by Anne Degrace
“It’s hard to believe such calm could exist after that,” I say.
“This place sees a lot of weather,” John agrees. “It’s too bad about the Washout site.”
We pause at the door. “My ancestors saw the sea give birth to Qikiqtaruk,” Annie says. “We will be there, watching, when the sea takes it back.”
If there’s a note of regret, I can’t discern it. Annie makes tea while Ray and John talk, and I watch through the window as the children play.
ELEVEN
RIVER RISING
·1999·
Brigitte
PLEASE. I NEED to get home to my children. Can you help?
They say I am here for my own good. They say now it is my turn to be looked after. But they don’t understand. I must go — the children are alone.
Oh, I know. You will say what they say over and over. Don’t worry, Brigitte, everything is fine. And they put on me the silly hat and they say: Look! It is a new year coming. A new century. We will have a party, they say. But it is no time for a party.
What is the world coming to? So many changes, I don’t understand them all. And young people who are not family should not call their elders by the first name. Mme Gauthier, they should call me, but non, they say Brigitte this and Brigitte that. My own children would not treat adults with such disrespect.
Sometimes I am forgetting. They tell me I forget. But you must understand: the children are at home, they are alone, they are waiting for their Maman. And they might be afraid!
Oui, there is Lucien, who is dix ans and very good at taking care of his brother and sister, but still, he is only ten years old. And there is Benoit, he is eight and — what is the word? — impulsive. He does things without thinking about them, like the time he pulled out all of the pillows and quilts onto the lawn and then climbed up on the roof thinking they would make such a nice, soft landing, and if Lucien had not seen him —
I was out back, hanging laundry. I had the baby with me, Emilie. She was playing in the empty laundry basket with her little doll MouMou, and Ami, our spaniel, was lying beside her with his head on his paws. And all at once here was Lucien, running around the side of our little house, yelling and waving, pointing up, and I looked but the sun was in my eyes at first, so I couldn’t see. Ami was barking by now, and Emilie started to cry, and I was about to scold Lucien for all the noise when I saw little Ben — mon Dieu, he was only four at that time — on the peak of the lower roof with his arms stretched out like Our Saviour. I told Ami to stay with the baby and I ran — oh, how I ran! — up the two flights of stairs to the attic, and I saw the open window under the eaves and the chair pushed up against it. From there I could see to the roof over the summer kitchen, and it was on this roof that Benoit had edged his way along to stand at its end, ready to dive headlong into all of our bedding, piled on the ground below.
There I was, hitching up my housedress and straddling the roof, inching my way to my baby, coaxing, coaxing. What a sight I must have been! Oh, I can laugh now, but then I’ll tell you my heart was in my throat with fear; I could feel it pounding in my chest like une bête. As I drew closer to the edge I could see Lucien below on the lawn standing beside that pile of bedding with his mouth open. Emilie had stopped crying; I could always trust Ami, and I knew Emilie was safe in the laundry basket with the dog standing guard.
I coaxed Benoit back along the rooftop, while my mind it was scrambling for the promise that would return him safely to my arms. I promised him a trip to town for ice cream, even though we could scarcely afford it. When I reached him he turned and hugged me with his arms and legs and buried his face in my chest and began to cry. He knew that he had done something wrong.
I can’t remember how I got him back along that roof and in the attic window. But of course we did get safely back, because I remember we all had ice cream: Lucien had chocolate, and so did Ben, and I chose strawberry for Emilie, who had never had ice cream, and then, even though I hadn’t planned to, I bought vanilla for myself!
Because it was a celebration, after all, with everyone safe.
Daniel
I SHOULD GET home to the kids. Probably nothing is going to happen, but I should be there. They are my children, after all, and Chantal is my wife. It will be midnight soon, celebrations across the country — and maybe that’s all that will happen. Still . . .
Late as it is, Mémére is still up, talking, sometimes to herself, sometimes to me. I can’t always tell what she says, but I hold her hand, and around the two of us the nurses and care aides come and go. Somebody turned off the big TV awhile back; nobody was watching. Here and there, old people in their chairs have nodded off and most have gone to bed. I wonder what Chantal is doing now.
