He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his left hand. 'This is truly nothing,' he said. 'A slip of the knife, that's all. But you.. '
Marie might pause during her day's work for a cup of tea. Never, in all the years he'd known her, had she paused because she was in pain. That was literally true; she'd gone on working till ridiculously short stretches of time before she bore her children, and she'd got back to work after each birth much sooner than the midwife said she should. For her to hold herself like that and weep was… The end of the world was the first thing that occurred to him.
An instant later, he wished he'd thought of a different comparison.
'I think it could be that we both should see our beau-fils,' he said.
Marie shook her head. 'It's nothing,' she insisted. 'I'm just.. tired, that's all.'
Hearing her say that frightened him as badly as seeing her sit there crying. He knew she must have been tired at times through their close to thirty-five years of marriage. She was a farm wife, and she'd raised six children. But she'd never admitted it, not in all the time he'd known her, not till now.
'Here.' He went to the closet and got her a coat. 'Put this on, my dear. We are going into town, to talk with Leonard O'Doull.'
'I don't need to see the doctor,' Marie insisted. 'And how can you drive the motorcar with your poor hand hurt?'
To keep her from going on about the hand, he let her bandage it, which she did with her usual quick competence. As long as she was taking care of him, she seemed fine. But, once she'd done the job, she argued less than he'd expected when he draped the coat over her shoulders. 'Come on,' he said. 'Our son-in-law will tell you why you are tired, and he will give you some pills to make you feel like a new woman.'
'It could be that you are the one who feels like a new woman,' his wife retorted. But, that gibe aside, she kept quiet. She let him lead her out to the Chevrolet and head for town. Her acquiescence worried him, too.
Leonard O'Doull's office was on Rue Frontenac, not far from the Eglise Saint-Patrice on Rue Lafontaine-the church over which Bishop Pascal no longer presided. Dr. O'Doull's office assistant exclaimed when she saw the bloody bandage on Lucien's hand. 'He's vaccinating a little boy right now, Monsieur Galtier,' she said. 'As soon as he's done, he'll see you.'
But Lucien shook his head again. 'It's not me he needs to see. It's Marie.'
That made the office assistant start to exclaim again. Just in time, she thought better of it. 'Sit down, then,' she said. 'He'll see you both soon.'
A howl from the part of the office out of sight of the waiting room told Galtier exactly when the vaccination was completed. A couple of minutes later, a city woman in a fashionably-even shockingly-short dress came out with her wailing toddler in tow. Normally, Lucien would have eyed her legs while she paid the assistant. That Marie was sitting beside him wouldn't have stopped him. That Marie was sitting beside him not feeling well did.
Their son-in-law stuck his head out into the waiting room as soon as the city woman and her son left. Like his assistant, he saw Lucien's bandage and wagged a finger. 'What have you gone and done to yourself now?' he asked with mock severity. 'Don't you think I get tired of patching you?'
Again, Galtier said, 'I didn't come to see you on account of this scratch. Marie is not well.'
'No?' Dr. O'Doull became very serious very fast. He almost bowed to his mother-in-law. 'Come in, please, and tell me about it.' As Marie rose, O'Doull nodded, ever so slightly, to Lucien. 'Why don't you wait here?'
'All right,' Galtier said. He knew what that meant. His son-in-law would have to look at, perhaps even have to touch, parts of Marie only Lucien would normally look at and touch. He could do that much more freely if Lucien weren't in the room with the two of them. Galtier understood the necessity without liking it.
He buried his nose in a magazine from Montreal. All the articles seemed to talk about ways in which the Republic of Quebec could become more like the United States. Galtier was far from sure he wanted Quebec to become more like the USA. The people writing the magazine articles had no doubt that was what Quebec should do.
Every so often, he noticed he was reading the same sentence over and over. It wasn't because the sentences sounded so much alike, though they did. But he couldn't stop worrying about what was going on on the far side of that door.
