Montreal Noir

by John McFetridge

  “Worth every penny,” she said to her reflection, pulling her shoulders back and jutting her chin forward with the air of someone mildly offended. Catalina knew that three-quarters of success depended on looking the part, on making an impression that inspired confidence and a bit of fear. But Mrs. Dubois was already afraid.

  As her aquamarine heels clicked against the red marble tiles, adrenaline surged though her body. It was similar to what she felt when she ran along the trails of Mount Royal, pretending she was being hunted before turning into the hunter. Now she stopped herself from running up the staircase to the second floor, not wanting to spoil the moment she’d so thoroughly rehearsed in her imagination. She ascended slowly, solemnly, holding onto the polished wooden banister, primed for her grand entrance into the new and enviable life which had begun when Dr. Schmidt’s ended.

  As Catalina walked into the office, Mrs. Dubois was slouched at her small desk, staring at her computer screen, which was playing an electronic-greeting-card version of Bach’s “Chorale.” It was the background music for the online condolence book of Paperman’s, the funeral home that had taken care of Dr. Schmidt’s remains. Mrs. Dubois was so absorbed in scrolling through the entries left by grieving friends and clients that she did not notice her new employer’s arrival, even though she’d just buzzed her in. The guest book was likely the reason it had taken so long. Catalina had consulted the wretched site several times in preparation for meeting Dr. Schmidt’s clients—the ones who had not already moved on to a new therapist, and the ones who would be encouraged to do so. She had not gone to the funeral, nor had she left a comment. Perhaps that was what Mrs. Dubois was looking for.

  Catalina grimaced inwardly as she studied the woman in her brown loafers and matching slacks, topped with a pale-blue sweater set that Mrs. Dubois had either bought in a thrift shop or saved from her youth—she wasn’t sure which was worse. Her blond hair had the brassy and dried-out quality of box dye, and was teased into a rounded helmet and sprayed into place. She wore glasses too large for her face, with rectangular gold frames and thick lenses divided by the horizontal line of bifocals. A small gold crucifix hung around her neck and was her only piece of jewelry other than a wristwatch and plain wedding band. Catalina knew Mrs. Dubois had been widowed several years before, and imagined that coming to work and keeping the also-widowed Dr. Schmidt and his clients’ lives in order had become the woman’s raison d’être. Perhaps Mrs. Dubois had hoped that becoming indispensible in the office would get her promoted to something more meaningful than secretary. But despite being only a few years younger than Dr. Schmidt, she was not young enough to satisfy his tastes, neither while Mrs. Schmidt was alive nor after she had died. Mrs. Dubois’s sartorial choices had obviously not helped her case.

  The waiting room was a decent size, with its twelve-foot ceilings and bay windows common to the older town houses in the neighborhood. But unlike the hallway with its art deco sconces, mermaid chandelier, and parquet de Versailles floor smelling faintly of lemon polish, it had a musty odor and was as drab as Mrs. Dubois. The walls were yellowed and grayed with age, stained by cigarette smoke from the years the vile habit was still permitted indoors. Neurotics and schizophrenics surely filled the now absent ashtray on the coffee table with du Mauriers smoked down to the filter; the burns in its wood veneer betrayed its former location. In its place was a metal bowl filled with wrapped candies that looked shriveled and unappealing. An assortment of outdated magazines littered the rest of the table’s surface: Paris Match, Chatelaine, and a tattered issue of Police Extra with a picture of a smug cop on the cover, the headline blaring, “Payé par les Hells!” Catalina thought she could smell stale smoke trapped in the brown fabric of the couch, though perhaps it was carried in Mrs. Dubois’s bouffant.

  When the door clicked shut, the old woman finally looked up, her eyes glazed as a sleepwalker’s. She gave Catalina a wan smile, then burst into tears. “I’m so sorry,” she blubbered, and hunched over to dig through her brown bag for a tissue, though there was a box for clients sitting at the front edge of her desk. “I know it’s been a week, but until you walked in . . .”

