James absently changes the channel over to a French station for a different take. “The No side winning such a narrow victory has caused a great deal of tension in this province,” a French commentator is saying. “There is a lot of bitterness today.”
James tries Véronique’s cell phone again, more to keep busy than out of any real hope she’ll answer. She doesn’t. Just as he’s about to try her parents again, the front door opens, keys jangling from the vestibule. He jumps up and rushes to greet her in the foyer. “Where have you been?” he says. “I’ve been calling you all night!”
She looks disheveled, tired.
“Were you with Louis?” he asks her.
“Let me inside, James.”
“Did you spend the night at his place? Did you sleep with him to punish me?”
“I was in jail!” she screams.
“Jail? Were you in the riot?”
“Yes.”
“V—”
“Just leave me alone.”
“What happened? Are you okay? Why didn’t you call me to come bail you out?”
“I called my dad.”
“I would have come.”
“I couldn’t face you,” she says, heading for the kitchen. She goes to the fridge, pulls out the pitcher of filtered water, and drinks straight from the pitcher.
“Tell me what happened.”
“I was arrested.”
“And?”
“I’m exhausted. I just want to shower and go to bed. I don’t want to get into this now.”
“Get into this?” he says, annoyed. “I’ve been up all night waiting for you. Do you know how worried I was? And you don’t want to talk about it?”
“It was a terrible night,” she says. “I was angry and I got caught up in the riot and I was arrested. Oh, and we lost the referendum.”
“I know how much you’re hurting—”
“No, you don’t!” she cries. “You won. You always win!”
“Don’t lump me in with whomever it is you’re blaming,” he says. “I’m as French as you are.”
“You’re nothing like me,” she says. “You voted No. You work for an English corporation. You’re the reason we lost. You’re the reason Quebec will never be independent.”
“Baby, I’m not the enemy.’”
She shakes her head. “‘They have French names, Quebec roots, Quebec diplomas, Quebec parents . . . but they have disavowed us. They work for Masters who scorn us. This fear they have that we will be on our own in here—’”
“All right, V, enough with the nationalist poetry. It’s just politics.”
She looks at him. Through him. Her face is hard.
“Look,” he says, “it was so close. Things are going to change now for the better. Quebec has sent a very clear message to the rest of the country.”
“Nothing will change,” she says. “We didn’t want to just send a message.”
He attempts to pull her into his arms, but she pushes him away.
“I know you’re upset, but it’s just a goddamn referendum. It wasn’t the first and it won’t be the last.”
“To you it was just a referendum.”
“We have a good life together, V. Certainly not the life of poverty and hardship you’ve been commiserating about for the last few months. You’re young, you’re going back to school, we’re getting married. You have a lifetime ahead of you to achieve whatever it is you want, including Quebec independence.”
“My parents don’t.”
“No, they don’t. But they’ll move on. They did before.”
She slides past him to go upstairs. He follows her.
“Louis keeps asking me how we manage to make our relationship work when we both want different things.”
“I’m sure he does,” James flares. “Maybe you should be with him. Is that what you want?”
“This isn’t about Louis,” she says, reaching the second floor, her back still to him.
“Isn’t it?” he says. “Isn’t that what you’re really trying to tell me? That you and I don’t belong together because I’m not a separatist?”
“I don’t know.”
“My father grew up poor!” James reminds her. “He was a farmer and a factory worker. You and I are not so different. Stop beating that drum.”
“And your mother inherited a successful business from her English father and that’s what lifted you all out of poverty. Don’t you see that? Don’t you get it?”
She goes into their bedroom and collapses on the bed. He stands in the doorway, fuming. “I’m not going to beg you to stay,” he tells her. “It’s not my fault you lost. I don’t represent all of the No voters in the province. I’m just one vote. Your side lost the referendum. So what? It would have been an epic disaster if the Yes side had won anyway.”
She sits up. “I’m going to shower.”
“You’re pissed off at me because I want to keep Canada in one piece,” he says. “I can’t keep apologizing for that, V. If you want to be with someone like Louis and make your daddy proud, maybe you should go.”
He turns to leave the room.
“Where are you going?” she calls after him. “To get drunk and shoot pool by yourself?”
He stops in the doorway.
“It’s nine o’clock in the morning,” she says.
He turns back to face her. “Don’t you see how crazy you’re being?”
“I’m upset!”
“I know you’re upset,” he says, lowering his voice. “I get it, but I can’t keep being your punching bag.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“Either we’re solid, or our relationship is contingent on . . . what? Me becoming a separatist?”
“I just wish we were on the same side.”
“I am on your side,” he says, approaching the bed. “I’m the one who’s always on your side. Always. You’re talking like a victim, V, and you’re better than that. You’re better than Louis, better than the choices your father made.”
He waits for her to blow up again, but she doesn’t. She’s staring at the floor. Poor thing. Her jeans are torn; there are dark circles under her eyes. He hadn’t even noticed. “Are you okay?” he asks her. “Were you hurt last night?”
