Emmanuelle didn’t want to admit it, but she was terrified. Getting a rush from a near-death experience wasn’t exactly her favourite pastime, but she climbed on behind Fabio anyway. He’d come all this way to rescue her, after all, and it would be stupid to send him back home.
Fabio pedalled bravely onwards while Manue clung tightly to his waist. As she pressed her nose against his sweater, she breathed in the traces of detergent and aftershave that lingered on his clothes. The slightly musky smell was soothing; she relaxed enough to admire her surroundings and enjoy the ride. Fabio had taken the bike path that ran along the St. Lawrence River. The water was dark and quiet, the night floating above the silent waves in mystifying harmony. The horizon was impossible to make out—the near and far, the here and the over there, the land and sea coming together in an infinite slowness. A wind from the south blew across their sleepless faces. They felt privileged to witness such scenes of beauty while the rest of the world slept.
Fabio stopped when they got to St. Helen’s Island.
“I haven’t doubled anyone in a while,” he panted, trying to catch his breath. “Do you mind if we walk for a bit?”
“Not at all. I’ve never been here before. It’s nice.”
Emmanuelle could pick out the roller coasters of La Ronde in the distance, still lit up despite the hour. The Ferris wheel had stopped turning, but its bulbs illuminated the city sky. It looked like a giant lion tamer holding a ring of fire, coaxing a frightened animal to jump through for the first time. Would the lion come out unscathed? Manue pondered such absurd scenarios to avoid asking more serious questions like: Why did I call Fabio? And especially: Why did he agree to come get me? The truth was that she didn’t want the answers. For once she wasn’t looking for the why. She just wanted to savour the is.
Neither dared speak. They walked along the river in silence, taking in the splendour of their surroundings. Both knew no words could do this scene justice. Words would only obscure the dazzling light of the night—a night that seemed like it could go on forever. Without meaning to, they ended up at the industrial port. They had overshot Manue’s house by a good kilometre. It didn’t matter; going home was no longer a priority.
They wound through Champêtre Park and sat on a bench, leisurely watching the port’s nighttime activities. Manue had never realized that many of the goods she consumed made it to her thanks to hundreds of workers who, day and night, docked and unloaded the ships that kept the city well stocked. In a split second she took it all in: all the effort, the sweat, the trips, the mistakes, the time, the money, and the battles waged so that she could continue to live easily. She owed her life as it was to exploited children in Bangladesh, Parisian designers, Laotian sailors, New York stockbrokers, Tibetan mothers, and Japanese engineers. She suddenly felt connected to the rest of the planet, just one stitch in a wool sweater. Crane operators were moving huge brown, green, blue, and orange containers filled with food and other objects, while port employees talked loudly and drank bad coffee that had turned cold. An immense freighter was docked at the quay, likely carrying thousands of products made in China or tons of cocaine from Colombia. Manue thought of Serena’s mother, who had fled Latin America on a cargo ship a few months before Serena was born. She had desperately wanted her daughter to be Canadian. After taking a boat to Florida, she’d hitchhiked all the way to the border crossing at Lacolle. Emmanuelle had no idea how she’d managed to get into the country without being caught. She wondered if Fabio had come to Canada legally. It seemed that all the immigrants she’d known had a very loose status when it came to their papers. As much as she wanted to know what had brought Fabio to Montreal, she didn’t want a misplaced word to break the harmony of their shared silence. She kept her questions to herself and turned to smile at Fabio, who met hers with one of his own.
At around three in the morning, Fabio placed a hand on Manue’s thigh. She had fallen asleep on his shoulder. He didn’t say a word, only touched her lightly to indicate, “we should be getting back.”
Fabio helped his sleepy companion to her feet, and Manue let him shepherd her home safely. On their way back, the two ran into a prostitute balancing on exceptionally high-heeled boots, her face painted in garish colours. Ignoring Emmanuelle, who was standing right there, the hooker asked Fabio if he was in the mood for a good blowjob.
