A Second Chance Read online

  I don’t like Gounod, but Adam is listening closely. From time to time, his eyes move to the conductor, whose head is caught in the floodlights. On stage, Mephistopheles is the character who interests him most. Adam follows him intently, I imagine because of his long black trench coat and his white makeup. The program says Alexander Vinogradov is the discovery of the season in the role, but I’m no expert. Even with his damaged brain, Adam may have a better idea of how good he is. I focus instead on the set, which is built out of large grey blocks that suggest a tomb, even when the action moves on to a banquet in the countryside.

  At the first intermission, I take Adam out to the lobby for a drink. I want a beer, but I point to the wrong bottle. I thought I was getting a Heineken, but find myself with a huge glass of champagne instead, and I hate champagne. Adam tries it, uncertain. He’s forgotten what champagne tastes like. I realize we had some sparkling wine for his birthday.

  “It’s champagne, Adam,” I tell him cheerfully, making the best of it. “For your birthday. Happy birthday, Adam.”

  He sips a small mouthful with satisfaction. He seems to like it more than the first time, and I pretend to like it, too.

  My gloom intensifies with the misogyny in the third act. Mephistopheles says, “A woman should not trespass the door of her house without a ring on her finger.” He condemns Marguerite to eternal damnation and humiliates her for her love affair with Faust.

  During the second intermission, Adam and I go back out to the lobby, and this time I just watch people at the bar who have forgotten their manners. I’m feeling light-headed and out of sorts. Adam’s smiley face makes me even grumpier.

  I share my indignation with Adam, but then I realize I didn’t explain the plot, so he has no idea what’s been happening on stage. I completely forgot that he’s unable to read the text in two languages running on a screen above the stage.

  I summarize the story for him briefly, enough for him to understand why I’m angry. Imagine, an old man who wants his youth back just so he can womanize. And at the end, it’s Marguerite who goes crazy and pays for his fantasy.

  “Is he that bad?”

  “Who?”

  “Faust?”

  “It is not because of Faust. It’s because of the Devil who makes him sign the pact.”

  “Then what happens isn’t Faust’s fault. Everything was going to be that way.”

  “Yeah, yeah. And Judas had to sell Jesus out. Your male way of taking responsibility.”

  Adam isn’t angered by my outburst. He keeps on smiling and is eager to get back to his seat. His feet don’t hurt as mine do. I have to go to the washroom. Adam doesn’t need to go; he still has a steel bladder. I tell him to wait for me here.

  When I get back, I see Adam from a distance, and he looks so normal with his old habit of standing with his hands behind his back. When I get closer, I see it’s only the good hand that’s behind his back; the stiff one is at his side.

  The student demonstrations make it difficult for us to leave the Place des Arts parking lot and get out of downtown. I have to make several detours until I unexpectedly find myself on Côte-des-Neiges. I then have no choice but to follow the road down Mount Royal, past Ridgewood to Queen Mary.

  Adam is wide awake, staring at the streetlights, the neon signs, the flickering lights over shop windows, the customers smoking outside bars. We’re almost alone on the street at this late hour, and I feel overwhelmed by the solitude of these crowded places.

  We have not been out much recently. Adam has seemed more ill-tempered than usual, and I wonder if this could be the reason.

  This weekend, I decide we’ll go to Quebec City. The idea is thrilling at first, but the prospect of driving all that way makes me nervous. When we used to travel, it was Adam who drove while I listened to the radio with my bare feet up against the windshield.

  I start packing on Friday evening. I even pack our toothbrushes, though I know we’ll need them in the morning. After breakfast, I have nothing to do except slip our pyjamas and slippers into the bag.

  It’s mild outdoors, in spite of the wind that came up after midnight and is now gusting powerfully as we leave the city. Adam looks happy in the passenger seat. After Trois-Rivières, he draws my attention to a huge flock of snowgeese resting on a lake beside the highway.

