by John Brooke
Jane paused.
Bruce was uncertain. “Hello? Jane?”
“Uh, Bruce, I don’t think I like the sound of this.”
“Well Jane, you have to see her. Her body is perfect, believe me, and we have this support group that’s dedicated to — ”
Jane broke in right there. “Thank you for your call.” The line went dead. Bruce was off the air.
Turning his radio back up… A woman was extolling the people who ran the Sock and Sweater Exchange at her church. Bruce wished he could say the same for the people who ran the Montreal Stock Exchange: Dead City. After her, another woman said her husband who got up at five in the morning to coach hockey was a true hero. Bruce thought, Right on! The next caller told Jane how, snow or hail, his paper boy was never late. And Bruce thought that was a good choice too.
Bruce had a paper route once. A boy’s first real responsibility. Getting up and getting out there is good for the character. He had tried to get his son James to apply for one, but James insisted that all the paper routes had been taken by men with trucks and Denise backed him up and so James was still living on his allowance. Well, it looked like James was wrong; there were still paper boys out there. Bruce felt vindicated in that pinched way only a divorced parent can. As for Denise, Bruce sensed she was paying the price for being so desperate to score a point in the cold war for their children’s love. That was the impression she gave whenever they talked now — how hard it was trying to raise a teenaged boy like James. True, it was Bruce who paid…and paid and paid; it was part of their settlement, but James lived the life of Riley over there in Lower Westmount and Bruce sensed Denise was starting to see that there were no winners. Not that James could ever live with Bruce and Gen. Too late. A million mistakes too late. And Gen’s house was only big enough for two.
Suddenly Bruce heard his friend Didier saying bonjour to Jane. Then Didier told her, “Me, I play music. Was teaching some guitar over on St. Hubert Street, but my boss, he couldn’t make it. Now it’s one of those dollar stores and now me, I deliver the flyers. It’s not too funny, you know?”
Jane agreed, “It’s tough out there.”
“But,” said Didier, “I feel I am made more stronger by this group — chez Max and Favio? I mean, it put me back together when I see this woman. She help me to get going for one more day.”
Jane said, “I’m not sure I’m following you, Didier. Which woman?”
“B’en, the woman Bruce told...Par la fenêtre!...Qui s’habille les matins?”
Jane was tentative as she translated. “Qui s’habille...Who gets dressed in the mornings?”
“C’est ça!”
It was true. You stood there in Favio and Maxim’s shop, directly across the street from her window, silent…you had your own deep sense of her. But Didier, he would see her and start to hum. He said they were melodies he hoped to turn into songs. The woman who got dressed in the morning inspired Didier to sing.
But Jane told him, “This show is not a joke, sir.”
Didier protested. “I don’t make a joke! I play music!”
Jane didn’t buy it. “Thank you for your call.” She apologized to her listeners and said that some people should get a life. Then she heard about a dentist who brought copies of old magazines to a retirement home in Côte St. Luc.
Bruce thought, That’s nice, but what’s so heroic about it? It’s the least he could do.
Jane said, “It’s the little things that count… Now we have Vic in north-end Montreal. Hello?”
“Mmm,” grunted Vic by way of greeting Jane. Bruce smiled. Who else in the world but Vic?
“Hello? Go ahead, sir.”
“I wan’ tell you this woman make my concombre grow fat.” Vic grunted again. Bruce could tell Vic was laughing in that furtive madman way of his. And Bruce could see Vic’s milky eyes narrowing, glancing around, playful and malevolent, like when Vic made faces across the fence.
“I don’t want to know,” stated Jane, getting cross. She did not thank Vic for his call.
Bruce wanted to call Jane back and tell her Vic didn’t mean it like that. Not exactly. Vic really did have fat cucumbers in his garden, and if he believed the woman who got dressed in the morning was the cause of it, well, that was the whole point right there: Belief. Bruce loved Jane as much as anyone, but today he was thinking she could be a tad more curious about some things.
