The Main

9

He wakes to dazzling sunlight streaming through the bedroom window, and to a heavy block of pain lodged behind his eyes. Ouzo.

The sunlight is unexpected after three weeks of leaden skies. It might mark the end of the pig weather, or it might be nothing more than one of those occasional wind shifts that bring diamond-hard winter cold for a few hours, like the night that Italian kid was found in the alley.

He puffs out a little breath and is not surprised to see it make a shallow cone of vapor. It will be sparkling and frigid out in the park. He slips out of bed, trying not to let cold air in to disturb Marie-Louise. When he bends forward to fish around for his slippers, he discovers the clot of ouzo pain behind his eyes is loose and jagged-edged. One eye closes involuntarily with the ache of it.

He pads into the living room muttering to himself: an ouzo hangover. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Giddiness overwhelms him briefly as he stoops down to light the gas fire The last time he had a hangover like this was from drinking caribou, that most lethal of all liquids, with an old friend from Trois Rivières. But that was years and years ago.

As the bathtub fills, he cups his hands and drinks tap water from the sink. So desiccated is he that the water seems never to reach his stomach, being absorbed by parched tissue on its way down. He almost gags trying to swallow several aspirin with water from cupped hands. In the tub, his eyes closed, he sits a long time with steam rising all about him. The water and the heat and the aspirin combine to melt some of the ouzo out of his system; the nausea retreats, but the headache persists. Why did he drink so much? Why did he want to get drunk? He thinks about the love he and Marie-Louise made last night. It was good, and very gentle, particularly that long time he held her, between lovemakings. He believes it was good for her too. She wouldn’t have faked all that. Why should she?

He did not shave last night before bed, as is his custom, but he doesn’t dare try just now. He would probably cut his throat with the straight razor, shaky as he is.

While he makes coffee, he suddenly feels guilty about Marie-Louise. My God. If he feels this bad, what will she feel like? Poor kid.

The poor kid chatters with animation as she sits on the sofa, curled up in Lucille’s pink robe. He answers in monosyllables, turning his head to look at her; it hurts when he moves his eyes.

“What was that licorice stuff we drank?” she asks. “It was good.”

“Ouzo,” he mutters.

“What?”

“Ouzo!”

“Hey, what’s wrong? Are you mad about something?”

“No.”

“You’re sure you’re not mad? I mean, you seem…”

“I’m fine.”

“Say… you’re not sick, are you?”

“Sick? Me?” He manages a chuckle.

“I just thought… I mean, you told me to watch out for that… what’s it called again?”

“Ou-zo. Look, I’m fine. Just a little tired.”

She looks at him sideways with a childish leer. “I don’t blame you. You have a right to feel tired.”

He smiles wanly. He cannot quite forgive her for being so healthy and buoyant, but she does look pretty with the sunlight in her hair like that.

She goes into the bedroom to find her hairbrush. When she returns, she is humming one of the Greek songs, doing a little sliding step and dipping down, then snapping her head up on the rise. One of his eyes closes involuntarily with the snap of her head. She plunks down on the sofa and begins to brush her hair. “Hey, we’ll have to go out for breakfast. I told you that I didn’t buy any groceries. I spent all the money on clothes. Where will we go?”

“I’m not particularly hungry; are you?”

“Hm-m! I could eat a horse! And look what a beautiful day it is!”

The glitter of the park stings his eyes. But yes, it is a beautiful day. Perhaps a walk in the cold air would help.

With few places open on a Sunday morning, they take breakfast in one of the variété shops common to this quartier, although slowly disappearing with the invasion of large cut-rate establishments. Such shops sell oddments and orts: candy, bagels, teddy bears, Chap Stick, ginger ale, jigsaw puzzles, aspirin, newspapers, cigarettes, contraceptives, kites, everything but what you need at any given moment. Its window is piled with dusty, fly-specked articles that are never sold and never rearranged. In the jumble, knitted snow caps and suntan lotion rest side by side, one or the other always out of season, except in spring, when they both are.