“Can we not talk about it right now? Will you just shower with me?”
He hesitates a moment. A difficult offer to refuse, but he can’t let it be this easy for her.
“Please?” she says, looking up at him with her big eyes.
He nods, goes over to the bed.
“I have to go to court,” she says.
“Tell me what happened.”
“I smashed a car with a brick.”
“That’s pretty badass.”
“I’m going to have a record.”
“What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t,” she says. “I was so angry.”
“Was Louis arrested with you?”
“No. I lost him in the crowd before the cops showed up.”
“He doesn’t know you spent the night in jail?”
“No.”
James feels some satisfaction knowing she didn’t call Louis. He holds his hands out to her. She lets him pull her to her feet, and they go into the bathroom together. He takes off her clothes. There are dark purple bruises on her arms, probably where the cops grabbed her. He doesn’t ask about them. He just kisses them.
She guides his head to her breasts and shivers when his tongue finds them. At the same time she’s unzipping his jeans and their clothes fall to the floor. He turns her around and bends her forward over the tub. They don’t even make it into the shower. The sex is a little rough, a little angry. They’re both still smarting, for their own reasons. The tension between them isn’t fully resolved. It makes for good sex, but James knows they’re not finished with this conversation. Maybe they never will be.
31
NOVEMBER 1995
Elodie pulls up in front of the house on Terrace Groulx. There’s a large OUI
sign on the front lawn, Christmas lights strewn around the railing. It’s just after four in the afternoon, but the sky is already dusky violet and quickly darkening. Outside, she pulls her hood over her head and looks up at the house. She has no idea what she’s going to do if he’s there. One minute she was home, rereading parts of Bruno’s memoir. Next thing she knew, she was on the Champlain Bridge headed for the Townships.
Standing at the foot of Dr. Duceppe’s front walk now, she can hardly remember what she thought might come of such a confrontation. She approaches the house. She can see there’s a light on inside through the curtains of the picture window. She closes her eyes and presses her finger to the doorbell. Let him not be home. Let him not be home. Her heart is pounding. She can hear muffled voices inside. A woman. Let him not be home.
The door opens. She freezes.
“Can I help you?” he says, without warmth. It’s him.
Forty years later, she is standing in front of the man who blithely sentenced her to life in hell. He must be in his seventies now, but the essence of him is unchanged; he’s still intimidating, with an edge of brusqueness in his tone and cold eyes. His hair is white, with the same Clark Gable moustache trimmed exactly as it was back then, in two perfectly symmetrical spear tips with a clean-shaven Cupid’s bow. He’s wearing bifocals and his teeth have yellowed, but otherwise, he looks remarkably the same.
He’s watching her, obviously not recognizing her. Time stands still. She’s five years old again, trying to find her voice. “My—my name is Elodie.”
He nods impatiently, waiting for more. Her name means nothing to him. She means nothing to him.
“Elodie . . . de Ste. Sulpice,” she stammers.
Recognition slowly lights his eyes. She senses his discomfort. He seems to shrink back from her. “Do I know you?”
“Elodie de Ste. Sulpice,” she says, with more confidence. “I was an orphan at Ste. Sulpice in 1955.”
He shakes his head, dismissing her. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”
“This is my file,” she says, shoving it at him. “You were the one who diagnosed me mentally retarded.” She opens the file and points to his signature at the bottom of the page. “That’s your name, right there.”
“I saw so many children,” he mutters. “It’s late—”
“I just want a few minutes of your time,” she says. “I just want to ask you some questions. Please? I just need answers.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, attempting to close the door.
She holds up her hand. “Please? Isn’t it the very least you can do? Just talk to me for a few minutes? Help me to understand.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Let her in, Guillaume.”
A woman’s voice, behind him. Dr. Duceppe turns, startled.
“Let her in,” Mme. Duceppe repeats.
He hesitates a moment and then holds open the door with an audible sigh. Elodie steps inside the vestibule. The house is already decorated for Christmas—a tree twinkling from the corner of the living room, a garland hanging from the fireplace. The wife collects fancy dolls, which are displayed all over the place—creepy little girls wearing fur stoles and hand muffs. There’s a round table beside the couch, on which a Nativity scene is spread out over a fur-trimmed emerald green velvet tablecloth. A musical snow globe of Santa and Mrs. Claus is playing “Deck the Halls.” Elodie doesn’t know where to look.
“Would you like a cup of coffee? Some sucre-à-crème?”
Dr. Duceppe shoots his wife an irritated look.
“No thank you,” Elodie says.
“Can I take your coat?”
“No.”
“Sit, please,” Mme. Duceppe says.
Elodie removes a needlepoint cushion of a reindeer from one of the press-back chairs facing the couch and sits down. Not knowing what to do with the cushion, she places it on her lap, resting her hands on the reindeer’s face.
“Guillaume, do you want coffee?” his wife asks him.
He shakes his head and she bustles off, but not before giving Elodie an unmistakable look of sympathy.
