Since she was convinced of Gilles Ménard’s innocence, my mother knew perfectly well that Frenchie was not safe from the murderer, which was the reason she spent her time keeping her eyes on her from the kitchen window, but she hadn’t heard the argument because of the radio, which she’d turned up to hear Chet Baker singing My Funny Valentine. I’ll go and talk to Madame Lamar, she said, letting her silk scarf slide onto the sand, then she took my hand and smiled. The sun was making the watery yellow circles around her irises sparkle like a ring of minuscule molten gold nuggets. There was such love in her eyes that I thought that never, in all my life, would I see anything so beautiful. I turned away so as not to be transfixed, and again I focused my eyes on the blue, or the purple rather, discolouring her ankle.
I’ll put a dress on over my bathing suit and we’ll go, she said, getting up. I watched her climb towards the cottage, not even mad that I’d disturbed her tanning session, and I felt a pang in my heart, a pang of love, seeing her little skirt fluttering over her hips. I was getting older, there was no other explanation, and I was gradually becoming aware that it could be not just a bore, but downright painful.
By the time she knocked at Suzanne Lamar’s door, my mother had lost her self-assurance, and was smoothing the sides of her dress, since she didn’t have any belt to twist. Leaving the cottage, she warned me to be quiet and to let her talk, but I’d have bet my life that she was too wound up to think straight, that she’d forgotten the words she’d planned to start with as she was pulling on her dress, and that she was groping for them frantically in that recess of memory that whites out from shyness when your nerves start short-circuiting. Still, I had confidence in her powers of improvisation, my mother always knew what to say, even when there was absolutely nothing to be said but you had to talk anyway.
I took a step back when Suzanne Lamar opened the door in a dressing gown that must have dated from her wedding night, close to transparent, with lots of frayed lace. I’d only seen her from a distance earlier on, but she was so pale it was scary, with circles around her eyes down to her chin. She’d applied mauve eye shadow to her bloodshot eyes, which didn’t help at all, and by her puffed-up nose you could tell that she’d been crying to beat the band. Taken aback by her look of death warmed over, my mother right away put a hand on her shoulder, and Suzanne Lamar started to cry again. Without waiting for an invitation, Mama went in, bringing me along, and sat Madame Lamar down while she made some tea. I stayed standing near the door, not too sure if I wanted to hear Suzanne Lamar’s outpouring, she’d end up stark naked if she didn’t leave the sides of her dressing gown alone. I didn’t know why women were always playing with a bit of skin or a fingernail or crumpling a piece of cloth. Hormones, probably.
Come help me, mite, Mama whispered to me from the counter where jars of jam and pickles were lined up, and I looked for cups in the cupboards, happy to be able to rummage around without being reprimanded. While the tea was steeping, Mama brought some handkerchiefs to Madame Lamar, she was always ready to help others, strangers or not, at her own expense, because she must have longed, sometimes, to bask peacefully in the sun without one of her three little brats coming round. But it was too late, the brat in chief had shown up, and my mother had left her beach towel to take the sun all by itself. She was a mother in the real sense of the word, who forgot herself as soon as a child cried or another woman needed help. Seeing her putting herself out that way, I’d long ago promised myself that I’d never have a child, and so would never be able to forget that I existed.
I finally found two cups with geese on them, and others with a picture of the queen, but I chose the geese, the queen reminding me too much of old-fashioned fairy tales. I took the quart of milk out of the refrigerator, and brought three cups to the table. My mother, sitting on the edge of her chair, took Suzanne Lamar’s hands, hands faded too soon, slightly plump, the shininess of whose nails contrasted with the wrinkled skin, and Suzanne Lamar, touched by my mother’s solicitude, gasped out that she couldn’t sleep, that she was worried about her daughter, who refused to confide in her, that she didn’t know any more what to do.
With all the tact and gentleness of which she was capable, Mama talked to her about the scene I’d witnessed, making it clear that if Frenchie had any information, she ought to alert the police. At the mention of the word “police,” Suzanne Lamar abruptly pulled her hands out of those of my mother, almost shouting that there was no question of involving the police because Françoise hadn’t told her what was bothering her. There was fear in her eyes, and more than that, terror, which prompted my mother to pull away from the cold blast of wind that had entered the room. For myself, I lowered my eyes to Madame Lamar’s slippers, because the dread distorting her face, already disfigured by pain, hit me like a ton of bricks.
