Saving Things

Yesterday, the department chair, Charles Sully, threw Lucie under the bus again, giving her two days’ notice to organize a recruiting talk for the Marine Biology undergraduates. Now, he’s insisting on another meeting this morning.

Despite Lucie’s recent promotion to Associate Professor, Scully treats her like a post-doc. And it’s petty, but when the new slide-in plastic nameplate for her office door finally arrived, her name was misspelled. Her name, her grandmother’s name, is Lucie, not Lucy.

She’s reviewing the slides for her lecture when an email from the department secretary at McGill lights up her inbox. Her ex-partner, Michael Sumner, is dead. Fifty-nine years old. Beloved husband of Claire and father of Brianna and Stéphanie. Humorous, collegial, and an outstanding mentor to his students. What else could they say? Irresponsible, philanderer, abuser.

The affair was a tragedy but not as terrible as her father dying of mesothelioma—all those years working with asbestos insulation. If her father hadn’t died that spring, if she hadn’t been so full of sorrow, would she have run away with Michael that June, seven years ago?

The alert on her phone rings. Time to get to Sully’s office.

“You’re late,” he growls. His shaggy beard and high forehead remind Lucie of the portrait of Melville in her copy of Moby Dick. She perches on the low folding chair before his desk like a schoolgirl in the principal’s office.

“First things first. The news about the death of Michael Sumner this morning. Sorry. I didn’t know him as well as you did…”

She flushes. Sully knew about Michael here at Dalhousie? Well, departments are small, and people gossip. She shouldn’t be surprised but the way he is staring at her is off like he’s making some kind of decision.

“But that’s not why you’re here. I’m assigning you the first-year biology course starting in January. Your teaching portfolio is thin for an Associate Professor.”

Thin. Really. Since she began to teach five years ago, she’s picked up more lower-level courses than any other staff. Endless batches of first years bullying her for higher grades. “That’s not fair. I’m more than qualified to teach 300 and 400 series courses.” Her tone is high-pitched and whiny, the opposite of how she wants to sound. 

“It’s not for discussion and what about tomorrow’s lecture? You’re prepared?” His lips tighten as though he’s suppressing a smirk.

“Of course.”

She feels the same uneasiness she had around Michael—all those edgy criticisms. She sits up straighter in the chair and stares past him at the pretentious painting of the fully rigged, tall ship hanging above his desk. Be agreeable. “The sooner the undergrads consider graduate work the more likely they are to commit to further study. A postgraduate program is essential to advancing the research of any department.”

“You’ve been enjoying the advantages of having PhD students,” he says steepling his fingers under his moustache. “All those first authorships.”

Her heart slams about inside her chest as he scans her face for a reaction. “I stand by the roles I’ve had in all my publications,” she replies coolly. But is she missing something? Has someone complained?

“It’s my responsibility to ensure the ongoing academic integrity of all the members of this department. You’ve been warned,” he says waving his arm towards the door.

She gets up, forcing herself not to run, not to trip over her self-doubt.

“Expect to see me at your lecture tomorrow. I’ll be evaluating the presentation for your teaching file.”

The news of Michael’s death and Sully’s insinuations have shaken her. That afternoon at coffee, she confides in her older colleague, Deborah.

“I’ve worked so hard. Teaching. Research. I deserve a medal for running all those 100 and 200 series courses.”

“Patience, girl. How old are you, mid-thirties? Already an associate professor. I’ve been here for two decades, stuck in an adjunct position,” says Deborah. “Undergrads around here get more respect.”

Lucie nods. “The Canadian abstract deadline is coming up. I’m behind with the analysis of my Bottlenose cortisol data. And I got stuck with that last-minute lecture at lunch tomorrow. Did Sully ask you to present?”

“Yes, and I told him no. I’m not at the stage in my career where I need to impress anyone. He’s not bullying me.” says Deborah, applying lipstick.

Lucie stares at the tan lipstick smudged on the corner of Deborah’s upper lip but doesn’t know her well enough to mention it. She’d sound paranoid if she mentioned Sully had implied she was stealing her PhD students’ work.

Lucie picks up her coffee cup and papers. “We’ll be late for the staff meeting.”

It’s evening and Lucie meets her boyfriend, Sam, at the local pub. He’s a speech therapist, who works with hearing-impaired kids. Sam is five years younger than her, newly thirty. But at least he isn’t one of her students.

They share some french fries. She nibbles four of them—Michael’s voice in her head—Don’t want to get fat, do we? But all his controlling didn’t work. He’s dead. She hasn’t told Sam about Michael or the hold he had over her during the nine months of their affair. The house band starts.

“Come back to my place. We’ll talk?” Sam signs as he licks the foam from his beer off his upper lip. “Friday night sleepover?”

He’s teaching her American Sign Language and Lucie loves it when they practice. She shakes her head and signs back, “I love you.” He’s allergic to her cat when they sleep together, they go to his place.

Her signing vocabulary is fragile and she must think more carefully before she signs. When flustered, she forgets the gestures but she likes the idea of another way to communicate, to be better understood. “I have that lecture to give tomorrow,” she says, emptying her glass of house white. “I’ll come over after.”

“Walk you home then,” he says, frowning below the brim of his toque.

They walk past the flickering neon sign of their favourite restaurant to her apartment. Would Sam be more insistent that they move in together if she didn’t have the cat? For now, Pattie protects her from such a decision. Since Michael, she’s afraid of commitments, even to a sweetie like Sam.

Lucie lies in bed, watching the shadows playing on the dimly lit ceiling. Pattie’s purring competes with the clamouring inside her skull—thoughts of Michael and the vague threats from Sully.

She remembers the department’s December drinks party when Michael approached her. It was four o’clock, wet snowflakes slapping against the windows of the seminar room. 

“Hello there, Beluga-Girl,” he said. “Did your cortisol stuff get published yet?”

An electrical thrill buzzed through her. He knew her work. 

After glancing around the room, he ran his fingers through her hair. “Magnificent,” he said.

After that, nothing else mattered—the differences in status, their ages or his marriage with two teenage daughters.

Lucie oscillated between her infatuation with Michael and the misery of her father’s incurable mesothelioma. She had nothing left for her belugas, so that January, she quit her PhD.

Nobody tried to stop her from quitting. If one of her grad students wanted to quit, she’d do something. But nobody helped her. Not Michael. Not her thesis supervisor. Not her parents.

But her brother, Jake, did try. “Dad’s death is messing with your mind. Michael is a middle-aged, stagnant academic looking for a thrill. You’re a striving PhD student starved for attention. Don’t quit. Don’t go with him.”

It was June when she moved with Michael to Victoria where his former Ecology department welcomed him back. He promised Lucie there’d be orcas and humpbacks to study. He promised her she’d be more successful than she could ever be in Montreal. She believed him.

The weeks passed in Victoria and the relationship soured. She couldn’t find an academic job and worked as a server. She was clumsy and forgetful—the wrong temperament for the job. Michael mocked her stories of spilled drinks and broken plates. “Get a real job.” But she failed to find one.

That summer, on her birthday, he gave her expensive sunglasses from MEC—cool and perfect for ocean research. But then, he told her that his first affair was when his wife, Claire, was pregnant with their eldest child. Lucie yanked off the glasses, stunned by the satisfied look on his face. “Joy robber.”

Since she left Michael, Lucie’s resisted an urge to contact his wife, Claire, and the two daughters he’d abandoned—to apologize for the shabby adventure. Instead, she found the courage to approach a Dalhousie prof, a kind man now retired in the desert. She begged him to supervise the final two years of her PhD. The Beluga data set and her publication saved her sorry ass. She was lucky to get back on track and she’s not going to let a creep like Sully push her off.

She’s thirty-five now, too young for a full professorship but getting old for other things, like having a family. Since Michael, it’s difficult to trust anyone, even Sam.

She takes a sleeping pill and crawls into bed. She rubs the special place behind Pattie’s tufted ears as he burrows under the comforter beside her neck. Eventually, she falls asleep.

At the auditorium, Mary Cosset, the department administrative assistant approaches her. “Sully’s cancelled the usual dinner for the presenter—too expensive for an internal speaker. And he’s grumbling about the cost of the sandwiches and coffee I ordered for lunch.”

“I’m on Sully’s shit list. Hope this lecture will get me off it.”

Mary smiles as she reaches over and straightens the collar of Lucie’s blouse under her blazer.

This morning as Lucie made her latté, Michael was right there, his voice in her head. He’d been a jerk but taught her how to make a great coffee.

“Good job, Lucie.”

You’re dead, Michael. Leave me alone. I’ve got a presentation to give.

“Sure. But Sully’s on to you.”

What does he mean by that?

Lucie scans the auditorium—about seventy-five students, more than she’d expected. For sure, they know about the free food. She’s skipped more of these lunch lectures than she should have. She could have learned more about the department’s dirty details at these events. 

Sully’s chatting in the front row with his deputy, Winchester—ignoring her and everyone else. 

After his introduction, she adjusts the height of the microphone and begins. “First, a bit about belugas from my McGill years.” She starts the video of her research team in orange survival suits in a Zodiac tracking a beluga pod in the St Lawrence River. There’s the clip of her launching the blubber biopsy dart from the crossbow. Her first time. There’s a gasp from the students at the thwack of the strike and the dark blush of blood washing out from behind the dorsal fin. She’d been terrified she’d hurt the whale.

“Now on to the big guys. North American Right Whales are critically endangered. Less than three hundred and fifty left.” Michael’s voice interrupts her. “Tackling Sully’s research, eh? Bad choice Lucie.”

Lucie highlights the summer when seventeen Right whales died in the Gulf of St Lawrence from entanglement or ship strikes. “Our group’s research convinced the government to close the snow crab fishery and enforce slower shipping speeds. Cruise ship routes were changed. The docks at Charlottetown were deserted.”

She senses the students’ interest and describes the acoustical tracking buoy network monitoring whale calls, showing their location in real-time. “You can’t protect whales if you don’t know where they are.”

Lucie licks her lips and clears her throat as she finishes. “Thank you for coming. I look forward to meeting you on campus.”

Sully presses his lips together in that weird way again. He is smirking. He approaches the microphone. The students are fidgety, looking at their phones—likely eager to get out to the lobby and into the food.

“Dr LeBlanc, thank you for your presentation.” He continues. “We’re a small department, small teams cooperating in the labs, in the field and on the research vessels. I’d have appreciated a little credit for the Right Whale research you’ve presented today but nevertheless, I look forward to your next contribution to this lecture series.”

Lucie squeezes her fingers into fists at her sides. She had referenced his research, but she hadn’t agreed to more lectures. She needs to escape before she does something regrettable. She glances at Mary.

“I’ll bring a sandwich to your office,” Mary says pointing her down the hall.

It’s six o’clock and dark outside. Lucie is at her computer combing through her presentation. Had she forgotten to mention Sully? Everyone is attributed even that pre-med student who showed up for one week that summer. She’d included pictures of all the team members—the vessel crew, the technicians, the students, the lab assistants, everyone. For sure, Sully was the Right Whale guy but all the stuff she presented was after his time. It wasn’t his work.

A text. Sully. Meet me in my office, now. Is he going to apologize for embarrassing her at lunch? She’s afraid of what she’ll say to him.

Sully gets up from behind his desk. He must know how rattled she is. “You’ve had a bit of a free ride here so far.” His pointy teeth flash below his moustache. “I’m wondering how we can get along better. Help each other out.”