Vic was their local isolé. Retired. Used to work road construction. Now Vic sat on his porch and drank wine, or walked around picking things up off the street. Or made faces at people. Bruce’s daughter Charlotte had been over for lunch one Sunday and they were sitting out back. Vic was drinking and watching them with those evil eyes. Then Vic made a face at Charlotte. It was the same one he often made at Bruce: a long finger extending from his nose, baring his teeth and curling his tongue, like he was a donkey or something. It was crude, yes, but it was his porch, he was allowed to; you ignored him. Charlotte couldn’t. Charlotte was in psychology at Concordia and she started analyzing Vic. Bruce was on his second beer and it seemed kind of funny. So Charlotte got mad and started analyzing him. Denise called the next day…she almost never called anymore unless James was really getting to her. But Denise had called and said, “Where is it exactly that you live, for God’s sake?” With that spite. As if the north end were on another (very low-grade) planet.
It had made Bruce realize that he and Denise had truly gone their separate ways.
There was no doubt Vic had a screw loose. But he had found his lonely way to the group and he was accepted — no questions asked. If he ever acted up, Favio booted him out. Fav wouldn’t stand for the crude side of Vic’s strange mind. That’s not what the group was about and most days Vic could understand this. Bruce wished Jane could try to understand it too.
Right now, he felt Jane was sounding a bit too much like Denise.
Two calls about heroic boyfriends later, Pacci made it through to Jane. “Hello?” Pacci, bless him, was one of those who never seemed to trust the phone and so was compelled to yell into it. “I am Pacci, here. Is to tell you, this woman is good people!”
“Sir,” warned Jane, “I’m serious about this. I — ”
“Is Pacci. You call me Pacci... When I first come in Montreal from Italia — ninedeen fifdy, my dream is to have a life like seins of this woman. Big! full!”
Bruce thought, Go for it, Pacci! Tell her, man!
Jane said, “You should be ashamed of yourself. What would your wife say about this?”
Pacci shouted back, “Ah! My wife she make a saucisse and me put in this woman’s poste to tell thang’gew for the group. This woman, she is good for us here in quartier! Ciao!”
“Thank you for your call,” sighed Jane. “Moving on here… Hello? This is Antoine?”
“Yes. Hello.”
“You have someone to tell us about?”
“First I would like to say I appreciate your show. During the Referendum you helped everyone a lot by letting them speak.”
“Thank you, Antoine.”
“But I also want to say that you are being unfair and sexist in reverse not to let your previous callers speak about this woman.”
“Oh, lord.”
Bruce…and surely everyone in Montreal who loved her, could feel Jane’s heart was heavy.
But Antoine was twenty-five and very intense. He went to school in the morning then spent four nights a week and his Saturdays in a factory moving boxes. Antoine had to be intense. Bruce liked to hope his son James might have that same kind of drive some day, but —
“Listen to me,” said Antoine, in a way that made Jane back off. “When my father died and my mother and sister and I left Lebanon, there were shells the shape of breasts flying past the bow of the boat that was taking us to the camp in Cypress. I was past praying by then — I sat there and watched them. Now we are here. I work, I save, I go to school to study building. It is my dream to go back to Lebanon and rebuild my father’s house. With life the way
it is, it is hard to hold onto this dream. Each morning this woman stands there in the sun and I am hopeful. She is a hero.”
“The shape of breasts?”
“I was only eleven when we got out.”
“I see... Thank you for your call, Antoine.” Jane hung up. She moved immediately on: “Hello? Something a little more real, I hope. Alvin?”
“Alvie…just Alvie. But I want to ask you, Jane, what could be more real than a naked woman?”
“Sir, the sexologue is down the dial. I thank you for your call, but I’m going to move on — ”
“What sexologue?” demanded Alvie. “What are you trying to say to me here? Eh? Look, Jane, I did my bit and made some money, and I have a little extra time now, so I like to drive across town to Fav and Max’s first thing in the morning. Best barbers in Montreal, take my word on it. But more important is this woman across the street.”
“So it seems,” said Jane.
