Five Roses (3 page)

Thérèse spread her fingers wider across the baby's back. The baby needed more than pretty words and noises. She wasn't a toy.

At noon Thérèse called in sick to work. How could she leave the baby with the kids? The girl only remembered her when her breasts ached. All afternoon she lounged with the others in the next room. They giggled, shared a large pizza, traded stories about which bands they'd seen.

At sundown they trooped downstairs as more kids arrived. Soon, Thérèse smelled the rank sweetness in the air. The thump and wail of music grew louder. She paced in her room with the baby, who began to cry and wouldn't stop. Thérèse had no choice but to find the girl.

The kids sprawled on the sleeping bags and cushions in the front room, passing around a pipe. Candles lit the gloom. The laziest movement cast long, distorted shadows. Music clashed and groaned. The scene was evil — an image of hell, which had never before seemed real to Thérèse, but which she recognized now that she saw it. She wanted to flee, but the baby had to be fed. Huddled over to protect her as well as she could, Thérèse crept into the room and kneeled before the girl, who could hardly rouse herself to lift her shirt. Jaw hard, Thérèse forced herself to watch. There had to be another way. A better way. There had to.

That night Thérèse tucked the baby into bed next to her. She stroked her delicate cheek and whispered, “I'll take care of you, I promise.”

Later, when the baby woke and began to fidget, Thérèse carried her downstairs again. The house was quiet. The girl, still clothed, lay against a boy who was naked, both snoring softly. The girl didn't wake. Thérèse rolled her aside with her foot, freed a breast, tucked the child against it, and gave her the nipple.

For two days and two nights Thérèse cared for the baby. She hardly slept, but she had never felt more determined and awake. The baby was docile now that she was held, regularly fed, clean and dry. While she slept, Thérèse ran from the house to the store to buy more diapers and clothing. There she saw bottles and formula. Slowly, her finger on the package, she read the instructions.

The baby sputtered when Thérèse rubbed the wet nipple across her lips, but Thérèse cajoled and rocked her, waiting for her to taste the few grains of sugar she'd added. “What's your name?” she wondered. She'd never heard the girl say it. “I'm going to call you Rose.”

That day, when Thérèse called in sick again, the supervisor told her she would need a doctor's certificate if she called in sick the following night. Thérèse didn't answer. A baby's claims were surely greater than a length of grey carpet.

Rose had taken the bottle several times, but tonight she kicked and gagged on the nipple. Thérèse finally bundled her close to carry downstairs. The front room throbbed with music, flickering shadows, drumbeats, and smoke. The kids slumped in a circle around a tableau of mother and child, not unlike the other times the girl had nursed the baby.

But Thérèse held Rose. A man lay in the girl's arms, his mouth on her nipple. In the wavering candlelight, Thérèse saw Stilt's unshaven cheeks pulling draughts of milk. The girl's dreamy smile. Farther down his body, a head bobbed at his crotch. The other kids lay in poses miming Stilt's. Some only watched or rubbed at themselves.

Thérèse charged up the stairs and slammed the door behind her. She stood with her back against it, her heart pounding hard in her throat. When Rose began to wriggle and cry again, Thérèse grabbed the bottle she'd left on the floor by her mattress. This time Rose took it.

Thérèse paced the room and thought hard about what to do. She flung open her suitcase, crammed in diapers, baby clothes, formula, nipples. Her things didn't matter. She tiptoed down the stairs with Rose hidden against her, suitcase in hand, and slipped out the door.

A groundhog sat upright, its snout twitching at the air. The boys playing in the fields near the woods saw the banner of smoke twisting above the trees. They sneaked as close to the cabin as they dared and spied movement at the window. What if robbers were staying in the cabin and they had guns? The boys scrambled home to tell their father.

Armand paid no mind to their story about robbers — robbing
what
from an abandoned cabin in the backwoods of Rivière-des-Pins? But he didn't like intruders so close to his land.

He didn't take his gun but snapped his fingers for the dog. More annoyed than curious, he trudged through the swish of high grass, across the fields, into the woods. At a distance, the boys trailed him.

As he crossed the clearing before the cabin, he wondered if he should holler and tell the person to come out. He decided to knock.

He stepped back when Thérèse opened the door holding a baby. She hadn't been gone that long. Was she pregnant when she left? Then who …? He blushed.