She stops just inside the doorway. He reaches behind her and closes the door. Everything feels wrong.

“You think you would have been awarded that MEOPAR grant without my endorsement? Or your promotion would have happened without my influence?”

“Think about it Lucie. Both the promotion and the grant, with your experience.” Michael’s voice again. 

“Yes to both. I exceeded all the criteria,” she says staring at Sully’s piggy black eyes. But Michael did have a point. It was extraordinary.

“My girl, that’s only part of it. You do the bare minimum of committee work, cherry-pick the simplest research projects and ride on the backs of your students’ work. You’re not fooling anyone.”

“He’s on to you, Lucie.”

Lucie steps back as he approaches even closer. It’s not true. Or is it? There’s always more work to do in an academic department.

“Without my advocacy, the committee would not have approved your promotion.” He reaches and grips her forearm with his thick fingers. A worn leather belt slung below his belly is holding up his baggy jeans.

Her eyes water.

“You need me. You need to appreciate my support.” He leans forward squeezing her shoulder with his other hand.

He was too close—the smells of pipe tobacco and drug store aftershave. His shirt is untucked now, falling over his belly. Disgusting.

“Get. Your. Hand. Off. Me,” she says in her deepest voice. “I’ll scream.”

“Go ahead. Everyone’s gone. It’s just us.”

Rage strengthens Lucie. He steps forward to brace her against the door. She lunges forward and knees him in the groin.

He pulls away, staggering and groaning, “You bitch,” he gasps.

She yanks open the door and bolts down the empty hallway.

Lucie’s boot heels strike the pavement as she strides home across the poorly lit commons. She shivers in the wind blowing up from the harbour. She texts Sam. She’s not going over. She doesn’t want to explain why she’s upset.

She’s confused. She hasn’t done anything wrong but a person in Sully’s position could ruin her career in a moment.

At home, she showers, swallows another sleeping pill and crawls into bed beside the cat. As she drifts off to sleep, she hears Michael. “Being smart isn’t enough Lucie. It’s a complicated system.”

It’s Friday morning. Lucie strides with her head down through the crowded, blue-glass atrium of the Marine Biology building. She crashes into Deborah.

“Whoa, girl. What’s up with you?” Deborah asks.

Lucie bursts into tears as Deborah steers her into her office and sits her down on the small couch.

“Sully,” says Lucie wiping her eyes with her coat sleeve. 

“His name was on the work he’d done, and it wasn’t on anything he hadn’t.”

Deborah looks unsurprised as Lucie, trembling, describes the assault.

“We need to go to the human rights office,” says Deborah powering up her computer. “I’ll get the contact info.”

“It’s he said, she said,” Lucie says. “Sully’s the one with all the power here. They won’t believe me.”

“What he’s doing is wrong and there may be others, Lucie. You have to.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“You know he’s wrong.” Deborah pushes the tissue box across her desk. “Think of all the shit we’ve survived so far.”

“I don’t think I have the energy to start over again. To go where? Memorial? Back to McGill? Lucie snorts into the wad of tissues.

“When this is cleared up, it’s gonna hurt Sully more than you. The allegation of harassment is enough to stall his career.”

Maybe Sully knew Michael better than she thought. Deborah must know about her affair with Michael too.

“Sully’s, not a nice man. It takes courage to go up against this stuff.” Deborah hands her a mug of instant coffee.

Lucie’s teaspoon clinks as she stirs the clumps of Coffee Mate. Courage. The last time she summoned that amount of courage was the August afternoon in the apartment, the day before she left Michael, the day he found her plane ticket.

Michael pushed up against her and backed her against the window blinds. He spoke, massaging each syllable as though he expected her to repeat what he said.

“Go ahead. Leave. Try to pick yourself up. It won’t work.” He tapped his finger on her breastbone. “You’re unconnected. I’m the one who’s connected. He pulled his finger back and locked his eyes on hers. “I’ll make sure you never get an academic job again. Ever. Anywhere. I’ll make sure of that until I die.” 

Shaking, she wrenched her gaze free from his. The bare-branched ficus tree stood in the corner, dried leaves littering the parquet floor around it. She left him the following morning.

No One Will Be Looking At You

Brianna’s first funeral was her father’s. She stood with her mother and sister, Stéphanie, on the steps outside McGill Chapel in the amber light of the late October afternoon. On the sidewalk below, students rushed past on their way to class.

The Holt Renfrew shopper had chosen the matching outfits—their mother’s idea. The itchy fabric of the V-necked dress gaped at her chest and strained over her bum and thighs. Her panties were cutting into the flesh of her buttocks. She’d have been better off wearing her flight attendant’s uniform. At least it fit her.

“Stand up straight, Brianna,” said her mother, Claire.

“And stop tugging at your hem?” Stéphanie added in her new irritating up-speak. Everything she said sounded like a question. 

“Stop picking at me. It’s hard enough already.” 

Nan, her grandmother, stood beside them in her black crepe, Chanel-style suit, the same one she’d worn at her husband’s funeral fifty–odd years ago.

The death of Brianna’s father was unexpected. Two weeks ago, one of the night cleaners found him slumped over his desk in front of his computer. The doctor explained it was a heart attack. He’d have turned sixty in November.

Dad and Mom had been separated for years. Brianna was sixteen when he had an affair with a graduate student, and Claire threw him out. He’d moved to Victoria with his fling, but six months later, after she’d left him, he slunk back to Montreal, to his teaching job at McGill and them. Mom refused to let him move back into the house, but Brianna was convinced her parents still loved each other—always asking her and Stéphanie sneaky questions about how the other one was doing.

Brianna and Nan made their way into the chapel behind Stéphanie, whose hand rested on their mother’s shoulder. With her hesitant steps, Claire looked like a crow with a broken wing.

Claire took small, careful steps along the flagstone floor of the chapel. The light touch of Stéphanie’s hand guided her to the front pew. At any moment, she’d lose her balance and fall over. It wasn’t the hangover from the sleeping pill she’d taken last night; it was the unexpected grief—grief for her unfaithful husband.

Last week, she’d met the rector, Anglican, a gentle person, who hadn’t known Michael. Claire sat quietly in the church office as her daughters described him; a sporty, funny, loving father. They’d left out his untidy infidelities.

Claire left out some things too—that Michael had fathered a child with their friend, Fiona. The girl was sixteen now. She’d also left out that she and Fiona were much more than friends but that was still hard to say. It was complicated, the three of them working together, being friends and at times, lovers.

A few years later, there was that incident with the graduate student.  She didn’t let Michael move back in. But she’d allowed him to come to the family cottage, to be with their daughters and to pretend that they were a normal family.

And now Michael was dead. The sense of unfinished business distressed her. Perhaps he was getting to the place where he was willing to make amends. They could have apologized to each other.

Two evenings ago, Claire and her daughters tried on the outfits she’d ordered for the funeral. Despite refusing to participate in Claire’s wardrobe plan, her mother had joined them.

“I have a suitable outfit, Claire,” Nan said. “I sewed it for my husband’s funeral. Ready-to-wear on an occasion like this?”

Oh Mom. A seamstress. A snob. Uncompromising. But she was enjoying the pizza that Claire had ordered.

Nan dabbed tomato sauce from the corners of her mouth with a paper napkin and spoke softly to Brianna, who sat beside her on the couch. She gave Brianna’s hand a purposeful squeeze. Her daughters shared their secrets with their grandmother. Claire didn’t have the patience for their dramas about boyfriends or unfairness at their jobs.

Had her mother ever told the girls that, in the beginning, she didn’t like Michael? She’d warned Claire not to marry him. Said Claire was marrying too far up, overreaching. It would only lead to trouble. But over the years, her mother and Michael became allies. They’d teamed up against her in a shared resentment of her accomplishments. After all, she was an internationally recognized, tenured professor with hundreds of publications. But truth be told, Michael and Nan had done most of the work raising the girls so Claire could have her career. Everything has a cost. And then Fiona. But that was after Michael had let her down so badly.

Claire watched Stéphanie slide into her dress. The jersey fabric of the wrap dress clung to her jutting hip bones. She looked fabulous. Claire still watched what Stéphanie ate. Her eating disorder was a lifelong condition, but she’d gobbled down an entire slice of pizza. 

“Your turn, Brianna,” Claire said, pushing the garment bag toward her.

Brianna struggled as she wriggled the dress up over her hips. “It doesn’t fit.” She slid her hand into the gaping front. “The jacket won’t fix this.”

Nan nodded. Claire felt the corners of her mouth tightening. Brianna wasn’t pulling her weight. “No one will be looking at you, Brianna.” No, they won’t. They’ll be looking at Stéphanie.

But now, they were in the chapel, seated in the front pew—Nan beside Stéphanie, then her, and Brianna on the aisle. They looked unified, dignified—a sort of solidarity against the shock of Michael’s death.

Claire’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. Her chest felt tight, and it was difficult to breathe. She interlaced her fingers with Stéphanie’s and let out a long sigh.

Brianna stared at the pewter urn containing her dad’s ashes resting on the altar table a few feet in front of her. Beside it was the picture of him smiling, his curly chestnut bangs draped over his forehead. It was Stéphanie who’d taken the photo—the final weekend they’d been at the cottage. She’d also chosen the pointed, patent shoes crushing Brianna’s toes. She gripped her tongue between her teeth and wriggled her heels out of them. 

Last week, Brianna had met Stéphanie at Dad’s apartment on Nun’s Island to choose a suit for his cremation. Mom had refused to come.

She found Stéphanie standing in his bedroom, her fists on her hips, gazing through the streaky windows at the view of the swirling waters of the St Lawrence River.

“We walked across the river on the Escalade with Dad?” Stéph said.

More annoying up-speak—must be nerves. Brianna sniffed. “I remember. That Minke whale swimming upstream. It died.” She felt her face screwing up tightly in the way that was supposed to stop her crying. She retreated into the tiny bathroom, shut the door, and slumped onto the toilet seat. Abandoned on the edge of the spit-splattered sink were Dad’s worn-out toothbrush and a chubby tube of toothpaste squeezed in the middle. She dabbed her eyes with a tissue, flushed it down the toilet and went back out.

Stéphanie slid back the mirrored closet doors. “Not much here, Bree?” 

The hangers scraped as she pulled each one across the metal rod.

“What about this?” she said, holding up a navy-blue pinstripe suit.

“That’s not him,” Brianna said. 

“This tie?” Stéphanie held up a brown tie, patterned diagonally with dark blobs. If you looked closely, you could see they were perching birds. “Mom gave it to him. Birds, it’s how they met.”

“Never saw him wear that either,” Brianna said.

Stéphanie pulled his camel hair jacket off the mangled wire hanger. “The tie’s perfect with this?”

Brianna stepped closer and pushed her face into the lapels of the jacket. “That’s his scent, that oaky scent. She held up the sleeve. “Remember?”

Stéphanie sniffed the sleeve. Brianna saw that she didn’t. “No tie. The cream turtleneck he always wore,” Brianna said, her voice muffled in the fabric of the jacket.

Stéphanie found the crumpled turtleneck stuffed in his bottom dresser drawer. Her nose wrinkled as she held it up.

“Doesn’t matter Stéph, it’ll be fine,” Brianna said too sharply.

