Chapter Nine

We took the ferry across the St. Lawrence River from Levi to Quebec City.

“For the romance,” sighed my mother. The river was packed with ice. It was like a glacier had exploded. The chunks of ice were a dirty gray. It was hypnotizing, watching them curl away from the bow of the boat.

“Julian, look! It’s the Château Frontenac!” My mother was almost jumping for joy.

“Just looks like all the postcards,” I said.

“Wet blanket,” she said. And stuck out her tongue.

“Time for a bite to heat?” asked Jean-Paul.

“Yeah. I could heat a horse,” I replied.

“Okay, Julian, that’s enough,” said my mother.

Jean-Paul whispered something in her ear.

The café was a hole in the wall. Really, it was this cool cave dug in the side of an old stone wall. It looked like people had been carving their names in the tabletops for centuries. In the middle of each table, straw-covered wine bottles plugged with burning candles made shadows dance on the walls around us.

“Does everyone in Quebec smoke?” I asked. My eyes were stinging.

And everyone was talking French. I couldn’t understand the menu until Jean-Paul pointed out it was in English on the opposite page.

“Are you illiterate or just English?” He asked. I biffed him on the side of the head.

“We say touché in French.” He really wanted to dig it in.

“We say it in English, too.”

“One more thing the English have taken from the French.”

“What’s with you two?” My mother was frowning.

“None of your beeswax,” I smiled back.

The split pea soup looked gross but it was delicious, I told the waitress. What a knockout she was.

Mom was staring at me like I was an alien.

“My, we really can be charming at times, can’t we?” she jabbed.

“Pretty women can make a guy do many tings!” said Jean-Paul. He caught himself just in time. He didn’t wink.

We walked around old Quebec for a while. In front of the Château was the biggest toboggan hill I’d ever seen. Right there, in the middle of the city! Three long tracks of ice humped in places like a water slide, only going straight downhill. The people in those sleds were screaming their heads off.

“Looks like a hell of a good time! What are we waiting for?” This trip suddenly looked like it might be fun. But Jean-Paul said we didn’t have time if we wanted to get to where we were going before dark. Mom looked disappointed, too.

“But, after all,” she hissed to me when she saw the pout I’d put on, “that’s not why we came. We came to meet his family. Now smile.”

I smiled. For almost a week, I smiled. And smiled. My jaw ached. We made the rounds of nearly all the brothers and sisters. There were ten in all.

We only got a break from all of it the day I went skiing with Mom. Jean-Paul wanted to shop for some new scuba diving equipment. He took us to the hill and bought us our passes.

“Are we ever going to sleep in the same bed twice?” I asked her on the chair lift.

“I don’t know, “she said. “In fact, I don’t know what’s going on around me half the time. I’m worn out trying to keep up.”

She did look tired.

“You’re doing okay, Mom,” I said. “Sheesh, I didn’t know you knew so much French.”

“I don’t,” she said. “I just nod and smile. And then I just take English words and say them with a French accent.”

“What do you mean?”

“Fantastic. Fantastique! Marvellous? Marveyyou! No problem? No ProBLAM!”

I almost fell out of the lift.

“Anyway, tomorrow is New Year’s and we’ll head home after that. And… thanks, Julian.”

“What for?”

“For coming. For being so great.”

“Yeah. Well, the food’s good.”

“Still, there are so many people!”

“And he says there’ll be even more tomorrow.”

“Fantastique!” she said. And sighed.

There were seventy-two people, including Mom and me.

“We rent the whole lodge so everyone can fit,” Jean-Paul told us.

“Crazy,” I said. “Crrrrazee!” I repeated, rolling my rs.

It was, too. Everyone was hugging. All those bonjours. The names all sounded the same to me. Double names. Marie-Claude. Marie-Luc. Marie-Jean. Jean-Marc. Too many to remember.

Except for one.

Bernadette.

She was about my age. She had straight black hair longer than Alanis Morisette’s. Some of it covered her left eye. Her eyes were the color of forget-me-nots, and those lips. Asking for a kiss. I kept catching her looking at me, out from under her bangs.

So there we were. Seventy-two of us, sitting around the main room of the lodge.

“Have you ever seen so much food?” asked Mom.

“Or so many babies,” I added as another one shot me dead. I fell to the ground and the little bugger stomped on my head.

“Show time,” announced Jean-Paul.

The guitars were brought out. Everyone sang. Not just French songs, either.

“Welcome to de Otel Callyfornia,” they sang. “What a lovely face,” I sang. Looking right at Bernadette.

Two guys did a two-man skit. Or, rather, a two-woman skit. It was a blast, even if I didn’t understand. Then we played some sort of guessing game. Well, they did. And then?

Enter Stage Left… Molly the Clown!