So instead of succumbing to my homesickness I told myself: your land, your fatherland, is all around. So instead of giving in to despair I chose active melancholy, in so far as I was capable of activity, in other words I chose the kind of melancholy that hopes, that strives and that seeks, in preference to the melancholy that despairs numbly and in distress.
Vincent Van Gogh
When Joel arrived in Ottawa in November he was startled to learn that his mother was staying in the Glebe with Aunt Carmel and Nana. "I'll be getting rid of the house, I think," she said as they drove from the airport into town. "Three stories and that huge yard...you know I love that garden, but it's ridiculous for me to live there alone. We could justify paying for help when Jim was — was here, because he had a lifestyle to keep up. But there's no reason now. I'm not a senator's wife anymore."
She was right, but somehow it made Joel angry, that the CFH hadn't just taken his father but also his home, and this second, unexpected loss struck him hard in the stomach.
"You always liked the city better, of course," his mother continued. "Sometimes I think we shouldn't have moved from Tunney's Pasture to begin with."
"What, because of me?"
"You seemed happier."
"Oh, Mum."
"No?"
"No, I was happy. It's just..." He sighed. "Don't think like that."
Moving probably hadn't made much difference, anyway. Perhaps you could trace the line of it back — at least as far as the vector of the meningitis, the other boy at school who died of it, who left his germs in the water fountain. Joel knew the boy's name, Will Downie, and thought of him sometimes as a tutelary spirit, a patron saint, and sometimes as one of those ghostly other selves that stalked his dreams. But things were going sour before that, long before.
"I wonder if the house might be a good place for you to—do your work?" his mother asked, sounding hopeful. "Four bedrooms, and you could convert the upstairs family room to another two and get a couple more in the basement."
That was tempting, but Joel didn't have to think about it long. "It's too far in the country. Anyone who's out on the street would have trouble getting to Manotick without hitching. And I've wanted..."
"You want to be away from home."
"That's part of it," he admitted.
As much as he loved his city, his, the tiny Gothic-towered capital nestled in its dairy fields and marshes, genteel and civil and white-knuckled — he wanted to be elsewhere. There was nowhere in Ottawa he could go that he wouldn't be surrounded by a whirlpool of O'Briens threatening to suck him down, to do everything for him and choke off any attempt he made to learn for himself. They all still saw him as the sick relative, and they were trained to swarm the unfortunate with comforts. It had saved his life; Joel couldn't imagine rotting away in St Rita's for years the way Paul had done, seeing his family once a year and grudgingly. But it was too much.
"I won't be gone," he said to his mother. "But I'd rather be away."
Aunt Carmel disdained Christmas decorations as gauche, for reasons she would not explain, but even though her handsome greystone had no Christmas lights or wreaths, Joel felt that the season was upon them. As he and his mother stamped the snow off their boots and hung up their coats, a roar went up from the golden-lit living room and a stream of relatives emerged into the hallway to greet them. The whole house smelled of butter and homemade bread. They were barely into Advent, but this was still a Christmas party somehow.
Dinner was, as usual, sumptuous. Aunt Carmel was serving chicken in a savoury sauce with light, fluffy dumplings and steamed asparagus, roasted new potatoes, and English peas. The table was extended with both its leaves to seat everyone, and the younger kids had a table in the kitchen, drinking Pepsi instead of wine and occasionally popping into the dining room to complain of some injustice. The rolls emerged triumphantly from the oven and arrived wrapped in white linen napkins, followed by the gravy in its silver boat. When everything was on the table, the kids had to gather in the dining room doorway as Father Mike, the former provincial of the Dominicans and a brother-in-law of someone in Carmel's family, said grace.
"I wish we had something a little finer," fussed Carmel as everyone started eating. "I had no idea everyone would be in town at once, although I should have guessed."
"We'd have stayed in Florida if they hadn't made absentee voting so difficult," Aunt Grace complained. "I should have saved my vacation time for Christmas."
"I don't even know what that thing is about," Brendan said petulantly. He was younger than Robin but older than Joel, and generally considered the shiftless one in the family. "I read the little booklet and I couldn't figure out what either side wanted."
"So what did you vote?" Joel asked.
"Yes."
"You idiot," said Robin, lifting the crystal lid off the butter dish. "If they can't make sense when they write the question, you vote no just to teach them a lesson."
"Too bad I didn't have you following me into the voting booth, I guess."
"Too bad is right. I'd do that for a living if I could. People like you shouldn't have a vote. You can be replaced by a random number generator."
"So I guess now we're screwed, eh? I've wrecked the country beyond repair because I wasn't cool enough to hang around my dorm room reading The Walrus like you do."