The proprietor moves a stack of newspapers to the floor to make room for them at the short, cracked marble counter. He has a reputation in the district for being a “type,” and he works at maintaining it. Although his counter service is usually limited to stale, thick coffee in the winter and soft drinks in summer, he can accommodate light orders, if he happens to have cheese or eggs in the refrigerator of his living space behind the shop. They ask for eggs, toast, and coffee, which the proprietor fixes up on his stove in the back room, all the while singing to himself and maintaining an animated conversation in English, his voice raised, from the other room.

“Is it sunny enough for you, Lieutenant? But I’d bet you a million bucks it won’t last. If it don’t snow tonight, then tomorrow will be the same as yesterday—shitbrindle clouds and no sun.” He sticks his head out through the curtain. “Sorry, lady.” He disappears back and calls, “Hey, do you want these sunny side up?

Hey, you remember that one, Lieutenant? Oh-oh! I broke one. How about having them scrambled? They’re better for you that way, anyway. Egg whites ain’t good for your heart. I read that somewhere.

You’ve got to remember that one, Lieutenant. Bing Crosby.” He comes from the back room, carefully balancing two plates, which he sets down on the cracked counter. “There you go! Two orders of scrambled. Enjoy. Yeah, Bing Crosby sang that in one of his films. I think he was a priest. Say, do you remember Bobby Breen, Lieutenant?

That was a great movie. He sang that sitting on a hay wagon. You know, that ain’t easy, singing while you’re on a hay wagon. Yeah, Bobby Breen and Shirley Temple. Wonder whatever became of Shirley Temple. They don’t make movies like that any more. All this violence shit. Sorry, lady. Hey! You don’t have any forks! No wonder you ain’t eating. Here! Geez! I’d forget my ass if it wasn’t tied on. Sorry, lady. Here’s your coffee. Hey, did you read this morning about that guy getting stabbed in an alley just off the Main? How about that? It’s getting so you can’t take a walk around the block anymore without getting stabbed by some son of a bitch. Sorry, lady. Things ain’t what they used to be. Right, Lieutenant? And the prices these days!

Don’t you believe it! What can you get free these days? Advice. Cancer maybe. It’s a miracle a man can stay in business with the prices. Everybody out to fuck his neighbor… oh, lady, I am sorry! Geez, I’m really sorry.”

As they walk slowly along a gravel path through the park, her hand in the crook of his arm, she asks, “What was that mec jabbering about?”

“Oh, nothing. It never occurred to him that you don’t speak English.”

The crisp air has cleared LaPointe’s headache away, and the little food has settled his stomach. The thin wintery sunshine warms the back of his coat pleasantly, but he can feel a sudden ten– or fifteen-degree drop in temperature when he steps into a shadow. The touch of this sun, dazzling but insubstantial, reminds him of whiter mornings on his grandparents’ farm, the soil of which was so rocky and poor that the family joke said the only things that grew there were potholes, which one could split into quarters and sell to the big farmers to be driven into the ground as post holes. All the LaPointes, aunts, cousins, in-laws, came to the farm for Christmas. And there were a lot of LaPointes, because they were Catholic and part Indian, and you can’t lock the door of a teepee. The children slept three or four to a bed, and sometimes the smaller ones were put across the bottom to fit more in. Claude LaPointe and his cousins fought and played games and pinched under the covers, but if anyone cried out with joy or pain, then the parents would stop their pinochle games downstairs and shout up that someone was going to get his ass smacked if he didn’t cut it out and go to sleep! And all the kids held their breath and tried not to laugh, and they all sputtered out at once. One of the cousins thought it was funny to spit into the air through a gap in his teeth, and when the others hid under the blankets, he would fart.

