My October (16 page)

“It's not sensitive. It's bullshit.” He hitched up his oversized pants and shuffled to the door.

Hannah opened her mouth to say something, but Mandelbaum raised a hand to stop her. And Hugo went out, following in his father's footsteps.

“That's that, I guess,” Mandelbaum said as the front door shut once more.

“I'm sorry,” said Hannah.

“I'm the one who should apologize. That really got away from me.”

“I should have warned you. It's an issue right now,” she said, thinking of Hugo's recent embrace of all things English.

“I kind of figured that out.” He paused to place the mahogany stick on his desk. “How do you guys manage it at home, if I might ask? You're an Anglo, right?”

“Right.”

“Hugo too.”

“No,” she said, and then changed her mind. “He was brought
up in French, but of course he speaks English. It's impossible to avoid in Montreal.”

“You'd want him to avoid it?”

“No,” she said. But the truth was too complicated to reduce to a simple yes or no. She saw Mandelbaum waiting for her to explain, but fatigue seized her: deep fatigue that made it impossible to think, let alone explain something as complex as being an English-speaking woman married to Luc Lévesque.

She gazed at him hopelessly. The real truth was that she was feeling sick with regret. She'd come here hoping to set things right again. Or at least to take a stab at it. To reopen communications with her husband, to patch up relations with her son. To undo, in other words, the damage she'd caused at the hearing. Instead, she'd made it worse.

“Hannah?”

Her eyelids opened. Manny Mandelbaum was kneeling on the floor beside her chair, a concerned expression on his face. What had just happened? Had she drifted to sleep?

He repeated her name, his voice strangely slow, as if he were distorting it with one of those gimmicky sound-altering machines. “Are you okay?” He got to his feet and went to fetch her a glass of water. After a few sips, she surprised herself by talking again. She talked about the hearing, recounting her version of what had happened, including all the bits Luc had left out.

“So you stood up for your son,” Mandelbaum said when she stopped for air. “Sounds right to me. Entirely appropriate.”

“But you don't understand,” she protested. “Luc was supposed to do the talking. That was what we'd agreed. He knows the school and the religious order that founded it. He
used to be a student there himself, and besides, he's good at that kind of thing. I'm not. And this was in French, don't forget.”

“Well, your speaking out doesn't seem to have done any harm,” Mandelbaum observed. “Hugo was accepted back, wasn't he?”

She nodded, sniffling. To her embarrassment, her tears had returned.

“I don't understand,” said Mandelbaum. “What's so wrong with what you did? A lot of parents would have done the same.”

An image of Alfred Stern flashed before her, not old and shrunken as he was now, but the way he'd been before, back when they'd been living under the same roof. She shook her head, trying to chase the spectre away.

Mandelbaum shook his head too, his eyes full of questions. “What is it, Hannah?”

She looked away.

“If ever you want to …” he said, but he let the sentence trail off, searching her face. “I don't just work with teenagers, you know.”

She hadn't known. But she was feeling more solid now, solid enough to know that certain stories must stay where they belonged. She reached for her purse. “Don't take this personally, Dr. Mandelbaum, but I've got to leave now too.” She scrabbled at the purse's bottom in search of her chequebook. “Eighty dollars, right?”

Mandelbaum waved his hand. “Forget it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Under the circumstances.”

“No,” said Hannah. “We've taken your time.”

“It's really okay.”

She put the chequebook away. He felt as bad as she did, just as responsible. Luc had been wrong. Despite his funny-sounding name, this was a good man.

“I could refer you to someone else,” he said as she got up. “A francophone, if that would help with Luc. She also practises NVC. She's very good.”

Hannah took down the name of the French-speaking therapist, knowing she'd never call her.

“Listen,” Mandelbaum said as he walked her to the door, “if you ever need to talk—you alone, Hannah—you have my number.” From his cluttered desktop he picked up the book he had held up earlier. “And please take this along,” he said, pressing it into her hands. “There's stuff in here that might help.”

Hannah slipped it into her bag. She didn't have the energy to refuse.

