The American Fiancee

by Eric Dupont

  Father Rossignol had lost the thread of the conversation. His eyes seemed to be drifting elsewhere. He looked at his watch.

  “That’s all very well, but I have work to be getting on with at the presbytery. Will you be much longer?”

  “Another two days to finish ‘Jesus is laid in the tomb’ and we’ll be able to announce the unveiling.”

  The parish priest left through one of the side doors. Madeleine slowly made her way between the pews and up to the nave where Lecavalier continued to paint. Thinking himself alone, he was humming a song that Madeleine had never heard, something in another language. Gaining confidence, the priest took a deep breath and bellowed:

  Reccondita armonia

  Di bellezze diverse!

  E bruna Floria,

  L’ardente amante mia . . .

  “Father Lecavalier?”

  The priest, who had had no idea he was being watched, nearly leaped out of his shoes and gave out a high-pitched girlish shriek, probably a G sharp.

  “Madeleine! How long have you been there?”

  “I just came in.”

  “Did . . . did you see your portrait?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “You made my eyes dark,” Madeleine replied quietly.

  “Yes, I gave you dark eyes. Dark brown, to be precise. Every character has them. Let me explain . . .”

  “You’re going to give me teal-colored eyes.”

  “As I was saying . . .”

  “I have teal-colored eyes.”

  Madeleine’s tone was glacial.

  “Yes, but it’s not you in the picture, it’s Mary Magdalene, and Mary Magdalene had dark brown eyes,” the priest explained.

  “How do you know?”

  “How don’t you know? The people in the Holy Land didn’t have teal-colored eyes, my dear Madeleine!”

  “People in the Holy Land didn’t have fir or spruce trees either. And they didn’t watch the sun set over the Charlevoix mountains!” Madeleine shouted, before catching her breath. “I’ve had it, Father Lecavalier! You’re going to give me teal-colored eyes right this minute or I’ll tell my father! Marc got the right color for his eyes, now I want mine!”

  “Calm down, Madeleine. I’m sure this is something we can discuss. You have to understand that you’re not Mary Magdalene. She’s a figure from the Bible. I based my painting on you because . . .”

  While the priest spoke, Madeleine sat down on the steps, on the very spot where her father was born, and began to sob. Lecavalier came over and took her in his arms to console her, an improbable Cavaradossi clasping an uncertain Tosca. Around them, a whiff of jealousy percolated from Solange’s skin as she hid behind the confessional, tormented by the desire to give the scene a Shakespearian ending. They remained like that until Madeleine calmed down. Crouched behind her confessional, Solange made the most of the fact that the side door was no longer in the priest’s field of vision to slip outside as silently as a cat. She’d heard enough, she thought, to throw up for weeks. Twenty minutes later, she broke a new noise and speed record as she zipped down Saint-Antonin’s main street. A complaint was filed with the police.

  Despite his intentions of returning to the city as quickly as possible, Father Lecavalier remained in Rivière-du-Loup until November, a decision that the nuns ascribed to their culinary talents. They continued to concoct all kinds of desserts for him. The reception celebrating the new stations of the cross was held at the provincial house at the nuns’ request. The last few nights of normality for all those folks, before the glacial wind swept in to upturn all that had once held any significance in Rivière-du-Loup. People fluttered around the convent’s entrance hall, stopping now and then in front of a painting. Nothing so beautiful had ever been seen in the parish. Gleaned here and there were expressions of amazement and surprise, from “My God, isn’t he the spitting image of Louis’s son!” and “Look! The women of Jerusalem look just like the Lévesque sisters on Rue Saint-Grégoire!” to “He even gave her the teal-colored eyes she got from her father!” and “How sad she looks, our little Madeleine.” Off in a corner, Irene was on her fourth glass of white wine, while Louis—dragged by his wife from his barstool at the Ophir—was unsteadily admiring the paintings he had helped pay for. The most notable absentee that evening was Solange Bérubé, who claimed to be suffering from a migraine. The parishioners were delighted by Father Lecavalier’s efforts. Unfortunately, every single station of the cross in the church of Saint-François-Xavier was swiped by a thief in early June 1975, leaving Father Rossignol in a state of utter distress. The circumstances surrounding the theft never came to light. Sadness gave way to consternation when, three days later, a man out walking found the charred remains of the frames on the beach at Notre-Dame-du-Portage. Clearly, the heist had not been motivated by the prospect of financial gain.

