thought that maybe you could go to the cottage . . . Just for the first month . . .’
That’s when I understood.
THEY LOVE EACH OTHER
It had been dark for a while by now. Boris Bogdanov watched from the window as Julie left her house. Beneath her half-buttoned winter coat she was wearing a very short skirt. The taxi had been waiting for a few minutes already. She quickly climbed in and the taxi sped away.
Boris Bogdanov sat down across from his aquarium and on a sheet of paper he carefully recorded the trajectory of one of his fish. His entire theory rested on his initial conviction. So before he could reach a hypothesis he must be sure his proof was well founded.
‘Da . . . da . . . da . . .’
Research is very complicated, but the logic behind it is simple. Everything must be proved. If you maintain that Melanie can wee standing up, before you can prove that she wees standing up, first you have to prove that Melanie exists. If she doesn’t exist, how can you maintain that she’s having a wee? That is why Boris Bogdanov had to make sure, first and foremost, that his fish always swam in the same direction, over the same course. He had drawn the trajectories of each of his fish on a sheet of paper, using a different colour for each one. He ended up with an enormous four-coloured knot, and with this he hoped to prove that each fish’s path depended on the paths of all the other fish.
Perhaps he should have paid more attention to Melanie having her wee. At least he could have had Melanie to talk to, because even with four fish it can seem really lonely when you feel like having a chat. The loneliness of the long-distance researcher.
There was classical music coming from the apartment across the way. Simon and Michel were sitting on their big sofa, luxuriating in the music. An LP was going round and round on a high-end stereo system. The interior design was tasteful, borderline rococo, with a dominant red note.
Before them on a little table was a bottle of Chivas Royal Salute 21 Year Old. Tonight, just like every night, they would drink two carefully measured glasses. The bottle lay in its blue velvet box, its neck adorned with a fine golden cord tied with a sailor’s knot. At one hundred and fifty-nine dollars a bottle in the shop at the Rare Spirits Society, they took good care of it. An all-white Maltese bichon, 4 Year Old, was whimpering in her wicker basket.
‘Simon took you out three hours ago. Patience, my friend!’
Simon and Michel had been living together for ten years, but they never went out together. It was as if they were in hiding. Everyone in the neighbourhood thought they were brothers. With their short-cropped white hair and elegant moustaches, they resembled each other a great deal.
They had met eleven years earlier. Simon was a psychoanalyst, and he had received Michel on his couch. Michel had gone into therapy for a malaise he could not explain. He was uncomfortable in his role as father and husband. He loved his only son, who was eighteen; he loved his wife, and they had been married for twenty-five years, but deep down something was not right. He didn’t feel well, as though he weren’t really himself. Only his job at the weather office, Météo Canada, made him happy. He was a hurricane specialist, working on a matrix for predicting the precise path of these natural predators. Simon, too, was married, and had two daughters, sixteen and nineteen.
As time went by, they found they had things in common. Simon knew he must never get close to a patient. But the more Michel opened up to him, the more Simon understood him. They liked the same things. They began to wish they could share them. They simply felt good together. More and more, they felt unhappy if they spent too much time apart.
‘Michel, I have two tickets for Alain Lefèvre with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. I shouldn’t normally go out with a patient, but it’s at Place des Arts, it’s not far from here . . .’
They went further than not far. Both got divorced at the same time and their families took it very badly. Particularly Simon’s; he was Jewish. The psychologists’ association of Quebec had never found out he was living with a former patient and they did not want it to get out. Whenever Simon took Pipo for a walk, Michel stayed home to cook. They had decided to keep their happiness to themselves, all the better to savour it.
The tempo of the music increased, from moderato to allegro. Simon’s hand slid over to take Michel’s.
They love each other.
AND I PRAYED TO THE SKY TO HELP ME
My dad got the bean, my mum got the crown, I got nothing. They looked at each other. My dad breathed in, my mum breathed out a sigh.
‘We have something to tell you.’
I didn’t want to hear it, but on they went anyway.
‘We want you to know that your mum and dad love each other very much.’
‘Well . . . still love each other very much.’
‘But, you know, sometimes you love someone, but everyday life gets hard . . . Things change . . . Time passes . . . You’re not the same any more . . .’
This all sounded complicated. My mum paused to catch her breath and at the same time put the crown back on, which had slipped off her head.
‘Sometimes it’s so hard that you can’t live together any more, because it’s just not the way it used to be.’
Friends at school had told me how their parents had broken the news to them. I hardly listened to what came next; I’d already heard it.
‘Your father and I have decided to split up.’
They stared at me, waiting for my reaction. I didn’t move.
‘We decided a month ago, but we didn’t want to spoil Christmas for you.’
I lowered my eyes, so that I wouldn’t have to say thank you. Let’s not get carried away here. I didn’t want to look at them, but I could tell they were looking at each other to see whose turn it was to speak. My mother has always been the more talkative one.
‘You will still have a mummy and daddy, they just won’t live together any more . . . One week you’ll be with Daddy, here. The other week you’ll come to my place. You’ll see, it’ll be almost the same as before. There are lots of children who are very happy living like this . . .’
That would make fourteen of us in the class now who migrated every week. Some of them say it’s cool. I looked up. I was all churned up inside. My mum stared at me. I stared back. She seemed worried.
‘Are you okay? You look like you’re not bothered about this . . . You’re allowed to feel something, you know.’
I had to say something. I didn’t want them to imagine I didn’t love them any more. I wasn’t thinking straight.
‘Who’s going to cook when I’m at Dad’s?’
My dad smiled as best he could. Not at all reassuring.
‘I’m going to buy a cookbook, and we’ll give it a go together. It’ll be fun.’
It was off to a bad start, this shared
