The American Fiancee

by Eric Dupont

  “You’re out of luck—he lives in Brooklyn.”

  Solange buried her head in her hands as the taxi sped toward Brooklyn. Did they really have to find that goddamn cross? Why now? Madeleine, on the other hand, seemed energized by the discovery.

  “I just know we’ll find him. It’s more important than you think, Solange.”

  The welcome in Brooklyn was less cordial. The address belonged to the last in a row of red-brick houses that had probably been built just after the war. There they surprised a man, who lived alone with his black Labrador, dancing the bamboula. He didn’t want to talk about Beck and refused to turn down the techno music that was about to rupture Solange’s eardrums. Madeleine managed to loosen his tongue by once again digging deep in her purse.

  “He sold this house to my father in 1989. Then my sister lived here, then I moved in when she left for New Haven. Beck moved into an old folks’ home. Dad could tell you where, but he’s gone now. Now hang on a minute . . . give Concord Nursing Home a try. Or Buena Vida, one of the two. One of those places where old Jews go to retire. He had a daughter, I think. Used to live with him. That’s all I know.”

  The door closed, much to Solange’s relief. Madeleine clenched her fists.

  “Now, before you go asking me to traipse around every old folks’ home in Brooklyn with you, have you seen the time, Madeleine?”

  “It’s almost three o’clock, dear.”

  “I know. And I barely got a wink of sleep!”

  “Just a little longer. If we’ve no luck at the homes, we’ll go back to the hotel.”

  New taxi, new driver, still no luck. At the front desk at Concord Nursing Home on Madison Street, they waited for twelve minutes before the receptionist finally told them that only a pre-approved list of people was allowed to ask questions about the residents. Madeleine produced more money from her bag; the receptionist threatened to call the police. Madeleine gave her an imploring look; the woman remained impassive.

  “Get out or I’m calling for help.”

  Madeleine put her money away and Solange thanked God. For the first time in twenty-four hours, she could see Madeleine’s resolve beginning to waver. Maybe now she might be able to go back to the hotel, lie down, and sleep for a thousand years. But her dream went up in smoke at the sound of a woman’s voice behind them.

  “Madeleine Lamontagne? I think I have what you’re looking for.” Solange and Madeleine whirled around. There stood Dr. Rachel Beck. Their surprise was suddenly interrupted by the sound of Solange’s cell phone ringing. Her assistant Marie-Claude had been trying to get hold of her all morning. Madeleine or Solange was to phone the Sisters of the Child Jesus in Rivière-du-Loup immediately. Sister Saint Alphonse had called three times. And she didn’t seem to understand the meaning of the words “I don’t know where they are.” Bruno-Karl D’Ambrosio had also called goodness knew how many times and, after verbally abusing everyone he spoke to, after calling every woman in the building a whore, stupid bitch, or incurable philistine, had demanded that Madeleine Lamontagne call him back urgently, wherever she was, whatever the hour. Marie-Claude had thought it worth pointing out to the director that, given the financial ties between his movie and Mado Group Inc., he should perhaps rethink his communications plan and watch his mouth. All this Marie-Claude explained patiently to Solange while Rachel pointed at her red Honda Civic, parked just outside the home. She didn’t hang up until the car was pulling onto the Brooklyn Bridge, bringing them back to the center of the universe: Manhattan. Madeleine didn’t say a word the whole time. An indefinable smile seemed to be playing at her lips. Rachel was in high spirits.

  “How Daddy would have loved it!”

  Rachel Beck lived in an apartment block on the Lower East Side, on one of the nicer floors. A small apartment for an on-call doctor, with just the odd piece of furniture.

  “It’s not much, but with Daddy gone, I don’t need as much room as I used to. I kept the cabin in the Catskills. I rarely go more than three days a year! I’ll really have to consider getting rid of it. Can I make you a coffee? I’m dying for one. I’m just home from the worst night shift ever!”