On Christmas morning they were allowed into the parlor, musty-smelling but very clean because it was kept closed, except for Sundays, or when the priest visited, or when someone had died and was laid out in a casket supported on two saw horses hidden under a big white silk sheet rented from the undertaker.

The parlor was open, too, for Christmas. Kids opening presents on the floor. Christmas tree weeping needles onto a sheet. A pallid winter sun coming in the window, its beam capturing floating motes of dust.

The smell of mustiness in the parlor… and the heavy, sickening smell of flowers. And Grandpapa. Grandpapa…

Whenever a random image or sound on the Main triggers his memory in such a way as to carry him back to his grandfather, he always pulls himself back from the brink, away from dangerous memories. Of all the family, he had loved Grandpapa most… needed him most. But he had not been able to kiss him goodbye. He had not even been able to cry.

“…still mad?”

“What?” LaPointe asks, surfacing from reverie. They have rounded the park and are approaching the gate across from his apartment.

“Are you still mad?” Marie-Louise asks again. “You haven’t said a word.”

“No,” he laughs. “I’m not mad. Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“Nothing. About being a kid. About my grandfather.”

“Your grandfather! Tabernouche!”

That is a coincidence. He hasn’t heard anyone but himself use that old-fashioned expletive since the death of his mother. “You think I’m too old to have grandparents?”

“Everyone has grandparents. But, my God, they must have been dead for ages.”

“Yes. For ages. You know something? I wasn’t mad at you this morning. I was sick.”

“You?”

“Yes.”

She considers this for a while. “That’s funny.”

“I suppose so.”

“Hey, what do you want to do? Let’s go somewhere, do something. Okay?”

“I don’t really feel like going anywhere.”

“Oh? What do you usually do on Sundays?”

“When I’m not working, I sit around in the apartment. Read. Listen to music on the radio. Cook supper for myself. Does that sound dull?”

She shrugs and hums a descending note that means: yes, sort of. Then she squeezes his arm. “I know why you’re leading me back to the apartment. You didn’t get enough last night, did you?”

He frowns. He wishes she wouldn’t talk like a bar slut. He can hardly direct her to the apartment after she has said something like that, so they leave the park and stroll through back streets between Esplanade and the Main. This day of sunshine after weeks of pig weather has brought out the old people and the babies, making it seem almost like summer. In winter, the population of the Main seems to contract at its extremities; the old and the very young stay indoors. But in summer, there are babies in prams, or toddlers in harnesses, their leashes tied to stoop railings, while old, frail-chested men in panama hats walk carefully from porch to porch. And on the Main merchants stand in their open doorways, occasionally stepping out onto the sidewalk and looking up and down the street wistfully, wondering where all the shoppers could be on such a fine day. If one stops and looks in the window, the owner will silently appear beside him, seeming to examine the merchandise with admiration, then he will drift toward the door, as though the magnetism of his body can draw the customer after him.

The weight of her arm through his is pleasant, and whenever they cross a street, he presses it against his side, as though to conduct her safely across. They walk slowly down the Main, window-shopping, and sometimes he exchanges a word or two with people on the street. He notices that she automatically bends her knee to disguise her limp when a youngish man approaches, though she doesn’t bother when they are alone.

Around noon they take lunch at a small café, then they go back to the apartment.

For the past hour, Marie-Louise has puttered about, taking a bath, washing her hair, rinsing out some underclothes, trying on various combinations of the clothes she bought yesterday. She does not do domestic chores; the coffee cups go unwashed, the bed unmade. She has tuned the radio to a rock station which serves an unending stream of clatter and grunting, each bit introduced by a disc jockey who babbles with obvious delight in his own sound.

LaPointe finds the music abrasive, but he takes general pleasure in her busy presence. For a time he sits in his chair, reading the Sunday paper, but skipping the do-it-yourself column, which he finds less interesting than it used to be. Later, the paper slides from his lap as he dozes in the afternoon sunlight.