"Brendan, grow up. You have any idea what a conservative government can do with that amendment? We'll be lucky if Joel here just ends up in the nuthouse for life and not in jail."
The table, which had been abuzz with many conversations, suddenly grew quieter, and Robin coloured a little. "Sorry, I — actually, no, I'm not sorry. Psychiatric hospital, not nuthouse, fine, but the point stands."
There were no mutants on the O'Brien side of the family, so they all assumed the gene came from the McCree side.
"The point is," said Robin, "and I know Jim would've agreed, God rest his soul and everything, because we talked about mutant health care and the Constitution once — the point is they shouldn't be doing it. It's, what's the Latin, beyond the man?"
"Ultra vires is 'beyond the power', not 'beyond the man'," said Joel.
"Isn't vir man?"
"He's right, Robin," said Father Mike, cutting off the argument. "Go on."
"Well, that's it, it's beyond their jurisdiction to talk about healthcare and standards of competence. Isn't it? That stuff's provincial. And the stuff in the amendment that is okay is all rehashed Charlottetown."
"I voted yes on Charlottetown," said Uncle David, in his usual tones of barely-restrained aggression. No one took his ire very seriously, and Joel had given up trying to understand his contradictory politics. "It deserved a second chance."
"It did not, Dad. It was a mess then and it's a mess now. I only say it's okay because it's just pointless and sort of racist, rather than immediately dangerous to members of me own family." Robin sometimes feigned a vaguely Irish accent when he got exercised about something, and Joel could not suppress a snort of laughter.
"What?" said Robin, turning to Joel. "You agree with me, right?"
"I guess, yeah."
"You voted no?"
"Don't ask people how they voted," said Simon.
"He doesn't have to answer, I'm just curious."
"It doesn't matter. You don't do it."
"I mean, obviously the last thing I would want to do is vote the wrong way here," Robin said, ignoring the groans of everyone else at the table. "The last thing I would want is for mutants to lose their civil rights, because like I always tell people, I've got a cousin who's a mutant. And he's completely harmless! He didn't ask to be this way."
"I voted no, Robin, Jesus."
No one tisked at him, not even Father Mike, who was shaking his head and going back to his chicken. Robin was mollified. "Good."
"You know it doesn't matter much to us, right?" Joel said, more quietly, after everyone else started talking again. "I don't want it to pass, but it's not like the status quo is so much better."
"It's all we can do, though. Isn't it?"
"For now. Yeah. But just — if it passes, don't worry. It'll be all right."
After dinner and tea, most of the guests left and Robin and Brendan went upstairs with Joel to watch the returns. Joel was drowsy, under the influence of all that butter and red wine, and fell asleep sometime during the segment entitled Mutants in Canada: Menace or Illness? Later, he cracked an eyelid upon hearing his own surname, and saw that they were recapping the CFH attacks.
"Some commentators saw Sherbrooke's announcement of Constitution talks as a capitulation to the CFH, while others worried that a vote against the Gatineau Accords would result in further violence. Western alienation..."
"I'm going to start a band called Western Alienation," said Brendan.
The camera was doing a slow pan across a file photo of Joel's father in his office, shuffling papers and looking serious, the sort of thing they used to use for campaign literature. Jim McCree, at work for you and similar lame slogans. "Although Sherbrooke brought in an elite mutant task force from the United States to aid the RCMP in capturing the CFH members, chaos erupted at the scene..."
"Do we have to watch this?" asked Joel. "This isn't exactly news."
It was early yet, and the numbers on the crawl at the bottom of the screen were already at 42% in favour to 13% against. The referendum required 50% plus one. "Landslide, I bet," said Robin. "Fuck."
Brendan changed the channel to a Simpsons rerun.
Robin proved to be correct. The Gatineau Accords passed muster with the Canadian people (the 69% who bothered to vote, anyway) by a whopping 76%. While the Constitution wouldn't change for five years yet, the mutant bulletin boards on the Internet were gloomy and Professor Xavier himself released a statement the next day decrying the move.
On Sunday, Joel took the train to Montreal to meet Paul and see some houses. He went through the op-ed sections of three newspapers on the way (well, two newspapers and the Ottawa Sun). Most approved of the Accords. Dangerous mutants sold, and the articles were full of them, some citing cases going back to the 70s. It was depressing, but Joel could still imagine his father standing in the kitchen doorway in his shirtsleeves, raising one hand as if in benediction and saying, "Nothing is forever, not even the Constitution. We can soften the blow. We will. This is why we have a government of people, not merely laws." Even now, Joel thought, he could stitch together his father from memory, prop him up in the frightening corners of Joel's own mind like a scarecrow. It should have been only a thin comfort, but somehow the thought that he had enough of his father to do this -- so many people didn't. The spectral other selves that wandered through his mind all turned their heads. You're lucky. You're lucky in spite of everything, in spite of it all.
