She was looking out the window, and he immediately recognized her ponytail. His eyes scanned his ticket, and then the number written on the overhead compartment, her neck to her shoulders and her wool fisherman’s sweater. She turned her head and smiled a nervous smile, barely noticeable, her nervousness under control and concealed behind the need to be polite and friendly. Aimé stared at her for a fraction of a second, as if he recognized her, as if he was trying to recognize something in her. This lasted a few moments, deeply charged yet barely perceptible, and he slid his carry-on into the compartment. He was thinking about her when he sat down in his seat, right beside hers, thinking about what they would say, in a few moments. The passengers were all chatting, a hum of voices both joyous and solemn. He fastened his seatbelt, automatically, didn’t think about it. When she saw him do it she imitated him, like someone who follows the rules and, for that reason, shows that they deserve to be spared, in the event of a mechanical failure, or human error.
She kept smiling though, and said, in a burst of laughter, as if trying to poke gentle fun at herself and include him in her mild anxiety:
“God I hate planes.”
And she breathed through her nose, scrunching up her eyebrows a bit. Aimé nodded in understanding. He also smiled to himself, reassured and full of authority. He had worn glasses for a few years now, his eyesight had suddenly deteriorated. He wore them on a cord around his neck, so they hung on his chest when he took them off. He looked like an internationally respected university professor, one of those people who, in certain circles, are even more famous than the movie stars they sometimes hang out with and marry. His beard was neatly trimmed, mostly grey with patches of white near the ears. It had been a long time since he’d opened his mouth to say something important to anyone, something beyond the niceties of social intercourse and polite conversation. He felt oxidized from the inside, but she trusted him, already, you could see it in her posture. She was tense, but let herself be slowly won over by his calm.
“Think of it as a big bird,” he said. “A really big bird.”
Her face looked pensive, but her smile was still there, present. He took it as encouragement.
“Go on.”
“Well, when you see a bird flying, from the ground, are you afraid it’ll fall?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Even if it’s real high up in the sky?”
“Yes.”
“Do you ever think about the possibility of one of its wings being broken, or its navigation system malfunctioning?”
“No, you’re right, in fact, I’m in complete awe watching it and trusting it to, well, just be itself. To fly wherever it’s flying to.”
“Just try to remember that feeling and the way you feel when you watch that bird, and everything’s going to be all right.”
She didn’t answer, but watched him as if he were an old sage she wouldn’t dare to contradict, out of deference, but didn’t totally believe either. Was he just talking shit? He had to wonder himself. She seemed deep inside herself, looking to recover a feeling, a mood, not just to make him happy. She breathed deeply and seemed to hear the song of a cardinal, maybe a jay, or the scream of an eagle crossing the mountains, gliding serene and majestic.
“I’m Laura, by the way.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Laura. I’m Kenneth.”
“I like the sound of your voice, Kenneth, it reminds me of someone.”
“It’s a very old voice.”
They heard the engines starting and the substance of the air changed in the cabin and the lights blinked along the aisles. A flight attendant with a serious expression sat down on a folding seat in front of them and fastened her seatbelt. The plane started backing up and the grim landscape around the airport paraded by the window. You couldn’t see New York, neither its skyscrapers nor its streets, all you could see were the metal and concrete hangers and electricity pylons, tiny men in hard hats and safety glasses. Aimé smiled at Laura, who seemed more tense suddenly. She leaned back in her seat, clearing her throat, with a very straight back and her eyes open wide. He placed his arm on the armrest between their seats and she put her moist, warm hand on his, which was only beginning to display the elasticity of old age.
He lowered his eyes and turned his hand over to take Laura’s, so she could squeeze it, interlace her fingers with his, and feel reassured. He smiled again, for himself and for her, for this irrational fear that took hold of her, and which she communicated to him. He whispered that everything was going to be okay. That she could trust him. That she was safe.
PART THREE
CHIC-CHOCS
CHAPTER TWENTY
AUGUST 1998
CHATTANOOGA, TN—SAINTE-ANNE-DES-MONTS, QC
We’d like to be able to paint a clear picture. Thomas is dirty, exhausted, and out of breath. He shows up on his father’s doorstep one afternoon at the end of August and finally sets down his dusty backpack on the wooden balcony and knocks on the door. We can almost see him weaving back and forth as he emerges from the mountains under storm clouds, heading down clearly marked paths in the eroded foothills, steering clear of Highway 299 where the tourists speed along, and then walking, and walking some more, toward his father’s village, through fallow fields, with a firm grip on a pilgrim’s stick he’d picked up by the wayside. In our imaginings he would have crossed the Appalachian Trail from end to end, camped in the White Mountains and the Green Mountains and the blue ridges of the Alleghenies, alone with only basic gear and a bottle of water and a notion of redemption that involved making up for past wrongdoings.
He’d have slept in uninsulated shelters, rough wood cabins with gaps that let in sun, rain, and mosquitoes without discrimination, and rolled up in a ball when other hikers came to share these spaces that belonged to one and all and were there for whoever might need them. He might have come across a bear or other wild animal, like a deer with magnificent antlers who turned toward him in a sudden, clean movement full of fear and confidence. And he’d have correctly identified their species, thanks to the images remembered from his childhood picture books.
