“I’m not sure I can serve you in that cap,” she deadpans, surprising herself with the uncharacteristic quip. She’s learned enough living in Montreal to know of the long-standing hockey rivalry between the Montreal Canadiens and the Boston Bruins.
The boy grins and obligingly removes his Bruins cap. His hair is pale orange, buzzed close to the scalp. These days, almost everyone has long hair—including Elodie. She parts hers in the middle and lets it fall over the sides of her face.
“Better?” he says, tossing his cap on the table.
She turns and hurries away, flushing. She can hear them laughing behind her. Feisty French gal. She shouldn’t have said anything.
When she returns a few minutes later with their food, the boy with the cap asks her name.
“Elodie,” she says, sliding his plate at him.
“Elodie,” he repeats, closing his eyes. “Like Melody without the M.”
When she responds with a blank stare, one of his friends says, “She doesn’t understand English, Den.”
“What time do you finish work?” Dennis asks, gazing up at her with an undeterred expression.
“Midnight,” she says, her face growing hot.
Dennis checks his watch, a shiny Timex on his thick, freckled wrist. “That’s in half an hour,” he says. “Can I wait for you?”
“Bien, non,” she says, dismissing the offer. Not because she wants to, but because it’s the proper thing to do.
Other customers are arriving to get their smoked meat fixes before Len’s closes, and Elodie rushes over to grab a handful of menus by the cash register. No sooner has she deposited them at the other booths then Dennis and his friends beckon her back.
“Dennis has a crush on you,” one of the friends confides.
“Crush me?”
“He likes you.”
“He don’t know me—”
“But he wants to. He has a thing for French girls.”
“Let me walk you home,” Dennis chimes in on his own behalf.
“I live in Pointe Saint-Charles,” she says, as though he should know where that is. “It’s too far.”
“We’ll take a taxi. Or the streetcar.”
“Non,” she says, confused by the attention, knowing she can’t let him walk her home. He’s too fresh and clean-cut, out of her league.
“Let him walk you home,” one of his friends says. “He’s going to Vietnam next week.”
Elodie has heard about Vietnam. Marie-Claude always has the radio on, and you can’t walk past a newspaper without seeing it in the headline. This lovely orange-haired boy with the clearest eyes she’s ever seen is going to war.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “But—”
“Don’t be sorry. Just let me take you home.”
Elodie hesitates. The other boys are pleading with her, hands clasped in mock prayer. She can’t quite believe this boy likes her enough to go to this much trouble for a walk home.
“You really go to Vietnam?” she asks.
“I really go.”
Even before she acquiesces, he smiles triumphantly. She wonders, with a swell of sadness, what war will do to someone like him.
Dennis waits for her by himself in the booth until the lights go off in the delicatessen. They walk out together, ignoring the raised eyebrows and good-natured winks of Lenny and Rhonda.
“Where did your friends went?” she asks him, as they step out onto St. Catherine Street, which is still brightly lit and crawling with revelers.
“They went back to Cleopatra,” he admits sheepishly. “Do you know what that is?”
Elodie nods. Café Cléopâtre is a strip club in the red-light district. She knows about it because her neighbor on Sébastopol is a go-go dancer there.
“It was my first time,” Dennis adds. “I was so uncomfortable, that’s why we left. It’s not my thing. I wanted to try smoked meat instead.”
“But your friends?”
“They liked the strippers,” he laughs.
“Why you came to Montreal?” she wants to know. What she means is, Why is Montreal your last destination before going to war? But she doesn’t speak enough English to formulate the sentence; she understands considerably more than she can actually communicate.
“Montreal is so European,” he says. “Your bars are open later, your women are more beautiful, and I’m legal drinking age here,” he explains. “Also for the strip clubs and smoked meat.”
“You said you don’t like strip clubs—”
“I didn’t know that till tonight.”
Elodie smiles and he reaches for her hand. Her body tenses at his touch.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’m just being gentlemanly.”
She lets him hold her hand and they walk like that to Ontario Street.
“You have a limp,” he remarks.
“I was born with it,” she says, coming to a stop.
“I thought it might have been polio.”
“This is where I take my streetcar,” she says. “You can ride with me, but then you turn back.”
“Scouts’ honor,” he says, holding up a hand.
“Who?”
“Boy Scouts. It’s an expression.”
She shrugs and they both laugh.
Dennis talks easily as they sit side by side on the empty streetcar. Elodie strains to understand him, listening attentively, content to let him have the spotlight while she sneaks sidelong glances at his lovely profile. He has a straight nose and round, peach-fuzz cheeks. She wonders if he shaves. He doesn’t seem grown-up enough to be a soldier.
The more he talks, the more she likes him. He admits to being a lover of sports but not a great athlete. He has two younger sisters, both still in high school. His father is a plumber. His mother wanted him to go to college, but school wasn’t his thing. He says that a lot. His thing. Strip clubs and school are not his “thing.” French girls are.
Instead, he spent the last year apprenticing with his father. And then he was drafted.
