“Your father never ran down his own kind,” said Marie. She did not mean to start an argument but to point out certain limits. He checked the towels, counted the hangers, raised (or lowered; she could not tell) the air-conditioning. He turned his back while she changed into her hibiscus-patterned chiffon, in case they were going out. In a mirror he watched her buckling her red sandals. Berthe’s Christmas present.
“Mimi is the first woman I ever met who reminded me of you,” he said. Marie let that pass. They walked arm in arm across the parking lot, and he pointed out different things that might interest her — Quebec license plates, a couple of dying palms. On the floor of the lobby lay a furled spruce tree, with its branches still tied. Raymond prodded the tree with his running shoe. It had been here for a week, he said, and it was already shedding. Perhaps Marie and Mimi would like to trim it.
“Trim it with what?” said Marie. Every year, for seven years, she had bought decorations, which Raymond had always thrown out with the tree.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Mimi wants me to set it up on a mirror.”
Marie wondered what Raymond’s title in this place might be. “Manager,” he’d said, but he and Mimi lived like caretakers in an inconvenient arrangement of rooms off the lobby. To get to their kitchen, which was also a storage place for beer and soft drinks, Marie had to squeeze behind the front desk. Every door had a peephole and chain lock. Whenever a bell rang in the lobby Raymond looked carefully before undoing the lock. Another couple worked here, too, he explained, but they were off for Christmas.
The three ate dinner in the kitchen, hemmed in by boxes and crates. Marie asked for an apron, to protect her chiffon. Mimi did not own one, and seemed astonished at the request. She had prepared plain shrimp and boiled rice and plain fruit salad. No wonder Raymond was drying up. Marie showed them pictures of Berthe’s Christmas tree, this year red and gold.
Mimi looked for a long time at a snapshot of Berthe, holding a glass, sitting with her legs crossed and her skirt perhaps a bit high. “What’s in the glass?” she said.
“Gin does my sister a lot of good,” said Marie. She had not enjoyed her shrimp, washed down with some diet drink.
“I’m surprised she never got married,” said Mimi. “How old is she? Fifty-something? She still looks good, physically and mentally.”
“I am surprised,” said Marie, in French. “I am surprised at the turn of this conversation.”
“Mimi isn’t criticizing Aunt Berthe,” said Raymond. “It’s a compliment.”
Marie turned to Mimi. “My sister never had to get married. She’s always made good money. She buys her own fur coats.”
Mimi did not know about Berthe, assistant office manager at Prestige Central Burners — a multinational with tentacles in two cities, one of them Cleveland. Last year Mr. Linden from the Cleveland office had invited Berthe out to dinner. His wife had left him; he was getting over the loss. Berthe intended to tell him she had made a lifetime commitment to the firm, with no leftover devotion. She suggested the Ritz-Carlton — she had been there once before, and had a favorite table. During dinner they talked about the different ways of cooking trout, and the bewildering architectural changes taking place in Cleveland and Montreal. Berthe mentioned that whenever a landmark was torn down people said, “It’s as bad as Cleveland.” It was hard to reconcile the need for progress with the claims of tradition. Mr. Linden said that tradition was flexible.
“I like the way you think,” he said. “If only you had been a man, Miss Carette, with your intellect, and your powers of synthesis, you might have gone …,” and he pointed to the glass bowl of blueberry trifle on the dessert trolley, as if to say, “even farther.”
The next day Berthe drew on her retirement savings account and made a down payment on a mink coat (pastel, fully let out) and wore the coat to work. That was her answer. Marie admired this counterstroke more than any feat of history. She wanted Mimi to admire it, too, but she was tired after the flight, and the shock of Raymond’s marriage, and the parched, disappointing meal. Halfway through the story her English thinned out.
“What’s she saying?” said Mimi. “This man gave her a coat?”
“It’s too bad it couldn’t have worked out better for Aunt Berthe,” said Raymond. “A widower on the executive level. Well, not exactly a widower, but objectively the same thing. Aunt Berthe still looks great. You heard what Mimi said.”
“Berthe doesn’t need a widower,” said Marie. “She can sit on her front balcony and watch widowers running in Parc Lafontaine any Sunday. There’s no room in the flat for a widower. All the closets are full. In the spare-room closet there are things belonging to you, Raymond. That beautiful white rodeo belt with the silver buckle Aunt Berthe gave you for your fourteenth birthday. It cost Berthe thirty dollars, in dollars of that time, when the Canadian was worth more than the American.”
“Ten cents more,” said Raymond.
“Ten cents of another era,” said Marie. “Like eighty cents today.”
“Aunt Berthe can move if she feels crowded,” he said. “Or she can just send me the belt.” He spoke to Mimi. “People in Montreal move more often than in any other city in the world. I can show you figures. My father wasn’t a Montrealer, so we always lived in just the one house. Maman sold it when he died.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing that house,” said Mimi, as though challenging Marie to produce it.
“Why should Berthe move?” said Marie. “First you want to tie her up with a stranger, then you want to throw her out of her home. She’s got a three-bedroom place for a rent you wouldn’t believe. She’d be crazy to let it go. It’s easier to find a millionaire with clean habits than my sister’s kind of flat.”
“People don’t get married to have three bedrooms,” said Mimi, still holding Berthe’s picture. “They get married for love and company.”
“I am company,” said Marie. “I love my sister, and my sister loves me.”
“Do you think I married Raymond for space?” said Mimi.
Raymond said something in English. Marie did not know what it meant, but it sounded disgusting. “Raymond,” she said. “Apologize to your wife.”
“Don’t talk to him,” said Mimi. “You’re only working him up.”
“Don’t you dare knock your chair over,” said his mother. “Raymond! If you go out that door, I won’t be here when you get back.”
The two women sat quietly after the door slammed. Then Mimi picked up the fallen chair. “That’s the real Raymond,” she said. “That’s Raymond, in public and private. I don’t blame any man’s mother for the way the man turns out.”
“He had hair like wheat,” said Marie. “It turned that rusty color when he was three. He had the face of an angel. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him like this. Of course, he has never been married before.”
“He’ll be lying on the bed now, sulking,” said Mimi. “I’m not used to that. I hadn’t been married before, either.” She began rinsing plates at the sink. The slit of a window overlooked cars and the stricken palms. Tears ran down her cheeks. She tried to blot them on her arm. “I think he wants to leave me.”
“So what if he does leave,” said Marie, looking in vain for a clean dish towel. “A bad, disobedient boy. He ran away to Vietnam. The last man in our family. He should have been thinking about having sons instead of traveling around. Raymond’s father was called Louis. My father’s name was Odilon. Odilon-Louis — that’s a nice name for a boy. It goes in any language.”