Seven

Monday morning

January 28, 2019

MARIE QUICKLY CHECKED her watch. Two minutes left. Her timing was impeccable. She looked out at the forty or so faces and knew that almost every one of them was actually listening. Although she wished this was all due to her gifts as a teacher, she knew that in fact, it was the subject she was discussing. “In 1967, Roger Payne and Scott McVay recorded humpback whales singing—yes, singing—off the coast of Bermuda. Four years later, they released a record of those songs. Amazingly, it became a bestseller. More importantly, it altered the fate of the humpback whale, hopefully forever. Now. Can anyone think of why?”

A few tentative hands were slowly raised. Marie called on a very shy girl in the second row. It took a lot of courage for her to speak up in class at all, and she blushed a furious fuchsia. “Is it because they were able to talk to us?”

A few of her classmates erupted in laughter. Marie overheard one boy say, “I speak whale. Don’t you?” His cronies snickered again. The second-row girl wouldn’t answer another question for a long time now.

“Actually,” Marie hesitated as she tried to recall her name. “Katie. You are absolutely right.” Marie looked directly at the sniggering gang of four in the back. “Can any of you expand on that?” The class went silent, puzzling over the question. “The whale songs were so strangely beautiful and haunting, they completely captivated the public’s imagination. Although humpbacks were the ‘musicians,’ this fascination and urge to understand them carried over to most whale species. Suddenly, these animals that were hunted for over four-hundred years to near extinction for such things as lamp oil, soap, corset stays—I’ll explain what those are later—margarine, and even for perfume from whale poop, were seen as something we could relate to, to have compassion for, because as Richard Ellis explained—it was like they were singing their own dirge.” Marie checked her watch again. “Okay! That’s all for today. Please read and take notes on chapter four of your course pack on whale vocalization. See you all right back here on Thursday!”

With a scraping of forty chairs, her class began to gather their things and exit the room. Almost everyone was staring at their phones or madly thumbing a text. About a half a dozen of them hovered around her desk, still bristling with questions. This was often Marie’s favorite part of teaching. “Miss, what is a corset stay?” asked a girl named Zaynab. A boy standing beside her explained what it was. “That’s horrible!” the girl gasped. Marie nodded and asked, “Which? The corset or the slaughter of whales to make them?” Another boy, Francois, wanted to know what dirge meant. Marie spelled it for him and then told him to look it up. He checked his phone immediately and smiled. “Okay. That makes sense now.” One of the gang of four from the back of the class had surprisingly remained behind. “Miss!” Marie started to correct him—she had repeatedly reminded her students to call her Ms. Russell, Mrs. Russell, or Marie. Just not “Miss,” a holdover from high school and so much less respectful and commanding so much less authority than the “Sir” used to address her male colleagues. But he seemed so enthusiastic about his question, Marie cut herself off. He wore the uniform of his crowd—a backwards baseball cap, sweatpants, and a faded hoodie with some logo Marie didn’t understand. He had a little bit of dark hair over his lip, and a few more patches under his chin. No real beard yet. “Miss—whatddya mean they make perfume from like, whale poop?”

Marie laughed. “Okay, so short answer?” The boy nodded. “It’s called ambergris, and it’s a substance sperm whales make in their bellies to protect themselves from giant squid beaks that they can’t digest, which might puncture their intestinal tract. So, they coat the squid beaks with this substance, and poop them out. Only about one percent of sperm whales do this, so it’s very rare, and highly valued by famous perfume makers—because it fixes scent to human skin. It can be worth thousands of dollars. An ounce.”

The boy opened his mouth dramatically, then remarked “Holy shit!”

Marie laughed. “Exactly.”

Marie glanced out the window of her classroom door and noticed several students and an annoyed-looking teacher waiting. She gathered her papers and made for the exit. As she headed down the bustling between-class halls, most of the hangers-on wished her a good day and disappeared into the crowds. Just one followed her, the one who’d written the brilliant paper. Michaela. “Professor Russell? You wrote on my paper you’d like to speak with me?”

Marie smiled. “Yes. I’d like you to present your paper to the class—you don’t have to read it, but just go over the main points. It’s outstanding.”

Michaela didn’t seem as enthusiastic as Marie had expected. “Am I the only one presenting my paper?” So that was it. Some students loved to be singled out to show off their work. Many more, especially the really smart ones, didn’t like it. They’d probably been teacher’s pet since kindergarten and had paid the price for it socially.

Marie shook her head. “No, there’ll be one or two others. How about two classes from now? Say, next Monday?”

Looking pleased in spite of herself, Michaela agreed. “I’ll do it if you promise to tell more stories about your life as a marine biologist—I’d like to hear the one about the time you got drenched in whale snot. You promised you’d tell it, but you never did.” Students loved personal stories. And Marie had many tales to tell. She agreed to Michaela’s conditions, but added, “Just cut me off when they get too self-indulgent and um…too personal.”

