Autopsy of a Boring Wife Page 6

  “Where are my leggings?”

  “Everything’s hanging in the laundry room.”

  “Are my leggings there?”

  “Go check.”

  “I bet they’re not even there.”

  “If you did your own laundry, you’d know where your stuff is.”

  “Screw you!”

  Laurie walked away in grumbling. Another missed opportunity for a good kick in the ass.

  “Laurie, get back here this instant!”

  “I don’t have time, I need to find my clothes.”

  “GET BACK HERE NOW!”

  “NO! I’M SICK OF YOUR STUPID LECTURES!”

  “OH YEAH? WELL, YOU’RE GROUNDED! YOU HEAR ME? NO GOING OUT TONIGHT!”

  “LIKE I CARE! I’M GOING OUT ANYWAY!”

  “IF YOU PUT ONE FOOT OUTSIDE, I’M CANCELLING YOUR CELL PHONE PLAN!”

  “YOU DO THAT AND I’LL CALL DAD. HE’LL STOP PAYING ALIMONY! AND HE’S THE ONE WHO PAYS FOR MY CELL ANYWAY.”

  “That little shit! I’m going to skin her alive.”

  Claudine’s younger daughter, Adèle, had just walked into the kitchen looking her usual exhausted, jaded self. She dragged herself over to the nearest chair and let her world-weary body plop down in an almost liquid sploosh. If it hadn’t been for her awful paper-thin crop top and blue highlights, she could have passed for someone who’d spent weeks fleeing a war-torn country on foot. She rested her head on her arms.

  “There’s nothing to do.”

  “What do you mean, nothing to do? Call Léa!”

  “She’s at her dad’s. It’s like, on the other side of the world.”

  “What about Noémie?”

  “Ugh, I don’t feel like it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Her little sister never leaves us alone.”

  “Then tell her to come over here.”

  “No, it’s too lame here.”

  Their father’s house had a finished basement, a swimming pool, a hot tub, an impossible array of electronic devices, and walls of screens for projecting movies, like in Fahrenheit 451. Claudine downed her half-glass of white in a single gulp. She could have used something stronger.

  “What about everything we bought the other week so you could learn to draw manga?”

  “Don’t feel like it.”

  “Then go take a bike ride, it’s beautiful out.”

  “Yuck!”

  “You could make me another friendship bracelet. I lost mine.”

  “Lost” was one way to put it. The last one Adèle made had shades of orange and brown with a small lime green thread running through it, an eyesore that “accidentally” came apart.

  “You could make me a nice one with a black and red design.”

  “Making bracelets is for babies.”

  “Oh, so that’s how it is, we’re babies now? Then go to the park.”

  “You just want me to leave you guys alone.”

  “I just want you to find something to do. To live a little instead of being a vegetable.”

  “But there’s nothing to do . . . ”

  “Then go take a nap, that’ll pass the time. You look like you’re starting to rot, anyway.”

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  I knocked back my drink and handed the glass to Claudine in solidarity. When the enemy is in your kitchen, you’ve got to use the means at hand to defend yourself.

  “You know, it’s funny. I don’t remember ever being bored when I was her age.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “Oh! I know what you could do with Noémie.”

  “Pfff . . . ”

  “Did you ever make prank calls, Diane?”

  “Did I ever!”

  “It’s easy — you go through the phone book and pick random people to call, then say stupid things.”

  “The phone book?”

  “Look online, then. Call people you know, or ones you don’t. Like guys from school. Pretend you’re another girl from school and try to play a practical joke.”

  “We used to get pizzas delivered to our teachers’ houses.”

  “Oh my God, that’s right! Pizza!”

  “That’s so dumb!”

  We started tapping into the folklore of our good ideas, ruses that were popular back in the day — before the whole me-myself-and-I attitude completely revolutionized the art of teen entertainment. Kids today want to be as visible as possible; back then, we did everything we could to slip away unnoticed.

  “You could throw eggs onto people’s sheds. They cook in a second on a black roof.”

