The Forgotten Daughter

by Joanna Goodman

  “Do you want to see my mom’s store?” he asks when the sun starts to wane and they’re unlacing their skates. “It used to be my grandfather’s.”

  She turns her head to look at him. There’s something in her eyes, a shadow that wasn’t there a moment ago. She’s quiet.

  “We don’t have to,” he says.

  “No, of course I want to.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  She slips on her boots and stands up. “Let’s go.”

  As they approach Rue Principale in Cowansville en route to the seed store, Véronique places her hand on James’s forearm and says, “Can we take a detour?”

  “Where to?”

  “Get on Rue de la Rivière and stay on it until Fordyce.”

  He does as she asks, and they drive in silence on the familiar country road, which is bordered on both sides by endless white farmland stretching out toward the sky. This will always be home, he thinks, with a bittersweet tug of nostalgia. The Townships are rich with memories of his childhood and the father he lost. This was Gabriel’s world, from the cornfields to the lake and everything in between.

  He looks over at Véronique, following her gaze out the window. He knows exactly where he’s taking her and understands why she got so quiet all of a sudden. He grew up fifteen minutes away, after all.

  “Did you used to visit him often?” he asks her.

  “Only on special occasions.”

  “What were the visits like?”

  “I hated it,” she says. “It was the most depressing place in the world. Have you ever been inside a prison?”

  “No.”

  “I always dreaded coming. It was awful.”

  She doesn’t talk about her father very often, and almost never about his time in jail. He’s glad she’s opening up now, quietly honored that she’s having him take her to the penitentiary.

  They continue in silence until they turn onto Chemin Fordyce. The landscape is a blanket of white, lovely and serene, the trees fluffy with fresh snow. If not for the orange cones flanking the entrance and the government sign announcing the Cowansville Penitentiary, you could forget where you were.

  “You okay?”

  “This is far enough,” she says. “Can we just sit here a minute?”

  James pulls the car to the side of the road, puts it in park.

  “This road,” she says. “I can’t tell you how much I dreaded this drive.”

  “What was it like, seeing him inside?”

  “You have to understand,” she says. “I didn’t know him. I’d never known him. He went to jail when I was a baby, so he was just this stranger I had to visit in this terrifying place. We’d sit across from each other at a table, and he’d ask me questions. I’d have to sit on his lap. He’d hold me and sob. It was so awkward. I’d cry the whole way home.”

  “Your mother waited for him, though. She didn’t leave him.”

  “She loved him.”

  James nods, pretending to understand.

  “I only got to know him when he came home,” she says. “He would talk to me about his upbringing, his struggles, how he became interested in politics. The more he explained to me about the struggle, the more I was able to understand why he wound up in the FLQ. Why he did what he did.”

  “But what he did—”

  “He’s my dad, James. I was happy to have him home, to be able to get to know him, to actually have a father. He’s a great guy. He really is. You just don’t understand where he came from, what he lived through.”

  James holds back, bites his tongue. This is not the time for one of their arguments. She’s finally opening up to him, and he doesn’t want to risk losing her trust. He doesn’t agree with her, but he doesn’t have to win this one. Doesn’t have to prove he’s right and she’s wrong and convince her that her father is a villain.

  “Will you introduce me to him?” he asks her. The journalist in him would love a crack at Léo Fortin.

  “Let’s just get through your mother,” she says.

  The seed store is on the main street in Cowansville. His mother’s been running Semences Supérieures/Superior Seeds since her father died in the early sixties. She started working for him as a little girl, weighing seeds up in the attic, some fifty years ago. It still blows his mind. She loves that store as much as she loves her kids, and she’s never fussed about trying to convince them otherwise. “It’s my passion,” she always says. She plans to work there until they put her in the grave, just like her father did.

  The bell jingles when James opens the door. Whenever he visits, he’s always surprised by how little has changed over the years. Even the sign out front—written in both French and English—has never been updated. His mother’s marketing strategy in the face of the American big-box store invasion has been to dig in and do what she and her father before her had always done: offer personalized “Mom and Pop” service, build lasting relationships with their loyal customers, and preserve the authentic feel of a charming seed shop from days gone by, which is why she’s kept her father’s antique bank counter and oak filing cabinets for the seeds. She’s got three things over her competitors: rare seeds, expertise, and heart. “You won’t find any of those at Seed Depot or Garden World,” she likes to say. “My store smells like things are growing.”

  To her credit, her store has managed to flourish in the good times and survive the bad; right now is one of the bad. The economy is grim and business has been slow, but she’s pulled through before, and frankly, she secretly loves the challenge of having to “save the business.” It’s a free pass for her to work even harder than usual. James and his sisters all recognize that Maggie is a workaholic—even more so since Gabriel died—but it also helped her get through one of the darkest periods of her life. Besides, it’s not like any of them could talk her out of it. Maggie is a force.

  They find her in her office, which is not unusual for a winter Saturday. This is the time of year where her work shifts to budgeting, marketing, and stocking up for spring.

  “Ma?”

