IT WAS WARM OUT. THE TATTOO OF A ROSE ON Raphaël’s arm had grown new leaves and buds and completely surrounded his bicep. My stomach had finally grown big enough that people on the street were able to tell that I was pregnant. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.
At work my boss kept laughing and telling me not to lick the envelopes because it would cause my baby to have birth defects. And then she yelled at me for carrying boxes of programs into the office. She said that she would never forgive herself if I had a miscarriage. Finally she told me to take some leave and promised to give me my job back whenever I wanted to come back to work. I was at home during the day with Raphaël.
“We’re going to the country,” Raphaël said. “We’ll be safer there.”
“No, we’re not.”
I didn’t even look up from my math textbook. I hadn’t left the island of Montréal since I was seven years old and visited Étienne in prison. There was just tundra and nothingness out there. I did not want to go into the wilderness, where you were all alone under the stars with nothing to distract you from your thoughts. If you lived a certain way downtown you could get away without having one of your own thoughts for weeks.
“We have to leave tonight,” Raphaël said. “I don’t want to be taken away and be incapacitated. They’ll fill me up with drugs so that I can’t even tie my own shoes. I’ll never be able to support my family.”
I had no intention of leaving the city and living in the boonies. I was outraged. I had put up with all his craziness all winter and I had to draw the line somewhere.
“Well it’s been nice being married to you, baby,” I said. “But I guess we’ll have to get a divorce.”
His face got red, but he didn’t say anything. Instead he launched into action, throwing stuff randomly into a suitcase. He mostly seemed to have packed underwear, an alarm clock and a copy of the novel Comment faire l’amour avec un négre sans se fatiguer.
“Goodbye!” he yelled.
He walked out the door. I sat there listening, but I didn’t even hear the sound of his boots going down the stairs. I knew he was standing outside in the hallway, waiting for me to run after him. Finally, he flung the door back open.
“We’ve got to get out of here now. Stop being a crazy, irrational bitch. Please! I’ve fucking had enough of this. You’ve got five minutes to put your things together.”
“I’m not putting any of my things together.”
“Fine, you don’t need any of it. It’s all cheap, crazy crap anyways.”
“Who do you think you are? Talking to me like this. Do you think I’m going to just sit here and be insulted by a washed-up figure skating schizophrenic? You are sorely mistaken.”
“They’ll all survive without you, you know. Your family.”
I burst into tears. I felt horribly homesick. I wished that I had never left home and that Nicolas and I still lived together in the same bed.
“I feel guilty and terrible,” I said.
“You want to believe that everything and everybody will go to hell when you’re gone. It’s all about your ego.”
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s go. Just let me pack a few things.”
I took off the dress that I was wearing and tossed it out the window. I threw my shoes out the window. The coats went down to the ground like descending birds of prey. A homeless man stopped, put on one of my hats and walked off. There were understudies everywhere getting ready to play my part if I left.
I dropped the drawer filled with utensils out the window in order to make a point. It woke up the whole building. I threw the plates. The little glass and ceramic people lay without their heads on the street. Some of them frowned sadly and closed their eyes and whispered their last words. I took Raphaël’s ten-speed bicycle and pushed it out the door. It rode itself down the stairs miraculously. It was as impressive as when Kermit the Frog rode a bicycle in that movie.
Raphaël walked out the door and headed down the stairs with our suitcases. I followed him down in my undershirt and underwear. I’m sure I looked ridiculous; everyone could see my protruding belly. I followed him out onto the street. People leaned out the window to watch, but they didn’t seem to worry very much—or think that they should come down and help us.
I lay down in the street in front of the car. I knew people did that kind of thing—but I didn’t know that I was one of those people. I was so afraid and confused that I almost wanted to let Raphaël run the show, but he was completely crazy.
An older woman wearing an orange housecoat came out of the building. Her white hair was held up in senseless directions with bobby pins. She started walking toward us with her cane.
“Yes, Madame,” Raphaël said fiercely. “Can I help you? Can I help you? This isn’t a show. If it was a show, I would charge admission and you couldn’t afford it. So go back and watch La Petite Vie.”
“I’m going to miss La Petite Vie!” I said from the ground. “I hate you. I used to be a beauty queen.”
“Here we go. Here we go.”
I was suddenly terrified about Nicolas not being able to find me. I thought that if I could just stop anywhere to leave a message for Nicolas, it would be okay. It was just impossibly awful for me to leave the city without telling him. I had promised him earlier in the year that I would never go.
“I just want to go to the pharmacy. I have to go get some Aspirin.”
I knew that my excuse wasn’t believable though. Raphaël called me out on it right away.
“Are you crazy? You don’t get headaches. You just want to have a chance to call Nicolas.”
“You’re always making me choose between you.”
“Our relationship always suffers when you start obsessing about him. You can’t be a wife. We have to have our very own little family. I get to be number one just for once.”
“I always make you number one.”
“Not really, Nouschka, my darling. Not really. You pretended that you chose to be with me at the wedding. And maybe you were, for just that night, but you’ve been slowly, bit by bit, trying to get back to Nicolas. But time moves forward and not back. And don’t you realize that all the successes in time travel are so that we can move forward?”
I sat looking at Raphaël, trying to grasp the gist of what he just said.
“If we were to go back in time, it would be disastrous to civilization. There would still be dinosaurs running around. And there would be no Beethoven or Sigmund Freud. All of our encyclopedias would be obsolete because they would be encyclopedias of the unknown.”
I shook my head at him in an uncomprehending way.
“You got married to me,” he said, putting his hands gently on my shoulders. “You can’t go back to the way things were before. Have some respect for the present.”
He was right. He was completely mad and even he could see that I couldn’t go running back to Nicolas.
A scrap-metal truck passed by. They were building spaceships out of fences and grocery carts. They wanted to be the first Québécois to plant a fleur-de-lys on the moon.
“Do you still love me?” I asked.
He paused and sighed. “Voyons donc, Nouschka.”
We left the city in the night. Nicolas and Loulou and Étienne were all on the island, having no idea that I was leaving. I felt in my purse. I had brought along the tin that was filled with money.