  “It’s funnier on cars.”

  “Or throw water balloons off the overpass!”

  “Yes!”

  “It’s hilarious! When the police show up, you just play dumb. Say that you saw it on Funniest Home Videos.”

  “Or if you want something tamer, you could do the runaway five-dollar bill. You hook a five-dollar bill to some fishing line and put it in the middle of the sidewalk, then tug on the line when someone tries to pick it up. I’ll give you a fiver. It’ll crack you up, you’ll see.”

  “That reminds me of the butt prints.”

  “I don’t know that one.”

  “No? It’s so funny. You pee in your pants, then sit on the sidewalk to make prints of your butt cheeks. You make a trail for as long as you’re able to pee.”

  “Not bad! And there’s always the classic brown bag on the porch.”

  “The brown bag . . . ”

  “You poop in a paper bag, then put it on the front steps of someone you don’t like, someone who really pisses you off — except for us, we don’t count — then you light the bag on fire and ring the doorbell so that the person who answers jumps on it to put out the fire. There’ll be poop everywhere!”

  “The problem is that you have to need to poop.”

  “True. That’s the catch.”

  “We used to change road signs around with black and white tape. We’d change street names — ‘Hartland’ to ‘Fartland’ — or we’d change one-way arrows into big penises. You just have to round off the points to make the head.”

  “Okay, you guys are totally nuts.”

  “Wait, we’ve got loads of other ideas! What about frogs? If you put a cigarette in their mouths, they’ll explode!”

  “I’m going to Noémie’s.”

  “Aw, too bad! We could’ve gone with you to egg some cars . . . ”

  Just then Laurie breezed by, her damp leggings clinging to her legs.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Somewhere.”

  “I told you, you’re grounded!”

  “Whatever!”

  The glass in the china cabinet rattled and clinked as the door slammed. Claudine calmly got out of her seat, picked up her phone, and searched for a number in her contacts.

  “Yes, hello. I’d like to suspend service for one of the numbers on my account . . . yes . . . uh-huh . . . I have a family plan, and I want to block my daughter’s number as soon as possible . . . yes, I’m Claudine Poulin. Can you block it remotely? Yes, until further notice . . . yes . . . the reason? Well, do you have options? For being impolite, rude . . . conflict? Sure, that works . . . ”

  She hung up just as Adèle slipped back into the kitchen, a little bag over her shoulder.

  “Let us know if you need some ideas, honey.”

  And the door slammed a second time. Claudine rubbed her hands together.

  “Right, let’s get out of here.”

  “Where to?”

  “Anywhere, as long as it’s not here.”

  “We can’t drive. We’ve had too much to drink . . . ”

  “There’s a little pub a few streets over.”

  “Aren’
t we too old for places like that?”

  “Of course not, it’s full of people our age!”

  “Okay. Don’t forget your phone.”

  “I’m not taking it. Pain in the ass!”

  As we walked out the door, the next-door neighbour was calling her cat. “Here, kitty, kitty! Come here, baby, come on! Here, little kitty! Come to Mommy!”

  Solitude can do that to you. Physically, she looked just like us.

  “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “What?”

  “About the girls.”

  “I’m not! I know what teenagers are like. I’ve had a few.”

  Nevertheless, the scenes I had just witnessed made me want to call Jacques and thank him for waiting until the kids left home to throw me out like an old sock.

  “The girls are furious. Having two homes in two different cities really pisses them off.”

  “Are they like that with Philippe, too?”

  “I’d say so. Last week, he told Laurie she’d better start acting nicer to his girlfriend because if he had to choose between the two of them, Laurie was not at the top of his list.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Ms. Uncooperative must have really laid it on thick. Philippe even warned me he was ‘taking steps’ to kick her out until she ‘shaped up.’ You think the prick would realize it’s his job to shape her up, but no! He just wants her out.”

  “He can’t do that!”

  “Oh, whatever Philippe wants, Philippe gets.”