That was how he imagined it as well, his trip up North, that’s how he thought it would go in his dreams about the legendary hiking trail and the personal fiction about the path his life was taking and what this reunion would mean. When he rang the doorbell of the pretty home that belonged to his father as it had belonged to his father’s deceased parents before him, a pretty house with painted shutters and bay windows, he imagined walking down mountains so old they had no summit, disappearing in the distance behind the fog and the drizzle. He saw himself crossing a creek, walking along the bank, scrambling up a rock so massive and imposing that it was itself a sort of volcanic hill.
His right cheek was still scarred. He’d had seven teeth replaced and had needed an operation to reattach his lower jaw.
Truth be told, he’d taken a Greyhound to Atlanta, then another to New York a few hours later, and after two days on the bus he had gotten off in Montreal. He’d heard good things about the city. Completely out of it from lack of sleep and lulled by the rhythmic pulsing of the heartbeat he could feel in his swollen lip, he boarded another bus for Quebec City, then another that did the milk run around the Gaspé Peninsula, hitting the thousand little towns that lined the St. Lawrence as it broadened into the sea.
Earlier, between Charlotte, North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia, where the driver stopped for a break in the middle of the night, he’d found himself trapped in conversation with a young pregnant woman who rubbed her belly in a circular motion while sharing her thoughts on the magnificent North Carolina landscape. Thomas was in the window seat, so she kept leaning over him to point things out: a flock of ducks in the sky, a lonely willow in the middle of a wheat field against the dark red dusk. The details flew by through the window, the bus made its way along the highway in gentl
e curves, but she didn’t miss a thing, and was more than happy to discuss all the sights with Thomas. He always agreed — it was true, it was pretty, she was right — but really he would much rather have been sleeping. He didn’t dare look closely, her stomach was so big even the most basic, ordinary movements were obstructed, even her neck moved along with it, like an outgrowth. A man was waiting for her when she got off in Richmond. He enthusiastically grabbed her suitcase and sports bag. Thomas watched them from his torn plush seat on high as they kissed before disappearing into the white-walled station.
Later, between New York and Albany, they made their way into the mountains, into the Adirondacks, the day fully upon them, the sun breaking through a layer of grey. The bus hugged the mountainside, overlooking drop-offs where he saw shimmering lakes, lost in primeval forest that reminded him of those old War of Independence battles he’d memorized in school. Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold crossed these lakes in birchbark canoes, delivering messages to generals who’d spent weeks waiting for the word to leap up and attack the English. He imagined Washington calming his men, telling them one more time that Boston would fall any day now, while a bonfire burned and the well-armed, patient English held their position across the river.
Sitting on a Greyhound bus, fingering a book he hadn’t read for hours, Thomas was moving a thousand times faster than the pace of war back in those days, a thousand times at least. And he moved without expending effort, carried by eight wheels and an engine over mountains and winding asphalt roads; it made him think about lightning and about light. If he were to compare, it was almost as if he were the light, especially when he imagined covering distances on foot, what it would entail, what it would mean, back then, to tell your wife or father, “I’m going to Quebec,” and then set off from Virginia. He thought about excursions, explorers, someone reckless and courageous, maybe just a touch foolhardy, who would be asked to follow the Mississippi to its source and answer, “Sure, why not?”
The bus was hurtling along, eating up the miles, Thomas almost felt sick: there was a rising nausea coupled with dizziness, a feeling that hadn’t left him since Chattanooga, layered on top of a nagging pain in his head. Now his legs were tingling from sitting still for too long. When he tried to sleep he grew aware of the driver’s jerky movements, his arms stretched out on the wheel, his accumulated fatigue as he tried to keep driving while listening to Haitian music in his headphones. It was to fight off his fatigue that he hummed the Creole words and bobbed his head, Thomas was sure of it. The driver was exhausted, it made it seem as if everyone else was feeling something similar, a heaviness of the eyelids, a loss of vision and depth of field. And he would wake up at the slightest turn, certain for a fraction of a second that the bus was going to roll.
He’d made a point of saying his goodbyes to his grandparents, to give them the sense of peace Laura had denied them when she ran off with Albert, slipped off into the night with bags so stuffed they barely closed, her clothes spilling out the sides. Now he too was leaving them, to live with the same man who’d taken their daughter from them. He wasn’t planning on coming back, but had sat himself down in their living room anyway, right at the top of the hall stairs, to give them a kiss, hold Josephine in his arms, and thank Wright for everything he’d done for him, no matter how bad the last few months had been. He felt responsible, though he couldn’t condone what his grandfather had done. He refrained from saying the words, the words that would hurt him, the words that would accurately describe the man in front of him. Words he never thought he’d have to say, but which had crept back into his life these past years, like bombs, or old stories kept secret, tucked away for politeness’ sake, and out of a certain respect, he had to admit. Wright and his past, Wright and his family, his beliefs, his speeches, Wright and the things he had written in newspapers and small-circulation magazines. Those terrible things his mother had told him about in the evenings, and that he associated with old white-supremacist films that showed men with crosses and flames and masks, swept up in their enthusiasm, screaming on the altars, brandishing their speech and their threats. He’d looked at him one final time, the monumental Wright who was now smaller than Thomas, with his white hair elegantly combed back, and repeated that, though he was grateful, the time had come for him to find his own path.
