Autopsy of a Boring Wife Read online

  “Me?”

  “A third of all jobs. They’re moving all the administrative positions to Toronto.”

  “A third of all jobs? That’s a lot of people!”

  “A lot of lives to ruin . . . ”

  “And you get to break the news?”

  “They asked me to meet with people two at a time so it would take one week instead of two.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I told them to fuck off.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “Yeah, I can get away with it because they need me to do their dirty work. They told me not to worry, they have a team of psychologists ready to help me. It’s like an assembly line: I announce they’re losing their jobs, they pack their boxes and then go cry to the shrink.”

  My life was starting to feel like the end of the world was just around the corner. I’d always thought it would arrive with a giant tsunami or fireball, something truly spectacular. But it broke over me in the most mundane form possible, in a series of cutthroat words that struck me down and made me want to vomit: administrative restructuring.

  “Now I’ll really have some free time.”

  “You’ll get six months’ severance pay.”

  “Fabulous.”

  “Diane, I don’t know what to say . . . ”

  “There’s nothing to say. I don’t envy you.”

  “Jesus, I hate this goddamn job sometimes.”

  “Listen, I think I’ll head home right away. I’m tired. Can you get someone to pack up my stuff? They can figure out which file is which. The Murdoch dossier reeks of a scam.”

  “I’ll take care of it. I’ll ask Émile to do the boxes.”

  She started to cry when she hugged me, but I couldn’t summon a single tear. I was totally stunned.

  “We’ll still see each other, Claudine.”

  “I know, but . . . life’s really giving you shit these days.”

  “You too.”

  I left her office and floated, weightless, across the polished concrete floor. I felt like a pumpkin that had been gutted clean, waiting to be carved. If I’d had the strength, I would have done a final bootless dash down the hallway, but I couldn’t convince my arms to reach down and take them off.

  I grabbed my purse, keys, and coat and left without a word. Those I passed must have waved at me, but I was already far away, numbed by torpor.

  As I no longer had anything important to do, I drove around, following unfamiliar highways, exits, boulevards, and streets like somebody watching TV, absent-mindedly eating handful after handful of chips. If it hadn’t been for a pressing need to pee, I might never have stopped.

  When I tried to go back to the Ultramar I’d passed a few minutes earlier, the one plastered with neon lights and advertisements for cheap beer, I ended up lost in a sequence of numbered streets going nowhere. Yellow fields stretched out in every direction, a throwback to an earlier era. I had no idea such expanses still existed so close to the city. I pulled over and opened both

  passenger-side doors along the highway’s gravelly shoulder to relieve myself. In front of me, scrawny ears of corn waved their brittle leaves. I hiked up my skirt, pulled down my tights, squatted, and peed as an icy breeze ruffled my backside. I tried unsuccessfully to save my pretty blue boots, now as precious as vintage wedding bands. Despite my precautions, small droplets ringed with steam bounced off the ground and up onto the hot leather of my boots, leaving dark spots upon contact. I hadn’t done this since my last trip with Jacques to the Swiss Alps. In those days I was still flexible, perfectly able to keep my knees away from splashes. I wiped myself with my scarf and left it there, spread over the liquid rapidly absorbed by the half-

  frozen earth. Once I settled back into the driver’s seat, I removed my boots and threw them into the ditch. We had been together long enough. They were hopelessly connected to the end of my marriage and were covered in piss. The ditch would fit them like a glove.

  But for a cabin made of poorly planed boards planted in the middle of the field, there was hardly anything around. Downy sparrows perched on power lines, crows screeched, and maybe there was a three-legged cat somewhere. These open spaces told the story of my life. My soul was true to the season.

  My texting icon had a little “8” in the notification bubble over it — Claudine was worried. I needed to get in touch or she’d call in the army, the police, and my entire family. I snapped out of it. I didn’t particularly want my kids feeling even sorrier for me, or for Jacques to feel obliged to pull me from the depths of my despair.

  “Out for a drive. Need to think. Everything’s okay.”

  “Call me, we need to talk.”

  “Soon, I promise.”

  “No, now.”

  “Talk soon.”

  I was like a tightrope walker on the high wire, focused on keeping my balance. If I talked to her right now, I was sure to fall.

  Stockings are not designed to be worn without shoes. The grooves of the pedals cut into the soles of my feet like the blades of a mandoline. Numbness was setting in, and I wouldn’t be able to go on much longer. In any case, the fuel gauge indicated that, against all odds, my situation was about to get a lot worse unless I got the heck out of this no-man’s land. Once I reached civilization again, I’d be able to buy a pair of something or other in it didn’t matter which supermarket that sold clothing and footwear at three-times-nothing prices made by people paid a hundred-times-nothing.

  Two kilometres down the road, an old man sat rocking on the front porch of a small green house. He wore a quilted gabardine coat — very Canadian Tire — and a beaver hat, its tail hanging down the back of his neck. Just my luck, Daniel Boone was standing guard. I pulled off to the side of the road and lowered the window.

  “Hello!”

  “ . . . ”

  “HELLO!”

  “Ah! Hello!”

  “Can you tell me how to get back on the highway?”

  “Pardon?”