 “I’m just as sad as you are, Bree. He was my dad too.”

“Sorry.” She hadn’t meant to be mean, but she’d been closer to him. She’d understood him better than Steph.

But none of that mattered anymore. Dad and his clothes had been cremated. What was left of him was in that urn. She sat on the hard oak bench, tugging at her sweaty polyester dress and wishing she could hug him.

Claire glanced back at her friends and colleagues, murmuring among themselves as they filed into the pews. The air was thick with smells of polished wood and dusty hymnals. The organist was playing a mournful Bach piece she couldn’t name, the one the rector had suggested. What would Michael have chosen if he’d had the chance?

Nathalie, the department chair, caught her eye, making a warm half-smile. Claire spotted the cleaner who’d found Michael. And there was his uncle, Fred, ninety-four now, bent over his walker and shuffling up the aisle with his caregiver. 

And despite their argument last night, Fiona had come. She sat in the final row beside sixteen-year-old Sophia. Claire had begged Fiona to come, to help her get through the day.

“Sophia never knew Michael. He wasn’t in the picture.” Fiona said.

“Come for me.” Claire replied. 

Claire recalled the kerfuffle in the department seventeen years ago—Fiona announcing she was planning to get pregnant and raise a child single-handedly. Michael agreed to donate his sperm. Claire should have anticipated that Michael would get involved with Fiona after the baby was born. After all, he did have a history.

Sophia was two years old and in daycare. Claire and Fiona had resumed their weekly habit of coffee on The Main. The single parenting had been rough on Fiona. She had no other family and Claire and Michael helped when they could. At eight and ten, the girls were too young to be of any use babysitting. But they should have let the girls meet their half-sister—be included in raising her.

Claire was sipping her cappuccino, her mouth stuffed with apple torte when Fiona reached across the café table and gripped her arm.

“I can’t sit here chatting with you like nothing’s going on,” she said, more huskily than usual. “No more lying for me. I’ve been screwing Michael since before I got pregnant. I’m sorry.”

Claire choked on her pastry and lowered her cup. So obvious now. His willingness to father the baby. His attentiveness to Fiona. She lifted Fiona’s hand from her arm and stared into her moistening eyes. “And now?”

“We’re done now.” Fiona rubbed her eyes. “I was blinded by wanting a child and then so grateful. I needed him.” Tears flowed. “I was a project,” she whispered between sobs.

Fucking Michael. Again. With Fiona. Michael needing to be needed—then, the usual, he loses interest.

“I was using him to get what I wanted but …”

Claire took Fiona’s hand. “He has a way of getting what he wants, when he wants, Fiona.” Claire was angry but not at Fiona. Claire had helped set Fiona up. She was the victim—postpartum, single mother, home alone for those first nine months. Claire should’ve seen it coming. 

Fiona’s phone alarm rang. “Gotta go. Daycare’s gonna fine me if I’m late.”

“I’ll need some time, Fiona,” Claire said as she got up and hugged her tightly. “Let’s talk again tomorrow and all the days after that.”

They did talk more. They became a couple. But now Michael’s dead and the girls still haven’t been told about Sophia or even harder, Fiona.

The organ was quiet now. If Brianna thought of only breathing in and then breathing out, she’d get through this. Gregory, her dad’s childhood friend, delivered the eulogy, telling his favourite story, “He Just Wouldn’t Leave.” Dad had loved describing casting his father’s ashes into Georgian Bay, the horror of the greasy pile refusing to sink or drift away. What would they do with Dad’s ashes?

Her mother, who was not religious, had insisted on a reading of the 23rd Psalm from the King James Version. Brianna wanted to read the lyrics of a Tragically Hip song.

“It was Dad’s favourite song, his favourite band,” Brianna said. “Ahead by a Century.”

“It’s a rock song.”

“It’s a love song, Mom.”

Brianna refused to read anything else, so Stéphanie read the psalm in her stupid up-speak. “The lord is my shepherd” is not a question, Brianna murmured under her breath. Her brain brimmed with messy feelings–annoyance with Stéphanie for being such a show-off, sorrow for her mother and fury at her father for dying.

As Brianna squirmed on the bench to adjust her panties, she glimpsed of a tall woman sitting on the aisle in the last pew. Her oval face was strangely familiar. From Mom’s work? And beside her, looking like she wanted to bolt out the door, was a slender, white-faced teenager. Her hair was frizzy, ginger like Stéphanie’s but tugged into a bun. They had the same almond-shaped, emerald eyes.

A memory flashed through Brianna’s mind. She was seven. It was a summer Sunday afternoon, in a small park with wilted geraniums in the window boxes of the row houses surrounding the square.

She and Stéphanie, who was five, were playing on the swings near the fountain. Brianna glanced back to check for her dad and saw the woman with the oval face sitting beside him on the park bench. Her long legs were stretched out in front of her, and her hands were clasped over her pregnant belly.

“Hey, Brianna. Come here.”

Dad was smiling, drumming his fingers on the back of the bench.

The woman looked at her with shining green eyes. “You’re noticing my belly.” Brianna nodded. “Would you like to touch it?”

Brianna did but she squeezed her hands together behind her back.

“Take your sister. Get some ice cream,” Dad said, handing her a five-dollar bill.

“By ourselves?”

“By yourselves.”

But when Brianna was in the variety store, Stéphanie disappeared. “Dad, I’ve lost Stéphanie,” she panted as she ran towards the couple on the bench in the park.

He grinned and pointed towards the fountain, where Stéphanie was trailing her fingers in the water. Brianna worried that Dad would tell Mom that she’d lost Stéphanie. She worried that she’d forgotten to close the freezer in the store.

“Bree, you worry too much for someone your age,” Dad said.

“The Day Brianna Lost Stéphanie,” became one of his favourite stories. When he told it, he never mentioned the woman, Fiona. But the worst part was that Dad hadn’t understood how frightened she’d been.

The rector’s voice hummed in the background. Brianna twisted on the hard pew considering what Nan had whispered to her the other night on the couch.

“Well, your dad can’t harm anyone anymore, can he?” 

Brianna wasn’t sure what Nan meant. He’d hurt her on the ice-cream day and that summer he went to Victoria. And why did that woman, Fiona, and the girl with the hair like Stéphanie’s belong at his funeral?

The service was over. Claire, flanked by her daughters and mother, made her way down the aisle and out of the dim chapel into the afternoon light. They stood in a line at the top of the steps. Claire exchanged kisses and hugs with Michael’s colleagues and friends. She and Fiona shared a long embrace.

“Sorry about last night,” Fiona whispered in her ear. “Of course, Sophia should be here.” She patted Claire’s bum when they moved apart.

“Who was that woman?” Brianna asked rubbing her hands on her thighs.

“My colleague, Fiona. And her daughter, Sophia.” 

Fiona’s arm was draped around Sophia’s shoulder as if to shelter her from the day’s sadness.

“Her hair’s just like Stéphanie’s. Same green eyes,” said Brianna.

“But her posture’s terrible. So slouchy and sulky,” said Claire, relieved her daughters were through the sloppy teenage phase and concerned at what lay ahead for Fiona. “Fiona works in the department. And yes, Sophia’s hair is just like Stéphanie’s. They’re both lucky.” 

Claire stopped. There’s never a good time. She took Brianna’s elbow and guided her away from the remaining guests. “Brianna, this is important. I should have told you years ago.” She pulled her fingers through her hair and took a deep breath.  “Michael fathered Sophia with Fiona. Sophia is your half-sister.”

“A half-sister? said Brianna. “Is this a joke? Does Stéphanie know?”

“Not a joke, Brianna. And let’s not tell Stéphanie. Not today. And please close your mouth.”

Claire saw Brianna’s confusion. Deaths and funerals make you do reckless things. It was the wrong time and the wrong day to tell her, but there was no going back. She glanced at Stéphanie, swaying in her high heels and flicking her flaming hair about in conversation with Michael’s soccer buddies. “Come on, girls. Let’s get to the reception.”

Claire hurried the girls past the brass-handled doors and into the faculty club. The flowers and linens did look elegant. The two-tiered cake was beautiful—royal icing decorated with tiny marzipan birds like the ones on that tie she’d him bought years ago. She’d resented the extravagant catering costs, but the girls had insisted. Her lawyer assured her there was nothing to worry about. Michael’s wealth would come to her. But she’d never stop worrying about money. She’d inherited that from her mother.

And now Michael was dead, she’d have to re-examine everything. Re-examine her anger, her disappointment and her contempt for him. To find what—sorrow or maybe even forgiveness? But if she was being truthful, she wished for a different ending; for another chance to tell him that she had loved him, at least in the beginning. But she didn’t forgive him for abusing her love with all those infidelities. Would he have forgiven her if she’d told him about her love for Fiona?

Brianna leaned against the wall of the reception room. Waves of chatter washed over her. Claire tilted her head to signal that she should join her and Stéphanie in welcoming the guests. Not yet. She hadn’t caught her breath. She wasn’t sure if she could walk. She was drowning in disbelief and anger. Today was supposed to be about Dad. The loss and the grief. Not the day to find out about a half-sister. Claire. So cruel. Questions churned inside her. Had Dad loved Sophia as much as her and Stéphanie? 

Claire had misjudged the situation. She hadn’t meant to be cruel. Poor Brianna propped up against the wall. So serious. Misunderstood. Her life would be so much easier if she’d lighten up. Claire should have spoken to Stéphanie first. She might have been amused at the situation, after all, they did look alike. It had been a mistake not to tell the girls sooner. Claire and Fiona told them the same day they told Sophia about Michael. But she and Fiona weren’t ready to come clean about their relationship. The girls would have seen it. Muddy water under a rickety bridge. 

Brianna made her way over to join them. Good girl. She’s recovering. They’d stand together for the remainder of the reception to receive condolences about Michael.

But in the future, it would be up to the girls to learn how to manage life’s tough truths. Like fledglings being forced from the nest, they needed to grow up. She wasn’t responsible for their happiness. It was hard enough to find her own happiness. But she’d begin by ensuring she got a slice of that expensive cake before it all disappeared.

The Hummingbird

It’s the middle of September. I’ve been locked up here on the Eating Disorders Unit of the hospital for three weeks. There are nineteen sad-looking girls with ugly plastic ID bracelets on their wrists walking out around this long ward with the alarmed doors at each end.

I did some stupid stuff this summer, like starving myself. But the best stupid thing I did was getting a tattoo. A black outline of a hummingbird sits on my right shoulder. Nan, my grandmother, took me to the parlour around the corner from her place in Verdun and signed for me. It didn’t hurt that much. No one else knows, not Mom, not Dad and not my older sister, Brianna, who is sixteen. I love it and I’ll have it forever. I got it in May, the week that Mom threw Dad out. He was screwing one of his graduate students. Now he’s in Victoria, teaching at the university and I’m locked up here.

You can tell who’s new here on the ward. Until the staff trust you, you wear pink scrubs with the hospital initials, HSJ, printed on them in sulking black letters. The twill polyester fabric grips the thighs of the fat girls and sags from the shoulders of the skinny ones. Everyone here is too something—too fat, too skinny, too needy, too boring, too sad, too hopeless. The fat girls hate the skinny girls, and the skinny girls hate them back. I can smell it. The one thing we all agree on is don’t trust the workers. Any second, somebody might grab you and force a piece of bread or a pill down your throat.