The burr of the doorbell wakes him with a snap. Who in hell? He looks out the window, but cannot see the caller standing under the entranceway. The only cars parked in the street are recognizable as those of neighbors. The doorbell burrs again.

“Yes?” he calls loudly into the old speaking tube. He has used it so seldom that he doubts its functioning.

“Claude?” the tinny membrane asks.

“Moishe?”

“Yes, Moishe.”

LaPointe is confused. Moishe has never visited him before. None of the cardplayers has ever been here. How will he explain Marie-Louise?

“Claude?”

“Yes, come in. Come up. I’m on the second floor.”

LaPointe turns away from the speaking tube to look over the room, then turns back and says, “Moishe? I’ll come down…” But it is too late. Moishe has already started up the stairs.

Marie-Louise enters from the bedroom, wearing Lucille’s quilted robe. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” he says grumpily. “Just a friend.”

“Do you want me to stay in the bedroom?”

“Ah, no.” He might have suggested it if she hadn’t, but when he hears it on her lips, he realizes how childish the idea is. “Turn the radio off, will you?”

There is a knock at the door, and at the same time the rock music roars as Marie-Louise turns the knob the wrong way.

“Sorry!”

“Forget it.” He opens the door.

Moishe stands in the doorway, smiling uneasily. “What happened? You dropped something?”

“No, just the radio. Come in.”

“Thank you.” He takes off his hat as he enters. “Mademoiselle?”

Marie-Louise is standing by the radio, a towel turbaned around her newly washed hair.

LaPointe introduces them, telling Moishe that she is from Trois Rivières also, as if that explained something.

Moishe shakes hands with her, smiling and making a slight European bow.

“Well,” LaPointe says with too much energy. “Ah… come sit down.” He gestures Moishe to the sofa. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“No, no, thank you. I can only stay a moment. I was on my way to the shop, and I thought I would drop by. I telephoned earlier, but you didn’t answer.”

“We took a walk.”

“Ah, I don’t blame you. A beautiful day, eh, mademoiselle? Particularly after all this pig weather we appreciate it. The feast and famine principle.”

She nods without understanding.

“Why did you phone?” LaPointe realizes this sounds unfriendly. He is off balance because of the girl.

“Oh, yes! About the game tomorrow night. The good priest called and said he wouldn’t be able to make it. He’s down with a cold, maybe a little flu. And I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to play three-handed cutthroat.”

On the rare occasions when one of them cannot make the game, the others play cutthroat, but it isn’t nearly so much fun. LaPointe is usually the absent one, working on a case, or dead tired after a series of late nights.

“What about David?” LaPointe asks. “Does he want to play?”

“Ah, you know David. He always wants to play. He says that without the burden of Martin he will show us how the game is really played!”

“All right, then let’s play. Teach him a lesson.”

“Good.” Moishe smiles at Marie-Louise. “All this talk about pinochle must be dull for you, mademoiselle.”

She shrugs. She really hasn’t been paying any attention. She has been engrossed in gnawing at a broken bit of thumbnail. For the first time, LaPointe notices that she bites her fingernails. And that her toenails are painted a garish red. He wishes she had gone into the bedroom after all.

“You realize, Claude, this is the first time I have ever visited you?”

“Yes, I know,” he answers too quickly.

There is a short silence.

“I’m not surprised that Martin is ill,” Moishe says. “He looked a little pallid the other night.”

“I didn’t notice it.” LaPointe cannot think of anything to say to his friend. There is no reason why he should have to explain Marie-Louise to him. It’s none of his business. Still… “You’re sure you won’t have some coffee?”

Moishe protects his chest with the backs of his hands. “No, no. Thank you. I must get back to the shop.” He rises. “I’m a little behind in work. David is better at finding work than I am at doing it. See you tomorrow night then, Claude. Delighted to make your acquaintance, mademoiselle.” He shakes hands at the door and starts down the staircase.

Even before Moishe has reached the front door, Marie-Louise says, “He’s funny.”

