“Ink”
Andrea Atchison knew it would be hard. The “it” was her father’s story, the one he always told between Christmas and New Year’s. The “hard” was that her older brother had died since the last telling. She wanted to hear the story—and she did not. It was an odd feeling. To want something, like Christmas Day, and to fear it just the same. To both love and loathe a moment. She did not believe her father’s desire to tell his food fairytale was for her benefit, nor the benefit of her younger twin brothers. It was for her father alone. Years later, she would have sympathy. She would come to see the storytelling as her father’s way of soldiering on, of keeping the family together after “the accident” (a description of Dom’s death she has never agreed with). But at that moment, sometime after supper, somewhere between Christmas and New Year’s, when Andrea was fourteen years old, she believed that, for her father, the tale was a patch, a band-aid, a way of covering up the truth: that her brother was gone. For her, the telling of the tale was different. It crossed a line; it was a trespass.
As her father fumbled through the introduction, Andrea looked to the twins. Were they, like her, bracing themselves for the story to come? She saw on their faces only an adulation of their father. Sometimes she forgot they were only seven years old. The twins had not experienced the troubles in the house as she and Dom had, when he and she were “young-young,” as her father liked to say. No, Henri and Julien were happy; they loved having their father home from the restaurant at mealtime. They still craved his attention, something she had lost the taste for long ago. She would be mature, and let them enjoy the moment. Andrea took a private breath and decided to act as if the story were welcome.
The story was as it always was. Her father flew in a magical canoe from one region of Quebec to another, all in a single night. The fantastic journey was powered by a deal with a devil, aided by a stoic lumberjack in the canoe’s stern and a lively coureur des bois in its bow. Her father recounted the story of Quebec’s cuisine as told to him while the four of them travelled through the night. In earlier years, Andrea had listened from under her bed covers, or at the dining room table, as her father gave details of the night’s journey and all the food he and his supernatural companions had gathered in their canoe. She never tired of hearing her father’s flying canoe story. Then one day in first grade, Andrea listened with quiet disbelief as Mme Arsenault read from a book of Quebec folklore. A sense of deception seeped into Andrea’s thoughts as she listened to the tale of the Chasse-Galerie with its flying canoe. As her stomach sank, a small schism of distrust opened between her and her father. She had always known the story was fanciful, but it was her father’s fanciful story. When she told Dom the news that day—that her father had deceived them—he laughed a little. He said that he had heard the same story from Mme Arsenault when he was in Grade 1, and it was like learning about the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. For her it was different. It took time for her to love the story again.
When the story finished, Andrea smiled at her brothers and then looked towards the open kitchen. Her mother had been slowly washing the dishes as she listened. Andrea saw her mother smiling through her tears, her eyes fixed on Andrea’s father. Andrea looked back towards her father. His performative face had gone. He turned his head towards the kitchen. Andrea watched her parents stare at one another. She studied them. She could not read what they were thinking. She continued to watch her father closely. He looked back to the twins, then dropped his head and gazed at the table. Andrea did not want to miss a clue. Peering at him a little longer, she found nothing new. Then she stood up, walked to Dom’s empty chair, angrily pushed it into place, and snapped, “He should have been here.” She stomped up the stairs and went to her bedroom.
Andrea sat on her bed. To love and loathe at once seemed beyond her. One emotion at a time was all she could manage. She thought of this as she picked up her sketch pad and a fine black marker and huddled into a corner of her bed. On a fresh page, she began to draw butterflies. She always started in the bottom left-hand corner of the page. Large, small, playful, realistic, every butterfly was different. It was the form of the butterfly she liked; a body with two wings, a head dominated by two big eyes, and two long antennae splayed outward. She watched her fine marker disperse droplets of ink. She knew where the marker was going, and she didn’t. The butterflies seemed to arrive from her marker’s tip as if they had pulled themselves into being. Watching them emerge, Andrea felt passive. One after the other, they climbed rightward on the page, rising like a flock. Some had intricate details; whole worlds were confined within their wings. Others were born from a few strokes of her marker.
Andrea began to shade one butterfly’s wing. She thought about how Marie-Jo had taught her to shade properly. “Always in the same direction, my rose petal,” Marie-Jo would say. As a child, Andrea had loved it when Marie-Jo arrived at her parents’ restaurant. Andrea would be in the dining room, her crayons spread across a table, half-watching her mother and father hustle about. No more than four years old. Then, in a flurry, Marie-Jo would come rushing in for her shift as a server. Elegant, articulate, dressed in brilliant colours, she was an actress taking the stage. The room seemed to pop with excitement when Marie-Jo arrived. Andrea would watch her moving gracefully through the maze of tables, placing fine cloth serviettes, shiny knives and forks, and glistening stemware on the white linen tables. In Andrea’s eyes, Marie-Jo was like a fairy queen sprinkling fairy dust. She was magical. And she knew how to draw. And she loved Andrea’s pictures, always.
