Loddy-Dah Page 6

  “Not that kind of painter,” he said. “I’m a visual artist and have a studio not far from here. When Dewey told me he was a photographer and did some painting on the side, I told him to look me up if he ever made it to Montreal. We’ve been talking about maybe forming a partnership. Pool our resources together, you know.”

  “Really? Dewey never mentioned.”

  The fluorescent lights above them started to flutter. Fury drove forward, a tiger about to pounce, thrusting his body, goading her, pushing towards her. She stood in the flickering and neither spoke. A Tango ensued. She danced backwards with the awkward shyness of a novice until her butt touched the sharp edge of the card table. Back arched and arms upraised toward the ceiling, she was plummeting over Niagara Falls, floating over a mound of clothes. The flickering died and in the darkness she felt his thigh pressing hers, his fingers fumbling under her shirt.

  “NO! Get off!”

  “Loddy, I like you.”

  “Bullshit! You lied! You’re just like all of them. You just want to know what it’s like to fuck a fat girl. Get out!”

  “Loddy, that’s not true.”

  “I’ve got feelings too.”

  And so the tango resumed. She, driving him back, shoving his torso, and now his turn to dance backwards, doubling his steps until he was in the doorway, facing a poster of Mama Cass who seemed to be ogling him, warning: “Watch your step, bud.”

  Loddy would always remember his puzzled expression as she slammed the door in his face. She keeled over as though someone had hit her in the stomach and she needed to adjust to the pain but, when she pulled herself up, her cheeks were damp from the crying. She truly needed to believe he was different, that he really liked her.

  xxx

  It was Sunday, October 29, the closing ceremonies of Expo 67 at Place des Nations. Flags were lowered in the reverse order that they had been raised, with Canada’s let down first, and Nigeria’s last. Dignitaries sputtered words from prepared scripts, and Prime Minister Pearson doused the Expo flame. The fairground locked its doors at 4:00 p.m. The houselights dimmed as Montreal took her final bow to thunderous applause and boisterous cheers. Bravo! Now she could remove her makeup and return to being just another city. The show was over.

  Loddy never made it to the Exhibition. She had a standing dinner date with Alma and Bettina every Sunday. When she woke up that afternoon, she poked a candle into twenty-two opened cans of white tuna and sang happy birthday to herself, ending the day with a solitary stroll on Mount Royal. She scaled the low-lying mountain to its summit until she reached the unlit giant cross overlooking the city. Kicking a litter of fallen leaves into a thick mat, she curled up and dozed off to the lingering chatter of birds preparing for winter. A dazzle of light, the headlights from a car turning a bend, woke her, but it was the giant cross, now ablaze like a klieg light that caught her in its rays. Almost dusk, she used the remainder of the day to witness the drama unfold in the sky. A fan brush of red and cadmium yellow diffused into an orange sun. This mountain of serenity and beauty in the midst of concrete was her gift, and she accepted it with gratitude today, her birthday. It was just what she wanted and nothing more.

  She hugged herself, retreating inside her poncho like a turtle seeking safety. Not a sound. Only the slight rustle of leaves carried an impending hint of change. And she was ready.

  SCENE 6:

  The Matador

  Winter 1967

  Midwinter blues with touches of grey, St. Hubert Street was an urban landscape in white, a John Little painting. Heaps of snow weighed heavily on the unplowed sidewalks, and sabre-tooth icicles dangled precariously under weather-worn rooftops. The arctic chill ruptured capillaries and left a rosy blush on unprotected faces.

  Loddy, Dewey and Ulu, bundled in layers, braved the wind arm-in-arm, kicking a path to Marcel’s house. They had never been to this side of town, the East End, the other side of St. Lawrence Boulevard, foreign to anyone who didn’t speak French. It was Sunday and in the distance the peal of church bells joined the symphony of shovels on the street. Marcel lived with his mother on the main floor in a rundown red brick triplex beside a corner depanneur. If Loddy hadn’t spotted the address first, they would have walked right by it. The three stopped dead in front of a dilapidated exterior door with blue paint chipping, tattered lace curtains draping the bevelled clear glass insert.

