“I’ve already started interviewing her,” he says. “And I’ve got your notes, the first draft of your memoir. She also showed me her scrapbook.”
“That scrapbook.” Maggie sighs. “It’s hard to go through.”
“She’s documented everything in there.”
“I know. And her drawings. I’ve never gotten over them.”
“I’ve had a few sleepless nights since I started,” he admits. “But I think the timing is right for this.”
“I have no doubt you’ll find a publisher.”
“If she can’t get justice in the courts, I can at least help her get some with this book.”
“I hope those nuns are still alive to read it,” Maggie says, handing him the manuscript. “Your cheeks are flaming red, James. You have to be more careful in the sun.”
“Steph seems to be floundering. What’s she going to do with her life? Live here with you forever?”
“Tell me about it,” Maggie says, getting up and going to the fridge. “I made lasagna. Where’s Sarah? Didn’t she come with you?”
“No.”
Maggie turns around, gives him a concerned motherly look. “How is she?”
“Good.”
Her eyes narrow.
“What?”
“It’s strange to watch your children living your life.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sarah. She’s your Roland.”
“Oh, please,” he says dismissively. Roland was his mother’s first husband. A decent guy, a banker. Not the love of her life.
“Listen, a lot of people marry their Roland or their Sarah and they’re perfectly happy,” she says, preheating the oven. “It’s not a bad thing to marry someone reliable and solid. Lust wears off anyway.”
“You weren’t happy with reliable and solid.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“I saw Véronique last night,” he confesses.
“You did? Where?”
“She showed up outside my office at two o’clock in the morning.”
“How did she know you’d be there?”
“Sarah must have told her, I guess. But Sarah didn’t mention it. I don’t know.”
“What did she want?”
“She wouldn’t say. She looked . . . kind of out of her mind. Not herself. She was agitated.”
“Drugs?”
“Maybe.”
He’d considered this, of course. She was selling them, last he heard. How big of a leap is it to become a user?
“Why don’t you call her?” Maggie says. “She’s made the first move.”
“I didn’t get a sense she was happy to see me last night. It was like I’d caught her off guard or something. Maybe she was just out in Old Montreal and it was a coincidence.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I don’t know. She looked so distraught. Maybe I should stay away.”
“Your father came back for me.”
“But I’m the one who hurt her, M’ma. She’s never going to forgive me for what I did.”
“I thought the same thing about your father,” Maggie reminds him. “But he forgave me for doing far worse than you’ve done. I gave away his daughter.”
Later, he goes out onto the front porch to check in with Sarah. She doesn’t answer. His spirits are low. It’s muggy tonight, and he’s got a headache from too much sun. The mosquitoes are out in full force and he slaps one dead on his forearm, leaving a smudge of blood. He’s still thinking about Véronique.
He calls Elodie. “Véronique came to see me last night,” he blurts.
“What do you mean she came to see you? Where?”
“At work,” he says. “I was there till about two in the morning. When I got outside, she was standing in front of my building.”
He’s almost positive he can hear a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. “Elo? I need her number. She obviously wants to talk.”
“James, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Please, sis. I need to speak to her. We ended so badly.”
“She doesn’t want to speak to you, James.”
“How do you know? She came to see me.”
“Because she’s here.”
James paces up and down the length of the porch. “What did she say? She told you she doesn’t want to see me?”
“She didn’t mention you.”
“Then why was she at my office last night?”
“Leave it alone,” Elodie says.
“How did she know I’d be working late? Did she speak to Sarah? Elo, is she okay?”
“I don’t know if she’s okay,” Elodie says, sounding upset. “I don’t think so.”
“Is it Louis?”
“She’s not herself. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Is it drugs?”
“You need to forget last night,” Elodie says, dropping her voice to a whisper. “For your own good. She’s in a bad place and it’s not about you and you can’t fix it.”
“I was moving on,” he says. “But when I saw her last night . . .”
“She shouldn’t have been there.”
“Why are you being so cryptic? I want to come over. I can be there in an hour and a half.”
“That’s a mistake,” Elodie tells him. “She’s still with Louis. They’re together. You’re reading too much into last night and you shouldn’t.”
Before he can answer, Maggie sticks her head outside and says, “Supper’s on the table.”
James is bone-tired. He grunts a brusque goodbye to Elodie and hangs up.
“Who was that?” Maggie asks him. “Did you call Véronique?”
“No,” he says, not elaborating.
He follows his mother inside, the screen door slapping shut behind him. He can smell the lasagna from the kitchen, and he remembers how famished he is.
Maggie scoops a massive helping onto his plate. Stephanie pours them each a glass of milk. Gabriel used to love a glass of milk with spaghetti and lasagna; now it’s tradition. Only Elodie thinks it’s disgusting. “Oh, M’ma,” he moans, inhaling a forkful before she’s even sitting down. “This is delicious.”
“Does Sarah cook?”
“Not like this. No one cooks like you.”