“Yes?” Thérèse tapped the baby's back.

“My boys said someone was here.”

“I'm here. With Rose.”

He looked away, not sure what to say next. He remembered the land. “I ploughed your field when I did mine. I planted corn.”

“Good,” she said evenly.

“It's your land. I'll give you a percentage.”

She dipped her head to smell the baby's hair. It was a protective, yet intimate gesture that reminded him of his wife when their boys had been babies.

Behind Thérèse the house was scrubbed and swept. She had no electricity or running water. She had already left once. Why had she come back? Especially with a baby. No sane person would choose to live like this.

But she looked so content, cradling the baby. As if her life brimmed with riches.

 

 

The roads didn't meet at right angles. One shot off on a tangent that curved tight to dip under a railroad bridge. The car slowed, almost stopped, rolled into a crater in the pavement, then — bump! — jolted onto the asphalt again.

In the back seat Fara felt like she and Frédéric were on a funhouse ride. Which they were, sort of.
House shopping
.

The real estate agent had driven them along industrial streets where transport trucks idled, past abandoned factories with corroded metal grids on the windows. Signs with the letters eaten by rust. Sagging heaps of thawed winter garbage.

The car rumbled across a truss bridge over what looked like a moat.

“Is this even still Montreal?” Fara asked. Frédéric nudged her.
Be polite
.

“The original, working-class heart,” Yolette said. “Pointe St-Charles.”

Yolette of the plucked eyebrows, signature fragrance, and stretched smiles. Yolette, their guide to a cut-rate mortgage. So far, she'd shown them a house with a stagnant pond in the cellar, another with a tongue-and-groove ceiling so buckled Fara refused to step into the room. Each house would need more than the cost of the house yet again to repair all that was tilted, decayed, broken, leaking.

Fara hadn't expected to see houses again so far south below downtown. Wasn't this where the rail yards and the port abutted the St. Lawrence? But look, here were row houses in faded, crumbling brick. They must have been a hundred years old, maybe older, built by immigrants nostalgic for brick and flat roofs. Didn't they know flat was crazy in a climate that dumped snow from Halloween until Easter? Old Québécois houses had high, sloped roofs.

Fara wasn't convinced yet that they should buy a house. She still wanted to feel footloose, to travel, to — she wasn't even sure what. Hike in the Pyrenees. Learn to paint watercolours in Corsica.
Habla español
. They had no children. Why tie themselves down with a house? Working Monday to Friday to funnel her paycheque into a mortgage would feel like slavery.

Frédéric said owning a house didn't rule out adventure. Real estate was an investment. They could afford to buy if they headed into a scruffier neighbourhood, away from the upscale bistros and grey stone façades.

Fara smirked out the window. Nothing upscale about doorways sunk in their frames, cornices blistered from age and neglect. Outside a
dépanneur
two men slouched on mismatched kitchen chairs, king cans in hand. Was it even noon yet?

Yolette stopped the car before a house covered in beige vinyl siding. “Wait until you see this one. It's really cute!”
Cute
was her gloss on
tiny
. A place where elves might feel cozy, but where Fara and Frédéric hulked like hormone-crazed giants.

When Fara didn't move, Frédéric said, “Fara.” He had a tone he used to remind her she wasn't
trying
. She got out and followed the swish of Yolette's skirt up the worn wooden steps.

They had to sidle through the entrance past winter jackets and coats heaped on wall pegs. The two bedrooms were at the front of the house, facing the street. Neither was large enough for their king-size bed. Nor were there closets, which might account for the slurry of clothes and toys underfoot, the winter coats still hanging in the entrance in mid-April.

“The bathroom.” Yolette waved gaily but didn't stop. Frédéric did and turned on the light. A minuscule tub with stained tiles. Maybe mould? Fara held her breath.

In the kitchen four adults sat crammed around a table, silent and gloomy, smoking and staring at their cans of Pepsi. The air stank of cigarettes and old grease.

“Outlets for a washer and dryer.” Yolette pointed near the floor since there were no appliances to demonstrate. “And there!” Out the window, last year's dried weeds straggled along a bucktoothed fence. “Western exposure — absolutely the
best
for a garden.”

As they edged past the coats and out the door again, Yolette chattered about green space, the proximity of the river and the Lachine Canal. “I'll bet you two cycle!”

