The Forgotten Daughter

by Joanna Goodman

  “Would it?”

  “Hell yes. My back problems are so bad I won’t be able to work soon. Then what?”

  Maggie looks away.

  “I’m angry,” she says. “But maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe the anger has to come up so I can get stronger. And I do feel stronger.”

  “I guess it’s my job to bear the brunt of it,” Maggie says, resigned.

  Elodie can’t tell if she’s mad or merely stating a fact. “I don’t want to be angry with you,” Elodie tells her. “You’re the one I love the most. I want it to be how it used to be between us as much as you do, before the Duplessis orphans. But right now, this is where I am.”

  Maggie reaches for Elodie’s hand and holds it across the table. Neither of them has touched their supper. “What can I do?”

  “Let me be.”

  Maggie doesn’t say anything. She releases Elodie’s hand, and the effort seems to leak out of her like air. She just sits there smoking, staring out at nothing. After a while, she says, “What did you come here to tell me?” Suddenly remembering there was some reason for the visit.

  “They’re tearing down St. Nazarius Hospital next spring.”

  “Thank God,” Maggie says, brightening. “I hope that old bitch Sister Ignatia goes down with it.”

  “I want to go and see it before it’s demolished.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “I need to go,” Elodie says. “And I want you to come with me.”

  “Because you need my support or because you want me to see how bad it is?”

  The answer is both, but Elodie doesn’t answer the question.

  35

  JANUARY 1997

  “Put these on,” Louis says, handing her a pair of rubber gloves. “Don’t handle anything without them.”

  She takes the gloves and puts them on.

  “We don’t want to leave any fingerprints.”

  She fills the wine bottle halfway to the top with a mixture of gasoline and motor oil. Louis says adding motor oil will make the fire burn bigger and longer. “Leave some empty space at the top,” he says. “That way it’ll fill with gas fumes and be even more explosive.”

  He’s learned a lot since his first botched attempt to firebomb the coffee shop in Westmount. For that one, he used a beer bottle and turpentine with no motor oil. There was no impact whatsoever; it didn’t even crack the glass. Véronique finishes pouring and shows Louis.

  “That’s good,” he says. “Now the fuse.”

  She works diligently, intensely focused. There was a brief moment in time, under the influence of James, when she thought she might try a more conventional life—school, a regular job, marriage. All the things that bring social acceptance. But people don’t change. She didn’t. James couldn’t.

  Her relationship with Louis turned sexual a few weeks after she moved in with him. She started out in his spare bedroom, which was just easier than finding a new place or moving back home. One night, Louis made a move. Véronique acquiesced, not with great enthusiasm but with resignation. Why not? They were good friends, he understood her, they were basically on the same page about life. Mostly, it was the easy thing. She doesn’t love him. A lot of the time, she doesn’t even like him, but they have in common their politics, their backgrounds, and their resentments.

  She’s not working, not even smuggling. She hasn’t been able to face Marc or her uncle since she found out Callahan is dead. She’s opted to disappear rather than have to confront the possibility that one of them killed Callahan. She knows her uncle is capable of it. It’s in his DNA. The men in her family kill people, which is a strange and disturbing knowledge to carry around. The last thing she ever wanted was to bear the responsibility for yet another death. She still sees her father’s face in black and white, screaming into the TV camera with wild eyes and hands cuffed behind his back. I did it for my baby girl! So she grows up in a better world than I did!

  She’s been having this recurring nightmare lately. In it, Pierre Laporte, her cousin Pierre, and Callahan are all lined up on their knees, pleading with her for their lives. She’s standing above them, shotgun in hand, emotionless. James is there, too, watching her. The look on his face is pure disgust as he realizes she is a killer, just like the men in her family.

  Louis is also unemployed, currently living off a combination of employment insurance and Véronique’s savings. He was laid off from his job shortly after the referendum and now spends most of his time plotting and writing pamphlets for the French-Language Protection Brigade—an organization he started and of which he and Véronique are the only members. So far, recruitment has been slow. At first he didn’t tell her about his plans for the Perfect Cup chain; didn’t mention it until it was on the news. And then all he said was, “That was me.”

