“Okay. I don’t blame you. You worked hard last night. You know, it was real good for me. I was…” She decides not to finish that.
“You were surprised?” he pursues.
“No, not exactly. Older men can be real good. They don’t usually blow off too quickly, you know what I mean?”
“Jesus Christ!”
She looks up at him, startled and bewildered. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing! Forget it.”
But her eyes are angry. “You know, I get sick and tired of it, the way you always get mad when I talk about…
Twice she speaks to him from the other room. Once repeating what she thought was wrong with him, and once grumbling about anybody who didn’t even have a goddamned TV in his pad…
He answers neither time. He sits looking out over the park, where the sun is already paling as the skies become milky again with overcast.
When she comes back into the living room, she is wearing the long patchwork dress she bought yesterday. As she puts on her new coat, she asks coldly, “Well? Coming with me?”
“Do you have your key?” He is still looking out the window.
“What?”
“You’ll need your key to get back in. Do you have it?”
“Yes! I’ve got it!” She slams the door.
He watches her from the window, feeling angry with himself. What’s wrong with him? Why is he fooling around with a kid like this anyway, like a silly old
Marie-Louise walks huffily down the street, not bothering to flex her knee to conceal the limp, because she knows he’s probably looking down at her and will feel sorry for her. She is angry about not getting her own way, but at the same time she is worried about spoiling a good thing. It’s dull and boring, that frumpy apartment, but it’s shelter. He lets her have money. He doesn’t ask much of her. Shouldn’t ruin a good thing until you’ve got something better. She recalls how the young Greek boy played the
Anyway, she’ll let him stew about it for a while, then she’ll come back to the apartment. He’ll be glad enough to see her. They don’t get all the young stuff they want, these old guys.
Maybe she’ll walk over to the Greek restaurant. See if anyone’s around.
Beyond the window, evening has set in, fringing the layers of yeasty cloud. The morning’s sunlight was a trick after all, a joke.
The gas fire hisses, and he dozes. He remembers the watery sunlight in the park. It reminded him of Sunday mornings in the parlor of his grandparents’ farmhouse. Floating motes of dust trapped in slanting rays of sun. The smell of mustiness… and the heavy, sickening smell of flowers.
Grandpapa…
A bright winter day with sun streaming in the parlor window, and Grandpapa, thin and insubstantial in the box. All the children had to walk in a line past the coffin. The smell of flowers was thick, sweet. Claude LaPointe’s shirt was borrowed, and too small; the tight collar gagged him. The children had been told to take turns looking down into dead Grandpapa’s face. The little ones had to stand tiptoe to see over the edge of the coffin, but they did not dare to touch it for balance. You were supposed to kiss Grandpapa goodbye.
Claude didn’t want to. He couldn’t. He was afraid. But the grownups were in no mood for argument. There were already tensions and angers about who should get what from the farm, and everyone seemed to think that one uncle was grabbing more than his share. And who would take care of Grandmama?
Grandmama didn’t cry. She sat in the kitchen on a wooden chair and rocked back and forth. She wrapped her long thin arms around herself and rocked and rocked.
Claude told his mother in confidence that he was afraid he would be sick if he kissed dead Grandpapa.
“Go on now! What’s wrong with you? Don’t you love your Grandpapa?”
Love him? More than anybody. Claude used to daydream about Grandpapa taking him away from the streets to the farm. Grandpapa never knew about the daydreams; Claude was only one of the press of cousins who used to line up to mutter “Joyous Christmas, Grandpapa.”
“Stop it! Stop it right now!” Mother’s whisper was tense and angry. “Go kiss your grandfather.”
The smooth dusty face was almost white on the side touched by a beam of winter sun. And his cheeks had never been so rosy when he was alive. He smelled like Mother’s make-up. He used to smell like tobacco and leather and sweat. Claude closed his eyes tight and leaned over. He made a peck. He missed, but he pretended he had kissed Grandpapa. To avoid hearing the grownups’ tight, muttered arguments about furniture and photographs and Grandmama, he went into the summer kitchen with the other kids, who by turns were making shuddering faces and scrubbing their lips hard with the backs of their hands. Claude scrubbed his lips too, so everyone would think he had really kissed Grandpapa, but as he did it he knew he was being a traitor to the living Grandpapa, whom he had never kissed because they were both physically reticent types.
The fat cousin who used to fart under the covers whispered a joke about the make-up, and the girl cousins giggled. His face blank, Claude turned from the window and hit his cousin in the mouth with his fist. Although the cousin was two years older and bigger, he had no chance; Claude was bashing him with all the force of his rage, and fear, and shame, and loss.
Some grownups pulled Claude off the bleeding and howling cousin, and he was shaken around and sent upstairs to be dealt with later, after the priest left.
He sat on the edge of the bed in the grandparents’ room. He had never been there before, and it seemed foreign and unfriendly, but he was glad to be alone so he could cry without the others seeing. No tears came. He waited. He opened his mouth and panted out sharp little breaths, hoping to start the crying he needed so badly. No tears would come. A hot ball of something sour in his stomach, but no tears. Others who loved Grandpapa less than Claude could cry. They could afford to let Grandpapa be dead, because they had other people. But Claude…
When they came up to punish him, Claude was lost in a daydream about Grandpapa coming to Trois Rivieres and taking him away to live on the farm.
That was how he handled it.
It is after midnight. LaPointe has been in bed for over an hour, slipping in and out of light sleep, when he hears the lock turn in the front door. It closes softly, and Marie-Louise tries to tiptoe into the bedroom, but she bumps into something. She suppresses a giggle. There is movement and the rustle of clothes being taken off. She slips in beside him, and cold air comes in with her. He does not move, does not open his eyes. Soon her breathing becomes regular and shallow. She sleepily presses against his back for warmth, her knees cold against the backs of his legs.
He can smell the licorice of ouzo on her breath, and the smell of man’s sweat on her.
…he can’t breathe…
…he wakes with a start. His face is wet.
He can’t understand it. Why are his eyes wet?
He falls back to sleep, and next morning he does not remember the dream.
10
Guttmann has arranged the overdue reports in stacks on the little table serving as a desk, leaving just