I’m not even the skinniest girl here. The week I arrived Genevieve was transferred to the ICU. Emélie stayed out of ICU by allowing them to insert the slender yellow feeding tube that dangles from her nostril during the day and feeds her at night while she sleeps. A stale milk odour lingers ‘round her.

I told the nurses I smoke so I can chew Nicorette like a few of the other girls do. It tastes terrible but I get a bit of a buzz and something to do besides folding origami cranes and journaling. This journaling is killing me.

I love to read and write but here, I’m supposed to write down the good things about my mom—determined, smart, industrious, and so on. If I think of a bad thing, I change it to a good thing—bossy to organized, away-all-the-time   to committed-to-her-work. Like that. The therapists help me find good ways to think about her. I’ve scribbled a lot in this book and today I wrote kind and loving because that’s what I want to be. I mean I’m making this stuff up anyway.

And the whole time I’m doing all these exercises, I’m thinking about what I did in June. And every time someone asks, “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?” I shake my head and say “I don’t think so.” But here’s what happened.

It was the first week of June. I was walking to school past the grand houses in Westmount with their green velvet lawns, tidy flower beds filled with early blooming roses and the scents of lilac and wisteria. But it was a sad time for me because Dad had left for Victoria the May long weekend. And that week, Brianna, who was nearly sixteen and in Grade Ten, ditched me to walk with her friends. All they talk about is the movie that Mom won’t let me see, The Hunger Games.

A wolf-whistle startled me. Who whistles like that? I jerked my head around. A gardening guy in a green T-shirt and cut-offs standing beside the rose bed, grinned at me from under a darker green ball cap. The green leafy curling La Scène Verte logo on his hat matched the one on his t-shirt. His lips were pouty and his smile lopsided to his right. His tanned calves bulged above his work boots.

He raised his arm and waved. Flustered, my thumbs stuck beneath the shoulder straps of my backpack, I flickered my fingers in his direction. My heart was whirring. My face was burning. He was staring at me, my legs. I tugged my uniform skirt down to cover my legs and shoved my thumbs further under my backpack straps. I wanted to run but that would look too lame. And right away, I knew I wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened, especially not Brianna. 

For the next two weeks, I walked the long way to school, past the apartments. It wasn’t as pretty but I didn’t have to think about running into that guy again. But that wasn’t true. I was thinking about him a lot and why he did that. Did he think I was cute? The guy was maybe twenty.

Had Dad ever whistled at girls like that when he was that age? My stomach clenched as I imagined that grad student with him in Victoria.

I’d been rolling up the waistband of my uniform skirt after I left the house each morning. I stopped. I wanted it to cover my knees. The other girls would have teased me if I didn’t hiked it up when I was at the school gates. I had the longest skirt of all of them.

It was the day of my English final. I was late and took my old route. When I turned the corner, I saw a truck with La Scène Verte painted in large, pale green letters on its side parked in front of the same house. What would I’d do if that guy was there. I walked faster and pulled Dad’s tattered Expos hat down over my brow.

“Hey you,” a low voice called out.

I kept my head down. “Got an exam. Gotta go.” He walked toward me but stayed on the grass. I backed away to the far edge of the sidewalk.

“Meet me after? Coffee?”

He seemed nice with his crooked smile. My heart was racing like the last time. The oldest boy I’d ever spoken to was in Grade Ten and now here was this guy, all muscly and big-jawed, trying to get my attention. “I have to go.” I turned and ran the five blocks to school without stopping. At the iron railings, I bent over, sucking in deep breaths, and waited for the pounding of my heart to stop. I didn’t notice the pain from my shoulder strap rubbing on the skin of my tattoo until I was sitting in my exam.

I knew Lord of the Flies, inside-out so even tho’ my brain was fizzing with confusing thoughts—he was interested in me, a skinny Grade Eight kid—the exam went OK. I was chatting with my girlfriends by the school yard railings when I saw him. He’d followed me. He waved that same wave and smiled that same smile.

“Do ya’ know that guy?” my friend Becky asked as we gathered by the railing.

“Not exactly.”

“Why’s he waving at you?”

Becky wrapped her arms around her chest so her hands clutched her back like she was being hugged by a guy. “Stéphie’s got a boyfriend,” she chanted.

“Do not. Don’t even know him.” Idiots, I thought as I spun about and stomped off toward the school gate. But he tracked me from the other side of the railings.

“Hi. Wanna go for coffee?”

That husky voice. My stomach fluttered. “I don’t drink coffee.” My voice was squeaky, and I knew I must be blushing again.

But that was how we got started. He bought me a Coke from the dépanneur and we shared it on the bench in the park near the school. He held my sweaty hand. His fingernails were dirty, his palms rough. My hand felt fragile inside his grip. He put his arm around me. I smelt the salty sweaty scent from his day’s work. He was way taller than me and meaty against my boniness.

We met every afternoon for the rest of the week. He told me his name was Roy. I think I told him mine, but he only called me Babe. I never learned his last name or where he lived or anything important about him.

He held my hand and touched my lips with his fingers. He said he loved my long thick hair and ran his hands through it. He touched my neck and held my face in his hands. We hadn’t kissed yet, but I’d decided that he could be my boyfriend. Brianna had a boyfriend so why shouldn’t I? I wasn’t going to tell her yet. I imagined us hugging and kissing on the couch in the basement like Brianna and Marc did. Maybe even French kissing?

The morning after my last exam, he picked me up in his friend’s rusted-out Honda Civic. We’d planned to drive to his friend’s cottage in the country for a swim in the lake. It was a steamy June day. For sure there’d be a thundershower later.

“Come on. Get in.”

I climbed in and untangled the seatbelt. The car stank of tobacco and maybe even dope. “Where are we going exactly?”

“My buddy’s cottage. Lac-Brome.

I didn’t think he knew people rich enough to have a cottage, but I was curious.

“Got your suit?”

“Sure, I do.” I fished out my bikini top from the plastic carrier bag and dangled it in front of him. He laughed. I put my bare feet up on the dashboard. Last night, Brianna painted my toenails Barney purple. They looked pretty cool. I wore my cut-offs and my favourite stretchy orange tube top. I checked my watch. It was ten-thirty. As long as I was back by five, Mom, who had already left for work, wouldn’t even know I’d been out.

It was hard for me to hear what he was talking about because of the screeching of his heavy metal CD. Somebody leaving some band to join another or overdosing or something. He said such dumb things, it was easier to like him when he didn’t speak. He kept one hand on the steering wheel and reached over and touched my left thigh with his fingers. I wanted him to take those rough fingers away but I did nothing.

“Nice thigh babe.”

I didn’t have a cellphone. Brianna would’ve asked too many questions that morning if I’d tried to borrow hers. Dad had gotten her one in May just before he left. It wasn’t even her birthday. I wished I’d pushed Dad harder to get me one too.

“You just turned fourteen. What do you need a phone for?” Dad said as he gave Brianna the box.

“You know, emergencies,” I’d said.

“How about not having any emergencies,” he’d said, patting the top of my head.

I should have kicked up more of a fuss before he’d gone off to Victoria. I could have said that if I had a cell phone it would be more convenient for Mom while he was away. And now Dad was gone, there was no point in asking Mom for one. And even if I’d had a phone, would I have done anything different?

We turned off the autoroute and drove past farms and white clapboard churches with metal roofs. I’d been out here before on a Grade Six school trip to a cabane à sucre. It had been early spring then. Snow was on the ground and the maple sap was running. Only three years ago, but what a goofy little kid I’d been then—a sucky little Daddy’s girl.

Roy stopped at the Boni-Soir in Bromont. I waited in the car, smoothing the place on my thigh where his hand had been. He strode out carrying a brick of cheese, some pepperoni sticks and two big bottles of beer. I wasn’t hungry and I didn’t drink beer. Dad liked to tell the story of when I was three and had tasted his beer. I’d scrunched up my face but had insisted on another sip.

“Where are we going again?”

“Lac-Brome. Soon. Change that CD, eh?”

I peeled my back off the plastic upholstery and slipped in a different disc—more whining guitar solos and pounding bass. I like the music that that Mom and Brianna like—Arcade Fire, Great Lake Swimmers, Cowboy Junkies. 

After a few miles of rattling along the washboard gravel road, he pulled into a dirt driveway. A white trailer perched on blocks overlooked the lake. Somebody was into gardening and had planted geraniums and marigolds in the two small beds in front of the steps. The lake was still, maybe resting before the weekend invasion of jet skis and wakeboarders.

“Let’s go!” He pulled off his green T-shirt. Did he only have one? And his cut-offs. No undershorts, just his muscled white ass charging down the dock. He cannonballed off the dock and into the water with a messy splash.

“Come on Babe. Jump in.”

I’d skinny-dipped a thousand times before with Brianna and the other kids at our cottage, but this felt more dangerous. I pulled off my top and wiggled out of my jeans but kept my underpants on. I wasn’t that crazy. I hardly knew this guy. Would he notice that my right nipple was a bit larger than my left one or that I didn’t shave my legs yet. I grabbed my towel and ran down the dock, clutching it to my chest.

Later, inside the trailer, he stood naked in the kitchen. His feet were white and pale against the cracked brown linoleum floor. I’d made a mini-dress with my towel. He gnawed at the pepperoni stick and slugged back a beer. “Want some Babe?”  He pressed me against the metal edge of the kitchen counter with his hips.

“Not hungry.” I pushed the strings of wet hair off my face and wished that I’d brought a scrunchy. I looked past him at the yellowed square plastic wall clock. It was 12:30. The red second hand jerked clumsily past the black minute markings.

He leant over me. “I want you.” His lips were greasy, and his breath stank of beer. I felt sick. He grabbed my hair and tipped me further back against the counter. He pushed his tongue into my mouth. He put his arm around my waist, steered me into the living room and pressed me onto the couch. The fabric was scratchy and sticky. He flopped onto me like a panting dog. He was heavier than I’d imagined. “I want you,” he said huskily as he tugged at the towel ends tied above my chest.

I wasn’t sure what to do but I was certain that Brianna had already done it with Marc. So why shouldn’t I? It’d be like a science experiment. I swallowed the acid taste in my mouth.

“Touch me, Babe.” He took my hand and folded my fingers around his erect penis. It felt dry and rubbery in my hand. He pulled my hand up and down. I didn’t want to look.

“Harder.”

It felt silly but he was gasping and groaning like it was something. I didn’t want to disappoint him or upset him. I had to stay curious.

“Babe, I need to fuck you.”

I nodded and squeezed my eyes shut as he pushed himself inside me. It hurt.

He whimpered and finished with a shudder. And then I knew what all the fuss was about. For guys anyway. But what I hadn’t expected was that after he had that nap, he’d want to do it all again. And the whole thing took longer this time and I was sore. Was what it had been like for Brianna with Marc?

Afterwards, I squirmed out from underneath his limp body, grabbed my towel and tore down the dock. I splashed into the lake. The cool water rushed against my battered parts and rinsed away the stickiness from between my legs.

When I got home, I went to Mom’s mending basket and found Nan’s second-best, brass shears. I locked myself in the upstairs bathroom. I shook as the thick chunks of hair fell onto the floor. The rasping of the sturdy scissors calmed me. I thought of the fragile crepes and organzas that Nan had cut with these scissors. I stood in the middle of the tangled mess on the floor and cut and cut and cut until my fingers were hard against my scalp and the scissors were hard against my fingers.