At this cliché his grandfather batted his eyelids, and in his reaction Thomas saw poorly concealed disdain: disdain for his cowardice in fleeing northward to another country while the battle was just beginning. The disdain of a man who saw himself as abandoned once again, by someone who refused to understand that it was all for his own good, all in the name of Good, the Greater Good. Deep in his grandfather’s eyes Thomas could see a form of conviction that scared him. It had sparked up again with the Keysha-Ann affair, which made Wright feel ten years younger, and made him feel like fighting, he said, to restore the balance of a twisted world in deep decline and poised on the brink of collapse. A world devoid of values, a world thrown off-kilter, a world with no tomorrow.
Thomas had shaken his hand. He’d wanted to show his sincere gratitude with a firm handshake, a handshake with conviction. But his grandfather’s grip was too much for him, the grasp of conviction itself, the fist of a man who’d never doubted anything, never questioned anything, and Thomas’s hand went limp upon contact.
Josephine drove him to the bus station and they had one final conversation, full of euphemisms and commonplaces about the North, the strength of filial ties, how cold the winter was up there, the possibility he might be disappointed. They didn’t mention Albert explicitly but his presence was palpable. As usual she finished his sentences for him, found the right words before they had time to come out of his mouth. He felt a great affection for her, in the old car, his nose full of the smell of old leather. He kept his eyes on the road and so did she, praying silently, and they arrived at their destination. Josephine didn’t get out. She turned to him and said:
“You’re eighteen now, go ahead and do what you want. We can’t make you do anything you don’t want to.”
It was a strange way to say goodbye, as if the argument they’d never had was now beginning, with Josephine turned toward him, one hand on the wheel, the other on his wrist, while he got ready to open the door and get out of the car. Thomas didn’t answer. His grandmother’s bracelets tinkled, there were lots of them in different colours. The trunk opened at the push of a button and he was off, with his big backpack on his shoulders. His name was written in permanent marker, Thomas Langlois, two words he’d never pronounced properly.
A few minutes later he was on the bus. No one knew where he was going. It wasn’t written on his face alongside the purple and red marks. Even the driver who tore Thomas’s ticket had no idea, it was somewhere real far away from here, Sainte-Anne-des-Monts, Kwee-bec. Several days away and in another country.
He didn’t wait long after knocking. There were footsteps inside, he could see a long hallway through the screen door, and his nervousness ratcheted up a notch when he saw a broad-shouldered silhouette take shape in the half-light and heat. His last memory of this man was from way back in early childhood: he saw his father in the darkness of his bedroom, there was no night light, he was leaving, telling him to go to sleep, as if it were no big deal, just another morning. He was whispering, full of a carefully aimed affection that was comforting. They’d see each other one day, wouldn’t they? And his father nodded, yes they would, before he disappeared for good.
The man coming to the door was the same one. The decade between the two memories was a chasm of unfathomable depth, impossible to comprehend yet easily crossed in a single bound. It was up to him to decide, he thought, and he remembered a series of pretty phrases he’d heard when he was young, from Albert, about everything and nothing, in moments of closeness he thought he had forgotten. Sentences spoken in that sophisticated accent of his. When they went to the library together to meet Laura, after saying hi to the security guard, Albert
pointed at the stacks. “You see that?” he said, unable to pronounce the “th.” “Your mom, she work in the most beautiful place in the world.” When they read the letter from Mr. Simons together and Thomas was reassured of his destiy — he who was always in doubt, who wasn’t even certain that he existed for real — Albert would rock him on his knee and repeat the mysterious words from far away across the river, explaining their meaning and repeating them so his son would understand they were meant for him. Between two sentences he told him to be quiet and breathe, “Breathe through your nose, Thomas.” And, of course, Thomas tried to do just that.
When the door opened, after a moment of stillness, the man who opened it wasn’t hunched over or broken by the years and the weight of his own mistakes; his arms were at his sides and he recognized the person in front of him and he recognized himself in the person in front of him, in his posture, neck, and jaw, seen through the screen door in pointillist contrast. Albert smiled, with his lips first and then with his eyes and the rest of his face. Thomas backed up a bit onto the porch, to leave him room to open the creaking door.
The daylight behind him was changing hue. The air smelled like fish and the sea. The houses were white and blue, big and tall, a few had people’s names written on wooden plaques out front. He could hear the chirping of grasshoppers in the fields next door, going up and up, and Albert told him to come in, not to just stand there. He laughed, and said it again in English, but Thomas had understood, his father’s gestures and the way he moved from place to place and displaced the air around him had always spoken louder than words.
The Longest Year Page 23