Autant

by Paulette Dubé

  He wipes the sweat from under his nose and signals André to stop and have a smoke. “This is going to go down as the summer that never was,” he said, as he stiffly lowered himself into the dusty red velvet wing chair.

  “What do you mean?” André plucks a long stem of grass gone to seed and sticks it in his mouth.

  “Are we ever going to get out of this mess long enough to go up to Winagami Lake, do you suppose?”

  “Ah, the fish’ll wait. Alice’s roof? Well, I wouldn’t bet the farm on it being here after one more good rain. We’ve let things slide, Maurice.”

  “We, let things slide? What do you mean slide? Who was out here every year to change the storm windows? Who painted the kitchen after that little accident with the deep fryer? Who put in the new toilet and the new linoleum in the living room and got the phone hooked up?”

  “All right, all right, Maurice, calm your nerves, old man. Have your smoke. Jésus you are touchy today.”

  “Well, a conk on the head has pushed aside my jollies, I guess. And I don’t like the idea of spending my summer cooped up with Alice and her ghosts and her Roland and Christ-knows what all else is up in that attic. I am not looking forward to those moths. How are we supposed to get rid of them once we get them out anyways?”

  “Fire,” says André.

  “Come again?”

  “We burn them. I already asked the boys to come over later on this afternoon to help clean up the mess I figure we’ll have with the roofing. They will bring wheelbarrows and another garbage barrel if she doesn’t want to use the garden. We burn the whole stinking shebang.”

  “The kids will do that for you?”

  “Yep. For the love of their old man,” says André.

  “How much?”

  “Twenty bucks each for the job, plus I take them to supper on the weekend at the Café.”

  “Good enough. Let them do that work then.”

  “A shit-load of butterflies up there that’s all,” says André.

  “Well, I don’t want to be underneath a shit-load of dead anything. It’s disgusting.”

  “Get a hat on over that lump on your head. We’ll put bananas over our mouths and noses . . . ”

  “A banana . . . on my nose.”

  “You know, like when we shovel grain, to keep the dust out.”

  “A bandana, you nitwit, not a banana.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Let’s get started. Are you finished killing yourself with that cigarette yet?”

  “Yeah, if you want to bite my banana, I’ll be ready to go.”

  “Ha.” André gives him a playful punch on the shoulder, then stretches his arms over his head.

  Alice walks towards them trailing long-sleeved housecoats, leather gloves, and long scarves. “Here you are!” she calls. “Everything you need to keep the dust from your clothes and lungs. And these.” From her apron pocket she pulls two pairs of welder’s glasses, dark lenses with protective side shields. “They were Roland’s.” She hands them to her two brothers. “Put your glasses on, Maurice, safety first.”

  Maurice reaches out and perches the glasses on his nose. I am too old for this shit. “There,” he says, “happy?” He stalks past them, wearing a lovely pink nylon housecoat.

  “What’s eating him?” asks Alice.

  “Nothing. He is just a little tired today. The heat. You know he gets cranky in the heat and his leg is acting up.” André crooks his arm towards Alice. “Madame, would you escort me? I believe we have a moth ball to attend.”

  Alice looks at her youngest brother with a ready smile, and then her gaze shifts. Hands on hips, she looks over the roofline, squinting. She brings one hand up to shade her eyes.

  “André?”

  “Yes?” He puts on his safety glasses and twists his head this way and that to see through the smears and the dust.

  “André,” she says, softer this time and no longer asking a question.

  “Yes, I am.” He still can’t make out a damned thing. The glasses are so dark.

  From inside the house they hear Maurice swinging the ball peen hammer into the ceiling. Thwuck. “Enfant de Christ de tabernacle!” Thwuck. “Maudite bête d’ l’enfer désespéré!”

  “André, there, do you see?” She puts her hand on his arm and leans towards the house.

  Thwuck. “What the fu — ?”

  A guttural ripping sound. The groan of a ceiling coming down mixed with the choked out bellow of a man caught under the debris. André and Alice run desperately for the house.

