A Family Affair by Nadine Bismuth

Author:Nadine Bismuth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2020-07-06T13:30:14+00:00

* * *

The afternoon has not yet ended, but already darkness has swallowed everything outside. Having finished smoothing the plaster on the walls, I roll up the plastic sheet my father lent me and put it away in the garage. I’m working tonight, but if I hurry, I’ll have time to visit the lighting store in Brossard. If I’m to have a new kitchen, it might as well have proper light.

Thursday, November 24

When Magalie materializes on my front doorstep, though I can tell the person she’s talking to on her cell is none other than Mathieu, I can’t help but feel my heartrate accelerate.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, I can’t. I’ve already made it out to Sainte-Julie. You’ll have to go back alone. You just leave her at the daycare, they’ll take care of her . . . okay? Bye!” She hangs up and apologizes: Mathieu took Charlotte to school this morning and just realized he left her lunchbox at home. Then she moves into the front hall, anointing the small room with a fragrance of fruity shampoo. “It’s wet out, should I take my shoes off?”

I tell her not to worry and glance over her shoulder, looking for someone else to emerge from this mess of freezing rain. As if she is able to read my thoughts, she informs me she’s come alone. Olivier has been detained by an important breakfast meeting. I close the door and she kisses me on the cheeks. Despite what I told her, she determines it’s best to take off her ankle boots.

“Here, there’s one for you,” she says, handing me a cardboard tray with two cups of steaming coffee wedged in it. “I really need caffeine this morning. There’s a real estate developer who wants to work with us. That’s who Olivier is meeting. Penture would be the official kitchen partner in all the buildings they construct. It would be a huge deal. It’s stressing me out. I slept badly.”

But, as I take her coat and we sit in the living room, Magalie seems quite awake to me. There’s a spring to each of her steps.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’ve just finished a stretch of seven night shifts myself. So I haven’t slept at all.”

“You should have told me, we could have rescheduled.”

“When? Neither of us has the time.”

“It’s true. We’re rushed.”

“I’ll sleep when you leave. I have six days off.”

Her hair is down and a few curly strands are still wet, as if she didn’t have time to dry them after her shower. She ties her hair back with the Hello Kitty elastic around her wrist, then sets up her laptop on the coffee table and shows me modifications of my kitchen design since our last meeting. I approve the changes — insignificant things, but she’s a stickler for detail — and then she gets out her laser measurer and surveys my kitchen. I offer to help, but she refuses. She’s concentrating on the beep-beeping of her device. So I drink my coffee in silence, doing my best not to watch her too obviously.

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