Métis Beach

by Claudine Bourbonnais

  I turned and was about to push my way through the crowd when I felt his calloused hand on my shoulder, “It’s your fault she’s dead at fifty-eight! You broke her heart!”

  I turned and faced him in a blinding rage, “What do you want to do now, eh? Hit me? How long have you dreamed of it? Go ahead! Go ahead, hit me!”

  Fire in his eyes. He was about to take a swing, but Jeff Loiseau placed himself between us.

  “Drop it, Albert. Think of Ida. She’s probably making a scene about this, up there.”

  He mumbled, and cussed him out. Limped to a chair along the wall and fell onto it. The only sound was his ragged breath.

  Rattled, I made a beeline for the exit, Moïse right behind me. How could I not despise him? How could I not despise myself? After all these years, for God’s sake, nine years of exile trying to become a man, and I still couldn’t face my father. I was fifteen all over again.

  In Louise’s Beetle, I couldn’t speak I was so upset. We passed my mother’s store. I barely glanced at it. That’s where her heart had given out on her — just like her mother’s had before her. In the middle of helping out a customer. I was tired. Tired and broken-hearted. We drove in silence down Rue Principale through to Beach Street, past the majestic pines and spruce, the ancient cedar rows, and the grand summer homes with their tennis courts. I hadn’t missed any of those things, even if, seeing them up close, so different from my memory that had faded with time, I felt a pang of nostalgia. Everything was like before, except perhaps the vegetation, which seemed denser, more vigorous. Moïse told me that Frank Brodie, the policeman who had appeared at my door on the morning of August 19, 1962, had been forced into retirement after Métis Beach fell under the jurisdiction of the provincial police.

  Then, Dana’s house.

  “It’s your house, Romain. In Métis Beach. Your house.”

  Moïse got out of the Beetle and watched me, smiling, as if he’d surprised me with a gift. My house. The one Dana had given me so that I might always be close to my native soil. It was more beautiful than I remembered, with its two towers, each a separate wing, dazzling under the still-warm September sun, its freshly painted veranda, its shingles washed by the salty air of the sea. Oh, Dana! I would have paid a pretty penny to see her nestled in one of the Adirondack chairs in the garden, in canvas pants, a large sailor’s sweater, and dark sunglasses, reading Life or a good novel, raising her eyes from time to time towards the sparkling sea before her. She would have heard the gravel on the driveway crackling under the Beetle’s tires, she would have turned her head and said, “Romain, is that you?” She would have gotten up, walked towards me barefoot in the grass as she loved to do; she would have opened her arms, taking in the space around us, “It’s your house, now.” She would have held me tight against her, placed her lips on my forehead, and I would have smelled jasmine perfume on her. “Yes, your house. The one in which I was so happy with my wonderful John.”

  I’m so sorry, Dana. You can’t imagine how much I miss you.

  “Isn’t the house wonderful?”

  I was thankful that Moïse and Louise had taken such good care of it. Louise walked towards us and offered up a soft, sweet-smelling cheek for a kiss, the seductive Louise I was meeting for the first time and whom I kissed in front of Moïse, who might have been jealous. He quickly showed me the ring on her finger. They were to marry soon. In two months, as soon as Moïse got his Canadian citizenship. I was happy for them, and I was happy to be with them, here, in Dana’s house.

  “Are you okay, man? You’re going to pull through?”

  By this time, they were probably putting my mother in the ground, without me. Not after what happened at the funeral home.

  We sat on the veranda facing the sea. Louise brought us a few beers and a couple of wool blankets. The September air cooled quickly, as soon as the sun began setting on the other side of the river. We were in for quite a show, one of those burning red sunsets. I was cold, still trembling from the confrontation.

  Louise left us alone on the veranda; we had so much to catch up on, and she knew it. Before she left, Moïse asked her for a kiss — “I love you,” he said. She gave him a smile, then smiled at me, and I felt the faintest touch of envy, a small twinge. “Right, man, how lucky am I?” he asked, as if reading my thoughts. He burst out laughing, and I joined him. His eyes filled with tears, and mine too.

