Métis Beach

by Claudine Bourbonnais

  The pompous theme music sounded through the studio, and the audience started clapping in time. Bill Sweeney smiled, a satisfied smile, almost teasing. A wide shot of the two of us, seated face to face. The third seat had disappeared as if by magic.

  “Good afternoon, everyone! We’ve got a guest today, all right!” He turned towards me. “You mind if I call you Rô … main Car … rier? Ah! French names! Unpronounceable!

  “Booo!” The crowd shouted.

  “Well, what now!” Bill Sweeney exclaimed. “You’re not going to insult my guest because he has a French name. Watch out — French-Canadian, it’s not the same thing!”

  “Canadian socialists,” someone shouted out, “can’t help us out when we’re under siege!”

  “People’s Republic of Canada!” someone else screamed.

  Bill Sweeney chuckled; he was one with his crowd, played with it. Small American flags were being joyously and enthusiastically waved in the room.

  “Though having two names might be rather handy,” Bill Sweeney went on, ignoring me completely. “Hey, it wasn’t me, it was Rô … main Car … rier!” Then, adopting an exaggerated French accent, “Who? Roman Carr? Sorry, I don’t speak English!” One of the pathetic little numbers he often played. The crowd ate it up. I refused to let myself be rattled.

  He was a manipulator, sure, but he knew the limits he couldn’t cross if he wanted to make a proper show of it. And so Righteous Billy calmed the crowd down. An unctuous smile, then a falsely contrite air, “A terrible tragedy that befell you.…” he began, with calculating effect. “Your friend, the child she was carrying.… What a painful ordeal it must have been.” He nodded gravely. “How are you, Rô … main?”

  Where was the bastard going with this? I answered with a simple nod. He went on, “It’ll be a relief, won’t it, when this James F. Lovell is executed. The man who killed your lover and your baby.”

  I stiffened. His eyes were burning with malice now, there was no sympathy in them. I answered dryly, “James F. Lovell needs to pay for what he’s done. But I’m against the death penalty.”

  “Booo!” the crowd shouted.

  “And yet it’s California law,” Bill Sweeney solemnly commented. “Don’t tell me you feel compassion for the man who killed Ann and the baby?”

  Ann and the baby. As if he’d known them. “Of course not!” I said, outraged. “Being against the death sentence isn’t about compassion; it’s about ethics.”

  He raised his arms skyward. “Ethics! There we are!” He uncrossed his legs, leaned towards me. “But the law is ethical. The law is just.”

  “That’s right, Bill!” a couple of spectators shouted.

  “No,” I answered defiantly, despite the nervousness growing in me. “The law isn’t always just.”

  Righteous Billy let loose a small, satisfied cry. As if I had just opened wide the door he was preparing to shoot his way through. He leaned back into his chair, crossed his arms. “You’ve often gone against the law, if I understand correctly?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  He got up from his chair, adjusted his expensive, shimmering suit. I felt myself boiling inside. The crowd rumbled with a sour mixture of pleasure and indignation, “Bill! Bill! Bill!” Bill Sweeney turned his playboy’s mug towards the camera, and fixed his eyes on it as if on the eyes of a woman he was trying to seduce. “Does Rômain Carrier have something to hide, ladies and gentlemen? Will he tell us the truth? Stay tuned to find out!”

  Round 1 was coming up. Cut to commercials.

  4

  As soon as the cameras were off, Bill Sweeney lost his smile. A woman appeared on the set and began applying powder to our foreheads and noses. I was furious. “What is the meaning of all of this? What are you playing at, Bill?”

  He looked at me with bored eyes. “I’m the one asking the questions here. Your role is to answer them as honestly as possible. All the people want is the truth.”

  The audience was laughing, talking loudly. People looking to be entertained, not to have truth revealed.

  “Who do you take me for, good God! And who are the other guests? Look at me, Sweeney! What the hell is your game?”

  “Ten seconds!” the director shouted out.

  He stared at me and said with barely veiled contempt, “Be honest. That’s all you’re asked.”

  Honest? Is that what he said?

