Mavis Gallant - Montreal Stories

“He’ll be lying on the bed now, sulking,” said Mimi. “I’m not used to that. I hadn’t been married before, either.” She began rinsing plates at the sink. The slit of a window overlooked cars and the stricken palms. Tears ran down her cheeks. She tried to blot them on her arm. “I think he wants to leave me.”

“So what if he does leave,” said Marie, looking in vain for a clean dish towel. “A bad, disobedient boy. He ran away to Vietnam. The last man in our family. He should have been thinking about having sons instead of traveling around. Raymond’s father was called Louis. My father’s name was Odilon. Odilon-Louis — that’s a nice name for a boy. It goes in any language.”

“In my family we just have girls,” said Mimi.

“Another thing Raymond did,” said Marie. “He stole his father’s gold watch. Then he lost it. Just took it and lost it.”

“Raymond never lost that watch,” said Mimi. “He probably sold it to two or three different people. Raymond will always be Raymond. I’m having a baby. Did he tell you that?”

“He didn’t have to,” said Marie. “I guessed it when we were in the car. Don’t cry anymore. They can hear. The baby can hear you.”

“He’s already heard plenty from Raymond.”

Marie’s English died. “Look,” she said, struggling. “This baby has a grandmother. He’s got Berthe. You’ve got Berthe. Never mind Raymond.”

“He’ll need a father image,” said Mimi. “Not just a lot of women.”

“Raymond had one,” said Marie. “He still joined the Marines.”

“He or she,” said Mimi. “I don’t want to know. I want the surprise. I hope he likes me. She. It feels like a girl.”

“It would be good to know in advance,” said Marie. “Just for the shopping — to know what to buy. Do you want to save the rest of the shrimp or throw it out?”

“Save it,” said Mimi. “Raymond hardly ate anything. He’ll be hungry later on.”

“That bad boy,” said Marie. “I don’t care if he never eats again. He’ll find out what it’s like, alone in the world. Without his mother. Without his aunt. Without his wife. Without his baby.”

“I don’t want him to be alone,” said Mimi, showing Marie her streaked face, the sad little curls stuck to her wet cheeks. “He hasn’t actually gone anywhere. I just said I thought he was thinking about it.”

Marie tried to remember some of the English Berthe used. When she was talking to people from her office, Berthe would say, “All in good time,” and “No way he can do that,” and “Count on me,” and “Not to worry.”

“He won’t leave you,” said Marie. “No way I’ll let him do that. Count on me.” Her elbow brushed against the handle of the refrigerator door; she felt a silvery spark through the chiffon sleeve. This was the first time such a thing had happened in Florida; it was like an approving message from Berthe. Mimi wiped her hands on a paper towel and turned to Marie.

“Be careful,” said Marie, enfolding Raymond’s wife and Raymond’s baby. “Be careful the baby doesn’t get a shock. Everything around here is electric. I’m electric. We’ll have to be careful from now on. We’ve got to make sure we’re grounded.” She had gone into French, but it didn’t matter. The baby could hear, and knew what she meant.

WELL INTO HER nineties, my aunt continues to send me news of people in Montreal I’ve had no trouble forgetting. When I open a letter of hers, a shower of clippings falls out, along with her reminders: “Steve! Mrs. Christopher Shrew was Nancy Pervious. Was dying to marry you. Good thing you got away.” Or “Peter Delorme. Nice boy until he got into politics. Leaves three fine sons.”

At some point she must have mentioned Carlotta Peel, the daughter of my former wife, but I’d no idea what the girl looked like or even what age she might be until she turned up on my doorstep, uninvited, in the South of France. It was an August day, in a season of drought. A layer of dust like fine salt covered the fading gardens. Brittle plane leaves blew into the corners of the terrace. The hotter the day, the grayer the sea. The sun beat through a thin grayish layer of haze that resembled the tail of a dust storm. I was reading a new book, which I had taken to be the secret diaries of General Georges Boulanger. He was the French Minister of War who might have thrown over the Third Republic, if he’d put his mind to it, and finally dismayed his admirers by committing suicide on his mistress’s grave. I had read steadily from the downfall of Louis Napoleon until about 1890, almost the end, surprised that someone I’d classed as a featherhead had shown so much wit and grace, when I looked again at the author’s notes and realized I was reading a work of fiction. I dropped the book face down and began composing letters to the author and his publisher asking for the return of my hundred and sixty-nine francs. Someone called my name. By then I was asleep and dreaming. I was at a christening, and a stranger suddenly handed me about a dozen prayer books. The infant at the font began to wail, a sort of mewing. The clergyman rang a bell for silence. The child’s mother said, “Steve! Steve Burnet!” I said, “For Christ’s sake, I’m holding all these bloody books!”

I woke up and went round to the front of the house, and found a tall child (child to me; Carlotta considered herself a young woman) with sleepy dark eyes. She wore a kind of uniform of white cotton, with a long buttoned tunic, and with her narrow shoulders and cinnamon summer skin she could have been Indian. I remember that the first things she said were on a rising note: “Steve Burnet? You knew my mother?”—which meant nothing until she added, “My mother, Lily?” At that I saw a resemblance, though not to recollections of Lily; rather, to Carlotta’s maternal grandmother, my late, crazy mother-in-law, anchored in memory as Old Lady Quale. Between Carlotta and me arose Mrs. Quale’s owlish staring and head of sleek black hair. Lily’s girl was a fragment of that ancient lump of righteousness — saner, probably; certainly prettier; perhaps more commonplace. As for Lily, I had not set eyes on her since she was twenty-three.

My life since that early capsizal had been sparsely and prudently occupied by married women in no hurry to leave their husbands. Indeed, the introduction of divorce into Italy had caused me to close down a six-year-old story. (It was managed without racking debate. A Canadian diplomat, evenhanded by nature, one of the rare foreigners to whom the French have not taken immediate and weighty dislike, I was invited to observe voting practices in the Society Islands. I obtained a long leave of absence, rented my summer house in France to a Belgian opposite number, loitered in the South Pacific as long as my means allowed, and spent an undue amount of time drawing up my conclusions. When eventually one summer I returned to Europe, it was to find Sandra dismissing men as a form of agitazione and studying to become a breeder of white Pekinese.)

My aunt believed that a distaste for restless and unclaimed women had me moored in a careful system of ways and means, keeping a blameless married woman friend around to act as hostess and accompany me to concerts and funerals, and pursuing invisible affairs with other men’s wives. In other words (this is still my aunt speaking), I was no different from any trifling, piffling male with a wife and girlfriends and a deck of ready stories. No woman was supposed to bring me more than she could pack and remove on short notice. It was my aunt’s opinion that I had too much regard for what was likely to happen. I thought she was wrong, and that I expected nearly nothing.