Washika (22 page)

“Albert! That's not true and it's not nice either. Anyway, look in the cellar. Next to the potato bin. I needed room in the fridge.”

“Ah, saved. I thought that old gobbler,
Madame
Brisebois had paid herself a few.”

“Albert!”

“All right,
maman
. Can't we laugh a little, eh? Henri?”

“Yes
papa
?”

“A cold one?”

Yes sure. Wait
papa
, I'll go and get them.”

“
Ah sacrament
! They learn things on the fire.”

“Albert!”

“Yes, yes,
maman
. I forgot. I know, I know. The children.”

The man approached the table, covered in small parcels taken from the large paper bags. “Come here,
ma belle maman
,” he said. “A nice big kiss for your poor tired old man.”

“Get away from me,” the woman laughed, stepping around to the other side of the table. “You maniac. You smell beer.”

“Come here,” he teased. Suddenly, he lunged across a corner of the table and locked his large hands around her waist. The woman did not pull away. Her arms went up to his shoulders and her hands caressed the sides of his face, and she kissed him with her mouth open and her fingers playing with his hair that curled at the back of his neck.

“
Maman
!” the man whispered. “The children.”

The woman laughed and pushed him away. She looked at Céline and Gilbert who had been opening the parcels. The two were standing close together with their heads just barely above the table. They looked at the man and the woman with inquisitive eyes and their mouths open and waiting for whatever was supposed to happen next.

“Come on, now,” the woman said to them. “What're we waiting for, eh? Help me put these in the fridge, my sweet. Gilbert, you take the cans.”

Henri arrived with the beer.

“You want a glass,
papa
?”

“Oh yes.”

“
Maman
, I brought an extra one for you.”

“What's got into you, Henri? You know I never drink that. But, don't worry. It won't go to waste.
Papa
will see to that.”

“Your mother,” the man said. “Always on my case. I don't know how I manage. Tell me, Henri, you made good money on the fire?”

“I don't know.”

“
Bon
. You don't know?”

“No. We haven't been paid yet.”

Henri felt the lump against his right hip. “I almost forgot,” he said. He opened his wallet and dropped the one hundred and seventy-eight one-dollar bills on the table.

“And that's just for the last three weeks on the sweep,” he explained. “There'll be more when we get our fire pay.”

“Be careful, Henri.” His mother looked at the bills spread on the table. “You shouldn't leave money lying around like that.”

“No,
maman
.”

“How much?” his father asked.

“One seventy-eight.” Henri gathered up the bills. “That's three weeks less two days. The rest is fire pay and we should be getting that in a few days.”

“Not bad,” the man said. “Should pay your room and board for the weekend.”

“
Papa
!” the woman scolded.

“A joke,
maman
. Everybody knows you're worth more than that, eh?”

“Don't try to flatter me, old man. I see it coming.”

“Now I'm an old man. Imagine!”

Henri's parents loved each other very much. It was obvious every hour of every day and it always made him feel wonderful and secure. Many times he had wanted to ask them what it was like before, when they had been younger and just starting to love each other. There was so much about loving that he did not know. His father never talked about such things. Perhaps he was just good at it naturally, without knowing anything about it. His mother rarely spoke of it and when she did it was always about someone else. None of it had been of any help to him.

Henri finished the sandwich and drank the cold beer. He gathered the one-dollar bills into a neat stack and went up to his room.

Once again there was the feeling of visiting a former classroom. It had been only five weeks but he felt a stranger in a familiar place. Everything was the same: the pictures on the wall, the map of the world, his writing desk and his bed with the thick down-filled comforter his mother had made for him and that he used both winter and summer. Still, there was a presence in the room, as if he had been there, thinking, being, only hours before. Henri pulled open one of the bureau drawers. He looked back to reassure himself that the bedroom door was closed. He slid back two heavy, wool shirts and, from beneath these, he withdrew a plain wooden box held secure with a tiny brass padlock. He sat down on the bed, with the money beside him in a pile, and held the wooden box on his thighs. Just touching the wood made him think of her. He had promised himself at Christmas that he would go on with his life, a life without her. He was young, after all, and there would be others. But there had not been others. Not like her.

Henri opened the box. He took out the magnifying glass, the Lone Ranger ring and the plum-sized chunk of Pyrite that he had, for many years, considered as precious as real gold. He removed the square of white canvas and took out the flat cigar box that had been hidden underneath. He opened the cigar box and saw the bundle tied with green fishing line just as he had left it. The letters had been tied like that for more than six months but he knew every word of every line of every page and remembered the pictures of them together, at the lake, huddled together in the tiny rowboat. He saw every smile and every hair in and out of place. There were seven pictures in all, but he had a favourite and it still hurt him, just thinking about the day he had taken the picture of her with the wind blowing her hair across her face. The two of them had chased each other through the park and he had finally caught her and thrown her to the ground covering her in the dry leaves and she, suddenly, not smiling and looking very serious, said, “I love you.” And what could he say? He knew nothing of such things. “Yeah?” was all he could manage and she had pretended to be angry with him but she stood close to him and kissed him on the mouth and then she left him and ran down the street to her home. Henri had turned sixteen a few days before. The next day he was in love. Nothing else was important; nothing existed in his life but Shannon and what they had together. Imagine! Shannon Morin. They used to laugh about that. They were very happy and walked hand in hand everywhere and sat close together at the movies, with their heads touching. And Henri's mother had warned him not to get too attached and his father had made jokes about checking out the rest of the pond. And then, one day, it happened. The kiss was not as warm, they did not hold hands anymore and, at the cinema, Shannon sat with her arms folded beneath her breasts.

