| Hands are the heart's landscape. They split sometimes Like ravines into which an undefined force rolls. The very same hands which man only opens When his palms have had their fill of toil. Now he sees: because of him alone others can walk in peace. Hands are a landscape. When they split, the pain of their sores Surges free as a stream. But no thought of pain— No grandeur in pain alone. For his own grandeur he does not know how to name. — Karol Wojtyla |
4 December.
[...]
It's not fair that they make it look so easy. It's not easy for anyone, it can't be. To hide all their anguish and despair, or sanitise it, or pietise it (not a word, I know — what word is there for encoding something real into the language of religion, tearing teeth out by the roots with pliers, cutting off the fingers that would have lengthened into claws, camouflaging everything in the words of that clean Latinate country where "most adorable" refers not to a puppy but to the very Heart of God — what word is there for that? Clean is also not the word. The entire nineteenth century of Catholicism is coated in burnt sugar.) — yes, to pietise, that's the worst thing you could do to people. You might as well write traffic signs and warning labels in Enochian.
Everyone is silent on days like this. Not only God but the whole crowd, all the multitudes, the cloud of witnesses. (There aren't so many as all that, but they press in.) They aren't gone, because I can feel them watching, but it's a silent rebuke. They're as tired of living with me as I am with them. Particularly the dead; they have nothing to say to me, even when I reach for them. But some of them never spoke in the first place...
Le Loft closed after three in the morning. Drinks were cheap, but Aurora had still managed to spend too much. Rum and Coke, earlier in the evening, and vodka Red Bulls later, on the recommendation of a handsome boy with shaggy sideburns. Now there was a stinging ache in her elbows and knees, and when she stumbled out into the suddenly quiet cold of Boulevard St-Laurent she could hear only a high-pitched whine in her ears at first. The last few revellers leaving the club were all paired off, leaning on each other and chattering happily, their boots squeaking in the snow and the taxis splashing as they pulled away from the curb.
The boy with the shaggy sideburns was gone, and Aurora regretted letting him go. She should have agreed to go back to his apartment with him—she would have gone, but he asked too early, and she was having too much fun dancing, feeling all the eyes of the room on her, the music pounding through the air, the heat of the bodies. Even now, tired as she was, she missed that feeling of connection, as if they were one great mind with many bodies. Or one body with many minds. She wasn't sure. And she was alone now, the taxis all gone, the traffic light still giving its marching orders even though the intersection was empty.
She didn't know where to go.
Oh, she could go back to the school. That was the plan, or it had been. Get back on the train for Laval, arrive in the early dawn, and be back in her room before anyone even noticed she was gone. But now that she was out it seemed impossible to return, as if she'd escaped from prison and was now contemplating going back. Why? Why should she? She wasn't the first to come to this city with nothing. She had money, her first paycheck. Enough for a night at a hotel, and tomorrow she could get a job in town. If that didn't work, she'd use her return ticket and go back to Madame DuPont's to accept her punishment, but not before.
There were hotels all around, big ones, but they looked expensive. She turned back up Boulevard St-Laurent, heading for the Travelodge hotel she'd seen on her way from the Gare Centrale.
The city was bright, even at this hour, the sodium streetlights casting a melon-coloured glow over the black streets, and the snow reflected the light back up at the sky, which was pale grey. Heaven is a city, she thought, and it must be bright. The land of endless day. She was cold with sweat, and unsteady on her high heels (a little too drunk, maybe; she'd do better next time), but Madame DuPont wasn't going to lay a hand on her tomorrow. She wanted to sing, and she did, under her breath in the empty street. "And I feel / quicker than a ray of light, / quicker than a ray of light..."
It wasn't safe to be out alone, but she wasn't helpless. She knew that now. She could get away. That power had brought her here, and now she was going to a room with a soft bed and no alarm clock. She would take all her clothes off as she got ready for bed, rather than undressing under her nightgown. She would stand in the hot water of the shower as long as she pleased.
Exhausted, she slept in her hotel room for almost twelve hours and woke up feeling dizzy and sick. At a funky café on St-Urbain, she poured six packets of sugar into her coffee and surreptitiously eyed the other customers. It was snowing outside, big fat flakes drifting down on the freshly-ploughed streets, and inside the café it was steamy warm. The realisation was slowly dawning on her that she didn't have a chance in hell.
She thought of the boy with the shaggy sideburns -- why hadn't she taken him up on his offer? Stupid. She knew she could talk a boy into letting her stay a week if he let her in for a night. True, she'd never done it before, but that was Jeanne-Marie's fault, not Aurora's.
She leaned back and looked around, not exactly predatory but wondering casually if anyone else in the coffee shop might be soft-hearted and tractable. Aurora depended on the kindness of strangers, naturally, and it was almost a Walnut Street epiphany for her: at any moment she might be surrounded by good people who would have compassion for her. The good unknown souls of strangers, walking around shining like the sun.
