Montreal Stories Read online

  The doctor put his fountain pen away and remarked, “I like Neil for a name.” He spoke to Mr. Fenton in English and to Ray and Nora not at all. At the same time he and Nora’s father seemed to know each other. There was an easiness of acquaintance between them; a bit cagey perhaps. Mr. Fenton seemed more like the sort of man her father might go with to the races. She could imagine them easily going on about bets and horses. Most of the babies Ray was kind enough to find for unhappy couples were made known by doctors. Perhaps he was one of them.

  It was decided between Ray and Mr. Fenton that Nora would be called for, the next morning, by Mr. Fenton and the doctor. They would all three collect the child and take him home. Nora was invited to lunch. Saying good-bye, Mr. Fenton touched her bare arm, perhaps by accident, and asked her to call him “Boyd.” Nothing in her manner or expression showed she had heard.

  That evening, Ray and his wife played cards in the kitchen. Nora was ironing the starched piqué dress she would wear the next day. She said, “They gave up their own baby for adoption, or what?”

  “Maybe they weren’t expecting a child. It was too much for them,” her mother said.

  “Give us a break,” said Ray. “Mrs. Fenton wasn’t in any shape to look after him. She had her mother down from Toronto because she couldn’t even run the house. They’ve got this D. P. maid always threatening to quit.”

  “Does he mind having his mother-in-law around the whole time?” said Nora.

  “He sure doesn’t.” Nora thought he would add some utterly English thing like “She’s got the money,” but Ray went on, “She’s on his side. She wants them together. The baby’s the best thing that could happen.”

  “Maybe there was a mistake at the hospital,” said Nora’s mother, trying again. “The Fentons got some orphan by mistake and their own baby went to the home.”

  “And then the truth came out,” said Nora. It made sense.

  “Now when you’re over there, don’t you hang out with that maid,” Ray said. “She can’t even speak English. If somebody says to you to eat in the kitchen, I want you to come straight home.”

  “I’m not leaving home,” said Nora. “I’m not sure if I want to go back to their place after tomorrow.”

  “Come on,” said Ray. “I promised.”

  “You promised. I didn’t.”

  “Leave your dress on the ironing board,” said her mother. “I’ll do the pleats.”

  Nora switched off the iron and went to stand behind her father. She put her hands on his shoulders. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not going to let you down. You might as well throw your hand in. I saw Maman’s.”

  3

  Obliged to take the baby from Nora, Missy now held him at arm’s length, upright between her hands, so that no part of him could touch her white apron. Nora thought, He’ll die from his own screaming. Missy’s face said she was not enjoying the joke. Perhaps she thought Mr. Fenton had put Nora up to it. His laughter had said something different: Whatever blunders he might have committed until now, choosing Missy to be the mother of a Fenton was not among them.

  “You’d better clean him up right away,” said Mrs. Clopstock.

  Missy, whose silences were astonishingly powerful, managed to suggest that cleaning Neil up was not in her working agreement. She did repeat that a bottle was ready for some reason, staring hard at the doctor.

  “The child is badly dehydrated,” he said, as if replying to Missy. “He should be given liquid right away. He is undernourished and seriously below his normal weight. As you can tell, he has a bad case of diarrhea. I’ll take his temperature after lunch.”

  “Is he really sick?” said Nora.

  “He may have to be hospitalized for a few days.” He was increasingly solemn and slower than ever.

  “Hospitalized?” said Mr. Fenton. “We’ve only just got him here.”

  “The first thing is to get him washed and changed,” said Mrs. Clopstock.

  “I’ll do it,” said Nora. “He knows me.”

  “Missy won’t mind.”

  Sensing a private exchange between Mrs. Clopstock and Missy, Nora held still. She felt a child’s powerful desire to go home, away from these strangers. Mrs. Clopstock said, “Let us all please go and sit down. We’re standing here as if we were in a hotel lobby.”

  “I can do it,” Nora said. She said again, “He knows me.”