  “WHICH WAY IS THE HIGHWAY?”

  “Eh?”

  I stuck my head through the window to reduce the distance between us.

  “CAN YOU TELL ME HOW TO GET BACK ONTO THE HIGHWAY?”

  He put his hand up to his ear, but didn’t stop rocking — odd activity on such a cold day. Sure, it was impolite to keep screaming from inside the car, though it was no less rude to keep rocking as he was. Whatever. I was resigned to having to leave the car and run over to his front steps. The cold and the pebbles mercilessly slashed through the tender skin of my feet. The mere idea of setting foot on grimy country soil, likely full of animal turds and spit, would have made Jacques ill.

  “Hello! I’m sorry to bother you.”

  “Hello hello!”

  “Yes, hi! I’m a little lost — can you tell me how to get back on the highway?”

  “What was that?”

  “I’M LOOKING FOR THE HIGHWAY.”

  “You’ve come from where, you?”

  Where had I come from? This was surreal. Physically, I was standing right in front of him, a bizarre question to ask. Metaphorically, I had no idea other than that I was caught in a tangled web of darkness.

  “Where’s your shoes?”

  “Oh! I threw them into a ditch back there.”

  I could tell he’d let it go. He didn’t even bat an eye.

  “Well, come on in, child. Gon’ catch your death, dressed like that.”

  Seeing him struggle to lift himself up and walk to the door, I’d have pegged him for about a hundred. All his joints, neck included, seemed welded together. He walked like a robot prototype. Some people’s bodies really hang in there.

  Inside, the smell of burned butter permeated the single room of the first floor. A faint aroma wafted up from a small battered cooking pot sitting proudly on the stove in the middle of the room. T
here were (most likely) vegetables swirling around in it, turning in the swells of bubbling water. The walls were lined with photographs, some very old and others more recent. All of the frames were askew, as if an earthquake had just rumbled through. The little man — I was almost a good head taller than he was — didn’t take off his boots as he walked over to a big wooden chest in the back of the room.

  “I’ll give you some slippers. I’ve got enough for an army, and no one around here uses ’em.”

  “That’s okay, sir, I don’t want to take your slippers.”

  “Since my wife died, I keep my boots on in the house.”

  His laugh revealed an impressive mask of wrinkles and a mouthful of blackened stubs probably only good for soft foods. A shame, since I bet the area had lots of fresh corn.

  “Plus, I don’t get too many visitors.”

  “I really can’t . . . ”

  “What colour are you wearing?”

  “What colour?”

  “My wife knitted ’em in all sorts of colours — to go with her clothes she said.”

  “Oh. I’m wearing black.”

  “Black? Are you headed to a funeral?”

  “Uh . . . no, I just like black.”

  “What was that?”

  “NO, I JUST LIKE BLACK.”

  He was reading my lips, so I tried to over-pronounce.

  “Well, good. I ask, seeing as we’re coming up on dying season. The Reaper does his cleaning before winter comes. So now, I’ll give you these, but grab another pair from the chest if they don’t fit. You must have big feet, seeing as you’re so tall.”

  He handed me two different slippers, one green and white, the other brown, “knit to last,” as my grandma would say. They had the characteristic stiffness of synthetic blends. I felt a wave of nostalgia.

  “Thanks a lot, you’re a lifesaver. I had a hell of a day today.”

  “WHAT WAS THAT?”

  “THANK YOU! I HAD A BAD DAY TODAY.”

  “Well then, I’ve got good news for you.”

  “Oh?”

  “The soup’s ready.”

  “Oh!”

  “You must be hungry, seeing as you’re lost.”

  I wasn’t, but I didn’t want to ruin the only good news of the day. He went over to the kitchen and came back with two wooden bowls and a ladle right out of a children’s nursery tale. I didn’t dare ask, but I’d have bet he’d whittled them from a tree himself.

  “Get closer to the stove so’s you can warm up.”

  I obeyed. I had nothing to worry about; the poor man, half-deaf and half-blind, moved at a snail’s pace. Even in synthetic slippers, I could outrun him just by walking. With a steadier hand than I’d expected, he served me without even looking down at the pot. He went by the smell and the heat. And habit, I suppose.

  “What did you put in your soup?”

  He didn’t hear me.

  “Here, little lady.”

  He handed me a bowl and sat down beside me on a chair facing the stove. I figured “seasonal vegetables,” judging by a piece of parsnip I saw floating around and “little wild rodents caught in traps” by what seemed to be meat.

  “Have you been living alone for a while?”

  “WHAT’S THAT?”

  “YOU LIVE ALONE?”

  “I’m too old for you, little lady. Hah!”

  “Pfff . . . ”

  “I’m joking. You’re not little.”

  “Hah!”

  “It’s just me, but Mariette comes by in the evenings.”

  “Every day?”

  “So she can get past the pearly gates. She’s got a few sins she needs forgivin’.”

  “Don’t we all.”

  “She’s my sister. Only eighty-two, a spring chicken. A real force of nature, you wouldn’t believe.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Eh?”

  “HOW OLD ARE YOU?”

  “Ninety-four, they say . . . but I think that’s a stretch.”