  Solange and Madeleine sat on a leather loveseat. They looked out from the twenty-second floor at the dull greys that make up Manhattan’s palette. Rachel Beck’s apartment had no more than three rooms, plus a bathroom. The kitchen opened out onto the living room and looked so much like something straight out of a 1970s American sitcom that it would have come as no surprise had Mary Tyler Moore popped out, grinning from ear to ear. Solange was nervous now after Marie-Claude’s call for help and asked if she could use Rachel’s office to work out one or two things. Alone in the tiny room, surrounded by German, French, and English books, Solange sat down on a wooden stool and called the convent. On the wall, a poster from the Metropolitan Opera announced Maria Callas’s much-awaited return as Tosca. She let the phone ring eight times. A voice as old as time answered. No sooner had she given her name than Solange heard the receiver drop and rapid footsteps disappear down a hallway. “Sister Saint Alphonse! She called! Come quickly!”

  The atmosphere at the convent was heavy. Sister Saint Alphonse (who had reverted to her given name—Antoinette—in 1969), Sister Fatty who had terrorized the girls of Grade 4A, had some gruesome news indeed for Solange on that first day of the new century. It had happened during the night. Some of the nuns had gone over to Rue Lafontaine to watch the fireworks at midnight. The good people of Rivière-du-Loup had waited patiently in the arctic conditions, some warming themselves in the shops that had stayed open for the occasion. Shortly before the first stroke of midnight, a bat had been startled by a firecracker going off and had flown low over the crowd. The sight of the terrified creature had frozen the blood in the nuns’ veins, and they’d gone back to the convent as soon as the fireworks were over. Sister Saint Alphonse pointed out that she hadn’t gone herself, that only the nuns who were still steady on their feet had gone. She’d stayed behind at the convent with the others, notably Sister Mary of the Eucharist and Old Ma Madeleine, who’d agreed to come out of the laundry for the evening. All night long, Sister Antoinette explained, both women, who’d become inseparable over the years, had behaved more than a little oddly. Both had been in unusually high spirits at supper. They’d already polished off the bottle of wine they’d recklessly uncorked for the occasion before Old Ma Madeleine had even finished her meat pie. The two had, in fact, in a manner that could almost have been considered impolite, insisted on eating alone together at a table in the dining room. Sister Mary of the Eucharist, aware of the malaise they were causing, had stood to explain herself:

  “Sisters, my very dear sisters,” she began, clearly already a little tipsy. “You know that I love each and every one of you like my very own sisters. I love everybody . . . But tonight is a very special night for the two of us. Please don’t see our celebration as us turning our backs on the community. We have long since proven our affection for you, for the children of Rivière-du-Loup, and for the whole world, but tonight Old Ma Madeleine and I would like to raise a toast (here she had to hold on to the table) to life, to Baby Jesus, and to all our sisters suffering in silence around the world. Tonight let us celebrate life, life lived to the fullest, life that comes through loving! Blessed are those who rise to the call! Blessed are those who laugh! To you, dear sisters! Hahaha!”

  The other nuns were dumbfounded, but polite enough to find the whole display rather amusing. Over the past thirty years, the two women had distanced themselves from the others; that was clear to all. They would often be seen walking through the forest together on winter evenings, peering up at the sky as though trying to make out the shape of the Blessed Virgin in a constellation.

  Sister Mary of the Eucharist had asked for a double helping of upside-down pineapple cake, her favorite dessert. Then they had looked through some old black and white photographs that Sister Mary of the Eucharist has produced from her room. Photos of people who were dead and buried, Papa Louis and
his children, construction work on the new convent. The photo of Father Lecavalier had them giggling like novices.

  “There was even a photo of you, Solange. On your first motorcycle, with Madeleine’s little brother. You know, the one who died in the casket?”

  From her end in Manhattan, Solange listened to the nun’s story, completely captivated. Outside, the wind whistled the murderous weather’s lament. She had to lean forward to catch her breath. All those people had stuck in her throat. Sister Saint Alphonse went on with her story. Around eleven o’clock, half of the nuns left to see the fireworks at the waterfall while the others chose to watch the celebration on television. No prizes for guessing that the two delinquents turned down the invitation to watch the cursed screen.

  “You know very well I can’t abide it,” Old Ma Madeleine huffed.

  Twenty minutes before midnight, to everyone’s surprise, the two women got dressed to go for a stroll in the forest. Sister Antoinette was so intrigued that she decided to follow them, after waiting five minutes.