The boy at the table next to hers caught her eye: he'd been looking at her, apparently, and now dropped his gaze back to his sandwich and his newspaper. Aurora was not so easily embarrassed. He was built long and slender, with curlyish russet hair that she thought would be delightful to run her hands through. Not bad at all.
"Are you reading the classifieds? Can I borrow that section from you?" she asked him in English. He was almost certainly English, she could tell by his face. Perfect specimen of a certain type of very pretty English boy, those delicate eggshell freckles on high cheekbones. Aurora gave him a coquettish smile.
He smiled back, just a polite smile, and picked out the classifieds for her. The newspaper was the Gazette, and Aurora was pleased—her anglo-dar was perfect. "Are you busy?" she asked.
"Well—"
"Do you think you could help me with some of these ads? My English is..." She wiggled her fingers in the air, as if searching for the right word. Thickening her accent a little. "If it is not a problem."
He wrinkled his brow a little, but accepted, picking up his plate and his coat and moving to sit next to her at her table. She shifted her chair closer to him. "Oh, that sandwich looks wonderful. Do you mind if I try a little piece?"
"Have the rest, if you want." He pushed the plate over towards her. He spoke French, nice French, with the mid-Atlantic sound of someone who'd learned the language equally from school and from Quebecers on the street.
She sank her teeth into it gratefully—lobster and crab pâté with soft cheeses and green peppers. "Mm. Oh, you're a saint, thank you. I haven't eaten in two days. I just arrived in the city and I've nowhere to stay, and I'm mostly bilingual but some of these abbreviations in the English ads..."
"It's not—well, it's not a great time of year for finding housing," he said, stumbling a bit as if he were afraid of giving offence. "You might find someone subletting for the holidays, though. Where are, I mean, what neighbourhoods are you looking into?"
"Anywhere cheap! I'm still looking for work."
He nodded. "How cheap are we talking about?"
Aurora wished that Jeanne-Marie had a credit card, but no such luck; Madame DuPont disapproved of credit cards as usury. "Someplace that wouldn't want a down payment?"
He raised his eyebrows. "Why, are you completely—?"
"Seventy dollars?" she said with a guilty smile, her hand over her mouth.
"Skint for now, or is that it?"
"No, that's it. I don't have a job."
The boy raised his eyebrows and looked down at the paper. "Oh."
"Then I'm fucked?" she said, trying to keep it light.
"Um, yeah. You are definitely fucked. You'd barely get a metro pass for that."
"I already have one."
"Look, seriously. Do you have anywhere else to go for awhile? Relatives anywhere, friends?"
Bout de viarge. She'd been going for wild free spirit, and only ended up stirring his pity. Fine, she could use pity. "I'd be a lot more fucked if I went to them, trust me."
He nodded, suddenly businesslike. "Okay. What's your name?"
"Aurora," she said, pitching her voice a little lower and shifting her weight just slightly. Inch by inch, she was getting closer to him, until she could feel the corona of heat that surrounded his skin. "What's yours?"
"Joel." He offered his hand and she shook it, awkward because of their closeness. He reminded her a bit of the boyish seminarians at Madame DuPont's, with something of the same toothsome cassocked innocence. Not that Jeanne-Marie ever looked at them that way, but Aurora did.
"If you don't mind taking them," he said, "I can give you some numbers. I have cards too, hold on." He fished around in his map case. The boy came up with a tattered envelope full of business cards and pamphlets. "This one's a women's shelter."
Aurora tried not to be nettled that her flirtations weren't working, and failed. "What are you, a social worker?"
"Not really. These people can help you find work, although they mainly handle new immigrants. I'll write down the name of someone I know there, she's good."
"So why all the literature, if you're not? What's your story?"
"I run a shelter for mutants," he said, rooting through his bag for something else. "So I know people. I had stuff from Old Brewery in here somewhere."
"I know about the Old Brewery Mission," she said, annoyed at the conversation taking such a philanthropic turn. "I'm not a hard luck case, I just need some time to get my bearings."
Joel nodded and sighed. "Sorry. Force of habit. It's just—time to get your bearings is a rare commodity. Things can change quickly, you know?"
"I just don't want to think about that stuff now. You know how it is," she said, wiping a last bit of cheese from her lip and sucking it off her fingertip. She met his eyes, her hand lingering around her mouth. He was very soft, like angels in the Renaissance, and she was sure that if she put her lips on him he would be solid only for a moment, tantalising, before melting like a meringue, or the Host. She would have a stomachache afterwards, she would feel like a tabernacle, full of holiness inside. He should have smelled sweet, like a bakery, but instead he had a dusty, masculine smell of old wool, flags folded up with war medals and photographs of dead men. She imagined that once the two of them were out of the shower, the natural honey sweetness of his sweat would fill the room.
She smiled, secure in the faith that dirty thoughts are visible, that he would know exactly what she was thinking and what she wanted. And he did, because he was blushing. She allowed herself a touch, a gentle squeeze of his shoulder. "I'll get by. Thank you for the sandwich."