  Father Lecavalier’s talented voice had not gone unremarked during his time in the parish, and he was asked to sing at the unveiling. Paris had not only made a painter of him, but a singer too. The church organist, the same man Louis had almost finished off at Luc’s funeral, had insisted that Lecavalier sing at least once for the people of Rivière-du-Loup before leaving the town.

  “I’ll accompany you. You have such a fine voice.”

  “What shall I sing?”

  “What you were heard singing in the church in Italian this summer!”

  He must have sung at least a dozen Italian arias that summer, whenever he thought he was alone in the church. Believing he’d already done enough for the people of Rivière-du-Loup, he turned down the organist’s invitation.

  A week went by. The day before All Saints’, Marc had fallen asleep on his bed after another day of exhaustion. This time, Irene had managed to get Louis to bring their son to see Dr. Panneton.

  “It’s not normal for him to sleep all the time,” she’d protested.

  The nuns were not the only ones to take an interest in French-Canadian cooking that fall. It was a November evening, a little before the first snow. With both her parents out, Madeleine opened the can of maple syrup she had stolen from the Damours grocery store. The maple syrup pie recipe was quite straightforward. Just five ingredients. But Madeleine prepared it with all the care and attention to detail that the Japanese take in making sushi. She worked in religious silence, without making a mess, without spilling the flour. The sweet aroma of maple syrup soon floated over the kitchen, then the living room, as the syrup boiled with the heavy cream. A smell delectable enough to wake the dead, to make them wish they were still alive. Madeleine washed the utensils as she went, leaving no trace behind. Once the pie was in the oven, its aroma gained in strength and substance. It was at that moment that Solange rang the doorbell. Three times. Madeleine pretended not to have heard, but the neighbor was not to be dissuaded and let herself in. She made Madeleine, occupied as she was in the kitchen, cry out in fear.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to say hello. Are you by yourself?”

  “No, Marc’s sleeping. What do you want?”

  “Madeleine, we need to talk. Are you still mad?”

  “I’m busy more than anything else. You’ll have to come back later. Come back tomorrow, Solange.”

  Not wanting to annoy Madeleine, the young Bérubé girl left and went back home to wait. Alone again, Madeleine took the pie out of the oven and set it in the middle of the table, where it couldn’t be missed. Then she walked downstairs to the basement, armed with her rosary beads, and prayed. It took no more than a few minutes for the beast to be roused from its sleep by the sweet fragrance. Footsteps could be heard all the way to the kitchen. Madeleine kept praying . . . forgive us our trespasses . . . She heard cutlery being taken out of the drawer, a plate, a pie server. The fridge door opening. A glass of milk. Noisy gobbling sounds. Then back upstairs to bed. Madeleine had time enough to go back up to the kitchen, where she found the pie plate empty. Nothing but a few crumbs. Quickly washed
it all. Aired out the whole house so that it wouldn’t smell of sugar. A suspicious stain at the back of the oven; she scraped it off with a knife. Caramelized sugar. Once everything was spotless, she went upstairs. Moans could be heard coming from Marc’s room. He was calling for his sister. Madeleine went to bed. Before falling asleep, she heard her mother and father come in. And the night was long. Sleepless. Dawn arrived with a gaunt stare. When morning came, Madeleine got up before everyone to throw up, as she had every morning for the past four weeks.

  They found Marc unconscious in his bed. It was Irene’s cries that alerted Papa Louis and Madeleine. The boy was taken to hospital, where the doctor on duty, as soon as he caught a whiff of acetone on Marc’s breath, diagnosed a diabetic coma brought on by a sugar overdose.

  Three days later, Marc died of kidney failure before the heartbroken gaze of his parents. The day he died, Father Lecavalier left Rivière-du-Loup with the firm intention of never again setting foot there, thereby missing the lovely funeral organized by Papa Louis. It was also the last funeral organized by Papa Louis. “Death by Maple Syrup” might have been a suitable epitaph. Although no one ever found out that, the night before All Saints’, Madeleine Lamontagne had baked a maple syrup pie that killed her brother, and nor did anyone ever know how the young woman had realized Marc was diabetic and that the dessert would prove fatal to him. There may be many things that we know, and that we don’t know, but that doesn’t prevent us from getting on with life.