We don’t need the police, she added, then she told my mother she could leave, the crisis had passed, and she’d be able to manage. We’d hardly had time to take a sip of our tea when Suzanne Lamar ushered us out, apologising for getting carried away. This woman wanted to protect her daughter, that was clear. Mama didn’t protest, she would have acted the same way had I been in trouble. Saying goodbye, Madame Lamar repeated that everything was fine, that she was just overwhelmed, it wasn’t surprising, but her eyes were flitting back and forth, unable to focus on a single object while seeking help where none was to be found, in the crazed void into which the lake, the trees, and the mountain were being hurled, all pitched into a torrent of water and greenery deep in the abyss that was pulling them down.
Mama was just going down the porch stairs when Millie, coming back from the Ménards’ with our father, ran towards her. Seeing the doll hanging from Millie’s arm, Suzanne Lamar opened wide her eyes, stifled a cry with her pudgy hands, and fled into her cottage.
Outside, Mama, Papa, Millie and I were left open-mouthed, wondering how Bobine could have made Suzanne Lamar take flight as if she’d seen a ghost.
Sitting at the kitchen table, my father slammed his newspaper down on the plastic tablecloth with its fruity design, crushing a green grape already punctured by a cigarette burn nobody could stop picking at. He’d made a decision. He’d go and phone the police as soon as Millie was put to bed.
While preparing supper, he and my mother had discussed Suzanne Lamar’s attitude, that of Frenchie, and that of Bob Lamar, who didn’t leave Frenchie’s side for a second when he was in Bondrée. Those people knew something, there was no doubt about it, but my mother was hesitant. She was convinced that Suzanne Lamar wanted first and foremost to spare her daughter more suffering, and she felt she’d be betraying her by calling the police too quickly. But Bobine clinched the argument. When my father asked me where I’d found her, he and my mother almost choked on their corn. The blood-stained shirt had been pulled out from under the same pile of boards, plus a bag full of hair that had apparently been Sissy Morgan’s, news that just about did me in – a scalp, for Pete’s sake! All this was information the adults had kept to themselves, thinking maybe we had some special fondness for that pile of boards, or that maybe we’d start losing our hair out of solidarity with Sissy or start tearing it out at the roots from sympathy, who knows?
My father ran to spit his corn into the sink, my mother ran after him, and I spilled my glass of Fanta onto the tablecloth, drowning the tortured grape at the same time. I didn’t bother going for a rag, the grape would recover, but I cried out why didn’t you tell me? A question for which no one had an answer. Because I was an idiot, I suppose, too stupid to draw a line between point A and point B without tripping over some other letter. If I’d known, I’d have spoken up sooner, the police would have examined Bobine and turned the pile of boards upside down, which might have prevented Gilles Ménard’s arrest, Suzanne Lamar’s collapse, the zombification of Franky-Frenchie, the sadness of little Marie, and the loss of two dozen ears of corn.
In the dead silence that came over the room, Bob let loose with a st
upefied Jesus Christ, which got a rise neither out of my mother nor my father, too stunned to react. The ticking of the teacup-shaped clock over the stove was the only audible noise, until Millie asked if her doll had bled. Mama reassured her, swearing that Bobine had not lost a drop of blood, but her look contradicted what she was saying. Given her state, Bobine had certainly bled, after Zaza, before Zaza, it didn’t matter, captive to the slimy hands that had gouged out her eyes. No one knew what role Millie’s doll had played in this story. We were all certain, however, that it was hidden under the pile of boards by the person who had also deposited Ménard’s shirt and Sissy’s hair there, the killer in other words, or someone who was trying to protect him by blaming the murders on Ménard.
I’m going over now, my father finally said, not able to wait for the tooth fairy to arrive, and probably frightened, like me, by the idea of roasting in hell for not having acted sooner. He’d just got up from his chair when Suzanne Lamar burst into the cottage. She’d looked everywhere for Frenchie, and hadn’t found her.