When Brianna saw me, she brushed her fingers through the remaining tufts on my head and said, “I know you’re sad. We’re all sad. It’s hard with Dad gone.”

And I hugged her and cried but I didn’t tell. 

The next day, when we went to the salon, the stylist squeezed some minty lotion onto my scalp and promised when I came back in September, I’d get the best cut.

Nan, who was looking after us while Mom was away in Costa Rica with her bird people, said nothing. She made chicken for dinner. That was when I stopped eating.

Mom went away again to Costa Rica in August with her bird people and Dad stayed out in Victoria. Brianna had her lifeguarding job and her cell phone. They were all too busy that summer to notice I was melting away under the baggy T-shirt I wore all the time.

I concentrated on getting down to one hundred pounds. I liked the tidiness of the one and the two empty zeroes. I believed I’d feel better at one hundred. It felt so good not eating. I felt so powerful and I loved it. I was the skinniest one. And then my gums started bleeding when I wasn’t even brushing my teeth.

It was the morning of the first day back to school after the Labour Day weekend. I reached up into the kitchen cupboard for a drinking glass and my uniform skirt slid off my hips. I grabbed the waistband and hauled it up but by then Mom had seen.

“Why are you wearing Brianna’s skirt?” she snapped.

“It’s mine, Mom.” I don’t know why I didn’t lie.

“Oh my God. Look at you. You’ve stopped eating.” Her voice softened and she touched my shoulder in the tenderest way I’d ever felt. She was crying. “Oh Stéphanie, how is this family going to find time for this?”

And I felt bad for her that I was causing trouble. I dropped my gaze and asked, “Are we still a family, Mom?”

So that’s my story. That’s how I ended up here. And what do I think now about what I did these three months later? What I feel is mostly stupid. Careless.

“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?” they still ask me. 

And why would I let some stranger barge in on my shame? No. It’s private. It’s mine. It’s my regret. 

He never used my name. I can’t even say for sure whether I told him what it was. I was Babe. A toy. Roy was a boy and I was his toy. And I still can’t name what I felt—scared, curious, excited or disgusted. All of those things? All at once? But mainly ashamed—ashamed I’d feel better than Brianna.

It’s the last week of October. Dad has flown in from Victoria to see me. I haven’t seen him since the May long weekend. Ha! Victoria Day weekend, the weekend he went to Victoria. He’s at his old teaching job at U. Vic. where Mom and he lived before they moved to Montreal. He’s in the Environmental Studies department— more bird stuff, a climate change researcher.

Mom told us her side of the story in May when he left.  “Your father made a terrible choice that has devalued our relationship. I’ve asked him to leave.”

“Will he come back?” I asked.

“That depends on him.”

And tho’ Mom sounded harsh, I could tell from her cracking voice that she was about to cry. 

That graduate student Lucie, the one with the thick brown hair, who hung around him all winter, was the one. She’d even come up to the cottage in St Sauveur last February for a weekend of snowshoeing. Each time I was at the lake that summer, I’d find those long, wiry hairs in the shower, on the bathroom floor and behind the toilet.

There’s a private room on the ward where patients can meet approved visitors. Mom isn’t one. The doctors decided that Mom shouldn’t visit for the first few weeks. I don’t miss her, but I worry about how she’s doing without Dad. Probably working too hard.

The room has a barred window, covered with a set of battered, yellowed blinds and overlooking the parking lot. There are two gaudy re-covered couches that despite all reds, yellows and oranges are still saggy and uncomfortable. Dad looks tired; he’s lost weight too.

“Thanks for coming Dad.”

“I’d have come sooner but it would have upset your mother. We’re both worried about you.”

“I felt so powerful not eating. I loved it.”

“You sound like a drug addict.”

“It’s the same thing, Daddy. I think about food all the time.” My voice is squeeky. I might cry.

“I need to say I’m sorry for…” he started.

“Stop it. I don’t want to hear about it.”

He wraps his arms around me and squeezes me until I can barely breathe. “I’m not supposed to mention your weight, but this is like hugging a skeleton,” he said.

“I’m fixing it Dad. I’ll get better, I promise.”

It’s after Halloween when Brianna brings me the chocolate. She puts the wafer-thin bar down on the scratched Formica surface of the coffee table in the lounge—Swiss, dark with sea salt. Each of the ten squares has exactly fifty-four calories. The delicate foil makes a crinkling sound as Brianna unwraps it. She tries to snap the bar along the lines, but it breaks into ten uneven pieces. I study the foil surface covered with the dark chocolate puzzle pieces. 

“Would you like a taste?” Brianna asks.

I do. I imagine the chocolate melting inside my mouth, the taste of the bitter cacao and the velvety texture coating my tongue. My rules about food seem too harsh, too nasty and too tiring. But if I do take a piece, what could I avoid eating later without upsetting the nurses?

“You don’t have to.”

“But I want to.” My hand shakes as I reach for the smallest fragment, the size of my baby fingernail. I hold it between my thumb and forefinger close to my face and inhale the chocolatey smell. My mouth moistens. I place the piece of chocolate on my tongue and close my lips. It feels dangerous and sacred like the time I took Holy Communion at Nan’s church when I wasn’t even confirmed.

Brianna sighs and I know from the way she is scrunching up her face that she might cry. The chocolate melts on my tongue. There is a zing as the sweetness enters my body. “I need a drink of water, Bree.”

She rushes away to get the plastic cup of water from my bedside table. When she gets back, I gulp down the whole thing.

“Do you want another piece?”

“Not at the moment. I need to think about it.”

I start to get better like I’d promised Dad I would. Maybe I would have gotten better anyway with all that counselling and those anti-depressants. I finish all the yogurt in the container. I eat all the tuna in the sandwich. My muscles get stronger. The boney ridge on my shoulder blade where my hummingbird lives softens. I want to take care of that hummingbird. I want to go back to school. I want to see my friends. I want to grow up and have a real boyfriend. I want someone who’ll love me.

It’s the end of November. The doctors say it’s safe for me to go home but I don’t want to go home. It’s not home with Dad away in Victoria. They let me go to Nan’s. She’s always kind to me.

I slouch on Nan’s tiny couch in my pajamas watching Saving Hope, Jeopardy, and Disney princess videos. Brianna and I know all the words to every song in the Little Mermaid. It’s our favourite. Nan explains what she is doing as she sets a sleeve in a blazer, tacks interfacing on a collar or covers buttons. She turns flat bolts of fabric into jackets and dresses and coats like a good sorceress with a magic wand. Sometimes Nan lets me do the basting or if the fabric is not too fine the hemming. Nan doesn’t barge about grabbing misplaced things or talk about how she is late or tired all the time. She doesn’t interrupt me when I’m reading or drawing.

We eat properly at the kitchen table. And unlike Mom, Nan likes to cook. Lunch today was real chicken noodle soup. Tonight, at bedtime, we’re having hot chocolate. And if there are any left, ‘cos we’ve been snacking, a chocolate-covered digestive biscuit. Tomorrow, I’m learning to make an omelette.

In the therapy sessions they explained that my problem is wanting to be perfect. But that’s not it. They’re mixing me up with those other girls—the dancers, the gymnasts, and that cellist. It’s Mom who wants me to be perfect—top marks, tidy room, swim team, which I hate. I drop whatever I’m doing to help her find her keys or papers so that she can get her precious stuff done—saving migrating birds and the planet. And they never explained to me why Brianna didn’t get sick? We have the same mother.

Brianna visits me at Nan’s most days after school and brings me homework. My pills help me concentrate. I might catch up on one course, maybe English. Will I ever tell her about Lac-Brome? Not yet, for sure.

“Mom misses you, Stéphanie,” says Brianna this afternoon.

“I miss her sometimes too.” And it’s true. Mom is so energetic and knows so much about migration and light pollution and climate change and how to run a meeting and circulate petitions. She travels to Central America for weeks with only a carry-on.

“She wants to visit, maybe this weekend for Sunday lunch?” 

The whirring of Nan’s Singer stops. I tug at my new haircut. 

It’s Sunday lunch. I helped Nan by chopping the carrots and potatoes for the pot pie. She made the pastry. Mom looks tired. She kicks off her runners and throws her jacket on the couch. She’d go crazy if I did that at home. She scans all the sewing stuff crammed into the parlour. “Well, this is cozy.”

Nan glares at her.

“If you’re serious about this vegetarian thing, Stéphanie, this pastry better not have any lard in it.” 

“It’s Crisco, Claire,” Nan says.

“I won’t be having any. You know, the calories. Work’s been crazy. Finishing my book.”

Mom always says that. She always says work’s crazy. and she is too tired. Nothing’s changed.

“I hope you’re pulling your weight around here Stéphanie.”

I winced.

“Well, I know how easy it is for you to sit back. But running a house doesn’t happen by magic.”

“Stéph’s a great help to me, Claire,” Nan says.

Brianna interrupted. “It’ll be great when Stéph’s ready to come home.”

I’ll never get used to calling the house “home” if Dad isn’t there.

“Why don’t we try a weekend together at the cottage? Go snowshoeing,” says Brianna.

“I’m not up for that,” says Nan. “Too cold. With Christmas and New Year’s coming, I’ve got three gowns to finish here, all velvet, taffeta and silk. Nightmares to handle. You three go.”

And I imagine the cottage, the roof blanketed in pillowy snow, the glistening frozen lake and the creaking under my snowshoes as I pack down a path to the porch steps. But I can’t imagine being there without Dad.

The car crunches to a stop at the edge of the snowplowed gravel road. The outline of the empty driveway is filled with fresh snow. Brianna and I bundle up in our down jackets. I’m wearing three other layers. We put on our mitts and hats and hatch out of the car into the cold. The snow squeaks under my boots. It’s the first time I’ve come to the cottage since the Labour Day weekend.

The silhouettes of the naked maple trees darken in the twilight. A full moon is rising over the rounded peaks of those worn-out Laurentian mountains; the receding glaciers having ground them down. I miss Dad’s ritual explanation of the whole glaciation thing.

“Shush. It’s an owl.”

I turn in the direction that Mom is pointing and hear a throaty hollow questioning. “Whoo, Whoo, Whoo,” repeating through the woods.

“It sounds so lonely and sad,” I say.

“Shush up. Listen,” she says.

I stand still and watch the moonlight strengthening the skinny dark shadows of the bare trees on the pale snow. My fingers tingle and my feet are freezing.

“Sounds like a Great Grey Owl. So rare.” Mom puts on her snowshoes, turns off her headlight and tramps away in the direction of the hooting.

“Bye Mom,” I whisper in her direction.

Brianna and I Bungie-chord the two snap-top containers of supplies to the toboggan and strap on our snowshoes. We take turns stamping out the trail or dragging the toboggan across the powdery snow. Although I’m stronger than I was a month ago, I’m breathless with each step. Brianna does all the work.

Brianna lights the fire in the wood stove with the first match and we stare at the flickering flames. Last fall, Dad and I split maple pieces and stacked wooden kindling. “Weird to be here without Dad,” I say.

“We’ll be OK. He taught us how to do everything we need to,” says Brianna.

I cuddle up against her warm, solid body and re-arrange the blankets on the couch. We watch our breath evaporate into the room. Soon it will be hot enough to take off our coats and mittens. I adjust the toque on my head. It’s staying on no matter what. Nan’s vegetarian chilli warms on the top of the stove and smells good.