  She turned to him, stunned. “Are you serious?”

  He nodded, grinning. He looked pleased with himself. He told her he’d built the bomb in his brother’s garage.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she cried. “Are you insane?”

  “I’m fed up. It’s time to do something.”

  She stood up from the couch and looked down on him, horrified. “Do you want to wind up in jail?”

  “I don’t really care.”

  “You should talk to my father about that,” she said, her voice rising. “It’s not some great achievement, you know. You won’t be a hero. My father is a nobody, and Quebec still hasn’t won its independence. It was absolute hell for nothing.”

  Louis shrugged. His indifference made her want to smack him, or leave him. She never intended to live her mother’s life—the life of a criminal’s sidekick, the Bonnie to his Clyde. She left Louis’s apartment that day without another word and went home to her parents’ place for a few days.

  Two things happened that changed everything. First, her father lost his job. His company brought in a new CEO from Toronto and swiftly laid off a third of its workers—mostly the older guys. When her father came home that afternoon, she could see the light had gone out of his eyes. Whatever spark he’d had left was now extinguished. He didn’t even have his anger. Véronique stayed a few more days—only because she was still furious with Louis—but eventually she couldn’t stand her parents’ misery any longer. They were both drinking heavily—Léo slumped in front of the TV, Lisette staring at the kitchen wall or locked in her bedroom. Véronique had to get out. She asked Elodie if she could spend a couple of nights with her, and Elodie said yes, of course, she was genuinely happy to have her.

  On her first night at Elodie’s, they went for dinner at a greasy spoon called Paul Patates. “This is where I had my very first hot dog and Pepsi,” Elodie said, sitting down on one of the spinning vinyl stools. They both spun themselves around like little kids, giggling as they twirled, and then ordered two steamés with fries and Pepsis. “My roommate Marie-Claude brought me here.”

  Elodie smiled, remembering. “Can you imagine going seventeen years without a Pepsi?” Elodie said, closing her mouth, still self-conscious about where her back teeth had been pulled out by one of the nuns.

  “Are you still in touch with Marie-Claude?”

  “Oh, no. After I had Nancy, she didn’t want anything to do with me.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “I understood why,” Elodie said. “After everything we’d been through as illegitimate children, she couldn’t forgive me for bringing another one of us into the world. I couldn’t really blame her. She was kind enough to let me stay with her until Nancy was born, and then she was there with me at the hospital when I gave birth. She’s the one who gave me the pep talk when I wouldn’t even hold Nancy.”

  “But then she just abandoned you?”

  “I had Nancy, so I didn’t really mind. I didn’t actually like Marie-Claude very much. It was circumstances that brought us together. She helped me a lot and I needed her, and I’ll always be grateful. But I didn’t especially like her.”

  The waitress set t
heir food down on the counter, and when Véronique bit into her hot dog, she closed her eyes and tried to imagine what it would have tasted like for the very first time at seventeen years old, freshly released from the asylum. It must have been exquisite—the soft, warm bun and globs of sweet ketchup oozing out the corners of her mouth. She felt her spirits beginning to lift for the first time in a long time. Seeing the world through Elodie’s eyes never fails to bring her back to life’s simple pleasures—a perfect hot dog, a spinning vinyl stool in a greasy spoon. Elodie has become her beacon of humility.

  “I have to tell you something,” Elodie said, her voice turning solemn.

  “What’s wrong? Is it the lawsuit?” All Véronique could think was, Not something else. Please, not another terrible thing.

  “James has a girlfriend,” Elodie told her. “She’s moved in with him.”

  Véronique hadn’t seen it coming. Certainly, it wasn’t the kind of bad news she was expecting. It was no tragedy, not as bad as an illness or more legal disappointments for Elodie. And yet as soon as Elodie said it, the air went out of the room. She felt a puncture in her chest. Living with a new girlfriend already? She couldn’t keep the shock or disappointment from her face. Elodie could see it at once, and Véronique was embarrassed that he’d already moved on and that she still cared.

