The Home for Unwanted Girls

by Joanna Goodman

  Last night on CBC it was reported that Duplessis had fallen ill after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. Having never considered that a man as powerful as Duplessis might be vulnerable to such mortal inconveniences as illness or death, Maggie is genuinely shocked. “My God,” she says, overcome with some sense of vindication. She immediately runs downstairs to call her father.

  “The dictator is dead!” he cheers.

  “It feels strange in a way, don’t you think? He’s been in the background of my life for as long as I can remember.”

  “It took a brain hemorrhage to get him out of that office, but by God, Quebec is finally free.”

  “What if the next premier abandons agriculture?”

  “Sweetheart,” her father says, “as this province soars, so, too, will Superior Seeds.”

  He’s in a boisterous mood. Maggie can already picture him at work tomorrow, gloating and puffed up with satisfaction.

  She returns to the bedroom to find Roland tucked under the chenille bedspread, holding his transistor radio on his lap. He carries it around the house with him like a pet.

  Maggie goes directly into the bathroom to brush her teeth. When she’s done, she stares at herself in the mirror for a long time, trying to see herself the way Gabriel must have seen her the other night. Her face is rounder than she’s used to—probably bloating from the last pregnancy. Or maybe cynicism and disappointment are already quietly undermining the beauty for which others have so often praised her. This may be what happened to her mother. Maggie remembers that photograph of Maman in the push lawn mower, how beautiful she was in her twenties. How different she is now.

  Maggie is slightly closer to thirty than twenty. She shuts her eyes against the image of her future self—a clone of her mother with no discernible trace left of her youthful, lovely self except for a single photograph, framed and sitting on a doily in her bedroom, for her future children to ruminate over and stare at in bafflement. She switches off the bathroom light and joins Roland in bed.

  “I still can’t believe it,” he says.

  “This date should be a provincial holiday from now on.”

  “It’s been a long time coming,” Roland agrees, and sets his radio down on the bedside table.

  Maggie snuggles up to him, resting her head on his chest. “What’ll happen now?” she wonders aloud.

  “Only good things, I expect. Let’s hope his replacement can move us forward into the twentieth century.”

  “It’s truly the end of an era.”

  “Your father must be elated,” Roland says.

  “He’ll probably throw a parade.”

  They both laugh, and then Roland leans in to kiss her with all the awkwardness of a teenage boy making his first attempt. She gently pushes him away. “Not yet, okay?”

  He slumps back against his pillow and stares off in the distance, looking hurt. “I thought we were going to start trying,” he says. “The doctor said after the tubal washing we should start immediately.”

  “I’m just not ready, Rol.”

  Roland sighs. “I understand,” he says, softening. “But soon, all right?”

  She kisses his chest and her body relaxes. “Thank you,” she says, relieved.

  The holidays come and go without much fanfare, followed by a long, deep winter hibernation, in which Maggie spends too much of her free time trapped indoors, thinking about Gabriel and their dreamlike encounter in the field last fall. Curled up by the fire day after day, in the same wool sweater and thick ski socks, Maggie loses large chunks of time to her richly imagined fantasies.

  And then one afternoon, shortly after winter has broken, Maggie finds herself in an unfamiliar part of the city. It’s as though she’s been holding her breath all these months and now, suddenly, she can’t hold it for another moment. It’s a new decade—the fifties are over—and she feels restless, brazen from the cabin fever. She needs to breathe.

  Canadair is near the Cartierville Airport in Saint-Laurent. There’s a bus that stops along Sherbrooke Street that will take her straight to Côte-Vertu. She walks purposefully, enjoying the mild March weather and the season’s first strong rays of sun on her face.

  When she was a little girl, Canadair was well-known for manufacturing airplanes during the war. A lot of the farm boys like Gabriel used to travel to the city and work shifts all through the winter. She remembers Gabriel bragging back in the late forties, when Canadair began making F-86 Sabre Jets, as though he himself were the one making them. He used to say that helping to build airplanes for the Royal Canadian Air Force was a privilege, even though he only made forty-three cents an hour and worked seventeen-hour shifts.