Andrea was lost in her butterflies and memories when her father knocked on her door.
“How are you?” her father asked.
“Why?”
“Why? You were angry when you left the table.”
“Not really angry, more pain. Not sure.” Andrea had not admitted to her father how she felt about him. She did not want to hurt him. As angry as she was, she still felt a need to protect him.
“Was it the story?”
“I am not sure. It’s like us acting as if nothing happened when you told the story. Like it’s all normal.”
“Oh, no. Nothing is normal.”
“Well, I don’t know. It’s like he was never here, or that he doesn’t need to be here for the story.”
Ronnie Atchison breathed outward. Then he asked, “Do you want me to stop telling the story?”
Andrea looked up at her father with shocked anger. She could not believe her father would put such a burden on her. That label: the one who stopped the story. “Why would I want that?” she asked.
“So you don’t get hurt. It’s easy, I just don’t have to tell it.”
“But then it will be gone.”
“I will talk with you before I tell it again, okay?”
“You don’t need my permission,” Andrea snapped. She hated how her parents tip-toed around her these days. They spoke confidently to Henri and Julian, as if the twins could not be hurt. But her parents feared her, and this made her mad.
“Okay, dear. I will let you be.”
After her father left, Andrea began to draw spirals in the upper left-hand corner of the page. Some were small and infinitely tight, while some were the size of dollar coins. Some had thick dark lines. Other times, she pressed her marker so lightly, the spirals appeared grey rather than black. Packed closely together, the spiral’s shades and shapes began to resemble a lamb's woolly coat and filled the corner of the page. She did not want to forget anything about her brother. Not the good, not the bad. She began to search for memories: by the lake catching fish; screaming at bugs together on a sidewalk; fingerpainting at the breakfast table. Less than two years separated them. She smiled to herself as she thought of the “shadow game” they used to play as children. It was a game of tag using their shadows. She remembered how they would play in the early morning or late on a summer’s eve—on a big field was always the best. How they would tumble or bump into each other as they ran, focussed on their shadows rather than where they were heading. She had always believed they invented the game. Still, the closeness in age had a downside. It led to envy and jealousy and petty spite. Fights that rolled on and on, only calming down when the two of them went to their separate rooms. Even when the accident happened—she hated that they called it an accident, for her it was neglect—she still had unresolved issues: him using her shampoo, him not putting down the toilet seat, him flirting with a friend.
Andrea began to draw a line that traced the outer limits of the spirally lamb's wool. The line curved as it cleaved to the spirals, travelling from the top of the page to the side, never touching the spirals themselves. She thought of the line as corralling the spirals, like with a herd of sheep. As she studied the image, it changed. It now reminded her of a decorative wall moulding, like the ones she had seen at the funeral parlour where Dom’s casket was laid.
Andrea’s thoughts ran from the funeral parlour back to Marie-Jo, and the troubles Andrea’s parents used to have. Before they bought the house, before the twins were born, before her mother returned to her old job. Back when the family lived above the old restaurant, Les Chasseurs d’Orignaux. When she was four or five years old. Downstairs, at her table (she always thought of table #8 as her table), she drew and listened and watched. Her father would be frantically chopping, frying, and instructing his cooks, while her mother hurried to put away the wines and write the menus. Suddenly, her father would step to the kitchen’s edge and bark at her mother in the dining room. Without hesitation, her mother would bark back at him. The flurry was such that Andrea could never understand whether her parents were happy or not, or if the words being barked were good or bad. She pretended not to listen. When it was obvious a fight was brewing, Marie-Jo would come talk to Andrea. “This is really good, Rose Petal. You know what I would love to see? I would love to see a big flower. Maybe on the right side of the page. Do you know how to draw flowers? No? I will show you.” Effortlessly, Magical Marie-Jo would lean over Andrea’s shoulder (Marie-Jo always smelt like soap) and whisk off a perfect flower.