  “Maurice? Maurice! Can you hear me?” calls André, waving one arm through the dust and wings and stench, keeping his other hand firmly clamped over the green nylon scarf that protects his mouth.

  “Jésus-Marie-Joseph,” breathes Alice. “Why would she do this?” She fans away the dust and surveys the boards, plaster, and wood chip insulation.

  “Alice, stay over here by the kitchen door.” André guides her back by the shoulder. “Call home. Get the kids over here quick as they can. Go!”

  “I saw, just before the roof fell down, I saw . . . ” begins Alice.

  “Later, not now. I have to help Maurice. Call home and get them to come, now.”

  Tightening his jaw, he turns from his sister towards the living room. He sighs. There, near the corner where the TV used to be, is a humped crumpled figure. He crosses the living room in two strides and drops to his knees, already brushing the plaster and dust off Maurice. A swinging rafter has nicked his brother on the other side of his head. He removes a clean handkerchief from his pocket and applies pressure to the gash. Maurice groans thinly, and tries to open his eyes.

  “Don’t move, Maurice. I got you, mon vieux. I got you, you are okay. Took a bit of a hit to the head again, that’s all. Maybe all of this’ll knock some sense into you.” He turns as far from his brother’s ear as he can and yells to Alice, “Call Trefflés. He’s bleeding like a pig from the head.”

  “No,” croaks Maurice, “I just sweat like a pig.”

  “Yeah, well you bleed like one too,” says André. He fumbles with Maurice’s scarf, flaps it awkwardly to clean it and ties it around the handkerchief already stained with blood. “There, that should hold you. Does anything else hurt? Can you feel all your bones? Anything broken?” André clears the ceiling offal from around his brother.

  “André, I fell. I fell off the ladder,” says Maurice, eyes wide.

  “I know you fell. Why the fuck were you doing it by yourself? Why didn’t you wait for me? You could have waited you know, I was right behind you.”

  From the kitchen comes Alice’s voice, “André?”

  “Yes?”

  “There was no answer at your place.”

  “The kids are on their way then.”

  “And I called the Chateau. Had to leave a message with the matron though. Madame Trefflé is sleeping they said. I told her to tell La Vieille that Maurice Garance was bleeding and to please stop it. Oh, there’s the phone. I’ll get it, it’s probably for me anyway.”

  “André, I fell off the ladder before the ceiling fell,” Maurice says.

  “Yeah?”

  “Something pushed me off the ladder. I was looking up into the attic. I had made a pretty good size hole and I felt something come down on top of my head and push me down, off the ladder. I fell before the ceiling did.”

  “It’s your worse nightmare, Maurice. There must be at least a ton of moths here on the floor. That was what pushed you off the ladder and probably saved your life too. Acted liked a cushion, a big pillow, einh? Can you feel that? Does that hurt? How about here, can you feel this?”

  Alice pokes her head around the corner from the kitchen. “André?”

  “Still here.”

  “Matron said she woke Émérentienne for the emergency. Has the bleeding stopped?”

  “I’ll check,” He lifts one corner of the handkerchief. “Yes it has. Good. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” she says and ducks back into the kitchen. />
  He hears her filling the kettle and lighting the stove. “I’ll make some coffee now,” she calls back.

  “Tell her I need l’eau forte,” says Maurice.

  “Easy does it there. Can’t have her and you both all screwy on the same day. Try standing up, einh?”

  “I can stand. I tell you, André, I fell before the ceiling fell.”

  “Yes, yes, Maurice, all right, there. There you go. How does that feel? Are you okay to walk?”

  “No goddammit, I think my ankle is fucked. Help me to a chair.”

  They both look up and around the bare room.

  “It looks like a bomb went off in here,” said Maurice. “A bomb of . . . what’s that?”

  “Remnants of a roof gone bad, where moths came to die,” says André, shaking his head.

  “No, I mean that, what is that?” Maurice points his chin towards a soft brown hump, half buried under the plaster.

  “Looks like an old suitcase. God only knows what’s in there. Probably extra Roland parts. We’ll worry about that later. Come on. Let’s get you to the kitchen.”