  “Come on, Dewey, hurry up and ring the bell. Like, I think my toes have died.”

  Dewey pressed the doorbell hard and long but no one answered.

  “Try again or I’m going to turn into an ice cube any minute,” Loddy said.

  He knocked this time, his stiff fingers brittle and sore. Still no response. He held the button down, a relentless ringing, non-stop, until a dour-looking middle-aged woman, with the fatigue of someone who had spent her years sleeping on park benches, opened the door a crack and peered over the security chain.

  “Oui?”

  “Is Marcel home?” Dewey could no longer feel his fingertips. He crossed his arms and tucked his hands inside his armpits for warmth.

  “Quoi?”

  “We’re friends of Marcel’s. Nous amis. Est-ce que Marcel ici?” Loddy struggled with her street French.

  The woman screeched Marcel’s name, then unlatched the door. It wasn’t much warmer inside. Condensation had transformed the windows into sheets of frost, and a build-up of shaved ice lined the interior frames. Overhead stove pipes, suspended along the hallway, rattled like dice thrown on a glass table, in a bid to carry some heat to the flat.

  The trio unfolded their scarves, the frozen beads of rime beginning to thaw, but no one removed their outerwear. Marcel approached them from a room in back, led them to the kitchen, the warmest place in the flat, where his mother was eating lunch, ignoring the disruption of guests.

  “Oh, sorry, we’re interrupting.” Ulu said.

  “No probleme. Would you like some potato soup? My Maman makes the best.” Marcel pointed to a pot bubbling on the stove. Loddy inhaled the aroma and that alone aroused her appetite.

  “No thanks, we’re all good,” Dewey said.

  “Des Anglais! Poof!” Marcel’s mother dipped a chunk of French bread into the potage.

  “Allons-y. Let’s go downstairs to my room and we can talk.”

  “Ils ne peuvent pas rester ici, Marcel,” his mother shrieked as they followed him to the basement.

  “We won’t be staying long, Madame,” Loddy said.

  They were all taken aback by the windowless confinement, the dimensions of a jail cell painted buttercup yellow. Dim light from a single overhead bulb cast a solitary pin spot over a shoddy kitchen table and rickety chairs in the centre of the room. A mural of a matador taunting a bull hung on one wall; a blue and white Québecois flag, the size of a bath towel, draped the opposite wall. An unmade cot sat in a far corner and a couple of empty grocery crates functioned as bookshelves for volumes on Lenin and Marx. The books appeared untouched, the pages not yet thumbed through or stained.

  “Oh, my God!” Loddy spat with excitement. “Like what the heck is that?” She pointed to a giant Windsor Salt box that almost touched the low-slung ceiling.

  “It’s one of those, how you say, stand-alone closets.” And Marcel opened the door of the Sel Windsor Salt to reveal an orderly row of clothes.

  “Like, it even has that aluminum spout where the salt gets poured out. That is so groovy. How did you do that?”

  “Didn’t know you were that clever,” Dewey said.

  First day at The Garage Theatre Loddy had fallen madly in love with Marcel. He was sitting with legs crossed, centre stage, dressed in black cowboy boots, jeans and a white muscle t-shirt, intent on carving a walking stick for a prop. He said, “Bonjour,” and she wanted to dive into his pants, and live there until laundry day. For months she noticeably drooled over him until Marvel took her aside one day to disclo
se his sexuality.

  “He’s gay. Don’t even bother, Loddy.” In her dreams, he wasn’t. Pretend. Make-believe crushes were harmless.

  “So tell us, Marcel. Everyone at The Garage has been worried about you, wondering where you were. You didn’t answer Samuel’s calls so he sent us looking for you. What’s up, mon ami?” Dewey slumped in one of the rickety chairs.

  “Like, you sleep here? It’s freezing down here.” Loddy scanned the room as though it was a boutique and she was looking for something in red.

  “I like the cold. I’m used to that. Mon Pays, C’est l’hiver.”

  Everyone waited for Marcel to burst into Gilles Vigneault’s anthem to Québec, but he instead gestured at the mural.

  “Voici. This bull is the English, and the matador, he is the French guy fighting the bull.”