“In what way funny?”

“I don’t know. He’s polite and nice. That little bow of his. And calling me mademoiselle. And he has a funny accent. Is he a friend of yours?”

LaPointe is looking out the window at Moishe descending the front stoop. “Yes, he’s a friend.”

“Too bad he has to work on Sundays.”

“He’s Jewish. Sunday is not his Sabbath. He never works on Saturdays.”

Marie-Louise comes to the window and looks down at Moishe, who is walking down the street. “He’s Jewish? Gee, he seemed very nice.”

LaPointe laughs. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know. From what the nuns used to say about Jews… You know, I don’t think I ever met a Jew in person before. Unless some of the men…” She shrugs and goes back to the gas fire, where she kneels and scrubs her hair with her fingers to dry it. The side closest to the fire dries quickly and springs back into its frizzy mop. “Let’s go somewhere,” she says, still scrubbing her hair.

“You bored?”

“Sure. Aren’t you?”

“No.”

“You ought to get a TV.”

“I don’t need one.”

“Look, I think I’ll go out, if you don’t want to.” She turns her head to dry the other side. “You want to screw before I go?” She continues scrubbing her hair.

She doesn’t notice that he is silent for several seconds before he says a definite “No.”

“Okay. I don’t blame you. You worked hard last night. You know, it was real good for me. I was…” She decides not to finish that.

“You were surprised?” he pursues.

“No, not exactly. Older men can be real good. They don’t usually blow off too quickly, you know what I mean?”

“Jesus Christ!”

She looks up at him, startled and bewildered. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing! Forget it.”

But her eyes are angry. “You know, I get sick and tired of it, the way you always get mad when I talk about… making love.” Her tone mocks the euphemism. “You know what’s wrong with you? You’re just pissed because someone else a fait sauter ma cerise before you could get at it! That’s what’s wrong with you!” She rises and limps strongly into the bedroom, where he can hear her getting dressed.

Twice she speaks to him from the other room. Once repeating what she thought was wrong with him, and once grumbling about anybody who didn’t even have a goddamned TV in his pad…

He answers neither time. He sits looking out over the park, where the sun is already paling as the skies become milky again with overcast.

When she comes back into the living room, she is wearing the long patchwork dress she bought yesterday. As she puts on her new coat, she asks coldly, “Well? Coming with me?”

“Do you have your key?” He is still looking out the window.

“What?”

“You’ll need your key to get back in. Do you have it?”

“Yes! I’ve got it!” She slams the door.

He watches her from the window, feeling angry with himself. What’s wrong with him? Why is he fooling around with a kid like this anyway, like a silly old fringalet? There’s only one thing to do; he’s got to find her a job and get her the hell out of his apartment.

Marie-Louise walks huffily down the street, not bothering to flex her knee to conceal the limp, because she knows he’s probably looking down at her and will feel sorry for her. She is angry about not getting her own way, but at the same time she is worried about spoiling a good thing. It’s dull and boring, that frumpy apartment, but it’s shelter. He lets her have money. He doesn’t ask much of her. Shouldn’t ruin a good thing until you’ve got something better. She recalls how the young Greek boy played the tripoteux with her under the table last night. Perhaps the old man noticed. Maybe that’s why he’s so irritable.

Anyway, she’ll let him stew about it for a while, then she’ll come back to the apartment. He’ll be glad enough to see her. They don’t get all the young stuff they want, these old guys.

Maybe she’ll walk over to the Greek restaurant. See if anyone’s around.

Beyond the window, evening has set in, fringing the layers of yeasty cloud. The morning’s sunlight was a trick after all, a joke.

The gas fire hisses, and he dozes. He remembers the watery sunlight in the park. It reminded him of Sunday mornings in the parlor of his grandparents’ farmhouse. Floating motes of dust trapped in slanting rays of sun. The smell of mustiness… and the heavy, sickening smell of flowers.

