English translation copyright © Rhonda Mullins, 2017
original French © Marchand de feuilles, 2015
First English edition. Originally written by Anais Barbeau-Lavalette and published in French as La femme qui fuit by Marchand de feuilles, 2015.
Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Barbeau-Lavalette, Anaïs, 1979-
[Femme qui fuit. English]
Suzanne / by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette ; translated by Rhonda Mullins.
Translation of: La femme qui fuit.
ISBN 978 1 77056 507 4 (EPUB).
I. Mullins, Rhonda, 1966-, translator II. Title. III. Title: Femme qui fuit. English
PS8603.A705F4513 2017 c843'.6 c2017-900550-2
Suzanne is available as an ebook: ISBN 978-1-55245-347-6 (softcover), ISBN 978 1 77056 508 1 (PDF), ISBN 978 1 77056 509 8 (MOBI)
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The first time you saw me, I was one hour old. You were old enough to have courage.
Fifty, maybe.
It was at St. Justine Hospital. I had just come into the world. I already had a big appetite. I drank her milk like I make love now, like it’s the last time.
My mother had just given birth to me. Her daughter, her firstborn.
I imagine you entering the room. Your face round like ours. Your dark eyes heavily lined in kohl.
You enter unapologetically. Walking confidently. Even though it has been twenty-seven years since you last saw my mother.
Even though twenty-seven years ago you ran away. Leaving her there, teetering on her three-year-old legs, the memory of your skirts lingering on her fingertips.
You walk calmly toward us. My mother’s cheeks are red. She is the most beautiful thing in the world.
How could you just walk away?
How did you not perish at the thought of missing her nursery rhymes, her little-girl lies, her loose teeth, her spelling mistakes, her laces tied all by herself, then her crushes, her nails painted then bitten, her first rum-and-Cokes?
Where did you hide to avoid thinking about it?
Now, there is her, there is you, and between you, there is me. You can’t hurt her anymore, because I’m here.
Does she hold me out to you, or do you reach your empty arms toward me?
I end up near your face. I fill the gaping hole in your arms. My newborn eyes search yours.
Who are you?
You leave. Again.
The next time I see you, I’m ten years old.
I am perched at the third-floor window, my breath melting the lacy frost on the pane.
Rue Champagneur is white.
On the other side, a woman falters, her long coat no longer enough to protect her.
Some things children can guess, and even though I don’t know you, I sense you in this waltz of hesitation.
You cross the street in long strides, your toes barely landing. A water spider.
You dart, you head toward us, leaving no trace of yourself on the ground.
You slide a small book into the mailbox before slipping off, yet again. But right before you disappear, you look at me. I promise myself I will catch up with you one day.
The train is heading to Ottawa.
I’m twenty-six years old. Beside me, my mother is reading a magazine to keep her mind off things. I like peering over her shoulder at the pictures of girls in dresses.
We have a mission in Ottawa, a city we don’t know. We are both looking forward to the end of the day, when we can wander and lose ourselves in neighbourhoods off the beaten path, the sort we love.
But my mother has had an idea. We are going to go see you. If you are still alive, you live in a tower near the Rideau Canal. That was the last place you sent word from.
We can’t call because you’ll tell us not to come.
We have to show up in person.
But I don’t know if I want to. I don’t love you.
I’m even a little afraid of you.
In the end, I preferred it when you didn’t exist.
My mother is still afraid of being abandoned.
Even though a mother is not someone who can be abandoned, we have to be careful, because it’s not all that clear to her.
I ask her whether she is sure she wants to go.
She says yes.
The day goes by, and we find ourselves in a taxi, on our way to you.
Ten identical towers reach toward the sky. A caretaker is in the foyer. The names of tenants are listed on the wall, each one with a little buzzer for visitors to announce their arrival.
Suzanne Meloche. Your name. Written in your hand. Round, painstaking letters. Apartment 560.
We slip in with a neighbour. Outlaws.
We don’t talk in the elevator.
Fifth floor. This is it. We walk down the long corridor. We are stationed in front of your door. My mother knocks. We wait. Footsteps. I’m scared.
You open the door.
My young woman’s eyes bore into yours, which are stony.
You smile.
You don’t miss a beat. You hardly seem surprised.
And yet. The last time we were all together, I was just born.
You open the door a little wider. So we go in. And you ask us to sit down.
My mother and I sit side by side. On alert. Ready to make a run for it if need be.
You are facing us. You must be eighty years old. Prominent cheekbones, thin lips, ebony eyes.
You look like us.
Then you start talking. You look mainly at me. And you wink.
It’s the three of us. It’s so natural it’s disturbing. As if we could just sit in silence and flip through women’s magazines together.
In a resonant voice, a voice younger than your years, you tell us about the neighbourhood, which is quiet, safe. The fellow tenants who don’t bother you, and Hilda, a neighbour with whom you eat sometimes. You tell us an old woman’s tales, but your voice and your eyes are twenty. Your smile too, animated, intense.
Your old-lady words shield you. You string them together while I search for you somewhere else.
Your apartment is small and bright. Books are scattered on the floor, as if forgotten mid-read. They, too, await