A Second Chance Read online

  I also like to caress his penis through the soft fabric of his pyjamas. I’ve always done this, but it isn’t the invitation to have sex that it used to be. It’s just a declaration of ownership, my taking possession of his body. Adam is mine. The blot on his brain doesn’t diminish the fact that his body is a perfect engine, beyond understanding. Adam is not just a collection of short-circuited neurons. He’s a fortress of muscles, veins, and organs that pulse, beat, and pound. Nothing can annihilate this complex scaffolding, which stands and acts by itself. I think this is a miracle.

  I tell Adam about Loïc, my student from group nine. He has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and he has no friends. No one in his class speaks to him, except to ask him for a pencil, an eraser, or liquid paper. His mother makes sure he always has some, for he always misplaces things, if he hasn’t forgotten his pencil case altogether. He wears braces and the elastics loosen by the end of the day. When he speaks, he opens his mouth like a fish to touch them with his tongue.

  He sometimes comes to my classroom at lunchtime to chat. On Friday, he told me about his plan to register at l’Ecole de l’humour to become a stand-up comedian. I asked him if, when he became famous, he would still remember his French teacher and give me an autograph. He said of course. He even intended to do a gag about my way of saying, “I am non-negotiable” whenever they ask me to give them a break with so much homework. I asked him if this was a kind of inside joke and he said, yes, they all make fun of me at recess, mimicking the way I say that.

  Loïc has the memory of an elephant, and I’m convinced he’s been misdiagnosed. I confide in him the line is a quote from Robert Lepage’s movie The Hidden Face of the Moon.

  As for his autograph, Loïc tells me I’d get one, for sure. He has already worked out his artist signature. I ask him to show me, and he signs his name on the first page of my agenda.

  At lunchtime, I show Adam Loïc’s signature, and he asks if he can put his own next to it. I agree. He has forgotten the baroque signature he used to use. He used to say this was a way of making sure crooks couldn’t forge his signature, but I knew it was pure narcissism. Using his left hand, he now has difficulty just writing his name.

  I have always told him about my day, about how my students astonish me. I’m still impressed by their spontaneity; blown away by their willingness to defy the system, to escape, slip through our fingers. Adults always seem to be out to get them. Their books and movies depict grown-ups as the problem and children as saviours. They’re good at mixing lies and truth, and they’re remorseless.

  At school, we have many ways of punishing the insubordinate. There are piles of papers in the secretary’s office, all waiting to be filled in, signed, and countersigned by teachers, specialists, the principal, parents. Rebels move through all the levels of Purgatory. They’re quick to apologize and pretend they’re sorry when the truth is, they feel not the slightest remorse. They know they’re right, and they hate grown-ups for wanting to make them feel wrong.

  The doctors have tried to convince me that Adam has regressed to his childhood, but I know they’re mistaken. Tormented though he is, my husband is still an adult. His baffled memory has not forgotten the height of the obstacles standing between an individual and the world, and he’s still aware of the consequences of what he does.

  What of the future?

  For his young counterparts at Saint Justin, the future is dark, overshadowed by climate change, which will transform the human being into a savage beast. My students are fired by the need for justice in a world that has lost its bearings.

  Adam has simply stopped thinking about the future, even about tomorrow. He lives in a perpetual present that’s only slightly darkened by the shadow of yesterday. He can take full advantage of what each moment has to offer.

  Will he ever recover? Will he ever regain what he once knew? And what would be the point? To rebuild his career, educate his child, serve society? What for, when all he wants is peace?

  I envy him for so brazenly escaping the system. He refused to play the game.

  Today, my first day off, I will embark on my criminal plan to cut down half of the lilacs in the garden, the ones that encroach on the grapevines. Adam made the trellis for the vines, promising me shade on the patio all summer, and though I was skeptical about getting any grapes from our own vineyard, it actually worked. Some years, we get such a bumper crop we can even make juice. The vines are much less plentiful on the side with the lilacs. I think they know I don’t like them and have declared war. In springtime, the flowers are anaemic and last only a day or two, but the leaves stay green until late in the autumn. I often asked Adam to cut them back.