  “Looks more like he’s teasing the bull with that scarlet cape, not fighting it,” Dewey said, pointing with his chin.

  “Since when did you become a separatist?” Ulu flung her scarf around her neck and shivered like she was in the middle of a shower and had just run out of hot water.

  “Some of my friends, we meet here and we talk. My father made me go to an English high school so I learn to speak White. He said it would help me get a job later; bien, not the good ones, not the ones with the good pay. He died before he find out that was a lie. For years I tried and there is no other way. Québec, she will become her own country one day. I am convinced of that now. I will fight for that if I have to.”

  “So your separatist friends convinced you. I thought you were smarter than that, Marcel.”

  “Dewey, it was a long time before I understand. Tell Samuel I’m with a French theatre company now. Tell him what you wish. I don’t care. We no longer friends.”

  “Marcel! You’re shunning us? How can you say that?”

  “Sorry, Loddy. Please go.”

  But no one moved. There was nothing else to say.

  xxx

  Marcel’s mother let them out, the door banging with a trail of “maudit Anglais” following them. Outside, the bitter cold attacked their noses and cheeks with such force, they huddled momentarily on the balcony against the wind to pull on gloves and loop scarves around their heads and faces like bandages.

  “We lost a friend,” Ulu said, jamming her hands into deep pockets with a note of finality.

  Loddy thought she saw a movement of shadow, Marcel perhaps, observing them through the door’s window.

  “Let’s go,” Dewey’s voice quivered in a cloud of cold.

  The three of them united arm-in-arm again, the wind to their backs this time. They ploughed their way towards the West End, to the other side of St. Lawrence Boulevard, where they welcomed Madeleine’s homemade minestrone soup in her tiny coffee house on Pierce Street. They needed to feel some warmth.

  xxx

  The heavy wet snow buried the small coffee house, an igloo now, and only a daub of light from the exterior lantern, like a beckoning beam from a lighthouse, signalled its location for those in need of rescue. They left Madeleine’s as the raging blizzard intensified, assaulting everything in its path, a total whiteout. Disoriented, they lost their bearings in the snow drifts, and dragged their bodies by sheer determination against the force of the storm through deserted streets, unaware that The Garage Theatre was only minutes away.

  “I can’t go any further. Like, just let me die here.”

  “Loddy, it’s not like we’re on the tundra.” Dewey panted as pellets of snow flogged his face.

  “Feels like it.” Loddy bulldozed through the high white drifts behind him.

  “We’re almost there. I think.” The blustery wind chipped at Ulu’s words.

  They stumbled against a building, sheltered themselves under the narrow awning, and propped each other up for support.

  “It feels like we’re here,” Ulu said, banging on the locked door. Then Loddy and Dewey joined in a trio of hysterical fist pounding until someone unlocked the door. Rita.

  “Darlinks! What on earth?” They tripped into the lobby in a spray of snow.

  “Like, I bet I must have burned off five pounds with all that exertion.” Loddy removed her wet mitts and rubbed the palms of her hands as though the friction alone would create a camp fire.

  “Shush! We’re rehearsing so just sit and be quiet.” They followed the click of Rita’s winter boots and parked themselves in the front row. Samuel shouted directions over deafening music to Marvel who kept flubbing the choreography, and then everything came to a halt.

  “Okay, enough. Take five and then we go again.” Samuel hopped off the stage and sat beside Dewey, who offered him a smoke.

  “Wasn’t expecting you kids today. What’s happening?” He pulled a towel around his neck like a boxer on a break before the next round.

  “Like, we found Marcel.” Loddy reclined into a seat and the entire row of chairs moved back with her.

  “LODDY!”

  “Sorry guys.” She adjusted her weight forward and the row of seats snapped back into its original position.

  “Rita, take care of that.” Samuel motioned at the row of seats. “He okay?”

  “You can forget him,” Dewey said.

  Samuel had anticipated Marcel’s separatist leanings so he was not disturbed by the news. “I’ve choreographed shows for the CBC and half the people there are separatists. Good luck to him, I say.”