  This time, the organist spontaneously burst into Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. Marc was laid to rest beside his younger brother. Unlike with Luc’s death, Marc’s passing seemed to drive Irene and Louis further apart and bring Solange and Madeleine closer together. The maple syrup pie was never mentioned. At the end of November, some two feet of snow fell on the region, then again on December 1. The winter was going to be long and snow-filled. On December 3, a dangerously sober Irene waited for her daughter to come back from supper at the Bérubés’. On the table before her was an advertisement cut out of the newspaper, alongside an opened envelope, stamped in Montreal a few days earlier. On the letter accompanying the coupon Irene had filled out and sent off, a New York address was listed beside a paragraph of text.

  “It’s the answer to your problem, Madeleine,” Irene said, in the voice of a bogeyman.

  “I don’t have a problem, Mom.”

  “Your brother Marc is dead and maybe that’s a blessing. What he did to you is a terrible sin, Madeleine. What he left you, you cannot keep. Mommy’s not going to let you down. I’ve put together the money, but you will have far to go. You’ll have to be discreet.”

  “I don’t know what you’re taking about, Mom.”

  “You’ll know in five minutes. Now go get your friend Solange. Tell her I want to talk to her. These are desperate times, Madeleine. Hurry before your father gets back.”

  Panic-stricken, breathless, and shaken, Madeleine reappeared two minutes later with a worried-looking Solange.

  “Solange,” Irene began. “You leave for New York City with Madeleine tomorrow morning to solve the problem Marc left her with before he died. I’ve bought bus tickets for the pair of you. You’ll take the bus to Montreal. When you get there, you’ll take the overnight bus to New York. You’ll go to this address with the money I’ll give you. It’s a doctor, he’s Jewish. Solange, it’s up to you to find the address. Madeline won’t be able to find her way about the city. That night, you’ll take the bus back to Montreal and, the next morning, another one to Rivière-du-Loup. Tomorrow morning is Wednesday. You’ll be back Friday night. I’ll tell your father, Madeleine, that you’re off looking for kitchen work in Quebec City. Do you understand?”

  Stunned, the two young women exchanged worried glances.

  “I don’t want to go, Mom.”

  Irene got up out of her seat, slowly walked over to her daughter, slapped her as hard as she could, and flung her to the floor with such violence that even Solange, no stranger to being knocked about herself, took fright.

  “I don’t think you understand, Madeleine Lamontagne. You can’t bring that child into this world. You’re carrying a monster!”

  Madeleine lay there, prostrate on the linoleum, while Solange trembled.

  “And one more thing,” Irene added. “You will never ever breathe a word of this to anyone. Otherwise I swear I’ll slit both your throats.”

  Irene disappeared upstairs. A door slammed. Silence fell over the house.

  On the morning of December 4, Madeleine took a path well traveled by many other Quebec girls in the 1960s. Thousands? Hundreds of them? No one will ever know. Those girls never breathed a word, except perhaps after therapy, a night’s heavy drinking, or as a deathbed confession. They set out alone on the roads of North America as though they’d fallen victim to the plague, and they came back changed by a journey that, for some, had taken over thirty hours. They didn’t talk about it.

  A light snow fell on the town. Sitting in the front row of a packed bus heading to Montreal, Solange held Madeleine’s hand. The palm of her mother’s hand was still stamped on Madeleine’s left cheek as she stared at the asphalt, all covered in white. The driver had announced the trip was canceled no fewer than three times before reluctantly venturing out onto the icy roads. Someone lit a cigarette behind the two girls. Madeleine threw up into a brown paper bag. Solange rubbed her back. The driver lit himself a cigarette too. Madeleine threw up again.

  “Didn’t ya have breakfast?” the driver inquired. He was a man who seemed to be all bones and not much else.

  “It’s your cigarette,” Solange protested, incensed.

  “I won’t smoke too many then. The girl’ll have to toughen up.”

