Following the Summer by Lise Bissonnette Page B

There was something enjoyable about being carried away by pity, about sniffing out the drama that had brought her here — desertion, or incest. No one could choose such abjection. Such dereliction, said the priest, who liked verbal precision. Marie was unmoved by dereliction, was only curious about the hoarse voice, so suited to curses.
    The voice of this woman bending over her wound resembles the other, save for its oily slowness. She talks about rusty scissors, about scars that close over invisible infections, about abscesses and accidents that happen to children. Before Marie can even think about making her getaway, the woman spits gently into the handkerchief, turning it mauve, and wipes the wound, probing deep inside. Firmly, as if using a grater, she exposes the pink, she presses once again, and blood wells up, clean. Again. Marie’s disgust is idiotic now, she knows that. Under the handkerchief tied as a tourniquet, the stickiness soaks into the cloth.
    Go home now, quickly. Thank her.
    The orange top exposes a plump elbow, rounder than her own. Like the arm that tucks you in on nights when you have a fever, tenderly, absently, already busy putting clothes away or turning off unnecessary lamps. “Thank you,” says Marie, the routine words turning ridiculous. The dog shakes himself, stirs up the silence a little, but the woman does not move away. She walks with Marie to the edge of the park, supports her on the irregular stones (“I’m fine now, really, it’s nothing”), and lavishes advice — Mercurochrome and cold water.
    On the moss a man with tattooed arms has just stretched out. He pulls himself up on his elbows just long enough for the shadow of the two women to pass across his pale shirt. An orange blouse against a beige dress, dowdy now with its sober flowers, its (genuine) patent leather belt which matches the sandals exactly. Marie is a catalogue image with her carefully waved hair, her discreet earrings. Her gait becomes awkward. The other woman does not even see the man feigning sleep.
    A crease of jealousy. Marie sees again Eleni, daughter of the Greek restaurant-owner who had the same confident sway when she brushed against the troops of boys in the narrow aisles at the arena. “Love me tender,” Elvis crooned, amidst the fine hail thrown up by their skates. Even in the depths of winter, when coats deform you and sweaters stiffen your silhouette, she still excited them. She had married the only West Indian in town and showed him off every night, dragging him down the main street, and there was no mistake. No possibility of mistake. She degraded every form of affection. And now a man stretched out in the park was using the same standard to judge Marie. Who didn’t protest. Even regretted her innocent appearance under his shamelessly greedy gaze, regretted not wearing some violent colour that would drive up the bidding. A colour meant to be followed, to be summoned, as far as the rows of houses up there, that will protect you from consenting, from appearing to consent.
    Neither the hour nor any shadow offers deliverance from the heat, the radiance. “I’m Corrine,” says the other woman, her manner familiar. They slow down. Marie falls in with her heavy pace, the better to be filled with her odour of musk and sweat, which she should find repugnant. And which should enable her to keep her distance, exasperated, detached. Above all, not to be seen.
    But none of this shows on the surface. The woman is thirty, at the very least. Her skin is dull. From the side, only her plump arms are visible, but her neck, observed just then, was somewhat crepey, her cheek chapped by the sun. Corrine is blind to Marie’s disgust. She hears herself talking about three willow trees, the only ones in this town, with every passing season their bare roots more eaten away by the acids in the lake, trees that should be cut down. She talks about rot, about danger. Says on