“I’m trying to stay positive about it,” he says, his eyes clouding over. “I didn’t even mind basic training that much. I spent eight weeks at Fort Lewis, and then another eight weeks at Fort Polk doing my AIT. I’m in the best shape of my life, although I’ve put some weight back on in the past couple of weeks of my leave.”
Elodie nods, pretending to understand everything he’s saying.
“Eight weeks of basic and another eight of Advanced Individual Training, and I’m evidently ready for war. I leave for Da Nang next week.”
“You must be scared.”
Dennis shrugs, looking out the window. “I’d be an idiot not to be,” he mutters. “But, hey, I get to defend democracy.” In spite of the language barrier, Elodie is still able to detect the sarcasm and bravado in his voice.
They get off on Wellington and cross through Parc de la Congrégation. It’s a gorgeous autumn night, with a touch of humidity in the air. The ground is covered ankle-deep in damp red and yellow leaves. Elodie doesn’t take any of it for granted. Fresh air, a starry sky, a maze of majestic trees, a cool breeze, the heat, snow on her face, the splash of a rain puddle, the sun on her back, the buzz of mosquitoes in her ear, the perfume of a flower—all are gifts, she knows that.
“What are you thinking?” Dennis asks her.
She smiles to herself. There are no words to communicate the bittersweetness of a night such as this, certainly not in a language she has not yet mastered. Without answering Dennis, she bends down, scoops up a pile of leaves, and throws them up into the air above her head. As the leaves rain down on her, she wonders if these rare happy moments will always be lined with sadness, never one without the other.
Dennis retaliates with a pile of leaves of his own, laughing as they cling to Elodie’s uniform and come to rest in her long hair. “You look like one of those flower children,” he says, brushing a leaf from her shoulder.
She throws another batch of leaves at him before she takes off through the park, lov
ing the feeling of her feet on the pavement as she runs, the breathlessness in her chest. This is freedom, she thinks, as Dennis catches up to her and pulls her to him. Before she can stop him or panic or think too much about it, he kisses her.
Her first kiss. As his lips press softly against hers, she’s overcome with emotion. Tears spring to her eyes. He tastes like beer and smoked meat and mustard, and it’s wonderful.
“You’re not really going to send me back to my hotel, are you?” he says, touching her cheek.
She averts her eyes.
“Well? Can I come in?”
Marie-Claude is visiting her boyfriend’s family in Valleyfield for the long weekend, so she has the apartment to herself until Monday night. And it’s not like she’s a virgin; she hasn’t been for years, thanks to one of the orderlies at Saint-Nazarius.
“Next week at this time, I’ll be in a jungle,” he reminds her.
“Is that really true?” she asks. She’s still not sure if she can trust him. She’s not sure if she can trust anyone.
“I wouldn’t lie about going to war,” he says, sounding slightly offended.
The pros and cons of letting him in are churning in her mind as he waits for her to make up her mind. Cons: She’s terrified.
Pros: He’s leaving for Vietnam, so he won’t abandon her when he realizes how much better he is than she, or how much better he could do for himself. She’ll never see him again, so she really doesn’t have to worry about what he thinks of her. Emboldened by the fact of his looming deployment, she’s free to be anyone she wants tonight, and even if he does uncover the worst about her—her ignorance and darkness—he could be dead soon anyway. Tonight, she can pretend to be a normal girl with a normal boy before he goes off to war.
The nuns are closing in on her. She can hear their snickers, smell the soap and cigarettes on their rough hands, but she can’t see them with the pillowcase over her head.
“Don’t!” she screams as one of them grabs her by the wrists and another by the ankles. They throw her onto a chair and bind her to it with leather straps. There are at least six of them, their habits swooshing like crows flapping their wings.
“Please, no!” she wails.
Someone rips off the pillowcase, and Sister Ignatia appears, glowing white, terrifying. There’s a small knife in her hand. “I’m going to cut your brain out now,” she says calmly.
Elodie wakes up, gasping for breath. She turns, startled to see Dennis’s face beside hers on the pillow. “I forgot you were here,” she manages, her voice thick.
“Are you okay? You’re soaking wet—”
“Did they give me the lobotomy?” she asks him, disoriented.
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
He’s been at her place for three days. They’ve talked for hours, deep into the night and well into the early mornings, sharing things new lovers share. They’ve discussed their hopes for the future—his to be a plumber like his father, get married and have kids; hers to find a living relative, her father perhaps or an aunt. And although they’ve traded some scars from the past, she hasn’t said a word about Saint-Nazarius. All she’s told him is that her parents are dead and she grew up in an orphanage in the Townships. He hasn’t probed about why every little noise—a car horn, a bus, the heater, a mouse—makes her jump; why she has so many scars; why she has nightmares and wakes up in a cold sweat. She assumes he’s drawn his own conclusions about the hardships of life in an orphanage. He doesn’t need to know that her orphanage was really a mental hospital.
“You sounded like a crazy person in your nightmare,” he says.
“I’m not crazy,” she snaps, turning her face away from him.
“Hey,” he says, laying a hand on her shoulder. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I was joking.”