She tousles his hair and bends down to kiss the top of his head. “My boy,” she murmurs, her lips against his hair.
“What about me?” Stephanie says.
Maggie goes around the table and kisses Stephanie on her damp hair. “I see you every day,” she teases. “I’d like to see you a bit less.”
They laugh, and James feels a little better. The melodrama of moments ago begins to recede.
I’m better without V.
It’s the first glimmer of lucidity he’s had since last night. He has no idea why she showed up outside his work. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. There is something fundamentally broken between them, irreparable. He knows that. He doesn’t want to go backwards, doesn’t want to join her in that bad place. His heart just hasn’t quite gotten there yet.
“Leave it alone,” Elodie said, echoing his own inner wisdom. He’s lost his way before, but his pragmatism always leads him home.
“Pass me the bread,” Stephanie says, and James rips off a piece of baguette and tosses it across the table.
“Should we open a bottle of wine?” Maggie says.
“Have we ever said no?”
Maggie jumps up and goes to the pantry.
“One glass and I’m going to pass out,” Stephanie says. “I got so much sun today. Look at me.”
Her chest and arms are an angry purplish red. Her face is puffy. She’s definitely worse off than James, whose complexion is more olive and tends to burn less.
“That’s going to blister tomorrow,” Maggie says, retrieving a bottle of Chianti. “You have to be more careful in the sun these days.”
James and Stephanie look at each other. Maggie sets three glasses on the table and pours the wine. James can ha
rdly wait to crawl into his old bed tonight. Between the sun and the wine, he’s going to sleep hard.
Maggie holds up her glass in a toast. “To my children,” she says, flushed and ebullient. “And to your book, James. It’s going to be big.”
As the warm wine slides down his throat, James feels suddenly expansive. A surge of energy, a tingle of inspiration. Maggie’s validation has reinvigorated him; he can’t wait to get back to writing.
40
Véronique hears Elodie hang up the phone in the kitchen, but several minutes pass before she returns to the living room. She waits with a terrible feeling of dread. When Elodie finally emerges, her eyes are red and swollen.
“That was James, wasn’t it?” Véronique says, knowing it by the expression on Elodie’s face.
Elodie sits down beside her. “Were you going to bomb the Canadian News Agency?” she asks her.
Véronique lowers her eyes.
“Oh, Véronique. You could have hurt James.”
And it’s those words, spoken so plainly and without acrimony by her closest friend, that finally shatter her trance of disassociation. She breaks down. Elodie takes her in her arms, giving her permission to let go. Something primal begins to move through her body, a force that is dark and ferocious, excruciating. She cries. Forgetting herself, she lets it out, this beast that has fed on her pain for so long. Elodie holds onto her, rocking gently.
“I didn’t know he’d be there,” Véronique sobs. “What if I’d killed him?”
“You didn’t.” Elodie says. “That’s not who you are. You haven’t been yourself for a long time.”
“What if it is? What if it is who I am?”
“No,” Elodie states, earnest and unequivocal. “I know you.”
Véronique looks up, searching Elodie’s face. “I don’t deserve your kindness,” she says. “I almost killed your brother.”
“You deserve it the most,” Elodie tells her. “You’re hurting.”
“Did you tell James?”
“No. And I won’t. He doesn’t need to know.”
“I’m sorry, Elo.”
“I know you are.”
“I should go.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know,” she says, pulling away. “I don’t blame you if you don’t want anything to do with me anymore.”
“I love you like a daughter,” Elodie says. “I just need some time.”
“I understand.”
“And you need help.”
“Help,” Véronique repeats, a little dazed.
Louis is thumping around the apartment when she walks in. “Where have you been?” he wants to know. His ashtray is overflowing. The place smells rancid. How has she never noticed before?
“Were you with him?” he asks her.
“With James?” She laughs out loud. “Yeah, I almost blew the shit out of him and then we spent the night together.”
“I didn’t know what to think. We had a plan and then you vanished. I’ve been calling you all night.”
“I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“I never said you had to do it in the first place! You’re the one who wanted to do it. It was your idea!”
“I know. And now I’m done.”
“I agree, it was too close,” he says. “From now on, you can just write the communiqués.”
“I don’t want to do any of it anymore.”
Louis sighs. “Don’t lose your nerve now,” he says. “We’re making a difference.”
“Are we? How?”
“We have their attention.”
How stupid he sounds. How deluded.
“How about a mosque or a synagogue next?” he says, and she realizes that somewhere along the way, it stopped being about the cause for him. He doesn’t represent the real French anymore, doesn’t care about the working-class struggle. He’s a self-hating, marginalized misfit. Louis will keep doing what he’s doing until he gets caught. Eventually, he’s going to kill someone and wind up in jail, and she wants no part of it.
“We’ve lost our way,” she says, deflated.
Louis laughs at her. “Who have you been speaking to? Your orphan friend?”
“I’m done.”
“What about the Brigade?”
“You don’t give a shit about the Brigade,” she says. “You’re not doing any of this for Quebec, or for independence.”