  If what “they” said was true, he’d been through the Great Depression, the Second World War, Elvis, the first TV, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Quebec flag, and a whole bunch of things we celebrate or despair of having invented. Like the leaf blower. How many loved ones had he buried? Yet there he was, calmly drinking soup directly from a bowl like any other man, using a finger to retrieve the vegetables he’d missed from the corner of his mouth. So I tried it, too. The combination of broth and overcooked vegetables, somewhere between a soup and a stew, was surprisingly delicious. If it contained squirrel meat, it was excellently cooked. Strangely, my misfortunes seemed irrelevant inside the house, as if they were waiting outside like a pack of hungry wolves. Everything that had been weighing me down, that had been smothering me only a moment before, suddenly seemed of little importance. I was drinking soup, I was wearing old mismatched slippers.

  “I just lost my job.”

  “Do you have kids?”

  “Yes, but they’re all grown up. They’ve got their own lives. My youngest daughter is the only one still in school.”

  “No kids?”

  I smiled and held up three fingers.

  “All in good health?”

  “YES, THANKS!”

  “As long as the kids are healthy . . . ”

  “You’re right . . . I LOST MY JOB TODAY.”

  He pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped his mouth and eyes, then blew his nose. I wondered if Mariette washed it every now and then, its colour slightly disturbing.

  “You’ll find another one. Are you sick?”

  “NO.”

  “As long as you’re healthy . . . ”

  “BUT YOU NEED A DIPLOMA TO DO ANYTHING NOWADAYS.”

  “Go back to school then, you’re young. Does your husband still have a job?”

  “My husband left.”

  “Eh?”

  “MY HUSBAND LEFT.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Oh, somewhere far, far away . . . ”

  I raised my arm and made waves with my fingers to indicate the distance.

  “Is he dead?”

  “No. HE’S PERFECTLY HEALTHY. Maybe even too healthy.”

  And we ate-drank our soup, lost in our thoughts, down to the bottom of the bowl.

  “To get back on the main road, drive to the junction with Route 7, turn right and take it to the end. There, turn onto the road that cuts in front of the church and follow it till you see the green sign. Church’s still there, but it’s not a church anymore.”

  “THAT’S TOO BAD.”

  “Good riddance! I never could stand them priests . . . Take a look at the bench over there. Picked it up when they took the church apart. Shoulda gotten a whole row for all the money I gave ’em over the years.”

  I wouldn’t have minded staying longer, sure that he had a whole bevy of stories to tell. It would have taken hours, days even, just to go through all the pictures in their frames.

  “THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING.”

  “Get lost again, why dontcha. I don’t get out much.”

  “DO YOU HAVE ANY CHILDREN?”

  “Yes.”

  “DO THEY COME VISIT?”

  He made waves with his fingers.

  “I’LL BRING BACK YOUR SLIPPERS.”

  “No, no, they’re a gift from my wife. She’da been happy to give ’em away. I’ve got a whole chest full.”

  I glanced down at my feet: I’d stretched one of them out, and the other was so big I was afraid I’d lose it with every step. The colours were awful, the material scratchy and uncomfortable. It had been ages since a gift had touched me this much.

  It was only once I was back in my car that I realized we hadn’t introduced ourselves. What did it matter, really? Our names wo
uld have taught us nothing more, beyond our parents’ preference for certain sounds.

  I left Adélard’s house — that seemed like a good name for him — recharged, as if I’d just taken a nap. When I reached the church, I pulled over to call Claudine.

  “It’s me!”

  “Shit! How are you? Where are you?”

  “Umm, in the country somewhere, hang on a sec, I see a sign . . . no, there’s no name. Anyway, I’m about to get on the highway.”

  “What are you up to?”

  “I took a long drive, got lost, and had lunch with a ninety-four-year-old man . . . ”

  “Have you been on Facebook?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “When was the last time?”

  “The last time what?”

  “That you were on Facebook?”

  “Okay, you’re serious about Facebook? I haven’t been on it since my spring blitz. Why?”

  “Shit.”

  “All right, what’s going on?”

  “Shit.”

  “Claudine . . . ”

  “You need to call Jacques.”

  “It isn’t the twenty-third yet.”

  “Call him anyway.”

  “NO! TELL ME WHAT’S GOING ON!”

  “Uggggg . . . ”

  “TELL ME!”

  “The whore’s pregnant.”

  The reflex was senseless, but I looked behind me to assess the possibility of turning back time, of rewinding these last few minutes and stepping once more into Adélard’s cozy cocoon, suspended in time and space. But I was at the part in my own story, like Thelma and Louise when they realize they’ve reached the point of no return: I had to jump and face the music, to the beat or not. Holed up with Adélard, I could have sipped broth and watched the geese come and go until my body gave out, but with a smartphone that could be contacted in the remotest reaches of the countryside and spill its poison over me, I didn’t stand a chance. The only thing left was to laugh.

  “Can you breastfeed with fake boobs?”

  “You know, I’ve never thought about that.”

  “I bet you can take them out and put them back in again.”

  “Maybe they can replace the silicone with bags of milk.”

  “With nipple-pacifiers.”

  “The fool posted a picture of her belly.”