  Bloody Moïse. What a joy to be with him again.

  He took a sip of beer, wiped his moustache on the back of his sleeve, suddenly serious. “Okay, man, let’s talk frankly. Time to organize your grand return.”

  “Forget about it. Every one of your letters says the same thing. You sound like a Jewish mother trying to get her son to visit.”

  He ignored my remark. “Incredible! You just can’t see what’s right in front of your eyes! What are you hoping for? What are you fucking doing over there?” He sighed loudly. “Look. I did my research. They’re looking for someone at the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Montreal. It would be prefect.”

  “I’ve got my job at the San Francisco Chronicle.”

  He snorted, “You’re a goddamn assistant, man! It isn’t serious! You can do better!”

  “It’s exactly what you were doing when you started at the Montreal Star!”

  “Sure, but I had bigger plans — to become a journalist. Is that what you want?”

  “How many times have I told you in my letters, I’m writing scripts.”

  “You’ve never sent me one.”

  “Fine!” I said, frustrated. “I’ll do it as soon as I get back to San Francisco.”

  “You’ll never do it.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because you can’t. And each time you fail, you fall deeper into despair.”

  I said, cut to the quick, “What do you know about that?”

  “Look at you, man! You’re at the end of your rope.”

  Above us, the sun was sending down its last rays. I was thinking of my mother in the small cemetery at the end of Rue de l’Église, and I promised myself I’d go tomorrow, with flowers, red carnations, her favourite. After the fight with my father, I had taken a quick glance at the coffin and noticed that she was wearing the Pierre Cardin suit I’d given her in New York. The furtive image troubled me, like a playing card seen in the middle of a shuffled deck. I came all the way from San Francisco, and saw her for only a few pathetic seconds. A long trip to hear Moïse lecture me and denigrate my work as a scriptwriter.

  “And you,” I asked, irritated, “where’s the novel that’ll make you so famous?”

  He began to laugh, an amused laugh, the sort an old man might have, remembering his past mistakes.

  “I don’t have the time, man. I have responsibilities now. You have to waste your days dreaming if you’re going to write.”

  “I can’t believe what I’m hearing! You sound like another goddamn capitalist!”

  “Maybe I’ll get back to writing someday. After I retire.”

  “Goddamn it, Moïse, you’re only twenty-seven! What’s going on with you? You, the writer!” Where’s your love for Kerouac and the others? An accountant! That’s what you sound like!”

  “You’ll see, man, when you have a real career.”

  A punch in the gut. I grabbed my beer and got up. There were limits to tolerating such stupid conversation!

  “Hey, don’t take it that way! Come on, be serious for a moment. Look at your life! An assistant’s job and dreams you’ll never achieve! One day, you’ll wake up and realize that you’ve lost years of your life. We need to build a solid foundation at our age, or else everything will fall apart later. You also need to come to terms with what’s happened here, man. You need to come back. Or you’ll never be able to move forward. And you know what else? With your mother’s death, it might be time to reconcile with your father.”

  “Are you
kidding?”

  “Do I look like I am?”

  “You don’t understand a goddamn thing.”

  Furious, I rushed down the steps towards the sea. The salty, cold air, heavy with humidity, slapped me in my face. What had happened to my friend Moïse? From a volcano, an inch away from eruption, he had turned into something tepid and flat. “Romain!” I turned, shivering. Moïse had followed me onto the beach, a wool sweater over his arm. “Put this on, man, you’re going to catch your death.” He helped me put it on, patted me on the back. “Hey, man, we haven’t seen each other in five years. We need to talk. That’s what friends do, no? Come on, let’s eat. Louise made something good.”

  Moïse was at the table. His back straight, a napkin on his knee. Louise had prepared us beef with carrots and mashed potatoes, set in the centre of the table. He got up, served us without spilling anything, reasonable portions, well placed on the white plates, whiter than white. Sparkling. Even his table manners — which used to revolt Dana — had become miraculously refined. I smiled. He looked like a goddamn aristocrat. Impossible not to think of the old Moïse, who ate with his fingers, mouth open, talking, spitting, and burping because it was funny. I was stunned.

