I excused myself a bit early so I could warm up properly. I’d been hampered that morning by not being able to demonstrate. Warming up while driving through traffic in downtown Montreal is not a good substitute for a quiet room with a good piano.
By the end of the afternoon session, I was completely wiped, but feeling quite exhilarated. I’d been able to work with a talented group of students and I felt that I helped most of them.
Lainey showed up to pluck me from the crowd that stayed behind, peppering me with questions — mostly related to securing a manager. The competition for singing gigs is always fierce.
“I’m taking you to dinner, girlfriend,” she said in my ear, “and you’re not saying no.”
“Do you mind if I check in to my hotel first and freshen up?”
“Not at all.”
As we transferred my rental car from a parking garage on De Maisonneuve to the hotel garage, Lainey brought me up to date on the lives of other friends from school. Always enthusiastic and funny, I’d forgotten how enjoyable she was to be around.
The woman had aged well, and even though she was dressed in business clothes, it was obvious she carried her youthful figure intact. Lainey’s blonde hair was maybe a little darker and there were a few tiny wrinkles around her eyes, but she looked terrific.
Once up in my room, I made a beeline for the bathroom. A shower was definitely called for and, it went a long way toward refreshing me.
When I exited the bathroom, rubbing my hair briskly with a towel, Lainey, having raided the room’s mini-bar, immediately shoved a rum and coke into my hand. It was the drink we’d cut our teeth on as undergrads.
I took a big swig. “Oh, that’s good, just what I needed. Thanks.”
“I love what you’ve done to your hair. Lighter brown, shoulder length, and those blonde highlights, yes, very nice.”
“I felt I needed to change a few things.”
“So you’re back on the road again,” she said, slouching back in her chair while I pulled on more casual clothes.
“Yup, and I have to tell you it feels great.”
“Well, I can’t tell you how happy I am not to be living out of a suitcase all the time. The job at McGill has allowed me to afford a terrific apartment in Côte Saint-Luc, and I feel like I’m finally able to put down some roots.”
“Got a guy?”
“Yeah,” she said, blushing. “I sure hope I’m not jinxing it, but I think he may be the one.” Diffusing the subject, Lainey’s eyes followed the jeans I was pulling up my legs. “You’re looking good. Been working out?”
“Part of getting my life back together was joining a gym. I’ve been pretty lax since I left for Paris, actually.” I looked over my shoulder at the mirror behind me. “I’ve certainly put on a pound or two.”
The conversation abruptly changed again. “We really haven’t spoken about your troubles. It must have been horrible.”
I sat down on the corner of the bed, picked up my drink and looked at my old friend. “Marc was everything to me and to just have it all yanked away like it was.... It was nearly unbearable.”
“You could have relied on Chloe and me.”
Shaking my head sadly, I answered, “I know that, but at the time I couldn’t reach out to anyone. It was as if someone had taken sandpaper to my soul. Everything was raw and bleeding, and I couldn’t bear the thought of anything or anybody touching it.”
Lainey got out of her chair, sat down next to me, and gave me a bone-crushing hug. “But you’re all better now — and that’s a very good thing.”
The way she said it, I knew she wanted me to affirm that everything was indeed better now. A month ago, I would have been able to tell her what she wanted to hear, but now? Sadly, it was not the case.
I had been thinking on and off all day about asking for my friend’s help, or at least her company, for what I planned to do later in the evening. She knew Montreal like the back of her hand and her French was home grown.
“Funny you should bring that up....”
Chapter Seven
My friend looked thoroughly perplexed.
So I told her about going out to the farm the day before, and among other things, finding a Montreal phone number. The part about seeing Marc in Paris I left out — at least for the moment. The way my sister had reacted made me very leery about sharing that information. If Lainey suspected I might not be telling the whole story, she didn’t let on.
I swallowed the last of my drink. “I’m thinking that the phone number I found might be someone in Marc’s family. He told me there’d been some sort of falling out and he’d cut off contact with them. They probably don’t even know he’s dead.”
Lainey knocked back the rest of her drink and put down the glass with a decisive thump. “Let me see that number.” Lainey whipped a BlackBerry from a little holster thing on her hip, and her thumbs flew over the keys for a couple of seconds, after which she announced, “Just as I thought. The number is for a phone in Verdun.”
“How did you figure that out so quickly?”
“Reverse search.”
“Reverse what?”
“Marta, you really are such a dinosaur. How do you keep in touch with the world? I’ll bet you don’t even have a computer.”
“Uh, no. I do have a cellphone.”
Lainey rolled her eyes comically and waved her gadget in my face. “I guarantee that within a month of getting one of these little babies, you won’t be able to imagine how you lived without it.”
“Perhaps you’re right.”
She stuffed her little marvel away, got to her feet, and slung her purse over her shoulder. “Eat first, detect later?”
Shortly after eight, we were sitting in front of what I mentally call “a Montreal apartment building” in the extreme lower west end of the city. They’re sort of like row houses, and each building contains three flats. The bottom one is right at ground level, never more than a step or two up to the door, the second and third flats are reached by very distinctive, curving metal staircases on the outside of the building. The general design hardly ever varies, just the decoration. Every Montreal neighborhood has streets full of them.
