Five Roses (5 page)

Yushi flipped shut her magazine and unfolded her legs. “If you're coming to the market tomorrow, stop by and say hello. I'll sneak you a pastry.” She took her plate to the kitchen. A moment later Rose heard the TV from her room.

She didn't think Kenny liked her — not in the way Yushi meant. He'd said he wanted to go fishing. Why shouldn't she believe him?

The trees, still leafless, stretched their branches to the sky. The buildings on the other side of the canal were reflected in the water. Kenny walked, oblivious to the cyclists whizzing by on the path, but Rose kept stepping behind him. Kenny always looked around in surprise and joined her again. He pointed out the train bridge that crossed the canal. He said the buildings, which were condos now, used to be factories.

“The canal looks great, doesn't it? They really cleaned it up. When I was a kid, it was one big polluted soup. The factories dumped all kinds of toxic junk. Factories and the ships. They stopped shipping before I was born, but my dad used to come down here and watch them — big ships with smoke stacks. He still talks about growing up along here with all the factories. My granddad worked in a nail factory, can you believe it? A whole factory just for nails!”

Kenny swept his arm through the air. “I'm giving you the big tour today. The scenic route. When you come down here, it'll be faster to cut through St-Henri.”

Rose couldn't visualize the past he described, nor what he meant by the scenic route. She saw old brick buildings. Silos tattooed with graffiti. Banks of grass and trees hemmed in by asphalt. The canal, which didn't look wide enough for ships, was bordered by slabs of concrete. Somewhere, nearby, traffic roared along a highway.

Kenny stopped before a three-storey brick building with large windows of many panes. Some windows were curtained, some checkerboard-covered with squares of coloured foil or paper that spelled out words.
IMPRIMERIE JULES. CRÉATIONS BIX
. A man stood outside a loading dock before a block of pink stone. He crept his fingers across the stone's rough surface, set a pick at a spot he'd found, grasped the mallet that poked from his carpenter's apron.

“There's another artist for you,” Kenny said. “You'll meet all kinds of friends here.”

Rose followed him to the front of the building, puzzled by his words about artists and meeting friends. He pulled out keys knotted on an elastic band and unlocked the steel front door. The floor was concrete, the air dusty and cold. Doors along the hallway sported logos and posters.

Kenny used the second key to open an unmarked door. He bowed and motioned for Rose to precede him. She hung back, peering into the dimness. He strode past her and yanked aside a long curtain. Through its grid of many panes, the window looked onto the canal. The room was large but filthy. Scrap lumber and metal debris littered the floor. Spider webs drooped in long bibs down the walls, which were gashed with scars.

“What do you think?” Kenny grinned. “A great big room for your loom! You can make as much mess as you want.”

What did he mean, make a mess? Weaving was orderly and neat. She couldn't imagine her loom here.

“And don't worry about the rent. The owner said it's all right. His uncle knows my uncle. He doesn't like these studios empty because people start to break in, and once you've got squatters, then you've got problems. Big time.”

She felt uneasy with his talk about break-ins, the garbage in the room, how isolated it was from the streets of the city. Then she saw the porcelain sink against the back wall. She'd seen an old sink like this in a farmhouse kitchen. She approached with slow steps. The inside was splashed pink and green. The deep red of fresh blood.

“That's just paint,” Kenny said. “I can try to strip it. But if you clean it, it'll be clean, right? Doesn't matter what it looks like.”

His enthusiasm echoed dully against the gouged plaster and spatter of wreckage. She still didn't know what to say.

“Hey!” He opened his arms. “You've got a place now, Rose! We can get your loom. We'll set you up, you'll see.”

“It's too —” she began weakly.

“It's perfect! And hey, if you need shelves, I can build them. I'm not an artist, but I can do that.” He stood before her beaming, convinced he'd given her the best imaginable prize.

Through the month of May and into June, Frédéric continued to visit houses. Fara said she would come if he found a place with walls, roof, windows, and floors intact.
No
pond in the cellar. A bedroom large enough for their king-size bed. And please: no repeats of the last house, with the sullen adults grouped around the kitchen table, waiting to have their fate decided.