Once they were in the car again, Fara asked, “What was wrong with those people? They didn't look like they wanted to sell.”

“They're not selling. They're tenants.”

“Are they moving out?”

“That's your decision. If you buy it as a rental property, they stay — but you can't raise their rent unless you do repairs. If you want to live there, you give them notice.”

“Evict them, you mean.”

Fara watched the pencilled line of Yolette's eyebrows in the rear-view mirror. How did she do it? Wax? Electrolysis? When they talked face to face, Fara had to remind herself not to stare at Yolette's hairless brow. “I don't want to evict tenants.”

“Me neither,” said Frédéric.

“Well, what did you think?” Yolette's voice rose. “If you want to buy a house, then the people who live there have to go.”

“We thought they would want to sell.”

“Eighty percent of the houses in the Pointe are rental properties, so you're seeing mostly tenants, not owners. And look —” She jabbed a red fingernail at a house with windows patched with hockey tape. “No one's taking care of these places, not the landlords, not the tenants. This is inner-city real estate only minutes from downtown, and it's sitting here, a wasteland. It's high time people start moving to the Pointe.”

Fara considered mentioning that
people
already lived here. “Aren't there any empty houses?”

Yolette's snort didn't match her chic perfume and clothes. “I think that's it for visits today. I'll drop you at the subway.”

Fara leaned against Frédéric, who squeezed her hand. Who cared if a woman with android eyebrows thought their scruples were ridiculous?

Fara woke with her heart thumping, but kept her eyes closed so as not to lose Claire yet.

The dream itself hardly mattered. It never did. The plot dissolved the instant Claire appeared. Across heads in a crowded bus. Framed in the window of a passing car. Heading up an escalator while Fara descended. Sometimes Claire looked at her and smiled. Complicit. Taunting.
You're there, I'm here. Don't try to get closer or you'll wake up.

In this dream Fara was walking down a street of dilapidated brick row houses. She lifted her eyes to the carved line of weathered cornices against the sky. And there — she almost missed her — in a second-floor window stood Claire. She was looking at the sky, too. Her hair was darker, not as blond as it used to be. Her body thicker. She looked older, as she would have were she still alive. Dream logic was relentless.

Dream logic or conscience? Fara hadn't accompanied the police to the morgue. She'd choked and wept. She
couldn't
. Not after the horror of finding Claire. She'd begged her boyfriend to go identify the body. Now, all these years later, a sly whisper persisted that, since she hadn't seen actually seen Claire's face, maybe it wasn't true. How often had her boyfriend lied to her about money and where he'd been? Why had she trusted him with this? Her sister with the snub nose and thick blond hair, dead at twenty.

She wondered if her parents ever dreamed that Claire was still alive. They hadn't wanted to see her in death. Her body had been shipped from the morgue to the funeral home. Claire was cremated with no ceremony, no witnesses. The reproach of suicide compacted into the smallest possible package.

The dream was already fading. Fara could no longer recall the shape of Claire's body. Only the brick around the window. A lingering aftertaste of sadness. And as always, regret — a useless emotion once it was too late. Seventeen years too late.

Beside her in bed, Frédéric shifted. She slid a hand across his chest to hold him. Or hold herself against him. His solidity was her anchor. His generous heart her warmth.

An early morning breeze made the edge of the curtain tap the wall. A block away, traffic on Parc was starting up. The wheeze of city buses. The alarm would go off any minute.

“Frédéric!” Fara leaned away from the pantry doorway, a box of cereal clutched to her robe, feet cringed in her slippers, grim-acing at the shiny black turds around the garbage can. She checked the corners of the cereal box for teeth marks. Glanced along the shelves around the jars of couscous and rice. Mice couldn't climb walls, could they?

“Fred!” No time for the tra-la-la of
Frédéric
. “Would you come?”

He ambled into the kitchen, wiping a towel across his face, wearing only his grey trousers. A tall man with a padding of flesh on his frame. The odd white hair in the sparse curls on his chest. A comma of shaving foam hung from one earlobe.

She waved at the floor, still standing well back. The mice might think the pantry was theirs now that they'd marked it. What if they attacked with sharp teeth and claws?

Frédéric bunched the towel in his hand and turned away.

“Where are you going? We have to do something!” Fara slammed the cereal box onto the counter and followed him to the bedroom.

