He’d convinced Stéphane Kavanagh, his banker and friend, to take a chance on him, and in the following weeks, while everyone else was getting worked up about the Cuban Missile Crisis, the two Irishmen were at the kitchen table, totally wrapped up in something else. It was a contest of dreams and hopes. Solange pretended to be won over by her husband’s arguments — the future king of Roxboro, as he said with a smile as broad as you please, shaving cream still on his face. Max remembered that Sunday when the four of them (Philippe was there for the day this time) went to scout out the plot for the ultimate sacrifice. Solange, not wanting to be a wet blanket, though she was wary of her husband’s impulses, faked her enthusiasm for the clearing of the street, the beauty of the lot, and the size of the river.
Gilbert O’Brien was a veritable home-handyman visionary. All these houses were going up at high speed, and one day they’d need improvement, renovation, or at least a change of colour. All these tenants becoming home owners would sooner or later get bitten by the toolkit/electric-sander bug. Their mortgages were all sewn up thanks to Kavanagh, who in return financed Gilbert’s business on Gouin Street. Yep, a tidy little arrangement. Solange went along without a word, Philippe and Max, too, despite the sacrifices: new neighbourhood, new school, new friends. Then, when Philippe left home to avoid the exhausting daily trek to college, Gilbert had to resign himself to the boy getting a room in town. He’d be a long-distance partner in the dream.
Max was inconsolable. He idolized Philippe, his teacher and protector. Philippe had six years on his brother and brought a whiff of the outside world to Lajeunesse Street. With him around, dressing, eating, and talking were all different: everything was “modern,” a modernity learned at college side by side with the daddy’s boys of Greater Montreal. Gilbert had spared no expense. The Jesuits cost him an arm and a leg, but he paid without blinking. It was an investment in his son’s future, his own, too. Did he already have Philippe in mind to pick up the reins after him, or was he thinking of Max as the “handier” of the two? Whichever it was, the “empire” was still in the planning stages. It kept Gilbert awake at night. He spent sleepless nights adding details here and there. By dawn he’d be ready to pass the torch to both of them, as they went out to conquer the world in their turn. His office became a time machine to the future.
Solange was the one left waiting in the present. Then one day she’d had enough. She was seeing another man on the side, one who “understood” and who did not live in a fantasyland. Her confrontation came as a complete surprise to the “king of Roxboro,” who felt she’d betrayed him. Gilbert hadn’t seen this coming. She wanted a new life that wasn’t Gyprocked, screwed, and asphalt-shingled into place. She wanted out with her kids, but Philippe refused to leave. So did Max. They both clung hard to Gilbert, shutting out their mother’s arguments. She insisted, she lamented, then she slammed the door in a fury.
Gilbert, supported by his friend Kavanagh, was heartbroken for months. Then life started up again, and the king of Roxboro got right back to work. On Saturdays, Max filled in for Philippe, who was absorbed in his studies, and helped his father in the store. Early on Sunday evenings, Philippe would disappear to his small room on Amherst. When he was gone, Max paced the floor, not knowing what to do. He had trouble fighting the sadness brought on by big brother’s absence. Fortunately, there was Kavanagh, a constant guest at their table after Solange walked out. Likeable, open, and “modern” in his own way, he gradually replaced Philippe, who showed up less and less.
A love lost turned into new prosperity for Gilbert. He had been right, and Kavanagh the banker was delighted. Business at the hardware store doubled every trimester, and it was time to expand right away. The housing boom surpassed all expectations, and the king of Roxboro reigned supreme. Gilbert invested more and more, and Kavanagh backed him up. The bank made bigger loans on the strength of even greater projected income. Gilbert spent more than ever and didn’t mind sinking everything he had into the project. Success became almost a monotonous routine: no bumps or sharp turns in a road as wide as tarmac leading straight up into the clouds.
The fateful day was one Max could never forget. The radio said it was the coldest day of the year. They came to get him while he was in math class late one afternoon. Way to go, he said to himself. He hated differential and integral calculus. Philippe was in the principal’s office, fresh from Vancouver, where he’d been studying political science since September. Then Philippe took him out to a waiting taxi. The driver already knew where to go. He headed straight for downtown, but road construction led him back to Gouin and the hardware store.
By the time Philippe realized what was happening, it was already too late. The store was closed … on a Friday. Max looked for his father, but the place was deserted.
“We’re going to a hotel for a few days,” Philippe said when Max turned to him. “The house has been seized, too. It’s the bank’s now.”
“What about Papa?”
“He’ll be here soon.”
Kavanagh had six stitches in his face where Gilbert had hit him with a nail-puller. From the police station, he’d called Philippe in Vancouver instead of a lawyer, and Kavanagh declined to file charges, so Gilbert was able to join his sons at the hotel by evening — motel, actually. A pretty grubby one, too, in a slummy neighbourhood. The windows hadn’t been opened in weeks, due to the cold, and the room hadn’t been cleaned ever, except maybe a superficial once-over. All three slept in the same big bed, three world-weary musketeers chewed up and spat out by fate. Gilbert turned on the light in the middle of the night. He had to talk, confess, get it off his chest. He was washed up. Kavanagh hadn’t kept his word and had let his superiors take a piece out of the king of Roxboro. The vultures had swooped down on his business and torn it to pieces. It was the saddest night in Max’s short life: a filthy little bulb overhead, worn-out furniture, and the hum of traffic in the distance.
“Why us? Why?” Gilbert couldn’t get over it. He never did. After the nervous breakdown, he wound up in the woodworking section at Castor Bricoleur, where he coasted along. He’d come home with his hands full of splinters and never even bother to pull them out. All desire to make an honest living or even “make an effort” deserted Max, too, which resulted in petty crimes to round out the month’s expenses, a borrowed car to impress a girl his age in the neighbourhood, some vandalism, a few misdemeanours here and there: nothing original, just run-of-the-mill impulses. Then one day, he took off after Kavanagh to give him a taste of their calamity. Another dose of the old nail-puller. But the banker had pulled up stakes. Aw, the hell with him. Max had to get on with his life, and he wasn’t about to let anyone get in his way, not like his dad. Little crimes led to bigger ones, bolder, riskier. Max was bound to end up in jail sooner or later.
Then along came Mimi.
Before her, Montreal had always spelled misery and hard times for Max.
The first time he got out of the Bordeaux prison in 1972 — it seemed like only yesterday — there was no one but the bus driver. Gilbert hadn’t passed the news along, so Philippe didn’t know Max was out. No sign of his father in the little apartment on Bagg Street, either. That’s what Max thought at first, because of the drawn curtains and locked door. A neighbour came and let him in. There was Gilbert, sitting in the shadows with a cat on his lap. He’d never liked animals before.
“I don’t want you here, Max. I put all your stuff in that box. Take it and go.”
It was only a shoebox of souvenirs he didn’t want anyway, and he tossed it in the first garbage bin he came across on his way to Mimi’s place — an ex-cellmate had given him the address.
Mimi was the eldest of the three and stood in as mother for the other two: Antoine, who was Max’s age, with his nose buried in Popular Mechanics, was the intellectual in the family; Pascale was secretive and melancholic, looking at him that day through wide teenage eyes, more curious than frightened. The tenants were the collateral damage of the justice system, and Mimi had seen plenty already, so what was one more or one less? And what did these bewildered black sheep live on? Max had an idea, but he wasn’t about to ask. To each his own. They barely said “hi,” then one day they disappeared.