“No thanks,” he politely declined.
“Allez,” she insisted. “I’ll give you a good price. Twenty bucks for the best you’ve ever had. That’s a fuckin’ good deal.”
“That’s nice of you, but I’m OK.”
“Dix, alors. I’ll do you for ten bucks.”
“I’m not interested, sorry.”
“What guy wouldn’t want a good blowjob? Who do you think you are? Five bucks, final offer.”
“I’m really not interested.”
“Oh, screw you then!”
Emmanuelle was appalled that the woman was willing to stick a stranger’s penis into her mouth for a measly five dollars. What could she possibly buy with so little? Some bad drugs, she guessed. She thought about Dave and wondered whose behaviour was more demeaning—hers or the dollar-store whore’s? As she was thinking about how much money it would take to get her to sleep with a dirty old man, Fabio grabbed her hand and slipped it into the warmth of his sweatshirt’s kangaroo pocket.
It would take a lot. A whole lot.
On Adam Street, city workers were busy repairing a burst water main. All of a sudden a huge geyser shot up, soaking the workers who had just drilled a new hole in the pipe they were trying to fix. Water sprayed everywhere, shooting across the cars, spinning back on itself, then splattering back to the ground, exhausted. Fabio and Manue watched the performance in disbelief, fumbling to catch a few drops of the raging sea in their hands.
So that’s where beauty had been hiding all this time. It sought shelter along the sleepy river under a half-moon and burst forth for those who believed it gone forever, proving not only that it was still alive, but that it had redoubled its strength, ready to knock the socks off the non-believers.
Fabio left Emmanuelle at the bottom of the stairs to her two-bedroom apartment. He let her hand go, taking care to kiss it first, then turned and started off home. Without saying goodnight. They hadn’t exchanged a word since the moment they had gotten off the bicycle.
Dance of the Jellyfish
emmanuelle spent the rest of the night sitting outside on her apartment steps. She had moved past drowsiness and was now wide awake with only one thing on her mind: Hector. Her hope of finding him was fading, since a fish can’t survive very long out of water. Yet she felt an urge to honour him in some way, to swim upstream and visit his most distant ancestors. She needed to get to the aquarium in Quebec City, and knew just the person to accompany her on this irrational pilgrimage.
“Fabio? It’s me again.”
“You’re up already?”
“I never went to bed.”
“I’m going to have to send you half my cellphone bill. You’re about the only person who calls these days.”
“Very funny. Listen, would you come to Quebec City with me? I want to go to the aquarium.”
“When, this weekend? I can’t, I have to work.”
“No, right now.”
“Now? But don’t you have a job?”
“I work from home, and I don’t have too much going on right now. And I really, really want to go to the aquarium.”
“Is this about Hector?”
“You got it.”
“How are we getting there? I can’t bike you 300 kilometres!”
“I know our train system doesn’t compare to Europe, but we’ve got public transportation over here too, you know.”
“I like trains. And I’ve never been to Quebec City.”
“Meet me at Central Station at eight-thirty. There’s a train at nine.”
•
The train left five minutes late, but it didn’t matter; Fabio and Emmanuelle were in no hurry. They watched as Mont Saint-Bruno, the fields of Saint-Hyacinthe, and the signs advertising Rose Drummond rolled by before their tired eyes. Both fell asleep somewhere between Notre-Dame-du-Bon-Conseil and Val-Alain. The train came to a stop just before Laurier-Station.
After a long wait, the head operator announced over the intercom that they wouldn’t be able to continue. One of the cars on the freight train in front of them had come loose from the rest and was blocking the tracks. What were the odds of that? Zero. But since Emmanuelle was on board, something bizarre was bound to happen. A few minutes later the passengers were told it would take several hours to clear the track. A bus would take them the rest of the way.
