The bees trace complex diagrams in the air; Paul puts away his tools haphazardly, as if they have become useless junk now their job is done. He turns toward her again.
“You’re looking out of sorts.”
“Me? No, everything’s fine.”
“Mommy doesn’t like to share her little boy?” he teases.
Madeleine’s face grows hot and crimson. Inwardly, she responds in the most scathing terms: “Mommy doesn’t have a little boy to share anymore. He hasn’t been hers for a very long time.” But she clenches her jaws and waits for her flushed cheeks to cool down. Paul is one of those people who always think they know more about others than they do themselves. It makes him obnoxious but she wants him, which is no doubt why she continues to see him. And the annoyance he elicits heightens her desire for him. With her husband it was the opposite. Everything was a matter of tenderness and patience. And she marvelled at the fact Micha managed to draw all that gentleness out of her grouchy soul. Even after the desire had flown away, it was the kindness that won out and made her open her arms.
Paul keeps looking at her gleefully, like a mischievous uncle having fun making the little girls blush. He proffers a sticky jar.
“Here, take this back to him — to your son. If he’s anything like his mother he’s got a huge sweet tooth. Anyway, it’s good for lovers.”
Madeleine accepts the glistening honeypot. Paul points to the house with his chin.
“Are you coming in? Your sugar craving needs to be satisfied, too.”
He takes her hand and they walk toward the house, which from afar looks as vacant as the new hive.
The rays of sunlight fall on the museum parking lot like pillars. Madeleine eats her snack while enjoying these first sensations of springtime warmth. An elderly group is waiting in the hall, and the thrumming of their mobility scooters can be heard outside. Just as Madeleine gets up to throw away her apple core, a huge, lumbering automobile pulls up alongside her with Yun aboard. She’s come to say goodbye before heading off on a trip to Cape Breton.
“It seems I’ve got some distant relations out there.”
“And you trust this car to get you there?”
“No way! I’m going to sing Patsy Cline to it the whole time. It’s the only thing that stops it from acting up, apparently.”
“Well, good luck! I hope you come back to see us again some day.”
“Oh, I’m coming back very soon! I’ll be gone for barely a week, just long enough to let Édouard touch down. He needs to get his bearings, you understand…”
Madeleine nods affirmatively, though she doesn’t grasp the meaning of that puzzling statement, any more than she does the mutual allegiance that seems to exist between her son and this young woman too studious to be a true bohemian and too unpredictable to put down roots. But she feels a mute gratitude toward Yun. The two women kiss each other on the cheek, and Madeleine waves as if to encourage the Monte Carlo’s grinding motor. The noise emanating from the colossal machine does nothing to reassure her, but Yun is unperturbed as she steers her white monster down the road. She drives off in a din of metal and country music, which is soon covered over by the roar of the ocean. Madeleine goes back to her mobile visitors, who are turning in circles like seagulls over an island.
It feels as though something is rumbling beneath her feet, as though the willow’s roots are stirring beneath the house. Madeleine shudders. It’s only the wind or perhaps the spring tides making their presence felt. Some waves remind her of sumo wrestlers before a fight, lifting their massive legs high in the air and then pounding the floor to make the ground tremble and chase away evil spirits. This is probably why Madeleine has always longed to be near the sea. Those repeated blows on the shoreline driving the demons away. It was the same for Micha. They had this in common: the need to feel the ocean’s proximity, to feel in each of their cells the water’s to-and-fro and the texture of salt. Micha had a legion of monsters to keep at bay.
The door slams. Shabby scampers in followed by Édouard looking exhausted after a hike.
“All hell’s about to break loose!”
“What?”
“The storm! Didn’t you hear the thunder?”
“Oh, yes. But I thought it was the sea.”
“You always think it’s the sea.”
Édouard leans over the sink to wash his face, his long braid blending with the water flowing between his fingers. The chicken soup is still simmering on the stove. He serves himself a bowlful. Madeleine sits down at the table facing him and watches him eat. Her mind travels light-years back, and she finds herself stunned at the sight of those hands so tiny a short while ago clasping her finger, that mouth just moments before awkwardly suckling a single food, those limbs fashioned inside her now so large, magnified by time, out of her reach for good. She grabs a dishrag and wrings it underneath the table to push away the too-close image of the child who once was hers. The soup gradually disappears, then Édouard stretches a tired arm out toward Paul’s honeypot and plunges his index finger into it like a gold prospector. The storm is still rumbling on the horizon like a guest dithering on the doorstep.
“Mother, I’m sick. I need a kidney.”
Madeleine is struck dumb, with the dishrag hanging from her fingertips. Édouard starts weeping over the honeypot.
“I’m sorry, Ma. There’s no one else I can ask.”
Madeleine steps toward him and, without giving it any thought, takes him in her arms. Édouard’s body feels so big, so tangled, so hard to comprehend. It seems to her everything is coated with honey, that her hands are sticking to her son’s skin, attaching themselves to it in a complicated, sweet and salty embrace, a bungled knot.
The storm gathers strength, flattening the dahlias and bellflowers and whatever still strives to remain upright. As Madeleine watches the spectacle, she recalls how during her pregnancy she slept curled up, so distraught because of a previous miscarriage that even at night she sought to shield her child against the unseen blows that make babies disappear before their mothers can see their faces.
You spend your life fearing the worst. First, you’re afraid of crib death and all the congenital diseases that can show up after birth. You wave your arms, snap your fingers to make sure his eyes can see, his ears can hear. You wait for the first steps, the first words. At every new stage you eliminate a set of handicaps you don’t want to contemplate but that stay planted in your mind like stings.
He grows and you avert your eyes when the TV shows bald children asking for their last wish to be fulfilled. He learns to ride a bicycle, to climb trees, and you pray he won’t fall. He dives into the waves and you keep your eyes glued to the big bubbles in his wake. He goes to play far from the house and you hope he’ll remember not to speak to strangers, to never get into a van with tinted windows. Adolescence comes and you’re afraid the lectures on drugs were inadequate; you’d like to secretly follow him to make sure he doesn’t touch a drop of alcohol before getting behind the wheel, that he always carries condoms, that he doesn’t dive off a high cliff to impress the girls. Then he becomes a man, and you’re left with no choice. You have to let go. And now it happens. I shouldn’t have let my guard down.
Madeleine interrupts her monologue on hearing her son step out of the shower. He slowly comes downstairs and settles in by the fire, which is sucking the dampness out of the air. He looks calmer, but a furrow has appeared on his forehead. It will never go away again. Years later a woman covered with the same sheet as him will run her finger over the little gap and say, “What about this one?” He will answer: “I don’t recall anymore. It appeared in my late twenties.” Madeleine pictures this with a desperate wishfulness. She too approaches the fireplace now, rests one foot on the hearthstone, and lets the heat climb up her leg. Outside, peals of distant thunder are still audible. The storm is heading toward Labrador.