  He was against this. He just didn’t like the idea of cutting down trees. The garden now looks like fallow land because of all the flowers Adam planted there over the years. There was no way to convince him to reduce the undergrowth of daisies, lilies, gentians, hyacinths, roses, freesia, phlox, sweet peas, mulberry and blackberry bushes.

  We go outside, where the grass is already getting green. I should rake the last of the fall leaves. We’re wearing tuques, gloves, and old winter coats. The day is cold and dark, as dark as my intentions. This is the day I’ll sacrifice the lamb.

  I take out the handsaw from the hut and tell Adam to follow me. I show him the lilac branches I want to cut down. He asks me how he can help. I tell him to hold them steady while I saw them down to their roots.

  I’m good at this kind of work, but I’m not really strong enough for it. The effort exhausts me, but I do manage to clear the lilacs.

  Adam carries the cut branches onto the stone platform into the middle of the backyard. In summer, we set up a small table here close to the grill.

  I study the grapevines I have now liberated from their hostile neighbour. Each spring, I take pictures and send them to my brother-in-law, in the countryside back home, to show them to my father-in-law. The old man takes his time analyzing them, drawing arrows, and writing down detailed instructions on how best to prune them. This year, he told me I had to cut down all the old vines to let the young ones grow, as they’re the ones that bear the fruit. I’ll probably have less shade this year, but I should have a good crop.

  That’s it for today. I was thinking of calling Michael to help me take down the car shelter, but I don’t feel like it now. Our Armenian neighbours from across the street are having trouble with theirs. They don’t see eye to eye on how to get the fabric off the structure. After a few unsuccessful attempts, the man decides to do it his way, and his wife leaves him to it and starts weeding the flowerbeds instead. I spy on them for a bit from behind the curtain of my office window until he asks for her help with the structure itself.

  What next? I’ll help Adam with his French and English vocabulary. Then we’ll spend an hour on his handwriting. He wastes time going for the crayon with his left hand, imploring me with his eyes to leave him alone, but I am non-negotiable, everybody knows that.

  When we’re done, I leave him in front of the TV and go to my office to read. At noon, I cook cabbage soup and grill some fish and vegetables. It was last fall when the kids got me to set the grill up on the patio. I protested, worrying about the dirt and grease, but it works great. I can now grill eggplant and zucchini all winter long, flipping them and then stepping inside to watch the fire.

  I do the laundry, hanging the clothes outside in the sun. Nobody does that in this neighbourhood, not even in summer. I know when they do their laundry because of the detergent smell coming from the dryer. Thanks to Adam, I can hang my laundry directly from the patio.

  We knew it was illegal to attach the clothesline to the Hydro pole. The technicians that come by to check on the electrical wires threatened to pull it down. Adam said they could do that; they show no mercy when branches of the maple tree touch the wires. Fortunately, they haven’t touched my clothesline.

  The twenty-first
of April is Adam’s birthday. He’s turning fifty, an age which used to make him quake. Sara asked me what I would like for him, as I’m now the real beneficiary of everything that concerns her father. I tell her we would like tickets to the opera. Her father always wanted to be the kind of person who lives well and goes to the opera. Immigrants don’t often hang out at the opera.

  Adam told me one day that for his fiftieth birthday he would like to do something special, something really different, like climb Mount Kilimanjaro or drive the length of Route 66. Now, the only novelty I can offer him is an evening at the opera.

  Sara called me to report that the only show on right now is Gounod’s Faust, I tell her that’s fine, and she says she’ll get the tickets.

  On Saturday, the twenty-first, it rains all day. Since our arrival here, there has been bad weather on Adam’s birthday practically every single year. Either it rains or it snows or, at best, it’s just overcast. In the morning, we stay in bed a long time, I with my book, Adam with his comic strip.