Michaela nodded. “It’s a deal.”

Marie arrived at her office door and waited to see if Michaela would follow her in, but she checked her phone instead, and gasped. “I’m late for anthropology. I’ll fail if I’m late more than twice. Thank you for the great class!” Marie watched as the diminutive young woman hastened down the hall. It was students like Michaela Cruz that made teaching such a privilege. It was a big cliché, but it was true. Marie could stand up in front of a class and discuss what she felt so passionately about to seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds forever—or until they dragged her out of the college feet first. This morning, Marie was feeling like she’d never retire.

Marie dropped her books and papers on her chair and tried to stuff them into what few square inches of surface area remained on her desk. She rolled back in her chair and took a moment to consider the few photos she had on her wall. Very dated ones of her kids’ high school graduation—Ben’s open and sincere smile, Ruby’s more guarded smirk. Another one of her mother, Claire, and her older sister, Madeleine, in poofy peach dresses at her middle sister Louise’s wedding, and one of Marie in a kayak on the Sea of Cortez, paddling very close to a humpback whale. Magnus had taken that picture. The Norwegian love of her life. They had sworn to sail the seven seas together, and they did manage four of them before Magnus opted for number five without Marie. He got on a boat for Madagascar and left her behind. She followed his career obsessively at first, then on and off for years as he rose through the ranks of whale researcher royalty, but she never heard from him again. Sometimes, Marie could still feel the actual physical pain of her separation from Magnus. It took her years to recover from his betrayal, and Marie had kept her emotional distance from all men until she’d met Daniel. They were an unlikely couple. The closest he came to life at sea was a canoe on a Laurentian lake. Daniel had dyslexia and a lifelong resistance to reading. His idea of outdoor adventure was his childhood camp in the Laurentians where the counsellors unpacked your clothes for you. But Daniel had an encyclopedic mind and endless curiosity. He was a charming fast-talker, the opposite of laconic, Viking Magnus. He ran his father’s successful shmata business and was well off. He was sexy and fun and he loved Marie, at least for the first ten years of their marriage.

“Would you like to hear the latest?” Marie’s colleague, Simon, a history teacher two offices down the hall, dropped into her spare chair and sighed deeply. Marie waited for him to launch into his usual litany of complaints about his students’ shocking ignorance, and he didn’t disappoint. “So. I am reviewing the material for their first in-class test, a test, by the way, they would like all the questions to beforehand.” Marie had heard this one many times before. “And then one bright light in the peanut gallery at the back of my class says, ‘Sir?’” At this point Simon was imitating his lazy consonants and teenage slur. “‘Sir, do we have to know who fought who in World War Two for the test?’” Marie smiled her sympathy, but only half-listened as Simon bemoaned their general illiteracy and total absence of any knowledge of history. “I mean, what happens to an ahistorical generation? To a generation of moral relativists? To a generation that is constantly told their opinions are most valuable and precious, regardless of the facts?” Marie watched as he kept talking. She and Simon had had a brief encounter a few years earlier when Marie was about two years divorced. They had had a lovely evening, as long as they talked about nothing but Simon himself. Then, for some inexplicable reason, Marie agreed to go to his place for a nightcap. Within minutes, he had groped at her on the sofa, and kept placing her hand on his erect penis. She told him she wasn’t ready for sex with him. Then he started to cry and apologize. Marie wasn’t sure which was worse.

“What happens is Trump. The rise of fascism in the United States. And Doug Ford. Demagogues the world over.” Simon waited for a response, but Marie offered none. There was an awkward silence. Then he rose from the chair and sauntered back to his office, his load lightened perhaps, Marie thought. Once again, Marie felt so grateful for Roméo, even though he’d missed their Saturday night date, and he had yet to explain to her what fresh drama Sophie had concocted to ruin their night. Marie checked her watch and realized she had seventeen minutes to pick up a very necessary coffee before her next class.

