A Second Chance Read online

  This morning, before the start of classes, he came to my corner to lecture me. This is not the first time he has told me he hates my students. My group nine, with students like Sabrina, Ernesto, and Jamal, has the reputation of disrupting every class – especially art class. I tell him I’m powerless as I’m their tutor, not their mother. He carried on, telling me that Ernesto had scribbled something pornographic on his desk, Jamal drew the Haitian flag on his art outfit, and Sabrina threw a pot of red ink on Marc’s drawings. And they all left without cleaning their tools. I promise to do my best to calm them down. I don’t dare give Oliver the same advice I give some of the other teachers, that it is better to interest them than to threaten them.

  By lunchtime, his mood had completely changed. He came over to show me a picture he found on the Internet. It was an image taken at the beginning of the century, of the spot where our school was to be built, with the church on the other side of the street and some carts parked in front of it. At that time, Saint Justin School was nothing more than a wasteland. There was a white house with carved pillars nearby, and Oliver pointed out an old woman sitting on the balcony. She looked like she was waiting for somebody to come down St. Justin Street. This house today is a ruin that nobody wants.

  I pretended to be enthusiastic about his discovery. I was relieved it was just a picture and nothing more serious. The day before, Oliver was in the staff room with a notice he had ripped off the bathroom wall with instructions for hand washing. Were we that stupid that we had to be told how to wet, soap, scrub, and rinse our hands? Who took us for such brainless creatures? He wanted to take this complaint to the top.

  I’m home by ten o’clock. The light in the living room is on, the TV is blaring, and Adam is asleep on the couch. He doesn’t hear the front door and he doesn’t hear my footsteps on the stairs.

  I watch him sleeping, his palms together under his left cheek. At this moment, he looks the same to me – the man I have watched sleeping all these years. There’s nothing to suggest he has changed. His body, his face, his lips are the same. This is the man I fell in love with. The small stain on his brain cannot turn him into someone else, someone less worthy of being loved, someone who deserves to be abandoned.

  Who could I replace him with? With Oliver, who displays his cane like a trophy to show me he is a better choice, despite his stiff leg? With Robert, who pretends to be disturbed by my chair? Or with Mario, divorced, who is forever working on a Master’s, always preoccupied by his children’s problems?

  On Friday evening, Adam chews his olives bitterly. The intact quarter of his brain has not forgotten to hate the Mediterranean diet. The most difficult thing for me is to convince him that olives are part of our own heritage, sort of. That terrible heritage. He always hated this topic, which used to come up in many of our conversations.

  “There are no olive trees at home, it’s as simple as that,” he always said.

  This was how he tried to stop stocking such products in our refrigerator. Not to mention the extra-virgin olive oil. What a nightmare to discover that in a salad.

  “My body does not know how to digest it, according to your theory, as I did not eat it when I was child. So why do you want to kill me with this poison? It tastes bitter, too.”

  “The Bible says we also have to put bitter things in our mouth.”

  “Can you please show me that passage in the Bible? If so, I will eat it, binding included.”

  This was the kind of exchange we used to have on evenings when I didn’t have time to cook and improvised with a simple meal that was not to Adam’s taste.

  I was just as insistent as he was. I was tireless in explaining my theory to him on the place of olives in our national cuisine.

  We did not have olive trees because of the climate, that’s true, but we did have the Greeks. And during their hundred-year reign, they surely brought olives with them. Olives are easily kept in brine. The leaders of our Orthodox church were often Greek, and I was certain they must have introduced some of the foods they used to eat. My parents were crazy about olives. This was not the case in Adam’s family, and the only way I could explain that was that his ancestors came from an isolated mountainous region.

  Adam doesn’t object to olives any more, but he still doesn’t like them. He chews them unwillingly, convinced I’ve told him they’re good for him. Which is a reason that trumps all others.