  The two brothers limp into the kitchen where Alice is fussing with the twenty-cup percolator. “Do you think this is enough? With the kids on the way I should probably make more, or maybe Kool-Aid. I used to have Kool-Aid.”

  Maurice drops heavily into a chair. “How about you break out a bottle? Do you have any honey wine left? Or some rye even? You always said alcohol was for emergencies. I could use a shot right about now.”

  Alice looks over at him. “I don’t see why at every little thing you have to run to the bottle, Maurice.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I am not exactly running anywhere.”

  “The pain in your ankle? That is a sprain. I can see from here it’s not broken,” she says.

  “Oh for the love of Pete! I am asking you for one lousy cup of wine! Surely to God you can see . . . ”

  “Yes, I can see,” says Alice. “I can see, that you have pain and Roland had pain and he became a small man, Maurice. Small enough to fit in a bottle and to never come out again.”

  “Alice, please. A drink.”

  André steps in. “All right you two, let it go. The kids will be here and I am not feeling so hot myself. The air isn’t moving in here. Alice, I’m taking Maurice outside. You should come too.”

  He reaches under the sink, behind the potato bucket and pulls out a bottle of Five Star. The star hangs crookedly and Alice’s spidery writing on the label reads, Miel d’Autant.

  Maurice grins and opens his mouth to say something, but André shoots him a look to keep quiet. “Bring the glasses out would you please, Alice?” he says.

  “Fine,” she says. “I will bring two small glasses. And coffee.”

  They look out the window when they hear the crunch of tires on gravel. “Kids are here,” says André. “They can help us with this mess. Alice? The glasses? Bring a few more, einh? The kids are going to love your famous honey wine. I think they’ll need it. Then we’ll get to work on the house.”

  Maurice is slow to rise. André slings one arm over his shoulder and one around his waist. They make wobbly progress to the stairs, where Maurice leans on the wall then steps down the three stairs into the yard.

  Alice watches quietly. The kids, as André called them, close to or over six feet tall each and ranging between fourteen and eighteen years old, pile out of the car and stand still, peering through the living room windows.

  André’s youngest boy, Urbain, laughs when he sees the mess inside. “Wow! When you guys do a job, you really do the job!”

  His brother, Pierre, comes up from the other side of the house. “Holy hell, Dad. What happened?”

  “It was a little more far gone than we thought,” says André.

  “Mon oncle Maurice, you okay?” asks Léo, the eldest.

  Maurice waves his hand, as though brushing away a fly. “Just a scratch,” he says.

  “Lucky it hit your head, eh?” laughs Léo.

  “Yep, hit the second hardest part of me that’s for sure.” Maurice’s voice tries to hide the throb in his head and the pain in his ankle. He feels all of his sixty-eight years, plus a hundred more.

  “Hello, hello, les boys!” Alice arrives with a tray laden with cups, a pitcher of coffee, gingersnaps, and the Five Star bottle filled with mead. “What a nice surprise! Can you stay a while? I just made this little coffee party and here you all are.”

  “Ma tante Alice, did you do all this?” asks Léo. He takes the tray from his aunt and sets it down on an end table. The others circle him and pour coffee and mead into the mismatched cups.

  “Don’t be silly. We moved the furniture out here because your dad thought it would be easier to fix the roof that way. Then, I saw your mon oncle Maurice go in there and,” she turns to the house, her voice drops, “I saw someone dancing on the roof,” she finishes.

  The young boys elbow each other and smile into their cups. Alice’s gaze stays on the house and the copse of trees behind.

  André however scowls, embarrassed at his sister’s declaration. They think she is a retard! I can see it in their faces. “All right you ninnies,” he says, “drink your coffee and let’s get to work. There’s been enough horseplay around here for one day.”

  Alice turns to him, her blue eyes searching his own. “You believe me, André. You know I saw someone dancing on the roof; you saw. You too, Maurice. Oh non, not you, because you were inside. You were knocked down off the ladder and landed with a suitcase on your head. Someone knocked you off the ladder.” She pats Maurice on the arm. “I will be right back. Urbain, viens. I need your help.”