My dad still talks about the year the Red River flooded, how much snow they had. He was the oldest, and he felt a great sense of responsibility, I know. Mémére has always talked about it, but lately she’s been getting confused, and then the Home calls me, asks me to come and see her. And I know I should try to convince her it’s 1999, and sometimes I do try, and sometimes I just listen to her stories. Sometimes she knows it’s me, sometimes she doesn’t. It’s like a switch on the wall, with a loose wire. When she worries about her children, I try to tell her: It’s okay, Mémére. Everyone is okay.
It is the role of the mother, isn’t it? to be concerned with the safety of the children. It’s what I keep telling myself, these past months with Chantal becoming more and more obsessed. She’s home now with the kids, Marcel and Josslyne. She’s got the generator and the back-up generator primed and ready to go, and if those fail she’s got candles and the propane barbecue and enough food to keep us all for a year.
The other day I came home to find her unloading cases of soap. Soap! “If the world ends, Chantal,” I told her, “at least we’ll die clean!” She gave me that look she’s been giving me more and more — like I’m the enemy, instead of a bunch of digit-challenged computer programmers — and said: “When the grid collapses, all the shipping routes will be compromised. That’s if there isn’t total anarchy. You want me to make soap out of ashes and lye, like the grandmother who you’re so fond of?”
Chantal never really liked my grandmother Brigitte. That’s because Mémére never liked Chantal. She didn’t approve of the way Chantal raised the kids, for one thing. Marcel has always talked back to us, from the time he could say non, and Chantal says it’s good, that he’s learning to assert himself, but when he tried it with Mémére —
Boy, I remember it clear as day, and it must’ve been a few years ago because Marcel is seven, now, and Josslyne’s nine. We were at the dinner table, and Marcel — he must’ve been a toddler, still — was fighting with his sister over something, I don’t know what. Mémére was visiting — she wasn’t in the Home yet. She still lived in St. Vital. For her, it’s still a separate village, with Winnipeg the big city. It’s a big thing for her to come to our house; distances are different for old folks.
At least we are here. The rest of our family is scattered across the country. My aunt and her family live in Rivière-du-Loup and my uncle and his partner are in Toronto. My mother is Anglaise — she’ll correct you and say her ancestors were Irish, but it’s all the same if you’re French — so when Dad retired she talked him into going to B.C. She said it was for the mild winters on the coast, but Dad says you can’t take the Anglophone out of the girl, no matter how fluent she is. As for us, Chantal and I settled here after college, so we’re the closest to Mémére. Before she moved into the Home, before she became confused, she would come over to see the kids. She certainly didn’t come to see Chantal!
Anyway, I was trying to settle the kids down that night, because of Mémére, mainly, and Chantal was going on about letting the kids freely express themselves, and then, whap! A handful of mashed potato goes flying across the table, right across Mémére’s face! Well, okay, my first inst
inct was to laugh, I’ll admit, but I jumped up to help Mémére, who was flapping her hands and trying to clean potato from her glasses. I thought Chantal would look after reprimanding Marcel, but what did Chantal do? She told him: “You must eat your food, mon ange, if you are to grow up to be a strong boy!”— and she wiped off his hand and put the spoon in it!
Mémére got up and left the table, closing the door of the guest room, and she didn’t come out all evening. Chantal and I had words after the kids were in bed, you better believe it, but she didn’t listen, and anyway, the damage was done.
She’s still not listening, not when I tell her this millennium computer-bug thing is overblown, that January 1st, 2000, will be no different from December 31st, 1999, except we’ll all be a little older, and some of us will have hangovers. And when I say we should join the neighbours — there will be a bonfire at the park with games for the kids, a party to bring in the new millennium — she tells me: “This is no time for a party, Daniel. This is about keeping the children safe.”