She still didn't see why Frédéric wanted a house, though with the freakish heat wave this past week, she could hardly stand to come home to the oppressive cage of their apartment at the top of a sixplex, a bull's eye under the scorching sun. The air baked. Sweat oozed. Garbage rotted. Travel by bus at rush hour was a stop-and-start nightmare.

Home from work, Fara stood under a cool shower and let the water sluice her. She patted herself dry, leaving wet tendrils of hair to drip down her back, and didn't bother to dress again except for a camisole and panties. Even that skimpy layer felt like too much. Groaning, she collapsed on the sofa. Their fan had broken last summer and they hadn't bought a new one yet. Who expected a heat wave in June? The balcony door was open, but the air didn't stir. She could hear the next-door neighbours having supper on their balcony. The chink and scrape of cutlery. Her breathless snicker, his monotone.

She sank into a doze, blinking awake to the click of the key in the door. Frédéric stepped around the corner, white shirt wilted, holding a baguette.

“Hi,” she said, too depleted by the heat to sound anything but cranky.

“The balcony door's open. You're practically naked.”

She rolled her head against the cushions. They'd had this discussion before. The windows of the building across the street didn't face their balcony door. Living in a box, above a box, between boxes taught you to calculate your angles of privacy.

“We need a fan,” she mumbled.

“Us and everyone else in the city.” He scuffed down the hallway to change out of his trousers and white shirt. She heaved herself off the sofa. Despite the heat, she was hungry. She would slice some tomatoes, add feta, olives, oregano, oil and vinegar. Lots of black pepper.

She slipped on a short, spaghetti-strap dress and they carried their plates to the balcony where they had folding chairs, though no pretty wrought-iron table like the neighbours'. Their door was closed now, their apartment quiet. They must have gone out.

“Supposed to rain tomorrow,” Frédéric said. “The heat will break.”

“I hope.” Fara bit into a cube of feta. “How was work?”

“Marie-Ange twisted her ankle on the stairs today. She'll be off work for however long she can drag that out.”

“She doesn't need her ankle to do data entry.”

“She needs her ankle to get to work.” Frédéric supervised the payroll technicians for a grocery chain with seven thousand employees. Most of the staff in his department used to be clerks who'd worked in the stores. They were his parents' age with parent-type tics and foibles. If they asked a question once, they asked five times. They granted that he was smart enough to have gone to university, which they hadn't, but still believed that they knew best. After lunch their eyes looked bleary like they needed a nap. Any change in routine met with astounded blankness — and resistance.

Frédéric wiped a chunk of baguette through herb-flecked juices and oil. “What can I do? Challenge her medical certificate? It's signed by a doctor.”

Across the street a skinny man in low-slung jeans peered over the railing of his balcony at the apartment below. He'd moved in a month ago, strung a rope between the balconies and attached little bells. At first Fara had complained about the jingling jangling. Hadn't these buddies ever heard of
telephones
? Lately she'd noticed that, when the man upstairs tinkled the bells, the downstairs couple ignored him.

Just now Fara could see them inside, slouched on the sofa. “Must be a sauna in their apartment. They can't even open their door or he'll know they're home. What's that line — good fences make good neighbours? You'll have to remember that if you buy a house.”

“Not
if
. When. I'm going to find one, you'll see.”

High-rises blocked their view of the mountain, but their building was close enough that Fara felt the slightly cooler air that had begun to seep down its stone and earth bulk, through the trees, into the city. “Do you want to go for a walk? I want an ice cream.”

They strolled in a lazy zigzag down one street, then another. Fara tutted when she saw a new block of condos on a lot that had been empty a month ago. Last winter, when Frédéric began talking about buying a place, they'd visited a few condos. The sales reps handed out pamphlets with statistics and cross-section diagrams demonstrating the superior quality of the windows and the insulation. Indeed, some of the details were pretty. A slim rail of crown moulding. Water-bright varnished floors. But the kitchens were derisory for anyone who meant to do more than microwave. Fara dared Frédéric to sit on a toilet snug up against a vanity. With his long legs, he had to twist sideways. She stood at one end of a unit while he jumped at the other. She felt the floor vibrate. How solid was that?

