Rising Abruptly (15 page)

Maddie stuffed her few possessions in a backpack. Invited Mom to a farewell dinner in a bistro on rue Saint-Denis.

Lillian declined: This month, I'm banqueting with Proust, ma chérie. But I promise to write.

Maddie watched Montréal grow smaller under the belly of the plane.

Later a flight attendant shook her until she woke up. They had landed in Calgary twenty minutes before.

And here she is in Jacques's bed. His sleep seems agitated again. Is he falling off a ledge? Is the smell of onion attacking his brain deep in his slumber? She warned him. He dismissed her warning. She should leave his house. Why torment him with the pungency of her desire? The sharpness of his own should suffice. Sooner or later, he will kick her and her onion obsession out, so he may sleep in peace.

After the flight attendant kicked her out of her seat and Maddie deplaned, she stayed at the Y while drumming up business as a window dresser. As soon as she could afford to, she would move into a place of her own and resume her
Allium cepa
experiments.

One day in early December, Maddie was dressing the window of a high-end jewellery and glassware store on 17th Avenue. She dropped white glass pearls into martini glasses she had filled with water and glycerine to enhance their size. Added coloured glass swizzle sticks. Then arranged her display on draped white satin. She was finishing her composition with a river of pearls cascading from empty, tipped glasses when she felt watched. From the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a young man with thick black hair sticking straight out of his skull, wearing a red Gore-Tex jacket, black fleece pants and steel-toed work boots. Before she could give him a look of annoyance, he raised his hand and formed the O of approval with thumb and forefinger. Her face relaxed into a smile and, immediately, he pointed at the martini glasses and, taking the pose of a swell in a film noir, mimicked drinking cocktails together. She nodded and motioned, wait a moment.

At The Martini Bar, she insisted on buying the first round: Let's have Gibsons.

Gibsons? At a
martini
bar?

They're interesting to me, and they're cousins. Apparently, the Gibson was named after a teetotalling American ambassador of the Prohibition era. At functions, for diplomacy's sake, he had to drink with his guests. So, he carried water in a martini glass to which he added a cocktail onion. And today's Gibson is just a dry martini with an onion. Perfect for martini bars.

They toasted their encounter. Sipping his drink, he watched her perform a new slant on the old come-on. Between her fingernails, she daintily seized the pearl at the bottom of her glass. Inhaled the sweet-tart scent. Rolled the bulb between thumb and index finger. With eyes half-closed, she licked it, the tip on her tongue hard against the white flesh. Wrapped her lips around the onion, parted her teeth and sucked it into her mouth, rolling it from side to side, then bit. He imagined vinegar and sugar exploding in droplets of sharpness and softness on her tongue and rising in vapour up her nasal cavity to lodge deep inside her brain, causing her whole body to arch, her skin to shiver. She swallowed and opened her eyes.

He sipped his gin: Was it good for you? He couldn't begin to imagine what she could do with a gherkin.

She drained her glass, shaking her head: Complete imbalance of sugar and vinegar. And cheap vinegar too. French wine vinaigre is best, but it costs an arm and a leg.

She leaned so close to his face he smelled her onion breath, and wanted to kiss her.

She licked her lips: Ultimately, the secret is the water. That's why I came to Calgary. My mother, who is an expert, told me if I use glacier water, I'll make the perfect pickled pearl. The problem is, how do you get to the glaciers? We're not talking ice cubes from the freezer tray. Nevertheless, the water brought me to Calgary. What brought you here? Veux-tu qu'on parle français?

Non non. Anglais is fine. I have one of each.

One of each what?

Parents. Ma mère est une Anglo. Mon père est un Franco.

Moi aussi! Same configuration. How about that! My name is Zoé Madeleine Rivière. Everybody calls me Maddie.

He laughed, rubbing his steely hair: My name is Jacques Lachance. Everybody calls me Jack Lastchance. I came here for the climbing.

Maddie's eyes sparkled: You're kidding me.

Why would a guy called Jack Lastchance kid you? You've seen the Rocks. They're but a stone's throw away from the city. I can tell you about glaciers. Teach you climbing techniques. On rock, ice. The lot.

She insisted on buying the second round.

I may not know my pearl onion from a gherkin, but I can recognize the right woman when she comes along.

He invited Maddie to move her bags from the Y to his Bowness bungalow, which he had been renovating forever and was in no hurry to finish.

When not shingling roofs, I climb. If you're not ready just yet, on my way back from the mountains, I can bring you a small supply of glacier water.

The second round of Gibsons arrived and they toasted their new venture.

Maddie observed him. He seemed like un bon gars and his offer was irresistible.

Jacques, my very own porteur d'eau. Oh, I don't mean in the old contemptuous appellation of hewers of trees and carriers of water. You will carry glacier water in triumph.