Manue and Fabio stood in the middle of a field waiting for the bus and giggling. The other passengers, for the most part businessmen in suits and ties, didn’t see anything to laugh about. A group of German tourists looked rather bewildered.
“You might have trains,” said Fabio, “but I can’t say they’re all that efficient!”
“Go ahead and make fun,” Manue shot back, giving him a little cuff on the shoulder.
“Did you see those poor Germans? In their country it’s a disaster when the train is even a minute late. Imagine how they must feel!”
They reached their destination two hours late. Fabio and Manue walked the short distance from Sainte-Foy station over to the aquarium.
They started their visit with the seal show, then went and checked in on the walruses and the polar bears. Then, since Manue was really there to see the fish, they headed into the main building. There was all sorts of marine life—octopuses, starfish, perch, clownfish, catfish, sea horses, turtles, speckled trout—but no trace of Hector. Obviously.
“Why did you want to come here so badly?” Fabio asked in all seriousness. “I know you miss your goldfish, but there must be another reason.”
“There is. But I don’t know what it is yet.”
Emmanuelle herself had no idea why she’d felt the need to travel 300 kilometres and pay $17 to see fish so far from their natural habitat.
But as she walked past the jellyfish building, it suddenly came to her. As the luminous creatures materialized to the bewitching sounds of Sigur Rós, Manue couldn’t hold back a long shiver. She watched their violet, turquoise, yellow, red, and green bells dancing in the shadowy water from the very beginnings of life. They looked like lonely hearts caught in spidery webs, struggling with all their might to break free from the relentless cycle of time. Emmanuelle was fascinated by the ageless ballet of these graceful sea creatures. She walked up to the glass and reached out a hand to touch the translucent animals that had existed since time immemorial. Before her swam living beings that hadn’t changed since their creation, over six hundred million years ago. The jellyfish were happy with what they had, satisfied with their simple, malleable existence as they drifted in the depths of boundless oceans. They asked for nothing more than what had been given.
Humility made light.
Emmanuelle pored over the information cards just beside the jellyfish exhibit. Suddenly, she wanted to know everything about these mesmerizing creatures. She was astonished to learn that they reproduce just as they are about to die.
Male jellyfish wait until the moment of their death to release their sperm. After making contact with female eggs, the resulting polyps will settle on the ocean floor and can take up to fifty years to develop into adult jellyfish.
Growing for half a century. Taking the time needed. Waiting for the right moment to come into being.
Jellyfish eventually break free and take shape most often due to a change in environment—a rise in temperature, a drop in oxygen levels, or a violent storm.
So in the end, a bolt from the blue could give rise to new life. It had nothing to do with passion, however. Coming into existence was not a question of love; rather, it was more about disappearing. To create life, one must know how to die. Light can only appear once we are done grieving for ourselves.
Manue realized that she could learn a great deal from these awe-inspiring invertebrates. She’d found her answer: she needed to die completely in order to come to the surface again, abandon the part of herself that was keeping her a prisoner of the past, and go back in time, back to the fateful moment her heart had been torn to pieces, then pick them up and try putting them back together. Go as far back as the Stone Age—or the Ice Age, if need be—as far as it took to pinpoint the exact cause of her distress and put the past to rest.
Emmanuelle wanted to swim with the jellyfish, float alongside their watery, otherworldly bodies, follow them to the source of everything and return lighter, more serene, fulfilled, bursting with the vital energy that propels beings beyond themselves and pushes them to be better.
A little Darwinian lesson on the laws of evolution: how to succeed in life without taking everything down with you.
Ressac Street
the aquarium staff had to kick Fabio and Emmanuelle out at closing since Manue couldn’t tear herself away from her new-found muses, the jellyfish. They had finished what they had come to Quebec City for and could have taken the 6:10 p.m. train back to Montreal. But something told Fabio their adventure was far from over.
“So, intrepid traveller, where to next?” he asked Manue.