But sometimes it was Marie-Jo who was in trouble. Andrea would watch as her mother or father spoke sternly to Marie-Jo. Andrea remembered how Marie-Jo would walk away from them, her neck stretched; her head held high. Demonstrating a brave tolerance undercut with subtle defiance. As a child, Andrea always sided with Marie-Jo’s mute gesture; her parents had to be wrong. They were wrong about bedtime, when to bathe, when to turn off the T.V. Andrea would sit and watch the spectacle unfold. The small side-glances amongst the staff, the subtle siding with Marie-Jo. All agreed Marie-Jo must have been in the right, and, therefore, her parents in the wrong.
Downstairs did have its good times. When a review or an article appeared in the newspaper, the restaurant felt golden. Her father’s optimism would spill out as he pointed at photos of him and her mother. They were like movie stars, and Marie-Jo somehow the heroine of the story. Andrea could only imagine, as she lay in her bed and listened to the murmur below, how the night would unfold in the restaurant. The glamour, the sophisticated guests. Elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen would surely chat up the servers and congratulate her parents on the article. All the while, dishes would be whisked out of the kitchen, wine poured, bread served. Everyone sparkling and happy.
Upstairs, the restaurant life climbed into the apartment like ivy. When Andrea was little, her mother cooked their breakfast with the reservation book open on the kitchen table. Andrea loved to watch her mother. How she would answer the phone in her bathrobe and talk as if she were in an office. If the clients only knew, Andrea would think. But the phone calls meant silence and long waits for breakfast. Or it was her father who disrupted the morning’s peace (reflecting on it all, Andrea conceded there was never peace in their home). His big steps shaking their fire escape, the one that ran from the back door of the restaurant to the back door of their apartment. The rattle announced his imminent arrival. He’d storm in and pepper her mother with questions that made no sense to Andrea, and didn’t seem to make sense to her mother either; then he’d rattle away, leaving behind a wake of commotion.
These disruptions to Andrea’s home felt normal when she was young. Not like when her parents talked about “the staff.” Andrea never liked these talks; they unsettled and confused her. She could never figure out if the staff were friends or not. Her parents would seem to like them, and then they would just disappear. Andrea would demand to know what went wrong, what happened. Her parents would remain vague about the reasons why a Michelle or a Stephan would be gone. All she knew was that they vanished, with no goodbye. Andrea would ask her father, “Marie-Jo is okay. Right? You’re not going to make her leave?” She remembered lying in bed, looking at the glowing stars on the ceiling and worrying, as she listened to her brother’s wheezy asthmatic breath, about whether Marie-Jo would be there tomorrow.
The troubles seemed to be at their greatest depth when money was the issue. In her younger years, Andrea heard words like “foreclosure” and “back taxes.” These words were spoken at a low volume and with tension in her parents’ voices. Something was bad. Her father would chase her mother through the house with promises; there’d be an article soon, that’s all they needed, things would turn around. He spoke as if impending doom could be avoided. Emotions would run high after a big night, or after an article finally appeared in the paper, then dip low once the business settled back into its natural malaise. Andrea came to hate the highs as much as the low, since neither erased the anxiety from the house. Then, one day, it was announced that Les Chasseurs d’Orignaux had been sold. A new owner would occupy its space, and her mother would return to work as a speech therapist.
As Andrea continued to draw her marker along its line, her jaw tightened; there was no in or out, no upstairs or downstairs, no family or restaurant, no place of her own. The troubles were everywhere when she was a child. And they did not stop for holidays or birthdays, nor did they break for flus, colds, or minor trips to the hospital. These should have been adult troubles, not hers and Dom’s, Andrea thought as she pressed her marker harder on the page. The line on the page now rounded itself, like a snake reversing its direction and seeing its own body as it headed homeward. Andrea consciously kept a small distance between the line’s current path and its prior self, enough space for a little-little man to walk.
Her father explained, after the accident, that Montreal’s harsh winters sometimes triggered façades of old buildings to tumble. The moisture in the grout, and between the bricks and the inner wall, would expand and contract as the city froze up and thawed. It was as if the buildings took a small breath, heaving up and down. And so, after deep freezes or in the spring, this could cause walls to fall. It was true. She saw it, now, during her walks: the reason for the emergency tape tied to metal barriers, blocking sidewalks in front of naked duplexes. Their wall had fallen. She was happy to see the barriers in front of walls that had not fallen. Someone smart knew what to do and had saved a life. For the fallen walls, she said a private prayer as she walked past.
As she continued to draw, Andrea thought of her mother’s words at the funeral. Andrea had quietly told her mother, she believed she’d seen Dom’s chest move. Her mother clasped her hand and said, “We never notice the small clues that someone is living. And when those clues are absent, our brain plays a trick on us. We expect there to be life. Always. So, we kind of fill in the gaps. That is why you think you see him breathing. I am sorry Andrea, he loved you very much, and that will never change.”