  Catalina moved toward the crying woman, towering over her as she laid her briefcase on the desk. With her fingernails, she extracted a tissue from the box and handed it to Mrs. Dubois, who dabbed at the dribbles of mascara that were pooling in her wrinkles. “There, there,” she whispered, hoping her voice conveyed sympathy. She stopped short of patting the woman’s hand, which looked greasy and was mottled with brown spots. “It must be very hard to move from denial to acceptance so quickly. You’ve skipped a few very important steps.” Mrs. Dubois tried to smile, though she was still leaking blackened tears. “Thank you for coming in on such short notice, Joan.” She bent over the secretary’s desk and gazed at her so intensely that Mrs. Dubois was compelled to lean back in her chair. “Dr. Schmidt said you were as dependable as an atomic clock.”

  Mrs. Dubois winced when she heard his name, though Catalina pretended not to notice. She was not the woman’s therapist, after all, and was eager to avoid the questions that were swimming behind the woman’s watery eyes: Why did Dr. Schmidt do it when his prostrate treatments were going so well? How could she, who saw him daily—more than anyone else—not have noticed his depression? And how did Catalina, who she had never heard of until after his death, come to be named a curator in his professional will? Dr. Weintraub was listed as his first choice, but he had retired to the Cayman Islands years ago and was unlikely to come back to Montreal to settle his old friend’s affairs. Catalina knew this because Forrest had mentioned that he hoped to follow Dr. Weintraub’s example, though he preferred Bermuda, which he visited every other year during Christmas break.

  Catalina’s answers were prepared, of course. Yes, Bermuda would have been a more fitting and gentler denouement to his long career, but neither lifespan nor will to live came with a guaranteed end date—something, perhaps, for Mrs. Dubois to mull over as well? And men manifested depression in different ways than women: irritability, violence, impulsivity. These were things she might not have readily noticed in the sterile environment of the office, no matter how well she thought she knew him. Not to mention there was an increased incidence, statistically speaking, of suicidal ideation among psychotherapists. But since Mrs. Dubois wouldn’t be around long enough for this first encounter to matter, Catalina didn’t bother comforting her with facts or philosophical musings, nor did she explain how she had come to fill Dr. Schmidt’s orthopedic shoes, which as she recalled were not that big. For the moment, she would just empathize and validate the woman’s feelings—it was what all the literature recommended.

  “I can see how hard this has been on you, Joan,” Catalina said in her most compassionate tone. She handed the woman another tissue, and Mrs. Dubois wiped her tears, smudging mascara into her crow’s feet, then blowing her nose like a rusty trumpet.

  “I’m so sorry,” the woman replied, trying to smile. “I didn’t expect to have such a reaction. I didn’t even cry at the memorial service. I guess there was no time to process it—he was at work one day and buried the next.” She waved her frail hands in a gesture of helplessness, then lifted her handbag onto her lap and retrieved a dented compact. “Look at me, I’m such a mess.” She worked haphazardly on the smudges around her eyes with the soggy tissue. “It’s a good thing that no clients are coming in today. There are dozens of messages and just as many referrals that were made before he . . . left us.” Her face began to collapse again; she managed to catch it, but not the quaver in her voice. From a drawer she retrieved two folders, which she handed to Catalina: the first was full of little pink callback slips, the second contained almost a dozen intake sheets, which provided basic information about each potential client—name, age, address, as well as a few lines summarizing the reason for the referral. Catalina placed the folder with the pink slips back onto the desk and slipped the second folder into her briefcase. Mrs. Dubois gave her a puzzled look.


  “It will be at least a few more weeks before I can return any of these calls,” she explained, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “I’d like to spruce up the waiting room, give it a fresh start, and probably the rest of the office too.”

