‘She set sail last night.’
‘Let me tell you, our hearts were in pieces all night long!’
‘It was a clear night. We watched her boat cross the bay.’
Like a knife to the heart, it suddenly struck Moralès how he had watched the sailboat gliding through the sliver of moonlight. So that had been her? Setting sail forever?
At that very moment, because the Gaspé was such an unrelenting kind of place, his phone chose to ring. Moralès picked it up with a mechanical reflex, taking three steps off to the side.
‘Hello?’
‘Joaquin? It’s me.’
‘Me?’
‘Sarah. Your wife.’
The silence fell flat as a pancake. For the first time in thirty years, he hadn’t recognised the sound of his wife’s voice. Because he was somewhere else entirely, on that boat with its back turned and the wind in its sails.
‘Joaquin? Are you there?’
Moralès was lost for words.
‘You left me a message.’
He stepped outside the Café du Havre.
Why hadn’t he gone to see Catherine last night? Why had he waited before telling her what he had decided? She had no idea he was going to get a divorce. She left without knowing! How was he supposed to get hold of her now?
‘Why aren’t you saying anything? We’ve not spoken for days…’
He took a step towards the sea. Towards Catherine. With her, he felt so… young… He was so…
‘Joaquin?’
Sarah was insistent.
‘Yesterday, I met with the collectors in New York and I… I’m going to let Jean-Paul take care of it. I’m sorry, Joaquin. I regret my… my hesitations, my doubts. I miss you.’
It was now or never. He had to tell Sarah. To stop any wishful thinking, to stop things getting out of hand. So, Moralès let it all out. He told her he was in another place. He felt lighter, uplifted, swept away. It was too late. Could she understand? His life was shifting too, embracing new possibilities. He explained all that to her, but only in his mind, because she was the one doing all the talking.
‘If you like, I can hit the road today. I can get the boys to finish up the move. I… I’ll come and join you in the Gaspé.’
Possibilities? Who was he kidding? If Catherine had known he had been plotting a divorce, would she still have left? Moralès gazed out to sea. Stared. Pilar was out there, somewhere beyond the horizon.
‘Joaquin?’
In spite of himself, he knew his name when his wife called it.
‘Yes, Sarah. I’m listening.’
‘I… I know we don’t make love often enough…’
She went on to say how old and graceless she felt, struggling to keep pace on the day-to-day treadmill, what a fool she had been. She insisted how handsome she found him. Even more handsome than before. And she was still attracted to him. Here or elsewhere. Anywhere. Out there, why not? Down by the sea.
‘What about you?’
As she was talking, Moralès realised he was not alone. Over on the wharf, a tall, Indigenous man had his eye on the horizon. Rooted to the shore like a lighthouse, he too was casting his gaze far offshore.
Suddenly, Moralès felt… old. Past his best. Over the hill. What a fool.
He bowed his head.
Down by his feet, his reflection stared back at him from the watery mirror of a puddle. Yes. Even if she’d known, Catherine Garant would have gone. Forever. She was a lure. Admit it, Moralès, though you know it hurts. And you do feel hurt, Moralès, in all that hurt can mean. A pang at the pit of your stomach, a hole, a void.
‘I still love you, Joaquin.’
He closed his eyes and, in spite of himself, he saw age-old images emerging from the depths, scrolling across the slate of memory. His wife slipping off her tights, stripping away her makeup, wiping off her lipstick, rubbing her eyelids ever so gently. The grace of love.
He took a deep breath and opened his eyes.
‘Me too, Sarah. I still love you too.’
And he turned away from the sea.
Daughters of the sea
Cyrille said the sea was like a patchwork quilt, that our pure morning gaze was a clean slate for the splintered light of sunrise to make a mosaic of us. Cyrille was right. The rising sun fanned its rolling colours over the Baie-des-Chaleurs, washing the hull crimson, drawing me ever deeper into the coralline canvas of the open sea.
I stole away in the dead of night, because I wanted to sail my first nautical miles of freedom under a sky full of stars. I cast off my moorings with neither sorrow nor regret. Happy. I glided out to sea with the wind on my side, in the same regal style as the great tall ships.
Around one in the morning, Night Flight drew alongside me. Together we traced parallel wakes at close quarters. Suddenly, Yves Carle veered course slightly to bring our hulls abreast. He pointed to a bay.
‘Look, it’s the Banc-des-Fous!’
‘I know!’
Our voices echoed on the water.
‘Who told you?’
‘I was here the other night.’
He gave me a grand send-off as I steered my course offshore.
The other night had been moonless. Pitch dark. I was dressed in black. The sky was heavy with clouds, and the will-o’-the-wisps were as still as could be. I didn’t make a grand entrance through the wrought-iron gate with the letters of eternal repose – RIP – embraced in a tangled wreath of flowers; rather, I crept along the edge of the wood.
There was no need to count the rows. I knew exactly where the earth had been freshly churned up, where they had buried my mother’s old, drowned and butchered body, in the shadow of the tall trees. Slow, solid steps carried me forward. I skirted my way around the grey headstones of others, engraved with indifference, and I stood before her, asking her forgiveness for my dirty clothes, my work boots, the spade breaking the surface. I dug into the soft ground. I could feel the tears streaming down onto her grave. The sacred site of our missed rendezvous.
My daughter, I am willing Pilar to you, and the horizon is your oyster.
This was no sacrilege. I pried the wooden coffin open. There she was, pale in the funeral director’s sewn-up shroud. Though it was light, I toiled to lift her body out of the hole. I laid her down on the grass and smoothed over the grave as best I could. Then it struck me they’d know what I’d done anyway, and I wouldn’t get away with it. But never mind. I hid the spade in the woods before returning to her side, while she sagely waited with eyes closed, horizontal in the nocturnal dew. Mother.
I had sworn I wouldn’t love her, but it was stronger than me, this urge to take her in my arms, forgive her, carry her body back to the waters where she deserved to rest in peace – beyond my fears, beyond the promises I had made to myself and cemented so they became stumbling blocks in the way of my own freedom.
I tore open the cloth of the shroud. I lifted my mother’s cold, blue body to my chest – Marie Garant’s body there in my arms – and I carried her to my car.
He emerged from the shadows as I drew near the edge of the cemetery.
‘If you take the sailboat, they’ll know it was you. Heee… Let’s put her in my truck and we’ll take my boat. Heee… It’s safer that way.’
I checked the route on the GPS as the sun continued tracing its southerly circle. Out to sea, I spotted a fishing boat. I grabbed the binoculars. It was a trawler, the Delgado. And somewhere, invisibly, I knew Jérémie was watching over me. I put the binoculars down and turned my gaze north one last time.