Suzanne

by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette

  ‘What a lovely big girl you are.’

  Gradually, Mousse’s hand lets go of yours. You let her slip through your fingers. You lose her.

  Mousse moves decisively toward François, now awake, surrounded by cooing babies.

  Mousse sits down beside him. She chooses sides. A little warrior.

  You scan her territory one last time. Her proud little body, her narrow shoulders, her stubborn eyes that riddle you with bullets of love. The territory that is hers. That you tear yourself away from. Arid, no goodbyes.

  You turn your back on Mousse. You turn your back on François. You rush out, Marcel on your heels.

  He is crying. He tells you gruffly to stop. That you should both go back. Yes, you should go back and get them.

  The wind has picked up. The cornfield bows.

  You wait for the bus. Unburdened. Empty. Alone in the gusting wind.

  Where is everyone? The sudden breakup of the group was a huge blow.

  I’m like a rudderless ship.

  You have changed a lot too, Mr. Borduas, changed a great deal. Obviously it’s because of the hopes you had and lost. On the rare occasions when I see you, the atmosphere feels strained.

  Now I find myself like you. Alone. Suzanne is gone. We left the children where they will be taken care of.

  I left Mousse with a heavy heart. I love her.

  Afterward, I was so disoriented that I didn’t know what I was doing. It all happened so fast. I couldn’t support my little family. I lost it.

  I still think Suzanne is magnificent, and I love her enough to understand her deep-seated impulses.

  I suspect she confided in you, and that with your usual generosity you gave her impeccable guidance. I admit my own cowardice on this point, and I am prepared to suffer the consequences. For four years, I thought only of myself and not much of her.

  I believe Suzanne is headed toward her deepest desires and that her desires are her most profound duties.

  I am leaving the city alone to look for work. I still have to pay for my children’s upkeep.

  I leave with my heart full, with my wife’s and children’s smiles in it. And I hope that my little family will be happily reunited soon.

  Goodbye. Thank you for being there. I take with me the memory of a very good friend.

  Letter from Marcel Barbeau to Borduas, 1952

  1952–1956

  You have returned to Montreal and you are drawing. You are giving charcoal classes to amateurs, in a gloomy little room that is still a breath of fresh air.

  You don’t know anything about charcoal, but you invent yourself as a master of the instrument.

  Everyone watches you, eager for your gestures, which guide them more than your words, which you are parsimonious with.

  Marcelle has given you the key to her place, where you sleep on the sofa, amidst three cats with bad breath.

  In the evening she talks to you about nothing in particular, punctuating it all with laughter. She makes tomato sauce; she drinks shoplifted wine.

  The wine and her levity quench your thirst.

  You write while she paints, passing a plate of spaghetti back and forth between you.

  You don’t settle into the moment. You clutch at it and you consume it.

  You know Marcel is doing odd jobs. That he spends hours on the road between Montreal and Val d’Or, passing through Rouyn, to string together hours of cabinetmaking and manual work. He sends the money to the daycare.

  And yet you receive a phone call. The children can’t stay there. They don’t want custody of them anymore. You have to go get them. You can’t. You’re not ready. Marcelle helps you look for someone to go pick them up, while you find money and the space. But it’s mainly courage that you’re lacking.

  You call Pauline, Marcel’s older sister. She lives with Janine, the youngest of the Barbeau family. They are twenty-four and twenty-seven. They inspire confidence.

  Pauline agrees to go get Mousse. But she doesn’t have room for François. You insist: he doesn’t take up much space. He’s small. Just raising the subject of your son, just considering his fate, lets a splinter of maternal feeling break though. That, just that, burns you alive.

  You hang up. You hang on. You choose yourself.

  One is tall, thin, and blond; the other is shorter, solid, and a redhead. They walk in step.

  Their words overlap. Together they create long sentences of lace.

  They go into the daycare and introduce themselves: they are the Barbeau sisters. They have come to get Mousse. Mousse, who cries all the time. Mousse, who shuts herself away in closets with her little brother. Mousse, who is afraid of the boogeyman.

  They find her at a table, concentrating on a drawing of an umbrella, around which she is sketching a downpour.

  Her suitcase is ready, set at her side. Pauline is gentle. She takes the child by the hand. Janine is gentle too, and takes her by the other hand.

  Mousse would like to grab her brother, but she has no hands free. François so small and already so alone. Stuffed in his pocket is the drawing of a blue umbrella, cleaving the pouring rain.

  You are sitting with your little sister Claire, the nun. When you’re with her you feel the echoes of your childhood nights. The damp nights when you opened the window to straddle its frame. Claire was your leverage, offering her frail shoulders as a ladder.

  You would describe to her how the river was running, the neighbours’ comings and goings, and when an English person went by, you would spit on them. So Claire would blush on your behalf, while you would burst out laughing.

  Today it feels like you can see a bit of your shame on her face again. You offload your shame on her, and she carries it like a coat of arms.

  You cannot stand her sad, sad eyes.