  “What about you?”

  “What can I do? Tell him I don’t want her, either? Give him yet another reason to hate me? No, I take the fall for both of us. Laurie has to be in a good mood at her dad’s, has to play the happy kid in a new home. It never crossed his mind the girls might get bent out of shape, that wasn’t part of the plan. But of course that’s not his fault, oh no!”

  “Would Adèle stay at his place alone?”

  “I doubt it. Besides, when Philippe learns she’s this close to being expelled from school, I bet he’ll find an appropriate punishment. Something like ‘I’m throwing you out too, but it’s for your own good. Come back when you’ve smartened up.’ ”

  “What’s going on at school?”

  “She doesn’t give a shit. Laurie’s on the warpath, and Adèle’s a blob of Jell-O. They kick you out once you fail three classes — unless you make a generous donation to the football team.”

  “That makes me sick.”

  The bar was bursting with people gathered together over drinks. The air felt thick and heavy as molasses. Body odour fused with the smell of fermenting liquid being consumed in small sips to dilute the week’s miseries.

  We settled in at the bar and watched a tall leggy girl with thick bangs pace back and forth behind it. She had a selfie pout and a tattoo of a woodcutter on her arm. You’d have to travel back to the 80s to see fashion impose itself so relentlessly. And no, don’t try it: nothing looks more average nowadays than a sleeve of tattoos.

  A large mirror above the bar reflected the crowd getting drunk behind us. They were younger — a lot younger — no offence to Claudine, who’d included anyone legally able to drink in her “people our age” just so that I’d come.

  When the bartender finally came over to serve us, he pointed his beard at us in a quick nod that I took to be an abridged form of “Good evening, ladies. What can I get for you?” Nobody bothers with pleasantries anymore, time is too precious. Claudine raised two fingers and said “White” without smiling. Efficient.

  We solved a few of the world’s problems and asked for as many rounds, twirling our fingers in the air with a “One more time!” We drafted a few not-so-radical public policies, spewed vomit on our exes with abandon, settled accounts with two or three hopelessly incompetent colleagues, laid the foundation for a new — anti-Heideggerian — direction in philosophy, the details still to be ironed out, and quietly lamented our lives and all their terrifically disappointing moments.

  Just like he’d done every night since Jacques had left, Antoine texted me to make sure I was okay. And for once, I didn’t lie: “I’m great, sweetie. I’m with Claudine. Mom xxx.” I know you don’t have to sign a text, but I love writing the word “Mom.”

  I waited a bit too long to go to the bathroom — so long that, once I was on my feet, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hold it all in. I called on the few neurons that weren’t completely sloshed in alcohol and mustered up the nerve to get in line for the bathroom. I waited, contracting all my sphincters as hard as I was able to avoid the humiliation of wetting my pants in the ultra-trendy bar.

  When it was my turn, I scurried into the stall doing my best to pretend that there was no hurry. It only took another second and a half to show the girls in line that women my age have everything under control. I didn’t notice the big wad of shit and toilet paper clogging the bowl until I’d already lowered my cheeks onto the seat. I had no choice but to leave my own addition, since I was unable to contain my bladder any longer. I lifted my bottom a few inches to avoid being splashed as the drops bounced up from the pile of excrement. I’d have preferred a porta potty in some faraway field.

  Like everyone before me, I left casually and hid my crime by avoiding eye contact. Given the amount of paper, it was clear I wasn’t the cause of the problem. I’d only augmented it — which, all things considered, isn’t really a crime. Or an excuse.

  Once I’d sat back down, I couldn’t contain my laughter as I told Claudine what had happened.

  “Shit! Who’s going to unclog it?”

  “By the look of it, they’ll need an axe!”

  My cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number.

  “I don’t answer if I don’t know who it is.”

  “Same here.”

  “That’s why prank calls don’t work anymore.”

  The fifth time it rang, I took the call, ready to give whoever it was a piece of my mind.

  “Hello?”