  None of the passengers on that bus making its way to Quebec City had the faintest idea of the drama unfolding in the front row, nor would they have known what to make of it, because on that December morning nothing was more hopeless—or more delightful—than the image of those two snow geese being catapulted across the snow-covered roads of the New World. Hopelessness in the face of the poor girl being sent by force to a mysterious, unknown city to undergo the unmentionable; delight in the face of her companion, who had for so long harbored dreams of exploring the vastness of the continent, but who would never have suspected that her desire to see more of North America would be made possible by the miserly Irene. Three hundred dollars in an envelope, in American notes. A few sandwiches, a few apples. That’s what they carried in their purses. Solange remembered the rare satisfaction she felt, for once feeling in control of things, for here she was, alone with Madeleine at last. After ninety minutes of snowy roads, they were already further from Rivière-du-Loup than they’d ever been: aside from the odd ride in a convertible or on a motorcycle to Cacouna, Pohénégamook, or Trois-Pistoles, Solange and Madeleine had never left the town. The few road signs they could make out in the blizzard conditions revealed destinations unknown: Saint-Roch-des-Aulnaies, Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière, Montmagny. It was in that precise spot that Madeleine burst into sobs for the eighth time. The other passengers, a few gossips from Rivière-du-Loup among them, had already put up their receiving antennas. They weren’t going to miss a second of the show. What on earth was Louis Lamontagne’s daughter doing on a bus to Quebec City in such a snowstorm? All alone with Solange Bérubé? And ill, into the bargain! The cold air that made its way in through the drafty windows lashed their senses. Solange was wise enough to wait until they got to Quebec City before mentioning her brief visit to the convent the previous night. Once Madeleine had been safely shut away in her bedroom and the Lamontagne family home had been locked down by an unhinged Irene, Solange, who had kept her composure in the face of the madwoman, had run to the only place that still inspired confidence in those crazy times: the provincial house belonging to the Sisters of the Child Jesus, where, in spite of the late hour, she asked to speak with Sister Mary of the Eucharist.

  Visibly distressed by Solange’s story, the nun seemed to look to
Heaven for inspiration. She left Solange to cry by herself in the parlor and came back clutching two items in her bony hands.

  “Look, Solange. Seeing as this is how things are going to go . . .”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s an old book that Madeleine’s grandmother brought with her from New England. It was her recipe book. Leave it at your house here in Rivière-du-Loup and give it to Madeleine when you come back.”

  “The New England Cookbook?”

  “Yes. She had it with her when she got off the train in 1918. It never left her side. And you’ll give this little gold cross to Madeleine while you’re at it. It was also her grandmother’s: Louis-Benjamin gave it to her when they got engaged. Madeleine the American was wearing it when she died giving birth to Louis. I kept it all this time to protect it from covetous looks. I want you to explain to Madeleine what it is and where it comes from. Can you do that, Solange?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “You have to tell her she must never take it off. Even to wash, you understand?”

  The nun grabbed Solange by the wrist. “I understand, Sister.”

  “Look me in the eye when you’re talking to me, Solange Bérubé.”

  It was at the bus station in Quebec City that Solange decided to give Madeleine the cross, in the relative privacy of a waiting-room bench. A strange offering on that cursed day. Madeleine looked incredulously at the piece of jewelry, wondering how much it would go for, and tried to imagine the American girl’s face, which had survived only in wedding photos, while she clutched the cross in her fist. They would never stop to wonder why Sister Mary of the Eucharist had waited until then to give the cross to the American’s heiress. She must have had her reasons.

  “The initials are the same. It was destined to be yours,” Solange said, trying to lift her friend’s spirits.

  Between Quebec City and Montreal, Madeleine stopped her vomiting and crying. And the sky stopped snowing. Evening came early. Her head leaning against the window, she contemplated the world she had never seen before while Solange, her guardian angel, slept. Under a sky turned blue by the December light, it seemed to her that they had been thrust unjustly into a hell whose rings bore the names Victoriaville, Drummondville, and Saint-Hyacinthe, a cold, flat world that seemed without end, a series of concentric circles whose center would inevitably be New York. They would know they’d arrived when the devil’s forked tail, long and red, made its way up into the bus. After that, Madeleine would just have to keep a tight hold on her cross. Crossing the Jacques Cartier Bridge into Montreal gave her the fleeting impression of flying through the sky. To her left, the remains of Expo ’67 that Papa Louis had watched on television and that his cousins had sent a postcard from. The bus station in Montreal shook her from her thoughts. That was where Madeleine understood why her mother had put her in Solange’s care. All alone at night, she wouldn’t have lasted fifteen minutes in that gloomy building that reeked of tobacco.