  You repeat curtly that it’s temporary.

  You’re sick of justifying yourself. You don’t owe her anything. Not just yet.

  You endure. You need her. You need to find someone for François. A home, temporary parents.

  Claire doesn’t speak. She seems to doubt you will survive.

  You desert again. You will bleed to death from cutting ties like this.

  You meet her eyes. She left too. To each her own means of flight.

  Claire tells you she knows someone. He comes to the hospital regularly, collecting the dead. He is an undertaker. He and his wife want to adopt a child.

  Your body moves from the depths to the surface. You find a wisp of voice to tell her it’s perfect.

  ‘Call them.’

  A few days later, one-and-a-half-year-old François leaves the daycare in a long black car.

  You exhibit your poetry. Shocking.

  It stands comfortably alongside the Automatist works presented.

  Journalists remark on Suzanne Barbeau’s bold words that day. That is your name. Divorce is illegal in Quebec. Only men can apply for it with evidence of adultery.

  Borduas approaches you from the back of the room. Something strong and intangible binds you. Broken threads. A sad connection that has gotten under your skin.

  He tells you he is leaving for the United States. The evening goes on. All you want is an alcove so you can lose yourself one last time in this man’s fragile body. To come together for a moment in the terrifying freedom of those who remain alone.

  Mousse is four years old today.

  You meet Pauline at the foot of the mountain. She is holding Mousse’s hand. They still don’t look alike, and that reassures you.

  Mousse approaches you confidently. She is planted on the ground. She has a hard time disguising her joy at seeing you. She is bursting with it. You clear the path through it.

  She says hello and calls you Mommy.

  The two of you set off along Chemin Olmstead. Her small hand rests in yours as if it had never left it.

  The green leaves have replaced the bursting buds, which yellow and collect on the ground like a carpet rolled out for the occasion.

  You take shortcuts. You are
proud to show them to her.

  You have jujubes in your pocket. You sit down to share them.

  Her cheeks are pink, and she looks like spring.

  You tell her that she will come back to live with you. At the same time, you tell yourself the same thing.

  Night is falling when you take Mousse back to her aunts. You want her to live with you. You want to watch her fall asleep. To read beside her as she dozes, her breathing slow. You want to breathe her breath in the morning. You still want to be her mother.

  You knock at the door, but before they open it, Mousse takes a key out of her pocket and invites you into her house.

  Yves Montand is singing full blast in the kitchen.

  You walk along the orange carpet in a small hallway filled with the strong smell of warm sugar.

  You walk by the tiny pink bedroom where a single large mattress accommodates three bodies. Your daughter must sleep well, nestled between two young women in their pyjamas, the smell of cottage pudding tangled in their hair.

  In the kitchen, one of the sisters is at the stove. The other is at the table doing a crossword puzzle.

  You are in a proper home. They invite you to stay. But feeling suddenly fragile, you offer your regrets. You have to go.

  Mousse follows you to the door. You turn back and say goodbye to her like an adult.

  ‘Goodbye.’

  You close the door behind you. You won’t be back.

  That evening, you call Marcel. You want the children put up for adoption. To make that happen, he has to relinquish his parental rights.

  He goes to the courthouse the next day and legally renounces his paternity.

  Then he leaves for New York, destroyed.

  Marcelle has a lover. He is tall, blue eyed and from distant lands. He likes good restaurants and the physical sciences.

  He is working on a translation of Refus Global.

  He is American, born in Chicago. But he has a distinct English accent, having grown up in the U.K.

  He is ethereal. His feet touch the ground, but the rest seems to be part of the ambient air, blowing in the wind. Up where everything is possible and nothing seems serious.

  You latch on to him.

  You run off together.

  In the classified ads of La Presse, you find a job ad, and you apply.

  Postal worker. On the Gaspé Peninsula.

  A few weeks later, you receive a job offer.

  You and Peter fill a bag with a few books and clothes, and take the train to the Gaspé.

  To wide-open spaces. Away from the noise. Away from your children, whose memory causes you pain.

  You don’t talk about it. Just hearing their names makes your stomach churn.

  The train speeds along. You breathe a bit easier with the movement. You haven’t changed; you are still like the horizon streaming by. You take Peter’s hand. It is foreign to you. And that feels good. You feel like you could settle into it, precisely because it is unfamiliar. It speaks to you of the present. Just the present, no history, no past or future, somewhere you can stop thinking.

  Peter never asks you anything about your past.

  He has eyes you don’t lose yourself in. Eyes that are pure surface, smooth, worry-free. That you can skim without diving in.

  He smells of wet wool, of drying rain.

  He has no roots, moving from encounter to encounter, a stray man.

  He is curious about you. Likes watching you move and sleep. Likes the surfaces of your body. Is moved by its peculiarities. Enjoys exploring them with his soft fingers, his hot tongue.

  He likes making you feel good. He becomes your hideaway. You are going into exile.

  You get off the train in the Gaspé as husband and wife, strangers in a place where everyone knows each other.