Joel got off the train at the Gare Centrale, and wandered through the grey terminal for a few minutes before he found Paul waiting near the bank machine. Paul looked good; his silky dark hair was freshly cut, and he wore a black wool coat over a soft blue sweater that looked expensive. Seeing Joel, his skin lit up in red and gold, with darting flashes of silvery violet underneath like tiny fish. They nearly embraced, but then Joel stopped and Paul just touched his shoulder awkwardly instead.
"You look amazing," said Joel, and bit the inside of his cheek. Too strong. Don't be weird. "Um — I thought you weren't going out without your makeup anymore?"
"Nah. The good stuff is really expensive, the stuff made for people with serious birthmarks and scars. And the regular women's makeup isn't strong enough. No point in looking any weirder than I have to, but I only get to be normal on special occasions." He sounded nonchalant, but as they left the terminal he positioned himself on Joel's far side, staying close to the wall.
"It's not dangerous here, is it?" Joel asked quietly.
"Not in this neighbourhood," Paul admitted. "A lot of freaks like us in downtown. Pointe-St-Charles and parts of St-Henri, places like that...it can be sketchy. And residential areas like NDG and Outremont will give you the stinkeye if you don't look normal. But the houses you're looking at are all in good areas."
Paul did not seem particularly comforted by this, and Joel prompted. "Still, though...?"
"Still." He shrugged. "I'm paranoid, you know that. It's not far enough to get the metro, you want to walk?"
"We'll take a cab," said Joel, knowing that Paul's mutation made him sensitive to cold.
They took a pleasantly overheated cab through the snowy streets of downtown. The driver was an African immigrant, and only gave Paul a brief wary look before asking the destination in heavily accented French.
Keeping his voice low, Paul said, "It's better with eux autres than with the real Québécois, really. You wouldn't think so. But it's the pure laine types who are freaking out about the danger to the community, and losing our children to the mutant menace. You ought to read the tabloids here, I keep telling you."
Paul counted as pure laine himself, and Joel was a little uncomfortable hearing him use the term, which had racist overtones. "Are they happy about winning the referendum?"
"Oh God, the triumphalism. You don't want to know. The Gatineau Accord was full of toys for the separatists, so yeah, everyone feels like they pulled something over on Ottawa. And it was just the right note to strike — no one wants to be mean to mutants just for the sake of it, but dangerous mutants and crazy mutants, of course, lock them up without trial before they do anything they regret." Bitter pine green and burnt orange flashed over his skin. "So it's a good time for a rich eccentric like you to come to our rescue, Batman."
Joel laughed, and the cab driver frowned at them in the rearview mirror. They both shut up, and there was only the exhale of the heater and the ticking of the turn signal. The tires made a thick slushy sound in the deepening snow as the flashing blue lights of the ploughs crawled down the side streets.
The cab stopped on Rue Sainte Famille, in the student ghetto area around McGill. The street was sloped, and the property was banked with high limestone walls so that the greystone house seemed to perch a full storey above street-level, fortress-like. It was a duplex with three storeys and a low-pitched roof, flights of stone steps leading through twin archways in the wall up to the front doors.
"This is certainly imposing," said Joel, as they climbed the steps. "Who's going to shovel these? You can't get a snowblower over this."
"You have no soul. It's a beautiful place, especially inside."
"What, you've already seen it?"
"Mom took me around yesterday." Paul's mother was a real estate agent, and Joel had sent him a list of likely houses for her to vet. "We saw the other places, but this is the one, trust me. A wonderful Victorian house, toute en splendeur."
It was one of those French phrases that Joel was uncertain about. "'All in splendour?'"
Paul gestured vaguely. "You know, beautiful, in good condition, everything at its finest, the way it should be. 'In all its glory', maybe?"
"Oh. And how much does splendour cost these days?"
"Get ready."
"I'm ready."
"Three hundred and fifty thou is the asking price."
"For a duplex? Downtown? Are you fucking shitting me?"
"Never."
"What the hell is wrong with it?"
"Nothing, as far as we could tell."
"Is it haunted?"
"Maybe. I didn't see it at night."
