8
18 Dec 88
It
is Sunday evening. Another week till winter break, and B and D are busy
studying.
D spent the whole afternoon at home. He did not take his
usual Sunday afternoon museum outing. I asked him about it at dinner, and he
said he had too much schoolwork. What about your friend the nurse? I asked.
He did not answer, but smiled sheepishly and looked down. I am inferring that
its over.
During the week I will confirm with B and D in order to
make reservations at Mont Tremblant for a week of skiing.
Anyway, it has been a month since papa died. He never came
out of his coma.
I opened you,
my journal, when I came back from the funeral, and had my pen poised over this
very page, trying to write down my feelings, but no words came. If one could
say that I experienced a feeling during those two days in Rimouski, among
brothers and mother and other relatives, it was emptiness, around me and inside
me.
Around me
it was as if Rimouski, in the November fog and without Tante Clotilde, simply
did not exist. It was like a grey hole.
Inside me it
was an emptiness in the heart (un vide au cœur), the way hunger, once the pangs
are gone, feels like an emptiness in the stomach. The worst moment came when we
were in church and Betty took my hand, and I felt nothing. My sweet Betty, my
dear child, at that point in space-time, in Rimouski, Québec, November 1988, I
felt nothing for you!
I was going to
write Please forgive me! But of course there was nothing to forgive. I had
simply stepped into that grey hole. We left Rimouski as soon as possible and
spent the night in Rivière-du-Loup, and my love for Betty and for the absent
Daniel was back in its rightful place in my heart.
But I could
not find the words to describe what had happened. And yet I believed that an
event such as the death of a father requires to be recorded, so I waited for
the words to come. Each time I opened your covers, my journal, I waited for
those words, and neglected to write about what really happened. I suppose that
this is what is meant by writers block.
Well, it has
been a month and the empt void is practically filled. At least I no
longer feel it. And I am again feeling free to write.
And I want to
write about Tante Clotilde. Clotilde Bouchard, Papas younger sister, Dr.
Palombes nurse, who remained single because she was not allowed to marry the
man she loved because he was Anglais (actually he was Scottish, Ian Campbell),
and worse yet Protestant. So she chose independence, and fostered it in me. She
encouraged me to become a doctor, not a nurse, and to go to Montréal, not
Québec, for university in order to broaden my horizons. I would visit her on
Sunday mornings when the rest of the family went to church and we would drink
tea and joke about being two at tea, deux à thé, deux athées, two atheists.
But we also
talked in English, which she spoke better than most French people in Rimouski
(she had practice with Ian). You will need English in Montréal, she would say
to me. She also liked to say, of the nuns who had taught her nursing, that she
appreciated their teaching but not their teachings.
Diagnosed with
breast cancer at 60, lived with it for 5 years. Tu me manques,
chère tante Clo. I miss you.
Admission
In mid-December Daniel received his letter of admission to
Columbia. Along with congratulations on his sterling scholastic record and test
scores, it included a reminder to apply for a student visa and an admonition to
maintain a rigorous course load and a strong academic performance for the
remainder of his senior year. Evidently this was to prevent his lapsing into a
condition that, as Ms. Casey told them, was known in the States and in Western
Canada as senioritis. The term struck Daniel as bizarre: his mother, the
doctor, had taught him that the ending -itis defined an inflammation,
but the seniors in this condition were apathetic, the very opposite of
inflamed, at least in the way that enflammé would be used in French.
Soon
thereafter Angie informed him that their meetings would have to stop. She had
met someone and, she said, It might get serious. By then it was only a week
till winter break, and Mireille had made plans for the three of them to go
skiing at Mont Tremblant, so that Daniels relationship with Angie would have
been interrupted anyway. Instead, it simply ended. It was a breakup of sorts,
but a friendly one.
Daniel
had observed on previous winter vacations that ski resorts are great places for
flirting. This time he would not just observe but participate. He would be, as
anthropologists would say, a participant observer.
Back at school in January Daniel now began to look at his
female friends as girls, nay, he had to admit to himself, as ripe-bodied
seventeen-year-old women. Leslie, who now played in the Montreal Civic Youth
Orchestra, was as much fun to be with as ever. But of late she had taken up
smoking, perhaps in an effort to lose weight, and after two coffee dates at
which she blew puffs of smoke at him he shifted his attention to Roxane, who
was in his French literature class. One day in late January he told her that he
would like to go cross-country skiing with her; she agreed readily. She
normally went on Sundays for the day with a club, but he suggested a
weekend getaway, just the two of them. She said, blushing, that she would have
to think it over, but two days later she said that it was okay. He reserved a room
with two beds at an inn in Morin Heights, and on a sunny Saturday morning in
February they left in his car, with Roxanes skis and poles alongside his
rented ones on the rooftop ski rack that he had also rented.