He reached into the antique armoire for a shirt.

“Well?” she demanded.

“I didn't do it.”

“I never said you did. I want to know what we're going to do about it.”

“I'm leaving for work.”

“So am I!”

“So clean it up when you get home.” He nosed his belt through the loops.

“Why should
I
clean it up? Don't we need to get traps? This is exactly the kind of thing I mean about not being ready to buy a house. All these things we don't know anything about. Mice and toilets blocking —”

He watched her as he buckled his belt. His wide cheekbones and eye sockets gave him a candid expression that made people trust him, though it was simply how his skull was shaped. She knew him well enough to see past the bones to the amusement he was hiding.

“What's so funny?”

“How about you aim for the garbage next time you clean a papaya?”

Papaya seeds? Fara spun around and strode back to the kitchen.

A disgruntled queue traipsed off the bus in front of the hospital. Fara waited on the sidewalk for the light to change. Across the street she saw Zeery walking up the wheelchair ramp to the ER entrance. Fara loped past employees dawdling over cigarettes, sidestepped an elderly man who seemed startled by the workings of the sliding door, and tapped Zeery's arm.

Zeery plucked out an earbud. She barely reached Fara's shoulder and had to tip her head to look at her. Light shimmered off her gold hoop earrings. “Hi! How are you? How was your weekend?”

Fara grimaced. “Looked at houses again.”

“That's good.”

“Only if you want to buy a house.”

They got off the elevator on the twelfth floor. Zeery was talking about her cousin who was visiting from Calgary. Fara only half-listened as she assessed the Monday morning havoc. Linen trolleys blocked the doorways to patients' rooms where the orderlies were busy with a.m. care. Inside the oval nursing station bodies milled. The night nurses were busy charting. The nurses coming onto day shift grumbled about their assignment or gossiped about the weekend. The surgeons yelled last-minute instructions as they headed to the stairwell to the OR. “For 27B, d/c every second stitch and Steri-Strip. And that ultrasound drainage, make sure it gets done.” The charge nurse scribbled notes and nodded. She knew the spiel.
We hold down the fort while you go play diva with your scalpels and probes.

Fara had to squeeze between chairs to get to her desk at the head of the counter. “Let me through,” she droned. “Let me through or I'm going home.” Chairs wheeled aside. No one else wanted to do battle with the phone and the intercom.

Her blotter was heaped with requisitions and consults tossed every which way — the doctor version of a projectile sport. She shoved her knapsack in a drawer and grabbed the phone that was ringing. “Twelve Surgery, yes?” The OR had received a patient wearing dentures.

Fara called out, “Who sent 23A to the OR?” No one answered. She peered at the assignment sheet tacked on the billboard. José had 23A. But José dropped his daughter off at a daycare that only opened when he was already supposed to be at work. When he worked day shift, he always showed up late. Whoever had sent his patient to the OR hadn't checked for dentures.

Fara waved at the orderly walking past with an armload of towels. “Royal, will you go to the OR to get dentures?”

Royal touched a gloved finger to his breastbone. “
Me?
A nurse did that. Send the nurse.”

He was right. Of course he was right. But that didn't help her if she didn't have a nurse to send. The phone kept ringing. The intercom, too. She had to giddy-up to the supply room to do her order, which had to be faxed before eight. She grabbed her clipboard and shimmied past the chairs again. The OR didn't have to be so king-of-the-castle. Put the dentures in a cup. Someone would get them later.

In the supply room she scribbled a list of stock that was low. Iodine gauze, #8 cannulated trachs, urine measuring bags, 21G butterflies. And surgical tape. Not a single roll left. She'd emptied five boxes, twelve rolls per box, into the bin on Friday. What did the staff do with tape on the weekend? Take it home and truss up their partners? Not a sex game, just tying them up.

Back at her desk, she filled out the order sheets, faxed them, and began sorting through the heap of requisitions and consults. Without looking, she answered the phone.

“Are you sending someone or aren't you?”

No hello, no goodbye. Probably the OR. Read the fine print on the job description. Unit coordinators had to be telepathic. Able to guess which test a doctor meant when the loop-de-loop scrawl across a requisition bore no visible relation to either of the two official languages. What a demented patient wanted when he toddled to the desk clenching the baggy armhole of his gown. Who
my mother
was when family members asked for information without saying who
my mother
was.