“I’m not sure how I can help,” Dr. Duceppe says, taking a seat on the couch. “It was a very long time ago.”
“Why did you do it?” Elodie asks him, holding up her file. “Why did you sign this?”
Dr. Duceppe is silent.
“I wasn’t mentally deficient in any way,” she says. “I didn’t know what a wallet was. Or keys. How could I? I’d never seen any before. I was only five! And from that you determined I belonged in an insane asylum?”
“It was much more complicated than that.”
“How could it be?” Elodie says, her file shaking in her hands. “I was a normal little girl. You ruined my life—”
“No,” he interrupts. “Duplessis ruined your life. You have to understand, our hands were tied. Duplessis gave the order. The nuns told us what to do. If it hadn’t been me signing your assessment, it would have been another doctor. You were going to wind up in an institution no matter what. There was nowhere else for all of you to go.”
She can feel tears coming, but she wills them back.
“The orphanages were terribly overcrowded,” he explains. “They were filled well beyond capacity. There simply weren’t enough of them to house all the illegitimate children in the province, let alone enough money. There was nowhere for all of you to go but to the hospitals. I told myself you would all be better off there than on the street. That’s what it came down to.”
“You knew the nuns and the provincial government would get more money for mental patients than for orphans,” she says, unbuttoning her coat. The room is hot; her face feels flushed. “You knew and you just went along.”
“Of course,” he admits. “We all knew. Everyone knew. But what could we do? The order came directly from Premier Duplessis. Quebec was basically a theocracy back then. The church ran just about every institution in the province, and in return, Duplessis helped the church impose its traditions on every aspect of Quebec society. It was quid pro quo, and it was impenetrable. Those of us in the College of Physicians—we were just puppets. We did what we were told. We asked no questions.”
“You turned a blind eye,” Elodie accuses. “You had an obligation to uphold the standards of all the psychiatrists in the province. Your obligation was to protect us!”
“My sin was following orders and staying silent, yes. But what choice did I have back then? I couldn’t disobey the most powerful man in the province. Or the church, for that matter. To whom should I have reported what was happening? Duplessis himself? The police, who were also under his thumb? My priest? There was nowhere to turn with my doubts.”
“You had to know where you were sending us.”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I never knew about the mistreatment in the hospitals.”
“That can’t be true,” she says. “If you’d ever set foot on any of those wards—which of course you must have done hundreds of times—you would have seen with your own eyes.”
“Mam’selle Sulpice,” he says, “we had no choice but to transfer all those children to mental hospitals. As a practical reality, there was no alternative. Not only were the orphanages overcrowded, but the hospitals were understaffed and in desperate need of labor.”
“Cheap labor. Which we provided.”
“Yes. In those days the nuns believed they had the right to judge and punish illegitimate children for the sins of their parents. It was the morality of the times. Given your circumstances, you were considered fortunate to be housed and cared for anywhere.”
“Cared for?” Elodie cries, standing up. “We would have been better off in the street!”
“Well. As for what went on behind the walls of those hospitals,” he says, “we knew implicitly not to infringe on any practices or decisions made by hospital management. That was the church’s domain, certainly not within the purview of the doctors.”
“It’s always the same excuse. The doctors bl
ame the church, the church blames the doctors—”
“I only did what the nuns told me to do.”
“Most of the children you misdiagnosed are illiterate, uneducated, and living on welfare now. I did okay for myself. I found my family. But my friend Francine has brain damage from all the drugs she was given. She can’t work. And my best friend from Ste. Sulpice is dead. She overdosed in her twenties.”
Elodie pauses long enough to notice Mme. Duceppe standing in the doorway, looking horrified. Elodie takes a breath and sits back down, this time on the reindeer cushion.
Dr. Duceppe lowers his head.
“Do you remember me at all?” Elodie asks him.
He shakes his head, still looking at the floor. “Truthfully,” he says, “I don’t remember doing any proper exams at all. Not really. It was more like paperwork, bureaucracy.”
“Do you even feel guilty about what you did?”
“I don’t like to think about it,” he says. “At the time, back in the fifties, I thought I was doing the right thing by trying to keep a roof over your heads. But when you all started showing up outside my house, picketing and protesting . . .” He returns his gaze to the floor. “I’ve questioned my actions many times.”
“Questioned?”
“Yes, questioned whether I could have done something different. Something more noble.” He looks up at her again. “And the answer is no. There was nothing else I could have done. Not then. But to answer your question, do I feel remorse now? Yes, I do. I’m a good Catholic. I’d have to be a monster not to feel terrible about what happened to you all, or not to feel guilty about my hand in your suffering.”
“You knew we weren’t at all mentally deficient when you diagnosed us, didn’t you?”
“I do remember the smaller orphanages like Ste. Sulpice,” he admits. “I did think the children seemed normal and well-adjusted, in some cases quite bright. Happy, even.”
“I was happy,” she says. “Until the day you came.”
The Forgotten Daughter Page 26