After
an afternoon of skiing they came back to their room to change and, in short
order, one thing led to another. Roxane was a virgin she told Daniel that she
had fooled around with girls but never with a boy but she got into it
enthusiastically. Back in their room after dinner, she was as insatiable as he
was. He had been prescient in bringing a whole package of condoms.
It
soon became obvious at school that Roxane and Daniel were a couple. One day at
home Betty approached him with a report that struck him as strange.
Some
of the girls have been saying that its weird that youre dating a girl thats
not hot, she said One of them said shes a dyke.
What
business is it of theirs? he asked, nonplussed.
Betty
giggled. Girls are always talking about guys, about whos dating who
I mean
whom. She giggled again. And a cute guy like you is supposed to date a cute
girl, I guess.
Someone
more like Vivian?
Yes.
But
I like Roxane better than I liked Vivian. Would you date a guy who wasnt cute
if you really liked him?
I
dont know. She was blushing. I dont think Im ready for dating yet.
Have
you been asked?
Yes.
And?
I
guess I didnt like them enough, she said after some reflection.
Were
they cute?
I
guess so.
There
you are. Betty said nothing, so Daniel went on. But what might happen is that
a guy who may be really nice, but whos not what girls consider cute, might be
too shy to ask a pretty girl like you.
So
whats a girl supposed to do, O wise brother?
The
word, O inquisitive sister, is flirt. It means showing in subtle ways
that youre interested. Dont tell me you didnt see people doing it at Mont
Tremblant.
I
saw you doing it, she said with yet another giggle.
How
about maman? he asked.
This
time she laughed heartily. Yeah, her too. But very subtly.
Join
the family, he said.
Have
I ever told you that youre my favorite brother? she said with a sisterly kiss
on the cheek.
I
love you too, he said.
Afterwards Daniel
thought about the fact that he could now be regarded as being, in the common
parlance, successful with women. He could not deny that his own good looks had
something to do with it. It also helped that Gen McGrath had taught him to
discern whether a girl was interested in doing it. But he liked to attribute
his so-called success mainly to his relative indifference to womens looks,
reinforced by the fiasco of his attraction to Vivian. And so the range of his
potential partners (he refused to think of them as conquests) was greatly
broadened by the fact that a very pretty girl or woman did not necessarily
attract him more than a not-so-pretty one. Che sia brutta, che sia bella,
as Leporello sang.
Roxane, who was neither brutta
nor bella, was the youngest of a brood of four. Her siblings had left
home, and her parents owned and jointly managed a bilingual bookstore, so that
on weekdays she had the house to herself for a few hours after school. After
Mireille had written her a prescription for the pill, Roxane and Daniel found
themselves caught up in a whirlwind of unbridled juvenile sex that lasted about
six weeks, including an outing for combined cross-country and downhill skiing
at Mont Tremblant during spring break.
At
the end of March, with the beginning of the track season, things changed
abruptly. Roxane was faced with a conflict the coach believed that estrogen
impaired a young womans athletic performance and love won out over fun.
Daniel was fun, but running was her love.
By mid-April, when it was obvious that he no longer had a
girlfriend, Daniel began to get interest-bearing glances from Megan Kenner, an
eleventh-grader though she had already turned seventeen in his algebra
class. She was a second cousin of Bettys classmate Amy, the daughter of
Mireilles friend George. Megan was very smart, and also rather pretty in an
unassuming way. She had a round, pleasant face with large eyes and an engaging
smile, girlish in a way that made her look younger than her age she might
easily be taken for fourteen framed by soft, wavy brown hair. Her figure, by
contrast, was womanly, nicely curvy if not spectacular. She was quite
experienced for her age, and, as with Roxane, they could spend after-school
time at her house, as she had already done with her previous boyfriends.
With
Megan, Gens She comes first was self-fulfilling. She liked Daniel to undress
her as part of the foreplay. The more clumsily he did it, with his fingers
losing their way into nooks and crannies of her well-developed body (which
strangely reminded him of Felas sponge cake), the better she liked it. It was
not unusual for her to have an orgasm before all her clothes were off.
It
was reassuring for him to learn that a girl as pretty as Megan she
might be a seven or eight on a scale on which Vivian was a ten did
not have to be frigid like Vivian.
Megan
also, unwittingly, helped confirm another of Gens teachings. She did not smoke
cigarettes, but marijuana was another matter. On a couple of occasions she told
Daniel that she had scored a joint and proposed that they share it before sex.