  “Where are you guys?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Laurie.”

  “Laurie?”

  Claudine slapped her forehead.

  “Here we go. The little princess must be royally pissed off.”

  “Where are you?”

  “We went out for a drink.”

  “Where?”

  “At Chez Louis.”

  “NO! DON’T TELL HER!”

  But she’d already hung up.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “She’ll come waltzing in here, just you wait! With no phone on a Friday night . . . ”

  “You think she’ll show up here?”

  “How much do you want to bet?”

  “Maybe she was worried. We didn’t say where we were going.”

  “Hah! That’s a good one. Worried!”

  Claudine was still laughing when I saw Laurie’s reflection in the bar mirror.

  “Uh-oh! We’ve got company.”

  Laurie hustled our way, parting the crowd like a bionic swimmer. She stopped just short of her mother. I glanced at her hands to make sure she wasn’t concealing a blunt object, maybe a brick or a flashlight.

  “Why didn’t you take your phone with you?”

  “I didn’t feel like lishening to you whine. You’re grounded, you know that.”

  Claudine’s lips, numbed by alcohol, stumbled over the words. I flashed an idiotic, happy smile to show Laurie I had her mother’s back — that we were in the same boat, guilty of the same crime.

  “You need to come home, Mom.”

  “NOOO! I’m shtaying here. No one’s bothering me, I’m good.”

  “Mom, please come.”

  I could sense the storm approaching. Claudine was clutching her glass, the golden liquid sloshing against the sides as it swirled.

/>   “Mad about your phone, baby girl?”

  “Your brother wants to talk to you.”

  “Hah! My brother? Mr. Me-Me-Me? Must be in deep shit.”

  “Come on.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Come.”

  “First, temme what’s going on.”

  “Not here.”

  “Then I’m not leaving.”

  “Your dad died.”

  Claudine hadn’t spoken to her father since her divorce. He’d blamed her for everything, claiming she’d been too “emasculating.” By his logic, which reeked of machismo for miles, the woman is always the one responsible for breaking up a family. A product of another generation touting ideas of the Almighty Man, he couldn’t see the clearly medieval in his point of view. In fact, he never missed the opportunity to lay it on thick, declaring that men strayed because Mother Nature commanded them to reproduce until the very end — unlike women, who dry up long before kicking the bucket and are thus saved from the torment of desire. Clearly an agreeable fellow with a penchant for biology. But her father, just the same.

  Love and hate didn’t mix well with alcohol.

  “He pissed me off right to the very end, the old bastard.”

  Claudine’s brother André was just as unpleasant, though of an entirely different breed. He was a master manipulator who suffered from innumerable undiagnosed conditions: navel-gazing, narcissism, a god complex, mythomania, acute actor-itis, cash drain, compulsive lying, etc. Claudine had saved his ass more than once, clearing up his nebulous debts. She’d eventually had to leave his fate to his kind, to avoid being pulled down with him. But death attracts scavengers, and he was back.

  We walked slowly back to Claudine’s house in the pouring rain, letting the water wash over us. She restrained everything she could: her mood, her hair, her clothes. Laurie didn’t say a word about her phone. She even hooked her mother’s arm with her own so they could walk together. Adolescence might end one day, after all. We could only hope.

  9

  In which, like Rocky, I scream “Charleeeeene! ”

  Darling Jacques’s darling Charlene wanted to meet me and talk woman to woman. Blah, blah, blah. She wanted to give me the “I’m so sorry” song and dance. Movies, books, and “chicklit” are rife with pity-party scenes like these, in which the evil mistress — too pretty, too young, and always a little stupid — begs forgiveness from the woman who’s been discarded with a sincerity as authentic as her fake tits in order to clear her own conscience. They want to have their cake and eat it — along with the guy who makes it, too. No doubt she wanted me to realize, listening to her story, that it wasn’t her fault, they’d only succumbed to some greater force of symbiotic alchemy that united them and transcended — or rather, annulled — all past promises.