"Wait, wait." He dug in his coat pocket and retrieved a blue card, not one of the ones he'd given her earlier. "This one's for our house. I'm sure you'll be fine, but if you get into trouble, you know, if you're on the street, come to the house and we'll give you a bed. Promise me you won't spend a night in the cold."
Victory, she thought—but no. Aurora read the card, and decided she'd been eyeing the fruit on the wrong tree, one that wasn't hers to shake. "I thought it was a mutant shelter."
"We're not fussy if you're not."
She shrugged, not wanting to make promises to anyone, and certainly not to some seminarian do-gooder. "Maybe."
"Fine," he said, and raised a hand. "Salut, Aurore."
"Salut."
The first thing she knew, she was in a bathroom stall with a handful of coins in one hand. Her eyes were open, and that was where the disorientation was coming from, she realised. If the switch happened while her eyes were closed, it would be just like waking up. Instead it was like suddenly remembering an essay assignment with only four hours left to write it—guilt and panic as well as confusion. I lost it, I missed it. I should have known.
She sat down on the toilet seat, looked at the money in her hand. A lot of quarters, loonies, and toonies, which suggested that Aurora had been spending cash at a good clip. About fourteen dollars in change. She put the money back in her pocket and stared at the stall door, not sure she wanted to know what was on the other side of it.
Her watch was missing. Aurora might have lost it, being absent-minded. Or she might have sold it, or even had it stolen. Jeanne-Marie had no idea what time it was, or what day it was. The last thing she remembered was sitting down in her green armchair in her room with a blanket and a collection of Louis de Monfort's writings. That was Friday. She'd just finished her first week of teaching and wanted to relax.
Now she was wearing a scandalous dress that she couldn't remember buying, dark purple with a filmy petalled skirt hitting at mid-thigh, sequins around the bust. Black fishnets and her skin coming through them in diamonds high up inside her thighs. She pulled the stocking away from her leg, touched the red pattern. The black heels were hers, she'd bought them for the May formal last year, and they at least were chaste-looking, unadorned and the heel not too high. Her feet hurt.
In her right coat pocket, Jeanne-Marie found a handful of receipts and scraps of paper. She went through them: a Montreal boutique with a self-consciously hip name, a charge of $214; a Jean Coutu drugstore downtown, almost sixty dollars; six ATM receipts showing a balance crawling down to $5.47, withdrawals of a hundred at a time; two phone numbers in handwriting she didn't recognise, one on a torn envelope and one on a piece ripped from a photocopied philosophy article.
So Aurora had gone into the city and spent every cent that Jeanne-Marie had in her savings. She couldn't return the dress, because she had nothing else to wear—what had Aurora done with Jeanne-Marie's tweed skirt and lambswool sweater? Thrown them away? Left them in some hotel? Jeanne-Marie couldn't find any keys or receipts from stays anywhere, but the dates on the receipts said at least a week had gone by. Aurora must have—
Suddenly Jeanne-Marie thought of something else Aurora might have done to get a place to stay. As soon as she thought of it, she couldn't put it out of her mind. She pulled down her stockings and looked between her legs, as if there might be a sign of it. Her face was hot, and her hands were shaking. Of course there was no way to tell. She wasn't a doctor.
She swallowed, pulled her stockings back up, and pressed her hands together. Nothing to be done. There was. Nothing to be done. No proof. She couldn't go to a hospital with no proof. Only a suspicion. So put it from your mind. God have mercy God have mercy put it from your mind.
There was a week's metro pass in her pocket, and a blue business card, which read Maison St-Jean-de-Dieu and gave an address on Rue Sainte Famille. She recognised the Catholic Worker logo, a stylised Christ with his arms around a mother with a baby and a black labourer. That made her pause, and she wondered where in the world Aurora would have picked up such a thing. Catholic Workers were dissenters and collectivists even by the standards of the conciliar church, and Jeanne-Marie had always lumped them in with liberation theologians, feminists, and other groups too far gone to have any truck with the traditional Church.
But they might be able to help her. Yes, going anywhere near Catholic Workers was as bad as getting in bed with Communists or Freemasons, but she didn't care anymore. Aurora had probably done worse than that already. All Jeanne-Marie wanted at the moment was to throw herself on someone's mercy, to take her hands off the clay and her foot off the treadle. Enough, enough. Everything was ruined, every alarm was going off, and she was the cause of it. Let someone else begin the work of picking up the pieces.
Leaving the bathroom, she found that she was in a Tim Horton's on a busy street. Boulevard René Lévesque. She looked through the torn pages of the phone book under a payphone in the donut shop's vestibule, and picked out Rue Sainte Famille. North of Sherbrooke, just west of St-Urbain. Jeanne-Marie had never been in the city alone before, and usually relied on the nuns or her friends to keep track of direction. She had always hated people who did things like this, but she surreptitiously pulled the page from the map section and put it in her pocket.
What if someone else in your position needs that map, Jeanne-Marie? Will you be responsible for—
"No no no," she whispered to herself and stuffed the torn page back into place in the book. Sorry sorry I am sorry.