After the longest half hour in Galtier's life, Marie came out again. Dr. O'Doull came out with her, saying, 'Please sit here for a moment, if you would.' She nodded and sat down beside Lucien. O'Doull continued, 'Mon beau-pere, I would speak with you for a few minutes. Come in, please.'
'Very well.' Galtier didn't want to get up. He wanted to stay there beside Marie. But he saw he had no choice. 'Is everything as it should be?' he asked his son-in-law.
'Well, that is what I want to talk to you about,' O'Doull answered.
Numbly, Galtier walked to the door. Dr. O'Doull stood aside to let him go through. Galtier had thought he was afraid before. Now his heart threatened to burst from his chest at every beat. O'Doull waved him into his own personal office. Lucien sat in the chair in front of the desk.
His son-in-law opened a desk drawer. To Galtier's surprise, he pulled out a pint bottle of whiskey. 'Medicinal,' O'Doull remarked as he yanked out the cork and took a swig. He held out the bottle to Galtier. 'Here. Have some.'
'Merci.' Lucien drank, too. It wasn't very good whiskey, but it was plenty strong. He coughed once or twice as he set the bottle on the desk. O'Doull corked it. With a smile that might have come straight from the gallows, Galtier asked, 'And now, mon beau-fils, have you a bullet for me to bite on?' He'd forgotten all about his cut hand.
And so had Leonard O'Doull, which was an even worse sign. 'If I did, I'd give it to you,' he said. 'Your wife has a… a mass right here, in her belly.' He put his hand on his own belly, on the spot that corresponded to the one Marie had been holding when Galtier had walked into their kitchen, a little more than an hour before.
'A mass,' Galtier echoed. Dr. O'Doull nodded. He had surely used the mildest word he could find to give Lucien the news. Though Galtier hadn't had much schooling, he needed only a moment to figure out what the younger man was talking about. 'A tumor, do you mean?'
'I'm afraid I do,' his son-in-law answered, as gently as he could. 'She should have an X ray. It is possible she should have a surgical operation.'
'Possible? Only possible?' Lucien said. 'What does this mean?'
'It depends on what the X ray shows,' O'Doull answered. 'She told me she first began feeling this pain a year and a half or two years ago, though it was less then. That means it could be-God forbid, but it could be-that there has been some… some spread of the mass. If the X ray shows there has… In that case, there would be less point to an operation.'
In that case, an operation would do no good, because she would die anyway. Again, Lucien didn't need his son-in-law to explain that to him. He forced his mind away from it. 'She had this pain for two years?'
'So she told me,' Dr. O'Doull replied.
'And she said nothing? She did nothing? In the name of God, why?'
O'Doull sighed, uncorked the whiskey bottle once more, and took another drink. 'I've seen this before among you Quebecois. Why? Maybe because you hope the pain will go away by itself and you won't need to go to the doctor. Maybe because you simply refuse to let pain get the better of you. And maybe because you're just too busy to get out of the house and into town to do what needs to be done.'
Slowly, Galtier nodded. Any or all of those reasons could have fit Marie. He didn't think he had the nerve to ask her. Even if he did, he doubted he would get a straight answer. 'Is it that you can take this X-ray picture?' he asked.
'No. I have no X-ray machine here,' O'Doull answered. 'She will have to go to Quebec City, to the capital. If she has the operation, she will have to have it there, too.'
'All right. We will do that, then.' Lucien didn't hesitate, even for a moment. He wondered how much the required treatment would cost. He wished he hadn't bought the Chevrolet. If he had to, though, he could sell it. Marie mattered more than money, and that was all there was to it. He did ask, 'This operation, it will cure her?'
His son-in-law's shrug was more weary and worried than Gallic. 'Without knowing what the X ray will show, without knowing what the surgeon will find, how can I answer that? Be fair to me, please.'
'I'm sorry.' Lucien bent his head and rubbed his eyes. 'Let me ask you a different question, then. You have