  “You can’t imagine how cold it is here, Solange!”

  Out in the forest, Sister Mary of the Eucharist kept up the jokes with Old Ma Madeleine. They were having a grand old time, as if they were at the Saint-Jean-Baptiste parade. Sister Saint Alphonse swore she heard them say this:

  “Are you sure it’s tonight?” Old Ma Madeleine had asked.

  “Absolutely. No two ways about it. The handsome young fella came and went. All that’s left now is for Madeleine to make the trip and it’s in the bag!”

  “I wonder if your little sister in Nagasaki could feel things coming the way you do, Sister Mary of the Eucharist.”

  “There’s no way. There’s no way to predict what man will do. Only God’s intentions can be foreseen. And even then you need to know where to look! How pure the cold is! Feel the snow melt in your hands one last time! Take in the stars! So beautiful, so many of them! There are as many stars as there are dreams in the world! Breathe in the air of this beautiful land of ours!”

  Then Sister Saint Alphonse heard a whistling sound shoot down from the heavens. Like the sound of a mortar shell falling, the noise started off quietly, then got louder. Next she heard what sounded like a knife going through meat. Twice. Schlick! Schlack! And not a sound after that. Nothing but the wind in the trees. Sister Antoinette came out of her hiding place, numb with fear and cold, and her eyes fell on a scene that would haunt her until her dying day. Both women lay on their backs in the snow, arms splayed wide. In each of their hearts, firmly planted, a wooden arrow come out of nowhere. On each of their faces, a mysterious smile, a look of great relief, a grimace that made one wonder what pale-blue fantasy they’d swallowed.

  “Like an Indian arrow, Solange! They were dead! The arrows just fell from the sky! You have to pray, Solange! You have to tell Madeleine too!”

  Alerted by a breathless Sister Saint Alphonse, the Mother Superior had managed to cover the whole thing up. It hadn’t been easy. The pair of them had carried the bodies to an unheated room before the other nuns came back from the fireworks. (The other nuns who’d stayed behind at the convent were either by then fast asleep or secretly glued to the Céline Dion performance on TV and didn’t notice a thing.) The next morning, while Rivière-du-Loup was still belching away the night before, they managed to move the bodies to the charnel house by the graveyard, where they would stay until the ground had thawed. The nuns, being independent and self-reliant creatures, alerted neither police nor doctor. The two women, they explained to the other nuns, had been a bit tipsy and died of hypothermia in the forest.

  “They’d been wanting to go for so long, Solange. Speaking of which, Madeleine will have to give us their dates of birth for the gravestones. Do you have any idea how old they were?”

  Solange didn’t say a word. How old they were? What a strange question! Like putting a price on freedom! Sister Saint Alphonse was obviously still as out to lunch as ever, she thought. She promised to speak to Madeleine as soon as possible and thanked the nun for calling.

  “One last thing, Solange. Old Ma Madeleine wasn’t a nun. She lived with us, but she never took her vows.”

  “I know all that . . .”

  “Well, now it’s become a bit of a problem, what with the picture and all . . .”

  “What picture?”

  “You know, the painting that Papa Louis gave her. He brought it back from Germany.”

  “I remember it vaguely. What’s the problem?”

  “Well, since she wasn’t really a nun, her things don’t belong to us. We have to work out who to give the picture to. That old thing can’t be worth very much. And it’s so poorly painted! You know, the one with the apostles gathered around the Virgin Mary lying on a cement slab? Used to be in the dining room. Not the Virgin Mary, the picture, I mean.”

  Solange smiled at the predicament. What was to be done? She immediately knew who might like it. She looked up Gabriel’s Berlin address in her address book. She asked Sister Saint Alphonse if she would be kind enough to mail the painting to Gabriel Lamontagne in Germany. She would send her a check for her trouble as soon as she got back to Montreal. The nun wrote down the address, with Solange spelling out the complicated, rough-sounding German words, and again wished her a happy new year.

  “I hope the two of you are well.”

  “Everything’s fine, Sister. Couldn’t be better.”