The Blessed Mother would show her where to go, she told herself. Stella Maris, the star of the sea, the help of navigators.
The city was the sea. Dark, bitter cold and snowing. She hadn't gone more than a block before she started wondering if she would make it to Rue Sainte Famille at all. The fishnet stockings were no better than bare legs, and her heels kept none of the cold out. Jeanne-Marie began to entertain the idea of fashioning a longer skirt out of newspaper or plastic bags.
No, there was only one thing to do, and that was run. She didn't feel like running, and in fact what she wanted was to lie down anywhere and sleep. How had Aurora done it? Did she have her men drive her around? Don't think about that. Jeanne-Marie took off her heels, ignoring the looks of passersby and the terrible cold of the damp sidewalk. She drew a breath that hurt her lungs, and started running, praying that no one would look at her, praying that her bizarre powers would not assert themselves as she picked up speed. No matter how much it would help if she could cover the blocks in seconds.
Madame DuPont said it was wrong for girls to draw attention to themselves in athletics or with their behaviour, especially if they were immodestly dressed, but Jeanne-Marie would die if she didn't keep her blood moving, she knew it. She was piling sin upon sin now, but she could only hope that she wouldn't die before she could get back to Madame DuPont's and confess. Don't let me die, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I never wanted any of this, don't let me die...
She ran until her head was pounding, her windpipe on fire and her legs cold with sweat. There wasn't much ice, and her feet barely felt the cold as long as she kept moving, but there was a sick chill in her bones and she began to pray in earnest that the Catholic Workers would let her in. She matched her praying to her stride: ...et tui—amoris—in eis—accende! Veni—Sancte—Spiritus...
Soon the blocks began to pass as if in a dream. They never became shorter and the cold cement never became easier to run on, but she would tell herself, only to the next row of houses, only to the next intersection. She had always been running. It was not possible to stop. But she told herself, in just an hour you'll be inside somewhere and this will all be in the past. How was she still running? She would faint soon, maybe—she could barely focus on the street ahead of her—but for now this was a miracle, one that even Madame DuPont would have to admire. Still on her feet. Amazing.
At last, among the Victorian rowhouses of Milton Parc, she came to the address on the card. The building was a grey stone duplex on high ground with an imposing limestone wall at street-level, crawling with bare brown vines. She went to the door, cringing as her feet sank in the snow on the steps, and rang the bell.
A long wait. Now her feet were feeling the cold, or rather they weren't feeling it, and she wondered morbidly if she might lose a toe from this little adventure. She shifted her weight back and forth, then stopped, fearing that frostbitten toes might snap off like icicles.
No answer from within. Maybe they were closed—she had no idea what time it was. Maybe they were just something like a soup kitchen or a reading room and wouldn't be able to help her at all. Although she was sure that Catholic Worker houses always had live-in staff. But maybe not? For one mad moment, she thought of breaking a window. There were no lights on inside that she could see. She was about to give up when she heard a thump and a creak within, and the door opened.
It was a young man in a black sweater, only a little older than Jeanne-Marie herself, long and narrow with shaggy brown hair, hair that Madame DuPont would not have tolerated for a moment in her school. He took one look at her and said, "Come in, come inside. I'll put the kettle on."
She followed him in, through the dense blackness of the hallway, and waited as he fumbled for a lightswitch. Her ears ached in the warm air, and when she touched them they felt stiff and fragile. She wanted to collapse.
The kitchen was painted pale yellow, with flowered mouldings along the ceiling that clashed with the utilitarian steel stove and formica countertops. A transit map of the city was tacked to the wall over the table, beside a poster of Our Lady of Guadalupe. On the door was a whiteboard scribbled over with bilingual messages, newspaper clippings and holy cards taped up beside it. A clock on the wall read quarter past twelve, and Jeanne-Marie felt awful. "Did I wake you up?"
"No, it's cool. I was up writing an essay." He put the kettle on the stove, then noticed her feet. "Jesus Mary and Joseph. Let me get you some socks."
She just nodded, and he went off upstairs. There was a newspaper sitting out on the scarred wooden table, and she glanced at it, looking for the date. When she saw it, her throat closed up with a clicking sound.
Two weeks. Two weeks had gone by. Two weeks of her life, to say nothing of the money, gone with no explanation and for no good reason. By now, her job at the school would be history. Madame might let her stay on scrubbing floors or refilling inventory in the pantry, but Jeanne-Marie could forget about teaching.
Her skin felt too tight. She couldn't even get back at Aurora...could she? What was there that Aurora cared about as much as Jeanne-Marie cared for her job, her reputation at the school, even her soul?
I never did anything to you, Aurora whispered from within. You self-righteous bitch, I'm just trying to get along. You can't expect me to live like you do.
