DECEMBER 1992
Elodie’s father, Gabriel Phénix, is buried in the East-Dunham Cemetery in the town where he grew up, the same town where he fell in love with Elodie’s mother, Maggie. He rests next to his parents and two of his siblings, all of whom had died in a car crash when he was young. On the other side of the cemetery, Maggie’s parents—Elodie’s grandparents—are buried side by side.
Gabriel had been in Elodie’s life exactly ten years when he died, not nearly enough time to get to know him. Today would have been his sixtieth birthday. They’re all here today at her mother’s request. Later, they will go back to Maggie’s house in Cowansville for what she is calling a celebration of his life.
Stephanie crouches down on all fours and lays a bouquet of winterberry at the foot of his headstone. Maggie brought copies of the Brome County News and the Quebec Farmers’ Advocate, which she sets down in the snow next to Stephanie’s berries. Elodie doesn’t understand why she brings these sorts of things. He’s dead. He can’t read the papers.
She looks over at her brother, James, who is stone-faced and stoic. He hasn’t brought anything either. He’s wearing sunglasses and a tuque, as though trying to go unnoticed. The only ones missing are Clémentine and Nancy. Clémentine moved to Rimouski with her husband and daughter, Georgette, about a year after Gabriel’s death. Gabriel was more like a son to her than a little brother, and she couldn’t bear to be in Dunham after he was gone. The cornfield, the farm, the cottage where they’d always lived, all were saturated with her memories of him. Everywhere she looked, she’d complain mournfully, she could feel him, smell him, see him. Her daily life was so fraught with grief, her husband put the cottage up for sale and moved them to his hometown of Rimouski for a fresh start.
She still writes to them. She’s found her footing again. She’s a grandmother now and works part-time at a local bakery. She’s never returned to the Townships.
Nancy is also gone. Moved away to start a new life. She lives in Bouctouche, New Brunswick, of all places. She never gave a proper reason for leaving other than to say she liked the beach and wanted to explore “different places.”
Elodie is the one who always encouraged Nancy to be independent and self-confident, so she can only blame herself for Nancy leaving. She wanted her child to live a life free of fear and insecurity. She wanted her child to grow up and be in the world, not cowering on the sidelines of it. In spite of her own inadequacies, Elodie somehow managed to foster a healthy self-reliance in Nancy. It’s been her greatest gift to her daughter: freedom. Nancy lives her life with gusto; she doesn’t even know to know to be afraid of the world.
Elodie’s been a good mother. She can say that with certainty. She never raised a hand to Nancy, never screamed, never intimidated her. She was affectionate—no small feat given where she came from. She had to teach herself how to hold another human being, how to be tender and gentle and loving. It never came easy, and it certainly wasn’t natural, but she tried until it became natural. My God, she tried. Besides that, there was always food on the table, heat and hot water, even some extras so that Nancy never felt different from any of her peers—a VCR, a Sony Walkman, whatever running shoes all the kids were wearing at the time.
You can hide a lot from a young child, and that’s exactly what she did. She kept her secrets to herself, concealed the horrors of her childhood, and pretended to know what she was doing, even when she didn’t. Nancy knows her mother grew up in an “orphanage” and only reunited with her parents at twenty-four, but that’s about the extent of what she knows.
There was only one time when Elodie was made aware of just how perceptive Nancy was and how careful she had to be. They were watching a documentary about the deadly London fogs of the nineteenth century, those dense, foul-smelling blankets of soot that smothered the city, obscuring it in murk. “That’s what happens to you, M’ma,” Nancy said, precocious beyond her years. “You get the dark fog sometimes.”
After that, Elodie doubled her efforts to shield Nancy from her “dark fog.” And it’s paid off. She’s created a stable life for them, a life she would even go as far as to call normal.
In spite of the late-afternoon sun flooding the cemetery, the mid-December air is frigid. Elodie is grateful when Maggie and Stephanie step away from Gabriel’s headstone and look at everyone as though to say, I guess that’s it.
What else is one to do at the cemetery? Elodie has always found these visits to be awkward. Sometimes Maggie kisses his stone. Other times, she kisses her fingers and then touches the stone. She’s been known to converse with the stone, or simply to sit there in front of it in meditation, as though it helps her to conjure Gabriel back into the world. Elodie understands; he was the love of her life.