“I tell you, Jane, my wife, my three kids, they got their shrinks, their support groups, they sit at the dinner table and talk about finding their inner child till my ears hurt. Bunch of complainers, so self-centred, all of them. As God is my witness I love them, but that’s what they are. Then I stand there with those boys in that shop in the morning. Jane, it brings me back to earth.”
“Boys is definitely the word, Alvie.”
“Jane, Jane, Jane…What’s the matter with your soul today?”
“What kind of ques — ”
“She’s a hero, Jane, no question. And you know why?”
“Why?”
“She reminds me of my wife,” said Alvie.
“Don’t tell me — her breasts.”
When Jane got snide it could shake you. The confidence factor. Bruce recognized it all too well; it had gotten like that with Denise. Why didn’t women know this? Or maybe they did.
But Alvie was a veteran who’d made a fortune in retail and he rolled right through it. “Breasts, schmests! Jane, it’s how she stands there in the sunlight. I can’t really describe it, but my wife used to look just like that. Not physically. Something spiritual. What made me get out of bed all those years and get to work and make some money. I sure as hell didn’t do it so she could lay down eighty bucks an hour to tell some Freud wannabe about our sex life. It’s not like I don’t try at these things… A man’s mind, it has to feel right. Hopeful! You know what I’m saying here, Jane?”
Jane was slow in responding. Her heavy heart was shifting. “Yes, I think I do, Alvie…I think.”
“Jane, the woman in the window’s as real as it gets and that’s all I have to say.”
“Thank you for your call.” 1
Some days, after she was gone from her window, you’d get to talking; but Alvie had never once mentioned this last thing at the group. Bruce was touched. He could relate. Denise was everything, then she started getting unhappy. Bruce was never unfaithful. It was never that. But their marriage had just stopped. Denise said he was worrying too much about things that had nothing to do with love. Politics. Weather. The way they never fixed the roads. The damn markets. She said Bruce was too distracted. One night when it was snowing: point zero. He could still see her lying there an inch away and so alone.
Alvie was right. The woman in her window reminded you of the good thing. The central thing.
For Bruce, it was Gen now. Charlotte and James and his mom and dad, and his brother in Calgary too, of course… But it was Gen.
“Hello, Radio Noon. This is Stephanos?”
“Stephanos Morphonious, but you call me Steve like on my sign. I have a small hot dog-frites place on St. Hubert Street.”
“OK, Steve, and who is your unsung hero?”
“Your callers have not mentioned the fact that the woman who gets dressed in the morning is very blonde and straight like a statue. This is important.”
Actually, Bruce had seen at least two other colours. She had appeared with amazing forest green hair once, for day or two. Then again, it could have been Bruce’s eyes. Sometimes they saw what they wanted to see, he had to admit.
Jane said, “She sounds like a real dream girl, Steve.”
“No dream girl!” Steve insisted. “You mock me, I hang up… A goddess! Probably Aphrodite. There is the periwinkle that grows on her wall in spring, falling from her window almost to the street. The blue flowers go with her golden hair. Maybe not with her nipples — but a goddess is not perfect and your listeners should remember that. It is the contradictions that bring you to your knees.”
Well sure, thought Bruce, a goddess. A woman bears your child, you have to think she’s a goddess. How else could you think? And a girl-child! Charlotte had a frown when she arrived that day, and he has to say it’s lasted. Charlotte told him she’s working on her issues and most of them have to do with himself and Denise… Then you’d move in close, right up to her eyes. Denise’s eyes and Charlotte’s eyes: Goddess eyes repeated twice. Then she would stop her pouting and grin right at him. Reach out with her little hand…
“ Because,” said Steve in response to Jane’s question, “the life is plat...uh... How do you say this in English?”
“Dull?”
“Thank you. The life is dull making a hot dog and frites all the day long, some days is like a prison. People have a Coke, a coffee, it never changes. This woman appears, the bird of youth it flies across the sky. I come from a village on an island where the sea is blue and clear. It reminds me of myself each morning, of who I really am, and I can continue on with the hot dog-frites. Thank you.”