Brigitte
MORE THAN ANYTHING else, we need to keep our children safe. And you, do you have children? Of course you do, of course. I am forgetting. I have become so forgetful! Josslyne, yes, such a lovely girl; she looks like her father. And Marcel, yes. A rascal, but a good boy underneath. So like his uncle Benoit.
Ice cream was always a rare treat for us. Oh, Henri worked hard, but it was never enough with three children needing so many things. Still, I managed to save a little each month in a jar I kept at the back of the pantry. I thought if I saved enough that we might someday go, as a family, back to Quebec to see my parents, my brothers and sisters.
Foolish.
So: there is Lucien, and Benoit, and Emilie. All born in Winnipeg, so very far away from my home in Rivière-du-Loup. I met Henri there, in the town where I grew up. He was working as a millwright for the Canadian National Railroad. It was his hands I first noticed. I was shopping for my mother at the grocer, and I had dropped my glove. Oh, how I loved those gloves! You should have seen them: pigskin, with tiny white pearl buttons. My father had given them to me for my eighteenth birthday. They were not the sort of gloves a young lady would normally wear to the grocers, but you see my birthday had been just the week before, and I wanted to wear them all the time. Just between us — you won’t tell, will you? — I wore them when I went to sleep that first night, wore them right to bed. I wanted to smell their sweet leather smell, and to feel their softness against my face. I woke with the round buttons pressed into my cheek, three small indents I tried my best to rub away before I came down to breakfast.
I don’t know where those gloves have gone. I think perhaps someone has taken them. Mme Sinclair, down the hall, she is always saying someone took this, took that. She says there are thieves here.
But yes, I was telling you, wasn’t I? About Henri. About his hands. Henri had the largest hands I’d ever seen, and when he picked up my glove from the plank floor of the grocer’s it was almost lost in those long, wide fingers of his. He held it out so gently! He was always a gentle man, my Henri. Soon after we were courting, and then married, and then the CNR offered him work in Winnipeg for twice the pay. I did not want to leave Maman and Papa, but Henri was my husband, and so I went. And then the children, first Lucien . . .
THE CHILDREN! I must get back to the children. Please. They are alone, and the river has been rising for days, now. We are so close to the Red where we live, and there was so much snow last year. Lucien, he is such a good boy, but will he know what to do?
SO MUCH SNOW this past winter! We made paths to the root cellar, to the mailbox, to the outhouse, which we had to use for a few days when the temperature dropped low, before the pipes thawed again. It did not snow, while it was so cold, but the snow that was on the ground squeaked underfoot, like we were stepping on frozen mice, and it was necessary to have a scarf over your mouth and nose or the cold would burn your throat. And then, when the cold snap broke, then came the snow.
The banks on the paths we dug were so steep it was like walking in a white tunnel. And Lucien, after a while he couldn’t throw the snow as high as the banks. Ben would pull Emilie on the small sleigh fast, fast through the tunnels and she would squeal when they came around a corner, Ami running behind and barking, and Lucien angry when the sleigh dislodged snow into his carefully cleared pathway.
Sometimes I think Lucien is too serious, now, since his father has been gone. He feels he needs to be the man of the house. A child should play, should be a child. Should not have such worries.
We had settled in St. Vital, which made me happy because of so many French. Our neighbours, the Bouchers, were very kind to us. Henri worked long hours, and sometimes travelled for the railway, staying away for days. In fact, when Lucien was born — he came early, almost two weeks — Henri was away and if it wasn’t for Mme Boucher, I don’t know what I’d have done. When my waters broke —
OH, MON DIEU, the children! Who is with them? Will they know what to do? The water is rising. It’s been on the news; we must all evacuate. I need to go home —
No, I said. I said no — I will not calm down. You must listen, it is important. I don’t care what is the date, what is the time.
Daniel
WHAT HAVE WE come to? We live in such a world of fear.
All Chantal has been doing these days is talking about the time. She’s been watching the calendar, and now, for sure she’s glued to the clock, like that doomsday clock the anti-nuke freaks had going during the Cold War.
