The Forgotten Daughter by Joanna Goodman

Author:Joanna Goodman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Published: 2020-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

22

On Friday, Véronique meets Louis at the corner of Pine and St. Laurent and slides into his red Pontiac Acadian. It smells of weed, French fries, and a faint masking odor of pine-scented air freshener. There’s marijuana shake on the floor at her feet, several crumpled McDonald’s bags on the back seat, and Black Sabbath is blaring from the tinny car stereo.

“The signs are in my trunk,” he says. “You got the addresses?”

She can barely hear him above Ozzy Osbourne belting out “Sweet Leaf.” “Here,” she says, pulling out the list Céline emailed her. “The first house is a corner lot on Ninth and Bélanger in Rosemont.”

“La Petite Patrie,” he says, pulling out onto Pine Avenue. “On y’va!”

He roars north on St. Laurent, past shops and restaurants and a sprinkling of offices on the top floors of old buildings. Through one window, she observes a row of heads perched over their computers. The poor sheep, stuck in an office all day. She experiences a sudden surge of joy in the realization that she will never be one of them.

After three or four houses in the East End, they get a good rhythm going. Louis sticks the H-wire stand into the grass and Véronique slides the sign onto the frame. It’s still warm for autumn, and they work quickly and efficiently under the September sun. Louis sings while he works, everything from Gilles Vigneault’s nationalist anthem, “Gens du Pays,” to the old French Canadian folk songs their grandparents used to sing. He sings in a deep, old-timey voice, and Véronique finds herself laughing along for a good part of the day, occasionally joining in when she knows the words.

Every now and then, someone passing by gives them a thumbs-up or shouts out, “Quebec libre!” An elderly woman even comes out of her house to hand them homemade banana bread wrapped in tinfoil. “You two give me hope for Quebec’s youth,” she tells them, shaking their hands. “I admire your commitment.”

As the sky turns pink behind them and the air cools down to a more seasonal temperature, they decide to grab a beer at Bar Bernard, a dark tavern on the outskirts of the Plateau.

“I used to live above this place,” Louis tells her once they’re seated. “Every weekend I’d have to listen to their shitty cover band until three o’clock in the morning. It was like they were playing in my bedroom. Their last song of the night was always ‘The End,’ by the Doors.”

“Where do you live now?”

“A few blocks north. It’s a shithole, but at least it’s not above a bar. You?”

“The Plateau. On Ste. Famille.”

“Nice street,” he comments. “And you don’t work, you said?”

She realizes he must see her as some kind of spoiled princess, someone whose daddy probably pays her rent on one of the prettiest streets in the Plateau. “I work,” she says. “I just have extremely flexible hours.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a bookkeeper.”

He looks impressed.

“I’m going back to school in the fall to study poli-sci.” Even as she says it, she likes the sound of it more and more.

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