Overreachers
From the passenger’s seat of Madeleine’s Saab, Henry watched out at the big construction cranes. There were many more cranes and superstructures than he’d seen from his room’s window. Saint Hyacinthe had been his. They made the city feel uninteresting, indifferent. For this reason alone a taxi would’ve been better. A taxi alone to an airport, never looking right nor left, was always a comfort.
‘You look beat up,’ Madeleine said. Driving too fast usually put her in an aggressive good humour. Together they had always been driving someplace good. He liked speed then. Now, he liked it less, since it threatened getting to the airport. And there was nothing to say about looking ‘beat up.’ He seemed to know her, and now he also seemed not to know her. It was part of the change they were enacting. When they were in the thick of things together, Madeleine couldn’t drive without looking at him, smiling, remarking about his excellent qualities, cracking jokes, listening to his comments. Now she could be driving anybody—her mother to the beauty parlour, a priest to a funeral.
‘Do you realize what the day after tomorrow is,’ she said, manoeuvring skilfully through the traffic’s changing weave. She was wearing some sort of scent that filled the car with a dense rosy aroma he was already tired of.
‘No,’ he said.
‘It’s Canadian Thanksgiving. We have it early so we can get a jump on you guys. Canada invented Thanksgiving, eh?’ Madeleine quite liked making fun of Canadians but didn’t like it at all if he did. He had never really, of course, thought of Madeleine as Canadian. She just seemed like an American girl to him. He was not exactly sure how you considered someone Canadian—what important allowances you needed to make.
‘Do you observe it for the same reason we do?’ he said, watching traffic without noticing it. He still felt slightly dazed.
‘We just have it,’ Madeleine said happily. ‘Why do you have it?’
‘To solemnize the accord between the settlers and the Indians who might have murdered them. Basically it’s a national gesture of relief.’
‘Murder, murder, murder. It’s your big subject down there, isn’t it?’ Madeleine looked pleased. ‘We just have ours to be nice. That’s enough for Canada. We’re just happily grateful. Murder really doesn’t play a big part.’
The old French university buildings passed below and to the left. The little Frogs-only fantasy world. He considered how he and Madeleine would function together following today. He hadn’t really thought about it. Still, everybody had a past. It would be a relief to the people who knew about them to have this over with. Plus, not having him in her life was going to be much better for Madeleine. The world would open up again for both of them.
‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ she said, both hands firmly on the leather steering wheel.
‘I probably already know what it is,’ Henry said. His tongue sought the sharp little spike of his broken molar. The tender flesh was debrided and sore from going there. He could get it fixed in San Francisco.
‘I really don’t think you do,’ Madeleine said. A great white Japanese 747 slowly descended out of the sky ahead, and across the autoroute in front of them. ‘Do you want me to tell you?’ she said. ‘I don’t have to. It can wait forever.’
‘That guy wasn’t your husband,’ Henry said and quietly cleared his throat. The thought just came to him—why, now, he didn’t know. Lawyer’s intuition. ‘Did you think I was stupid? I mean...’ He didn’t care to finish this sentence. It finished itself. Most sentences could. So much that was said didn’t need to be. Aristotle was right about it. The subject actually embarrassed him.
Madeleine looked at him once, looked away then looked again. She seemed impressed. And she seemed happy about feeling impressed, as if this was the best of all outcomes. The big white jet sank from sight into an unremarkable industrial landscape. No big ball of flaming explosion followed. Everyone safe. ‘You’re guessing,’ she said.
‘I’m a lawyer, what’s the difference,’ he said.
She liked this too and smiled. He understood it was impossible for her not to like him. ‘How’d you know?’
‘Among other reasons?’ Freeway traffic was now standing back for the airport exit. He looked out at the high concrete sides of the highway. ‘He acted more serious than he felt. Something he said..."divided inner somethings?" Plus, he looks like an actor. He wore those glasses. Are you sleeping with him, too? I don’t mean "too." You know.’ He noticed the scuff on the toe of his shoe where she had stood on it.
‘Currently, no,’ Madeleine said. She touched her brass hair clip with her little finger and cocked her head slightly. She appeared to be on the verge of realizing something. What that might be, he thought, would be worth knowing. ‘I knew you’d go see him,’ she said. ‘I knew you couldn’t resist it. You always want to seem to be so forthright and brave. It’s your disguise.’
Henry watched the clean industrial landscape passing along more slowly. The green sign was visible, AEROGARE/AIRPORT. What an exertion. Everything said twice.
‘He’s an American,’ Madeleine said. ‘His name’s Bradley. He is an actor. We worried you’d know he wasn’t Canadian.’