“Of course I am. Why the hell else would I be doing it?”
“Hatred.”
“Sure, that’s part of it. I hate the English. I hate the rich. That’s what motivates me. You hate them, too, or have you forgotten?”
“You don’t know me.”
“I think I do.”
“Then I don’t know you.”
“Sure you do,” he says. “I’m exactly like your father.”
She packs her things in garbage bags—again—and calls her father to pick her up. Leaving Louis is one of the easiest decisions she’s ever made.
“I liked Louis,” her father says, stuffing the last garbage bag in his trunk.
Véronique doesn’t respond. They drive most of the way home in silence. As they turn the corner onto their street, Véronique says, “I hate your legacy.”
“Heh?”
“I don’t want to relive your life anymore.”
“No one asked you to,” Léo says. “You’ve made your own choices.”
“Not really. It’s always overshadowed my life. I can’t escape it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Being the daughter of Léo Fortin. The infamous FLQ murderer.”
“You can thank your ex-boyfriend for dredging it up again,” he says. “Don’t blame me for that.”
“That’s not the point. The point is what you did. You killed someone.”
“What I did,” he says, pulling up in front of their house. “I did for you.”
“Stop saying that. It’s bullshit! You did it because you’re a criminal, plain and simple. The cause was just an excuse.”
Léo stops the car in front of the house and faces her, his neck red and splotched, his eyes black. “I did what I did so you would have a better life.”
“But I didn’t have a better life!”
“You should never be afraid to fight for what you believe in,” he says. “This is how the world changes, Véronique. It’s how slavery was abolished. It’s how the Nazis were stopped.”
“You can’t compare our situation in Quebec to slavery or Nazi Germany, for Christ’s sake!”
“You weren’t alive in the forties and fifties. You have no idea what it was like. Things changed because guys like me fought.”
“We weren’t at war,” she says. “Pierre Laporte was not at war with you. He never signed up for combat. He was just playing football outside his house.”
“You don’t get it,” Léo mutters. “Which proves you have had a better life.”
Véronique gets out, dragging two garbage bags from the back seat. “Violence isn’t the way,” she says. “The FLQ is not the reason things improved in Quebec. Things improved because of the Quiet Revolution, the PQ, Bill 101 . . . Not because you blew up mailboxes and kidnapped a politician.”
Léo dumps her garbage bags on the sidewalk and slams the trunk. “You don’t know that,” he says, leaving her stuff there and heading to the house.
“I know it cost me my father for the first twelve years of my life!” she screams after him.
She hauls the bags inside by herself.
“What the hell is this?” Lisette wants to know, standing in the vestibule, staring at all the bags.
“I’m moving back home for a while.”
“Why? What happened with Louis?”
“I left.”
“Why? I thought you were so good together.”
She finds her father at the CD player, already with a can of beer and a cigarette. He’s got a Deep Purple CD in his hand, about to put it on.
“Do you feel any remorse?�
�� she asks him, coming between him and the stereo. “Are you sorry for killing him? I’ve always wanted to know.”
“I’m sorry a man had to die, but—”
“He didn’t have to die, though.”
“I only ever wanted you to grow up in a world where you were in charge of your own destiny.”
“Stop laying his murder at my feet,” she cries, still blocking his access to the CD player. “I never wanted that burden. I was a baby, completely innocent. You justified killing a man in my name, which you had no right to do, and your reputation has hovered over me ever since.”
“Stop being so dramatic, Véronique.”
“You took a man’s life. He was a father, like you. A husband, a son. You did the most monstrous thing a human can do.”
“It was heroic!”
Véronique wants to slap him, scream, smash something to shake him up. She understands James’s frustration now. The stakes were never high enough in Quebec to justify murder. Why could she never admit that to herself? Why can’t her father, even now, after twenty-seven years?
“I’m as passionate about Quebec’s independence as you are,” she says, hands on her hips. “But I have a line.”
“There can’t be a line!”
“That’s the lie you tell yourself,” she says. “I believed it my whole life. I wanted to believe it, but it’s just a big lie. It’s the myth of Léo Fortin. You know what I think? I think it’s possible to fight for change but not lose yourself in violence and anger and hatred. That’s who I want to be.”
“Good luck, Gandhi,” he says, and heads for the kitchen, forgetting about the CD. She goes after him, waits behind him while he gets another beer.
“I don’t know how you’ve lived with yourself all these years,” she says, relieved to finally unleash the truth. She’s never had the guts to question or confront him before; she’s been far too invested in protecting his story, propelling his myth. They all have. “How do you live with yourself, Daddy? I need to know.”
“Leave me alone, Véro.”
She’s got him cornered now. “Tell me!”
“It wasn’t me!” he blurts, throwing the Deep Purple CD across the room in a rage. It hits the wall above the table, leaving a small dent. The case smashes on the floor and the disc slides out. “I wasn’t there when they killed Laporte, okay? Now you know the goddamn truth.”
The Forgotten Daughter Page 34