Travelling Light (16 page)

He asked her to come with him while he continued his search for the right automobile. That was all he wanted. He would not force himself upon her, he had acted that way only to help her, help her learn what she wanted.

She was barely listening. He moved closer as he spoke. She sipped coffee and watched him. She felt no fear. What were those claw marks on his throat, and what was he saying?

The car was a Taurus station wagon, ten years old. The seller, a middle-aged Chinese man, was eager for them to take a test drive. He hurried into his house and came out in a grey overcoat and a pearl-grey fedora with a tiny feather roosted in the band. He sat poised and erect in the centre of the back seat while Roberto backed out carefully from the driveway, cutting the wheels hard to swing into the narrow street of Toronto immigrant houses, crumbling brick with steep gables, patches of dead garden heaped with husks of snow, concrete saints' grottos.

They drove west on Danforth until the Chinese man directed Roberto onto the Don Valley Parkway heading north.

On the highway Roberto relaxed, and she saw how confident he felt behind the wheel. After the first coagulation of traffic at the Eglinton Avenue exit, he pressed harder on the accelerator and she felt the engine open up, breathing. She guessed what he was feeling: that a car was as powerful as a man. That once he had a car, this car, there'd be no stopping him. That everything he desired must sooner or later be his — blood and earth and unlimited power. Around him a jungle of opportunities, possibilities, loyalties, and obligations would soon snake and climb, growing dense and luxuriant. A car was as powerful as a man, that's what he was thinking, and a man was as powerful as what he wanted.

He had pulled into her aunt's driveway, honking proudly. Now they were parked around the corner from a theatre showing a Mexican movie. He had just asked her to lend him money. Registration and car insurance were more expensive than he'd expected, he said. He was temporarily short of cash and if he didn't pay the rent on time the Korean landlord — always looking for an excuse break the lease — would throw them out of Café Roberto and give the space to his nephew to open a Korean grocery store.

The child-carrier bought in Buffalo was established in the backseat. An air freshener in the shape of an evergreen tree dangled from the station wagon's rearview mirror.

“How much do you need?” She already knew she wasn't going to lend him money.

“Eight hundred dollar. One thousand.”

“Can't help you. Sorry.”

He ignored her then. He got out of the car and locked his door and she got out and followed him across the dirty sidewalk towards the box office, where he paid for two tickets, then seized her elbow and led her past the usher collecting ticket stubs and into the old warm velvet theatre.

She couldn't follow the dialogue but the story was simple. There was a bad man, there was a brother and sister, good triumphed over evil, and many unnecessary people were killed. As they sat there he put his hand on her thigh, calmly. She was wearing jeans. He began to stroke her thigh through the material. After a few minutes of stroking her thigh and staring at the screen, where the colour of the images was washed out and faded, with browns and pinks predominating, and close-ups of insects on the flesh of dead men, and the villain drinking whisky sloppily, then being shot down by the brother, he moved his hand higher and worked it between her legs. But she felt no excitement, no stirring, no warmth, and after he had been rubbing her and stroking her for almost a minute, she roughly pushed his hand away.

She waited another minute, then stood up abruptly and seized her jacket from the seat in front. It took him a moment or two to react and before he could stop her she was hurrying up the aisle and across the rotting lobby and out to the sidewalk and the shadowless municipal light. She buttoned her parka as she ran for a few blocks along College Street, then walked, then ran again.

Fiona and her aunt sat in the little sewing room off the kitchen, where the biggest television was. It was one o'clock in the morning; everyone else in the house was asleep. The neighbourhood was comatose, its streets stained by a residue of road salt; out on the bare highways no one moved.

Roberto would come by, she knew, sooner or later. But she wouldn't see him. And if he refused to leave she would ask her aunt to call the police. He would be wary of the police, and the threat would be enough to get rid of him forever.

Satellite imagery swirled on TV, winter storms drenching the west coast. Fiona's aunt was reminiscing about her youth in Scotland and Fiona felt herself mentally drifting in the dull, crackling light coming off the TV. She felt herself floating in the beam of light until she was back in the room in Aberdeen with her boyfriend Alun on top of her, panting and almost weeping, and she felt as though for the first time the passion, the frailty, the delicacy of his ardent body.

IN
MONTREAL

D
owntown they struggled against winter but in Saint-Henri they let the snow fall without fighting it. All the buses had stopped running and Mike had to walk home from his last class at McGill. There was no traffic, only driving snow, and light from the windows of ground-floor flats.

The little depanneur
at the corner of their street was open. The shop window was steamed up but he could see Monsieur Thibault inside, spreading sawdust on the floor. A bell jingled when Mike opened the door, and the storekeeper set down his bucket of sawdust and moved behind the counter. A television was on somewhere in the back of the shop: hysterical applause and a screaming announcer. It sounded like a game show in French.

Mike asked for cigarettes. “Has Nora been in at all today?”

“
Non
,” said Thibault, sliding a pack of Export As across the counter. “
Pas aujourd'hui
.”

Mike paid and headed for the door.

“Anything wrong?” said Thibault.

