For several years the books sat unread on the top of his bedroom chest. Then one evening, for lack of something to do, he opened one and scanned it over. Within a year he had read them all. It wasn’t until the first time through that he realized there was a sort of order to some of them: heroines of one book were the daughters of heroines of another, and so on. Thereafter he always read them in order. His favorite novel is L’Assommoir, in which he was able to predict, in his first reading, the inevitable descent of the characters from hope to alcoholism to death. The books feel good in his hand, and have a friendly smell. It is the 1906 Edition Populaire Illustrée des Oeuvres Complètes de Entile Zola, with drawings of substantial heroines, their round arms uplifted in supplication and round eyes raised to heaven, the line of dialogue beneath never lacking in exclamation points. Such men as appear in the plates stand back, amongst the dripping shadows, and look mercilessly down on the fallen heroines. The men are not individuals; they are part of the environment of poverty, despair, and exploitation to which futile hope gives edge.
The novels are populated by people who, if they spoke in Joual dialect and knew about modern things, could be living on the Main. It seems to LaPointe that you have to know the street, to have known the parents of the young chippies back when they were young lovers, in order to enjoy or even understand Zola.
Yes, he’ll put on his robe and read for a while. Then he’ll go to bed. He is looking for his robe when he notices in the corner of the bedroom Marie-Louise’s shopping bag with its burden of odds and ends.
She will be back after all. The shopping bag is a hostage. He returns to the living room feeling less tired. She will surely be back within half an hour.
She is not. Evening imperceptibly deepens the sky to dusty slate as details down in the park retire into gloom. The novel is still on his lap, but it is too dark to read. The gas fire hisses, its orange-nippled ceramic elements an insubstantial glow, the room’s only light. Twice, when cars stop outside, he rises to look down from the window. And once he starts up with the realization that the kettle must be burning. Then he remembers that he took it off long ago.
The air becomes hot and thick with the oxygen-robbing gas heater, which he knows he should turn down, but he is too tired and heavy to feel like moving.
As always, his daydreams stray to his wife… and his girls. It is late evening in their home in Laval. Lucille is doing dishes in the kitchen fixed up with modern appliances he has seen in store windows on the Main. Logs are burning in the fireplace, and he is fussing with them more than they need, because he enjoys poking at wood fires. He goes up to the girls’ room—they are young again, and they are disobeying orders to get right to sleep. He finds them jumping on the bed, their long flannel nightgowns billowing out and entangling them when they land in a heap. He kisses them good night and teases them by scrubbing his whiskery cheek against their powdery ones. They complain and struggle and laugh. Lucille calls up that it is late and the girls need their sleep. He answers that they are already asleep, and the girls put their hands over their mouths to suppress giggles. He tucks them in with a final kiss, and they want a story and he says no, and they want the light left on and he says no, and they want a glass of water and he says no, and he turns out the light and leaves them and goes back down the stairs—he must get around to fixing the one that squeaks. He knows every detail of the house, the layout of the rooms, the wallpaper, the pencil marks on the kitchen doorframe that record the growth of the girls. But he never pictures a bedroom for Lucille and him. After all, Lucille is dead. No… gone. To the house in Laval. He wakes with a sweaty throat and a wet mouth, and with a confused feeling that something is going on. Then he hears the sound of a key in the lock. The door opens with a slant of pale yellow light from the naked hall bulb, and Marie-Louise enters.
“My God, it’s hot in here! What are you doing, sitting in the dark?”
As he gropes out of sleepiness, she finds the switch and turns on the lights. She is loaded down with parcels, which she dumps on the sofa, then holds her hands out to the gas fire. “Boy, it’s cold tonight. Well? What do you think of it? Cute, eh?” She turns around to model an ankle-length cloth coat of burnt orange. “It was on sale. Well?”
She walks a couple of steps and does a comic little turn, parodying the models she has seen on television. She doesn’t bother to conceal her limp, and LaPointe notices it as though for the first time. The detail had dropped from his mind. “It’s… ah… fine,” he says dopily. “Very nice.” He wonders what time it is.
She hugs herself and rubs her upper arms vigorously. “Boy, it’s the kind of cold that goes right through you. I was hoping you might have some hot coffee ready.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “It didn’t occur to me.”
He is uneasy about the babbling quality of her speech. She’s trying to say everything at once, as though she has something to hide and doesn’t want to leave him space to question her. She says it’s too hot in the room, yet she warms herself at the heater. Something’s wrong.
“What have you been doing with yourself?” she asks lightly.
“Taking a nap.” He looks at the mantel clock. Eight-thirty. “You’ve been shopping all this time?”
“Yes,” she says with the inhaled Joual affirmative that means either yes or no.
“Take a cab home?”
She pauses for a second, her back to him. “No. I walked.” Her hollow tone tells him there is something in the way of a confession coming. He wishes he hadn’t asked.
“No cabs?” he asks, affording her a facile excuse.
She sits on the sofa and looks directly at him for the first time. She might as well get it over with. “No money,” she says. “I’m sorry, but I spent all you gave me. I got other things besides the coat and dress.”
That is the confession? He smiles at himself, aware that he has been acting and thinking like a kid. “It doesn’t matter,” he says.
She turns her head slightly to the side and looks at him uncertainly out of the sides of her eyes. “Really?”
He laughs. “Really.”
“Hey! Look at what I got!” Instantly she is up from the sofa, tearing open bags. “And I shopped around for bargains, too. I didn’t waste money. Oh, did you see these?” She parts her long cloth coat and shows him thick-soled boots that go to the knee. They are a wet red plastic that clashes with the burnt orange of the coat. She rips open a bag and draws out a long dress that looks as though it were made of patchwork. She holds it up to herself by the shoulders and kicks out at the hem. “What do you think?”
“Nice. It looks… warm.”
“Warm? Oh, I suppose so. The girl told me it’s the in thing. Oh, and I got a skirt.” She opens her coat again to show him the mini she is wearing. “And I got this blouse. There was another one I really liked. You know, one of those frilled collars like you see on old-time movies on TV? You know the kind I mean?”
“Yes,” he lies.
“But they didn’t have my size. And I got… let’s see… oh, a sweater! And… I guess that’s about it. No! I got some panties and things… there must have been something else. Oh, the coat! That’s what cost the most. And I guess that’s it!” She plunks down on the sofa amongst the clothes and ravished bags, her hands pressed between her knees, her elation suddenly evaporated. “You don’t like them, do you?” she says.
“What? No, sure. I mean… they’re fine.”
“It’s all the money, isn’t it?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“You know, we don’t have to go out to dinner tonight like you promised. We could just stay home. That would save money.”