  Meanwhile, Rachel and Madeleine were having a very different conversation. Rachel was small, with the voluptuous hips of a woman who’d hit her fifties. She offered Madeleine a slice of carrot cake, which she declined.

  “Do you take sugar, Madeleine?”

  “No, never. Thank you.”

  “Well, I do. I must say you haven’t changed much. Five years ago, when I saw your photo for the first time in the newspaper, I recognized you right away. The name, too. I was sure you’d be back in New York one day.”

  Madeleine wrung her hands nervously. She was about to open her mouth to speak, but Rachel was saying something, the combination of coffee and fatigue making her more talkative.

  “Did you know, Madeleine, I’ve waited for you for a long while. Believe me, I wanted nothing more than to be there when you opened your restaurant in Times Square, but I was on duty, as I said. By the time I got there, they said you’d already left. A server told me you were staying at the Radisson and I saw you come out around 1:30. I knew exactly where you were going, the route you were going to take. You weren’t the first patient to try to look for Daddy, but you were the first who didn’t take no for an answer. That article in Business Week was right: it’s all about determination with you.

  “Once a week, I work in the ER at Mount Sinai Hospital just over there. I’m exhausted, forgive me. And I’m talking to you like we’re old friends. But I have to tell you what happened just as I was about to leave. The ambulance brought a young girl in, around 5:45. She can’t have been more than twenty, I’m sure.

  “When they lifted the sheet, I—My God, why am I telling you all this? I thought of Daddy and those photos from Auschwitz, even though Daddy didn’t go to Auschwitz, he hid in Berlin the whole time. But her body was . . . do you know what I mean? Have you seen photos of people like her?”

  “I think so, yes. Just skin and bone. Yes, I know.”

  “She’d obviously starved herself to death. We already had her on file. A colleague at the Eating Disorders clinic had already treated her a year ago. She was still able to talk. All she would say was, ‘I have to work, I have to work . . .’ Then, even after we pumped her stomach, she went and died on us. She’d taken pills. It’s not the first time, but anything to do with anorexia cuts me to the quick. It kills me. A little girl from your part of the world, too! A Canadian. A student at the Juilliard School of Music. Can you imagine? I’ll never forget her name. Stella, Stella Thanatopoulos. A young woman from Toronto. We had to call her mom. And—get this—she was livid! Can you imagine? She shouted at me like I’d strangled her da
ughter with my own hands. People are crazy, Madeleine. Raving mad. The older I get, the more I agree with Daddy.”

  Both women fell silent. The wind howling outside the skyscraper lent the scene a funereal feel.

  “I knew you’d come back for your cross,” Rachel continued. “You’re not the first. But you’re the only girl to leave with crosses that weren’t yours. Daddy and I thought we’d seen it all! When you both ran off like a couple of thieves, he raced into his office to find out what you’d taken. He wanted to give you back your cross, but he couldn’t catch you. At one point on 10th Street, he almost had your friend by the collar, but then a blizzard suddenly blew in, thick snow that stopped us in our tracks. But Daddy knew the French Canadian girls that came to see us always left from the Port Authority Bus Terminal. He also knew that almost none of them could afford a night in a hotel. They always left the same day, even if that meant traveling overnight. So that’s where we waited for you. And that damn flower that fell out of your hair! Daddy fractured his kneecap on the floor! You didn’t even stop. But no doubt you had your reasons . . .”

  Madeleine squirmed on the loveseat, stared at the floor, breathed heavily. Rachel went on.

  “Did you think we were angry with you, Madeleine?”

  “I . . . I . . .”

  “At first, yes. At first, we wondered: what did she do that for? What did we ever do to her? We wanted to help her get her life back on track, like we’d done with other girls, putting ourselves on the line, and she pulls that on us! You had a nerve!”

  “When I was getting dressed, I noticed your father hadn’t closed his desk drawer. You have to understand: I was distraught, I didn’t know what would become of me.”

  “But we knew all that, Madeleine. All the girls who came to see us were in your situation. But none of them has done as well as you have, I’m sure. I’m even sure that Daddy would have been amused to see his money led to so much more. Believe me, he’d only have spent it on a woman with a twinkle in her eye or on opera tickets.”