  On Sunday morning, I tell him about a Maclean’s article on the economics and demographics of the new Canada. For the first time since Confederation, wealth is concentrated in the West. The only consolation, if we need one, is that the West is also suffering from what economists call the Dutch disease, by which they mean an overreliance on the export of raw materials.

  “You were a Liberal, Adam,” I add. “You wanted to join the Liberal party in order to fix it. The Grits needed you after two university professors ruined the party. It was time for an immigrant engineer to put their big train back on the rails.”

  Adam laughs, which pleases me. It seems that the political fibber is still there. I laugh, too, and arrange his hair, which is standing up in a comical comb that makes him look like Tintin.

  “The Conservatives were lucky this time. And look at the result. They’re forcing me to keep on working until I’m seventy years old.”

  The phone rings. It’s Sara saying goodbye before leaving for a cruise. George is driving them to Plattsburg, and then they’re catching a flight to Florida. I renew my offer to pick them up at the airport when they get back next week, but Sara declines. Michael’s father will make the trip again, mainly because they’re getting in at midnight.

  Adam looks at me dazed. He waits for some explanation. He pays unusual attention when I speak to Sara.

  “They’re going on a Caribbean cruise,” I tell him. “They’ll eat lots of junk food and lie on a chaise-longue in the sun all day, connected to a straw.”

  The children are well aware of my opinion of such vacations. This is why they waited until the last minute to tell me about their departure.

  This gives me an idea, though. Adam and I will stay in their apartment for the weekend, just for a change.

  Adam agrees on the spot. Yet as soon as I start packing, his cheerfulness vanishes. Where are we going with all that baggage?

  I don’t have time to sit down with him and explain it all again. I run from one room to another, tossing items we will need into a bag: pyjamas, shoes, toothbrushes, pills.

  Adam sits on the sofa, his head bent downwards. Does he believe this is a scheme to oust him? Does he fear banishment to a rest home?

  “We’re going to Sara’s,” I finally reassure him.

  “But why?”

  “To be downtown.”

  Ah, this matter of being downtown. Finally, I do not want that any longer. After years of hating suburbia, I have finally grown to like it. And the fact that I have finally found a job near my house is a heavenly gift.

  We get to the apartment on Ridgewood by noon.

  I like this street. We bought this apartment close to the Université de Montréal when Sara was still a student, but she didn’t really take advantage of being there. It was only a twenty-minute walk, but she rarely walked. Michael gave her a lift, most of the time, up the mountain to the Faculty of Dentistry, on his way to the hospital where he was doing his residency. In winter, she even preferred to be there an hour early just to avoid getting there in a sweat.

  They’re still living here, even after graduating. At first, they found it too small, but now they’re used to it. They appreciate the interior parking for Michael’s car and the bus out front that Sara takes to work. They have no kids yet, and they’re not too keen to buy a house and get into debt.

  I dream about the day when I will move into this apartment. We bought it for our old age when we would not be able to run a house. Adam insisted on doing it during the subprime c
risis, when few people were investing in real estate. We were also able to take advantage of the lowest interest rates in history. This is how we found ourselves with a second mortgage, but it wasn’t too much of a sacrifice as our house is now paid for.

  The kids are now in charge of paying the expenses. I stopped paying the mortgage after Adam’s stroke, I needed the money to keep our own household going.

  Sara has kept the bright colours we chose when we bought the apartment: red and orange. The rooms still smells new, too, as they’re always buying furniture. Their last acquisition was a white leather couch. This horrid leather. They bought it on the sly, as they know my opinion of leather: cold in winter, sticky in summer. I dream of the day I can dump my own leather sofas. I only keep them for sentimental reasons, which is always a bad idea. When I told the kids I wanted to replace them with new, fabric-covered sofas, Sara said that Adam loved the leather ones. It’s true; we bought them when we got our first permanent jobs here. This was proof of our success, and it had given us a feeling of security.