That same evening in early December, she hung up her stockpot and canner and jars and skimmer and kitchen scale and measuring cups, the tools of her search, on whatever sections of the walls not taken by Jacques's climbing gear. The house was bare, except for a few pieces of furniture and stacks of books. Mom would approve of this roofer-climber-bookworm. As for Maddie, she delighted in the large windows facing the four points of the compass, especially the ones looking south and west at the mountains and the big sky. She could grow chives and scallions and, perhaps, leeks in boxes. Jacques had no problem with verdure in the house. He helped her with her collection of postcards. When they ran out of walls, he climbed and fixed the cards to the ceiling. He downclimbed and carried her to his bed.

Now that Maddie is settled in Jacques Lachance's Bowness bungalow, she daydreams of successful pickling days, while Jacques never misses his chance to go to the mountains with one of his several climbing buddies. Maddie has yet to buy hiking boots and crampons and a harness and a helmet.

Jacques raises his hands: No pressure, ma grande.

And he leaves, excited-expectant. And he comes back, exhausted-elated. Pumped, he tells her. His mouth frothing with tales of spindrift and bergschrund, rock pelting him and his partner, postholing in knee-deep snow, crevasse rescue, a close call inches from an avalanche, a seven-pitch climb on beautiful plastic ice; tales of wondrous days. Tales, it seems to Maddie, extracted from the ancient myths of Coyote the Trickster or Raven the Messenger, rock and ice, mountain spirits with a mind of their own. And Jacques and his climbing partners, mere mortals, battling the Eternal Elements. Does her onion obsession seem as unreal to him as this climbing thing appears to her?

Outrageous, Jacques, what you do. Simply outrageous. Will I ever be ready to try this climbing of yours for myself?

He turns the stained pages of her lab book, stares at graphs, then at drawings of
Allium
. Grins at her: I'm curious about this stuff you're doing. But, no pressure.

In between going out and coming back, Maddie loses sight of him, having no clue (not really) what he could be doing out there and how. But each time, he comes back with his bag full of astounding tales and with a few litres of glacier water. Maddie tastes the water and, soon, she can identify the glacier from which Jacques drew it. She claims she can tell the difference between the water from the Rae, or the Bow, or the Victoria, or the Athabasca.

Until they all melt, ma grande, an endless parade of glaciers to choose from.

Maddie inspects the water from the Athabasca: I don't know, Jacques. But visiteurs' feet dirtying the toe of the glacier will ruin my pearls. I admit to having a soft spot for the Bow Glacier.

I get the water way higher than any tourist goes. Only your imagination, not the water, alters the taste of your onions. I bet this tap water, which by the way comes from the Bow Glacier, would do just fine.

Yes, but this tap water's been treated. Are you saying I don't know my onions?

I don't mind carrying water from any glacier, Madeleine, but don't push it. You must accept what I bring you. I carry lots of gear. I can't hop from glacier to glacier…

Okay, okay. I'll be out of here in a jiffy. I told you you'd end up kicking me…

Relax. I'm not kicking you and your onions out.

You don't look like you mean it.

I'm bushed. But what I mean is this. When you begin exploring glaciers yourself, you can take your pick and be your own water carrier. Until then… Now, you mind bailing from this pointless argument?

You're right, Jacques. This is dumb. Nitpicking about glacier water. Still, I swear the Athabasca does something not quite right to my pearls.

What? What is it the Athabasca does to your pearls?

She can't tell. Perhaps insomnia more than imagination alters taste, the same way brain seizures make you smell things that are only in your head. Perhaps the time has come to apply poultices to her forehead. She laughs and drinks a sip of glacier water, from the Stanley, while Jacques, despite claiming to be bushed, climbs the kitchen wall and, motionless, facing an overhang near the ceiling, assumes his monkey hang.

They are thinking the same thing and both laugh at the same time, acknowledging the outrageousness of their chosen practices.

Insomnia has followed Maddie to the rat-free land of triumphant water. Jacques is out climbing frozen waterfalls in the Ghost. A region, he told her, difficult to access and where roads, such as they are, and bridges are often washed out and where vehicles get bogged down in streams, mud, snowbanks.

She does not understand the subtleties of his passion. Does not know what's what in the climbing world, but, since the squabble over glacier water, she refuses to interfere, only grateful that he continues to bring her water from les hauteurs, only happy that he is un bon gars who indulges her onion practice, even though he doesn't know what's what in the
Allium
world.

Nuit blanche after nuit blanche, she dreams experiments awake.

Batik pearls. Maddie twists thin blue rubber bands in a random pattern around each peeled pearl. Steeps the onions in salted beet juice. Goes to work on an overcast, freezing March day, dressing department store windows in frilly Easter garb. Goes back home to catch a few hours of sleep in Jacques's deserted bed. After two days of leaving them to steep in their glass vessel, she checks on her onions. Removes the thin elastic bands to reveal tiny white veins snaking around the rose pearls.

Jacques at work, redoing a roof while a chinook wind blows. Maddie after work, making amber pearls. She steeps a fresh batch of the vegetables in an infusion of saffron and the skins of Bermuda onion, which impart the rich colour of fossilized resin.