Having never spent any significant time in Verdun, I knew little about it beyond its blue-collar origins. Once, there had been a lot of factories down here, but starting in the sixties that had begun to change as one after another closed or moved out of province. Always low-rent, the area was now looking pretty rough in places, with whole streets of rundown buildings and many vacant storefronts.
Not having a good map, it took us a bit of time to find the correct location. Finally, we turned into a one-block street, poorly lit and lined with careworn buildings.
“You’re sure this is the right place?” I asked Lainey after she told me to pull over.
“Yup. That building over there, bottom flat. Ready to do battle?”
With a heavy sigh, I nodded. Faced with actually moving forward with my little project, I suddenly felt the first twinges of cold feet. Had I been alone, I might have chickened out.
Opening the car door, I answered, “Let’s get this show on the road,” with a lot more bravado than I felt.
My heart was thumping to beat the band as we crossed the street, mounted the one cracked concrete step, and looked down at a worn mat. I crossed myself for luck and pressed my finger on the buzzer. Beneath it was one of those embossed plastic strips with the name Lachance. I thought the name was appropriate, considering the circumstances.
To our left, the brick facade bulged out to contain a bay window, and a quick flash of light as the curtain flicked let us know someone was home. A moment later, a bare bulb went on above our heads.
A short, absolutely ancient-looking woman opened the door, safety chain on. Her face was so wrinkled it reminded me of one of those dried apple dolls you see in folksy gift shops.
“Oui?” she said. “Puis-je vous aider?”
I didn’t answer right away, so Lainey gave me a bit
of a nudge with her shoulder.
It was only then that I realized I’d never considered how I might open what could turn out to be a very uncomfortable conversation.
“Bonsoir, Madame,” I said, deciding it was best to speak French. “This is going to seem a very odd question, but does the name Marc Tremblay mean anything to you?”
She looked harder at me, then shook her head slowly. “No.”
Opening my purse, I took out one of the photos I’d brought from the farm.
“Do you know this person?” I asked, holding it out.
The old woman studied it for barely a second, then looked up sharply. “Who are you and why are you here?”
“Well, you see, the man in that photo was my husband.”
Her eyes opened wide. “I do not believe you!”
“But you do know who this is?”
“Of course! He is my grandson, but his name, I assure you, Madame, is certainly not Marc Tremblay.”
Scattered drops of rain began falling around us, and a rising wind blew them onto our backs.
“Do you think we might come in and speak with you?”
She peered at us for a long moment, then nodded and released the chain but didn’t issue any words of welcome as she stood aside for us to pass.
The sitting room was old, filled with heavy but worn furniture and oppressively hot. The television was on but the sound had been muted. Over the TV hung a print of the Virgin, de rigueur in a proper French-Canadian household.
The old woman gestured toward a sofa — lumpy, but with a bright Indian throw neatly covering it. She took a seat on a recliner but stayed perched on the edge, wary. No offer of tea or coffee was made, and that was out of the ordinary, too.
I reckoned Madame Lachance to be at least in her mid-eighties. She was short, rotund, and wore the expected black dress. A small gold crucifix hung from a chain around her neck, and her white hair was pulled back into a neat bun. In short, Marc’s grand-mère looked exactly like thousands of others in la belle province.
“You said at the door that my husband’s name was not Marc. Could I ask you what it was?”
She frowned at me. “How do I know that you are what you say you are?”
I was ready for that question and removed from my purse another of the papers I’d picked up at the log house the previous day: our marriage licence. From my wallet, I also produced my driver’s license and a photo of Marc and me that a waitress had taken on the night of our marriage as we were enjoying a quiet meal together Mexicali Rosa’s in Perth.
Laying out the various things on her lap, the old woman studied each one carefully. Lainey was fidgeting next to me, eager to see what was going to happen next in this little drama. The minutes ticked by.
“My grandson’s name is Jean-Claude Lachance,” she said, removing her glasses to rub her eyes tiredly. “I thought you might be from the police.”
I had decided ahead of time to stick with the official line, that Marc had been killed in the fire, until I knew for certain this wasn’t the case. It would be unfair, and probably very counter-productive, to tell this poor woman absolutely nothing about Marc’s fate.
I took a deep breath. “Madame, before we go any further with this, I have to tell you some very, very bad news.”
“He is dead then?” She didn’t sound surprised.
“Yes. Two years ago in a fire at the home he was building for us.”
“Where?”
“In Ontario, near Perth. Do you know where that is?”
She nodded. “He never told me he’d gotten married.”
“Your grandson told he was completely estranged from his family.”
“That is because of the trouble which was following him. He told me he did not wish to put me in danger. The less I knew about what he was doing, the better.”
Tears welled in my eyes. Marc’s grandmother, his flesh and blood, didn’t appear upset. Her expression only transmitted weary resignation. I only hoped she wouldn’t be hurt further at a later date.