  And my anger faded.

  “Still seeing that fucker Ken Lafayette?”

  In my letters, I often spoke of Ken, and Moïse had warned me off fanatics.

  “I haven’t seen him in more than two years. Sometimes his name pops up in the newspaper, but I’m not telling you anything you don’t know when I say I don’t miss him one bit.”

  I spoke of his scandalous attitude towards his friend Pete. They listened to me attentively, shocked. I told them of a particularly awful moment at the Berkeley antiwar committee office. Ken had gone after a guy who was about to be drafted into the army. For the guy’s father, who had served in the Second World War, it was all about honour. Ken decided to “have a little fun” with him, because he came from an illustrious Republican California family.

  “What did the bastard do?”

  “The guy’s father was close to Governor Reagan. The guy was pitiful. Both rebel and daddy’s boy. Drug problem and in to sports cars. Terrible self-esteem but a big mouth. He wanted to know how to join “the Resistance.” Join the Resistance! Like in Nazi-occupied France! He was ready to renounce his family, his family’s money, and his Porsche 912 to live clandestinely. Ken told him that to get his help, he had to pledge allegiance to the Maoist cause in front of at least fifty students and sign a $2,000 cheque over to the Cause.”

  “No!” Louise exclaimed.

  “Oh, yes! Within twenty minutes, Ken gathered fifty students on campus. Everyone was in on it. Ken gave him a megaphone and the poor guy stammered out his love for Mao. Everyone was laughing. It was cruel.”

  “The guy’s a criminal!”

  “Did he sign the cheque?” Louise asked.

  “Yes. But I don’t think Ken put any money in his own pocket. Someone at the committee told me the money would help to buy supplies.”

  “Supplies?” Moïse asked. “What kind of supplies?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I swear, that guy could be making bombs as we speak.”

  “On that, Moïse, we disagree. The guy’s a manipulator, but he’s non-violent.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  After the meal, Moïse invited me into the living room. Grand Marnier in crystal glasses, the same ones Dana used to drink her vodka from with Ethel, in this room that once was so full of life, and smoke. Seeing Dana’s furniture and Ethel’s paintings on the walls, I felt my chest tighten. Dana, and now my mother. Disappeared, and only their belongings as testimony to their lives. Dana had been dead for three years. It was like an eternity had passed. The sadness I felt when I thought of her was still as strong, though not as intense, like the shape of something far away. With sudden acuity, I realized I was afraid my memories might simply fade away. It was a paradox. But that night, with Moïse and Louise, in the fabulous, warm home, good memories chased away the bad. “To our reunion!” Moïse exclaimed. We raised our glasses, brought them together. A tender look passed between them, and I thought, He seems so happy! Such a simple, serene life! I thought of my own life, seemingly slipping away, a series of fortuitous accidents over which I had no control. Sipping my Grand Marnier in front of the fire Moïse had lit, I surprised myself as I began to consider that it was time to find a place to call my own, and build a future on a more solid foundation. But where, how?

  “Good evening.”

  The voice paralyzed me. A voice I immediately recognized. A voice that brought me back to the past like an old scar cut anew. At a loss, I gave Moïse a questioning look. Embarrassed, he didn’t look at me.

  “Gail?”

  7

  She was smaller, more melancholy than I remembered. With a disconcerting fragility in her eyes.

  She had come to Métis Beach by herself, as she did sometimes, when her parents weren’t there and her husband was busy at work. She liked the solitude of the village, the long walks on the beach.

  She had learned about my mother’s death and wanted to offer her condolences. She had thought of coming to the funeral home, but thankfully had decided not to. “Your father wouldn’t have taken it well, I think?” I was speechless. An awkward silence fell over the room; Moïse and Louise were smiling dumbly. Gail said, “Everyone’s talking about you in the village. The prodigal’s return.” She watched me with a mixture of amusement and confusion. “Your beard, your hair, I would have never recognized you.”

