Boundary

by Andrée A. Michaud

  He’d hardly slept, lying on the hall rug in front of their bedroom door, and felt like he’d been hit in the lower back by a truncheon, one of those blows you don’t see coming that shatters reality and thrusts into a kind of heavy fog everything a broken individual has grown used to hanging onto. The governor’s interference, together with the echoing of the word “whore,” had been the last straw. Ménard was a guy like himself, incapable of attacking young girls, or women, or children. Yet he himself had hurt Laura, had sullied with dust and blotches of red her loveliest summer dress.

  He was trying to imagine what his life would be like if he were to quit the police, when Michaud asked him for news of Laura, whom Dottie had gone looking for during the night, making the rounds of the places they went, the park, the little hill where they sometimes picnicked in the town’s east end, the fast food place that was open twenty-four hours a day, while Michaud made calls and alerted his police cars, all for nothing, as Laura was brooding over her pain right behind the house, sitting in the shed among the carpentry and gardening tools.

  Good, she’s good, Cusack replied. Michaud hadn’t pursued the matter. This affair concerned only Cusack and Laura. He passed a hand over his brow and left the meeting room, grumbling. It was time to tell Gilles Ménard that he’d be eating canned stew for days, or maybe weeks to come.

  Gilles Ménard had covered Zaza Mulligan’s body so she wouldn’t be cold. Death could be so cold in the middle of summer. His gesture was also prompted by modesty, the bared torso, the arms, too much skin exposed. But there was no blood on Zaza’s torso, no. The shirt must have slid down to where there was blood, pushed by the wind, displaced by an animal. It was the same animal, or perhaps the wind, another wind, that had dragged the shirt under the pile of boards, unless the killer had still been there nearby, unmoving in the shelter of the underbrush, his eyes on Ménard and the young girl. He would have waited for Ménard to leave before stealing the shirt to swab the ground, to wipe his hands.

  In Gilles Ménard’s mind, you had to blame the animal or the wind, you had to find the man hidden in the woods, but he could no longer say who, the wind or the man, had landed him in this cell. All he knew was that he was innocent. Only a deranged individual could have unearthed Pierre Landry’s traps, and he wasn’t yet crazy, not then, not at the beginning of summer. It was now that he was coming unhinged, unable to see things clearly, and unable to take his eyes off the drop that, every ten seconds, was falling to the bottom of the washbasin. He stared at the tap, imagining the progress of that minuscule thread of water through the piping, saw another clear small bead form under its rusted outlet, swelling, elongating, then dropping into the drain through the force of gravity, where its echo resonated between the grey walls. Plock. That drop obsessed him and kept him from thinking, which was perhaps all for the best, because this constant drumming seemed to be protecting him from true madness.

  Seated in front of him, Michaud watched Ménard eyeing the drop, and felt as if he were going to lose his nerve. If he couldn’t stop that damned leak he’d end up tearing the sink off the wall. He got up abruptly and wrapped his handkerchief around the tap. As soon as he left that cell, he’d call a plumber. Ménard was distraught enough without this torture being imposed on him. Yet he seemed let down when Michaud stemmed the flow of the drop that connected him to the passage of time, to the eternal return of suffering and death. Still, Michaud pushed his chair in front of the basin so that Ménard would have to look at him at last. He’d have preferred him to throw a fit, to smash his chair against the wall and protest his innocence, but he seemed drained of all energy, as if he’d been walking for days in the desert only to see a thread of water appear at the foot of a dune, which he knew, however, was an illusion.

  Unable to draw anything out of Ménard, Michaud closed the cell door behind him. Passing in front of the reception desk, he asked Westlake to summon a plumber, then went to sit in the parking lot, where he directed his attention to the iridescent mirrorings in a patch of gas, reminding him of pieces of marble or onyx run through with veins, stones whose formation evoked stratified reliefs crisscrossed by streams of lava. The earth’s history was concentrated in those stones and in this pool of gas slowly evaporating. Billions of years to end up in this parking lot, in these leather shoes, in this creature on two legs with no other option than to invent God in order to defy time.

  What a mess, murmured Michaud, who nevertheless got up to go back to his job. He could tell himself that every action was meaningless, since the tree, the parking lot, and the shoes would all disappear in short order, but he saw no better way to get through this life than to keep putting one foot in front of the other. For him, the illusion of going forward took the place of God, and he would try to maintain this illusion for as long as his legs obeyed him. Hurry up, he added, without conviction, then he made his way towards the building. Many tasks awaited him, many men as well, who’d learn to do without him once he’d turned in his badge and walked away. Yet he’d phone the governor when he arrived, he’d curse the press, and he’d wait for Gilles Ménard’s trial to be finished before emptying out his drawers. In a few weeks, it would all be over.

  The girl wasn’t dead, he said over and over again, as the shower spray struck his chest. The girl’s eyes were open. The girl wasn’t dead. A wave of panic swept over him, and he bolted from the shower to throw his clothes back on. Two minutes later, he slammed the door and jumped into his car to make it look as though he were going into town. He parked at Juneau Hill behind an abandoned building, and took to the woods in the direction of Otter Trail. His heart was beating in his temples, and he felt as if he were back there, under fire from the German Maschinenpistolen, with the ground breaking up around him. Skirting a fallen tree, he tripped and heard the bullets whistling over him. Run, Little Hawk, run!