  Half way, we stop for gas and coffee – and to give me a break. I’ve never been a good driver, and the long trip tires me.

  Once we get to Quebec City, I follow our GPS, which leads me straight to the Clarendon Hotel. We were here once before, to celebrate when Adam finished his MBA and found his first job as a project manager for an aerospace company. He was happy, but mostly proud about this, and glad to leave engineering for a new career. What with foreclosures and the manufacturing sector moving to Asia and Latin America, he figured the engineering field was finished in Canada. From now on, it would be a new world of speculation, management, and research. He pretended to be upset about the fact that his new job was resulting in his losing his engineering skills. What was the real job of a project manager? Simply put, to speak on the phone and check-in to hotels. It was a funny kind of job, really.

  He worked at that for the last few years before his stroke, and he didn’t enjoy the job at all.

  He had no worries when we first came to the Clarendon Hotel. Sara had been accepted into dental school, we had paid off half our mortgage, and we had no other debts.

  I still remember the rage I felt when I saw the $250 item on Adam’s credit card bill. I told him it was criminal to pay so much for a bed. He answered that we deserved it every bit as much as the actors in those stupid ads for beauty products.

  Today I’m paying $300, plus $28 for parking.

  Our room is on the sixth floor, with a small living area and a double bathroom. Once I’ve hung our clothes up in the closet and put the toiletries on the glass shelf above the sink, I ask Adam if he wants to get some rest. He says yes. We take off our pants and socks and go to bed.

  The hotel is very quiet, except from time to time, when we hear the elevator stopping at our floor.

  We get up at four o’clock, feeling hungry. I help Adam get dressed, and we go for a walk around the Old Port. The wind gusts are strong and the light dazzling. Some of the tourists are in shirtsleeves, but it’s just for show. Their teeth are chattering.

  In the Old Port, we look at a few shops and stop for coffee and cake. Adam has a lot of trouble climbing the stairs by the Château Frontenac. I have to sit him down on a bench to catch his breath.

  We watch the river and the city of Lévis for a long time, on the far side of the St. Lawrence. I ask Adam if he wants to take the ferry just for the pleasure of being on the river, but he says he feels tired.

  At six, we set off for the Crêperie Bretonne, our usual stop for supper. A rancid odour hits me at the door, instead of the sweet smell of caramel I remember from previous visits. We order one crêpe with bacon and another with maple syrup for dessert. We both love crêpes, but I rarely cook them because of the smell.

  Back in our room, Adam crashes with fatigue. I have a bath, taking my time soaking in the bathtub. When I get back into the living room, Adam is in his pyjamas, watching TV. I don’t insist he take his bath. His body has learned how to conserve its energy. He doesn’t sweat a lot these days.

  I buy a movie for us to watch, The Artist, which has just won the Oscar for best actor. This will increase our bill by $14. Adam falls asleep after just a few minutes; he no longer understands movies. When I think how much he used to love them.

  In the morning, we’re among the first in the restaurant. What we enjoy more than anything on our trips is a hotel breakfast. The big hall is already filled with a group of high school students chaperoned by some adults, probably their teachers. They must come from outside of Quebec, for they speak only English.

  I tell Adam I find it strange th
at the school – or the parents – pay for such an expensive hotel for their children’s trip to Quebec.

  He does not understand what is strange about it. He has never had much money sense. He never found anything that pleased him expensive. He has always had a taste for luxury. Saving money and talking about the price of things has always displeased him. He used to pay without quibble for everything he wanted, and he wanted many things – postcards, souvenirs, sweets. When we were first married, we argued about this a lot, as I’m thrifty by nature. I was raised to believe that women should be thrifty. For the last few years before his stroke, though, I stopped checking Adam’s bills. Mostly, I stopped reproaching him for buying me expensive gifts.