"Stop it," Jeanne-Marie whispered out loud, but nothing stopped. She was alone as an animal in a trap, but even alone she was watched, and she could not look back at the predators and scavengers gathering in the trees. And with a mental jerk like the sensation of falling just before sleep, she felt dizzyingly un-herself, her body and brain strange and unfamiliar, and rather contemptible. It seemed impossible that she'd really been herself all this time, without a break. Impossible that she'd ever really existed, in fact: she was sure, for a few seconds, that she'd just been in the audience, an observer. None of it was real and she wanted none of it.
The boy in the black sweater returned with a blue fleece blanket and a pair of thick grey boot socks. He seemed about to say something, but then fell silent and went to get a casserole dish out of the fridge. She stopped him, because she was near tears for no reason and knew she would not be able to sit through a meal. "Please, please just let me lie down somewhere quiet. I'm so tired."
"All right," he said. He had a very quiet voice. "All right. Follow me."
He led her up two flights of stairs to a small bedroom on the third floor of the house. As she sat on the bed, feeling herself curl forward like a wilting plant, the boy went to another room and knocked gently. Some whispered conversation in English that Jeanne-Marie didn't catch, and then a girl came in and helped her off with her coat, with the awful fishnet stockings.
The girl had a round face, oily and plain (although it was an unkind hour to judge anyone's appearance). She might have been Native, or Asian; Jeanne-Marie had never been good at guessing which. From the dresser she produced a voluminous flannel nightgown.
"We'll find you some clothes tomorrow," she said. "My name's Vicky. Let me help you unzip."
The awful purple dress came off, and Jeanne-Marie fumbled with the nightie, which was several sizes too big, but warm. The bed was next to a big old-fashioned steam radiator, and heat was breathing out in waves like water.
"Are you sure you don't want a shower first? Okay." Vicky started turning down the bed. There was a knock at the door, and she went to crack it open. "No, don't come in, we're fine. Go finish your essay. What? Oh, good idea."
She set a hot water bottle on the bed and a cup of tea on the night table. "Joel just wanted to bring these up for you. And he asked me to take your temperature, so just hold this in your ear, okay?"
Jeanne-Marie pressed the digital thermometer into her ear and waited, holding the hot water bottle on her lap like a cat. Vicky knelt down and rubbed her feet with a towel, chafing her toes and lower calves until some of the blueness left them.
When the thermometer beeped, she handed it to the other girl, and she read it. "You're tougher than you look. I guess Joel was afraid we'd have to get Paul to drive you in to the Dieu, but looks like you skipped hypothermia."
"Good," said Jeanne-Marie, sleepily.
"I'll let you get some sleep. I'm nearby if you need something."
Vicky turned out the overhead light and closed the door gently. Jeanne-Marie did not turn the lamp off, as she hated the dark, but fell asleep quickly, curled around the warmth of the hot water bottle. Warm and dry, miraculously. Outside, the wind rattled the windowpanes and whistled in the chimneys, but she was safe.
Joel got up early the next morning to finish his essay. He wasn't in the habit of getting up early, since he needed a lot of sleep to keep seizures and disappearances at bay, but he liked the grey silence of the city in the early hours. From his bedroom window, he had a view of snow-covered roofs and white arrière-courts — he was thinking in French again, like in elementary school — white backyards, the edges of the sun turning the bricks of the other houses coral red. Mackerel scales in the east: more snow soon.
The door opened, and Paul shuffled in, looking sheepish.
"Am I forgiven, then?" Joel asked, trying to be cool and not look up from his work, and failing.
"Yeah, sorry. I was a prick."
"No, you were right." It was always easier to be generous when Paul was in the mood to make concessions, but Joel really had been feeling guilty about their fight. "I should have got my work done on time. I do take you for granted."
"So we're good?"
"We're good. How's the basement couch, to sleep on?"
"Not great." Paul wandered over to the dresser and pulled down his lower eyelid, looking at the white. "I think I have jaundice."
"You're fine." Paul's hypochondria was business as usual, so Joel turned back to his essay.
"Who rang the bell last night?"
"New girl."
"Uh-huh." Paul's favourite "you're not being helpful" tone.
Joel gave up, saved his file, and turned his chair around. "I met this girl in Santropol a couple of weeks ago and ended up giving her a card, since she didn't have anywhere to go. She showed up last night barely dressed and almost freezing, so we put her up."
"How did you meet a girl in Santropol?"
"She wanted to borrow my newspaper," said Joel. Paul looked sceptical. "What, you think I'm lying?"
"Obviously not. One thing fails to explain another, is all."
"She was friendly. Too friendly, even. I don't go around chatting up hot chicks, you know that."
Paul rolled his eyes. "'Friendly,' that's great. This ought to make dinner time fun and exciting for all. Did you make it clear to her that the house is a mack-free zone? Or that you and the mack don't mix, period?"
"I didn't get a chance," Joel said, getting up to go brush his teeth. Paul followed, leaning in the doorway. "What did you, just learn the word mack? No one uses it like that in English."