PART TWO

11

T
he corridors were empty as Hugo made his way up from the lockers in the school's basement. Bits of paper and debris littered the floor. He swung his foot and kicked a brown paper lunch bag that someone had scrunched into a ball. It flew down the corridor and rolled along the tiles as far as his homeroom door. He sighed. School was a weird place at this time of the day. An urge to shout rose up in him, but he repressed it, pursing his lips and forcing his feet to move.

The door to the classroom was partially open—Vien's sign that he should enter—but Hugo didn't do this right away. He peeked through the crack. He knew he was late, he knew Vien would be pissed. Vien didn't notice him right off. He was totally engrossed in a mural he was making out of spray-painted cornflakes. In it, a gigantic Iroquois hunter was holding out a fur pelt—a real one—to an equally gigantic coureur de bois. All the kids in Hugo's homeroom had joked about the cornflakes today. The mural looked impressive, though. The cornflakes actually gave the figures texture and substance. Open House was coming
up on Friday, and this bizarre breakfast-cereal creation was the history department's contribution. The whole event made Hugo sad. All these hopeful little kids swarming through the school while Bonnaire (Boner, in Hugo's private lexicon) and Vien and the rest of them smiled their fake smiles, trying to entice them to enroll. It was all such a show.

Vien finally turned and saw him. He frowned. “I've been waiting for you,” he said, walking to the door, his eyes gazing in two directions at once. “I almost left.”

Hugo glanced up at the clock. Classes had ended over an hour ago. He'd made the mistake of stepping outside for air. A guy from his homeroom had offered him a smoke.

“You're lucky I had things to do.” Vien pointed at the mural. He had glued the pelt to the Iroquois hunter's hand.

“You can touch it if you want,” he said.

Hugo reached out, but the glue hadn't dried yet and the pelt came off in his hands.

“Damn,” said Monsieur Vien. “It's too heavy, that's the problem.” He began rummaging in his desk while Hugo stood beside the mural, clutching the animal skin. The fur on it was long and surprisingly coarse. “It's goat, not beaver,” Vien said. “Don't tell anyone.”

His tone was friendly, at least.

“It's the only skin I own,” he said, and then smiled. “Except this.” He pinched a fold of his own hairy forearm below his rolled-up sleeve. “My ex's uncle has a farm near Rigaud,” he explained. “Goats and maple syrup.”

He had found a box of tacks, the kind with round coloured tops resembling Smarties. “White's best, I guess. Less
eye-catching.” He took the pelt and tacked it to the wall, and once again the hunter held it out to the white man. One of the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling began to flicker. Hugo and Monsieur Vien both looked up.

“Got to fix that,” Vien said, frowning. “I read somewhere that they disrupt your brainwaves.” He made a goonish face and laughed—a honking laugh.

Hugo looked away. Vien was trying too hard.

“How's your father?” he asked after a few awkward seconds.

Hugo didn't respond.

“Okaaaay,” said Vien. “Clearly, you think it's acceptable to show up an hour late on your first day back. No apology, no explanation. Not even a pretense of manners. You think I'm going to put up with that?” He reached out quickly and took hold of Hugo's chin. Bits of glue that had hardened on his fingertips now dug into Hugo's face. “Think again.”

Hugo jerked himself free. Vien wasn't supposed to touch him: another of Saint-Jean's many rules. “What are you going to do?” he said, moving out of his teacher's reach. “Call my father?”

Vien smiled disagreeably. “Good plan. I can say I've washed my hands of you and you've been expelled. Like Vladimir. Would you prefer that?”

Hugo's face reddened. Heat shot upward from his neck to his hairline.

“I thought not.”

But part of Hugo wished he
had
been kicked out. Certainly after what they'd done to Vlad. “It isn't fair,” he said.

“What? That Vladimir got turfed out and you didn't? There were other considerations with that boy, believe me.”

“Right,” said Hugo indignantly. “Like his foreign name.”

Vien frowned. “You can't possibly believe we're that small-minded.”

Hugo kept his mouth shut this time. He wouldn't fall into Vien's trap. He crossed his arms defensively.