Maggie lives in an old farmhouse on the edge of the lake, the same one where Elodie first met her birth parents eighteen years ago. Elodie will never forget arriving at their front door in 1974. At that time, thanks to Sister Ignatia’s monstrous lie, Elodie still believed her real mother was dead. She remembers thinking how beautiful Maggie was, standing there in the living room with her thick black hair and lovely cream skin. As a couple, Maggie and Gabriel were perfect; the life they had created was a fairy tale, with their good looks and their two well-adjusted kids and their warm, welcoming farmhouse.
The reunion was charged with emotion. After the initial shock of discovering that her mother wasn’t dead and that she was actually face-to-face with her real parents, they got down to the business of explaining how she’d wound up in an orphanage. In some ways, it was everything Elodie had always wanted to hear. Maggie had been fifteen when she’d gotten pregnant; her parents had made the decision for her. It was like that back then, in the fifties. Good Catholic girls did not get to keep their illegitimate babies. Maggie hadn’t had a choice.
It buoyed Elodie to know that they had at least come looking for her. They told her they’d tried to find her numerous times over the years, even getting as close as the mental ward of St. Nazarius Hospital, where Elodie had been locked on the other side of the metal doors.
That night, Maggie asked her if she could ever forgive her. Elodie remembers wanting to, desperately. She said, “What else could you have done back then? Everyone knows it’s a sin to have a baby out of wedlock.”
She said those things to let Maggie off the hook. But the sincerity behind the words took much longer to catch up. It would be years before she truly felt any peace with Maggie’s choices.
She slept in her parents’ guest room that night. She remembers her mind swirling with angry, vindictive thoughts; her chest clenched with hatred for little Stephanie—Maggie’s other daughter, the one who was born after her—and rage at God. And then Maggie was there, standing over her, asking if she could stay. Elodie said yes, and Maggie lay down beside her. She sang her a song, or told her a poem—Elodie can’t quite remember. Something about seeds. She held Elodie all night.
Maggie wanted Elodie to move in with them right away back in ’74, but Elodie felt it was too much. She needed space and she was scared. She didn’t want to fall headfirst into a relationship that could just as easily be taken from her. So she visited them on weekends, and they got to know each other slowly, on her terms. Maggie frequently came to see her in the city, and they would spend hours in the diner on Wellington, interviewing each other about their lives and working on the manuscript of her memoir. Elodie recounted a story about St. Nazarius while Maggie sobbed and swore, overcome with guilt. She blamed herself. Elodie felt this was reasonable and did not try to talk her out of it.
About two years after they’d found each other, something happened that very nearly severed their embryonic relationship. Maggie and Gabriel decided to take the family to Old Orchard Beach for the construction holiday, but they did not invite Elodie. When Maggie told her about their plans, Elodie burst into tears.
“I didn’t think you’d want to go!” Maggie said, her face collapsing.
“You could have asked.”
They were at Paul Patates in Pointe St. Charles, having coffee and sharing a plate of French fries.
“I know you work weekends, Elo.”
“You still could have asked,” Elodie said. “Nancy would love the beach. We’ve never been.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just—”
“What?”
Maggie reached for her hands and clasped them in her own. Elodie would never get tired of Maggie’s gestures of affection. Over the two years, she had become reliant on them, needy. That’s what made her exclusion from their vacation so painful. She almost felt entitled to be included, as though they owed her. And didn’t they?
“It’s just the kids . . .” Maggie fumbled. “We haven’t really done anything with them, just the four of us, in so long.”
Oh, how that cut deep. Just the four of us. Elodie could feel the rejection coagulating into rage. She retracted her hands and stood up.
She left the diner, vowing never to see them again. Let them go to Old Orchard just the four of them. Let them swim in the ocean and eat lobster and build sandcastles without her, the way they used be before she crashed their cozy little family.
She could hear Maggie calling after her as she fled, but she did not turn back. She neither saw nor spoke to Maggie and Gabriel for over a year.