“What’s it like at home, Brianna?”

“Trying to keep Mom happy. She’s pretty mad.”

“Except she can’t figure out that she’s mad. She thinks she’s just busy.”

“I’d like it if you came home. It’s easier when there’s two of us.”

I could stop being so mad too. I’m so tired of being angry and sad.

The next evening Brianna and I sit on the couch in T-shirts in the roasting cabin. Mom is out tracking the poor owl. “Who? Who?” it calls wondering who is tracking it. Or maybe it is “Whew! Whew!” because Mom hasn’t found it.

“Disgusting to think of Dad and Lucie doing it, right here on this couch,” Brianna says.

“Any moment, we’re gonna find another one of her hairs. Think she’s with him in Victoria?”

“Maybe. Or maybe it didn’t work out. That happens.”

“Will Mom forgive him?” I ask.

“Nope.”

We rearrange ourselves among the pillows and blankets on the couch.

“I’ve got a secret. I’ve been meaning to tell you all month,” Brianna says as she smooths my toque and takes my face in her warm hands.

“Go.”

“Marc and I finally did it.”

“And…” I try to look pleased but turn away. I feel sick.

“It was OK. I think it’ll get better.”

“Were you safe?” After being locked up with all those other girls, I know enough to ask that question now.

“We figured it out.”

I was wrong about her and Marc, having already done it. I was wrong to have gone a guy I didn’t know. Such a stupid, stupid, stupid thing. “I have a secret too.” I say. I turn towards her, pull the neck of my T-shirt off my shoulder and show her my hummingbird. 

“When? How?”

“With Nan. In May. I was so sad when Dad left. She wanted to help.”

“It’s beautiful and it’ll be there forever,” Brianna says as she traces her finger along the curving outline.

“Yes, it will,” I say, straightening up my shirt. “It will be there forever.” Along with everything else I did. And one day I’ll be able to trust Brianna enough to share my secret.

The End

The Tree

It’s the afternoon at the cottage. Brianna lies on the grass in the shade of the maple, lording it over the backyard. There are five days left to climb the tree before she turns thirteen. She doesn’t want to become a teenager knowing that her younger sister, Stéphanie, has climbed the tree, but she hasn’t. Brianna is taller and stronger than Stéphanie but less daring.

Brianna spends the afternoon staring at the pale undersides of the waving leaves and the kaleidoscopic patches of sky peeking out between them. She had a kaleidoscope once, but the tube was made of cardboard. Stéphanie left it out in the rain. When Brianna found it on the porch, it looked OK, but when she picked it up it collapsed in her hands, except for the glass part, where the light comes in.

Brianna plans her route up the tree. She needs to get to the big branch to be as high as Stéphanie climbed. Two Pileated Woodpeckers pecked out a hole nest above it this spring. The Woody Woodpecker birds, noisy and gaudy with red crests, were easy to spot, unlike some other birds her mother expected her to recognize. They had two baby birds and by June they were gone.

Brianna tires of thinking about the long stretch from the lower branch to the big upper one. She opens her book. It’s about an orphaned girl whose parents died in India. Her favourite stories contain sad orphans trapped in icy orphanages where coughing skinny girls spray droplets of blood as they die. Sometimes she wishes she was an orphan, but it makes her teary when she imagines her parents dying.

She’d also be sad if Stéphanie died. Brianna is a good big sister. Last summer, when she was ten, Stéphanie fell out of the tree and broke her arm. Brianna scratched under Stéphanie’s cast with the metal barbecue skewer and spent hours playing checkers with her when she couldn’t go swimming.

This morning at breakfast, her parents had another fight over the barbecue. Last week’s fight was Stéphanie’s fault because she hadn’t waited a whole week before asking again about going to Disney World. Dad was for and her mom was against. Brianna changed the topic of conversation to the new Black American president to stop them from arguing. Her grandmother, Nan, taught her how to do that.

After breakfast, while Stéphanie was canoeing with Dad–she always sits in front and never dips her paddle properly into the water–Mom insisted that Brianna sit down at the kitchen table for a talk.

“It’s time to explain menstruation,” she said, arranging samples of napkins and tampons on the kitchen table like it was science class. Brianna already knew that stuff from school. Most of her friends were allowed private computer time and knew tons of things. Her mom skipped the important stuff, the stuff they talked about at school—cramping, forgetting supplies and accidents. The girls monitored each other’s bums in case there was a leak on someone’s pants or skirt. Anyone carrying a purse always had extra supplies. Her mom finished her lecture with “Don’t tell Stéphanie. She’s too young.”

Where was Brianna meant to hide those boxes of pastel-coloured items wrapped in their noisy crinkly plastic? Stéphanie would find them for sure. And why shouldn’t she find them?

The next morning at breakfast, Mom is talking with her mouth full of cereal.

“Bricks and cement all over the place. You don’t have a clue what you’re doing. Go and buy a barbeque.”

Dad says nothing.

Brianna gets up from the table and hugs her mom. “It’s OK Mom. I can help him.”

She spends the morning helping him stack the red bricks into shapes like the diagrams of the barbeques in the library book. The bricks are heavy and scratchy, so she quits. She’ll be more interested when Dad gets to the cementing part. He says cement will hold the bricks together into a barbeque that will last forever, but Brianna knows that nothing lasts forever.

It’s the afternoon now and Mom and Stéphanie are reading on the dock. Brianna’s inside the cottage rummaging in Stéphanie’s dresser drawer looking for her new stretchy leggings. There they are—blue and shiny like a superhero’s outfit. Stéphanie won’t know she’s borrowing them if Brianna’s careful not to snag them. She squeezes her feet into her ratty sneakers. She’ll have to persuade her mom to get her some Nikes for back to school.

She stows her book, a baggie of Goldfish crackers, and a juice box in her backpack. It’s hotter than yesterday so she gulps some water from the kitchen tap and then pees. She doesn’t want to have to pee during her climb. The screen door slams behind her as she springs off the kitchen porch. Her legs flash with metallic blue as she tears across the back lawn.

But now she is stuck—rigid and sweaty, straddling the second largest limb and clutching the tree trunk. The leaves grab at her face and the smaller branches tug at her arms. Everything is difficult. She can’t go up and she can’t go down and worse, she’s not as high as Stéphanie was last year before she fell and broke her arm.

At first, Brianna didn’t believe she was stuck. She tried a few moves but was too scared to stretch the bit to reach the big branch below the woodpecker nest. The soles of her dangling feet tingle. What if she falls? She imagines the thud of her body landing on the grass and wonders if she’d break an arm or a leg. Maybe she’d need an operation or a wheelchair. She’d want her parents to wheel her around, but she wouldn’t want to be paralyzed. That would be too much.

She turns her gaze toward the woods. The sun has moved across the sky and is hanging above the hills where the gravel road winds its way to the store. The horrible feeling in her feet is growing. She’s hot and her mouth is dry but worse, she has to pee.

She looks out over the shingled roof of the cottage towards the lake. Stéphanie is sprawled on the dock, reading comic books. She doesn’t care if they get wet and wrinkled and must be thrown out.

Each weekend when they drive up from Montreal, Dad always stops at the village store and lets them choose new ones. The lady there is nice with a big smile. She gives them gummies. But even though she’s young and pretty, she wears an old-lady perfume that makes Brianna sneeze.

On the dock, Mom, wearing her swim goggles and her saggy old suit, is set for her afternoon swim to the island. Stéphanie isn’t wearing her sunhat like she’s supposed to. Her curly red hair is blowing about her face. Mom doesn’t make Brianna stay on the dock to watch Stéphanie. Her swimming is stronger this year, so Mom doesn’t care.

No, Brianna won’t call her mom for help. If she calls her mom, she’ll get that harsh what-do-you-think-you-are-doing look. Brianna will have to say she’s checking out the woodpecker nest. Then, she’ll have to listen to a lecture on woodpecker nest holes, even more boring than yesterday’s period talk. Nope, she won’t ask her mom for help. She’ll wait for Dad to return from the store. He won’t panic. She mustn’t panic.

When he left, she was resting on the lower big branch. She saw the quarter-sized bald patch on his head that she’d never noticed before. He was wearing his favourite T-shirt, black with Tragically Hip printed on it. Once, he told her the T-shirt was older than her and, because he likes the T-shirt, she likes it too. Her mom hates the T-shirt. She says an old girlfriend gave it to him.

Brianna hums “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” to distract herself, but she can’t get enough breath to finish the chorus. She’s going to burst.

By the time she sees the ribbon of dust from the road expanding above the trees, she’s wet her pants. She’d leaked a bit as she squirmed about on the branch. And then with a warm wetness, everything gushed out all at once. The liquid shadow crept over her crotch and her thigh and pee dripped from her calf into her right runner. She hasn’t wet herself in years. It’s Stéphanie who sometimes wets the bed.

Brianna hears the car crunching on the gravel, the engine stopping and the door slamming.

“Dad, up here,” she calls.

He shoots her a crinkly smile and Brianna wonders if he knew she was stuck up here before he left. Well, she hadn’t asked for help then.

“That’s high up,” he says, pulling his fingers through his hair and brushing the tip of his nose.

“I’m stuck.”

“I see that,” he says, placing the sack of milk on the grass and resting his hands on his hips.

This is what Brianna expected. Dad doesn’t panic. And even though her belly is churning and her feet tingling, she won’t panic either. But she’s cold, her butt is soaked, and she smells of pee.

“Let me put the milk away and I’ll get the ladder.”

Brianna doesn’t trust the ancient wooden ladder. It’s been in the shed forever, from before the cottage was theirs. What if it breaks? What if she slips? Dad drags the long ladder to the tree, leaving deep gouges on the lawn. Mom’ll be mad about that. He extends the top bit and props it against the tree trunk. His hands rest on the sides of it. She focuses on his bald patch.

“One foot, Bree. One foot on the top rung.” His voice is calm and smooth.

He isn’t going to come up and get her. She’ll have to get down by herself. Her whole body tingles. Gripping the trunk with her sore arms, she scrapes her belly down the ridges of bark. For sure, she’s wrecked the leggings. Her foot gropes the air until it finds the solid surface of the top rung.

“That’s it. Now the other foot.”

Her foot lands on the rung. Her arms soften.

“Don’t look down.”

Dad’s voice is soothing. “I won’t.” She loosens her grip on the trunk a bit more.

“Nice and easy.”

Her runner squelches as she lands on the grass. She leaps up and wraps her legs around his waist, hugging him.

“Brianna, you’re soaking wet,” he says, pulling back.

“I peed myself, Dad.” Her voice is all choky.

“Let me go. You’re wrecking my T-shirt.”

He pushes her but Brianna doesn’t let go. Not yet. She burrows her nose into the skin behind his ear and breathes in. But it’s wrong—not like he should smell. It smells like sushi and she doesn’t like sushi. Her dad stiffens. She looks at his face. His eyes flicker with a fierceness that doesn’t match his smile. It’s a look she hasn’t seen before.

“Won’t tell Mom if you don’t,” he says in his sing-song voice. 