  Righteous Billy reintroduced me, distributing smiles like playing cards. “Let’s now go to Canada, ladies and gentlemen! To Toronto!”

  “Noooo!” the crowd shouted.

  “Oh yes,” he said, laughing. “A courageous man is waiting for us there, you’ll see.”

  On the big screen, a completely bald head, mottled with liver spots. Two moist slits for eyes, under mean, shrivelled eyelids.

  Robert Egan? What the hell was he doing here? And why him?

  “Hello, Robert!” Bill Sweeney warmly called out.

  I was shocked, stupefied. “Why is this man here?” I called out. “What does he have to do with the Iraq War?”

  Once again, Bill Sweeney offered a fake smile. I felt like I was in a bad movie; someone, somewhere, would realize it and put an end to the goddamn thing! Bill Sweeney wasn’t one for qualms, that much was clear from what I’d seen of him on television. He would trip up his subjects, have surprise guests on, dramatic witnesses. But this was a new level — an old man shaking with Parkinsons, who, despite Sweeney’s friendly welcome, seemed as confused as I was.

  “How are you, Robert?”

  He nodded once, a collar of flesh around his neck echoing the nod. With a trembling hand, he played with the earpiece he’d been given. The arrogant jock with the iron constitution who terrorized his opponents on the greens and tennis courts of Métis Beach was gone. Without waiting for Righteous Billy’s questions, he began talking, mired in a confused monologue, too happy to dig up the hatchet after all these years. He stammered, spat, and mumbled his way through a story in which I raped his poor daughter, dead now, and then ran off to the United States to escape justice.

  “That’s a lie!” I exclaimed. “Slander, pure and simple!”

  Robert Egan bobbed his head, a shifty old man who had come to believe the lie he’d been telling for forty years.

  “This … man raped my daughter!” He continued feverishly. “He … he destroyed our family!”

  “His daughter was never raped!” I protested vehemently. “This man you call courageous disowned his daughter! He refused to see her for more than thirty years. Wasn’t even at her bedside when she was dying of cancer, while I, I was there!”

  “So you entered the United States in 1962 under false pretenses,” Bill Sweeney interrupted. “Like a criminal.”

  “Robert Egan never laid charges against me! The Canadian authorities never went after me because his story is pure fabrication. I did not rape his daughter!”

  “Hmmm.” Sweeney groaned, a fake look of regret on his face. “She’s no longer here to give her side of the story.”

  I was mad with rage.

  “He got her pregnant and ran!” Robert Egan spat out. “Like a feckless coward!”

  I jumped up from my seat. “You and your wife ordered her to get an abortion! Which she refused to do!”

  My God, was this the trap? For me to reveal my private life and feel obliged to justify myself in front of Bill Sweeney’s indecent cameras?

  “In terms of abortion and respect for life, you’re not very well positioned to be giving lessons.”

  I ignored Sweeney’s words and went on, “This man made the life of his only daughter miserable. If you looked into it, you’d know. But, clearly, truth matters not one iota to you, Mr. Sweeney.”

  His smile became fixed, and the crowd immediately came to his defence. “We love you Bill!” “Yes, Bill!” “Bill! Bill! Bill!” Righteous Billy nodded thanks to
his faithful, silenced them with a gesture of his hand, and turned towards me. “When you sought asylum in the United States in 1962, you were hoping to get under the radar of Canadian justice, were you not?”

  “I won’t answer that question.”

  “Oh! I’m giving you an opportunity to set the record straight, and you’re refusing?”

  “Truth! We want truth!” the crowd chanted.

  “But I didn’t commit a crime!”

  “And yet you found sanctuary in New York, thinking to escape justice. You’re the one who spoke of morality, of ethics, were you not?”

  “Nonsense, it’s all nonsense. I came here to talk about the Iraq War, not to be the victim of a phony trial!”

  “We’re giving you a chance to explain yourself, Rômain.”

  “Explain myself for what, for God’s sake!”

  “For your life in the United States, entered illegally.”

  Illegally? “What are you talking about?”

  He didn’t answer and turned towards the crowd. “Ready for the second round?”