Lainey, misinterpreting the situation completely, put her arm around me and squeezed.
Madame Lachance asked, “And my Jean-Claude has been dead for two years?”
I could only nod.
“I feared it was so. I have not heard from him for that length of time. How did you come to visit me tonight, so long afterwards?”
“There was a phone number on a scrap of paper in his pickup truck. I only found it yesterday and followed the trail here.”
“I moved three years ago from our old house after my dear husband passed on. It was a new phone number.” She chuckled fondly. “Jean-Claude had such a poor memory sometimes.”
“You said a moment ago that you thought I might have been from the police. Why did you say that?”
At this moment, the old woman finally offered tea — quite possibly there might be things she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell me. Somehow I had to wheedle out what I could. In the back of my mind, I could hear Narissa’s voice telling me I should have listened to her and hired a professional.
Madame Lachance re-entered the room with what must have been her best china. She poured the tea, and we silently took a few small sips. The way I was feeling, a good shot of whiskey would have been more in order.
In order to get the conversation rolling again, I asked, “Can you tell me about Jean-Claude when he was younger?”
The old lady looked up at me, the same expression of resignation on her face. “His home life was not of the best. It was not a marriage I would have wanted my son, Jean, to make. The mother was wild, drank too much, took drugs. She conceived a child and the families forced the marriage. Even before Jean-Claude’s first birthday, she left. No one knows where. It was probably for the best. She would never have been a proper mother.”
“Did he come to live with you?” I asked.
“He had to. His father drove transport trucks just like his father before him, mostly western Canada, but sometimes down to the States. He could be gone for a week at a time. We did the best we could for the child, but he had a wild streak — like his mother. There was always trouble, first with the school, then with the police as he got older. He took up with a bad crowd.”
“Where was his father in all this?”
“Driving transport takes many lives. The long hours, the always pushing for more miles, it extracts a price. There was a pileup in the fog one night in Ontario near Windsor. At least I can thank our gracious Father that my son Jean’s death was a quick one. Little Jean-Claude was only twelve and he did not take the news very well. His behavior only got worse after that. My Gaston, Jean-Claude’s grand-père, spoke with him, the priest spoke with him. Nothing seemed to get through. Finally, when he was seventeen, there was a very big fight and Jean-Claude left.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“You know about the motorcycle gangs in Quebec? It is a grand scandale! The big fight was because of this. Jean-Claude had become friends with some of them.”
This came as a real shock. I knew my Marc loved motorcycles, especially big, noisy Harleys, and he talked constantly about buying one for himself someday, but I thought it was so much talk. Boys with their toys, nothing more. To me, Marc was always gentle and kind and funny, completely unlike what I imagined a biker to be.
Lainey finally spoke up. “Madame Lachance, was your grandson a member of one of these gangs, or simply someone who hung out with them?”
Madame Lachance hesitated before answering. “I believe he was on the outside with them, not a full member. In his heart, Jean-Claude really was a good boy. He was like a moth attracted to the flame, you know what I mean?”
We both nodded, and I asked, “So you completely lost touch with him after he left?”
“He never spoke to his grand-père again, but he did call me on the telephone sometimes when he knew Gaston would not be home, usually for holidays and my birthday. He once told me he was in Vancouver, working on a construction site.”
<
br /> I’d found a dirty blank postcard from Butchart Gardens in among Marc’s tools. I could see him buying it to send to his grand-mère, then with his usual cheerful carelessness, losing it in the mess in the back of his truck.
“Five years ago, I stopped hearing from Jean-Claude. In my heart I feared the worst, but I hoped for the best. The priest assured me that God was looking after him. I prayed every day that I might hear his voice again. After one year and a half, the Virgin answered my prayers.”
I thought back to the first dates on the receipts I’d found. I’d been singing at Covent Garden. “Was this in October?”
“Yes, it was.”
“He came to visit.”
“Yes. With his grand-père now at home because of his illness, we could not meet at the house, even though I begged for Jean-Claude to make up before it was too late. He would not yield, so we met at Place Desjardins.”
Bingo! The three receipts I had from that October trip were for purchases made at that shopping mall. “And the other times he met you?”
“It was always at places well away from where Gaston and I lived. Jean-Claude made me swear on the Blessed Virgin that I would not tell anyone about his visits, before or afterwards.”
Lainey stirred but didn’t inject herself into the conversation any further.
Madame Lachance offered more tea, which neither of us accepted. Excusing herself, she went out to the kitchen and came back with a plate of Fig Newtons, taking two for herself.
“Now, my dear,” she began after pouring a second cup of tea for herself, “tell me your story.”
I gave her a rough sketch of how Marc (I was going to have a rough time forcing my brain to accept Jean-Claude as his name) and I met, fell in love, and the basics of our life together. She seemed especially amused that I was an opera singer. I asked about that.
“My Gaston loved opera. Every Saturday, he would listen to those broadcasts from New York on Radio-Canada. That is what he and Jean-Claude had their big fight about. He called all opera singers fat old women who screamed for a living. It is very funny indeed that he married one.”
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