It was seven-thirty on the kitchen clock, seven-thirty-three on Sissy Morgan’s watch, and my father now had two good reasons to get Stan Michaud out of his La-Z-Boy.
In too dark a mood to be enjoying his first day off for ages, Stan Michaud was mowing his lawn behind his house and thinking about Gilles Ménard, who must have been monitoring the progress of a spider on his cell’s ceiling, or who maybe was lost in contemplation of a crack in the yellowed plaster, when Fred Crosby, who was replacing Anton Westlake that night, phoned him. Dottie took the call, hoping that it was one of her co-workers at the library, or maybe Stan’s sister, uncle, or aunt, or a vacuum cleaner salesman miraculously doing his rounds in the neighbourhood, anyone at all who had nothing to do with her husband’s work.
Seeing Dottie’s sombre mien in the doorway, he understood right away that something was wrong, and hoped a living room wall had collapsed, which would have explained his wife’s knitted brows, but all the walls were in place, and, next to the one closing off the sitting room, the telephone receiver was perched on a low table. Freddy Crosby, Dottie said, and she went into the garden. When she came back, she found Stan in the bedroom, changing out of his work clothes into clean pants, and grumbling that he knew, he knew, he knew, for Christ’s sake. Can you call Cusack, he asked Dottie while pulling on a shirt, but she replied no, she couldn’t, Laura would never forgive her.
Another girl has disappeared, Dot, this is serious. So is marriage, she shot back, placing a kiss on his forehead, and suggesting he call someone else. He tried Westlake first, only to hang up after fifteen rings, then Conrad, then Demers, but those two had the best reasons in the world for not being able to go with him, the first all agog because his wife’s waters had just broken, the second because he’d just fallen in his garden shed a few minutes ago, his wife said, and was bleeding like a pig from his head. If he’s bleeding, that means everything’s all right, grumbled Michaud, thinking that he’d be two men short the next day, and he had no choice but to call Cusack and risk causing a divorce.
Frenchie Lamar, he sighed when Cusack picked up, and the other also sighed at the other end of the line. Pass me Laura, I’m going to talk to her, Michaud added, faced with his colleague’s silence. He, of course, got bogged down in muddled explanations, and Dottie took the phone out of his hands before he made the situation worse. I’m coming, she murmured, then she applied another kiss to Stan’s brow, but there was no more smile on her face. She was on the side of women, women who were alive, and who’d had enough of playing second fiddle to death.
While he sprayed himself with eau de cologne, Dottie pulled on a sweater, and Michaud dropped her off at the Cusacks’, where Jim was waiting for him, pacing up and down on the lawn, without a thermos of coffee this time, or any snacks for the road. Jim took Dottie’s place on the front seat, Dottie took that of Jim in the Cusacks’ yard, a cop style wife-swap, and the car took off.
At the first intersection Michaud mumbled I’m sorry, Jim fanned the air with his left arm, as if to say that he didn’t have to be sorry, that was the work, the life, his life. When they got as far as North Anson, he told Michaud that he’d cancelled a reservation in a Kennebunkport motel, where he and Laura were to be celebrating their third wedding anniversary. Laura had been talking only of that, of the straw hat she was going to buy, of the shells being sold in little green or yellow nets, of the mother-of-pearl polished by the waves, of the colours at sunrise, those thin pink and cream-coloured bands, you know, where the sea meets the sky. Michaud, thinking of his own vacation, almost placed a hand on Cusack’s shoulder, but there was the road to deal with, and that shoulder was too damned far, he’d never bridge the gap.
The rest of the trip unfolded amid the sea smells Cusack had talked about, in a climate blighted by awkwardness, and regret at not being able to respond to the sorrow concealed behind the smell of seaweed, which dissipated bit by bit as they approached Boundary and Frenchie Lamar, who at that very moment was running through the woods, barefoot, a large cut in her right cheek, a gash in the shape of an M, perhaps, or a W.
