Maggie wakes up from a terrifying nightmare, crying out so loudly she wakes Roland. She leans over and turns on the lamp with trembling fingers. Her heart is racing.
“What’s the matter, dear?” he says, placing his hand on her shoulder.
“I dreamed I was drowning,” she says, trying to calm down. “I was pregnant and we were both drowning, the baby and I. I kept thinking, I can’t lose this one, too. Oh Roland, it was awful!”
She doesn’t mention that the unborn baby’s name in her dream was Elodie.
Roland pulls her close and they lie back together, leaving the lamp on at her insistence.
The next day, having barely recovered from her sleepless night, Maggie sits down in one of the booths at Fern’s and orders a cup of coffee while she waits for Audrey. Maggie’s got a driver’s license now and a Ford Falcon that Roland bought her for her birthday. Now that she’s finally quit Simpson’s, she has even more free time on her hands, mostly to ruminate over the two lives she finds herself caught between—which is no doubt to blame for her recent nightmares. One of those lives contains her beloved homes, her treasured garden in the country, and her marriage to a wonderful man she can never quite love enough; the other—still mostly a fantasy—contains Gabriel, which, she believes, is enough.
She hasn’t stopped thinking about him since their encounter at the apartment on Papineau. She’s been telling herself a lot of things lately to justify her emotional infidelity, but the one that seems to assuage her most is that she should have been with Gabriel all along. She’s only just found him again, but her feelings are as deep and unyielding as they always were. Roland doesn’t ask much of her. He works long hours and is generally happy when she’s happy. His trust and complacency—or unwillingness to scratch beneath the surface of things—makes falling in love with another man almost too easy.
She lights a cigarette, still thinking about how things left off with Gabriel when she went to the apartment the other day. Say hi to Audrey for me, he said as she was leaving.
His tone had an edge to it. She’d made the mistake of letting him know she was getting together with Audrey in Dunham. Of course it brought back that incident long ago, with Barney and the fight in the street when Gabriel pulled a knife. He didn’t have to say it, but he was angry—she could see it in his face at the mention of Audrey’s name. Maggie regretted it immediately.
They didn’t speak while she collected her things. A familiar tension had wedged itself between them, and she worried fleetingly that maybe love could not surmount one’s roots. She wants to believe love is irrepressible, but what if it can’t hold its own against who a person is, fundamentally, at the core? It terrifies her that they would have to give up on each other after all this time and retreat to their respective sides, defeated by the complexities of language and class.
“Can I see you again Friday?” he asked her.
“I can’t,” she said. “Roland likes to see a show on Friday nights.”
“Qu’i mange d’la marde,” Gabriel muttered. Let him eat shit.
She kissed him and touched his face. His eyes were dark gray, angry.
“Another day,” she said. “Any day but Friday. I want to see you again.”
He looked away. She made him promise to call her. That’s how they parted.
She glances up from her cup of coffee and sees Audrey waddling toward her. Audrey is seven months pregnant with her third child, rosy-cheeked from being outside, and more adorable than ever. Her blond hair is bleached platinum now, like a movie star’s. They’ve continued to stay in touch over the years, politely and from a distance, just enough to still be able to count each other as an acquaintance. Audrey likes to send Christmas cards with photographs of her family, accompanied by long, self-indulgent letters detailing their achievements with exclamation points. Barney was promoted! Lolly is finally potty trained! Davie won the Goutte de Lait Healthy Baby contest! She also likes to get together once or twice a year for pie and coffee so she can brag in person.
“How are you feeling?” Maggie asks her.
“Not so bad,” Audrey says, sliding her unwieldy body into the booth. “You look gorgeous. You’ve still got that figure. I envy you.”
Maggie smiles, but she can tell Audrey does not envy her at all. Audrey orders a coffee and some apple pie and takes a drag off Maggie’s cigarette. “Where do we begin?” she says, clapping her hands together.
“How are the kids?”
“Lolly is a hoot, and Davie is an absolute mohn-ster. I’m crazy to be having another one! I don’t know what I’ll do if it’s another boy. Listen,” she says. “Before we get into things, how are you coping, Mags?”
Maggie tips her head. “Coping?”
“I hear you’re having a hell of a time getting pregnant,” Audrey says, her voice turning sympathetic. She lowers her voice and whispers, “The miscarriages.”
Maggie flicks her ashes into the ashtray. “Where did you hear that?” she asks.
“Oh, you know Dunham,” she says. “Violet, I think.”
“I’ve had a tubal washing,” Maggie tells her. “The prognosis is good.”
Audrey is obviously rooting for Maggie to get on the baby bandwagon. People seem to have so much invested in a married woman getting pregnant within the accepted timeline. It troubles them when it doesn’t happen, as though some universally agreed upon contract has been tampered with or disturbed. Maggie can actually feel the unspoken championing of her success at fertility, the simultaneous panic if she were to fail.
The waitress brings Audrey’s pie. “Do you think . . .”
“What?”
“Never mind,” Audrey says. “Forget it.” She has a bite of her pie.