  “Yes!” the crowd howled!

  “Okay!” Righteous Billy cried out, rubbing his hands together. “Music!”

  A booming tune filled the studio. I felt the ground cave under me. On the great screen, Robert Egan’s head disappeared. On Bill Sweeney’s set, guests were on for only a short amount of time, just enough to reinforce his point, to make him seem smarter. While “God Save the Queen” blared, a bedlam of percussions and brass, I readied myself for the second round.

  Should I have gotten up and left? I was far too angry to withdraw in self-defence.

  5

  Back from the break. The crowd’s noise was so loud, it was enough to make me nauseous. I had the feeling of having a rubber band pulled to its limit in my head, about to snap.

  “Hello, Mark! Thank you for being here! Great Britain is our most faithful ally in the war against terrorism! My thanks to Tony Blair!”

  Mark Feldman. Dana’s son. I looked at him, frozen stiff.

  The years hadn’t been kind. He was thicker, his natural good looks morphed into a sort of Santa Claus maturity, with his long beard and grey hair under a needlepoint kippa. Stone-faced, Mark greeted Bill Sweeney as if addressing a simpleton. Mark certainly wasn’t the type to greet anyone warmly, and he treated personal questions with disdain. I almost enjoyed the way he looked down on Bill Sweeney from the large screen, barely repressing a look of disgust, while Righteous Billy enumerated, like an impressionable little boy, his guest’s accomplishments — one of the largest fortunes in Great Britain, recipient of the highest honours, a high-profile member of the London Jewish community, “our allies against the Muslims who hate America.…” A powerful man, who owned a large chunk of London in the form of hundreds of buildings. As Bill lauded him, Mark seemed bored, even giving an impatient glance at his watch. His time was precious.

  Bill Sweeney said, “It was in fact at your mother’s home that Rômain found sanctuary in 1962? When he was trying to escape the Canadian justice system?”

  I cut in. “Will you cut it out? I wasn’t living illegally in the country, as you keep claiming. That’s slander, Bill! As soon as I get out of this studio, I’ll be giving instructions to my lawyers. There’s a limit to how much mud you can throw in people’s faces. I won’t let you do it with impunity!”

  The crowd interrupted my rant, “Bill! Bill! Defend yourself!”

  Bill Sweeney smiled slyly and continued, “Robert Egan said that your mother was an accomplice to a young man who raped his daughter. Do you agree?”

  An incredible violence filled me. I said, trying to control my rage, “Retract those words, Bill, now. I’m giving you one last chance.”

  He ignored me completely, all his attention on the screen, “Please, Mark.…”

  Mark grimaced. In a dull voice, emotionless, he told how I manipulated his mother, an unstable woman — an unstable woman? — disturbed by the death of her husband, his father, forcing her to hide me at her place, in New York.

  “Now, wait a minute!” Sweeney interrupted. “Your mother was famous at the time. A sort of fury of the feminist cause.” The director tossed him a book which he caught and showed the camera. “The Next War. A feminist pamphlet your mother published in 1963. An unstable woman, you say?” He flashed a large smile. “Yeah. I think everyone got that one.…”

  The crowd laughed. Mark didn’t. He went on, his voice still devoid of emotion. It was as if the whole episode, his mother and me, had stopped affecting him, no longer made him angry. He was no longer the same man and Bill Sweeney, who seemed disappointed, started peppering him with questions to get him off his game, but Mark persisted with his usual arrogance.

  He ended up answering that I “dishonoured his mother” by having an “inappropriate relationship with her” while I was a “minor,” and I blackmailed her to “get money off her,” forcing her to “write me into her will.” “Before killing her.”

  “That’s slander!” I shouted under a hail of indignant cries from the crowd.

  “Before killing her?” Righteous Billy asked, back in good spirits.

  The crowd was whistling, booing; I thought my head would burst. Mark spoke of the accident on Long Island and how Blema Weinberg and her guests swore they saw me take the wheel in Amagansett. Furious, I defended myself as best I could — the police report was clear on that. The employee at the restaurant who saw us trade places.…

  “You were drunk?” Sweeney asked.