Paul made a rude gesture and started unbuttoning his shirt. He had no hair on his chest at all, as a result of his mutation, and the colours that streamed over his skin — gold and cerulean and rose and green — all came together in a pulsing knot of light at his heart. It was almost unbearably beautiful, and Joel had to look away.
"Can you wait and not shower while I'm in the bathroom, for Christ's sake? What difference does it make to you, anyway, if a girl talks to me?"
"I just have a natural and brotherly concern for your vocation, Frère Joël," said Paul, buttoning his shirt back up. "And I'm not a fan of goo-goo eyes at the table. That's not hard to figure out."
Joel spit into the sink. "That's the first time you've said anything positive about my vocation. And you were being sarcastic, so I don't think I'll give you any points for that one."
"I've been plenty positive. I just, you know, if you were serious about it..."
"Right, here we go."
"If you were serious about it, you'd tell Hodya. That's all I'm saying. She has a right to know, doesn't she?"
Joel had been seeing Hodya Eitan, the daughter of an Israeli diplomat friend of his father's, off and on for a little over two years. It was a long-distance relationship, as she was in microbiology at U of T, and more friendly than passionate. They were both fine with that, but for some reason Paul had the ability to make that fact sting like Borax in an open wound. "I'm not going to fight with you about my love life at this hour, Paul."
"We're fighting?"
"When you bring Hodya and the friars into it, we're fighting, yeah."
"Sorry."
"Sure." He wiped his mouth. "I'm beginning to wonder if we shouldn't have separate rooms."
Paul immediately became more subdued, blushing a dusty purple the colour of a bruise. "Seriously?"
"Yeah, seriously. I know we thought it was more important to keep an extra room free, but at this point..."
Paul said nothing. He didn't like to let Joel trail off.
"At this point I feel like all you do is pick at me, and we need some space."
A long silence. Joel didn't dare look over to see what colours were moving across Paul's face, so he busied himself with getting ready to shave, ignoring his peripheral vision.
At last, Paul said, "I don't do that. Not on purpose."
"I know you don't." The buzz of an electric razor still reminded Joel of his father, so he always used an ordinary disposable razor, on days when he bothered to shave at all; his beard was red, also like his father's, and it wasn't obvious when he skipped days. "This is just — we're bouncing off each other too much, and it's affecting the atmosphere in the house. Don't tell me you wouldn't like some privacy, some days."
"No," said Paul, sounding perhaps more earnest than he had intended to. "I wouldn't. I like — I like rooming with you."
Joel, reaching up to shave his left cheek, risked a glance over at Paul. Green, which usually meant agitation and embarrassment. Paul couldn't lie to anyone who knew him well, and he generally didn't bother. He was honest by nature, in any case, and quick to sniff out deception in others. And yet Joel couldn't resist saying, "Really?"
"Yes, really." Annoyed now, and that was more in character. Joel relaxed.
"Well, fine. Just stop riding my ass, okay?"
"Whatever," said Paul, pushing off from the doorframe and going to the dresser. Back to normal. "You're doing breakfast, right?"
"Yeah, yeah."
Downstairs in the kitchen, Joel started the oatmeal while Paul rustled through the French paper. More snow was now coming down, small flakes that were almost invisible unless you looked hard. Everything was still, the house was cold, and Joel, pouring the salt for the porridge into the palm of his left hand, felt his body become somehow more real, more physical, every cell biting hard on the air like teeth in a dentist's X-ray. It was a feeling that came over him sometimes just before a seizure, so he put down the box of salt and waited, but nothing happened. He felt either very happy or very empty, and at first he could not quite tell which.
Empty, Joel decided. Empty to the corners.
They heard a rustling on the staircase, and the girl Aurora appeared in the hallway, wearing a powder-blue flannel nightgown reaching to the floor. She paused, frowning slightly.
"Have some breakfast?" Joel asked in French, keeping his tone casual.
She came into the kitchen and sat down at the table. Paul gave her one of his penetrating looks, his mouth a thin line.
"Excuse me," said Joel, wishing Paul would learn some manners. "This is Paul Laliberté, my — he works here too. Paul, Aurora."
"My name's not Aurora," the girl said immediately.
Paul smirked. Joel felt cold all over, and wondered how he had screwed that one up. He had a good memory for names, and he was sure... "It isn't?"
"It's Jeanne-Marie Beaubier." She would not meet his eyes. "I...I lied. And I don't remember your name either."
She gave you a fake name, said the calming voice of his therapist in his head. You didn't forget. It's okay. "Oh...that's all right. It's Joel McCree."
She looked up at him. A glint of recognition. "Like Jim McCree?"
Joel bit his lip and nodded. It was a famous name in Canada, since the attacks five years ago, as famous as Homolka or Redpath or Trudeau. Paul murmured to her, "Son père," and she coloured.
"It's okay," said Joel. "We — well. If you want to talk about why you're here or what you need — you don't have to..."
"I do need to speak with you," she said.
"Okay. Paul, could you make sure the porridge doesn't burn?"
"Ouais," he drawled, turning a page of the newspaper.