  Out of breath, he finally made it to the spot where he’d left Zaza Mulligan. He saw the red hair, the shirt draped over her chest, and he almost turned back. Someone had come, someone was perhaps watching him at that instant, and the young girl was still alive. Beneath the shirt that had appeared, he didn’t know how, he saw her heart beating, he saw her breath coming and going, shading the white garment with lighter or darker greys depending on the slant of the light. He swiftly scanned the trees around him, seeking an enemy in ambush, and he crawled towards the girl. As soon as he placed his hands on her neck, he felt the cold skin and saw the closed eyes.

  Who’s there? he demanded, his voice on edge. Who’s there? But no one answered Little Hawk. He scanned the forest again, where a few birds were cheeping, tits or robins, and perhaps tanagers, Zazas with red wings. He took away the shirt to be certain the breast was stilled, and in a surge of tenderness out of the distant years of the war, don’t cry, Jim, he swabbed the girl’s wounds. A crack rang out, who’s there? as he was dabbing at the torn leg, and the rain began to fall, which would wash away his tracks, would undo the sound of his footsteps.

  Taking advantage of this providential rain, he made his way back through the trees. Without thinking, he’d brought with him the garment left behind on Zaza Mulligan’s body by another man, a wanderer who had found the adolescent and had perhaps finished her off.

  FRENCHIE

  The Morgans left Bondrée at the same time as the Mulligans. Autumn’s on its way, my mother murmured, seeing the Morgan station wagon go by, fully loaded, in the rear window of which a box bearing the inscription “Fragile” was shoved into a corner next to other boxes that must have contained Sissy’s personal belongings, clothes, jewels, 45 and 33 rpm records. All the things their owner’s passing had rendered vulnerable, ready to crumble at the slightest touch. My mother well knew that the Mulligans’ departure was not just due to the coming of autumn, that there were a few weeks left before the clouds would be swollen with the darkest of greys, but she preferred to associate this departure with the changing seasons, rather than the dramas that had marked the summ
er. In two weeks we would also leave for the start of the school year, but the summer, what I called the summer, with its odours of cut hay and the schoolgirls with scabs on their knees, would go on until the end of September. It was in Bondrée, only in Bondrée, that autumn had arrived prematurely, swathed in mourning clothes, and with its store of traps covered over with dead leaves.

  After Gilles Menard’s arrest, the mood did not lighten. On the contrary, it was as if Ménard had been taken away in a hearse, not a police car. Death had struck a third time, leaving us all in the same state of incredulity or the same anger. There were those who were convinced of Ménard’s guilt and sullied his name in front of television cameras, those who swore that his arrest was an error, and those who remained open-mouthed, like the fish expiring in Pat Tanguay’s wicker basket. My parents were among those who refused to believe that Gilles Ménard was harbouring the face of a maniac behind his own face, deathly pale. When my father got back to Bondrée, Thursday morning, moving his weekend up by two days after hearing that Ménard had been taken away, he arrived in a state of fury. The police had screwed up, Ménard would have burned his shirt if it was him, he’s not such a sucker as to walk around with a sign saying “guilty” on his forehead! In any case, it can’t be him, it’s all he can do not to faint when he sees a drop of blood.

  My father spewed out what he had to spew to rid himself of the nastiness, the bile burning his stomach, then he went to see Jocelyne Ménard to try to cheer her up. During his absence, unable to sit still, my mother threw herself into cake making. She disappeared into a cloud of flour, and I left before I got asphyxiated.

  It was a beautiful day and no one seemed to notice. Not even Franky-Frenchie was lying out on the beach with her radio and bathing suit. She must have been mulling over her argument with Meyer or coming to terms with her heartbreak, depending on whether their set-to was fatal or not. Since I still didn’t have the right to wander off, I went into my cabin, under the pine, to depress myself a bit more I suppose, because the place no longer resembled the dark, odorous grotto where nothing could touch me. I suddenly felt constricted there, and I had the feeling that the heavy branches were forcing me down rather than embracing me. Maybe I’d grown, but what bothered me the most was that I’d got older, I was starting to lose my capacity to crawl under trees. Since my manicure session, becoming a young woman didn’t interest me any more. I looked at the ground flattened by the weight of my body, saying again that I didn’t want a bra or nylon stockings or nail polish or blood between my legs. I wanted trees to climb, I wanted dirty running shoes that go a hundred times faster than new running shoes and girls’ sandals, and I especially didn’t want to feel that what up to then had got me out of bed every morning was going to leave me cold, while life went on without me. It hurt too much to think that old age planed down the mornings, and left slivers of new wood at your bedroom door.