‘No worry there,’ Henry said. She was taking the AEROGARE/AIRPORT SORTIE/EXIT and looked across at him and seemed slightly tricked herself. Perhaps, he thought, she was thinking about patting her face when they were in the room, or saying, I’d pictured something different. These might seem excessive now. He reached and took her hand and held it loosely. She was nervous. Her hand was moist. This whole business had required something of her, too. They had been in love, perhaps were still in love. ‘Is someone filming all this?’ he said and glanced to the side, at a pickup truck speeding along beside them on the autoroute. For a moment he expected to see the truck bed full of cameras, sound equipment, smiling young cineastes. Everything trained on them.
‘For once, no,’ she said glumly.
Up ahead the D’EMBARQUEMENTS/DEPARTURES area was jam-packed. Cars, limos, taxis, people loading golf bags, collapsible cribs and taped-up coolers from the backs of idling vans. Policemen with white oversleeves were waving everyone through. He had only a suitcase, a briefcase, a raincoat. It had become a wonderful autumn day. Clouds were being cleansed from the sky—a perfect day to take in the fall spectacle.
He continued holding her hand, and she grasped his back in a way that felt important. What would it be like finally, he wondered, to grow uninterested in women. The things he did—going here, going there, deciding this, that—he’d always had a woman in mind. Their presence animated everything. So many things would be different without them. No more moments like this—moments of approximate truth vivifying, explaining, offering silent reason to the choices you made. And what happened to those people for whom life wasn’t that way? They certainly achieved things. Were they better, their accomplishments purer? Possibly, of course, when it was all out of your reach—and it would be—you wouldn’t even care. You could hope for that.
On the curb side, amid skycaps and passengers alighting and baggage carts nosed in at reckless angles, a family—two older adults and three nearly grown blond children—were having a moment of prayer, standing in a tight little circle, arms to shoulders, heads bowed. These were Americans, Henry realized. Only Americans would be so immodest with their belief, so sure a quick prayer was just the thing to keep them safe—at once so careless and so prideful. Not the qualities to make a country great.
‘Do you think if we asked them, they’d include us in their little circle,’ Madeleine said, breaking their silence, as she pulled to the curb, exactly beside the praying Americans. She meant to annoy them by stopping so close.
‘We’re represented already,’ he said, looking out at the pilgrims’ hefty, strenuous backsides. ‘We’re the forces of evil they think so much about. The terrible adulterers. We worry them.’
‘Life’s just a record of our misdeeds, is that it?’ she asked musingly, still clumsily grasping his hand. He couldn’t open his door for the praying Americans.
‘I don’t think that,’ Henry said, holding her warm, soft, moist hand casually. She was just letting the other subject go now—the lying, tricking him, having a joke at his expense. Though why, for God’s sake, not let it go?
He sat for a moment, facing forward, unable to exit. He said, ‘Have you decided you don’t love me?’ It was of course the thing he wanted to know. His version of a prayer.
‘Oh, no,’ Madeleine said. ‘I wanted us to go on. But it just won’t. So. This seemed like a way to seal it off. Exaggerate the difference between what is and what isn’t. You know?’ She smiled weakly. ‘Sometimes you can’t believe the things that are taking place are actually taking place, and you need to believe it. I’m sorry, though. It was too much.’ She leaned and kissed him on the cheek, then took both his hands to her lips and kissed them.
He liked her. Liked everything about her. Though now was the wrong moment to say so. It would seem insincere. Reaching for too much. Though how did you ever make a moment be worth as much as it was in fact worth, if you didn’t reach?
Outside, the American Christians were hugging each other, smiling big confident smiles, their prayers having reached a satisfactory end.
‘Are you trying to think of something nice to say,’ Madeleine said jauntily.
‘No,’ Henry said. ‘I was trying not to.’
‘Well, that’s just as good,’ she said, smiling. ‘It might not be good enough for everybody, but I understand. It’s hard to know how to end a thing that didn’t altogether begin. Isn’t it?’ He pushed open the heavy door, pulled his suitcase out of the back, stepped out into the cool fall light, looked quickly in at her. She looked up through the open doorway. ‘Wouldn’t you agree with me about that, Henry?’ she asked. ‘That’d be a nice thing to say. Just that you agree with me.’
‘Yes,’ Henry said. ‘I do. I do agree with you. I agree with you about everything.’
‘Then rejoin your fellow Americans,’ she said. He closed the door. She did not look his way again. He watched her ease away and quickly disappear into the traffic that was heading back to town.