  A mild panic flitted across the secretary’s face as she glanced at the sagging furniture and the fading posters hung with no apparent design on the walls. They illustrated Freud’s defense mechanisms—projection, sublimation, denial, reaction formation—with large-headed and frightened-looking characters who were sure to make clients uneasy.

  “Feel free to take anything that holds sentimental value for you. I’m sure Dr. Schmidt would have wanted it that way.” This statement seemed to placate the secretary, as her only response was a quiet, “Thank you.”

  “Now, if it’s not too much trouble, can you make a list of all the clients with active files? I’d like you to note who should be contacted by phone as well as who should receive the lawyer’s letter explaining what has occurred and what will happen next.” It was protocol to reach out to each client individually, and Catalina believed that you could get away with almost anything if you kept on top of the smaller tasks. From her briefcase she extracted a flash drive containing the lawyer’s letter and placed it before Mrs. Dubois. “Make sure everyone on the list gets a copy of the file labeled, Schmidt-death-notice.”

  Mrs. Dubois plugged the flash drive into her computer and pulled up the document, which bore the letterhead of Dr. Schmidt’s attorney, Anthony Curtiss, and was signed by him as well, though Catalina had composed the message herself for expediency. The secretary pushed her glasses onto the bridge of her nose and silently read the letter.

  Dear———,

  It is with deep regret that I write to inform you of Dr. Forrest Schmidt’s passing. Many of you have known him and counted upon his support for years, and no doubt this news comes as a shock. It is understandable if you have questions about his death, but Dr. Schmidt’s primary concern in his professional relationship with you was to keep the focus on your needs and emotions. Although he did not have the time to generate personal referrals for each of you, rest assured that in the coming weeks you will be contacted by his curator, Dr. Catalina Thwaite, who will also be assuming much of his practice. She will confirm any referrals, as well as inform you when appointments will resume at the Sherbrooke Street location. In the interim, should you experience overwhelming distress as a result of Dr. Schmidt’s passing and the concomitant halt of your therapy, please do not hesitate to present yourself at the nearest emergency room or call one of the help lines provided with this letter. In closing, I would like to express my deepest condolences for your loss.

  Oddly, the letter perked Mrs. Dubois up a bit, though it might have been the prospect of filling the role of next-of-kin by informing the clients of the doctor’s passing. The office’s voice mail had announced that all sessions were cancelled until further notice, and a statement of Dr. Schmidt’s death had appeared in the Gazette and Le Devoir. There had been no reference to the cause of death, which was certain to be the first question everyone would ask, had Mrs. Dubois not already spilled the beans when she called to cancel their appointments.

  “Would you like me to phone them since I already know them all?”

  “No,” Catalina said firmly, “it would be better if they heard it from someone—” she paused as if to select her words, “—less involved.”

  Mrs. Dubois looked somewhat sheepish as she nodded, but she picked up a pen and legal pad, eager to prove she was something more than a quivering sack of grief. “And by what criteria would you like me to select who gets called, Dr. Thwaite?”

  “By who is most likely to become hysterical, naturally.”

  Catalina did not indicate which clients would receive the phone call in addition to the letter. She had yet to decide what would be most interesting.

  * * *

  It took Mrs. Dubois all morning to compile the patient list and personalize and print the letters. Meanwhile, Catalina sequestered herself behind the dark wooden door that led to both Dr. Schmidt’s consultation room and study. Like the waiting area, the rooms were spacious, with large windows looking onto the street. The consultation room had the dark wainscoting of what was once a dining room or parlor before the town house had been cut up into office space—two other doctors had offices on the second floor. There was also a fireplace that no longer functioned; a fake log in need of dusting sat on its grate. The mantelpiece was made of the same dark walnut as the doors of the waiting room and study. A porcelain Ming reproduction vase holding dried flowers sat before a wood-framed mirror, and a green corduroy sofa was pushed up against the wall by the windows. This kept the distractions of the outside world away from clients, but afforded them to Dr. Schmidt. Catalina had to admit this was good planning—it went without saying that most of his long-term patients were going to be unbearably dull. (The hysterics would be called, she all at once decided.) A matching armchair sat facing the sofa with an end table next to it, an obvious cousin to the coffee table in the waiting room. A few files still lay upon it instead of being locked away in a file cabinet as professional standards and bylaws required. She wasn’t sure who was at fault for the lapse: Dr. Schmidt or Mrs. Dubois. She chose to condemn them both. She sat on neither the sofa nor chair; both looked lumpy and likely to shed a powder of grass-stain green on her lovely new suit. With amused contempt, she imagined the sofa being carried out with Mrs. Dubois stretched across it, complaining to the ghost of Dr. Schmidt about his successor.