No condo, she'd said. She didn't want to live in a place that was smaller and more flimsy than their apartment, simply to have bragging rights that they owned it. She wanted real brick, not brick-look siding. She believed in walls constructed with hammer and nails, not prefab sections that came from a factory.

Fine, Frédéric said. Let's look at old houses.

Sunday morning, almost nine. Frédéric was still sound asleep. Fara eased out from the sheets and reached for her robe.

The coffeemaker growled and spit as she hulled strawberries into a bowl. Red juice on her fingers and the blade of the paring knife. Soft, wet fruit flesh against the porcelain. She heard flip-flops in the hallway, then Frédéric was beside her, scratching his chest through his T-shirt. She held a strawberry to his mouth. “Taste this. It's the best part of summer — fruit that doesn't have to cross two continents to get here.”

He slid a hand into the opening of her robe and palmed her breast. “This is the best part of summer — no pajamas.” His thumb stroked her nipple as he raised a questioning eyebrow.

She tilted her head.
Maybe
.

The phone began ringing and he dropped her breast to walk back down the hallway to answer. She retied her robe with a smirk. When they were first together, he would have ignored the phone. She could hear him from the front room, sounding brisk. At least it wasn't family. His mother or his sister would have kept him talking until the strawberries turned to jam.

Back again, he said, “That was Yolette.”

“Who?”

“The real estate agent.” Instead of pouring himself coffee in the mug she'd set next to the machine for him, he took a sip from hers. “She's got a house in Pointe St-Charles. It's empty — no tenants. I said I'd meet her at noon. Do you want to come?”

“To look at a house?” She scrunched her nose.

“That, too, if you want.” He looped the ends of her belt around his knuckles and gently pulled her to the bedroom.

Yolette had given Frédéric the address. He and Fara walked from the subway, crossing a long, narrow park. From a distance, she heard a metal clunk that made her think of old movies with country fairs, pony carts, and candy apples. “Is that …?” She heard it again. “Horseshoes?”

Past the trees they saw a man swing his arm.
Thud!
Even the sound was a miss. The man standing with him kissed his horseshoe before he tossed it.
Clang!
He hooted.

On the sidewalk sat a toilet planted with blowsy pink petunias. The row houses along the street still looked old and pockmarked, but this time Fara granted that they'd withstood the years. They were solid.

At the end of the street, against the sky, jutted the enormous metal letters of the
FARINE FIVE ROSES
sign. It was in the news just now, because the new owners of the building didn't want to keep it lit. Montrealers protested. The historic sign marked their horizon — which wasn't the horizon, Fara realized. Pointe St-Charles lay behind it.

The trees in the alleys were enormous branching patriarchs overlooking the houses. “Because there's been no development,” Frédéric said. “No one's cut them down.”

“No development means no cafés, either,” Fara said. “No
boulangerie
with fresh baguettes. We'll have to eat sliced white bread from a bag.”

“The Pointe's only a fifteen-minute walk from the Atwater Market.”

“Where we live now, I can get a baguette in one minute.”

“You're going to arrange your whole life around the availability of baguettes?”

They waited for Yolette on the sidewalk in front of a brick row house with a recessed entrance panelled in wood that had been painted beige. The paint was caked with grime, as were the windows, which were strung across with faded cloth. Frédéric crouched to examine the hewn blocks of stone that formed the foundation. Fara wandered over to look at the house next door. It had the same style of panelled entrance, but the wood had been stripped and varnished. “Come see this,” she called.

He walked over but looked more skeptical than impressed. “That's a lot of work.”

“You can't buy an old place and not expect a lot of work.”

“You would still set priorities. I don't think stripping the entrance —”

The door swung wide. The woman who slammed it and bounded down the steps nearly collided with Fara. “Oops, sorry, I didn't see you.”