Joel led Jeanne-Marie through the kitchen door to the other side of the duplex, where the house office was. It was a refurbished dining room, with a four-bulbed brass chandelier and a large bay window looking out over the backyard, the radiators on either side painted black with complex Moroccan-style grilles. In contrast, the furniture was shoddy Naugahyde donated by the rectory of Saint-Sulpice, and the filing cabinet was made of cardboard.
Jeanne-Marie sat down on the tattered loveseat and Joel pulled out the computer chair. "So what's going on?"
She stared down at her knees. "I go to — I teach at Madame DuPont's School for Girls in Laval."
She stopped there, as if he should find this fact significant. Madame DuPont's, Madame DuPont's...oh. Joel found himself wondering whether "sedevacantist" was a dirty word for those people or not. He was pretty sure that "schismatic" and "splinter group" were. "Not the school run by the, um, the—"
"We are traditional Roman Catholics," she said primly. "We're run by the Petites Soeurs de Notre Dame de Fatima. Although Madame is not a sister, of course."
"Right. Okay. Wait, is that connected with the Pères de la Société de Notre Dame de Fatima?"
"That's right."
"Hardcore," said Joel, without his volition. The SNDF were batshit insane, right down (or right up) to their stigmatist impostor pope in Quebec City. "Okay, sorry, go on."
"But I left. Without telling anyone."
He didn't blame her. Everything he'd heard about the SNDF said they were abusive, in one way or another. "Ah."
"No, you don't understand," she said, some heat coming into her voice. "I was a student there, an orphan, since I was tiny. I didn't just leave a job, I left everything. And now I don't have anywhere to go."
"So going back is...it's not an option."
"No. Well...no."
She wasn't sure, he thought. Sometimes it was hard for him to even draw simple conclusions like that about people — he got flustered and couldn't think about anything but himself and all the things he was doing wrong. But now, letting his physicality relax just a little into the Aphanes, he managed to really look at her.
She sat with her back straight and her lips closed, not looking him in the eye but in the nose, her gaze sometimes drifting over to his shoulder or the wall behind him. Her hands lay in her lap, folded and still, but he saw that her right elbow was moving, convulsing slowly and rhythmically, as if she'd always been nervous and twitchy but someone had trained her out of the habit. But never completely.
The other thing he noticed was that she was no longer getting in his face, giggling and sucking her fingers and all that other stuff he found so inexplicably menacing. She'd lied about her name, yes, and for a moment he compared her to an actress who was shy off-camera, but even as the analogy came to mind he knew it was wrong. You could trace a thread from the character to the actress. It was easy to see that a single mind had built both persona. This was more like looking at a painting and a student's copy. Only not—
"What are you..." Jeanne-Marie whispered, pulling forward in her chair. "Is that—is that your power? Your mutation?"
He'd gone too far into it. He hadn't meant to, but lately it felt good. Too good, like napping while sleep-deprived. Joel slipped back into his body. "Sorry. Yes. It is."
"You looked exactly like a ghost."
He smiled tightly and changed the subject. "We're all mutants here, like I told you when I saw you last, so I guess...I hope it doesn't bother you. You already saw Paul — that's pretty much all he does — and Vicky does...well, she does stuff that she doesn't like us to talk about. It's not dangerous or anything, just that she has strong opinions about it. None of us is really dangerous."
Now she looked him straight in the eye, a searching look, and then said, "You are Catholic?"
"I am. And Paul and Steph and Sabine, although they're not that religious. The rest of us are sort of, I don't know, it's not a homogeneous group."
"But you believe it, in all of it? You're not a dissenter?"
Joel felt that he had lost the thread of this conversation somewhere. "Why are you asking?"
"I want to know if I can trust you," she said, her voice quiet and even kind.
Joel wasn't sure he wanted to get into this sort of a dick-measuring contest, but he had no idea what to say besides the truth. "I'm, uh, I'm in discernment with the Dominicans, if that helps. I go to L'Institut Pastorale. But you can trust me anyway."
"Really?" She sat up a little straighter. "All right. The Dominicans are...they're not too bad."
Usually Joel had to reassure kids that they weren't missionaries, that no one was going to push religion on them. He had to play the opposite game with diocesan representatives, of course, convincing them that they weren't secularists and should still get community support from Saint-Sulpice and the other local parishes. The whole business made him uncomfortable, and he had the dim feeling that he was in over his head as far as the SNDF was concerned.
The girl licked her lips and said, "I'm asking because I might be a mutant. Or maybe...maybe something else is happening to me. But I don't want someone who's an apostate to be giving me advice about mutants or anything else. You—you understand me, don't you? I don't mean it as an insult, just..."
"I think I understand," said Joel slowly. "I just don't know who to refer you to. Would you talk to one of the Dominican friars, or a priest at Saint-Sulpice?"
"They're conciliar."
Joel assumed that the maligned council was Vatican II. "So you'll only talk to a traditionalist about this? And you know that the vast majority of traditionalists have not been friendly towards mutants?"