  A fisherman is waiting for you.

  His name is Barnabas. He is the only Hungarian man in the Gaspé. He has a house to rent, right behind his.

  You meet his wife Marta, the only Hungarian woman in the Gaspé. She is coming out of the smoker, where an astonishing amount of cod is drying, sliced in filets.

  They don’t speak English or French. But he knows how to fish and she knows how to smoke. They made this country their own.

  The smell of salted fish permeates the walls of your wooden refuge, perched on the cliff.

  You see the expanse of ocean in front of you, arrogant. It is so powerful, so proud. You close the curtains. You give yourself time to settle in.

  The next morning, you put on your postal worker’s uniform. You carry the weight of mundane correspondence on your shoulders. You enjoy learning the route, divining the contents of envelopes, becoming part of the place. Your steps take you to places where people need you. Some wait for you in the window, others in front of their house.

  You feel like a conduit, and it heals you for a while.

  In the evening, you go home to Peter in your house from another time. Flowered wallpaper and pastel watercolours cover the narrow walls. Peter’s books are strewn everywhere, in reassuring disorder.

  You eat cod. Every day. There are no vegetables or eggs here.

  One day at the general store you order meat. They take out a huge red block from the freezer, which they cut with a chainsaw.

  Peter cooks the meat with potatoes. It reminds him of England.

  Barnabas invites you out on his boat. The open sea grabs you by the collar. You like the feeling. The wind feeds on you. Takes away your burdens for a moment. Erased.

  You bring home pounds of cod, which you hang from the beams of the smokehouse with Marta. Her gestures are both coarse and feminine. She speaks to you in Hungarian, even though you can’t understand her. She is carnal and energetic; her booming laugh descends on you, and sometimes you laugh too.

  She is dressed in layers of faded, floral fabric, which jubilantly covers her extra few pounds.

  You are dressed in black, head to toe. You’ve cut your hair short.

  You have shrunk in this vast space.

  And yet, people’s eyes follow you here. Nibble at you. You have never been so visible.

  Men want you, and they let you know it.

  You personally hand the mail to the ones who do.

  Official letters from Yale University take you to the edge of the cliff, to a patched-up little trailer.

  You meet Jean, a small, energetic man with sunken cheeks and a compact body.

  An agoraphobic doctoral student in theology, he is in exile and keeps the Yale Divinity School library going from here, with a view of the sea.

  His trailer is as small as he is; you can’t stand up in it. So you spend a few afternoons lying down with him. Salt seeps from his pores, and his hard body takes you firmly.

  You leave him at sundown, the smell of sex and low tide so thick you can taste it.

  Winter comes. Suddenly, with no prelude.

  A storm thrashes against the walls of your house, which shakes. It will hold. It has seen others.

  You huddle up against Peter. Your man-boat with whom you run aground. Who knows everything, but who asks nothing. Who harvests you anew every morning. Who rediscovers you each time.

  Peter, whose smile is hung from the corner of his eyes and can’t be dislodged. And who tells you about the elegance of the universe, the mysteries of anti-matter and the ultraviolet catastrophe as he sips his tea.

  Peter lets you gently lose yourself in him. He knows that it is the only place you let go.

  Through the winter, your bag filled with letters, you walk your route, your head into the wind, once, then again. You walk looking down at your feet, starting to miss the ocean you have grown accustomed to. It is hidden behind the blizzard, and the whole landscape disappears along with it.

  You want soup and the movies.

  So you hand in your resignation, and Peter packs his books in his bag.

  You leave, something you know how to do so well.

  The train takes you back to Montreal.

  It’s been only
a year, but you feel like it has been more. Going back to the city upsets you. You don’t like things to be permanent; it gives you vertigo. You are afraid of putting down roots again. You tell Peter you’re leaving again. He says he will follow you.

  You sail for Brussels, the only city in Europe that Peter has never been to.

  The crossing is long and cold. You stay huddled against him. It’s your first big trip.

  You rent an empty room on the top floor of a building that’s seen better days. You put a mattress in it. It becomes your home.

  Someone is selling bags of coal in the basement. You feed a little stove that warms you and that you cook on.

  You boil eggs, which you eat naked under the sheets, bathed in the acrid smell of burning coal.

  You wander through the damp winter, polish the neighbourhood bars with your elbows, spend nights listening to music while smoking rolled cigarettes. You love Peter, his haughty manner, his air of great wealth despite being penniless, his levity, his keen, complex ideas. But you don’t need him. And you constantly remind yourself of it.

  One afternoon, you decide you want a nice dinner. You will sit in a window, cross your legs under the table. You will wear stockings and heels. Just for the occasion.

  You will study the menu for a long time. Imagine the colour of the food. The texture. The smell. How it will feel on your tongue.

  You may even go into the kitchen to watch how each plate is prepared before choosing the one you want.

  You decide that tonight you will be a queen.

  You go home and invite Peter out to eat. You can’t afford such an extravagance, but Peter doesn’t ask questions and that fuels your desire for him.