A Second Chance Page 6

  We have our checkup tomorrow. This is the least busy day of Sara’s week. Apparently, people just don’t go to the dentist on Tuesdays. She called us in for the end of the day so she can spend a little more time with us. This is also the only way to avoid some of our acquaintances who don’t know about Adam’s accident and who might ask questions in front of other patients. She even wants to send her receptionist and one of the assistants home.

  On our arrival, Sara is busy with an emergency – a young man with an abscess. It takes longer than usual, and Katy, the assistant to the other dentist, who is on holiday, is getting impatient. She was expecting to leave early, but she cannot go until Sara says the word.

  Adam takes a seat in the waiting room. He looks exhausted and is shaking slightly, the way he does when I take him to the doctor. It’s no good explaining that this is Sara’s office, our daughter’s. He should remember he helped her with the renovations when she bought the dental practice. That was the last time he helped her out. He changed the carpet and took down the wall between the receptionist’s office and the waiting room.

  Tina, Sara’s assistant, asks me to go with her for an X-ray. Adam asks if he can come with me. I reassure him I won’t be long and try to convince him to flip through one of the women’s magazines on the small table.

  Tina does not look happy, either. Her cheeks are red, whether from anger or fatigue. Sometimes, Sara has told me, there are conflicts between the two assistants.

  When I come back to the waiting room, Adam is standing at the window watching cars in the street. It’s already dark, and the traffic has started to slow down.

  Sara leads us into her office. She always starts with me, in order to reassure Adam, who keeps us company on a little stool in the corner. My instinct was right: Katy has done practically nothing all day. Because Katy is not herself on holiday, she was supposed to help Tina, sterilize all the instruments, call some patients, and settle the bill from the insurance company, but all she has done is surf the Web.

  Tina says nothing, but she’s handling the suction tube pretty briskly.

  I feel a bit guilty about her. Does Sara realize that, while Katy and the receptionist have now gone home, Tina is working overtime because of us?

  My teeth are giving up on me, one by one. My crowns are wearing out, and some deep pockets have formed in the gums where food collects and gets infected, despite the tools Sara has given me. This evening, she discovers another pocket at the back of my mouth and she cleans this out. I can see blood all along the suction tube. She penetrates deeper and deeper, asking me if it hurts. I say no. Tina laughs skeptically, but Sara reassures her:

  “She’s the only one who can stand this without an anaesthetic.”

  I tell myself this is for my own good.

  When it’s Adam’s turn, she has to freeze him, otherwise she fears hurting him when she does the cleaning. The last time, he reacted rather well, but she does not want to risk it. His acidic saliva means tartar under the gum, and she needs the curette for that.

  Sara tells me the details while showing me the inside of his mouth on her little mirror. Adam needs an implant, but what’s most urgent is a night-guard to stop him from grinding his teeth and wearing away the enamel. When Tina goes out to check on her sterilizing machine, I take charge of the suction of the blood from Adam’s gums.

  “Your blue blood, Daddy,” says Sara playfully.

  Adam does not seem amused. Since the stroke, I have never joked about his aristocratic background, with all those philosophers and professors in the family.

  When we’re done, Sara asks if I can give her a lift home. She comes to work by bus, as she lives in the neighbourhood, but the trip home is tiresome, and Michael usually drives her home. This evening she’s given him a break.

  Once we get there, she invites us in for a drink, but it’s already late and we go on our way. She kisses us goodbye and jumps out of the car.

  This weekend, I want to finish Salman Rushdie’s Luka and the Fire of Life, even though the large cast of characters is dizzying. For a children’s book, I find it a little overcharged.

  Next to me in bed, Adam flips through a cartoon book. He looks up from time to time to watch me reading. I don’t say anything.

  On page fifty-four, I come across a passage that makes me laugh. It is the riddle competition between Luka and The Old Man of the River. I ask Adam if he wants to listen to the riddles in English. He is happy with this. His own book is clearly of no great interest.

  I start with this one: “It stands on one leg with its heart in its head.”

  Adam laughs. I ask him why.

  “Because that’s too difficult for me.”

  I start laughing, as well. It’s too difficult for me, too.

  I tell him the answer in English: a cabbage. But he doesn’t remember the word. I tell him the answer in Romanian: varza.

  For a few seconds, I hoped he would react with the same jokes over the Dace origin of our language, but not this time.

  “Don’t you remember, Adam? Mazare, varza, viezure, miez, zmeura” – peas, cabbage, badger, crumb, raspberry –“those are words in Dace, the language we were speaking before the Roman conquest of Dacia, our mythical mother country.”

  Linguists have established a list of the Dace words in modern Romanian, and most of them include the letter z.

  Adam completely forgot the reply he once gave me when I served him peas: “Where are the varza, viezure, miez, zmeura?”

  Another thing he does not remember is the conversation we used to have over the origin of the Romanian words for pizda – cunt – and pula – cock. He was explaining that pizda was probably Dace; the proof was either the presence of the letter z or its similarity to the Dace word for the smelly cheese, branza. Pula, on the other hand, could not be anything other than Latin, considering how similar the word is to apulum. He insisted on this, though I told him apulum has nothing to do with pula; it means a fortress or settlement.