  Maggie looks up from her work, and James sees her as Véronique must be seeing her for the first time. Her hair is still thick and black—dyed now, but no less striking—and for someone just a year shy of sixty, she looks damn good. She’ll tell you the work keeps her young, but good genes don’t hurt either.

  “Ma, this is Véronique.”

  Maggie stands up and comes around the desk. She embraces Véronique and says, “He’s been talking about you since October. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

  “I love your store,” Véronique says. “It has such a happy feeling when you walk in.”

  “It was my father’s,” she says proudly. “I’ve tried not to change too much.”

  James realizes his palms are sweaty. He’s relieved that Véronique cut off her dreadlocks and now has a sexy bob of soft auburn waves. Maggie wouldn’t have liked the dreadlocks, but then she was never one to choose her boyfriends by what might please her parents. “I met James’s father here,” Maggie is saying. “He came in one day with his sister, and I was hiding on the stairs over there, spying on the shop floor. I loved all the action down here. Anyway, Gabriel came in—he must have been about fifteen or sixteen. My God, he was gorgeous. He looked exactly like James, only rougher around the edges.”

  Maggie smiles, remembering. “That was it,” she says. “The moment I saw him, I was infatuated. I loved him until the day he died.”

  “Well, Ma,” James says, “this is a lot for the first five minutes.”

  Maggie and Véronique both laugh, and James starts to relax.

  “We’ll have lots to talk about tonight,” Maggie says. “I’ll be home by five thirty. I made a shepherd’s pie.”

  Véronique and Maggie exchange two kisses on either cheek, and then Maggie wraps her arms around James and holds tight. “You look happy,” she whispers. T’as l’air b’ein content.

  “She can hear you, Ma,” he says, but he
doesn’t mind. He is happy.

  Back at the house, he takes Véronique upstairs to his former room, which is now the guest room. His mother has always loved decorating—much like Véronique, she does almost everything well—and this season the house is an homage to her current idol, Ralph Lauren. Each room is a tasteful blend of stripes and checks and bold floral patterns in navy blues and hunter greens; the walls are papered in classic ticking stripes, the pine floors are laden with dark floral rugs, and the curtains are gingham. Couches are buried under throw pillows, bookshelves are overflowing, dark mahogany antiques are decorated with candles and family pictures. Every room strikes a confounding balance between overdone and understated, the overall effect being one of warmth and hominess.

  His bed—now the guest bed—is layered with a brown plaid duvet cover, wool blanket, and cable-knit throw, as well as about a half dozen decorative pillows in a variety of leather and suede and flannel.

  “Your mom likes pillows,” Véronique says, falling back into a pile of them.

  James climbs on top of her and starts kissing her. They can’t get each other’s clothes off fast enough. They’re in that glorious early stage when every touch is electric, when it’s all exploratory and new. She likes to be on top, isn’t shy about telling him what to do. It’s such a turn-on the way she places her hands on his chest and says his name over and over again—a whimper almost, like she’s pleading with him, her beautiful body rocking back and forth—and then that final arch of her slender back, the way her body shudders and quivers against him when she collapses.

  “How many girls have you slept with in this bed?” she asks him when they’ve finished.

  “Not that many,” he says. “My parents were in the room next door.”

  She’s got her head on the flat of his stomach, her arm draped across him. “I need to shower before your sister and mom get here.”

  “I’ll join you, in case there’s parts you can’t reach.”

  “I’m a little anxious.”

  “About what?”

  “The dinner conversation.”

  “Why? My mom and Elodie are harmless.”

  Véronique doesn’t look convinced. “My father is always the elephant in the room.”

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “We have our own elephants.”

  After dinner, which is jovial and relaxed—helped along by a couple of excellent bottles of Barolo—the four of them move into the den for a round of cards. Turns out they all play 500, and to make things more interesting, it’s Elodie and Véronique against Maggie and James. Not surprisingly, Véronique is a formidable opponent, even against Maggie, whose competitiveness is matched only by James’s. Maggie and James take the first win, at which point Maggie goes out to the liquor cabinet in the dining room to retrieve a bottle of cognac. Things are going well.

  “So what’s the age difference between you two?” Véronique asks James and Elodie as she deals the next hand.

  James looks over at Elodie. He hasn’t told Véronique anything about Elodie’s past, which is the family’s unspoken rule. Elodie prefers not to discuss her past with anyone, and out of respect for her wishes, they all keep it within the family. But Véronique is not blind; she can plainly see that Elodie is a good decade older than James, and that Maggie must have had her when she was a teenager.

  “I’m eleven years older,” Elodie says.

  “She got the ball rolling for my parents,” James adds, making light.

  “I was definitely a surprise.”

  “Your mom must have been so young when she had you,” Véronique says.

  Elodie doesn’t respond. James shoots Véronique a look, and it silences her right away. She seems to register that this conversation is off-limits. “All right, Elo,” she says lightly. “Let’s destroy them this round.”

  Elodie smiles and visibly relaxes. James can tell she likes Véronique, which is no small achievement. Elodie is typically very shy around strangers, but tonight he’s observing an ease with Véronique that pleases him.

  “No more mercy,” Véronique warns, winking at her partner. “We were just warming up, right, Elo?”