“I want to meet people, Henri,” she said. “I want to live.” And so Shannon went back to living and Henri crawled into his shell. The only time he left his home was to attend classes at the high school. He no longer went to the dances and changed his route home from school to avoid walking by the restaurant at the Hotel Chamberlain where many of the students gathered after school and on the weekends. Finally he got word that she was gone. Her parents had moved to Montréal. He found it easier then. To Henri, Montréal was far removed from his life in Ste-Émilie. As far as he was concerned, Shannon might have gone to live in Dublin or Chicago or Red Deer, Alberta. She was gone and now, perhaps, he could start again. And so, on Christmas Day, when everyone was sleeping in the afternoon, Henri re-read each letter she had written, looked at the pictures and then tied them in a bundle with a bit of green fishing line, never to be looked at again.

Henri moved the bundle to one corner of the cigar box. He placed the stack of one-dollar bills beside the other bills he had earned during his first three weeks on the sweep. He closed the cigar box, replaced the canvas, returned the lens, the ring and the chunk of rock and closed the box. Seeing the bundle of letters in the cigar box had awakened familiar feelings. One day, he thought, I'll burn them all. Someday, when I've got things straight, I'll do it.

H
enri sat at the table opposite his brother and sister. His father ate loudly at one end of the table while his mother rushed back and forth from the table to the stove, to the sink and back to the table.

“
Maman
!” the man said. “Sit down, will you. They can get their own.”

“It's nothing,” she replied.

“Ah.”

“Céline, eat my sweet,” she said. Then, turning to her youngest son sitting beside her, “And you too, Gilbert. No dessert, I'm warning. No one can live only on cake and ice-cream, you know.”

“Why?” the boy said, pushing the glasses up on his nose.

“Albert, we're going to have to take him in for an adjustment. They're still not right.”

“Sure,” the man said. “Henri, pass the beets.”

“
Eh,
maman
? Why not?” the boy wanted to know.

“Why not what?” his mother replied. “Eat Gilbert.”

“Why is it that we can't live only on cake or ice cream?”

“You can't. Ask your father, he'll tell you.”

“
Papa
,” the boy turned to the opposite end of the table. “Why can't nobody live only on cake or ice cream?”

“Eat,” his father replied. That was the final word on the subject. Gilbert had learned to recognize the signal early in his life, as had Céline and Henri.

Henri looked up from his plate. His mother smiled. Both she and Henri knew from experience what Gilbert was not old enough to have learned. Someday, probably in the near future, Albert Morin would take him for a walk, to the park maybe, or along the shore of the Baskatong and, while they were watching the gulls flying overhead or the boats tacking along the widest part of the lake, he would casually start talking to his son about nature and animals and food chains and nutrition and finally, if the wind was right, he might answer Gilbert's question about cake and ice cream.

“
Maman
?” Henri said.

“Yes, Henri.”

“Do you think I could have some money for tonight?”

The woman smiled at Henri and then she looked across the table where her husband was struggling with a chicken leg, pulling at the tendons with his teeth.

“What's that?” he said. “With all that money you threw on the table today, you want to bum money from your poor old
maman
?”

“Albert!” the woman's face grew stern

“Yes,
papa
,” Henri said. “That money is for school, for the university. I can't touch that.”

“That's right,” his mother argued. “He'll have to buy clothes and books and who knows what.”

“The tuition alone will cost several hundred. Maybe a thousand, Henri added. “Maybe, I won't go.”

“Henri!” the woman scolded.

“Now, now, Bernadette.” The man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. It was not often that he called her Bernadette in front of the children. Henri remembered well the shock it had given him, when he was about Gilbert's age, to discover that his mother's real name was not “
maman
.”

“It's all right, Henri,” his mother said. “You save your money. It's not every young man your age that plans ahead like that. And don't worry.
Papa
will let you have some for tonight.”

Albert Morin leaned over his cup and slurped the hot, steaming tea.

“That's it then,” he said. “A man works hard at his trade and what does he get: a rich son who bums money off of him to go whoring around town until all hours while his poor old parents lie in their beds shortening their lives with worry.”

“Albert Morin!” the woman snapped. Her face was red. Henri was afraid that she would cry. He wished that he had not spoken about the money.

“Now take your mother here,” Henri's father continued, probing at his teeth with a toothpick. “She won't sleep at all. And she'll wake me several times during the night to tell me how she cannot sleep, worrying about you.”

“
Maman
,” Henri looked at his mother. “There's no danger. You worry too much,
maman
.”

“Her mother was the same,” Henri's father said.

“Yes, she did worry a lot,” the woman said. “But then, she had reason to. Imagine, her innocent young daughter going out in the evenings with a wild man like you.”

“Innocent!” the man chuckled.

“Albert!” the woman looked at him sternly. Henri noticed the change in his mother's eyes.

“Yes, yes, my little pigeon. Anyway, your mother was probably no worse than mine. My poor old
maman
, always worrying that I'd never amount to anything. Well, she was right about that at least.”

The man laughed and poured himself a cup of tea. The dark, steaming tea fell loudly into the cup. The man looked up and saw his entire family staring at him. He felt, immediately, that now was not the time to be thinking about himself and his opinions of life. He had created a situation with his idle babble and, now, he was confronted with it and, because he loved his family more than anything in his life, even more than his life, he must make things right without hurting anyone.

“Yes,” he went on, speaking over the rim of his cup. “
Maman
was right. She was always on my back about how a person alone thinks alone, and only about himself and, being that way in the world, can never amount to anything good. It's in the thinking and caring of others, she used to say, that you make something of yourself in this world.”