  “As you can see, we’ve been fucked ever since the dawn of time,” Adam concluded.

  We could have simply checked their origin in the Romanian dictionary, DEX, that we brought with us in our baggage. But why dissipate the magic of Adam’s etymology lessons?

  “What is it that you can keep after giving it to someone else?”

  “This one’s is too difficult, too,” says Adam.

  His eyes show increasing worry. What if the answer is in fact very simple and he should have known the answer?

  I reassure him. “Indian wisdom, what can I say? For me it is as difficult as it is for you. The answer is, ‘Your word.’”

  He doesn’t get it.

  “It means that you can give your word, but you keep it at the same time,” I say, not sure this is right.

  “You mean that I, too – I have to keep my word after giving it?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Do you still want to listen to some other riddles?

  He reluctantly says yes. I tell him that from now on I will give him the answer as well, so he won’t have to guess:

  “This is really funny, listen: ‘What do sea monsters eat? Fish and ships.’”

  Adam does not find it funny.

  “Do you not remember our trip to the Atlantic Provinces? In Halifax, we ate fish and chips and drank Alexander Keith’s beer. Fish and chips. Here, instead of chips they say ships.”

  “When did we go to Halifax?” Adam asks, not paying any attention to my explanation.

  “For your forty-fifth birthday. We toured the Atlantic provinces by car, three thousand kilometers in fifteen days. You drove, as I had my foot in a cast.”

  “Do we have pictures?”

  “Unfortunately not. We lost the camera’s memory card. There are no pictures from that trip.”

  The lack of proof makes Adam suspicious. It isn’t the first time
he thinks I may be messing with his memories. He says he doesn’t remember anything.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I tell him. I want to continue reading my book. I already regret getting him into this English lesson. “Listen to this one, it’s very cute: ‘What has been there for millions of years but is never more than a month old?’ The answer is, the moon.”

  I laugh. I want him to understand it’s witty. But Adam is difficult to convince.

  “Would you have guessed the answer?” he asks me hesitantly.

  “No, not at all. It isn’t easy. But it is witty, you have to admit.”

  Adam agrees, but he does not find it funny at all.

  I tell him that’s it, even though there are some other riddles. Riddles may not be the best way to practise a foreign language.

  What disappoints me is not so much that he has lost his English as that he has lost his sense of humour.

  Over the next week, the temperature reaches twenty-five degrees. Some meteorologists say this is the warmest winter in the past sixty-five years. Birds have already started to return. Almost every day I see flocks of ducks and geese flying north. In Maclean’s, I read that the majority of robins did not even leave the country. In the morning, I hear them singing, lined up like pearls on the electric wires. I also read that mammals and amphibians are coming out of hibernation sooner, while some never hibernated at all. The worst thing is that pests have not been killed by the cold over the winter, as they usually are: corn flea beetles, bean leaf beetles, and pine beetles will ravage crops and trees. Blackflies, ticks, hornets, and wasps may plague us as never before. Grass fires will ravage the Prairies even before the arrival of spring.

  This mild weather threatens what some analysts call our sense of self. Simply put, the change in the climate will alter our Canadian identity. Winter isn’t just the season when people put on snow-pants, tuques, and Kanuk coats; winter is what makes the difference between us and the rest of the world. The freezing cold has been the pride of Canadians, something no one could take away from us. In what ways will the Canadian identity change without this harsh season?

  Defying winter was always the final ordeal a newcomer had to face in becoming a Canadian. Winter was the immigrant’s baptism. It was a natural border that kept the unwanted out, and we would now have to watch out for barbarous hordes invading the country. The myths surrounding the Canadian winter would melt as readily as the polar cap.

  The article ends on a sober note about the impossibility of there ever being another Wayne Gretzky if the backyard skating rink where he played as a kid disappeared forever.

  I take the garden chairs out on to the patio so that Adam can sunbathe while I’m at school. At eight o’clock, the temperature is already so mild that he can wear just a T-shirt.

  Before leaving, I repeat to Adam that today I won’t be back until ten o’clock because of parent-teacher meetings to discuss the second term report. I explain to him once again that he should eat the eggplant stew I’ve left on the counter. He can eat it without heating it in the microwave; I’m not comfortable with the idea of him turning on any appliance other than the TV.

  I finish school at four o’clock, but am too tired to make the trip home twice. I prefer to stay at school till seven o’clock, when the meetings begin. I check my email, flip through a magazine, and start marking a grammar test. Mario invites me to go out to eat in the neighbourhood, but I decline, saying I brought a double lunch. I always keep a Tupperware container full of nuts in my drawer, too. I crunch some pistachios as I go over the tests.

  Robert comes to get his bag. I pull my chair towards the desk to let him through to his, but I don’t speak to him. I thought he would leave soon, as usual, but he sits down, and searches for something in his drawer. He has just gotten back from Italy, where he went to celebrate his daughter’s birthday. On his return, I asked him if he had had a good trip, but nothing further. I want to avoid contact with him, as I don’t like his attitude.