  We settle in their office, where Sara has a sofa bed, also black leather. On the walls, Sara has added two new paintings of white lilacs on a violet background. From time to time she still paints. This was the passion of her childhood, when she wanted to enroll in art school. Behind the door, she keeps the easel with a half-finished painting of grey skyscrapers on a foggy morning.

  Whenever I’m alone in their apartment, I check out Sara’s new dresses, skirts, and blouses. My mother used to do this with my things, so I find nothing wrong with it. Unlike my mother, who used to wear the clothes I no longer wanted, I can’t wear anything of Sara’s. Our tastes are completely different.

  What surprises me is how tidy Sara has become. When she lived at home, her room was a mess. Her underwear was higgelty-piggelty in one messy drawer, and her blouses and T-shirts were in a pile on the chair and on her bed. She had to be ordered to clean up her room.

  Now, her blouses are all on hangers, her pullovers are folded, her underclothes are arranged neatly in separate drawers. Her shoes are nicely lined up, too, with steel shoetrees stretching the leather.

  I ask Adam to turn on the TV while I get organized in the kitchen. He can’t work the remote control, and it takes me a few minutes to figure it out myself.

  Sara is accumulating sophisticated kitchenware – coffee mugs, platters, ladles, jars – all from the most expensive stores. A potted plant looks as though it hasn’t been watered for some time. I decide to save it even though I did not actually intend to tell Sara about this invasion.

  The children don’t cook much, so their fridge is full of jars, pickles, jams, cheeses, and sausages. I will have to confess to staying here, for sure, as I’ve already opened most of the jars to taste the marinated seafood, almond-stuffed olives, Greek feta in olive oil and basil leaves, and sour cherry compote.

  Sara loves the same things I love, and when she does cook she makes dishes she learned from me.

  I make a platter of cold cuts and open a bottle of wine. Adam is excited. How come he remembers that he likes this kind of sausage?

  He eats with gusto and drinks deeply. I’m afraid he’ll have a headache later, so I give him Advil right away. After all, we’re on vacation.

  At naptime, he stays in the living room to watch TV. Sara has more channels than we do, and he treats himself to his wildlife documentaries.

  I try to snooze. It’s warm and comfortable, and I’m tired, but I can’t fall asleep. The pianist who lives on the fourth floor has just started her afternoon practice. I recognize the tune, which is one that Sara used to sing to me. Unable to fall asleep, I hum the notes the pianist is playing over and over again, and this calms me.

  An hour later, I ask Adam if he wants to take a walk. He says yes, his eyes on the screen.

  We walk down Ridgewood to Côte-des-Neiges, then over to Queen Mary. We stop in at the bookstore, Olivieri, and then sit down for coffee and cake outside the Brûlerie Saint-Denis.

  The terrace is crowded with students exhausted after a demonstration downtown. They’re striking against the tuition fee hike announced by Charest’s Liberal government. It’s cold, but they’ve taken their coats off. Adam and I took the last available table.

  Many of them are smoking. I feel like a cigarette, too, but I don’t feel like getting up to find a place to buy them. I know there’s a dépanneur nearby, but I don’t have the energy to go. When I stopped smoking, it was because it was a nuisance having to buy them.

  Somebody stops at the railing. It’s Victor, of course. He’s an artist friend who lives nearby, and he has a way of showing up any time one of us stops for coffee around here. He has some special radar beamed on Côte-des-Neiges cafés.

  I invite him to join us, but he says he’s busy. I know what that means. It means he’ll now describe all his projects, which could take hours. I’m right. He’s leaning on the railing, lecturing us about his new work. The students don’t like him talking in a language they don’t know.

  Adam doesn’t remember Victor, and I think he finds Victor’s long, bushy beard and his white ponytail alarming. I can’t help him right now, for Victor doesn’t know much about Adam’s condition. He just thinks Adam’s a bit crazy, but then Victor takes a dark view of everything.

  By four o’clock, the sun has gone behind the buildings on the other side of the street, and the temperature is dropping. We’re shivering, and the students are chilled, too, but they’re not ready to leave yet. They’re sure they’ll win against the Liberals, and this warms their blood.