  In the afternoon we go to Costco. I don’t like this store, but its prices are unbeatable for the Opera cake we like for our birthdays, Liberty yogurt, and Danish Blue cheese.

  When we head out, I tell Adam we’re going to the place with the best value for our money. He does not laugh. He has completely forgotten this old joke.

  In the good old days, he honestly believed in getting the best value for his money at Costco, and he could never understand why I would tease him about it. One day, I explained.

  “When immigrants start talking like this, they feel they’ve reached all their goals. They’ve finally made it.”

  I kept going. When an immigrant lands in this holy land of prosperity, he watches enviously as his old compatriots emerge from these warehouses pushing one of those space-ship-like carts loaded with goods. He cannot afford the annual membership fee and he especially cannot afford to throw away half of what he might buy. Buying at Costco represents not only prosperity but also a willingness to squander money. If you’re not wasting money, in this country, you’re not a good citizen.

  We used to go to Costco from time to time just to use our card. Neglecting to renew our membership gave Adam the chill of dissidence. Failing to show off our Costco products as we carried them from the driveway to our front door was nothing short of rebellion.

  I took advantage of those expeditions to renew my supplies of olive oil, canned peas and tomatoes, jars of dill pickles and roasted red peppers, detergent, almonds, raisins, and black socks for Adam. It had taken me some time – and some detailed calculations – to figure out which items really were less expensive here than at the Arabs or the Greeks.

  That’s why we would maliciously tell each other, “It’s the best value for our money,” whenever we headed out to Costco.

  This morning, in silence, I help Adam get into the car.

  Despite the rain and the early hour, customers are trampling one another. The filled carts collide in the jammed aisles. The traffic is even heavier around the tables where people can taste new products or items close to their expiry dates. People crowd around the frozen products, the aisles with grilled sausages, cheese, bread, wine, and beer. Everyone is hungry. By the time they’ve paid for their purchases, people have done their best to leave the place with a full stomach.

  I get Adam behind me and dodge recklessly in and out of the crowd. I put an Opera cake into my cart, his favourite, a packet of pork chops that will last us two months, four jars of yogurt, two bottles of wine for unexpected visitors, salmon – $15 per kilo is a very good price – almond-stuffed olives, and Danish Blue cheese. That’s all. This the last time I will set foot in this place.

  I have to celebrate this decision. I offer Adam his last meal at Costco, saying, “We have to pay our tribute to America.”

  Adam says yes without knowing what he is approving. He has forgotten our teasing. I tell him to sit down at one of the tables while I go up to the counter for hot dogs and Coca-Cola. He avoids the eyes of a fat child at the next table.

  We stop at the IGA on the way home. Tomorrow we will have some guests for his birthday, and I want to avoid having to go out in the morning just for a baguette, so I want to buy the kind of bread that stays crusty till the next day.

  I suggest Adam take a nap. He says he prefers to watch TV. I don’t understand how it can be that things that used to tire him out have no effect on him nowadays. As for me, a visit to the supermarket still takes a year off my life.

  I go to the bedroom, draw the curtains, and get into bed. Fatigue crushes me when I remember that I still have to do the cleaning and most of the cooking. Maybe I should try the new practice of inviting people to a restaurant and getting them to pay for their own meal. Adam used to disapprove of imposing such an expense on our friends. They should at least get a free meal out of it when they bring a present.

  It’s six o’clock when I get started. Adam is watching a documentary on black caimans. He watches wide-eyed as scientists catch a huge specimen, load it onto a boat, carry it ashore and measure it. It’s a huge female, about three metres long. The narrator says it’s unusual for a female to exceed two-and-a-half metres, while males can reach four. They name her The Countess, a real matriarch. Despite her age, she can still reproduce. After tagging her, they follow her for a while during the feeding period before she lays her eggs.