Jeanne-Marie merely said, "I don't care what they say so long as it's the truth."
"I'll see if I can find anyone. I assume talking to a secular therapist is out of the question too?" He was getting nasty, he realised. "Sorry. Um—do you feel okay just talking about what your powers are, how they manifested?"
She shook her head, a glimmer of tears appearing in her eyes. She whispered, "I'm not dangerous or anything. I never use them."
"Okay. It's all right."
"I'm sorry I'm so—" She stopped, and quickly plucked a tissue from the box on Joel's desk. She held it to her face as tightly as if she were trying to stop a flow of blood, and said nothing more.
Joel wanted to comfort her, the way Vicky touched and embraced so easily. But he was still too afraid, still convinced that no one wanted him to come too close. Nor could he be the unflappable, capable type. Being in the presence of this sort of unexplained pain just reduced him. His stomach hurt.
All he had to offer was money and shelter and food, so he offered it. "You can stay here as long as you need to."
"I hope I can," she whispered. "Thank you."
Practical things were easier to deal with. "We're low on clothes for young women, since we got cleaned out last week. Sabine's free today, I think, so she can probably take you around to Value Village or somewhere to get a few things."
"I spent all my money," Jeanne-Marie said, an edge of hysteria creeping into her voice. "I have nothing left. I had everything I needed at Madame's, and money besides, and now I've got nothing, nothing..."
"It'll be all right."
"No, no, it won't..."
"Yes it will. Look, we have a discretionary fund, so we can buy you some things. Don't worry about that. Now, your things at Madame's, is there anything you really need? I can go back there and tell them you've left, you won't have to see them at all."
They made a list of things that she needed, including her glasses and a couple of books that she'd bought with her own money. "Most of my clothes were issued by the school," she said. "I had a couple of outfits for teaching, but Madame bought those. They aren't really mine."
"Smaller things are easier anyway," said Joel, since he didn't particularly want to take the train out to Laval. "Go off to breakfast."
When she was gone, he lolled back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling, willing the hot sentimental tears to go back where they came from. The old voice in his head was talking, you sanctimonious phoney fuck, what the hell have you got to cry about anymore? He didn't argue, but he sat up and looked at his class schedule, taped down on his desk. The morning was free to whip down to Laval, and then Hebrew and L'Evangile selon Marc in the afternoon, followed by a couple of hours in the library to make sure all the verb tenses didn't fall out of his head.
And oh fuck, the essay. Well, it wasn't going to get done on time and that was that.
He took his cheque-book out of the desk drawer and realised he had no idea how much clothes for Jeanne-Marie would set them back. How in the hell was that possible, that he still didn't know what clothes cost for women? How fucking out of touch was he?
A cold wave of horror broke over him suddenly, and he felt his innards seize up like the fists of the damned on Michelangelo's altarpiece, clutching and scrabbling for safety while Christ hung far above with one hand upraised, a lord telling the peasants to get off his property. All the dead shrieking and crying, as if they hadn't suffered enough. As if everyone didn't have—as if they didn't—nobody was listening, nobody was listening.
There were the dead on the altarpiece crying at the Last Judgement, who couldn't see him, and there were all the dead around Joel, his father and his cousin and the little boy from Sacred Heart who died in the meningitis outbreak. And more, all the white flecks in the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery that he passed every day on the bus. All the multitudes who suffered, all the lonely people, us sinners now and at the hour of our death. In the rock hard ground in Our Lady of the Snows. None of them would say a word, even though the doom was everywhere now, in his nostrils and between the tree branches outside, under the papers on his desk and between the fibres of the carpet. Everywhere. Joel felt like he was being sucked out of his body, like a snail from its shell, and if he let go he wouldn't get back. Get back, Loretta. Let me back, let me back. Pushing, pushing, some desire to do something but he couldn't move.
And then it was over.
Joel raised his hand to his face, and it came away wet, but it was only saliva and not blood. Relax. It was a seizure, that was all, in the temporal lobe. The brain was tricky. He was only tired, not losing it again. Period.
He signed the cheque, left the amount blank, and wrote "please be gentle" on the memo line in French. Whatever "gentle" might mean to Sabine. On the back of his hand, he wrote the time and the note TLS – Comp. Part., in case he forgot to make an appointment with Dr Stein. Obviously the Klonopin wasn't working, which wasn't much of a surprise.
He set the pen down, and with a feeling of incomparable relief, dropped into complete invisibility.
Notes: I did my best to find a plausible name that wasn't currently in use by some other order, but all I can do is emphasise that the Petites Soeurs de Notre Dame de Fatima and the associated society of priests are fictional, based on other sedevacantist orders. Please don't write to me saying you're a Petite Soeur of Notre Dame de Fatima and all you do is help lepers and you've never been unkind to a French mutant girl ever, because I will feel very guilty. Saint-Sulpice here is also a fictional parish, although I'm sure there's a church by that name in Montreal.