He pulls her back, and she rests her head on his shoulder. He strokes her hair. She looks up at him, knowing these are their last hours together. They haven’t talked about seeing each other again. There’s an unspoken understanding that this is simply a moment in time, a lost weekend. If he survives the war, he’ll have a fond memory of the French girl who devirginized him. As for Elodie, she’ll always remember the first person—man or woman—to show her physical affection and tenderness.
“You have the saddest eyes,” he says. “And you’re not even twenty-one.”
She quickly looks away and turns on the TV. “Tabarnac,” she says, sitting up. “They killed him.”
“Who?”
“The politician,” she says. “He was kidnapped by the FLQ. They just find his body in the trunk of a car.”
“The FL-who?”
“FLQ. They want Quebec to separate from Canada, so they blow up building and kills people,” she explains, struggling with her English grammar. “They throw a bomb into the place where I used to work.”
“Were you there?”
“No.”
“How does that help their cause?”
“I don’t know. I just know they ’ate the English.”
“They ate the English?” he teases.
“Hate,” she clarifies, emphasizing the H.
“Do you? Hate the English?”
“Bien non.”
“But you’re French,” he says, plainly confused.
“We don’t all ’ate the English,” she says.
The truth is everyone who ever harmed her was French. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t feel any real connection to her own people, why she’s more comfortable with the likes of Len Cohen and Dennis from Boston.
She turns up the volume to hear the news anchor from Le Téléjournal.
“He’s not even English,” Dennis points out. “The dead politician has a French name, which means they just killed one of their own.”
“But he’s Libéral,” Elodie explains. “They’re also the enemy.”
“You’re pretty smart for a—”
“For a what?” she cuts him off, bracing for the dagger. For a retard. For a lunatic.
“For a Canadian,” he says innocently. And she laughs, relieved.
“I like when you smile,” he tells her. “It makes your eyes less sad.”
Chapter 49
Maggie
Maggie throws open the front door and steps inside the mudroom. “Hello?” she calls out, going into the kitchen. “Ma?”
The house is quiet. She grabs a handful of saltines from the pantry—she knows her mother always has the familiar red box on hand—and stuffs one in her mouth to quell the nausea. As with the last pregnancy, saltines bring instant relief.
“Ma?”
She finds her mother on the couch in the den, staring vacantly into space.
“Ma?”
“Yvon is dead,” her mother says, shell-shocked.
Maggie’s heart skips. Good, she thinks, feeling nothing at all. “How?”
“He hung himself.”
In spite of the shock, Maggie experiences a jolt of triumph. “Why?” she asks her mother, sitting down on her father’s worn ottoman. “Did he leave a note?”
“No. A girl came forward saying he’d raped her.”
Maggie wants to scream, I told you so! But she holds her tongue. She wonders how many others there were.
“The girl’s father was one of their farmhands,” Maman says. “She was twelve. Her father beat Yvon nearly to death and threatened to go to the police. Yvon would have gone to jail.”
“How did you hear?”
“Deda’s neighbor called me,” she says, sobbing into her handkerchief. “Thank God Deda isn’t alive to see all this.”
Deda had a heart attack last year, died in her sleep. Maggie didn’t go to the funeral.
“Other girls came forward, too,” Maman says. “From all over Frelighsburg.”
Her shoulders collapse and she starts to wail loudly, expressing more anguish than when her own husband died. Maggie’s back stiffens and she stands up. “You’re obviously very upset that he’s dead,” she says coldly. “I’ll leave
you.”
Maman stops crying at once and looks up at Maggie. “It’s not him I’m upset about!” she cries. “It’s you. You tried to tell me . . .” She breaks down again. Maggie has never seen her mother like this.
“It’s all right,” Maggie says awkwardly. “It was a long time ago.”
“I didn’t believe you,” Maman sobs. “You tried to tell me and I cared more about protecting Deda than I did you.”
Maggie looks away, remembering the pain of that same realization all those years ago.
“Can you forgive me?” There is a vulnerability in her mother’s eyes that is hard to reconcile with the woman she has known all her life.
Maggie can’t bring herself to say yes. While she feels vindicated, it’s not enough. Not yet.
Maman jumps to her feet and pulls Maggie into a too-tight embrace. “I’m so sorry, cocotte,” she murmurs, her breath warm against Maggie’s hair.
Maggie’s body remains stiff in her mother’s arms. How strange it feels to be held like this, she thinks, as Maman’s thick arms squeeze her with surprising vigor. More than three decades’ worth of love poured into one well-intentioned but belated gesture.
“Don’t crush the baby,” Maggie tells her.
Chapter 50
Elodie
1971
Elodie pulls up her skirt in the bathroom, and it occurs to her as she’s wiping that she hasn’t seen blood in a long time. She tries to remember the last time she had her period—a challenge, since her memory is terrible—and realizes she hasn’t had one since the fall, possibly even as long ago as September. She had terrible cramps, she remembers, and had to go and buy more pads late at night and it was still warm outside. It’s January now.
She looks down at her protruding stomach, and it’s suddenly so obvious she actually gasps out loud. She chalked up the weight gain to too many french fries and smoked meat sandwiches at Len’s, even mentioned to Marie-Claude that she should cut back because she was getting a bédaine.
The Home for Unwanted Girls Page 26
