Following the Summer by Lise Bissonnette Page A

boredom and Saturdays when you counted the weddings. In the distance she hears the latest one, the blaring horns of rented Cadillacs, to be returned as soon as the wedding party has alighted at the hotel.
    The dog has come back, has stopped moving. The animal has legs of unequal length, its eyes are reminiscent of ancestors we would like to disown, in photos where workers are dressed up like members of the bourgeoisie. Into dark suits and taffeta dresses with ruching are tucked the hardworking leanness of one, the fat of the other. Their hands give them away, as do the fixed stares of the children in their one pair of white stockings, eyes bulging at an everyday magic. The dog is panting like one of them, like the grandfather who every morning carted logs from his house to the workshop where he sharpened other people’s saws and knives.
    She is there to absorb it, along “with the day’s humidity, the dog’s gaze. Nothing happens here, only scratches. A prison-land that drags its rocks like a ball-and-chain. Meagre shoots that lap up blood through the dust.
    Go home now. The sun still harsh and high. Bicycles have delivered the children’s cries to the rim of the park, to the little thicket of aspens, noon-hour stopping place during excursions, where they bite into thin bread, into ham grey with butter and light. Marie makes a final attempt to stem the oozing, now a paler pink. Behind her flits a brief shadow, scarcely more than a rustle on the sand-polished stone. Something like mockery in the voice. “Hurt yourself?”
    Against the sun the lengthy silhouette becomes stocky, divided between the black slacks and the orange blouse. She’s built like the grocer’s wife, Marie thinks, straightening up. Her cheek brushes the slight curve of the other woman’s hip. An ordinary woman, with sheep’s eyes (like her own) and hair burnt by a cheap black dye-job.
    A salesgirl, or rather a waitress in the beer parlour. When the town was finally populated there were twenty-nine taverns and ten hotels that children weren’t even allowed to go near. The obverse of night, lights that turn the snow on sidewalks green, and ventilating fans that send out rancid odours, and in summer the sugary smell of beer. Whenever they walked under the awning of the Union Hotel ( Verres stérélisés, Bienvenue) they laughed at the misspelled word. It was their way of showing contempt for the drunken midafternoon laughter that came through the swinging door. Laughter of people like this woman. You envisage them with sheets always rumpled, with unmade beds flanked by grubby night tables, with companions noisy and malodorous.
    Her face is clean, her eyelashes thick. What is she doing here, on the other side of the lake? Does she not know the difference? Firmly, she grasps Marie’s arm and shifts her to a higher position, leaning against a still-scorching rock. “You should be careful, it’s dirty here.” Takes a blue handkerchief from Marie (the kind you put in hope chests, that bring laughter from girls like her). “Could be dangerous, better clean it up right away.”
    A worn-out voice, one that’s been hung up in many places. They have to be like that at night, mercenary, tolerant of alcohol and of jokes repeated a thousand times. Marie believes she can recognize them. Last year, on a day like this, she had tried to help to her feet a woman moaning softly in an alley, whom the police had taken to the station instead of the hospital. “Nothing wrong with her, she’s dead drunk, she’s always falling down, and when she starts chasing other customers away, the owner of the Royal kicks her out.” As Marie signed the deposition, the human wreck stirred slightly, a howl of pain. The youngest officer had picked up the pale body covered with scrapes and tossed it into the station’s only cell. Obscenities poured out in waves, as if the woman wanted their contempt.