Today, as she watches Maggie turn the sausages over in the pan, humming her favorite Edith Piaf song, Elodie can’t quite believe she ever had the nerve to sever ties with this beautiful woman, her mother. But she had lost so much in her years at St. Nazarius, and the one thing the nuns and doctors had not managed to destroy was her stubbornness. That stubbornness, bolstered by profound hurt, propelled her in her isolation. She was determined to punish her parents for their indifference and insensitivity, no matter how hard it was. And it was hard, especially with Nancy asking all the time, “Where are Grand-maman and Grand-père? How come we never see them anymore?”
When Maggie called her after their trip to Maine, Elodie said, “Please don’t call me anymore. Having you in my life is more painful than not having you.”
“Elo—”
She hung up on her mother, and again on her father when he called back later. The next day when she got home from work, there was a plastic bag outside her door. Inside were two hooded Old Orchard Beach sweatshirts—one for her, one for Nancy—and a small white box of saltwater taffy. Elodie threw all of it in the trash and cried.
Maggie and Gabriel did not respect her wish to be left alone. Maggie wrote her letters and called regularly. Elodie stopped answering the phone, but often came home to messages like We’re here when you’re ready. We’re not going anywhere.
A couple of times, Elodie spotted them in their car, parked across the street, watching her house. She did not relent and invite them in. She couldn’t. She would not put herself at risk again. Her parents were damn persistent, though. Eventually, over the course of that year, Elodie’s anger began to subside. Perhaps she’d been testing them to see how long they would hang in before giving up on her. Some part of her thought they’d be relieved to be rid of her, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
One morning she woke up and felt no more animosity toward them. The grudge she’d been hanging onto over the Old Orchard vacation suddenly seemed absurd. She felt light, cleansed. She missed them both terribly. Who the hell was she to kick them out of her life after she’d spent her first twenty-four years conjuring them and longing for them and wishing she’d had them?
She got in her car and drove directly to Maggie’s seed store in Cowansville. She remembers the bell jangling when she walked in, Maggie looking up from serving a customer, their eyes locking. Maggie’s face broke into a wide smile. She didn’t even finish serving the customer. She just ran to Elodie and pulled her into her arms and held her.
“I miss you,” she murmured.
“Me, too,” Elodie said.
“I’m sorry, cocotte.”
“I’m sorry,” Elodie said.
“Don’t be sorry, Elo. You have every right to your anger. We handled this poorly. And you need to know, we are never going anywhere.”
Elodie has had a mother for eighteen years, almost as long as she didn’t have one. Having Maggie in her life doesn’t completely erase her pain or blot out the memories or stave off the anxiety that can twist inside her chest, but Maggie makes everything infinitely better.
Looking at them all now, bustling around the warm, sunlit kitchen, passing plates to one another and chatting in familial shorthand, no one would guess that Elodie grew up apart and came to them as a complete stranger, fully grown. Sometimes even she forgets, and that’s the beautiful thing about family.
Maggie is trying valiantly to keep the mood upbeat in spite of this being a birthday party for someone who is dead. She’s made baked spaghetti with sausages and roast potatoes, and James has brought baguettes from Duc de Lorraine—Gabriel’s favorite—and there’s even a chocolate cake for dessert. The kitchen smells like heaven.
Maggie wanted to have a party. No one begrudged her, though James and Elodie did discuss how strange it was, maybe even a little unnerving. But everyone agreed to be here because it was for Maggie, and, of course, to honor Gabriel.
“As long as you’re not hanging streamers and putting sixty birthday candles in a cake,” James said when Maggie first brought up the idea at one of their Sunday family dinners. “That would just be creepy.”
It’s nothing like that today, but there is still a feeling of it being a little forced, as though Gabriel is merely upstairs showering and will be downstairs soon to join them. The feigning of joy is something Elodie is not only well practiced at, but also can easily detect.
Maggie brings the food to the table, and everyone sits down. James opens a bottle of Chianti, fills their glasses. “Happy birthday, Pa,” he says, holding up his glass.
“Happy sixtieth, my love,” Maggie says, her eyes shining. “You should be here.”
“He’s here with us, Maman,” Stephanie reassures her.
“No, he’s not,” James mutters.