  Adam eats with gusto. Maybe he recovers some part of his memory when he’s faced with sausages, omelets, grilled bacon, cheese, croissants, pastries, little boxes of strawberries or blueberries, bottles of orange juice, apple juice, grapefruit juice, cartons of milk, and containers of yogurt. The colours, the odours, and the elegance of it all excite him. He gobbles up everything I put on his plate and asks for more. I agree and go back to the buffet with him in order to avoid any unpleasant accidents.

  I allow him to help himself, and he arranges his food on his plate painstakingly with his good hand. He sets the plate carefully on the counter, grabs the spoon, taking more than he can possibly eat, then pushes his plate further along the counter. I tell him not to be in a hurry, he can come back for more

  When we’re full, we linger over our espresso in front of the large picture windows that overlook the street. Around us, the high school students are noisy, but their talk doesn’t disturb us at all.

  We go back to our room and decide to stay a bit longer. It’s too cold for a walk, in spite of the bright sun. According to the weather forecast, the temperature dropped considerably overnight.

  We loll around in bed all morning under the duvet. I read while Adam switches channels. He can’t find a wildlife documentary and settles for the news, which shows crowds of students in the streets of Montreal. This is the eleventh week of the student strike.

  Adam asks me what they want. I explain that they refuse to accept the government’s hike in tuition fees. He asks me again if the hike is a good or bad thing. I tell him that school is like Costco; you get what you pay for. On the other hand, we ourselves have greatly benefitted from low tuition fees. If they were higher, no immigrant would ever be able to afford to get a diploma or train for a new career. Immigrants are the ones who should really be marching in the streets.

  By eleven o’clock, I have the bags packed. Adam helps me out by putting the toiletries and the slippers by the suitcase.

  While I’m checking out, the valet gets our car out of the garage and parks it at the door to the hotel. I give him a $5 bill.

  Behind the wheel, I start laughing. Adam asks me why.

  “Because of the tip I gave him,” I say. “There’s a first time for everything.”

  Close to the highway ramp, I change my mind about heading back to Montreal. “We’ll do a little tour of the Île d’Orléans to check on our duck farm,” I tell Adam.

  He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t remember that we once planned to go into the duck confit business.

  The wind is so strong on the island that I have to hold onto the wheel with both hands. There are only a few pedestrians, and their cheeks are purple with cold. It’s less windy on the south shore, the sunny side with the farms and the orchards.

  Every time we went to Charlevoix, we stopped here for a bottle of ice wine and a jar of duck pâté. One day, we saw a For Sale sign at a duck farm that got Adam very excited, and, all the way home, he talked about going into business. We’d go back to the land. We had to come here, to an island in the St. Lawrence, where the first settlers arrived four hundred years ago, the water their best defence against attack. Our Quebec roots were here, where the first log cabins and churches had burned to the ground and were buried under new buildings. I teased him about reconnecting with the ancient Gauls and betraying his Dace heritage and mazare, brinza, viezure, varza. My skepticism about his farming skills fell on deaf ears. He wanted to rebuild this country on a new foundation. “What foundation?” I asked him. He didn’t quite know, but the dream lasted.

  I ask if he would like me to stop somewhere and go for a walk. He says it’s too cold.

  I stop anyway, though, in front of Felix Leclerc’s house, where we always used to stop. Adam looks at every picture on the walls while I read some lines of poetry that have been carved into the wood of the tables. We’re the only visitors in the huge hall, which serves as a museum and occasionally as a venue for literary events. The young woman at the front desk greets us and then goes back to her reading.

  I always check my email before leaving for school. This morning, there’s a message from Dora, no subject. I hesitate before opening it; at this hour I don’t have time to read the jokes and the miracle diets I always get from her. I’m early this morning, though, so I open the message before trashing it.

  She writes that Virgil, her husband, had a serious road accident yesterday at 4.30 p.m. and is in hospital. There are lots of spelling mistakes in her message. At the end she says that all those who want to see him alive for the last time can do so this morning at Sacré-Cœur Hospital, on the fifth floor.