“Yes,” said Jane. Then there was dead air for a moment. 2
Your heart skipped a beat when Jane paused. For an hour you lived inside her voice. But Steve Morphonious spoke in tones far darker than a radio, so where did that leave her? You could never really know. No one knew much at all about Jane. They had heard she was tall. Divorced. Had a kid…she talked about her kid some days. He was in grade one now.
Then Jane returned. “We’ll just continue on here, to Léonard. Hello, Radio Noon.”
“Oui...madame?”
“Go ahead, you’re on the air.
“It is Léonard Kaloomba calling, I have come here from Zaire. I have brought my wife and child with me. I am an elder in my church. But I have also brought a carving from my father’s house. This carving is of a woman. She came to my father from his father and so on and so on for many generations. Do you understand me?”
Léonard’s English was always impeccably precise, and always light, like singing.
Jane said, “Your name is Léonard, you are from Zaire, and you have a fetish.” It sounded so flat compared to Léonard, as if she were hypnotized, staring straight at her microphone — her own fetish, suspended there. Although you never saw her, there were moments when Jane verged on the visual.
“Yes! That is it exactly!” Then Léonard laughed and it was like a fountain spilling through the radio, an uncanny expression of unfettered delight washing over Montreal. Bruce had seen Maxim doing Léonard’s hair: Descartes’ logic versus Eternity’s curls. Léonard always laughed at his haircut and Max was learning to deal with this, but Favio wouldn’t go near him. And some days he would laugh in the morning — when she appeared in her window. Fav and Max didn’t like it when he did, they didn’t want the wrong idea in their shop; but Léonard never laughed like Vic might laugh. Léonard Kaloomba was the farthest thing from salacious. He was so religious he thought it was a sin to dance. Bruce knew that if Léonard laughed it was because he was happy. His laughter was clear. Like the woman in the window. You saw her, you heard Léonard, and you felt this.
But Jane didn’t get it. Léonard’s laughing. She asked, “Was it something I said?”
“Oh ho! Madame Jane, no, no, no! You see, nothing works in Zaire…nothing! This is politics and bureaucracy and the effects of colonialism and dictatorship and some evil men who took away my father’s coffee export firm. And here in Montreal we struggle because we are the last ones in line and maybe
not the right colour. So you see, everything is a test of faith. My carving, she is bleached as white as the lady in the window. She tests our faith in the things of this present world. The faith of the father is carried on. Do you see? Do you understand me?”
“I suppose,” allowed Jane.
“Here in Montreal she has come to life! It is the hips,” said Léonard, blithe and joyful for Jane, and for anyone who heard; “the hips of the mother! It is as though she has bathed in milk!”
“That’s very poetic, Léonard. Thank you for your call.”
“Do not thank me, madame. You must thank the lady. I am happy to bring this to you today.”
“Well, Léonard, so am I. I mean…well, I mean I really am. Thank you.”
“You are welcome, Jane. Bonjour.”
Jane was vulnerable because she had to speak. The woman who got dressed in the morning never batted an eye. Geneviéve was like that sometimes: not cold…no, not cold; it was something one step removed. It was exactly what Bruce needed to be seduced. To take his life and set it free on the other side of its own boundaries. As Jane listened to someone sing the praises of her faithful dog, Bruce was thinking of Gen and their small yard in August. Flowers…Gen’s tan…and he was thinking Léonard was onto something. The woman in the window was a test, yes, but a conduit too, a bridge to the present tense. A bridge in a context of morning sun. It’s there, you cross, you keep going. You keep heading for the thing you need.
Then there was a man on the line who sounded like a hard-liner, who was trying to say they were stupid, that they were less than men. “Jane, these are some very pathetic men who are calling you today…” Jane let him say his piece. 3
He went on for a precious minute, then she asked, “Did you have an unsung hero, sir?”
“Not really,” said the hardline man. “I wanted to register my disgust. I — ”