Its effect on Megan was not obvious to him, but Daniel felt his senses dulled,
not cleared, and his pleasure lessened, not enhanced. So Gen was right at least
on the drugs part, he thought; the drink part would have to wait. And
whenever, in the future, Megan would propose grass again, he would take a token
toke without inhaling.
Daniel
and Megan dated until the end of the school year. When they said good-bye for
the summer it was understood that this was not the end but that they would get
together again, as opportunity provided, and again and again.
Meanwhile,
Harveys fling with Vivian had fizzled even faster than Daniels. Vivian had
made a point of holding hands tightly with Harvey, or putting her arm around
his waist, whenever Daniel could see them, all the while casting disdainful
glances at him. Harvey was obviously embarrassed, and he and Vivian were
estranged within a month.
That summer Mireille, Daniel and Betty took a six-week
vacation in Western Canada the Rockies and the Pacific Coast and the
American Northwest. They flew to Calgary, where they rented a small camper;
Mireille and Daniel took turns driving. They knew that it was their last
vacation together, and Betty and Daniel made a point of being extra nice to maman,
never more so than on her fortieth birthday, which they celebrated in Victoria.
Daniel sent postcards to his friends in Montreal, including Harvey, Leslie,
Alex, Roxane and Megan. And of course to Fela and Brigitte. He enjoyed the process of
isolating himself from his mother and sister and composing a personal message
to each recipient. The sending of postcards was a habit that remained with him
into the age of instant electronic communication.
On
their return to Montreal Mireille and Daniel took a trip downtown to take care
of some practical matters: shopping for clothes for Daniel the kind that
would be suitable for a university student in New York and setting up a
money-market account for him in US dollars at Citibank Canada, on which he
could draw in order to set up a checking account and a credit card for himself
at Citibank in New York. Since the money was withdrawn from his trust account
at the Bank of Montreal, representing his inheritance, he thought that he might
use the occasion to talk to her about his father. He tried to bring the matter
up over lunch in a downtown restaurant. But her reticence remained unchanged.
While
in the restaurant he noticed, some four tables away Angie Accorso at a table
with a man who had his back turned to him. He waved to her. Though he was sure
that she had seen him, she did not wave back. Mireille asked him who he had
waved at. He told her. She turned to look at Angie, turned back and smiled
without a comment.
During the next two weeks he packed clothes, books,
personal appliances including his portable stereo, and a small collection of
music cassettes, but not his guitar or his soccer ball and said good-bye to
his friends. Of course there were a couple of afternoons alone with Megan. She
had a new boyfriend by then, but it didnt seem to matter.
For
the third time, Daniel took the overnight Greyhound bus to New York. This time
he had no intention of picking up a woman along the way, and none presented
herself. But the excitement of the journey kept his sleep to a scant few hours.
His scattered dreams were of New York as a kind of fantasyland, more like
downtown Montreal than the real New York. He woke up at each stop believing
that he had already arrived, only to see that it was still dark outside. For
some reason he had a hard time summoning up his actual memories of the New York
that he had visited twice already. At last the image of the Low Library settled
in his conscious mind, and this image was to remain his mental polestar for all
his years at Columbia.
When
he finally arrived, the weather outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal was
surprisingly pleasant for late August. The temperature was on the cool side of
mild, some 16 or 17oC. The humidity was comfortable. The sky was
clear, and a northeasterly breeze swept the air. He felt New York welcoming
him, perhaps even returning the love that, for the third time, he felt welling
up inside him.
He
found a taxi immediately and gave the driver the address of his dorm at
Columbia, where he had a single room waiting for him. The bathroom would be
shared with a double room next door, but otherwise he would be living on his
own. On his own in New York!
The
driver, who seemed Middle Eastern, sped up the West Side Highway in silence.
His radio played some excitingly rhythmic, exotic-sounding music. As the road
entered the lushness of Riverside Park Daniel mused on the fact that, almost
eighteen years old, he had yet to fall in love with a girl, but he was in love
with a city. He thought back to his surreal dreams on the bus, and remembered
that on his first trip to New York he had dreamt about Hamburg, which in his
dream was also a distorted version of Montreal. The thought of Hamburg led to
his father, and made him wonder if the young Miki Wilner had also fallen in
love at first sight with a city. Miki, Daniel now remembered, had lived in
Hamburg as a boy before he ever met Brigitte.
Would he fall in love with other cities in the
future? And would falling in love with a new city entail falling out of love
with the old one?
The
future would tell. The present was here in New York. Novum Eboracum. New
York, the capital of serendipity, as some journalist had recently called it.
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