Brianna needs to run, to get away from her dad, away from the smell and his smile. She peels her sticky body off his chest and without looking back, races toward the kitchen door. Crazy energy flows through her body. There’s a tightness in her chest. She races up the steps and flings open the screen door. It bangs behind her. She runs through the cottage and out the front door. She skips down the steps and across the grass to the dock, towards Stéphanie. Brianna cannonballs off the dock into the lake, yelling like a Samurai in battle. She splashes about in the water, her clothing dragging at her arms and legs. The frantic feeling washes away.

“What’ya do that for,” Stéphanie screams. “I’m drowned.” She holds up a soggy comic book. “I wasn’t finished this.”

“Jump in,” says Brianna. “Let’s swim.”

Stéphanie cannonballs into the water beside her.

Twenty minutes later, Brianna, naked underneath an orange beach towel, lies on her stomach beside Stéphanie on the dock. Her clothes are in a dripping heap beside her. The pressure in her chest has lifted.

“I climbed the tree and didn’t break my arm,” she says.

Stéphanie is trailing her fingers in the water, sending circular ripples from the dock.

“You climbed the tree?” She lifts her head and looks at Brianna. “How high?”

“To the big limb below the woodpecker hole. But I wrecked your new blue leggings.” Brianna pushes her hand through the tear in the butt.

“Leggings, smeggings. I don’t even like those anymore. I want the pink tie-dye pair I saw at Simons last week.”

Stéphanie points towards the island. Their mother swims towards them, smooth stroke after stroke like a mechanical toy. She pulls herself onto the dock in a single strong movement and shakes like a wet dog. Scattering droplets make mini-rainbows in the afternoon sun.

“Is your father back yet?” she asks and without waiting for an answer, she strides away toward the cottage.

“Do you ever wonder about Mom and Dad?” Brianna whispers.

“What do you mean? Why are you whispering?” Stéphanie rolls off her stomach, sits up and looks at Brianna. Her hair hangs in dripping ropes around her shoulders.

“Whether they still love each other?” Brianna says softly, twisting the corner of the beach towel between her thumb and forefinger.

“Why do you think that?”

“They don’t tell each other everything.”

“Mom sure was straight with him about Disneyland. And the barbeque.” Stéphanie takes her hair in her hands and wrings out the remaining water.

Maybe Stéphanie’s right, there’s nothing to worry about. A few minutes later, Brianna hears her mother’s voice, tinny and fast, shouting at her father from the cottage.

“Three hours. Long time to be gone for milk. You didn’t have your cell phone?”

Her father’s reply is a low rumble of words she can’t make out.

“Then why do we even have them,” her mother says.

Does she mean the cellphones or us, Brianna wonders.

“I know what you’re doing, Michael.”

And then silence.

Ten minutes later her dad walks down the stone path to the dock in his flamingo bathing trunks. He’s carrying a brown paper bag.

“Brought you guys a treat from the store,” he says, holding up the bag.

Stéphanie grabs the sack. “Yay. Two new Archies.” She pushes a fistful of candy toward Brianna. “And jelly babies. Want some?”

“Nah. Gotta get some clothes on,” she says pulling herself up from the warm planks of the dock and wraps the towel around her body. She’s cold and it feels wrong to have a treat from the store when Mom is so mad at Dad. When they’re at the store, Dad and the lady laugh too much at stuff that isn’t even funny.

“Gonna see if Mom needs help with dinner,” she says.

“I’ve already sorted it, Bree. Like I always do,” Dad says. “Lighten up. Have a jelly baby.” He holds one up between his thumb and forefinger. “A red one. Your fav.”

“Don’t want one. Stéph can have them.”

Brianna dawdles towards the cottage door. The tail of her towel drags in the dirt between the stones, but she can’t be bothered to pick it up.

Brianna’s parents mostly tell her the truth about stuff, but sometimes they lie. Sometimes, it’s a tiny lie. No biggy. Can’t hurt anyone. Might even be kind, like when Dad says you’re good at baseball, but you know you suck. Sometimes, lying to keep a secret is fun, like Nan’s surprise birthday party in June. Sometimes, lying to keep a secret is stupid, like hiding tampons and pads from Stéph or being rescued from the tree. But it doesn’t feel right not telling Mom about the sushi smell in Dad’s hair.

Brianna slides open the front door and blinks her eyes to adjust to the darkness. It’s cooler inside and she pulls her towel closely around her. Her mom, in her wet bathing suit, stands in front of the kitchen sink. Her hands grip the metal edge of the counter. She’s staring out the window at the tree. There is a fine quivering at the edge of her upper lip. Brianna wants to hug her mom, but her mom’s body is shouting “Go Away.” She waits shivering beside her. Their shoulders are almost at the same height. She wants to help her mom, to help rinse her anger away. 

After a few minutes, her mom speaks. “I’m worried.” She lifts an arm towards the tree, “Remember in the spring when those Pileated Woodpeckers nested up there.”

“Sure I do. See the hole, there above that big branch,” Brianna says, relieved that Mom is talking. She points at the branch above the one that Dad rescued her from.

“They only make nest holes in trees that are rotting.”

“Our big maple is secretly rotting?” Brianna asks.

“The tree looks healthy from the outside, while it rots from the inside. It’s so sad.” Mom sighs and lets her arm drop.

Brianna reaches over and wraps her mom in her arms. She feels smaller and bonier than when she hugged her this morning. They’re both shivering. “I know how much you love that tree, Mom. I do too. When it’s time, we’ll find another tree to love.”

Alterations

Yesterday afternoon, with only a week’s notice, Adélie’s daughter, Claire, came home from Victoria. “I’m bringing the baby,” she’d said. The baby was eleven months old. It had been seven years since Claire had returned to the three-story walk-up in Verdun where she’d grown up.

Adélie worried about the stairs. Some of her clients (as they caught their breath) complained about the climb up to her studio. Eventually, she’d have difficulty with those stairs and have to move, maybe into a home.

Claire’s hair hung limply around her neck. A grey sweatshirt clung to her bony shoulders and her jeans were baggy. As she lugged a blue, rectangular sack and her suitcase up the stairs, the baby, Brianna, worrying her soother, waited at the bottom in an umbrella stroller.

“What is that thing? A tent?” Adélie asked, pointing at the blue sack instead of running down the stairs to hug the baby.

Claire dumped the sack on the landing and shot a disdainful look at Adélie. “It’s a portable crib. It’s a lot of work travelling with an infant.”

When she was a young mother, travel was a luxury. Those days had overflowed with worry, making do, and exhaustion.

Claire and her husband, Michael, hadn’t told her about the baby until a week after the birth. She and Claire weren’t close but surely, she deserved to hear about the arrival of a grandchild sooner than that. Adélie didn’t send a gift and now that feels mean. She was a seamstress and could have made a quilt for the nursery.

“I’ll need you to babysit while I’m interviewing for the job at McGill,” Claire said catching her breath.

“I’ll do what I can,” she replied. Her daughter had left for university on her swimming scholarship when she was eighteen. Other than the occasional birthday or Christmas card, she’d rarely contacted her. Her life was busy and her scientific work important, but when would she trust her enough to tell her what was going on? 

Adélie’s concerns, the dressmaking business, and the losses with aging didn’t interest her daughter. But maybe, now that Claire was a mother herself, this was their chance to be kinder to each other. At times, Adélie had been unkind. She was ashamed of it and could see now that it hadn’t always been necessary.

She was designing a copper velvet dress like the one Juliette Binoche wore at the Academy Awards in February for her client, Mme Gavreau. Adélie had to cancel the appointment. She’d moved her sewing machine, her serger and the mannequin out of the spare room and into her bedroom. She’d vacuumed the carpets and brushed them with a magnet to find any stray pins or needles lost on the floor. She’d worried constantly bringing up Claire. What would it be worse than being a grandmother? Claire wouldn’t forgive her if she made a mistake and the crawling and toddling Brianna was hurt.

It was nine o’clock, a sticky June evening. Claire was out at a dinner, and Adélie was babysitting Brianna. At bedtime, she’d sung “Michael Row the Boat Ashore.” Her voice was reedy now, and she couldn’t hit the top notes of the Hallelujahs the way she’d done when Claire was an infant. “Should I stick to “Fais Do-Do?” she asked the glassy-eyed baby as she rocked her to sleep. It was a sticky and noisy night like this one when Adélie’s first child was born. The moans and wails of the labouring unwed mothers mixed with the sounds of traffic and sirens pouring into the open windows of the grey building.

Adélie was sixteen when she moved from Québec to Montreal. She worked at the glove counter at Olgivy and met a man who was buying a present for his wife. She’d believed him when he’d said he loved her. When Adélie got pregnant, he stopped calling. Her parents disowned her.

The Catholic sisters took the baby away from her the moment he was born. She remembers the emptiness as she sat on the gurney while the sisters bound her breasts and massaged her lower belly. A few years later, she married Alain and they had Claire. She hadn’t told Alain or Claire about baby Daniel. There was never a good enough time. Alain was killed in Cypress leaving Adélie, only twenty-six years old with two-year-old Claire.

Adélie had tried to shield her young daughter from her worries but there was no disguising that money was tight. Saturday evenings at the laundromat—five-year-old Claire, swinging her legs over the edge of the stainless-steel folding table, watching the TV mounted to the ceiling. No TV at home. Simple things, like new swim goggles, needed a shuffling of the grocery budget.

That Christmas when Claire had wanted an Easy Bake Oven. “These are nice too, Mom,” she’d said, patting Adélie’s shoulder when she opened the flat package containing the baking pan set. Eight years old and she already knew how to hide her disappointment. But if it could be sewn—Adélie smiled, remembering the ten-year-old Claire spooking the neighbours in her Bride of Dracula Hallowe’en costume.

She didn’t dare to wish that she might be included in moments like those with this new baby. This grandchild was a chance to love a child fully. A chance to love, unblurred by grief. Her daughter might forgive her for her mistakes and let her love this grandchild.

Earlier that evening, Adélie made a pasta salad for dinner–it was too hot to eat anything else. Brianna’s corkscrew curls had bounced about as she played on the kitchen floor among the Tupperware and yogurt containers. Claire hadn’t brought any toys for the baby. Adélie didn’t ask why. Things were too fragile between them.

Adélie met Claire’s husband, Michael, when they came to Montreal, the July before they married. He reminded her of a male model in an Eaton’s catalogue—neat khaki pants, collared golf shirt. He smiled when she made him a coffee and offered him a Peak Frean. Along with his “Thank you very much, Mrs. LeBlanc.” she couldn’t tell what his all-purpose broad smile meant. 

Adélie hadn’t gone to the wedding. It was on an island his family owned in Georgian Bay. She’d worried about getting in and out of tippy boats, bumpy waves and splashing water. She didn’t swim. She was afraid of water.

At dinner, Claire and Adélie sat across from each other at the cracked Formica kitchen table. A gold barrette held Claire’s hair tidily at her neck, and makeup brightened her face. Adélie approved of the tidy French-blue blazer she wore over a white linen dress. Maybe Claire had taken in some of her advice over the years, despite her insensitive way of dispensing it.

Claire traced her fingers on the kitchen table, her nails still bitten to the quick. “I remember this pattern. I imagined that each gold starburst contained a spot of happiness.” She sighed. “I pretended we lived in a big house with a father, and you didn’t have to work. You drove me to school in a shiny car and cheered for me at my swim meets.”

“This kitchen table was the first thing that your father and I bought together,” Adélie said, hoping the moment would continue, maybe lead to a hug.  But Claire’s mouth was full, her fork loaded with spirals of rainbow pasta, so they sat opposite each other, neither speaking.