  I angrily dug up my tin box, in which there remained a few candies glued to their wrappings, as well as a melted mint patty stuck to the bottom under duck feathers and snakeskins. My treasure chest had lost its magic. No fairy, no genie out of the woods, could ever emerge from it any more. Still, I slid a mallard feather into my hair, and I unwrapped a caramel, here, littoldolle, but it stuck to my teeth and had a bitter taste. My mother was right, summer was over and had only lasted a few seconds, all condensed into this rusted tin container. If I could have, I would have jumped on my bicycle and left Bondrée right away, instead of which I put the box back, for Millie, and dragged my running shoes to the edge of the lake.

  It was only ten o’clock and I was already going around in circles, which is just a manner of speaking because my circles were all askew. I was navigating, rather, through a kind of pale grey that spread itself out all around me, incapable of reacting to the smells that usually unblocked my ears and opened my eyes wide in the wind’s direction. I was suddenly at a loss in the presence of a familiar beauty, and a magnificent day was being spoilt by states of mind, adult states of mind. Children’s souls were less complex, too new to the world to go to pieces when a day goes wrong. As this one had.

  Emma was in town with her mother and would be back only on the weekend, Bob had gone off with Scott Miller to cut wood on Juneau Hill, and Millie was playing with Marie Ménard in the Ménards’ sad cottage. That left my mother, and Jane Mary Brown, still fanning herself on her porch and reading useless novels and getting fat on cheese curds. A lame day, where even the fish had to drift with their heads down, their eyes brimming with salty water.

  I was getting ready to give myself a kick in the behind, literally, a good blow with my heel between my two buttocks, to go and put on my bathing suit so as to cheer up the fish, when I heard someone cry out in the Lamars’ cottage, where they were also getting ready to leave. Frenchie came out right after, slamming the door with her mother on her heels telling her that if she knew anything at all, then she should talk. Fuck, mom, I’ve told you a hundred times that I don’t know anything, she shouted. With that she went off at a run, barefoot on the Turtle Road gravel. Madame Lamar was left with her eyes glazed over, so tired that they didn’t even want to move, or to see, or to want to do their work. Finally Butterscotch, the house tomcat that seemed to weigh forty pounds, slid out through the half-open door to rub against her legs, at the same time bringing her back to life. Come, my lovely Butterscotch, Suzanne Lamar sighed, taking the cat in her arms, and she went back inside.

  I was frozen in place. The scene I’d just witnessed was as wretched as this listless day. Frenchie Lamar had said fuck to her mother, her mother had lost three or four minutes of her life while her body went on strike, but at least something was happening, and that thing had something to do with Zaza’s or Sissy’s death, or both of them, I’d have bet my life on it, because what secret could she be hiding that was so important that it was making Frenchie Lamar’s mother cry, if it wasn’t a secret having to do with the murder of her friends. I figured that if Franky-Frenchie was hiding information about that, then Gilles Ménard wasn’t guilty. That also meant that she was still in danger, even though the policemen standing guard in front of her house had been recalled after Ménard’s arrest. Her father must have thought the same thing, because he spent his time watching Frenchie to be sure that she didn’t leave their yard. I’d seen him talking to my father when he left our cottage to go and see Jocelyne Ménard. The two men spoke in low voices, making gestures in the direction of the bay, then they shook hands. A little later Monsieur Lamar got into his car and told his wife to keep an eye on Frenchie, look out for my baby, honey, and the argument started. Frenchie cried fuck, slammed the door, and left just like that, shoeless, with her long legs exposed to thorns and branches. If I hadn’t been certain of being given the bum’s rush, I’d have run after her to tell her to go and lock herself in, but Frenchie Lamar would have sent me packing, just like she’d sent her mother packing, and I’d have been flat on my back. I had no choice, I had to bring my mother into this. If I buried my head in the sand while Frenchie was being chopped to pieces, I’d never forgive myself if I lived to be ninety-nine, and I’d end up in the hell for those sinning by omission, where the innocents pound their chests all day long with their mea culpas.

  My mother was just then going down to the beach, in her pink-skirted bathing suit, her towel, pink as well, and her rubber sandals. I wasn’t used to seeing my mother like that, half naked. Exposed to the light, her white skin made me admit to myself that she had a body under her clothes, a body out of which I came nine months after my father had lain on it, and I preferred not to think about that.

  Coming near me, she stretched her towel out on the sand, and lay down facing the sun, asking why I wasn’t trying to teach sign language to the squirrels, or something like that. It was a good idea, I’d think about it. Meanwhile, I concentrated on the bruise on her left ankle so as not to have to look at her too pale thighs, trying to figure out how to bring up the subject of Frenchie. It was
the first time for weeks that my mother had settled down to tan herself, probably waiting until the Morgans and Mulligans had left, in front of whom it would have been indecent to be seen enjoying the pleasures of summer, and I was getting ready to spoil it all. You don’t look too happy, my mite, what’s going on? she added, placing a white silk scarf over her face, and I took the plunge, I told her about Frenchie’s argument with her mother, Frenchie’s fuck, the downcast look of poor Madame Lamar, insisting on the fact that even if Frenchie deserved a pair of slaps, she was in danger.