I took a look in the cupboard the other day, and I couldn’t believe it! There were seventy-two cans of tuna. Seventy-two! “It’s good protein,” Chantal said. “And those ships all rely on computers these days. Do you think all those foreign shipping companies will be on the ball? I doubt it. Besides, there’ll be riots in China. I read it on the Internet.”
Which for Chantal, is the gospel truth. Cans of pears and peaches, because “when the grid breaks down, we won’t be getting food from the States, and Canadian farmers won’t be able to meet the demand. They’ll be patrolling their orchards with a shotgun!”
Okay, so I admit I don’t know everything — I mean, I only have a hardware store, I’m no computer expert — but I can’t see it that way. Humans were smart enough to invent computers, right? They should be smart enough to fix them.
Still, it’s good for business. We’ve sold thirty-seven generators since November, and they’re not cheap, those things. I had to put a sign up saying that we’ll only take returns for malfunctions, because otherwise everyone’ll be wanting to return them January 2nd. And candles? Can’t keep ’em in stock. Other stuff, too: flashlights, batteries. Hurricane lamps. Propane, coal oil.
And string. Ha! I suppose we can tie the string to all those empty tin cans and make telephones between our houses for when the lines go down. Been selling barbecues of all kinds, not exactly a big seller in December most years. Usually, it’s snow shovels, but what are they buying? Barbecues. I guess that when the system breaks down and anarchy reigns, there’ll be no city bylaw officer around to tell us to shovel our walks. Maybe we should be thankful for small mercies.
When I told Chantal I wanted to spend New Year’s with Mémére, she let loose with her own flood of words.
“Daniel — you’re going to abandon us? Are you crazy? There might be riots! What if something happens?”
“Nothing will happen, cherie,” I told her. “And Mémére is old, she’s confused. She needs someone to reassure her, especially with New Year’s and everything.” But the truth is, I don’t think I can bear to be with Chantal as the clock ticks down. The kids will be asleep; they’ll be fine. Chantal can call some girlfriend to stay with her, and I told her so. They’re understaffed at the Home, I said, and Mémére might become agitated with everything that’s going on.
“I’m the only family she has here,”
I told Chantal. She gave me a look that could freeze every computer on the planet.
“We’re your family, Daniel.”
I DON’T KNOW why they even bother to celebrate at the Home, since most of the residents don’t know today from yesterday. The TV’s on again, with the sound turned down, and some guy with a party hat is talking. Nobody’s watching.
I felt bad as I walked out into the snow earlier this evening, eight inches since yesterday. There was almost no traffic as I drove through the big, fat flakes across town to the Home. I felt torn, you know, but the kids are asleep anyway, and I can’t spend the evening with Chantal while she counts candles and cans of tuna. I just can’t. And Mémére won’t come to our house anymore.
Outside the snow is still coming down. Nature doesn’t care about calendars, dates, or computer digits. If it wants to snow, it snows. If it wants to rain, it rains. We are not so important, not really. The world keeps turning, and we just turn with it.
Brigitte
THERE WAS TALK, you know, of flooding after all that snow, but nobody expected so much water. If Henri were here, I am sure he’d have been sent to go and work the pumps, to keep the water down. Millrights, machinists, skilled workmen from all over have gone to help. People with no skills fill sandbags. Everyone has to be there, to stop the water. You must help me. Lucien is a smart boy, but sometimes Emilie runs away, she thinks it is a game, and what if she is hiding somewhere when the water comes?
Yes. Yes, Lucien will keep everyone safe until I return home. He is a good boy, so much like his father.
Lucien, when he was born, came in a flood of water, my water. It was there, suddenly, in a pool at my feet on the kitchen floor, my hands dusty with flour. I was making tourtière for Henri. I was so tired in those days, when I was big with the baby. Henri, when he was home, would laugh and hold me from behind and try to make his arms meet in front, over the baby, and of course they wouldn’t. Petite baleine, he called me. Ma petite baleine.