  “Missy knows where everything is,” said Mrs. Clopstock. “Come along, Alex, Boyd. Nora, don’t you want to wash your hands?”

  “I’m feeling dehydrated too,” said Mr. Fenton. “I hope Missy put something on ice.”

  Nora watched Missy turn and climb the stairs and disappear around the bend in the staircase. There’ll be a holy row about this, she thought. I’ll be gone.

  “It was very nice meeting you,” she said. “I have to leave now.”

  “Come on, Nora,” said Mr. Fenton. “Anybody could have made the same mistake. You came in out of bright sunlight. The hall was dark.”

  “Could we please, please go and sit down?” said his mother-in-law.

  “All right,” he said, still to Nora. “It’s O.K. You’ve had enough. Let’s have a bite to eat and I’ll drive you home.”

  “You may have to take Neil to the hospital.”

  Mrs. Clopstock took the doctor’s arm. She was a little woman in green linen, wearing pearls and pearl earrings. Aunt Rosalie would have seen right away if they were real. The two moved from the shaded hall to a shaded room.

  Mr. Fenton watched them go. “Nora,” he said, “just let me have a drink and I’ll drive you home.”

  “I don’t need to be driven home. I can take the Sherbrooke bus and walk the rest of the way.”

  “Can you tell me what’s wrong? It can’t be my mother-in-law. She’s a nice woman. Missy’s a little rough, but she’s nice too.”

  “Where’s Mrs. Fenton?” said Nora. “Why didn’t she at least come to the door? It’s her child.”

  “You’re not dumb,” he said. “You’re not Ray’s girl for nothing. It’s hers and it isn’t.”

  “We all signed,” Nora said. “I didn’t sign to cover up some story. I came here to do a Christian act. I wasn’t paid anything.”

  “What do you mean by ‘anything’? You mean not enough?”

  “Who’s Neil?” she said. “I mean, who is he?”

  “He’s a Fenton. You saw the register.”

  “I mean, who is he?”

  “He’s my son. You signed the register. You should know.”

  “I believe you,” she said. “He has English eyes.” Her voice dropped. He had to ask her to repeat something. “I said, was it Ninette?”

  It took him a second or so to see what she was after. He gave the same kind of noisy laugh as when she had tried to place the child in Missy’s arms. “Little Miss Cochefert? Until this minute I thought you were the only sane person in Montreal.”

  “It fits,” said Nora. “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. “I don’t know. There are two people that know. Your father, Ray Abbott, and Alex Marchand.”

  “Did you pay my dad?”

  “Pay him? I paid him for you. We wouldn’t have asked anyone to look after Neil for nothing.”

  “About Ninette,” she said. “I just meant that it fits.”

  “A hundred women in Montreal would fit, when it comes to that. The truth is, we don’t know, except that she was in good health.”

  “Who was the girl in the lane? The one you were talking about.”

  “Just a girl in the wrong place. Her father was a school principal.”

  “You said that. Did you know her?”

  “I never saw her. Missy and Louise did. Louise is my wife.”

  “I know. How much did you give my dad? Not for Neil. For me.”

  “Thirty bucks. Some men don’t make that in a week. If you have to ask, it means you never got it.”

  “I’ve never had thirty dollars in one piece in my l
ife,” she said. “In my family we don’t fight over money. What my dad says, goes. I’ve never had to go without. Gerry and I had new coats every winter.”

  “Is that the end of the interrogatory? You’d have made a great cop. I agree, you can’t stay. But would you just do one last Christian act? Wash your hands and comb your hair and sit down and have lunch. After that, I’ll put you in a taxi and pay the driver. If you don’t want me to, my mother-in-law will.”

  “I could help you take him to the hospital.”

  “Forget the Fenton family,” he said. “Lunch is the cutoff.”

  Late in the afternoon Ray came home and they had tea and sandwiches at the kitchen table. Nora was wearing Gerry’s old white terry-cloth robe. Her washed hair was in rollers.

