Lucien bowed his head as Father Guillaume offered up sonorous Latin to the Lord. Absurdly, Galtier chose that moment to remember how strange the American priest who'd married Nicole and Leonard O'Doull had sounded while speaking Latin-he'd pronounced it differently from the way Quebecois clergymen did. But even they'd assured him it wasn't wrong, merely not the same.
After the Latin was done, Father Guillaume dropped back into French: "Marie Galtier no longer gives us the boon of her company on this earth. But she is at the right hand of the Father even as I speak these words, as she died in our true and holy Catholic faith. And she will live forever, for she was a good woman, as you show by coming here today to honor and commemorate her passing."
Nicole began to sob. Leonard O'Doull put his arm around her. Lucien wished someone would do the same for him. But he was a man. He had to bear this as a man did, as stoically as he could. His eyes slid to the black-draped coffin. He'd thought burying his parents was hard. And it had been. This, though, this felt ten times worse. That was his life going into the hole the gravediggers had hacked from the frozen ground. How can I go on without Marie? he wondered. He couldn't imagine finding an answer.
"In a real way, too, Marie Galtier does still live here among us," the priest said. Lucien almost called him a liar and a fool, there in front of everyone. Before he could say the words, Father Guillaume went on, "She lives in our hearts, in our memories. Whenever we recall her kindness and her love, she lives again. And because she gave us so many reasons to do just that, she will live on for a very long time indeed, even if her years among us were fewer than we would have wished. Think of her often, and she will live for you again."
He turned toward the coffin, making the sign of the cross and praying once more in Latin. All the people standing there shivering as they listened to him crossed themselves, too. As Lucien did so, he felt a certain dull amazement. Father Guillaume had been right after all. Lucien could hear his wife's voice inside himself, could see her smile whenever he closed his eyes. A marvel, yes, but a painful marvel. Seeing her and hearing her that way only reminded him he wouldn't see her or hear her in the flesh any more. Helplessly, he began to cry.
"Here, Papa." Of all people, his foolish son Georges was the one who held him and gave him a handkerchief: Georges, whose always-smiling face was as twisted with sorrow as Lucien's had to be.
"Thank you, my son," Lucien whispered. He felt his eyelids trying to freeze together, and rubbed at them with the handkerchief.
Then he and his sons and Marie's brother and Dr. Leonard O'Doull lifted the coffin and set it in the grave. What struck Lucien was how little it weighed, which had little to do with six men lifting it. After Dr. O'Doull found the mass in Marie's belly, after the X ray and the operation that only confirmed the worst, the flesh had melted off her day by day, till she was little more than parchment skin wrapped around bones by the time the end finally, mercifully, came. Those were memories of his wife Galtier wished he wouldn't carry into the future with him. No matter what he wished, though, he would have them till his turn to lie in a coffin came. He made himself go over to the priest and say, " Merci, Father Guillaume."
The young priest nodded soberly. "You are welcome, and more than welcome. This is a cup I wish had passed from me, and one I wish had passed from your wife as well. I would have hoped she might enjoy many more happy years."
"Yes. I would have hoped for the same." Galtier looked up into the cloudy sky. More snow might start falling any time. "Better God should have taken me. Why did He take her and leave me all alone?" That thought had been with him since he first found out Marie was ill.
"He knows the answer to that, even if He does not give it to us to know," Father Guillaume said.
"Marie knows now, too," Lucien said. "If ever I see God face to face, I intend to ask Him about it, and His explanation had better be a good one." The priest coughed and turned red. Galtier went on, "And if I don't see Him face to face, if I meet the Devil instead, as could be, then I intend to find out from him."
Now Father Guillaume gravely shook his head. "Satan is the Father of Lies. Whatever he might tell you, you would not be able to believe it."
With Quebecois stubbornness, Lucien said, "I'll hear what he says, and then I'll make up my own mind."
Charles came up to him and asked, "Do you want me to drive you home, Papa?"
"Why would I?" Galtier asked in honest surprise.
"After this… I was not sure how you would be," his older son answered.
"I am not so very well," Galtier agreed. "But if I am not so very well after burying my wife, are you so very well after burying your mother? It could be you would make a worse menace on the road than I, n'est-ce pas?"
Charles looked surprised, but nodded. "Yes, it could be, I suppose." He turned away. "I should have known you were too stubborn to take help from anyone."
"When I need it, I take it," Lucien said. "When I don't, I don't. Don't be angry at me, son. I am not angry at you. And the two of us, we're not so very different, eh?"
He knew that was true. Charles took after him in more than looks. His older son also had a character much like his own. After a moment's thought, Charles gave him the same sort of grudging nod he would have used himself. "All right, Father. Yes, you're right-I can be a stiff-necked nuisance, too. I'll see you there, then?"
"Certainly," Galtier said. "Where else would I go, but to my own house?"
But when he got out of the Chevrolet close by the farmhouse on the land that had been in his family for almost 250 years, he wondered. He didn't want to go back into the house. Going in there had always-not literally always, but more than thirty years came close enough-meant going in to see Marie. Now she wasn't there. She never would be there, not any more. And remembering that she had been there, remembering the life together the two of them had built, the life now forever sundered, forever shattered, was like knives to Lucien. He had to gather himself before he could go inside.
Nicole and Leonard O'Doull were already there. So were Charles and his wife. One by one and in small groups, the rest of his children and his wife's relatives and his friends came in. There was plenty to drink and plenty to eat; the womenfolk in the family had been cooking since Marie died.
"Thank you all," Lucien said. "Thank you all very much for coming. Thank you for caring for Marie." His face twisted into a characteristically wry grin. "For I know you certainly would not have come for my sake."
"Certainly not, mon beau-pere, " Dr. O'Doull said. "We all hate you."
For a moment, Galtier took him seriously, being too emotionally battered to recognize irony. But then even he saw the smile on his son-in-law's face, and those on the faces of his other loved ones. He wanted to smile, too, but ended up weeping once more instead. He felt mortified all over again, and angrily turned away from Dr. O'Doull.
"It's all right," said the American who'd become part of his family. "No one thinks less of you for it. Here. Drink this." He gave Lucien a glass of applejack.
The homemade spirits went down Galtier's throat without his even noticing them. He had another glass, and another, all with scant effect. He felt too much already for applejack to make much difference. For the next half hour or so, he thanked everyone who'd come to his house to say good-bye to Marie.
"What will you do now, Papa?" Georges asked him. "Do you know yet?"