  Catalina picked up the wayward files and carried them into the adjoining study, tossing them onto Dr. Schmidt’s gray metal desk. She would instruct Mrs. Dubois to file them in the matching metal cabinet tucked away in a closet that also contained one of the doctor’s old hats and trench coats. All of his belongings looked utilitarian and tired. Perhaps they had all been new once, but their time had clearly passed. More likely they were hand-me-downs, just like the furniture in his apartment on Wood Avenue, which had been left untouched after his mother’s death—a dusty shrine of 1940s chinoiserie. Catalina had no such sympathies. The metal desk, the lugubrious sofa, and the faded brown rug would be thrown out immediately; she wouldn’t even bother donating them to charity. This would be her favor to whatever down-on-their-luck family might acquire them, giving them a chance to wait for something better to come along, something free of the accumulated dander and burdens of others.

  She hesitated at the bathroom door, sniffing the air like a disdainful cat, but was pleasantly surprised to see a spotless claw-foot tub resting on a black-and-white tile floor, as well as a large pedestal sink with a shiny chrome faucet, and a modern toilet paired with a bidet. The bathroom was the only room that looked like it belonged to the town house, probably because someone other than Dr. Schmidt had chosen its fixtures. It smelled of flowery ammonia, evidence of a recent visit by the cleaning staff, who obviously took pride in buffing and polishing the one room in the office that showed the fruits of their labor. A striped bathrobe drooped on a hook behind the door, and the medicine cabinet contained Dr. Schmidt’s old razor, shaving brush, and an open canister of shaving soap that had specks of stubble trapped in its melted waves. There were also a few pill bottles: painkillers and vitamins, immunotherapy drugs for his cancer, along with a full bottle of the same sedatives that had dispatched him, which she slipped into her pocket. She would ask the cleaning staff to dispose of his remaining personal effects during their next rounds. From her inner pocket she extracted a yellow cotton handkerchief bearing the initials FS and, out of habit, wiped her fingerprints from the medicine cabinet.

  While she was removing the traces of her inspection, she heard Mrs. Dubois’s feeble voice: “Hello? Sorry to disturb.”

  The constant apologizing was starting to get on Catalina’s nerves—had she been truly sorry, she would not have come into the study without an invitation. No doubt the secretary’s territoriality, along with her grief and routine, meant she would
be crossing boundaries all the time, which would not do. New locks would be the first order of business, this afternoon if possible: one for the main entrance, another for the door between the consultation room and the waiting room, and one for her study. This would not only prevent Mrs. Dubois and whoever replaced her from barging in, it would keep the crazies contained.

  “Not a problem,” Catalina called out, stuffing the handkerchief into her pocket as she stepped out of the bathroom. The secretary was looking through the files on the desk, where Catalina’s briefcase lay perilously open.

  “I’ll put these away for you.” Mrs. Dubois located the key to the file cabinet on her key ring, but didn’t apologize for leaving the files laying about. Catalina saved her reproach for a more profitable moment. “These are the clients he would have met with . . .” The woman sniffled and hugged the files to her bosom like a picture of a loved one, then quickly turned toward the closet to hide her latest wave of tears. She jiggled the lock on the file cabinet until it opened.