Montreal Stories Read Free Page A

founder among castaways for his first twelve weeks.
    So Nora reasoned, gently stroking the baby’s back. Shewondered if he had managed to capture her thoughts. Apparently infants came into the world with a gift for mind reading, an instinct that faded once they began to grasp the meaning of words. She had been assured it was true by her late Aunt Rosalie, a mother of four. The time had come to take him out of this sour place, see him fed, washed, put into new clothes and a clean bed. But the two men seemed like guests at a disastrous party, unable to get away, rooted in place by a purely social wish to seem agreeable.
    How sappy they both look, ran Nora’s thoughts. As sappy as a couple of tenors. (“Sappy-looking as a tenor” was an expression of her father’s.) I’ll never get married. Who wants to look at some sappy face the whole day.
    As though he had heard every silent word and wished to prove he could be lively and attentive, the doctor looked all around the room, for the first time, and remarked, “Some of these children, it would be better for everybody if they died at birth.” His English was exact and almost without accent, but had the singsong cadence of French Montreal. It came out, “Most of these children, it would be better for everybody …” Nora held a low opinion of that particular lilt. She had been raised in two languages. To get Nora to answer in French, particularly after she had started attending an English high school, her mother would pretend not to understand English. I may not be one of your intellectuals, Nora decided (an assurance her father gave freely), but I sound English in English and French in French. She knew it was wrong of her to criticize an educated man such as Dr. Marchand, but he had said a terrible thing. It would have sounded bad spoken heedfully by the King himself. (The King, that August morning, was still George the Sixth.)
    The stiff drinks Mr. Fenton had taken earlier in the day must have been wearing off. He seemed far away in his mind and somewhat put-upon. The doctor’s remark brought him to. He said something about shoving off, turned easily to thenun, gave her a great smile. In answer, she placed a folded document in his hands, said a cool “Au revoir” to the doctor and did not look at Nora at all. In the hall outside Mr. Fenton stopped dead. He appealed to the doctor and Nora: “Look at this thing.”
    Nora shifted the baby to her right arm but otherwise kept her distance. “It’s a certificate,” she said.
    “Baptismal,” said the doctor. “He’s been baptized.”
    “I can see that. Only, it’s made out for ‘Armand Albert Antoine.’ She gave me the wrong thing. You’d better tell them,” for of course he could not have made the complaint in French.
    “Those are just foundling names,” said the doctor. “They give two or three Christian names when there’s no known family. I’ve seen even
four
. ‘Albert’ or ‘Antoine’ could be used as a surname. You see?”
    “There damn well is a known family,” said Mr. Fenton. “Mine. The name is Neil Boyd Fenton. When I make up my mind, it’s made up for good. I never look back.” But instead of returning the certificate he stuffed it, crumpled, into a pocket. “Nobody asked to have him christened here. I call that overstepping.”
    “They have to do it,” said the doctor. “It is a rule.” In the tone of someone trying to mend a quarrel, he went on, “Neil’s a fine name.” Nora knew for a fact he had suggested it. Mr. Fenton had never got round to finding a name, though he’d had three months to think it over. “There’s another name I like. ‘Earl.’ Remember Earl Laine?”
    “Yeah, I remember Earl.” They started down a broad staircase, three in a row. Mr. Fenton was red in the face, either from his outburst or just the heat and weight of his dark clothes. Nora might have sympathized, but she had already decided not to do that: What can’t be helped must be borne. Her