  We head back to Sara’s, which takes longer than I thought, for Adam has trouble getting up the hill. We find a bench and sit down to let him catch his breath.

  The street is always busy, close to the university, full of student lodgings, and it’s the time of day when they’re walking their dogs and running errands. They walk effortlessly, and we watch them with envy.

  We’re close to the place where I crashed my car, I realize.

  “Do you remember the accident, Adam?”

  “What accident?”

  “The fender-bender with the young woman.” I point at the spot, on the curb behind us.

  “I’m not sure,” he says. “Was that a long time ago?”

  “Almost five years.”

  “I don’t really remember.”

  It happened a few months after we bought the apartment. We took our time renovating the bathroom and the kitchen. It was late afternoon, already dark, and I was coming to take window measurements so I could order curtains, driving carelessly on this zigzagging street, where there’s no street parking. I wasn’t going more than the speed limit, but I was distracted by the rents advertised on a new building to my left, which is how it happened. I had noticed the car ahead, but thought it was moving. I crushed its bumper and suffered worse damage to my own car, a broken light, a bent hood, and a cracked radiator. When I saw orange liquid spilling on to the asphalt, I thought it was my own blood.

  Behind the wheel was a young woman who had forgotten to turn on her lights and who had stopped in the street to look for an address,

  She got out of the car and yelled at me. “Merde, I’ve just had it fixed!”

  She was expecting a violent reaction from me and was making the first move. But I didn’t argue. This was my first accident. It happened because of her, but it was mainly my fault. I told her to calm down as I would to pay for the repairs.

  It was the end of November and very cold. I invited her inside my car to talk. I asked for her cell phone to call my husband.

  I told Adam what had happened. He told me not to do anything for the moment, just to turn on my indicators, if they were still working. He’d be there as soon as he could.

  While we waited, the young woman told me she lived in a flat on Côte-des-Neiges and was graduating from law school next year. She lived alone and was doing her
best, but everything was always going wrong. It was then that she said, “You’re lucky to have someone to call at a time like this.”

  When Adam got there, he checked my knees to see how badly I was hurt. Then he called Stavros from his cellphone and asked if he could replace a bumper without going through the insurance company. He told the young woman everything was fine. She should go to our garage to get it fixed, and he would pay the bill.

  The repairs to her Volvo cost us $1,500, but my Toyota was finished. Stavros wanted $4,000 to fix it, but Adam preferred to buy another car. That’s the one I’m driving now, a black Nissan.

  This evening, we eat more sausage and cheese and drink beer. The kids throw a lot of parties, and there are impressive quantities of alcohol in their apartment.

  I want to go to bed early, and Adam has to come with me, as I’m not sure he knows how to turn things off here. I’m obsessed that nothing be left on overnight.

  The next morning, we take the bus to Alexis Nihon, where I restock my supply of henna at Pharmaprix. Adam sits on a bench while I shop, and we have lunch at a small restaurant before going back to Sara’s. Adam settles down in front of the TV, but I tell him we have to go home. I have to do my cooking for the week.

  I clean up, water Sara’s plant one more time, and take out the garbage.

  It’s Easter, six days of leisure I don’t yet know what to do with. I giggle at Adam, who is rolling around in bed like a kitten.

  I adore Adam’s body. I love him even more than I did when we were young. Despite the new hormones of misfortune that he is now releasing, he has kept his shape and, most of all, his smell. He’s still my man.

  When we go to bed, he faces me, puts his good arm around my neck, and I rest my head on his shoulder. I slip my fingers between the buttons of his pyjamas and rub his belly. After a quarter of an hour, though, I get him to turn over, as he will soon start snoring. In the night, I put one arm around his waist, the other on his head. When I’m awake, I tap him gently, and he responds by tapping my hand tenderly or by rubbing my feet with his instep. There is a mute language between our two bodies, which have known each other for such a long time.