“We were admiring your entrance.”

The woman stared at the panelling as if she'd never seen it before. She raked her hand through her thick curls. She was Fara's age, maybe older.

“You didn't strip the wood?” Fara asked.

“Ages ago. Maybe ten years? I forgot all about it by now.” She laughed. “Guess I could have left it the way it was. Listen, sorry, I've got to run.” She fanned her fingers at them and hurried off down the sidewalk, the soft pummel of her broad buttocks ruffling the cloth of her skirt.

A car was pulling up. Yolette stepped out in a tailored white dress. To Fara, who hadn't seen her for a few weeks, the fixed arch of her eyebrows looked more incredulous than ever. “Wait until you see!” she trilled. “You'll
love
this place.”

“We just met the neighbour,” Frédéric said.

“Her?” Yolette nodded at the house next door. “I wish she'd sell. She's got a gorgeous stairway with the original banister and a tiger-oak newel. That's one good thing the hippies did. They stripped all the wood. Back in the seventies this was a commune.”

“How do you know?” Fara asked.

“My aunt used to live a couple of streets over. Everyone around here knew about this house. Some old Woodstock hippie set himself up as a free-love guru. Kids from Westmount used to hide out and smoke pot — and who knows what else — until their parents hauled them home again. Sometimes the parents called the police. The bikers didn't like that. The guru got pushed out. Or maybe one of the parents laid charges. Some of the kids were minors.”

“Bikers?” Fara asked.

“They're all gone now, don't worry.”

Fara wasn't sure she believed Yolette. But the neighbour hadn't looked worried and she'd lived here for years.

Yolette dangled a house key as if it to hypnotize them with it. Just open the door, Fara thought. We're here. Why turn this into a game on the sidewalk?

Yolette still hesitated, seemed about to say something, then didn't. The door opened onto a hallway carpeted with filthy broadloom. Except for a mattress leaning against the wall, there was no furniture. Yolette strode across the large central room and tugged the chain for the vertical blinds. They stuttered open, flooding the room with light. The window was large, with a handsomely moulded frame in stained and varnished wood. Outside was a deck and a tiny backyard of weeds grown high as hay.

Weeds and dingy broadloom could be ripped up. The white-and-gold ceiling fan chucked. What mattered was the size of the room, the high ceiling, the large window, the stained and varnished wood. Fara dragged the toe of her sandal across the carpet. “What's under here? Wood?”

“Should be,” Yolette said.

The room next to the main room was painted brown, walls and ceiling. The roll-down blind had been tacked to the window frame. The room was a cave. Fara felt a strangeness — that was somehow familiar? — but ignored it. She opened the closet, which was empty except for a pole and two hangers. She imagined the walls painted white. Or a pale wash of rose. A dining room or maybe a study.

Through the wall she heard Frédéric running water and flushing the toilet. Behind her Yolette was quiet. None of her usual chatter and pizzazz — for which Fara was grateful. She didn't like being told where and how to look.

The kitchen counters were buckled and would have to be replaced. There were square-edged gaps for a refrigerator and a stove. Dribbles of what looked like hardened molasses on the wall. But also two large windows, lots of cupboards, and a walk-in pantry lined with shelves.

Fara brushed her fingers down the deep moulding of the door frame and walked back to the main room. She could picture their sofa against the far wall.

Yolette said, “Do you …”

Fara had turned to gaze out the window. The tiny backyard was large enough for a garden.

“Do you have a problem with suicide?”

The word was a blade that touched her, sharp and cold, but she wouldn't let it pierce her. She faced a window but felt herself standing in a dimly lit room. A bed with the duvet thrown back. Green plastic. Striped pajamas. A thin body. Socks balled on the floor. Clothes dragged off a chair.

Yolette cleared her throat. How much time had passed? Fara made herself look at her. The manic arch of her eyebrows. Her white dress smudged across the hip. What an idiot to wear white to walk through an old house.