“It's a bad night out.”

Thibault nodded and Mike pushed open the door. Tucking his chin into his collar, he hurried up the street.

He and his wife, Nora, lived in the top-floor flat in a building Thibault owned. The storekeeper's elderly mother lived immediately below them. Mike and Nora had settled in the Saint-Henri
quartier
because it was close to downtown and rents were so cheap that she could afford a separate studio in the district. Nora was a painter and Mike an assistant professor.

He planned to spend the evening correcting papers. With any luck, classes would be cancelled the next day and he wouldn't have to teach.

An iron staircase rose from the sidewalk to their front door. Mike climbed the icy steps one at a time. His fingers were so cold it was hard to grasp the key, but he was finally able to shove it into the lock and press the door open.

The apartment was dark. He called her name and the sound hung in the hallway. Light shone in through the door glass, and ice dripping from his beard made little stains on the floor. He placed his briefcase on a table and hurried back down the stairs.

Thibault was counting cash when Mike entered the shop.

“Is my wife here?” Mike demanded.

Without waiting for a reply he walked around the counter, pushed apart the curtains, and stepped into the back room, where old Mme Thibault was dozing in an armchair in front of the television, with a cat in her lap. On top of the set was a container of holy water in the shape of a statue of the Virgin Mary.

“Where is Nora?” Mike demanded. “
Où est-elle
?”

The cat leapt to the floor and Mme Thibault looked up.

“
Pas ici
,” she said. “
Elle est allée à l'église
.”

Thibault squeezed into the room behind Mike. “You have to go,” the storekeeper said. “Go find your wife.”

Mike left the store. The street was lined with buried cars. At the next corner a truck went by, with workmen shovelling sand in graceful arcs down onto the road, and Mike hurried along Rue Notre-Dame.

Before they moved to Montreal Nora's work had been included in group shows at galleries in Toronto, and dealers were interested in her. After they had been in Saint-Henri a month she learned she was pregnant; a few days later one of the Toronto dealers phoned and offered her a solo show in the spring, in Toronto. It would mean a lot of work over the winter. The dealer wanted her to produce twelve new paintings at least. She didn't tell him she was pregnant.

“What happens now?” Mike asked.

“Don't you want to have this baby?”

“It's not me that's going to have the baby.”

Nora looked at him and rubbed her belly. “Don't know if I can do this,” she said.

Nora was sick every morning for a month. Meanwhile Mike collected pamphlets on pregnancy and read a book on home-birthing and composed lists of names, scribbling them in the margins of his typed lecture outlines. For the first time he began to think about saving money. He began to think about investing. He started bringing his lunch to school instead of buying it. Sometimes he felt oppressed at the idea of becoming a father. Sometimes the feeling was helplessness, as if he were falling in deep soft snow, but it was a joyful feeling.

One morning she told him she was afraid the baby was being poisoned by the fumes in her studio. They were in the kitchen, getting ready to go to work, and he was feeling deeply unprepared for the lecture he had to give.

“Okay, maybe you shouldn't have the baby,” he said sharply.

Nora swallowed a glass of grapefruit juice, put the glass in the sink, and left the kitchen without a word. He heard her put on her coat and boots by the front door. Her studio was ten minutes away, in an old tobacco factory near the Lachine Canal.

“Wait a sec,” he called.

As he started down the hallway she ducked outside. When he reached the front door he put on shoes and stepped out on the icy porch. He peered down the street but she had already disappeared around the corner.

She seemed okay that evening. His lecture had gone all right. They went to dinner with a couple from the department at a Greek restaurant on Duluth Street. They rode home in a taxi and didn't talk about the baby. She seemed fine all week, but on Thursday night when he came home late after teaching his evening class Mme Thibault was sitting in the chair by the bookcase in the living room, with a pile of knitting. When she saw him she dropped her needles and whispered, “
Pauvre madame! Pauvre madame!
” then pointed down the hallway.

Mike went into their bedroom and found Nora lying in bed with her face turned against the wall.

She'd had the abortion at a clinic in the Town of Mount Royal. She said she hadn't told him because she hadn't wanted to discuss it with him because whatever he said, whether he wanted her to keep the baby or not keep the baby, she would have hated him for saying, and she didn't want to hate him.

The taxi had cost twenty-four dollars each way.

“Do you hate me?” she said. “Tell me the truth.”

Mike took her hands and kissed them. He stroked her hair for a long time. “Baby, what's the old woman doing here? Did you tell her?”

“She was sweeping the steps when I came home. I told her I was sick.”

He lay down beside her until he thought she was asleep. When it was dark, he went out and found Mme Thibault still sitting by the bookcase, needles clacking. Mike took ten dollars from his wallet and gave it to the old woman. He tried to remember the French word for cramps.

“Thank you for staying with her,” he said. “
Merci beaucoup
.”

Nora went to work the next day but it didn't go well, and that evening she told him she had decided to give herself a few days off. After that Nora gradually stopped going to her studio. Soon she didn't want to leave the apartment for any reason. By then it was winter. She said it was too cold outside. The Montreal winter was savage, brutal, violent, worse than anything she had imagined.