  She’s thinking about all of this as the bus comes to a stop at Côte-Vertu and the full magnitude of what she’s about to do presses down on her like the airplanes landing on the Cartierville tarmac.

  Chapter 23

  Maggie traces the blue-and-white fleur-de-lis tattoo on Gabriel’s biceps with the tip of her finger. She imagines that making love with him now, as a woman, will be very different than it was when they were young. Their tender, tentative adolescent lovemaking—as well as the last few years of perfunctory sex with Roland—have taught her very little about sex or even about how to be in her body. Sex with Gabriel now, she fantasizes, will be more mature and free.

  But not yet. This time she’s waiting. Out of respect for Roland and a healthy fear of repeating past mistakes, she’s told Gabriel she won’t sleep with him until they’re sure they want to make a commitment.

  “When did you get this?” she asks him about the tattoo.

  They’re at his friend’s bachelor apartment on Papineau. There are beer bottles and ashtrays everywhere, mice scurrying boldly across the linoleum and gusts of wind rattling the drafty windows. The friend who rents the place is never around. Maggie suspects he keeps it for sleeping with women who are not his wife. Gabriel says it’s nothing like that, but never elaborates.

  “Couple of years ago,” he says. “Do you know what the fleur-de-lis stands for?”

  “It’s on the Quebec flag.”

  “It was the first provincial flag in Canada,” he says. “One of the few good things Duplessis accomplished.”

  “So you had it tattooed on you?”

  “It’s meaningful to me,” he says. “It was from a banner that was carried by Montcalm’s French-Canadian soldiers at the victory of Carillon.” He lights a cigarette and picks up an ashtray from the floor. “You probably can’t understand.”

  After a long silence, she says, “You still haven’t really forgiven me, have you?”

  “Forgiven you for what?” he asks.

  “For ending it the way I did.”

  “We were teenagers.”

  “What if we’d stayed together?”

  “It would never have worked then,” he says dismissively.

  “Maybe this would have been enough,” she murmurs, snuggling closer to him.

  “Meeting secretly in this dump?”

  “Being together.”

  “You’re too much of a romantic.”

  “Am I?” she says. “What is this to you then?”

  “I don’t know. Me trying to have sex with you.”

  She playfully punches his shoulder.

  “And to you?” he asks her.

  “I’m hoping it’s a second chance for us,” she admits.

  He runs his hand along her hair and then lets it drop back to his lap. “We’re both married, Maggie. Is the future really an option for us anymore?”

  “If it isn’t, why are you here with me?”

  “I told you. I want to sleep with you.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  Gabriel sighs, exhaling at the same time. “I honestly don’t know,” he tells her. “But I like being with you. It’s easy. You know me.”

  “Doesn’t your wife?”

  He shrugs. “It’s different. She knows part of me. The man I became when I moved here for good.”

  “An
d who is the Gabriel I know?”

  “The insecure boy who pulled a knife on a couple of thugs,” he says. “The farmer’s son. The kid who fell in love with an English girl who ended up breaking his heart.”

  She reaches out and touches his face.

  “But you made the choice for us, Maggie, and it wasn’t me.”

  She turns her head away, unable to look him in the eyes. It’s on the tip of her tongue to blurt out that it was her parents who made the choice for her, her father. But then she’d have to tell Gabriel about the baby and she’s not ready for that conversation.

  “Anyway,” he says, “it’s the best life for you.”

  “What is?”

  “His life. The one you’re living.”

  “Who? Roland’s?”

  “Your father’s.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “He always had you brainwashed, Maggie.”

  “My mother used to say the same thing.”

  “You couldn’t have it all, I guess,” he says, his tone lighter. “The big house, the banker, your old man’s approval, and me.”

  “That’s mean,” she says, standing up to leave.