There weren’t many men in Boundary that day if you considered the fact that some families had already left, that Ménard was in prison, that the Mulligan sons had pulled up stakes that afternoon after closing up the cottage for the winter, but all those who were there, from the oldest to the youngest, answered Suzanne Lamar’s desperate call. They were just a handful, Sam Duchamp and his son Bob, Ed McBain, Scott Miller, the son of Gary, Pat Tanguay, who’d been able to drag along his son Jean-Louis, Brian Larue, Conrad Plamondon, the owner of the campground, and Bill Cochrane with his wooden leg, all gathered together behind the Lamars’ cottage, where Florence Duchamp draped a shawl over the shoulders of Suzanne Lamar, who was shivering in her near-to-transparent dressing gown, her grief almost indecent, given the state of her dress.
Before the men fanned out, Sam Duchamp asked her where she’d been looking for Frenchie. Everywhere, she’d looked everywhere, on the Loutre trail, that of Belette, at the top of Côte Croche on the woodcutters’ road, crying her name, Frenchie, my little Françoise. We’ll keep looking, Duchamp promised, responsible despite himself for leading the hunt, since he was the sturdiest, and it was to him that Suzanne Lamar had run, an honest man, she said to herself, who’d help her find her child.
Duchamp was discussing things with Larue when he saw a few women appear, Stella McBain and Harriet Miller, Madeleine Maheux, Martha Irving, Juliette Lacroix, women who didn’t have small children to watch over, and refused to wait behind their windows, pacing up and down, while one of their own was perhaps being sacrificed to some scumbag’s fantasies. No, this time they were going to be part of the search, and find Frenchie before it was too late.
Stella McBain and Harriet Miller were already moving off along Turtle Road when Jocelyne Ménard’s car almost skidded out of control while taking a curve. She braked in a cloud of dust on seeing the crowd near the Lamars’ cottage, and quickly jumped out of the vehicle, her little Marie in her arms, whom she handed over to Florence Duchamp, please, Flo. Now there was proof that Gilles wasn’t guilty, and she wanted to be the first to spit in the killer’s face. Suddenly she seemed twice as tall as she really was, taller than all the men gathered there, than Sam Duchamp, than Brian Larue, than Scott Miller, her eyes shining like those of a woman in love, with a burning light, and no one doubted that if someone could get on the killer’s trail, it would be her, this woman in love.
Then a strangulated wailing was heard in the half-light of Turtle Road, and they saw Flora Tanguay running, too fat to run like that, Flora waving her arms over her head, and she fell and the wailing grew louder, but it wasn’t Flora keening that way, no, Flora was moaning, Flora was struggling for breath. Jean-Louis, her husband, rushed up to help her, followed by Florence Duchamp or Madeleine Maheux, maybe both of them, and the source of those cries now surged into view, Frenchie Lamar, wet blo
od on her forehead and cheeks, her long legs scored by branches, and her feet bleeding, bare, naked as the leg of Zaza Mulligan far back in the woods. She wanted to run faster, seeing her mother throwing herself towards her, arms outstretched, both of them with their arms outstretched and crying, then Frenchie tripped as well, a young girl with long legs whose long blonde hair flew in front of her over her face and over her cries, which stopped abruptly as she struck the ground.
In the darkening night, only Suzanne Lamar was still crying.
When Stan Michaud and Jim Cusack swerved into the Lamar yard, riding on their hubcaps, Frenchie was stretched out on the living room couch, still unconscious, while Hope Jamison, who’d been sent for, was dressing her wounds and applying compresses to her forehead. As for Suzanne Lamar, she was sitting in an armchair next to the couch, her eyes fixed on Frenchie, whose child’s soul seemed to be uncoiling in vaporous wreaths over her sullied body. Florence Duchamp had brought Suzanne some tea, which she hadn’t touched, then a glass of vermouth, but neither the glass nor the cup had budged. Stella McBain, on her knees in front of her, tried to comfort her with the few words of French she knew, ignorant of the fact that Suzanne Lamar had been living in English for so long that she was surprised when she wasn’t called Susan. Tout va bien, now, everything’s all right, la petite is here, she repeated in her gentlest voice, and she went on in English, poor thing, poor little girl.
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