  “No!”

  “You were on drugs?”

  “At the time, everyone was on drugs.”

  A voice came from offstage. In the dark, just behind the bright projectors, I couldn’t see who it was. A man’s voice, as familiar as the smell of urine in a New York subway station.

  “Okay!” Bill Sweeney said. “Things are heating up. Stay with us ladies and gentlemen. After the break, Round 3!”

  6

  He emerged from the shadows, a hazy image at first, in the blind spot of my bad right eye. He extricated himself from the hand of an unseen character helping him up the few steps to the stage. He hated when people noticed his limp. He’d put on some weight over the years; his feminine, Jon Voight face had gotten thick, his hair grey and dull, sparse on top. His eyes, however, were the same — piercing, slightly almond-shaped, separated by two pronounced lines between his brows.

  In the same way he got rid of Robert Egan, Bill Sweeney made Mark Feldman disappear, though perhaps with slightly more deference. He ordered a third chair brought up with a dismissive snap of his fingers.

  Looking at Ken Lafayette slowly make his way across the ring, wearing a marine blue-striped suit, white shirt and red silk tie (the colours of the American flag?), I realized with surprise that I hadn’t thought of him in years. He’d been arrested at my place in San Francisco and imprisoned in San Luis Obispo. From what I remembered, he was released in 1974 because of lack of evidence. A young woman dead, another seriously injured from a bomb on Washington Street. The cops believed he was guilty, but the judge severely criticized their work, their rapidly executed arrest, calling them amateurs. Nolan Tyler of the San Francisco Chronicle had been right — the guys who picked him up at my place were kind to me, never believed I was involved. For a while, though, I lived in terror at the thought of Ken denouncing me for having helped his friend Pete enter Canada. Nothing ever came of it. In the end I came to the conclusion that he held his tongue, and I was thankful for it.

  But on the Bill Sweeney Show?

  A bank of commercials — get thinner and better looking, lose weight, forget about heartburn — and back to the studio. “Ladies and Gentlemen, Doctor Ken Lafayette!”

  Based on the enthusiasm of the crowd, he wasn’t unknown to them. Doctor Ken Lafayette? The evangelical pastor Sweeney’s researcher mentioned?

  “Okay, Ken. Le
t’s see what we have here.”

  Bill Sweeney briefly looked down at his notes. He lauded Ken. A respected minister in a church in North Carolina. Owner of a not-for-profit Christian radio station. Author of numerous best-selling books, his greatest success (why had I never heard about it? Was Sweeney exaggerating Ken’s success?) a memoir about the “judicial error” to which he’d been victim and for which he’d been unjustly imprisoned.

  “Ooooh!” the crowd sang. Who was responsible? the crowd seemed to be asking. While Bill Sweeney was telling his story, Ken, next to me, looked triumphant, his back straight, impeccably manicured hands on his thighs. He still had the same habit of crossing his shorter leg over the longer one. He turned his head, gave me a small, strange smile that was hard to interpret. My heart was beating hard and fast. My ears were buzzing.

  Two years spent in prison were hard on him, brought him God. His release was a sign from God. God had answered. Since then, he’d been devoting his life to Him.

  The crowd applauded. “A great American, ladies and gentlemen!” Bill Sweeney announced. “A patriot!”

  Ken Lafayette, a patriot! Was this a joke?

  The crowd went wild. Ken Lafayette offered me his condolences for Ann and the baby, a compassionate look on his face, which I was aching to wipe off with my fist. “What a horrible tragedy, Roman. My wife, my children, and I prayed very, very hard for you.…” He shook his head theatrically. He then went on with a soft but unyielding voice — not the one from the Berkeley days, with which he used to harangue crowds — about how In Gad We Trust had deeply affected him. It was an affront to Christians, to God. Sweeney couldn’t even put a word in. Ken Lafayette was up and pacing the ring, like a preacher in his element. He removed his lapel microphone and took a handheld one that Righteous Billy offered reluctantly. Ken Lafayette addressed the crowd directly now, subjugating listeners with his eloquence and his life story — Americans loved nothing more than redemption.