dead.”
“You took it from Dr. Beck?”
“Yes, and I left him mine by mistake. But now I know who this cross belongs to. You know the corny joke you always tell, the one about the pigeon who arrives late for tea at the old lady’s?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You heard it from Dr. Beck’s daughter in 1968, didn’t you? From Rachel.”
“Yeah, she told me it. Her father told her, she said. And what about the other crosses? Were they taken by mistake too?”
“Something like that. You’ll have to drive me. Please say yes!” Solange sighed.
“Yes, but it’s getting dark. You know I don’t like driving at night, Madeleine.”
“Solange, I need to be in New York City tomorrow morning. It’s too late to charter a jet and I’ll never find a flight tonight. It’s not the first time. We’ve done it before.”
“More than thirty years ago! And on a bus!”
“Solange . . .”
“I’m tired, Madeleine.”
“Me too, but I have to go to New York. It’s important. It’s our first restaurant in Manhattan.”
“You should have thought of that earlier. You swore you’d never set foot in New York again, remember? You swore the first time we went in 1968. You shouted and stamped your feet: “Solange, I’m never coming back to New York!” then you threw up into a paper bag. People were staring. And now, on December 31, 1999, you suddenly want me to drive you down to Manhattan? I promised you, Madeleine: I can open the Times Square restaurant by myself. Get some rest. You’re just out of the hospital.”
Venise wondered if she shouldn’t see herself out.
&n
bsp; “Shall I leave you two to talk? Do you still need me, girls?”
“Yes, Venise. The Good Lord sent you to my rescue once again. You’re like a guardian angel to me. It’s a shame you’re an atheist. Otherwise, you’d be certain of your place in heaven.”
While Madeleine told Venise what she needed her to do, Solange chewed things over in the corner. Could she really drive her to New York that evening? That hadn’t been her plan. She was to take the nine o’clock flight to open the Times Square restaurant alone, and now Madeleine was changing her mind less than twenty-four hours before the opening. All because of a little gold cross that had been left behind in December 1968. Was she really expecting to find Dr. Beck right where she’d left him? Then, amused at the thought of hitting the road again with Madeleine, just like old times, Solange changed her tune. Sure, she could put up with Madeleine being there at the opening of that goddamn Times Square restaurant that had given them no end of trouble. Solange wondered how the boys had managed to be so stupid as to let their mother in on their letters to each other. And she swore at Gabriel’s naïveté. What had he even found in Rivière-du-Loup? Who had told him what? Solange was beginning to feel the effects of the slow poison of repentance.
Venise had duly noted Madeleine’s instructions. She was to do her a tiny favor while she was in New York. Nothing more than throw a few people off the scent and do a little PR for her. Her mission? To turn the spotlight away from Mado Group Inc. by any means necessary, keep the journalists’ minds off Anamaria’s disappearance until Madeleine came up with a solution, write a glowing article about the woman who had just conquered Manhattan with her eggs, pancakes, and toast, and, last but not least, come up with a ruse to lure that little devil, that degenerate Gabriel Lamontagne and his steroid-pumped body, to Rome. If she were to ask him herself, she knew Gabriel would have nothing but a string of expletives in response. Her plan just might work if Venise Van Veen lent a hand.
“I’m going to settle a few old scores tomorrow, Venise. If ever things don’t work out, I’ll need someone to speak up for me.”
“You can count on me. I’ve been doing that for years. Are you planning on sorting things out in Berlin yourself?”