  “She’s English,” Elodie said. “She teaches at a private girls’ school.”

  Véronique wanted to ask if the girlfriend was pretty, if she was intelligent. Most of all, was James really in love with her? But she didn’t ask. She pretended not to be too bothered about it. Elodie offered no other information about her, not even a name. “You okay?” Elodie asked. “You’re with Louis now.”

  Véronique nodded, but her living with Louis was not the same thing. She’s not in love with Louis; it’s just a matter of convenience, laziness. For James to have met someone and asked her to move in with him, he must be in love. “Do you like her?” Véronique finally asked.

  “Not as much as I like you.”

  A few days later, when Véronique finally returned to Louis’s apartment, something was different about her. She was angrier than before. Knowing that James had moved on with an English woman was the final thing that untethered her from whatever path she had been on that might have led to anything good. She didn’t care anymore. She withdrew from the night course she was taking and began to channel her considerable time, energy, and anger into what has lately become her mission: the French-Language Protection Brigade.

  “We’re going to tie a knot right here for the fuse,” Louis explains. “It has to fit in the opening of the bottle, about an inch from the top.”

  She ties the gauze in a knot and shoves it inside the bottle.

  “It should reach the gasoline,” he says. “Good. Now turn the bottle upside down. The knot should hold.”

  It was her idea for this attack. She wanted to go after a business with ties to Ontario, vengeance for her father being laid off. Screw the rich Toronto Anglos invading her city and expunging the working-class French like exterminators. Screw them all. So she chose a British clothing chain with its head office and flagship store in Toronto. Louis was pleased with the idea. She didn’t have to do any convincing.

  “Now put the duct tape here to make the opening more airtight.” He watches her work. They’re both calm, focused. “Seal it in the garbage bag so it doesn’t smell like gasoline.”

  She looks up at him and he smiles at her. “You’re doing good,” he says. “Your dad would be proud.”

  She isn’t so sure about that. After Louis bombed the Perfect Cup, she told her father what he’d done. She was probably looking for his approval, or trying to cheer him up. He was impressed with Louis, but he said, “Whatever you do, stay the hell out of jail.”

  She remembers visiting her father at the Cowansville Penitentiary when she was about six. He’d just lost his first appeal and was now facing the reality of his life sentence. They were sitting across from him at a table in the visitors’ room. Lisette was crying. “What are we supposed to do now?” she asked him. “It’s a life sentence, Léo!”

  “My lawyer is not giving up,” he said. “It won’t be life, I promise you.”

  “Why did you do it, Léo? Why?”

  “Do what?” Véronique interrupted.

  “The lawyers are going to file another appeal,” Léo said. “They don’t know which one of us actually did it. We still have a chance to get out of this.”

  “Did what?” Véronique repeated.

  Neither of them answered her. Lisette leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “Léo, if you didn’t do it, please, please, I’m begging you, tell your lawyer. It’s not too late. Now’s the time to be loyal to us.” She looked over at Véronique, and then back at him. “Just tell the truth if it wasn’t you, Léo. Please.”

  Léo turned to Véronique without acknowledging his wife’s pleas, and reached for her small hands. “This is the worst place on earth,” he told her. “I’d give anything to come home with you, but I have my principles, Véro. It’s all I have. Hopefully, one day you’ll understand.”

  She still thinks about that day and wonders if there is a line beyond which the stakes are too high and one’s principles must be abandoned. She can’t help feeling like she’s standing at that line, and she’s about to have her answer. To this point, crime has always been a means to an end for her, a practical way to earn a living. But something has always been missing—a higher purpose, a calling. Her father had that. He spoke of his people with tears in his eyes. He was driven by a sense of profound righteousness; a belief so cellular, so primal, he was willing to give up his freedom for it. Now it falls to her to pick up where he left off. It’s no longer enough to whine and complain about wanting an independent Quebec, or to stew in self-pity without backing up that desire with meaningful action. Like her father before her, Véronique now sees clearly that the only meaningful action left to take will have to include violence. She learned from Léo to do whatever is needed to achieve the goal. She’s found all other paths to this point ineffectual.