  He grabs her arm, pulls her back down on the couch, and straddles her. She can feel his erection and it makes her weak. “Do we have to talk so much?” he asks, his breath warm against her neck. “Let’s just stop talking. It only causes problems.”

  He kisses her on the lips and the hairs on her body stand up. She tickles his back under his flannel shirt, remembering that first time in the cornfield when he was just a boy. The sweat on his tanned skin, the way his ribs stuck out, the cocky way he would strut up and down those stalks. And now here he is with that same lean, strong back and the same erratic temperament that never could manage to conceal his inner struggle between pride and vulnerability, between who he was and who he aspired to be. That’s what he meant when he told her she was the only one who really knew him.

  “Let’s just enjoy this moment together,” he whispers.

  “You mean have sex.”

  “Of course.”

  How can she enjoy their time together when her mind keeps leaping forward, strategizing and fantasizing, greedily wanting all of him? She dreads having to go home to Roland and his crusade to get her pregnant; to all the pretending and politeness, the smiling and fakeness. Gabriel is real; she wants their relationship to be real. She has no interest in embarking on some kind of illicit affair, filled with secrecy and guilt and uncertainty. She can’t stand the thought of him returning home to Annie tonight, sleeping beside her, talking intimately the way couples do. She wonders how often he makes love to Annie and if he enjoys it, and it’s killing her not to ask him.

  He kisses her neck and she lets out a small cry.

  “What now?” she murmurs, but he doesn’t answer.

  Chapter 24

  Elodie

  1960

  One day at lunch, someone tells Elodie matter-of-factly that Emmeline from the Saint-Sulpice Orphanage is dead. “You were there with her, weren’t you?” the girl asks, shoveling meat in her mouth. “At Saint-Sulpice?”

  “How did she die?” Elodie wants to know, her appetite vanishing.

  “Overdose of Largactil, I heard.”

  Elodie is outraged. She’s used to keeping her anger inside, despairing silently so as not to get in trouble, but this is more than she can tolerate. She’ll never forget how Emmeline held her hand the night they arrived, the way she spoke up for all of them by telling Sister Ignatia they didn’t belong here.

  Emmeline isn’t the first one to die and she certainly won’t be the last. Elodie has a thicker skin about it now, or perhaps a harder heart. She’s ten now and takes things more in stride. Death waits in every corner of Saint-Nazarius, as real and ubiquitous as the nuns themselves, but never has it been this close to home.

  A few days later, when strange itchy red spots appear all over her body, forcing Sister Ignatia to send her to the infectious disease ward on the third floor, Elodie seizes the opportunity to finally speak up on behalf of Emmeline and all the orphans.

  “Chicken pox,” the doctor confirms, taking a quick look at her neck and arms. “You mustn’t scratch like that.”

  Elodie is studying him carefully, trying to assess whether he’s one of them or someone who might be able to help her. He seems decent enough. His eyes are bright blue and she likes the look of his moustache and the pocket square in his white coat.

  “I’m going to give you a bottle of calamine lotion,” he says. “Stop scratching, young lady. You’ll have scars.”

  She almost bursts out laughing. Scars! If he could see the scars she’s already got from all the beatings. He thinks she cares about chicken pox scars? He has no idea.

  He slathers her with pink lotion that feels cool on her skin and instantly soothing. “You should cut your nails, too.”

  “Doctor?”

  “Hm?”

  “A girl from the sixth floor died the other day.”

  “Yes,” he says abstractly. “This is a hospital. It happens.”

  “But there was nothing wrong with her.”

  “She wouldn’t have been here if that was so.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me,” Elodie informs him. “And I’m here. Most of us up there are perfectly normal. We’re just orphans. We’re not crazy.”

  “Your records say otherwise.”

  “What records?”

  “When you were transferred here,” he explains. “We have your records.”

  “What does mine say?”

  “I’m not privy to the psychiatric ward’s records,” he says. “But I assure you if you’re here, there must be a reason.”