  The telephone rings. Marta. She asks me if I want to go with her to the hospital. I tell her to ask Dora first, in case she isn’t able to drive. She says she’s already talked to Dora, and she needs to go in her own car so she can stop at the Police station afterwards to pick up Virgil’s coat and keys. I decline her offer, too, because I’ll have to go on to school.

  It’s been raining since dawn. I stay in front of the window for a few long minutes before going to the bathroom. Adam watches me anxiously; there are rarely any phone calls at this hour. If there’s one thing that worries him more than anything, it’s a disruption in our routine. I can’t decide whether to let him know what’s really happening, but his wary eyes make me realize that not letting him know would scare the shit out of him.

  “Dora’s husband Virgil had a motorcycle accident yesterday. He’s in hospital. I have to go and see him. It sounds as though he’s been badly injured.”

  “Will he die?”

  “I don’t know, Adam. He could also get well. There are a lot of people who get into bad accidents and survive.”

  Adam bows his head. My reaction surprises him. He must be wondering why his question makes me so angry, when I normally remain calm, no matter what.

  I have no time and I’m in no mood to set things straight. I rush into the bathroom and get dressed in the same clothes as yesterday, as I have no time to think of anything else. Before leaving the house, I explain to Adam one more time:

  “I’m going to the hospital to see Dora’s husband, who had a motorcycle accident. Then I will go straight to school. If I don’t get home on time this afternoon, I’ll be at Dora’s place or at the hospital. I’ll try to call you. Please, pick up the phone just this time. If it isn’t me, you can just hang up. Ok?

  Adam nods his head, but I know he will not touch the phone.

  The traffic is already heavy all the way to the Lachapelle Bridge, where one lane is closed for road work. I mumble that all these people are going to see Virgil. This is what Adam and I used to say whenever we were caught in traffic, that everyone was heading the same place we were.

  The hospital is not far from our house, but it takes me more than half an hour to get there.

  In the corridor, the smell of bad news hits me in the face. This is the way I felt the day I came here with Adam, who was unconscious, and the feeling lasted the whole time he was hospitalized. The bacterium of unhappiness is etched deeply into these walls.

  I am among the last to arrive on the fifth floor. A dozen others are crowding close to the door, anxiously asking for information. Marta repe
ats the same thing to each new arrival, like a robot: “Tell me it isn’t true.”

  We are waiting for the latest news from Dora, who is now with her daughter Nelly beside Virgil’s bed. We send Eugene over to them, and he comes back with Dora. She tells us that Virgil had head surgery overnight in spite of the fact that the doctors were almost certain he could not be saved. His brain was flooded with blood and had ceased all of its activities except for hearing. The motorcycle fell with all its weight on his head, crushing it like a watermelon. She warns us that what we were going to see is not her husband any more, but a machine working for his body.

  Cornelia, who is a nurse, advises her to ask for another tomography.

  Some of the women are unsure if they can bear to see Virgil this way.

  He’s in the recovery room, where small areas are sectioned off with blue sheets fixed on clotheslines. Behind these sheets we can hear the heavy breath of machines.

  When I go in with Marta, what I see is an old man with his mouth wide open and his eyes staring at the ceiling. An old woman next to the bed is holding his hand. It doesn’t look as though he’s still alive.

  Virgil is lying naked under a white sheet. His head looks like a huge distorted cannonball, with a few bruises and scratches on his right cheek. The surgeons had cut out a hole in the right side of his cranium to reduce the internal pressure, but the pooled blood in his brain mixed with grey matter started gushing out, and there was nothing else to do than stitch his head back together and wrap it up in this disgraceful turban. His belly seems huge in comparison to his feet, which are as dainty as those of a ballerina in the elastic socks the nurse has put on to help his circulation.

  Nelly is on the other side of the bed. She rubs her father’s arm and whispers something in his ear. One of the machines shows a little rise in activity, but after a brief moment it falls back to tedium.

  Out in the corridor, Marta starts sobbing. We’re all thinking the same thing – it’s impossible that that pile of flesh will come back to life.