Claire swallowed, “Today’s interviews went well. It’s a great department with access to a statistician and a scientific writer. I’ll get a job here beginning in September for sure. I might be able to start teaching summer courses in July.” 

Claire spoke at the wall, like Adélie wasn’t even there. “What’ll you do?” Adélie asked, wondering if Claire’s certainty was bravado—bravado to mask the terror of whatever was happening with her marriage.

Claire lowered her fork and fused her arms across her chest. “You never listen. I told you this morning.”

 “It’s hard for me to understand,” she said, staring down at the wrinkles and dark spots on her hands. “I didn’t finish high school.” But that doesn’t mean I’m stupid, she thought. Will she ever trust me enough to tell me what’s going on?

Claire’s eyes narrowed. “I’m a migratory bird researcher. I’m known nationally and internationally. I’m in demand.”

Adélie watched the flashing of Claire’s teeth as she spoke. Had Claire noticed how yellowed her teeth had become? Dental care was expensive. Had Claire noticed she could barely thread a basting needle even with her stronger glasses?

“I need your help. I can’t go back to Victoria. I want to stay here.” The edge of Claire’s upper lip trembled. 

Her help. After years of ignoring her, Claire wants her help. 

“I need to stay here. For a few months. While I get set up.” Claire stood back from the kitchen table, her lips pressed into a tight line and looked down at her. “I wouldn’t ask you if I had a choice.”

Adélie’s heart skipped a beat. It happened on occasion. It started up again, without hurrying after a sickening pause. She swallowed and spoke slowly. “There’s no room here, Claire. I need the spare room for the dressmaking. It’s what I live on.”

Claire’s plate clattered into the sink. “Can’t be late. I have a meeting tonight with the folks from UDM. Casting my net with the Francophones. Be back around ten,” she said, grabbing her bag. The front door clicked shut.

UDM, the University de Montreal. Claire hadn’t spoken French since she left for university in Ontario a decade ago. Adélie admired her fearlessness.

Fearless and stubborn. That’s both of us. She’d refused Mme DeMarchie’s request for alterations on the dress she needed for an upcoming wedding. More income lost and maybe even a client. But maybe she could get by for a few months. She could do small projects that didn’t need the fitting room and use her bedroom if necessary. Things might be gentler with the delight and wonder of the baby. But could she manage around Claire’s anger or deal with all the issues they’ve avoided?

Adélie tip-toed into the spare room to check on Brianna. Her knees cracked as she lowered onto the carpet and peered into the portable crib. Brianna’s smooth face shone in the soft glow of the night light. Her eyelids fluttered and her bowed lips quivered as she dreamed. Her smile was the same as Claire’s was when she was a baby. Such a precious thing. Such a precious moment. Adélie didn’t remember feeling this tender with Claire. Most of the time, she was tired and scared.

The buzz of the doorbell jerked Adélie awake. She groped for her glasses and pulled herself up off the carpet where she’d fallen asleep beside the baby’s crib. She peered through the peephole in the door and saw the distorted fish-eye view of Claire’s face.

“Sorry, forgot the key,” she said as Adélie opened the door.

Claire looked grey in the parlour light as she collapsed into the worn velveteen armchair. Adélie had comforted Claire in that same chair when she was a baby. And two years later, she’d sat there, frozen after Alain’s death, unable to hug her bewildered toddler.

Claire scuffed off her strappy sandals and flung her bare legs over the arm. The sandals were too flashy for a business meeting.

“When I was a girl, I loved reading books in this chair,” said Claire, picking at the worn fabric on the right arm.

“You were a good reader. I kept a few—The Secret Garden, A Wrinkle in Time.” 

“We didn’t have many books, Mom. Most were from the library. I’d get so broken up over a sad one. What about the chess set?”

“In the spare room closet.” 

The set of battered wooden pieces was Alain’s. Neither Adélie nor Claire knew how to play so they fought pretend battles with the pieces until Claire decided she was too old. Swimming and getting into university took over everything.

“How’s the baby? Claire asked, sinking deeply into the chair.

 “Beautifully asleep. What a treasure.” If Claire allows her, she’ll do a better job this time round. She’ll do a better job of loving a child.

“You keep Dad’s photo out?” said Claire, pointing to the mantel shelf at the picture of him in his uniform with its blue beret. 

When Adélie knew Claire was coming, she’d taken it out of the drawer, dusted it off and put it back in its place.

“It’s all we’ve got of him isn’t it?” she said.

But it wasn’t. Claire’s eyes were identical, steel-blue and she had the same tenacity.

Claire unfastened her barrette and loosened her hair. She looked at her painted toenails as she spoke. “Mom, I can’t go back to Michael.” She swallowed. “He’s having an affair with an undergrad.”

Adélie pressed her hand over her mouth.

“I was five months pregnant when it started. If the university ever finds out…” she trailed off.

“His first?” Adélie asked. Such an unnecessary question. She wanted to take it back.

“No.” Claire tugged on the stuck zipper on her bag bulging with papers.“It’s been happening for the whole marriage.”

Adélie rummaged through her horrible thoughts.

“Did you hear what I said, Mom? It’s been going on…”

“You knew and you went ahead and got pregnant?”

Claire sat up. Her voice was flat. “His dad died. Michael got his inheritance. The money from their pharmaceutical business.”

“Money’s no reason to have a baby.” Adélie winced as the words dropped out of her mouth.

“What is the right reason to have a baby?” Claire asked, her gaze hard.

Adélie lowered her eyes. “I’m the wrong person to ask.” The moment to be honest with her daughter, to tell her about baby Daniel, flitted past.

Claire picked up her bag and turned towards the hall. “I’m off to bed. See you in the morning.”

What Adélie did know was how she was after Alain died in 1964. He’d volunteered for the peacekeeping force in Cypress and died in a stupid accident—a rolled-over truck on the highway to Nicosia.

After Alain’s death, she’d been a bad mother groping her way through shifting fogs of desperation and helplessness. And even sadder taking the Valium that the doctor had prescribed. She didn’t laugh or say, “I love you,” to her toddler daughter. Claire had a right to be angry with her.

The next morning, Adélie woke to the sounds of babbling. She and Alain had held each other in this bed, listening to the same sounds from Claire. She got up and gently opened the spare room door. Brianna’s two oversized eyes begged Adélie to pick her up. Her expression was the same as baby Claire’s.

“Na-na. Na-na. Up. Up.”

Adélie’s body flushed with joy. “That’s right, Brianna. It’s me. Nana,” she whispered. She snuck the wriggling bundle past her crumpled daughter, snoring on the pull-out couch.

Adélie strapped the baby into the portable seat hanging off the kitchen table. Brianna’s little fists clenched the spoon as she smeared her porridge over the plastic table mat. She was humming and happy in her fresh diaper. Did Claire allow the baby to have juice? The rules were different now.

Adélie glanced into the parlour at Alain’s photograph. He’d been a competitive swimmer. They’d met after he’d failed to qualify for the Rome Olympics in 1961. When he was fourteen, only fourteen years old—Adélie liked to emphasize this part of the story—the police in St. Foy let him drive his father’s car to the pool for swim practice. That would never happen nowadays. Adélie didn’t drive and neither did Claire as far as she knew. There wasn’t enough money for lessons or cars.

It was ten o’clock when Claire arrived at the kitchen table interrupting Brianna’s snack-time. Claire’s muted floral blouse went perfectly with her French blue suit and her eye makeup was tastefully applied. Adélie tightened her worn, quilted dressing gown around her body.

Claire outlined her schedule for the day—more interviews and meetings for her, more babysitting for Adélie. “You could bring the baby to the university?”

Adélie wondered how many buses or how much taxi money that would take.

“It’s your birthday next week. So, lunch?”

Claire remembered her birthday. Adélie sat back from the kitchen table. She’d be sixty-one—widowed for thirty-three years. Baby Daniel would be turning forty-three. He’d started with blue eyes too but then all babies do. “Thanks Claire, but it’ll be difficult getting there with the baby.”

“True. And I might not be able to get away.” She got up from the table flicking her second piece of toast into the bin under the sink.

A thread dangled from the hem of her daughter’s skirt. Adélie forced herself not to snap it off. “It was lovely of you to think about my birthday,” she said.

Later that evening, Adélie knelt on a towel on the tile floor in the bathroom and sang “Row Row, Row Your Boat” while Brianna splashed about in the foaming bath water. Now, she sat in the armchair in the parlour with the baby’s soft body pressed against her chest, nuzzling into the baby scent of Brianna’s hair.

The rhythmic snuffles and sighs soothed her. This little thing, her granddaughter—this was love. She wanted to love Claire this much.

The chinking of the key in the door startled her. Claire was back already. It wasn’t even eight o’clock.

“The baby isn’t in bed yet?” Claire said as she pushed past the door.

“We were having a moment—a moment I wish I’d had more time for when you were this small.”

Claire stiffened.

“How was it?” Adélie asked.

“Got it. Starting as an Assistant Professor at McGill in September. But with my experience, I should be an Associate.”

“Sometimes you have to make do, Claire,” said Adélie, her arms sheltering the baby.

“I am making do.”

The eyeliner and mascara from the morning had smeared around her eyes. She’d been crying. Adélie wanted to reach out and comfort her, but it was too dangerous—too much of a chance she’d be pushed away.

“There’s a summer posting too. I won’t have to go back to Victoria tomorrow, back to Michael. I’ll live here for the first few weeks. I’ll need your help with the baby ‘til I get settled.”

Adélie wanted to help, to do everything for this baby that she hadn’t done for Claire, but it was impossible. It had taken years to establish her business. She’d been thinking about the collar style for the copper velvet dress. “Claire, I can’t. I’ll end up hating you. Resenting the baby.”

“What do I need to do to get help from you?”

The rising voice startled the baby. Adélie rocked and cooed at her to calm her. After a few minutes, Brianna softened in her arms.

“I love you Claire, but you’re not my responsibility anymore. You have a job. You can get a loan. I’ll help when I can, but you can’t stay here,” she said gently, swaying the baby. She’d done as much as she could for Claire. It was Brianna she could help, to love her in the way Claire wouldn’t.

“Fine. Just fine.” Claire dropped her bag and plucked the baby from Adélie’s arms. She cast Adélie a stony look as she walked away down the unlit hallway. The spare room door clicked shut.

Adélie was surprised at the emptiness she felt. She heard Claire chatting to the baby about the people she’d met during the day and the birds they discussed. Then she heard Claire’s clear voice singing Fais Do-Do, as Adélie had sung it to her all those years ago.

It was too hot, too humid, and too early to go to bed. Adélie sat in the parlour in her shift, remembering the soothing pressure of the baby on her chest. Claire and the baby would leave tomorrow. She’d contact Mme. DeMarchie and do the alterations to her dress. She’d confirm the cut of the collar with Mme. Gavreau. Tomorrow evening, she’d visit her friend Marjory, whose breast cancer had spread.

It was dark now. Tomorrow, she’d put the picture of Alain back into the bottom drawer of the corner cabinet. When Brianna was old enough, Adélie would tell her the story of her grandfather. She thought about a pattern for the quilt for the baby. Brianna would need her. She’d need her love, all the love that Adélie could give. It would take more time for her and Claire to find their way. They needed to agree on what they owed each other.