Jocelyn said, “Here, you can have the rest.” The condensation of the cold paper cup against her hand jolted Madeleine in her seat and, now that she was back, she was terrified of having left her body. Her heart beat rapidly, panting like a tongue, stinging like a cut.
She stared at the floor — sticky splotches, the popcorn tar pits. She chewed the plastic straw. She was okay.
“So …,” says Madeleine, “what? Don’t just tilt your head attentively. Give.”
Nina half smiles.
“Come on, Mona Lisa.”
“The psychiatric term is ‘depersonalization.’”
Madeleine allows her gaze to rest on the bleached skull. How did O’Keeffe manage to capture an image of serenity rather than morbidity? “So how come people get depersonalized?”
“Any number of reasons,” says Nina. “Abuse, for example.”
Madeleine feels her body temperature drop. The breath drops from her body too. She has to go to the bathroom.
Nina continues. “It’s a survival mechanism. It can feel crazy, but it originates as a pretty sane response to an insane situation. The ability to ‘leave your body’ when what is going on is intolerable.”
Madeleine feels her face grow hot. Shame is a physical condition, there ought to be an over-the-counter spray to control its embarrassing effects — so much worse than leaving your dentures in an apple.
Nina pours Madeleine some water.
Madeleine says, in a Viennese accent, “Very interestink.”
Nina picks up the pink egg and asks, “Does Maurice ever speak?”
Madeleine doesn’t answer.
“Why don’t you do any women characters?”
“Why don’t you buy a new pair of Birkenstocks, those are getting on my nerves.”
A DOZEN MUFFINS
FROM ON TOP OF THE FRIDGE Mimi takes a bowl of muffin ingredients that she prepared earlier today, before driving her friend Doris to the doctor. Doris is widowed and has osteoporosis. Mimi is one of the lucky ones.
She removes the shower cap from the bowl, adds milk and eggs and stirs with the wooden spoon. She holds the phone receiver in the crook of her shoulder and talks to her sister Yvonne longdistance while she works.
“Doris, she’s the one with the stutter,” says Yvonne. Mimi can hear the clickety-click of needles — Yvonne is knitting.
“Yvonne! She has a slight speech impediment.”
“She turns everything into a shaggy dog story, that one. I’m always half-dead and totally starved by the time she gets to the point.”
Mimi laughs. “She wants to know when you’re coming up again.”
“Don’t tell her!”
“She’s going to give you a card party.”
“No!”
When Yvonne asks what she’s doing, Mimi replies that she is making muffins but doesn’t say that they are for her daughter. It’s not because Jack is close by, in the living room, that Mimi doesn’t broach the subject of Madeleine — he wouldn’t understand her in any case, because of course she and Yvonne speak in French. But Mimi doesn’t discuss Madeleine with anyone; not with her husband, because he doesn’t share her feelings about what he calls their daughter’s lifestyle; and not with Yvonne, because Yvonne does. She and her sister both believe that the way Madeleine lives is a mortal sin and a total rejection of her parents and everything they taught her. Yvonne is more graphic: “She shits on it.” Yvonne feels the anger and the disgust. Everything but the love.
So when Yvonne asks, Mimi replies, “Making muffins.”
“How’s my little prince?” Mon p’tit prince?
“He’s himself.”
“Put him on.”
Jack is in his La-Z-Boy. The condo is designed so that the kitchen opens onto the dining and living area. She can see the top of his head but she doesn’t want to wake him if he’s napping. The TV is on. She puts down the phone and goes to his chair; his eyes are closed. She turns off the TV; he opens his eyes.
“Just restin’ my eyeballs.”
“Want to say bonjour to Yvonne?”
“Sure.”
Within moments he is laughing. She can see his gold tooth, and a healthy colour enters his face. She spoons the batter into the muffin pan. Yvonne loves Jack as if he were her baby brother. Nothing has ever been too good for him. Un vrai gentilhomme, Mimi, ton mari.
The last time Mimi and her sister discussed Madeleine, it was likewise over the phone. Yvonne said, “What happened to her?” She shared Mimi’s belief that the blight must be the result of something. “Did someone touch her?”
Mimi felt sick in the pit of her stomach. Something had happened to her child. Because she had failed to protect her.
Yvonne said, “She always had a secret, that one.”
Like her father, thought Mimi.
“Did you ask her father?” Yvonne continued.
Mimi was startled because at first it was as though her sister had read her mind. Then she realized what Yvonne might have meant, and she went icy. She didn’t want to have to lose her sister, so she pretended not to have heard. And perhaps Yvonne had meant something quite innocent. The line was silent for a moment, then Yvonne said, “Men are men.” She always said this in English — the way some people reserve the foulest words for a foreign language.
Yvonne must have sensed what hung in the balance, because she never again broached the subject of “what happened to Madeleine.”
Mimi stands, muffin pan in hand, poised to open the oven when the red light extinguishes. Jack laughs and says, “I don’t know, I’ll ask her”—and to Mimi, “Yvonne wants to know how come you never bring me down home any more.”
“You tell her I don’t want les belles de Bouctouche stealing you away.” The light goes out and she slides the pan into the oven.
Dark, dark, far back in the back of her mind is a shadow. She never turns to look. It wafts from time to time toward the front, where it settles momentarily, like a veil, before retreating once more. The breath that lifts the veil and carries it is shaped into words as it passes through the lacework. The words must never be spoken and she does not heed them: did my child’s father touch her?
In Centralia, the look on the child’s face when she played — wrestled — with her father. The blood on her underpants, the little lies she told. No. Mimi squeezes her eyes shut and keeps busy. This is the kind of thought sent by the Devil. In whom she does not believe — a heresy for which, perhaps, she is being punished. So she has never asked her daughter, “Did someone touch you when you were small?”
Mimi is looking forward to meeting God. He will have some questions for her, but she has a few for Him. He doesn’t know everything, He can’t. He’s not a mother.
WHEN DO I FIND TIME TO WRITE? I’M WRITING RIGHT NOW
“WHAT ON EARTH is this?” asks Christine.
“It’s a barbecue.” Madeleine is on the balcony, tilted back on a kitchen chair with the phone and a mongrel accumulation of notes, trying to write.
“Really?”
“Yeah, it even bakes cakes.”
Christine stares at her. “Why would anyone want to bake a cake on a barbecue?”
“I thought you might like it.”
“I’m not your bloody wife, Madeleine.”
If you are an aspiring alcoholic, if you were abused by your parents, if you have a mysterious chronic condition and wish to find a reason for it, move in with someone who is trying to write. You need never look farther for the source of your pain.
Madeleine says, “I’ll cook supper, I’ll make paella.” She gets up, lifts a rounded lid in the centre of the barbecue. “See?”