  “I’m normal,” Elodie says adamantly.

  “Stop scratching,” he says.

  “Can I see what’s written about me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I don’t want to die in here,” she says. “They killed Emmeline giving her too much Largactil. She came here with me from the Saint-Sulpice Orphanage and she was fine. She was smart and normal and they gave her a lobotomy.”

  “It sounds like she was a very sick girl.”

  “But she wasn’t, though. Not when we first got here. And now they’ve killed her.”

  “You’re being very dramatic.”

  “She’s not the only one,” Elodie goes on. “Last year another girl disappeared in the middle of the night. I heard her body was thrown out back and buried in the cemetery. All she ever did was sing.”

  Elodie still remembers the little girl who used to sing herself to sleep every night, her sweet voice floating across the room. Her name was Agathe. She was only about five, but Sister Ignatia used to beat her to try to get her to stop. One morning when Elodie woke up, someone said, “Agathe is gone.”

  Her bed was empty. Freshly made as though it had never been slept in.

  Nothing was ever said about what happened to her. No explanation was offered, as though they weren’t worthy of knowing.

  “They do all sorts of terrible things to us,” she tells the doctor. “Can’t you help us? Does anyone know what they’re doing to us up there?”

  “Calm down,” the doctor says, frowning.

  “Were the crazy patients in my ward crazy before they got here?”

  “How would I know that?”

  “Will I turn crazy if I stay here?”

  “Where are you getting these ideas?”

  “Please help me,” she begs. “We’ve been forgotten up there. And the nuns . . . they’re cruel. They torture us. Please, isn’t there something you can do?”

  The doctor places a hand on her knee. “I’ll look into it,” he tells her. “Calm down and I’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  Elodie nods obediently, her whole body caving with relief.

  “Take this,” he says, handing her the calamine lotion. “And put it on when it gets too itchy.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  He
winks and she leaves the room, feeling lighter and happier than she has in years. She smiles at Sister Calvert, who’s waiting for her by the door, and says, “Chicken pox.”

  “You seem awfully happy about it,” Sister mutters, and shuffles off down the hall, her habit swooshing with every step.

  Several days pass and nothing happens. Elodie waits for the doctor to appear, expecting his visit. He promised he would look into it. Maybe the nuns are giving him a hard time, she reasons, and she has to be patient. Wouldn’t it be something if he exposed the whole situation here and the hospital realized there’d been a terrible mistake and set them free? Sent them back to Saint-Sulpice, where, to the best of Elodie’s recollection, she’d been relatively happy?

  Lying alert on her cot one night, about a week after her visit to the doctor, she realizes that no one ever came by to give her Largactil. Maybe the doctor said something about Emmeline’s death after all and the daily tranquilizers have finally been outlawed. She has mixed feelings about not having her sleep medicine, but a surge of excitement at the possibility of freedom drowns out all other concerns.

  The next thing she knows, rough hands are shaking her awake. She tries to sit up, but someone pulls a pillowcase down over her head, making it difficult to breathe. There are hands grabbing at her, pulling her this way and that. The world is black under the pillowcase, but she can hear the buckles of the straitjacket as they attempt to get it on her. She thrashes, her screams muffled by the fabric, terrified she’s going to suffocate.

  “Calme-toi!” one of them hisses, and she immediately recognizes Sister Ignatia’s voice.

  They’re wrestling with her now, but she’s making it very difficult for them to fasten the buckles. “Stay still!” Sister Ignatia says impatiently, and then punches her in the head.

  Elodie’s body goes limp. The straitjacket is tightened. Sister Ignatia is barking orders. Elodie realizes the other assailants are patients just like her, willing to comply, relieved it’s not them. They carry her in total blackness to another room, where’s she’s dumped on her back on a metal bed frame and then tied to it like an animal. There’s no mattress, and she can feel the sharp metal coils digging into her back where the straitjacket doesn’t cover her body.