Maggie arrives at her father’s seed store with breakfast for both of them. The window is decorated with fake snow and a shiny red Christmas banner that says joyeux noël merry christmas. She hasn’t spoken to him in weeks. She tried to reach out several times, but he refuses to speak to her.
Today she’s determined to make amends for breaking into his filing cabinet. She’s brought the galleys of her first translation as a peace offering. We Shall Overcome represents not just the fifty thousand or so words she managed to coax from French into English, but also the successful assimilation of her French and English selves. Godbout’s encouragement along the way has surprised and bolstered her. If not for him, she would have quit the project.
“You’ve captured the struggle,” he told her when they were reviewing an early draft of her manuscript. “I believe you.”
“You wrote the words,” she deflected.
“I wrote them in French, Larsson. You’re writing them in English. I was worried your version might come off inauthentic. Or, worse, academic. But your writing is honest and real. I buy it.”
“Thank you,” she said, blushing. She was thrilled. In the absence of her father’s support, Godbout’s approval was profoundly reaffirming.
“We’re not so different, you and I,” he told her, rolling one of his homemade cigarettes. “Being a woman in a man’s world is not much easier than being a French Canadian in an English world, is it?”
“I suppose you’re right,” she said, having never made the comparison before.
She appreciates that he notices such things and consistently credits her for her efforts and resilience. He sees something in her that few men do and genuinely respects her. She attributes this generosity of spirit to his being a man with a deep allegiance to the subjugated and the downtrodden across all walks of life.
Still, in spite of Godbout’s praise, she worries what people will think of her work. She still cares too much how people will judge her. She wonders if Gabriel will stumble upon her translation at a bookstore. Say to someone, Hey, I used to know that woman. Maybe think she didn’t manage to capture Godbout’s passion after all.
She opens the door and steps inside the store. The smell of earth wafts around her. Vi no longer weighs the seeds; she works as a secretary at the Small Bros. Company, where they make the evaporating pans for boiling syrup. It sounds so dull, but then Vi never had grand aspirations for herself. She’s moved into Peter’s old room so she doesn’t have to share a bed with the others, and she’s still got no prospects for a husband. Nicole is the one who weighs the seeds now.
Maggie’s father glances up from a bin of seeds and immediately withdraws his friendly expression. He’s still upset with her. She has her own reasons for being angry with him, but right now she cares more about getting answers. She found a lawyer in Montreal named Sonny Goldbaum, but hasn’t been able to reach him because of the holidays. In the meantime, she is determined to find out what was in that manila envelope.
Her father looks thinner, pale. He’s getting too old to work this hard, she thinks, stomping light snow off her boots. “I brought you something,” she tells him.
When he fails to respond, she holds up a grease-stained paper bag in one hand and the galleys in the other. “Breakfast and . . . ta-da . . . my book!”
He offers a wan smile and mutters, “Congratulations.”
“It’s a peace offering,” she says, extending it to him.
Reluctantly, he comes over to her and examines it. “Well done,” he says, admiring the thick manuscript.
“Godbout says that what makes me a misfit is exactly what allows me to do such good work.”
“Misfit?” her father says. “I never saw you that way.”
She follows him to his office and he pulls out a chair for her to sit down. She hands him a fried-egg sandwich. “How’s the new saleswoman working out?” she asks him.
“She likes to give discounts to make a sale,” he complains. “I keep telling her it cuts into the margins.”
Maggie nibbles on a strip of bacon. When she first found out he’d hired a woman to sell on the showroom floor, she was crushed. She felt betrayed, as though he were cheating on her. At least having Godbout’s book to translate helped to soften the blow. By then she was well into it, distracted and plodding along with a renewed sense of purpose. Now her father’s slight only stings if she lets herself think about it for too long.
“The customers seem to like her well enough,” her father goes on. “She’s got spunk.”
Maggie doesn’t say anything. She glances up at a framed slogan above his desk, reading it with a swell of longing. Whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together. —Jonathan Swift
“What can I do for you?” he asks her, treating her like she’s a customer.
“I just wanted to give you the galleys,” she says, handing them to him. “Keep them. I have another copy.”
He flips through the pages, his expression unreadable. She wonders if he’s at all proud of her.
“Maggie,” he says, looking up and setting the galleys down. “I don’t think you’ve thought this through. You can’t possibly mean to raise this child by yourself. It’s just not practical financially or for the child.”
“I’ll have spousal support,” she says. “And whatever I earn from translating.”
“I’m sure Roland would gladly reconcile.”
“I came here to talk about my book, not my marriage.”
“I wish you would be more practical,” he pleads. “For once in your life, this is no time to go against the grain.” You always were my wildflower. “You’re having a baby.”
“Why did you have an envelope from a lawyer in your filing cabinet?” she asks him.
“You shouldn’t have gone through my things.”
“You know why I did it,” she says. “Why did you have that envelope from a lawyer?”
“I know you think there’s some great mystery, Maggie, but there isn’t.”
He stands up, throws away the garbage from breakfast, and turns back to face her. “I patented my Prévert seed,” he says, sounding exasperated. “That’s why I needed a lawyer. Satisfied?”
Maggie searches his face for some clue he’s lying.
“Anticlimactic, isn’t it?”
Maggie can’t hide her disappointment. She’d been hoping for something else.
“Take a poinsettia on your way out,” he says. “I’m overinventoried.”
“They give me a rash,” she mutters, leaving his office with the sinking feeling that things between them will never be the same.