  “There was nothing to it, no problem,” she said again. “He needed a hospital checkup. He was run-down. I don’t know which hospital.”

  “I could find out,” said Ray.

  “I think they don’t want anybody around.”

  “What did you eat for lunch?” said her mother.

  “Some kind of cold soup. Some kind of cold meat. A fruit salad. Iced tea. The men drank beer. There was no bread on the table.”

  “Pass Nora the peanut butter,” said Ray.

  “Did you meet Mr. Fenton because of Ninette,” said Nora, “or did you know him first? Did you know Dr. Marchand first, or Mr. Fenton?”

  “It’s a small world,” said her father. “Anyways, I’ve got some money for you.”

  “How much?” said Nora. “No, never mind. I’ll ask if I ever need it.”

  “You’ll never need anything,” he said. “Not as long as your old dad’s around.”

  “You know that Mrs. Clopstock?” said Nora. “She’s the first person I’ve ever met from Toronto. I didn’t stare at her, but I took a good look. Maman, how can you tell real pearls?”

  “They wouldn’t be real,” said Ray. “The real ones would be on deposit. Rosalie had a string of pearls.”

  “They had to sell them on account of Ninette,” said her mother.

  “Maybe you could find out the name of the hospital,” Nora said. “He might like to see me. He knows me.”

  “He’s already forgotten you,” her mother said.

  “I wouldn’t swear to that,” said Ray. “I can remember somebody bending over my baby buggy. I don’t know who it was, though.”

  He will remember that I picked him up, Nora decided. He will remember the smell of the incense. He will remember the front door and moving into the dark hall. I’ll try to remember him. It’s the best I can do.

  She said to Ray, “What’s the exact truth? Just what’s on paper?”

  “Nora,” said her mother. “Look at me. Look me right in the face. Forget that child. He isn’t yours. If you want children, get married. All right?”

  “All right,” her father answered for her. “Why don’t you put on some clothes and I’ll take you both to a movie.” He began to whistle, not “Don’t Let It Bother You,” but some other thing just as easy.

  THE END OF THE WORLD

  I NEVER LIKE to leave Canada, because I’m disappointed every time. I’ve felt disappointed about places I haven’t even seen. My wife went to Florida with her mother once. When they arrived there, they met some neighbors from home who told them about a sign saying NO CANADIANS. They never saw this sign anywhere, but they kept hearing about others who did, or whose friends had seen it, always in different places, and it spoiled their trip for them. Many people, like them, have never come across it but have heard about it, so it must be there somewhere. Another time I had to go and look after my brother Kenny in Buffalo. He had stolen a credit card and was being deported on that account. I went down to vouch for him and pay up for him and bring him home. Neither of us cared for Buffalo.

  “What have they got here that’s so marvelous?” I said.

  “Proust,” said Kenny.

  “What?”

  “Memorabilia,” he said. He was reading it off a piece of paper.

  “Why does a guy with your education do a dumb thing like swiping a credit card?” I said.

  “Does Mother know?” said Kenny.

  “Mum knows, and Lou knows, and I know, and Beryl knows. It was in the papers. ‘Kenneth Apostolesco, of this city …’ ”

  “I’d better stay away,” my brother said.

  “No, you’d better not, for Mum’s sake. We’ve only got one mother.”

  “Thank God,” he said. “Only one of each. One mother and one father. If I had more than one of each, I think I’d still be running.”

  It was our father who ran, actually. He deserted us during the last war. He joined the Queen’s Own Rifles, which wasn’t a Montreal regiment—he couldn’t do anything like other people, couldn’t even join up like anyone else—and after the war he just chose to go his own way. I saw him downtown in Montreal one time after the war. I was around twelve, delivering prescriptions for a drugstore. I knew him before he knew me. He looked the way he had always managed to look, as if he had all the time in the world. His mouth was drawn in, like an old woman’s, but he still had his coal-black hair. I wish we had his looks. I leaned my bike with one foot on the curb and he came down and stood by me, rocking on his feet, like a dancer, and looking off over my head. He said he was night watchman at a bank and that he was waiting for the Army to fix him up with some teeth. He’d had all his teeth out, though there wasn’t anything wrong with them. He was eligible for new ones provided he put in a claim that year, so he thought he might as well. He was a bartender by profession, but he wasn’t applying for anything till he’d got his new teeth. “I’ve told them to hurry it up,” he said. “I can’t go round to good places all gummy.” He didn’t ask how anyone was at home.