Joel shook his head in disbelief and Paul rang the doorbell. Three hundred and fifty thousand was unbelievable; they practically had to take it. Joel had budgeted eight hundred thousand as his maximum, which would have been enough for a decent building in the Plateau or a nice house in Notre-Dame-de-Grace, but prices went up to over three million in downtown and the Golden Mile. And he wanted to be in the thick of the city, along with the homeless and everyone else who was in trouble. The suburbs hid too much, and didn't welcome those who couldn't hide.
The landlady was a plump Portuguese woman who spoke good English and passable French, so she addressed Joel in cheerful ringing tones and rolled r's as she marched through the house. "The kitchen is a little small for cooking, but the pantry is very big. Or you could convert to a little bathroom. But the last tenants used for a pantry, and the storage is very good..."
It was, as Paul had said, a beautiful house, with stained glass inserts in French doors and bay windows looking over the backyard (which was, admittedly, just a pile of dead leaves and a broken motorcycle), hardwood floors and Victorian mouldings everywhere. There were no balconies, which Paul seemed to think was a distinct disadvantage, but each side of the duplex had six bedrooms, and there was a finished basement besides.
"Twelve people," Paul said, when the landlady left them in the living room to take a phone call. "Well, eleven. Maybe four more in the basements — fifteen. We can keep fifteen people off the street."
"We?"
"Well — it's not so far from Longueuil. By metro."
"About an hour, right?"
"Right." Paul glanced at him, then looked back up down at the radiators with their fancy floral grating. "I could help you out, with whatever...it's a lot of work, I mean. Think of buying all that furniture, supervising the renovations, all of that. I wouldn't mind. If you needed help, anyway."
Impulsively, Joel hugged him. It was an aggressive sort of embrace, taking Paul by surprise and requiring a determined follow-through on Joel's part. His nylon-shell coat squeaked a bit when Paul's black wool pressed the air from it. "Thanks."
"I didn't know if you'd ask."
"I would have, eventually. But thanks for doing it for me."
They broke apart. Joel met Paul's eyes and for a moment he felt uncomfortable, too visible, as if he were naked. Paul's skin was shining rosy gold, like a sunrise, a tremulous light shot through with a shifting opalescent radiance, a cloud or a jet trail.
It was the colour of happiness.
The early snow was as far south as Westchester when Joel got back to the Xavier Institute, and although it was gone by the next weekend, the temperature fell below freezing. As promised, then, Bobby provided them with a level field of ice about the size of the rink at the Gardens. Far bigger than it needed to be, considering that it was only three on three, but Bobby was proud of the texture. "Getting it smooth isn't easy, you know."
They had a small audience of younger kids, who slid and rough-housed on the unused ice, lending half their attention to the game and clearly waiting for a teacher to shut the impromptu works down. The players included everyone who owned skates and more or less knew the rules. They all had cheap wooden sticks, purchased locally by Piotr with some money they'd pooled together. At the south end of the field were John, Piotr, and Sam Guthrie (unsteady on his skates and absolutely forbidden from body-checking), while Bobby, Joel, and Kitty Pryde were at the north end.
"I don't think this is fair," said Bobby. "No offence, Kitty—"
"I got my team to the nationals in junior high, Bobby, so shut up."
"I'm just saying, two people on my team might let the puck phase through them. That's not unreasonable, is it? I'm not a sexist."
Kitty glared at him and pulled her laces tight with a snap. Alone of all of them, she had actual pads and wore a Blackhawks jersey, while the rest were playing in double sweaters and winter coats. "I wonder if Cyclops might be interested to know that you're all playing without helmets?"
"Okay, relax."
"No, hey, I'm just saying. Head injuries are serious business. He might want to come and ref the game, make sure there's no powers, no checking, no spitting, no foul language, penalties, a Lady Byng trophy at the end for the team with the best sportsmanship..."
"She's right," said John. "We might as well be playing broomball at that point."
"I already can't check," Sam complained.
"You guys have thirty seconds to get this sorted out before I go back inside," Piotr said from his position in the "net", which was just a rectangle of two-by-fours. "You don't want Kitty? We'll take her. You can have John."
"We're not stupid," Bobby shot back. "Fine, this is good. Joel, you're goaltending."
"Maybe you should."
"I hate being goalie, c'mon. Kitty actually has pads, maybe she can do it."
"I play centre," Kitty said with dignity. "You can have my gloves, though, if they'll fit you."
They didn't, quite, but Joel took them anyway — big thick gauntlets, still smaller than proper goaltender gloves but better than nothing. He skated to the crease and they began.
Artie was chosen to drop the puck, so the faceoff was gentle, Bobby deferring to John in order to keep from hitting Artie in the legs. John took his advantage and began a swaggering trip across the blue line, but he was too slow and Kitty snapped the puck away again with a ferocious crack of sticks.
