Fables of Brunswick Avenue by Katherine Govier

Author:Katherine Govier [Katherine Govier]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781554689644
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada

Going to Europe

Gemma and Suzanne are sitting in a café in Juan les Pins, about to order lunch. They wear white cotton tops over their bikinis; sand clings to their oiled skin. Their eyes are blocked by round dark lenses. The waiter, poised, affecting servitude, looks from one to the other thinking perhaps they are sisters. Certainly one is blonde and well-rounded and the other is thin with red hair. But under the glasses their smiles are identical—expectant, wide, somehow false. They are laughing a good deal.

The joke, which he does not understand, first because it is in English and second because it is about something that happened half a world away, has to do with how on Sundays Suzanne used to drag Gemma out of her bed in the sorority house and make her walk a mile through the snow for pancakes at Smitty’s. What loons they were! They walked to class together, arranging complementary timetables, had lunch and then sat in the library side by side, all the time talking and giggling and comparing passionately.

Suzanne pulls off her glasses to wipe away the tears. Gemma does the same. As they look down at their menus, the thin white starbursts in the corners of their eyes tighten. Watching, the waiter realizes that they are not girls, but women over thirty, accustomed to eating in good restaurants.

“Mesdames?”

One might choose fish, soup, salade Niçoise, an omelette. Suzanne was not terribly hungry when she left the beach, but now she can feel that familiar empty space wanting to be filled. She is eating too much. It has to do with being with Gemma who is always starving and never eats.

“Everything looks so good,” says Suzanne.

“I don’t see anything I want,” says Gemma. Then she launches into a discussion with the waiter. Could she have the omelette without sauce or the salmon cold? She wants allowances to be made for her finicky habits. Gemma learned to speak French very well when she lived in Europe. At last, she pronounces.

“Soupe aux champignons.”

Suzanne simply smiles and points her finger to what she wants on the menu.

“Fet-tu-ci-ne Alfre-do,” the waiter enunciates, as if teaching a child. “Merci, mesdames.” He bows himself away.

“Why don’t you speak it?” hisses Gemma. “You can.”

“I can’t.”

“You could if you tried.”

“Oh, I could, but…” Suzanne cannot explain that a bizarre fealty to her prairie origins makes her feel fraudulent in French.

“It’s weird. People can tell you understand. When you don’t speak, you’re like a mask.”

“When you do, you’re like a stranger.”

The wine comes. The women lean back and look around them. The restaurant is on a corner with a view of the promenade one way and of the park with its dark Mediterranean pines the other. They have taken shelter in the dim interior rather than sit on the sidewalk because they are exhausted from sun and wind. It is still one week before the season begins in the French Riviera, and it is the time of the mistral, the cold wind that stirs up the sand.

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