  Marvel bristled at the ridiculous notion Marcel would leave The Garage Theatre, this troupe that was like family. “And after everything we’ve done for him,” she said. Nobody left The Garage without her permission.

  “Okay Rita, start the music.” Samuel flung his damp towel on an empty seat and took his mark onstage in a karate stance — legs wide and bold; East Asian hand movements, palms up, seducing an invisible lover.

  “What’s the music?” Ulu asked.

  “The Age of Aquarius from Hair,” Samuel shouted over the ear-splitting song, “biggest thing in New York.”

  “Fabulous!” Ulu was up and about, rotating her hips. “Love it.”

  “We doing it next?” Loddy shouted back.

  “Maybe,” Rita said.

  At that moment, Loddy remembered. It was Sunday and Sundays were for Alma and Bettina.

  “Surely they don’t expect you to be there tonight in this weather,” Dewey said.

  “You don’t understand. I have to go. It’s just not worth the hassle. Besides, it looks like it stopped snowing.”

  She could hear the city trucks with their heavy machinery driving the snow to the side of the road. It was already dark and, although she knew Alma would disapprove, she took a taxi.

  The Haitian driver monopolized the entire conversation complaining about harsh Canadian winters and how he missed the hot blazing sun that was Port-au-Prince. His thick, Creole accent was like listening to jazz, making it almost impossible for Loddy to understand and yet, as a courtesy, she just nodded and enjoyed the beats.

  “It is paradise. It was,” he said.

  “Then, like, what are you doing here if you don’t like the cold?”

  “I left because of the corruption and the poverty. Papa Doc and his Tonton Marcoutes. Very bad. I send money to my family and hope to bring them. It is safe here.”

  Loddy feigned sleep while Haiti continued to prattle on about his former life, his eyes framed in the rear view mirror snapping back and forth from her to the traffic. The car jolted over a windrow of snow, the top of her head smacked the car roof, and she opened her eyes. Haiti reached over to the car radio and turned up the volume. The weather report, “a record snowfall ... nothing like this since 1920 ... people on skis or snowshoes. This just in,” the broadcaster interrupted, his voice tinged with excitement. “Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Minister of Justice, has just announced he will be running for leadership of the Liberal Par
ty of Canada.”

  “Oh, Alma will like that.”

  “Pardon?” Haiti addressed her in French as he looked over his shoulder. “You like him?”

  She shrugged.

  Perhaps he thought this subject would ignite a conversation but Loddy’s mind was on other things — Alma and Bettina, the blizzard, Marcel, his mother, the mural, that larger than life Sel Windsor Salt box, hot soup at Madeleine’s and the image of Samuel and Marvel dancing to the Age of Aquarius.

  SCENE 7:

  Sunday Prayers

  Sundays were becoming an unbearable nuisance. A late lunch with Alma and Bettina after their return from church; Alma speed-knitting in her armchair; Bettina wrapped in blankets on the couch reading a fashion magazine; the usual arguments for Loddy to remain for supper; and the only light allowed originated from the TV screen — the 6 o’clock news and The Ed Sullivan Show.

  Loddy never valued Alma’s frugality. Her mother could live on a roll of pennies; consequently, in winter, the thermostat was always set at 62˚F and the hot water tank was never hot. Baths were so rare they became a weekly celebration right up there with attending church. Laundry was done by hand in the bathtub with a washboard then hung out to dry on a clothesline in the laneway.

  Alma’s wages and prudence kept the family fed and clothed. She deposited any change, however small, into a savings account. Her husband, an unskilled lay-about from Germany, seldom worked. Every job was beneath him — construction work, paving roads, digging ditches.

  “I was a medical student before the war,” he would remind Alma as she left every morning to clean another house in Westmount.

  “You in Canada now,” she would say as she ran to catch her bus. No dirty fingernails for this man. Appearances were central to his character, his identity, and so he eventually found a position as a Pinkerton security guard, a man in uniform, a man of some worth, working the midnight shift around Montreal’s waterfront. He insisted Bettina enter nursing school just so he could see her don the crisp white dress and cap, a nurse’s uniform, distinguishing her as someone of merit, but he had already vanished from their lives after Loddy started working, and Bettina had other plans.