Grandpapa…

A bright winter day with sun streaming in the parlor window, and Grandpapa, thin and insubstantial in the box. All the children had to walk in a line past the coffin. The smell of flowers was thick, sweet. Claude LaPointe’s shirt was borrowed, and too small; the tight collar gagged him. The children had been told to take turns looking down into dead Grandpapa’s face. The little ones had to stand tiptoe to see over the edge of the coffin, but they did not dare to touch it for balance. You were supposed to kiss Grandpapa goodbye.

Claude didn’t want to. He couldn’t. He was afraid. But the grownups were in no mood for argument. There were already tensions and angers about who should get what from the farm, and everyone seemed to think that one uncle was grabbing more than his share. And who would take care of Grandmama?

Grandmama didn’t cry. She sat in the kitchen on a wooden chair and rocked back and forth. She wrapped her long thin arms around herself and rocked and rocked.

Claude told his mother in confidence that he was afraid he would be sick if he kissed dead Grandpapa.

“Go on now! What’s wrong with you? Don’t you love your Grandpapa?”

Love him? More than anybody. Claude used to daydream about Grandpapa taking him away from the streets to the farm. Grandpapa never knew about the daydreams; Claude was only one of the press of cousins who used to line up to mutter “Joyous Christmas, Grandpapa.”

“Stop it! Stop it right now!” Mother’s whisper was tense and angry. “Go kiss your grandfather.”

The smooth dusty face was almost white on the side touched by a beam of winter sun. And his cheeks had never been so rosy when he was alive. He smelled like Mother’s make-up. He used to smell like tobacco and leather and sweat. Claude closed his eyes tight and leaned over. He made a peck. He missed, but he pretended he had kissed Grandpapa. To avoid hearing the grownups’ tight, muttered arguments about furniture and photographs and Grandmama, he went into the summer kitchen with the other kids, who by turns were making shuddering faces and scrubbing their lips hard with the backs of their hands. Claude scrubbed his lips too, so everyone would think he had really kissed Grandpapa, but as he did it he knew he was being a traitor to the living Grandpapa, whom he had never kissed because they were both physically reticent types.

The fat cousin who used to fart under the covers whispered a joke about the make-up, and the girl cousins giggled. His face blank, Claude turned from the window and hit his cousin in the mouth with his fist. Although the cousin was two years older and bigger, he had no chance; Claude was bashing him with all the force of his rage, and fear, and shame, and loss.

Some grownups pulled Claude off the bleeding and howling cousin, and he was shaken around and sent upstairs to be dealt with later, after the priest left.

He sat on the edge of the bed in the grandparents’ room. He had never been there before, and it seemed foreign and unfriendly, but he was glad to be alone so he could cry without the others seeing. No tears came. He waited. He opened his mouth and panted out sharp little breaths, hoping to start the crying he needed so badly. No tears would come. A hot ball of something sour in his stomach, but no tears. Others who loved Grandpapa less than Claude could cry. They could afford to let Grandpapa be dead, because they had other people. But Claude…

When they came up to punish him, Claude was lost in a daydream about Grandpapa coming to Trois Rivières and taking him away to live on the farm.

That was how he handled it.

It is after midnight. LaPointe has been in bed for over an hour, slipping in and out of light sleep, when he hears the lock turn in the front door. It closes softly, and Marie-Louise tries to tiptoe into the bedroom, but she bumps into something. She suppresses a giggle. There is movement and the rustle of clothes being taken off. She slips in beside him, and cold air comes in with her. He does not move, does not open his eyes. Soon her breathing becomes regular and shallow. She sleepily presses against his back for warmth, her knees cold against the backs of his legs.

He can smell the licorice of ouzo on her breath, and the smell of man’s sweat on her.

…he can’t breathe…

…he wakes with a start. His face is wet.

He can’t understand it. Why are his eyes wet?

He falls back to sleep, and next morning he does not remember the dream.