  Louise invited her to sit down and offered her a drink. Moïse quickly said, “We met Gail last year at the clubhouse. Louise and Gail get on well with each other.”

  Why hadn’t he said anything in his letters? He could see I was upset, and laughed nervously while Gail, still shocked by my appearance, repeated, “Oh, Romain, you’ve changed so much.”

  Her voice was softer, more resigned than in my memory. There was some openness about her, not like that night in August 1962, with her caustic laughter, eyes filled with a disturbing fire, and that photo of Don Drysdale she stuck under my nose as a challenge, or perhaps to humiliate me.

  Do you love him?

  I don’t know, maybe I do, maybe I don’t, but that doesn’t matter right now.

  The memory of having been manipulated, ridiculed.

  But the young woman who appeared in Dana’s house looked nothing like that. Long dirty blond hair safely tied back into a bun, white pants and a black vest, shadows under her eyes that her light makeup couldn’t hide, an angular face, pale lips. As timid as a little girl, she said, “All that time … So many things have happened to you.… Wonderful things, according to Moïse.”

  “Is that so?”

  “New York, California. A degree in Art History.”

  “I don’t have a degree. Quit before I got it.”

  She forced a smile. “Moïse said you write for the movies, is that true?”

  I gave him a dark look. What had he said about my projects? Had he been sarcastic or respectful?

  “Yes, it’s true.”

  “That’s fantastic, Romain. I’m very happy for you.”

  She got up, took something out of her bag, and held it in her hand. I saw she had a slight limp. She presented me with a hand-painted card, a watercolour condolence card, a child’s drawing, with animals. I was touched that she had thought of me and my mother. She was no longer that young seventeen-year-old girl, disturbed and egotistical, who lured the naive and fearful adolescent I was into her bed, making him believe that she was actually interested in him. I thanked her, put the card back in the envelope. “And you?” I said. “What’s been going on with you?”

  She shrugged. “Me? Nothing extraordinary.”

  “I hear you married the heir to Barron cookies.”

  She laughed. “You say he
ir like it’s a royal title.”

  She sat back down, and there was something fleeting and veiled in her eyes. “Yes, he’s my husband.”

  “So?”

  “So, what?”

  “Are you happy with him? Do you have children?”

  Her face darkened, and I felt Moïse and Louise stiffen. She said, with poorly hidden disdain, “Oh, no. And it’s better that way.”

  What could that mean?

  We spoke for a time of Métis Beach — Gail told me about Mr. Riddington, whose health was declining. As for the Babcocks and McKays, they sold their properties after the car accident that cost the lives of their children. Art Tees bought the Babcock property while the eldest Hayes girl bought the McKays’. Gail spoke with surprising detachment of the whole affair, her eyes sometimes seemingly empty of emotion, and a constant trembling in her hands, like someone on mood-stabilizing drugs.

  Moïse tried unsuccessfully to hide a huge yawn. “Man, with all that road we covered today, and all the emotions, I’m beat. Off to bed for me.” Louise followed him, leaving us alone, Gail and me. I was sorry to see them go upstairs; I too was dead tired. Gail offered an embarrassed smile, and poured another glass. I went into the kitchen for a beer.

  Then she began telling me about her misfortunes. She showed me the bruises on her arms, a red mark on the back of her neck. I was horrified and astounded at the ease with which she confided in me, as if there were nothing appalling about what she was telling me, and she had never thought of putting an end to it.

  “He beats me.”

  They’d been married eight years, and for the past eight years it had been hell.

  “What are you waiting for? Leave him!”

  A bitter laugh. “I’m the wife of a very rich and very influential man, who would never let his wife leave like that. And anyway, what would I do, all alone? I don’t have a degree, or my own money.” She gave a fatalistic smile. “I’m trapped, Romain.”

  I couldn’t accept her defeatism. Not doing a very good job at hiding my anger, I said, “This is 1971, Gail, not the fifties. Women can divorce, build a new life of their own. Your parents can help you, can’t they?”