“You don’t know that,” Stephanie argues. She’s twenty-one and thinks she knows everything. She goes to university in Sherbrooke, and every time she comes home for a visit, Elodie is convinced she’s a little more self-centered. Elodie hasn’t always gotten along with Stephanie; she finds her spoiled and entitled, like most kids her age. Maybe Elodie is just jealous that Stephanie was here first. Regardless, there’s been a rivalry between them since the day Elodie showed up to claim a piece of their mother.
“You don’t know what happens after we die,” Stephanie is saying. “How can you be so sure Daddy isn’t here?”
“I don’t see him at the table, do you?”
“James,” Maggie says, silencing him.
“I mean his spirit,” Stephanie clarifies.
“You’ve got to stop watching Oprah, sis.”
“James,” Maggie repeats, more sternly this time. James and Stephanie still bicker like children, even though they are twenty-one and thirty-one.
Maggie serves them each a generous helping of baked spaghetti, sausage, and potatoes, and then tears the baguette into pieces. Elodie’s mouth is watering. She will never forget the first time Maggie made her her famous baked spaghetti, the way the top layer was charred and crispy and underneath the noodles were creamy and rich, full of fresh tomatoes and a whole block of melted Velveeta cheese. Maggie tried to teach Elodie how to make it—she’s been trying to teach her how to cook for years—but Elodie has no talent for it, and even less interest. She’d rather eat Maggie’s food.
“Did you see the Journal de Montreal the other day?” Stephanie says, to no one in particular. “There was a story about the Duplessis orphans.”
“It’s horrific,” Maggie says, looking across the table at Elodie. “The stories that are coming out.”
“Not that we didn’t already know,” James adds.
“Are you going to sue?” Stephanie asks her. “That’s what they’re talking about on the news.”
“Sue who?” Elodie says. “The government? The nuns? The doctor who had me locked up?”
“All of them.”
“I’m going to call the Duplessis Orphans Committee in the new year,” she says. “But I don’t see how a bunch of poor, uneducated mental patients can possibly stand up to the government, let alone the church.”
“You’re not a mental patient,” Maggie says.
“I was for ten years. The fact that I wasn’t crazy doesn’t change that.”
“It’s still worth trying,” James adds.
Elodie nods, savoring a mouthful of spaghetti. Part of her is eager for the chance to fight for some kind of restitution—money, criminal charges, and an apology from all who were complicit—but another part of her is terrified to dredge up the past. She’s managed to string an impressive number of good days together, days that have quietly morphed into solid chunks of time without despair, anxiety, or grief. Does she dare even consider tampering with such a fragile accord?
“I was thinking,” Maggie says. “With everything coming out in the news lately and so many orphans coming forward, maybe now’s the time for us to update your memoir, Elo. Try to get a publisher.”
“I could help,” James offers.
“Do you think someone would publish it now?”
“Absolutely. And I don’t think yours will be the only one. I’d like it to be the first.”
“You should find that nun,” Stephanie says. “Don’t you want to confront her?”
Elodie looks away. She hasn’t had any desire to find Sister Ignatia.
Elodie was barely twelve when Gabriel and Maggie showed up at St. Nazarius looking for her. Had they found her that day, they would have brought her home right then. Instead, Sister Ignatia told them she was dead. And then, for no other reason than inexplicable evil, she went and told Elodie that her mother was dead, purposely keeping them apart for twelve years longer than necessary.
Not long after Elodie came into their lives, Gabriel went back to St. Nazarius to find Sister Ignatia, but she’d already retired from the hospital by then. He was denied access to the convent’s residence where she was living. Maggie always said it was a good thing because he probably would have killed her with his bare hands.
“When Elodie is ready,” Maggie says, “she will do whatever she needs to do for herself. This isn’t about revenge—”
“Yes, it is,” Elodie says.
“Well, fine,” Maggie concedes. “But it’s also about getting some closure.”
“If that’s even possible.”
“I hope it is.”
“I prefer revenge,” Elodie says, not meaning to be funny, but the others laugh. “I would like the world to know what she did to us. I’d like people to know that she murdered Emmeline and little Agathe, and told me that you were dead when you came to take me home. I don’t think closure is realistic, but I’ll feel a lot better when Sister Ignatia and the doctor who put me in that place are exposed for the monsters they are.”