  I’m going to serve our guests a cream of pea soup, and I’ll ask Michael to help out with the grill. I’ve set my heart on barbecued sausages and pork. There will be leeks with olives, as an accompaniment, and fried mushrooms with garlic and parsley. I’ll also have potatoes and roasted peppers with vinegar and garlic. We’ll end the evening singing, “Happy Birthday, dear Adam,” around the Opera cake.

  I cook until nine o’clock. Adam has settled in at the big table with his drawing book and his pencils. He’s in a good mood, and he puts a lot of energy into practising his handwriting. He copies a whole paragraph in French to improve his skill with his left hand.

  The phone rings a few times while I’m busy in the kitchen. I would like Adam to pick up, but he can’t manage that yet. Old friends are calling to wish him happy birthday. Adam is reluctant to take the phone and talk to them, but he has no choice. Before putting the phone to his ear, he interrogates me with his eyes about what he should do. I cover the phone with my hand and whisper, “Just say thank you.”

  So this is what he does. At the other end, people can’t even finish their sentence before he thanks them.

  When I’m done, I sit on the couch. Adam is already comfortable, switching between two movies. On Télé-Québec, there’s a Hitchcock movie – Marnie, I think – and on Astral, a movie in which Tom Cruise plays a serial killer. Adam stays on each channel just as long as there’s action. He clearly prefers the one with Tom Cruise, but only while Cruise is punching people out.

  At this level, Adam’s instincts are still very male. He still loves tough guys who hit each other and cars that crash into one another.

  I wake up at six o’clock on Sunday morning and look out the window, as usual. There’s a huge black skunk in the backyard, with a white V all the way down its back. It’s digging small holes in the ground, probably looking for seeds. I open the window and start banging the wall to shoo it away, risking getting sprayed with its rubber-like odour. It does nothing other than shiver almost imperceptibly at every thud. I decide to let it do whatever it wants, as I’ve only succeeded in waking up Adam. He’s the one who notices the snowflakes.

  “You see,” I say. “There’s always bad weather for your birthday.”

  The guests start showing up at one o’clock. The women sit on the sofa and the men in the kitchen around the counter. I serve Adam a gin and tonic, his first one since his stroke. The others prefer whisky. I’ve already prepared some appetizers with cheese, anchovies, and pickles.

  This is the most beautiful moment of every
gathering: the first sips of alcohol, the first nibbles, the first exchanges.

  Dora and Marta have brought flowers for Sara. I told them she and Michael got engaged during their cruise. The women analyze the small diamond that Michael ordered in New York and asked a jeweller here to set in white gold. They want to know all the details of where Michael proposed, if he knelt down like a knight, if he was romantic, if it was during the day or at night. Sara has never been much of a storyteller, and the attention embarrasses her.

  The evening they came to share the news, I passed over the event as discreetly as I could, unable to simulate an enthusiasm I did not feel. Sara and Michael have known each other since high school, they went to the same university, and they moved in together four years ago. This engagement brings nothing new; they were already a couple.

  For our evening at the opera, I have to go downstairs to the storage area for the big box on which I have written: May be useful. In this I’ve packed away a few all-purpose suits that could serve a variety of occasions, ranging from weddings to funerals. Why not for the opera?

  I choose light grey pants from one suit and a black wool jacket from another. I add a light mauve shirt and a red and black silk tie. Adam looks gorgeous.

  For myself, I go for a beige linen dress that may be a bit too sporty, but it goes well with my black silk blazer with the velvet collar and cuffs. I pin on the Swarovski brooch, which was a gift from Sara for my forty-fifth birthday. After a minute, I complete the set with my Swarovski earrings, bracelet, and ring.

  While we’re lining up to enter the concert hall, I get confirmation that we go well together. Adam and I draw all the attention of the people around us. Just as everything in opera is based on make-believe, I enjoy these few moments of looking like an ordinary, healthy couple.