  I had to leave Canada to be with my father when he died. I was the person they sent for, though I was the youngest. My name was on the back page of his passport: “In case of accident or death notify WILLIAM APOSTOLESCO. Relationship: Son.” I was the one he picked. He’d been barman on a ship for years by then, earning good money, but he had nothing put by. I guess he never expected his life would be finished. He collapsed with a lung hemorrhage, as far as I could make out, and they put him off at a port in France. I went there. That was where I saw him. This town had been shelled twenty years ago and a lot of it looked bare and new. I wouldn’t say I hated it exactly, but I would never have come here of my own accord. It was worse than Buffalo in some ways. I didn’t like the food or the coffee, and they never gave you anything you needed in the hotels—I had to go out and buy some decent towels. It didn’t matter, because I had to buy everything for my father anyway—soap and towels and Kleenex. The hospital didn’t provide a thing except the bed-sheets, and when a pair of those was put on the bed it seemed to be put there once and for all. I was there twenty-three days and I think I saw the sheets changed once. Our grandfathers had been glad to get out of Europe. It took my father to go back. The hospital he was in was an old convent or monastery. The beds were so close together you could hardly get a chair between them. Women patients were always wandering around the men’s wards, and although I wouldn’t swear to it, I think some of them had their beds there, at the far end. The patients were given crocks of tepid water to wash in, not by their beds but on a long table in the middle of the ward. Anyone too sick to get up was just out of luck unless, like my father, he had someone to look after him. I saw beetles and cockroaches, and I said to myself, This is what a person gets for leaving home.

  My father accepted my presence as if it were his right—as if he hadn’t lost his claim to any consideration years ago. So as not to scare him, I pretended my wife’s father had sent me here on business, but he hardly listened, so I didn’t insist.

  “Didn’t you drive a cab one time or other?” he said. “What else have you done?”

  I wanted to answer, “You know what I’ve been doing? I’ve been supporting your wife and educating your other children, practically single-handed,
since I was twelve.”

  I had expected to get here in time for his last words, which ought to have been “I’m sorry.” I thought he would tell me where he wanted to be buried, how much money he owed, how many bastards he was leaving behind, and who was looking out for them. I imagined them in ports like this, with no-good mothers. Somebody should have been told—telling me didn’t mean telling the whole world. One of the advantages of having an Old Country in the family is you can always say the relations that give you trouble have gone there. You just say, “He went back to the Old Country,” and nobody asks any questions. So he could have told me the truth, and I’d have known and still not let the family down. But my father never confided anything. The trouble was he didn’t know he was dying—he’d been told, in fact, he was getting better—so he didn’t act like a dying man. He used what breath he had to say things like “I always liked old Lou,” and you would have thought she was someone else’s daughter, a girl he had hardly known. Another time he said, “Did Kenny do well for himself? I heard he went to college.”

  “Don’t talk,” I said.

  “No, I mean it. I’d like to know how Kenny made out.”

  He couldn’t speak above a whisper some days, and he was careful how he pronounced words. It wasn’t a snobbish or an English accent—nothing that would make you grit your teeth. He just sounded like a stranger. When I was sent for, my mother said, “He’s dying a pauper, after all his ideas. I hope he’s satisfied.” I didn’t answer, but I said to myself, This isn’t a question of satisfaction. I wanted to ask her, “Since you didn’t get along with him and he didn’t get along with you, what did you go and have three children for?” But those are the questions you keep to yourself.