  Lying in bed later on, Véronique curls up inside the nook of his arm. They’re both a little drunk—maybe more than a little—and all he wants to do is have sex with her.

  “Your parents weren’t married when your mom got pregnant, were they?” she asks him.

  “No.”

  “How old was she?”

  “Fifteen.”

  He doesn’t want to keep anything from her—not even Elodie’s story. This feels like the right moment to deepen their connection, and although he doesn’t want to betray his sister—Elodie deserves her dignity—everything about not telling Véronique the truth feels wrong.

  “You’re not the only one with a dark family secret,” he says softly.

  “You know mine, though, so you’ve got an advantage over me.”

  “It’s not really my secret to tell, though.”

  Véronique nods, understanding. “Elodie has a sadness about her,” she says. “You can see it in her eyes.”

  “She’s had a hard life.”

  “But not growing up here with you.”

  “My grandfather wasn’t a bad guy, he just did what was expected. He took her to an orphanage.”

  Véronique props herself up on one elbow, listening with her full attention.

  “I don’t know if you know this, but in the early fifties, Duplessis converted all the orphanages in the province into mental hospitals.”

  “I saw something on the news, but I didn’t pay much attention.”

  “Elodie was sent to an asylum when she was seven. She spent ten years there. It was brutal. She wasn’t educated, she was violently abused.”

  “How did your parents find her?”

  James explains about the ad his grandfather ran for years in the classified section of all the French papers, looking for Elodie. Eventually—miraculously—Elodie saw the notice and called Maggie.

  James will never forget the first time he was introduced to his older sister. He was thirteen, Elodie twenty-four. He remembers thinking she looked like a scared animal. She hid behind a long curtain of hair, but still he could see the sorrow in her face. She was badly damaged, you knew at once.

  He didn’t learn the details of her story until much later, at about eighteen. His father told him one afternoon when they were out fishing. He’d known her five years by then, and he cried as Gabriel unspooled all the horrific details of what she’d endured. He already loved her; she was kind to him, and they’d become friends. Because she had learned so little to that point—both in school and in life—they were more like the same age. He introduced her to music—Stevie Wonder, CCR, the Beatles, the Stones—and the best rock station, CHOM; his favorite TV shows and Kentucky Fried Chicken. He taught her how to play cards and how to ride a bike. Gabriel taught her to fish, grow corn, and drive a car; Maggie taught her high school math and grammar, and tried to teach her how to cook—she’s not a natural—and slowly, they managed to get her caught up to the rest of the world.

  “You should write a book,” Véronique says. “Why haven’t you already?”

  “Elodie and my mother actually wrote a memoir years ago,” he says. “Nobody wanted it. But now that the orphans are starting to come forward and speak out, we’re going to try again. I’m going to do it, update it with all the journalistic context.”

  “And Elodie doesn’t mind?”

  “It’s what she wants.”

  James waits until Véronique is snoring softly beside him, and then he slips out of the bed and creeps downstairs. He knows Maggie will be awake, working on her spring marketing, balancing the books, fretting about the winter sales.

  Sure enough, he finds her at the kitchen table, surrounded by papers and sketches for a new catalogue, her mug of cold tea, and some half-eaten cookies on a plate.

  “Hey, love,” she says, looking up from her typewriter and removin
g her glasses. She still refuses to get a desktop computer for the house.

  “Still typing, eh?” he says, sitting down and reaching for a cookie.

  “I can’t set up a computer at the kitchen table,” she says. “Besides, I like typing. It reminds me of my dad.”

  “What do you think of her?” he asks.

  “You stayed up this late so you could ask me that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your father would have loved her.”

  “And you?”

  “I can see she’s intelligent and obviously beautiful. And she’s in love with you. And I get why you’re in love with her.”

  “But?”

  “No ‘but.’”

  “But?”

  “I’ve been where you are, my love. My father forbade me to see Gabriel, but he couldn’t change how I felt about him. For a while, he made me doubt my feelings, but love prevailed, so to speak.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I know better than to give my opinion.”

  “But you have one.”

  “I always have one,” Maggie says dryly. “I think she’s wonderful, don’t get me wrong. I’m a little concerned that she doesn’t have a college degree. What can she really do without one?”

  “She’ll figure it out,” he says. “She’s so young. Steph’s age. But she’s brilliant, and she’s ambitious.”

  “I also have reservations about her family,” Maggie says. “How can she be okay, James? Her father is a convicted murderer.”

  “Véronique isn’t. She’s totally innocent.” Not exactly the truth, but white lies are required here.

  “As in-laws go, they wouldn’t be my first choice.”

  “What her father did has nothing to do with her,” James says, his voice rising. “How can you hold that against her? That would be like her family holding your teenage pregnancy against you.”

  “I’m not holding anything against her, James. You asked my opinion, and all I’m saying is I worry about her parents’ history. It’s not just about what her father did—although he did murder an innocent man—it’s about her beliefs and her principles. You said she’s a separatist. You work for the most prominent English news agency. You can’t stand the separatists. Will that be an issue down the road? That’s all I’m saying.”