  Louis carefully tucks both bombs into his backpack and zips it up. “Let’s type something up,” he says. “You want to write the communiqué?”

  She nods wordlessly and goes to retrieve some paper.

  We are fighting for the independence of Quebec. We always will be, until we succeed. When you don’t have a country, you feel like a refugee in your own land. You are an outcast, displaced by intruders who have all the money and power. If we are ever going to become a nation, it must begin with the pure laine French Canadians and the restoration of this province to its Mother Tongue. In the aftermath of the failed referendum—a loss ensured by the greedy English minority and the inept and disconnected politicians—we must revive the revolution by whatever means necessary. It must begin with protecting our precious French language. This was our grandparents’ cause. It was our parents’ cause. Today, it must be our cause so that it need not be our children’s. Our campaign of violence is just beginning . . .

  “Wow,” Louis says. “You’re a hell of a writer.”

  Véronique smiles, feeling strangely exhilarated.

  36

  FEBRUARY 1997

  “James? Can you open the wine for me?” Sarah calls upstairs to him from the kitchen. “My hands are covered in raw chicken!”

  James looks up from his laptop, his shoulders tensing. “Give me a minute!” he responds. He just wants to finish this chapter before her friends show up for the dinner party he did not want her to have. He finally started his book about Elodie’s life—Born in Sin: The True Life Story of a Duplessis Orphan—and he’s eager to keep writing.

  “Babe? I need that wine opened!”

  James slaps the laptop shut and goes downstairs. Sarah’s got her hands inside one of the chicken breasts, stuffing it with what looks like fruit salad. Her cookbook is open to a recipe for roast chicken breast with apple and nutmeg stuffing. His mother wou
ld be horrified. Fruit doesn’t belong in a stuffing, and stuffing has no place after the holidays. He opens the bottle of white wine and hangs there for a moment. “Anything else?”

  “Would you mind adding a generous splash to the gravy? It’s simmering on the stove.”

  “You made the gravy before roasting the chicken?”

  He’s no chef, but he’s watched his mother make gravy many times and knows it’s supposed to be made in the roasting pan from all the juice and fat and scrapings. That’s gravy 101.

  “I always do it this way,” Sarah says. “I use canned chicken broth and then I just dump the pan juices in when the breasts are done. It saves a lot of time and I get way more gravy.”

  James eyes the two empty soup cans with chagrin, thinking this is not how the French make gravy. Canned soup? It’s a goddamn sacrilege.

  “Since you’re down here,” she says, “do you mind peeling the carrots?”

  “I’m working on my book. I’d like to get my chapter done before your friends show up.”

  Sarah purses her lips, the way she does when she’s not getting her way. He’s noticed this is a very effective tactic and soon finds himself scouring the top drawer for the peeler. He finds her hurt silences far more intolerable than the screaming matches he used to have with Véronique. Sarah’s passive-aggressive sulking causes this strange, uncomfortable combination of feelings inside him—guilt and shame and confusion. It’s easier just to please her.

  “I told you Courtney and Will are engaged, right? Tonight is sort of an engagement celebration for them.”

  “You mentioned it.”

  “They’ve been together for three years. It’s a good thing he proposed. She was about to leave him.”

  James looks up from the ribbons of carrot on his cutting board. Three years doesn’t seem like a very long time to be dating. Is this a message for him? They haven’t even been together a year, so he should still be safe. Sarah smothers the bird with vegetable oil and then adds salt and pepper, poultry seasoning, garlic powder. His mother wouldn’t be caught dead using garlic powder. Sarah washes her hands three times with dish soap and shoves the pan into the oven.