“Vladimir wasn't expelled because he was Russian, Hugo. He was expelled because he's a troublemaker. This wasn't the first time he'd been called in for disciplinary action, as you surely know. And you weren't spared because of your father.” He paused. “Or not only because of your father. I'll admit that knowing him made it easier for me to vouch for you.”

Hugo looked away. The way Vien was talking made him feel physically sick. It was as if prejudice were all right, something Saint-Jean-Baptiste could allow to happen with a clear conscience. He hated this place. Downstairs, near the front entrance, there was a huge crucifix with a plaster Christ hanging off it. A bogus Jesus for a bogus school.

Vien wasn't looking at him anymore. He was rummaging through the clutter on his desk.

He handed three sheets of small print to Hugo, now seated beside him. “For you.” It was a
contrat social
in triplicate. “Sit down,” he said, motioning beside him at a chair. Finally he found what he was looking for. The contract was one of Bonnaire's clever ideas for improving the school—or at least for making its students more obedient. Whenever a kid was found guilty of an offence, he had to sign one.

Hugo looked over the first copy. A list of don'ts, followed by a list of dos, laid out in bullet form. First, the don'ts. Henceforth, Hugo would have to

~  
refrain from committing acts of violence of any kind for the remainder of his studies at Collège Saint-Jean-Baptiste;

~  refrain from bringing weapons onto, or carrying weapons on, school premises at any time for the remainder of his studies;

~  refrain from contacting former Saint-Jean-Baptiste student Vladimir Petrofsky;

~  refrain from getting into trouble of any kind for the remainder of the academic year.

And then the dos. Hugo would have to

~  complete all of his school work;

~  maintain a grade average of at least seventy percent for the remainder of the academic year;

~  visit Monsieur Vien every day after school for the rest of the semester;

~  write an essay on the theme of violence to be submitted by Christmas break;

~  consult an expert and undergo social-psychological assessment.

Hugo scowled. Who did Boner think he was, dictating who his friends could be, forcing him to see a shrink? He folded the sheets in two.

Vien stopped him before he could shove them in his bag. “You have to sign,” he said. Vien picked up a pen. “Here.”

Hugo refused to take it.

“Did you not hear me? You have to sign.”

Hugo took a step backward. No way he'd stoop to such indignity.

“Don't be stupid, Hugo.”

Hugo pointed to the bottom of the first copy, where the parties to the contract were identified. “That's wrong.”

Monsieur Vien stared at him blankly.

“It's not my name.”

Vien looked at the sheets, which he'd laid flat on his desk, and then back at Hugo. “It's what's in the register, Hugo. As far as this school is concerned, this is who you are.”

Hugo shrugged. The school could go screw itself. They wanted to make him miserable with all kinds of restrictions like he was some sort of little criminal? Then they should be clear on who they were making miserable. “My name's Hugh Stern.”

There was a pause as Vien pushed his glasses higher on his nose. “Why are you doing this? Because of Vladimir? Don't be an idiot.”

Hugo was not an idiot. Nor was he blind. He'd seen how the Russians were treated in the school—all of them. And the Iranians. Anyone who spoke any language other than French.

“You know,” said Vien, his voice a little gentler, “your name's not so bad, Hugo.” He smiled, his eyebrows joining to form a hairy arch. “René Lévesque,” he said, bobbing reverently. “Your dad. It's a pretty amazing club, if you ask me.”

Hugo looked out the window. Darkness was falling, and the glass had turned reflective. Instead of the sky, his own frowning face, yellowish in the indoor light, stared back at him.

“I'm serious, Hugo,” said Vien. “It's not so bad.”

“Neither is Stern.”

“No,” said Vien. “Your mother's name is perfectly fine as well.”

“Not my mother's. She changed it. My grandfather's.”

Vien nodded. “It's a fine thing to respect your grandfather, Hugo. But just think for a moment. Lévesque is the name your parents gave you. The name you've had since birth. You can't just throw it away on a whim.”

Hugo bit the insides of his cheeks. He must not speak. Not one more word. This was no whim. Vien was a hypocrite. They all were. Even his mother, the so-called feminist, who had tossed out her entire heritage for a man.