Chapter Eight

It took eight hours to drive to Quebec City. I slept most of the way. Between Edmundston and Riviere du Loup, Jean-Paul played Alanis Morissette on his new CD player.

“Good taste in music,” I said. I had to give him that.

“I got one hand in my pocket and the other one’s giving a peace sign,” she sang.

“The other one’s picking my nose,” I sang. “The other one’s scratching my butt.”

Mom laughed along with Jean-Paul despite herself.

“What other music you like?” Jean-Paul asked.

“The Bare Naked Ladies are wicked.”

“Wicked. This word, you say it all the time. I think it mean something bad.”

“It does, usually,” said Mom. “It’s sort of teenage slang. You know what I mean by slang?”

“Of course. So when Julian says wicked he means awesome, cool?”

“Only even better,” I said.

“Ah, oui. In French the kids say écoeurant. Usually it means disgusting. But when they say it means the… opposite.”

So while he boned up on his English and Mom kept practicing phrases from her French-English dictionary, I went back to sleep. And had a nightmare.

About number three. He was swimming underwater. Pulling me down.

Remembering him gives me shivers. A chill in my bones. I’ve erased his name from memory. But his eyes? Those, I remember. They were the cool white-blue of a killer shark. Reminded me of pictures I’d seen in magazines. The Shark. That’ll do.

“He has a Windsurfer and a motor boat,” Mom told us after their first date.

“The guy has possibilities,” I said.

“What’s he do, Mom? Rob banks?” This time it was Chris who was negative. “Greasy,” is how he’d described him after they left on that date. “Greasy as an oil slick.”

“I’m not sure exactly. Investments or some such. He owns his own company. Something to do with stocks and bonds.

“A con man,” she told her girlfriends afterwards. Crazy would have been closer to the truth. I don’t think she could ever admit her judgement was so poor.

They were hot and heavy for about six months. Then, he invested money for my mother—like she had so much to begin with. We probably would have lost our house if we owned one, but we didn’t. We still don’t. Probably on account of that jerk. We still rent. All Mom’s savings, from her clowning money, were history. That wasn’t the worst of it, though.

When she asked him to stop coming around, he didn’t.

“He was lurking outside of work today,” she whispered to Bette, her best friend.

“He’s creepy,” said Bette, sipping her tea. “I’m worried.”

“He followed me to the grocery store,” she hissed into the phone to Poppie.

“Maybe I will,” she said. “Yeah, okay, Dad, I’ll call the police. That’s a good idea.”

The police did nothing.

The phone would ring and no one would be there.

Just breathing. We knew who it was.

Well, this went on for about three months. During this time Mom was a bag of nerves. She jumped every time the phone rang. She was always looking over her shoulder. She lost weight. I began biting my fingernails. Chris slept with a baseball bat by his bed.

Then, one night, around two in the morning, there was a banging on the front door.

Mom said after she didn’t want to wake the neighbors, so she let him in. Big mistake. He was wired.

“Holy crap, he’s high as a kite,” said Chris. “Go now. Call the cops.”

I crept upstairs and for once did as I was told. It was still too late to stop what happened. The Shark grabbed a fistful of Mom’s hair and was screaming at her.

“Bitch!”

“Let her go, asshole,” said Chris. Then he whacked him a good one across the back of the neck with the bat. The guy was out cold. There was blood. We were bawling and screaming by the time we heard the sirens. The whole neighborhood was out on the street.

It was nasty. I’d rather not remember. The shark guy was not dead. He charged my brother with assault. Imagine. He left town suddenly, though, and the charges were dropped. Chris figures Poppie and the rest of his pals chased him out of town. That was four years ago. I was ten. My mother hasn’t dated since then.

Until now, I mean.

Je suis Molly. Tu es Jean-Paul. Julian est mon fils. When I woke up, Mom was still trying to prepare herself. None of his family spoke English. She was paranoid that they wouldn’t like him bringing home an Anglophone.

“Just don’t talk, Mom,” I teased. “No one will ever know.”

“Your mother, not talk?” Jean-Paul winked in the rearview mirror. That frickin’ winking of his.

“Something wrong with your eye?” I snapped at him.