Looking back, the word “absent” struck her. How people and things were suddenly absent from her life. The twins had made her mother absent. The restaurant she grew up in, Les Chasseurs d’ Orignaux, had gone in a fire-sale (a term her father flung bitterly around the house). Her older brother no longer ate breakfast or dinner with her, nor was he there to fight with. He was absent at Christmas.
And Marie-Jo disappeared too, just before Andrea’s seventh birthday. No announcement, no celebration or good-bye, just a lingering void that slowly became perceptible; first it was a feeling, then a wonder, and after a few weeks of not seeing Marie-Jo, a necessary question. Andrea went directly to her father and demanded to know what happened to Marie-Jo. She still hated his response. “It didn’t work out,” was all he said. As if she had asked why they had not gone to the movies or picked up bagels for lunch.
Andrea’s marker never left the page. She thought of the funeral and how she had stood at the top of the steps at Église Saint-Arsène. Behind her was the enormous church, with its enormous damp light-grey stone bricks. The many neighbourhood churches had the same humid stones, as if they absorbed matter that passed near them; one felt the cool stones as much as one saw them, Andrea remembered thinking to herself that day. She also remembered how quickly it had occurred to her that she and her brothers had been baptized inside Saint-Arsène, by an old priest she had only ever seen in photos. And even though the family never attended services, somehow it was their church. If she been the one who died, it would have been her funeral service inside instead of Dom’s. A rush of guilt pained her, a sense of shameful self-indulgence; to be thinking of her own death instead of his. She recalled secretly searching for Marie-Jo outside the church. Wanting Marie-Jo to come and comfort her, like she did in the old restaurant, at her old table. But she did not find Marie-Jo in the small groups of mourners that arrived on foot, dressed in black, clasping each other’s hands. Nor did Marie-Jo exit a car, as others had, squinting their eyes in the bright sunshine (Andrea hated the idea of the sun shining that day). She’d longed to see Marie-Jo walk up those stairs, dressed in black, with a veil covering a tearful face. To clasp Andrea’s body tightly and say, “It’s going to be okay, Rose Petal.” Looking back, Andrea now forgave herself for believing Marie-Jo could have arrived that day. For being naïve. For having waited for Marie-Jo, after the last mourners had entered the church, until all she saw below was a man walking his dog, before she turned and passed through the heavy doors.
Andrea’s curved line reached the top of the page. She rounded the line and clung to the same curve as she drew downward. Andrea continued this pattern, back and forth, never permitting the line to cross itself. She thought of it as a small maze that led to a corral of woolly spirals. She rested her hand and looked more closely. No, it was something different, perhaps a radiant mechanical sun, with flying butterflies underneath. She watched as her hand began to add shades with the marker, letting it add contrast and texture.
The last time she saw Marie-Jo was a chance meeting after school on rue Beaubien. Autumn had arrived, and five months had passed since Dom’s death. Without a doubt, she had recognized Marie-Jo half a block in the distance. Her stride was healthy and determined, but less graceful or playful than Andrea remembered. Her downward gaze was fixed only a few steps ahead, as if she were scrutinizing the sidewalk. The baseball cap, black track top, and exercise pants Marie-Jo wore all seemed out of place to Andrea. Even the hair neatly tied in a tight bun in back didn’t fit Andrea’s memories of Marie-Jo. Still, the anticipation of wanting Magical Marie-Jo to recognize her Rose Petal made Andrea giddy. As they approached one another, Andrea never stopped smiling. She looked directly at Marie-Jo. A few paces closer, no connection (Andrea was certain Marie-Jo had seen her). Closer still. Then, finally, Marie-Jo briefly raised her head and for a flash their eyes met. Nothing.
“Marie-Jo!” Andrea said as their shoulders drew level.
“Yes, Andrea.”
“Didn’t you see me?”
“I did, I just was not sure if you saw me. Sorry. How are you?”
Looking back, Andrea was still struck by the unease in Marie-Jo’s voice as she asked the question.
“Okay, I guess. In school.”
“That is good. Where? What are you studying?”
“I am in high school.”
“Of course. I forgot.”
An awkwardness surrounded them and created a void. Andrea remembered how it felt. Dom’s death seemed to be known by everyone she had met over the past five months; Marie-Jo must have known. Andrea never had to broach the subject herself. Others usually did it for her.
“Do you know Dom died?”
“Yes, I am sorry.”