Mike made the appointment for her to see a therapist. There was a three-week wait, but after the first session Nora seemed more like her old self. The next day she went to the studio — she still had her solo show to get ready for. She told him she had begun two new paintings. Mike felt relieved.

Nora started going to the studio every day. They'd walk as far as the corner together. He'd wait for his bus and she would head down Workman Street towards the canal. Sometimes when he came home after teaching an evening class, he found her asleep in the bedroom with the blinds pulled down and Mme Thibault dozing in the living room. The old woman always got up and left when he came in. Sometimes there was food — soup, meat pies, a roast chicken — on the stove. Nora said the old woman was lonely. He paid Mme Thibault for the food and always gave her something extra.

Her opening was scheduled for late April. They would stay two nights at a fancy hotel in Toronto. Mike started teasing Nora, asking when he could visit the studio, see the work. He knew she disliked showing any work in progress.

A small silver box dropped out of Nora's pocket one day when he was hanging her jacket in the closet. He picked it up and opened it. Inside was a set of black rosary beads.

“It's the old woman!” Mike said. “She knows what happened! She's got her claws into you!”

He hurried past Nora and down the outside stairs. He pounded on the old woman's door until it opened. He pushed the rosary beads through the crack and shouted, “Stay away!
Elle est malade!
”

Nora started seeing the therapist twice a week. He sent her to psychiatrist, who prescribed medication. When she was home, she moved around the apartment with her shoulders stiff and her neck very straight, as though she were balancing something precious on top of her head. Mike did all the cooking, all the shopping, all the laundry. Nora was working very hard but would not allow him to visit the studio. She said she had to paint for her own eyes and no one else's.

Then Mike found a registered letter crumpled up and crammed into a kitchen drawer. It was from the owner of the old factory where her studio was located. The landlord was threatening to padlock the studio until the rent was paid. Nora had always paid the studio rent from her own bank account. When he confronted her with the letter, she admitted that she hadn't been inside the studio for months.

“What about the work?” he said.

“Sometimes I go to church with Madame.”

“If you don't go to the studio, where do you work?”

“I'm done with all of that. It's so useless.”

Mike mailed a cheque to cover the rent arrears, but Nora refused to go back to the studio. Now, instead of getting up and pretending to go to work, she stayed in bed, except certain mornings when she would bustle around the kitchen making crazily elaborate breakfasts Mike hadn't time to eat. He took the rolls and fruit tarts and sausages and fried mushrooms and wrapped them in paper napkins that he stuffed into his pocket and dropped in a garbage can on his way to school.

He decided they should leave the Saint-Henri district, which was poor and depressing. But all apartment leases in Montreal ran until May. They'd have to wait for spring. When he saw Nora's therapist, the therapist said they probably should remain in the neighbourhood for now.

“No big changes,” the therapist said. “Geography's no solution. Let her work through this in her own time.”

Mike kept paying the rent on her studio. One Saturday in March he found Nora's key and went to the studio alone. Squirrels had gotten in through a broken window and made a nest beneath the worktable. He repaired the window, cleaned out the nest, and scrubbed the floor. He dusted the shelves and washed all the windows. He collected a few tubes of paint and brushes and carried them home, but she dumped everything in the kitchen trash.

“I'm done with it,” she said.

The March wind was cruel along Notre-Dame and the broad steps outside the church were blown free of snow. The oak door was hard to open, and when Mike finally slipped inside, it slammed thickly behind him.

It was dim inside the church — a glow of electric light in the vaulted ceiling, a throb from the sacristy lamp, waxy specks from prayer candles. The altar was dim and bare, with a stark wooden cross planted on it. He saw Nora kneeling in the front pew. He started down the aisle. A scent of waxed wood rose up from the pews. His steps seemed to crash and echo against the stone floor.

He slipped into the pew beside his young wife, and after a few moments she looked up at him and nodded. She kissed the rosary and slipped the beads into her pocket. She stood up and followed him down the aisle. While he struggled with the massive door, she dipped her fingers into a font of holy water. He pretended not to see her crossing herself. He turned away and shoved at the door.

When they got home, Mike cooked the meal, washed the dishes, and put them away. When the counters were bare and clean, he made a pot of coffee and went into his study to work on his stack of papers. Sometime after midnight he went to bed. Instead of disturbing her, he made up a bed for himself on the sofa in his study. The coffee kept him awake, and he lay there wondering whose fault their sorrow was. There was enough street light reflected from the snow that the outlines of everything in the room rose up clear. He had grown up in a world where, if something went wrong, there was usually something or someone to blame, and it was usually pretty clear exactly who or what. But he knew he could not blame her. And he couldn't blame himself, so who else was there? The Toronto dealer? The old woman living downstairs? The endless Montreal winter? He had always assumed that everything — career, love, marriage — would work out for the best, but now he knew that Nora was going to be the first person he really lost in his life — he could see it coming — and he wondered how he would feel when it happened, and how he would feel after.