  Sometimes I think I’m too cautious. Since I am the wife of a sick man, I may be too sensitive to people’s attitudes towards me. As I feel weaker than before, I feel people treat me as though I’m pitiful. I never feel this more intensely than with Robert.

  Mario stayed at school, too, in the end. He got himself a large coffee from the machine and withdrew to his desk behind a pile of papers. I see him flipping through them without enthusiasm. To our left, Yves, the math teacher, is talking loudly, as usual. We hear his voice on the far side of the staff room. He’s talking politics about the student strike.

  Most of our colleagues either went out to eat or went home. They start coming back by 6.30.

  The meetings with the parents take place in the school gym, as usual. For an hour or so, we can hear the three janitors putting out the tables for the teachers and chairs for the parents.

  I run into the building manager, Philippe, in the corridor and stop to chat. We’re old acquaintances; he worked at Saint Norbert when I was teaching there, a few years ago. Last autumn, I discovered him here. Today, for the first time, I ask why he left Saint Norbert. He tells me there was too much bureaucracy over there. I said I understand, but I cannot figure out in which way the School Board red tape could possibly affect his work.

  Philippe looks like an old rocker, with his white hair pulled into a ponytail, his battered jeans, and his turtleneck. A down-market Steve Jobs. He smells, even from afar, of cigarettes. From my second floor classroom window I sometimes see him smoking in the backyard. When we were at Saint Norbert, he was still living with his mother, who has since died of cancer.

  At seven o’clock, when I go down into the gymnasium, the five rows of chairs in front of my table are already occupied. Among the parents I specifically asked to come, only Jamal’s and Ernesto’s have shown up. Sabrina’s mother has avoided me since our last conversation over the phone. I regularly send her messages through Sabrina’s agenda, but she never signs them, which further complicates my life. She has abandoned the fight for her daughter, and she would like me to do the same and leave her alone. Her cell phone is always turned off, and the answering machine never works at home. I had to mail her a letter in order to ask her to come to this meeting. Recently, Sabrina was suspended for two weeks. I’m not even sure her mother knew. A few days after Sabrina’s return, the principal suspends her again, this time for scratching Moses’s cheeks during recess.

  Jamal’s parents look like teenagers. The father is Haitian and the mother Moroccan. Jamal inherited his father’s curly hair and his mother’s magnificent eyes. They’ve brought their other three children with them, toddlers now racing around the gym. I imagine how difficult it must be for them to put up with each other in order to be here and face every teacher in the room. I’ve been told they’re divorced, and Jamal is commuting every week between two houses and is not very welcome in either.

  “What can we do for Jamal?” they ask me.

  Do they know that for their son, school is nothing other than a boring waiting room until September, when he’ll be old enough to drop out? And that he’s decided, in the meantime, to cause as much trouble as possible in every class?

  They are both aware of this. Nevertheless, the father says that at home, Jamal is quiet and polite. I answer that this is the case with all disruptive students. At home they are all angels. The mother promises to hire a private tutor for Jamal. She asks if I could give him some supplementary work. I tell her that what he has in the book, which he hasn’t opened all term, will be enough. I promise her, though, to photocopy some extra exercises for him. She also asks me to make a note of incidents in his agenda, but Jamal pretends he’s lost it. She promises to buy a new one. Too many promises all at once. Otherwise, they’re the same old promises she made to me last term.

  Next in line is Ernesto’s mother, who turns heads with her miniskirt and décolletage. She wears heavy makeup and a blond wig that’s all wrong with her C
olombian olive skin.

  She repeats the same things she says over the phone, that she’s lost control over her son since the death of her mother, who was taking care of him. Ernesto has been at war with his mother ever since. She promises to ask for her ex-husband’s help as soon as she tracks him down.

  By nine o’clock, Selena’s parents are the only ones I still have to see. This is the first time I’ve met this couple, and I wonder why they’re here. Selena is not terribly smart, but at least she’s quiet. Her mother is Mexican and her father Asian, I don’t know where from.

  They’re here to ask for the same psychological support for Selena that her big sister gets. I don’t know what they’re talking about. The mother tells me she recently learned she has cancer, and the school decided to support the older girl, who is in the ninth grade. They do not understand why Selena was excluded, as she needs help just as much as her sister. She smiles, but her husband looks at me with frowning eyes. I note the request and promise to speak to the principal about it.

  The gym is almost empty. There were fewer people than usual, probably because of the hot weather. Only Tasha, the science teacher, still has a number of parents waiting. Because of her French (she was born in Russia), her explanations take a long time. What I don’t understand is why she insists on going over the whole report card, which the parents already got by mail.

  In the far corner, I see Oliver, the art teacher, who is already done, in spite of the scolding he gave the parents for their untalented children. He is walking from table to table to stretch his good leg, leaning on his cane, and he has finally found a reason for dissatisfaction: the water bottles. This year, the principal left them at the entrance to the gym for teachers to help themselves. Last year some of the seventh graders walked around to our tables with a basket full of the bottles. Oliver notes this decline in service in his agenda for the next General Assembly.