  Maurice struggles to say something to his sister, but she is already walking away, arm in arm with Urbain, towards the house. He wants to assure her, reassure her, help or at least comfort her somehow. She is becoming anxious and that is never a good sign. He looks to André. His mouth opens once then closes in frustration. He fumbles in his pocket for his kerchief and blows his nose. With the handkerchief he wipes a tear from his eye. Damn dust and all.

  There is a pressure on his heart, like a hand is squeezing it. Damnit! Am I having a heart attack? He feels the hand squeeze again. It is a small brown hand, another sister’s hand, his little Bella. Then her face before him, clear as a bell, as if no time has passed. He blows his nose again, long and loud, trying to expel the pressure somehow. He tucks the kerchief into his back pocket and walks painfully towards the house and the suitcase that slammed into him from more than fifty years ago.

  What sang you here will bring you back.

  — letters from Autant

  AUTANT, 1952

  Wednesday

  ALICE GARANCE WAS THIRTEEN YEARS. In her bloomed the desire to shed childish ways, to take on the mannerisms of a woman. So instead of pinching her younger sister, Juliette, awake like she used to, Alice slipped from the bed they shared and quietly knelt at her side. She rocked back, keeping one eye closed, lips already mouthing the words. She pulled her rosary from the hand-me-down leather suitcase she kept under the bed. If she could say a hundred prayers today without speaking another word aloud, any wish would come true. She would pray to the Virgin Marie for a slice of her suffering patience, a woman’s flimsy shield against evil.

  It was something her grandfather had taught her and usually this only worked on Good Friday, but Alice had been trying to win the attention of Adrien Trefflé for almost eight months now. Adrien had been hired to help build a new outbuilding, a shed for tools.

  Yesterday, as Alice hoed the garden, he had given her a lock made of wood, a simple yet intricate puzzle of carpentry. “You could put it on your jewellery box. To keep your jewels safe,” he said.

  He stepped toward her then, his hand reaching without guile to touch her gold cross pendant. They had moved closer, close enough to kiss. But he had backed away again when Papa rounded the corner of the house. Edgar Garance was intrigued with the warded lock and marvelled at the craftsmanship. />
  “How’d you get in there? This is a tiny thing, not more than what? Six inches by five inches?

  “I borrowed Pépère’s scroll tools to start and finished the rest with a knife. It’s pretty small but it works.”

  “Is this pine? That can’t be easy to cut . . . ”

  Together they walked away, talking about smoothing shackles, key inserts, wax, and how to cut proper notches on dowels.

  She had touched him six times already. Twice on their way into church, just the back of his coat but still, that counted. Once on the arm at Toupin’s store, right at the counter with Madame Toupin looking and everything; and once between the stacks of material and the cheese wheel; also at the store when he bumped into her, his arms laden with groceries. He’d said, “Excuse me, désolé,” and had smiled. That counted for almost two touches really, the bumping into and the smile.

  And once, once they sat next to each other just outside the Post Office and she had touched his leg. This was thanks to his mémère squishing them together as she squeezed herself onto the small bench. Then, of all the rotten luck, Mémère badgered him to go check on his pépère Baptist’s progress at the garage. Alice had definitely felt his thigh lift from hers. He turned to her, grinned, touched the brim of his cap and said, “Goodbye, Alice. Be right back, Mémère.”

  Madame Trefflé had practically pushed Alice off the seat at that point, settling her fat self more completely, as if she meant to take root on that bench. But who could begrudge a visiting grandmother her place on the bench?

  So, six touches and he had given her that lovely little wooden lock the other day. Alice checked her suitcase. Yes, there it was, safe and sound. She felt around the satin lining again and pulled out a small hand mirror. She brought the mirror closer to her face, letting the sun highlight her profile, first one side then the other. Her skin was clear and pale. Eyes grey-blue. Hair, long, honey coloured and shiny, thanks to the vinegar rinses and cold water. Her mouth was thin-lipped, rosy — could it be pouty?