"Foul!" John shouted, shaking his stinging hand.
"No ref, no foul," Piotr announced. "And she didn't touch you, you baby. Pick up the pace."
Sam made a half-hearted attempt to stop Kitty from flying past him, but he wobbled on his skates and nearly fell as she slammed a shot between Piotr's legs.
"One nothing for the Intangibles!" she crowed. "You guys are going down."
"'The Intangibles?'" Bobby repeated. "That's terrible. What about me?"
Piotr, skating back to centre ice with the puck, said, "I hereby christen your side the Zambonis."
"Damn straight," Kitty said. "Stay off the ice when the Zamboni's going by."
Even Joel had to cringe at that one, and John rolled his eyes. "This is lame. Who are we supposed to be?"
"The Piotr's-the-only-one-who-can-play team?" Bobby suggested. "The People's Republic of Losers? The Apparatchiks?"
"Apparatchiks. Drake, you don't even know what you're trying to make fun of me for. That's awesome. Fine, who's dropping the puck this time? Jubilee?"
The play lasted longer this time, as Piotr managed to stop all of Kitty's shots while Bobby kept John distracted enough to keep him away from the puck. Joel was left alone at the north end of the ice, watching the little knot of moving bodies across the white expanse. The shearing sounds of the skate blades and the crack of the sticks against the puck made him feel as if he were at home, on a rink in a park in Ottawa and hoping the puck wouldn't come across to him. Joel had never enjoyed playing hockey in those days, as the fat kid relegated to the dullest position in the game by other kids who held him in blatant contempt, and he wasn't sure he was enjoying it now. What he liked was the feeling that no one took any notice of him: he was not hated even if he was not liked. Neutrality. He thought of the Professor's description of health, "when nothing hurts very much", and thought that if there wasn't anything more to it than that, then he was healthy now. It was, however, a big if.
He was so caught up in his introspection that he barely noticed at first when John came rampaging down the ice with the puck. Too late, Joel realised where John was heading and tried to assume a goalie-ish posture. Close to the crease (far too close for Joel's comfort), John fired a slapshot at the goal, windmilling his stick back over his shoulder.
The puck flew up and hit Joel hard in the nose, and his vision went red and black. Distantly he heard Kitty yelling "Hiiiiigh-stickiiinnng, motherfucker!"
"You said we weren't doing penalties," John said, voice smaller than usual.
"Penalties, hell. Don't hit like that when the goalie doesn't have a mask, it's not rocket science."
A pinprick of silence, as if someone was holding him underwater.
"Joel?" Kitty was repeating his name. "Are you okay?"
Blood was dripping onto the ice and he wasn't sure he knew the answer to that question. The little silence had been a seizure. It might not repeat itself, or he might have 50 in an hour like in high school, when everyone used to call him the Zombie. Fuck this, Joel thought. He was cold. He should go inside, go to bed, lie down with an Elliott Smith album and zone out as much as he wanted. Ice at his head and hot water bottle at his feet. Door closed. It could still be a quiet afternoon.
Kitty was looking nervous now, so he answered her. "I dunno. Maybe I should head in. I'm not exactly an asset to the team here."
"Oh, come on. You stopped the shot, didn't you?"
"Seriously, Kitty."
"You always—" She squinted at him, then softened. "Let me see it."
He let Kitty examine him. She peered into his face, her long brown hair blowing around her windstung cheeks, and touched his nose lightly with her pinky. Human skin in winter, puffy and vulnerable. Heat inside the cold.
"Just bloody, I think," she said. "How's your head? You know what day it is, who's the President, you're not dizzy?"
"Saturday, McKenzie, and no." Joel touched his own nose and didn't feel any broken pieces, although his face was wet and cold with blood. He took one glove off, found a tissue deep in his pocket and wiped it away. "I guess I'm okay."
They returned to play, and the little silences did not come back, and the bleeding stopped, and amazingly enough, nothing hurt very much.
Quotes and Notes: Pure laine Quebecers are those who can trace their ancestry back to the original group of French settlers in Quebec. It's also used to mean any white francophone who's been in Quebec forever and who doesn't consider eux autres (those others -- the newer immigrants and visible minorities) to be "real Quebecois". Anglophones tend to hate this term.
Rue Sainte Famille is a real street in Montreal's Milton Parc neighbourhood near McGill, but the design of the house is inspired by a place on Ordnance and Montreal Streets here in Kingston, in the military end of town near the Armoury.
And that's it. See the endnotes for final thoughts and further details.