Elodie can already feel the dark fog beginning to rise up inside her, so she does what she always does. She smiles. She breathes. She silently acknowledges everything she has—health, family, home, food. “Let’s change the subject,” she says. “Pass me the cheese, please.”
“I met someone,” James announces.
“Really?” Maggie says, brightening. “What’s her name? Is it serious?”
“Her name is Véronique Fortin. The relationship is purely one-sided. She actually hates me.”
“I’m almost sixty, you know. Time is running out.”
“She’s the daughter of a convicted FLQ terrorist.”
“Not Léo Fortin?” Maggie cries.
“The very one.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish I was,” he says. “She’s a bad idea, I know. But I can’t stop thinking about her.”
“Is she a separatist?”
“Of course. Hard-core.”
Maggie rolls her eyes. “What is it with us? First my father fell for one, then I did. Now you . . .”
“The heart wants what the heart wants,” Stephanie says.
“Why the hell do we always want angry French Canadian nationalists?”
“It must be a gene,” Elodie says, and they all laugh.
After dessert, when the dishes are done and the kitchen is sparkling and smells of Fantastik, Stephanie takes off to meet friends and James announces he’s heading out.
“Sleep here,” Maggie says to James, a little slurry from the wine. “Don’t drive back tonight. It’s snowing.”
“I have to,” he says, hugging both of them. Maggie hands him a large chunk of cake wrapped in tinfoil and a Tupperware of spaghetti.
Elodie knows he probably wants to be alone for a while on his father’s birthday. Probably needs to get drunk and punch a wall or get in a fight.
When they’re alone, Maggie opens another bottle of wine, and the two of them settle in the den. Maggie has a new couch, navy blue corduroy, with an absurd amount of plaid and floral toss cushions that leave very little room for sitting. Maggie throws a handful of them on the floor to make room. “I wanted it to look like a Ralph Lauren room,” she explains.
“It’s nice,” Elodie says. “I like it.”
Maggie replenishes their wine, and they touch glasses. Maggie says, “To Gabriel.”
“To Gabriel,” Elodie echoes.
“I miss him.”
“Me, too.”
“I feel very sad tonight,” Maggie admits, her eyes filling with tears. Elodie doesn’t know what to say. “We were supposed to get old together,” Maggie goes on. “I’m just so glad you were all here with me. It means a lot. He would have been so proud of you, Elo.”
“Why?”
“Oh, Elo. You don’t give yourself enough credit.” Maggie takes her by the hand and pulls her into the hallway. They stand side by side, looking into the carved oval mirror on the wall, just as they did the very first time they met. Elodie has changed so much since that day, both inside and out. She still has the physical scars on her face, but she’s able to see beyond them now. She can see Gabriel in her full brow and blue eyes, Maggie in the shape of them. She wears her dirty-blond hair in a blunt cut to her chin, an improvement over the long drape of hair she used to hide behind. She has color in her cheeks, meat on her bones. They tell her she looks a lot like Clémentine, who is beautiful.
“Look at the woman you’ve become,” Maggie says.
“You paid for my teeth to be fixed.”
“I’m not talking about your teeth. I’m talking about your strength. You’ve raised a wonderful daughter, you’ve supported her for twenty years at the same job, you’ve overcome so much.”
“I’m a waitress—”
“Are you kidding me?” Maggie says, her voice rising. Elodie can tell she’s quite drunk. “Holding down a job for two decades after what you’ve been through, Elo? Do you know how many orphans like you are probably on welfare? Or back in institutions? Or dead? Your father would be proud of you for surviving.”
“It’s all because of you and Pa.”
“It’s because of you. You are the person I admire most in the world, Elodie Phénix. I’ve never known anyone as resilient as you are. Do you hear me?”
Elodie nods, moved beyond words.
“You are nothing short of a miracle,” Maggie says, pulling her into her arms and holding her against her breast. “God took Gabriel from me,” she says, her mouth in Elodie’s hair, “but He gave me you. And I love you so much, my girl.”
Elodie relaxes, allowing the good feelings to course through her body. In her mother’s arms, all is right with the world, as she always imagined it would be.