“I don’t really feel like going back tonight,” she admitted. “And my mom would kill me if she knew I’d come to Quebec City and didn’t stop by.”
“I didn’t know you were from here. Where does your mother live?”
“Just across the bridge, in Saint-Nicolas. Do you mind coming with me?”
“Of course not.”
They crossed the Quebec Bridge and walked the six kilometres over to Ressac Street, singing summer camp songs the whole way. Or rather Manue sang and Fabio, who didn’t know the first thing about call-and-response Quebec tunes, clapped along. An unlikely parade.
When they got to her mother’s doorstep, Manue hesitated a moment before ringing the bell.
“You don’t just walk in?” Fabio wondered aloud. “Isn’t this your house, too?”
“Not really. I never lived here. My mom moved in a few years ago with her new boyfriend. I grew up in a different neighbourhood, over by the falls.”
“There are waterfalls here?”
“Yeah. I’ll take you if we have time.”
The door swung open before Emmanuelle could ring the bell. Nicole had heard people talking outside.
“Manue? What are you doing here?”
“Surprise!” she shouted. “I came to see my favourite mom.”
“I hope I’m your favourite. I’m the only one you’ve got,” Nicole pointed out.
“Mom, this is Fabio. Fabio, my mother, Nicole.”
“It’s a pleasure,” Nicole replied, shaking the hand Fabio had politely extended. “Are you Manue’s new boyfriend?”
“He’s not my boyfriend, Mom. Don’t be so awkward.”
“A mother’s got a right to know!”
“Aren’t you going to invite us in?”
“Of course. Come in, come in.”
The house smelled fresh, like fake lemon and spruce-scented detergent. Nicole had spent the day dusting the shelves, mopping the floors, cleaning the windows, scrubbing the sinks, and vacuuming the rugs—her big weekly clean. She’d developed a compulsion for cleanliness after her husband died. Housework was now an obsession, one that used to get on Emmanuelle’s nerves. So when she’d gotten fed up hearing “Pick up your things!”, “Did you clean your room?”, or “Don’t walk on the linoleum! I just mopped!” she’d moved out.
“Richard’s not home?” Manue asked.
“No, he plays poker on Mondays.”
Too bad. Manue liked her stepfather. She got along better with him than with her ow
n mother. This meant that he wouldn’t be there to save the day when things turned ugly, which was bound to happen. It was always the same story: although Emmanuelle walked in with good intentions, she could never shake the old bitterness that surfaced at her mother’s slightest provocation. A vague reference to Manue’s troubled adolescence, past boyfriends, or present lifestyle (which Nicole disapproved of) was enough to set off a never-ending war of words. They jumped on any excuse to dredge up the past, going head to head and throwing blame around with abandon. Even the most mundane conversations could lead to a fight.
“It was nice out today.”
“You thought so? I found it really humid.”
“I guess, but at least it was warm.”
“I like it better when it’s cooler out.”
“Menopause gives you hot flashes. We know.”
“Someone’s touchy today. Are you PMSing?”
“Leave my hormones out of this. I’m not touchy. You’re the one getting all worked up.”
“Oh so it’s my fault as usual?”
“I haven’t accused you of anything. You sure have a talent for turning those mountains into molehills.”
“The expression is ‘make a mountain out of a molehill.’”
“You see? You’re always correcting me. I can’t even use the words I want.”
“You’re not always free to do whatever you want, girlie. Life doesn’t work like that.”
“Well you sure felt free to screw up my life!”
“Whoa, a little respect there, missy. Don’t speak to your mother like that.”
“Where was your respect for me when you hid the fact that I was a twin from me for twelve years?”
“I didn’t hide anything. I just didn’t tell you everything. I did it to protect you.”
“Because obviously you always know what’s best for me, right?”
“I’m your mother, Emmanuelle Bélanger, and a mother always does what’s best for her children.”
“A good mother, yes. But I can’t honestly say that’s what you were.”
Behind the eyes we meet Page 6