“What?”
“Well, I wonder. Do you think . . . Is it possible there was some damage from the, um, first pregnancy?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what the doctor said. There was scar tissue after the first miscarriage—”
“No, Maggie,” she interrupts. “That’s not the pregnancy I mean.”
Maggie freezes. Audrey is rubbing her belly protectively, watching Maggie. “What are you talking about?” Maggie manages, her chest pounding.
“Oh, it’s all right, Maggie. I’ve always known.”
Maggie stubs out her cigarette and lights another one. Her fingers are shaking. Audrey reaches across the table and touches her hand. “It doesn’t have to be a secret anymore,” she says.
“How did you find out?” Maggie asks, trying to keep her voice calm and contain the waves of shame rising up in her throat.
Audrey gobbles another forkful of pie and burps. “I’ve got the worst indigestion,” she says. “To be honest, I always suspected.”
“How?”
“I know what Gabriel expected,” she says. “I wouldn’t go all the way with him, which is probably why he traded me in for you.”
The remark stings and Maggie glares at her. “How did you know I was pregnant?”
“There’s a reason girls get sent away for a year,” Audrey says. “And, well, now you’ve confirmed it.”
Their eyes lock. Maggie is suddenly confused about why Audrey wanted to meet with her today. Perhaps Audrey’s been biding her time for years, waiting for just the right moment to pay Maggie back for stealing Gabriel.
“I wasn’t pregnant when they sent me away.”
Audrey’s blue eyes widen. “You weren’t?”
“No, my parents sent me away to keep us apart. Just like I told everyone. It was all true.”
“And he came to see you there? He got you pregnant while you were there?” She leans back in the booth, looking very satisfied. “Don’t be mad at me for bringing it up. I’m just curious.”
Maggie is quiet as she tries to guess at Audrey’s motives. Maybe she’s just trying to be a friend. Before Gabriel, they’d been inseparable.
“I just want you to know that I’m here if you need someone to talk to,” she says, burping into her napkin. “I know we grew apart when I started dating Barney, but I’ve always missed our friendship. I know you’re going through a hard time right now. I wanted to reach out.”
“Does anyone else know?” Maggie asks her.
“Not that I know of,” Audrey says. “Does Gabriel know?”
“No,” Maggie says. “Not yet. And please, no one else should know. I’ll tell him when the time is right.”
“It’s been ten years.”
“I hadn’t seen him until recently.”
“So you’re in touch with him again?”
Maggie swallows nervously, wishing she could backtrack. “We ran into each other,” she says vaguely. “We were both home visiting. I am going to tell him. Soon.”
Audrey nods, smiling sympathetically. “What was it like?” she asks. “Being pregnant and knowing you were giving up the baby?”
“I don’t really remember,” Maggie lies.
“I always feel so bonded with my babies when I’m carrying them.”
“I guess I liked the feeling of her inside me.”
“Her?”
Maggie nods.
“A girl?” Audrey gasps, as though knowing the sex makes it all the more tragic. “Will you try to find her one day?”
“Giving information to the birth mother is illegal,” Maggie explains. “So it won’t be easy, but yes, I’m going to try. I’ve already called the foundling home where she was supposedly taken.”
Audrey raises her perfectly plucked and penciled brow. “Do you think about her a lot?”
“Every single day of my life,” Maggie confides, grateful to finally say it out loud. “I think if it wasn’t for what I did—giving away my own child, sending her out into the world alone—things would be all right. I just find it . . . Well, it’s impossible to ever feel completely okay, knowing she’s out there. The guilt’s been so much worse since the pregnancies and miscarriages.”
“That makes sense.”
“Maybe I don’t deserve to be happy, or to have another child.”
“Rubbish,” Audrey says. “How’s Roland handling this?”
“He works a lot.”
“They always do. But he’s a good husband for you.”
The remark reminds Maggie of her days at Simpson’s. She’d point out the sturdy clasp and the thick, supportive straps. This is a good brassiere for you, she’d tell the customers. He’s a good husband for you.
“Listen, the other thing I wanted to tell you,” Audrey says, brightening, “is I’ve got a job for you. My uncle’s a journalist at the Gazette and he mentioned he knows a French-Canadian writer who just had a book published. He needs a translator for the English version. I told him I know someone who could do it.”
“I’ve never translated anything before.”
“How hard can it be?” Audrey says. “You’re perfect for it. You’re bilingual. I don’t know anybody as good in both languages as you are. And you were always so good at composition.”
“I could never.”
“It would be published, Maggie.”
Maggie’s heart lurches just thinking about it. “I’m unqualified.”
“Just meet him,” Audrey says. “His name is Yves Godbout. What’ve you got to lose?”
Maggie’s interest is definitely piqued. Perhaps it’s an opportunity to do something useful for a change. “All right, I’ll meet him,” she says, feeling brazen.
“Oh, good,” Audrey says, reaching for her hand.
Maggie smiles appreciatively, thinking she’s underestimated Audrey all these years.