Andrea waited. She had also grown accustomed to the conversations about her brother’s death. Everyone seemed to know the script: ask how she and her younger brothers were coping; speak to the pain her parents must be feeling; finish with tempered words of strength and encouragement, such as “time will help,” or, “this too will pass.” Andrea continued to wait for Marie-Jo to say these things. Nothing came. The uneasy silence prompted her to ask the only thing she wanted to know.
“Why didn’t you come to the funeral?”
Andrea could see Marie-Jo was startled by the question. How her eyes focussed intently on Andrea’s own. Then it happened. Marie-Jo elongated her neck and lifted her head in a posture of restraint. Andrea immediately understood that her question was being tolerated, just as her parents’ words had been tolerated years before. But she saw more. The look went beyond defiance, a quality she had once admired in Marie-Jo. It held a reserved judgement. Contempt even, as if Andrea had stepped out of place. Andrea had never believed she could receive such a gesture, with all it weight and precision, from Marie-Jo.
“Andrea. I was an employee at your parents’ restaurant. That’s all. Nothing more.”
“But you were special.”
“Not enough, I guess. Bye, Andrea, I must be going.”
In her bed, Andrea thought about the last thing Marie-Jo had said to her. “Not enough, l guess.” Was Marie-Jo not special enough to work at the restaurant? Did her father fire her? Or did he not treat Marie-Jo special enough to make her want to stay? Or did her comment have something to do with the funeral itself? Marie-Jo’s words were very unclear to Andrea, almost purposely so, she thought. But the gesture was not. Andrea knew her presence was being tolerated when they met that day, and her questions less so. Knowing this fact hurt her deeply; it felt like Marie-Jo was finally gone-gone.
The first gone Andrea had already dealt with; Marie-Jo had disappeared from her life long ago. But the idea of Magical Marie-Jo had persisted in Andrea’s imagination. Somewhere in the universe a Magical Marie-Jo could be found, captured, saved, held, or believed; someone who could bring calm to her life, and a sense that everything would be all right. After they had met that day, she understood that there was a second gone. Magical Marie-Jo did not exist in the universe, anywhere, and perhaps never had. For Andrea, this was a revelation. It was as if a butterfly had been erased from her drawing and left a ghostly image to take its place. Who was Marie-Jo really, Andrea asked herself. Who was the person who came into the restaurant when she was a child, and taught her how to draw? Was the lesson for her own benefit? Or for some reason beyond her grasp?
Andrea put down her marker and studied her drawing. Butterflies under a Mechanical Sun, she thought. Emotionally exhausted, she looked up to the wall before she closed her eyes and thought of the day Dom died.
Andrea and Dom were both home from school. The twins were in an after-school program. Her father had not yet come home from the restaurant for his late afternoon nap. Her mother would not be back before six o’clock. It was a warm day in early spring. Andrea had felt the sun on her face as she walked home and saw promise in the puddles pooling in the rapidly melting snow. She and Dom had spoken briefly. He said their father had asked him to shovel snow off the back deck and away from the back of the house, something about water and the foundation. He went outside, and she went to the kitchen. She was staring into the fridge when she heard the thump and felt the rattle. The sound was like a large sheet of snow sliding from a cathedral’s roof in a single thump, and the house trembled as if in an earthquake. She had no idea what the sound and trembling meant.
Andrea closed the fridge door and headed towards the back of the house. Looking out the window, she saw bricks oddly placed in the snow. She stepped outside and was astonished to see the pile of bricks on the ground. Their building’s back wall had fallen, and all that remained in place was ratty tar paper covering aged wood. She called for her brother. She wanted to know what had happened and why. She got no response. She went to the laneway to see if he was hanging out with friends. He was not there. Then she returned to the pile and saw a boot and a leg. At first it looked absurd, then it was Dom.
The meaning of the sound and tremble slowly came to her. It meant the bricks had fallen and exposed the house’s inner wall. It meant Dom was at the bottom of the pile. It meant fire trucks and ambulances, a crying mother and stunned father. It meant Dom was dead; a funeral and a place in the ground; an article in the newspaper about a nameless boy who died tragically. A quote from the housing inspector mentioned neglect. Every day the definition of the sound and tremble changed and remained elusive to Andrea. The meaning pulsated in her mind and emerged in small objects at home; the can opener he had given her as a joke for her birthday, his socks that would show up in the laundry basket. The meaning pulsed and shifted while she listened to her father’s food fairytale. She begged to have the meaning finally defined, to have it come to an end, to put it in its place. And when she finally thought it had, to her horror, the meaning rounded itself and continued to draw its own line.