gets up now, Mom. It’s not insomnia when you get up at the same time as everybody else.”
“You’re the one who said insomnia. Come, come over here.”
In the middle of the large bed, with only her head showing above the taut sheet, she presents a rare picture, free of the litter of objects with which she is always surrounded. The bed is a desert, and she is buried beneath the white sands. Framed by long, tousled hair, her face looks like a mask of the moon; she is a moon that speaks, her voice emerging from beneath the sand, barely audible because she doesn’t want to wake the children, who are asleep in the next room.
Étienne knows she is naked under the sheet. He keeps himself from imagining the body that, when he was little, she displayed openly, innocently and often, to all eyes.
He stands nearby, and she gazes at him with a wide smile, doubtless proud of the fine specimen of young manhood she brought into the world. Étienne lets her admire him, then sinks back into his gloom. He has to keep his problems, his dissatisfaction to himself — she has powerful arguments to set against any faltering steps toward liberation. “You don’t look happy,” she begins, reaching to him over the sheet that shrouds her. The great smooth beach that is the bed is now somewhat misshapen, collapsing in places, affording glimpses of the figure extending from the head, belying its lunar solitude. She is an ocean, a tide that surges well beyond the confines of the bed, filling the room, the whole house with her soft, warm presence, overflowing into the yard in miscellaneous heaps; she is Lucie, radiance and fanatical love spread around her, matching the huge brown eyes that conceal nothing of her soul. She is a soul, an utterly radiant body, a torrent of flesh proffered in sacrifice for the children who are an extension of her, for Étienne, who does not know what to do with this gift.
All this tenderness irritates him, and he falls back on practical issues.
“Do you need me today?”
“No, sweetheart. Do you want to go out?”
“Yes. I need to do something.”
“Going to see the girls?” she titters.
This is a maternal tack that Étienne can’t stand, when she starts touching on his few private attachments and desires. He rebels.
“A guy like me doesn’t have much to do with girls. I’ve got no job. I’ve got no money to take them out with, out to eat, to the movies. I don’t have a single thing that girls want from a guy. I’d be better off as a fag.”
“Oh, come on, the girls will find out about you fast enough. A cute guy like you has nothing to worry about. You think that’s all that matters to them, money?”
She strokes his thigh lightly, with the tips of her fingers. He steps back.
“Is there anything for breakfast?”
“Of course, darling. When have I ever let you go without? There’s always food in the house. Try not to wake up the little ones; I’d like to get some more sleep.”
She must have had to spend part of the night fornicating with one of her men. They turn up at around eleven o’clock, when the youngest children, who sleep downstairs, are in bed. The visitors stay closeted with her until two or three in the morning. Since she had her big operation, she no longer worries about nasty surprises and submits to the claims of nature without displeasure. The men she accommodates don’t find fault with her ways or the dishevelled look of the house.
They sometimes give her a hefty slap, or a fifty-dollar bill, depending how they feel. Étienne isn’t jealous of them anymore, no longer spies on them to see how they behave. He has benefited from the ruling regime of charity, and is only surprised that his sisters, the oldest of whom are fourteen and fifteen, have not — as far as he knows — begun to ply a munificent public with their charms.
He gulps down three slices of toast and a cup of bad coffee, then counts his money and dashes blithely out of the house. In spite of the heat, the morning’s air, ruffled by a light breeze, is breathable; the piping of bluebirds, accompanied by the blackbirds’ grating call, introduces a subtle gaiety. Étienne barely notices the rubbish strewn around the yard. Leaving his mother and his misery behind him, he recaptures the fleeting but violent joy that always attends his departures, when renewal and freedom could still await him at the end of the road and he hasn’t been seized by the suffocating thought of his destiny.
3
“Oh, you little pig!”
Lucie has just caught sight of Bernadette, the youngest, her cherished Babette. A long green string runs from Babette’s nose, and the rest of her face is unevenly spattered with dirt and jam. The spectacle moves her, calling forth a full complement of indulgence.
“Come here and let me clean you up a little.” She grabs the dishcloth and chases her daughter, who is terrified of the abuse inflicted by clean water.
“A pretty little thing like you can’t go around all covered in dirt! What would people say?”
She’s got her now and forces the rag’s smelly caress on her. Babette shrieks as if she’s being murdered, pummelling her mother with fists and feet, calming down as soon as the assault is over.
“Honey, why are you hurting mummy? Don’t you like being clean? You’re so pretty when you’re clean.”
“Don’t want to be pretty!” mumbles the child, her voice forced, sputtering like a string of hiccups.
“Come on, a little beauty like you! What would the Good Lord say? You know, not every girl has the good fortune to be a beauty. Would you rather look like a witch, with hair like a grey mop, a crooked nose, pointy teeth, and a face that’s all red and bumpy?”
“Yes!” announces Babette with a bold, mischievous laugh. Fernand has just stepped into the kitchen and he laughs, too, exclaiming, “Babette, you don’t have to turn into a witch, ’cause you already are one! You’re a real fart face!”
Mother and daughter howl in protest, and Fernand roars with joy.
“You, you’re a mental case, Fernand,” Babette sputters back, finally.
“If you ever say that again, I’ll strangle you!” Suddenly serious, the boy starts to carry out his threat.
“Mom, Mom! He’s hurting me! Let me go, you goddamn f ...”
“Fernand! Let go of your sister, right now!”
“She’s got to apologize first! Say you’re sorry, Babette, or I’ll kill you! Say it!”
“So ... sorry ...”
“Louder!”
“Sorry!”
Fernand lets her go, her face crimson with suffocation and rage.
“Mental case, mental case!” taunts the child from the safety of her mother’s arms.
“Mom! Tell her to stop or I don’t know what I’ll do to her!”
“Calm down, both of you! I’ve never seen anything like it! Are you Catholics or little heathen? What would Baby Jesus say?”
“Mom, Baby Jesus doesn’t exist.”
“What! What did you say?”
Fernand is gazing at her with that triumphant look he gets when he happens upon an idea that’s beyond his years.
“God’s just a bunch of lies they used to tell in the old days to keep the kids quiet. Like Santa Claus.”
“Fernand! Do you know what you’re saying?”
“Out of the mouth of babes,” says a placid voice that has a metallic ring to it.
“Father Lanthier!” The screen door frames the cleric’s plump silhouette. Instantly reconciled, Fernand and Babette duck out through the living room, and Lucie, disconcerted,