Once the Motherhouse to the Gray nuns, the imposing
nineteenth-century greystone buildings at the corner of Atwater and Sherbrooke streets were sold to the Quebec government in the early eighties and turned into Dawson College—or CEGEP—as they are called in Quebec. The convent’s chapel was turned into a spectacular library. Few other traces of the nuns remained, but most significantly one did—the great dome—and at its apex, the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus in her arms. For some, this overt religious symbol on a public, government building should have been removed years ago. For others, it was an important historical landmark that preserved the patrimoine of Quebec. Quebec was once again flirting with laicité—the complete separation of church and state in terms of religious symbols, including personal apparel items such as the kippah, the crucifix, and the hijab. Many Quebecois supported this in backlash reaction to the past autocracy of the Catholic church. A minority (usually including minorities) saw this as overt xenophobia, and in the case of the public servants the hijab ban applied to, cruel and petty. Within minutes, Marie had passed several students, each wearing one of the controversial religious symbols as she navigated the main staircase down to the busy atrium of the school. She refused to be pushed and jostled by students, cell phone in one hand, Starbucks coffee in the other, rushing to class. She secretly loved all that teenage hormonal energy. She loved watching the confident girls strutting down the hall, the others who thumb at their phones to avoid eye contact, or to look like they’re never alone. She loved the gaggles of obstreperous boys, the sheer energy of almost ten thousand students on the move. Marie decided to cross over to the mall by the underground metro level, her preferred route in winter, as she didn’t have to actually go outside, and wouldn’t need her full cold weather regalia. Besides, the aftermath of the snowstorm—snowbanks three feet high and sidewalks still not fully cleared—made stepping out into the January air even less appealing. She emerged from the Dawson doors into the actual metro station and passed by the Jehovah’s Witness couple flogging their version of Christianity, who still looked so hopeful that she might stop for a little proselytizing. She could already taste that café latte with an extra shot of espresso. Maybe she’d treat herself to one of those blueberry oatmeal squares that cost a fortune and about eight thousand calories.

Between the metro turnstiles and the shopping center proper, this part of Alexis Nihon mall was known for its high concentration of homeless people. Marie recognized some of them from over the years, and some were more transient, their faces changing every few months. A few of the regulars were there, their empty Starbucks or Tim Hortons coffee cups held aloft, begging for a loonie or a toonie. A couple of them were passed out inside filthy sleeping bags, their few possessions gathered around them in tired plastic bags. Sometimes one would begin to shriek aggressively at a shopper, but for the most part they were harmless, too drunk or high or sick to be a threat to anyone. Except sometimes to each other. Marie always walked quickly past what she called the gauntlet of guilt on the way to her daily coffee. She passed the first guy who wished her “Bonne journée!” with a cheery wave and a snaggle-toothed grin. Another regular, an old woman swaddled in layers of mismatched clothes and a floral babushka on her head, lifted her cup and smiled weakly at Marie, mumbling something in a language Marie didn’t understand. She used to stop and ask how they were. She always used to drop some change into their cups and every now and then she still did. But over time, a feeling of frustrated helplessness had eroded her empathy. She wanted to ask what had happened to them that brought them to this state and this place. She wanted to ask what she could do. But she didn’t. Instead, she held her purse a bit tighter and hastened past them, making just enough eye contact to remind herself that they were human, too.

Just as Marie turned past the vegan burger shop, she heard shouts and then terrible screaming. Ahead of her, surrounded by a small group of onlookers, were two uniformed cops. One held a woman by the waist, and the shrieking came from her tiny body, as she tried to kick and twist herself out of his grasp. The other cop held the arms of a second struggling woman behind her back, and she seemed to be writhing in pain, screaming something Marie couldn’t make out.

“Qu’est-ce qui se passe? What’s happening?” Marie asked an older woman with a Pharmaprix uniform on, watching the scene unfold next to her.

“What do you think? The usual. They’re drunk, and got into a fight, and the cops are breaking it up. Les ostie d’Esquimaux!” She shook her head, gave a dismissive shrug and left. The crowd seemed to have lost interest as well, and started returning to their mall activity, one or two looking back to see if anything else might happen. The policeman finally wrestled the kicking woman to the ground very roughly, causing her to hit her head hard on the mall floor. The woman started to wail, holding her head and rocking back and forth.

“Hey! Qu’est-ce que vous faites là? What the hell are you doing?” Marie heard herself yelling. “You’re hurting her!”

The cop who had the other woman finally subdued and quiet was speaking calmly into her shoulder walkie-talkie. She looked right through Marie like she wasn’t even there. The policeman growled “Occupés-toi tes oignons! Mind your own business!”

Marie watched as they half-dragged the two women away, and then decided to follow them. The cops pulled them through the double doors onto Atwater Avenue, directly across from the old Montreal Forum. A couple of very rough-looking friends were waiting for them there out in the cold, their breath suspended in the frozen air, howling at the cops in protest. The injured woman patted at her head gingerly, while the other woman was pulled away by a different gang. The two police officers returned to the warmth of their squad car and watched impassively through the window. Marie hastened over to confront the police, then stopped herself. Was it because of her relationship with Roméo? Had he turned her into someone who tolerates police abuse? She checked her watch and realized she was already three minutes late for class. No chance for a coffee now. Marie ran back into the mall. She would definitely discuss this incident with Roméo as soon as possible. It was just fucking unacceptable.