This pleases him. He kisses her forehead. He smells of body odor, cigarettes, and beer, but it’s somehow fatherly and wonderful.
“I’m home now,” he says. “For good.”
She’s staring down at the floor, a little uncomfortable.
“I’m going to make it up to you,” he goes on, his breath warm in her ear. “I’m going to be the father you should have had all these years. I promise, I’m going to make up for lost time.”
She nods, not knowing what to say. He seems to be waiting for something, a cue, an acknowledgment. He’s watching her expectantly.
She wraps her arms around his neck and says, “Okay.”
This seems to do the trick because he cries even harder and strokes her back and squeezes her, a little too hard, she thinks. “We’re going to go places and do all kinds of things together,” he says. “I’m going to teach you things.”
He doesn’t say what sort of things they’re going to do together, or what he’s going to teach her, but she’s willing to have an open mind. Her big concern right now is how he’s going to fit inside her life with her mother.
Uncle Camil and the boys leave around midnight. They’re the last ones to go, and as Véronique watches them stumble out the door, she worries vaguely about their long drive back to Ste. Barbe. Camil is drunk, but refuses to spend the night here. “I’m fine to drive,” he mumbles. “I need to sleep in my own bed.”
Neither of her parents protest.
When the three of them are finally alone, Léo looks around the room as though he’s seeing it for the first time. “I can’t believe I’m home,” he says. “With my girls.”
He tugs them both brusquely into his arms. “This is the most beautiful apartment I’ve ever seen.”
“Just wait a few weeks,” Lisette mutters.
“I love you both so much.”
Lisette kisses his neck, and then they kiss on the mouth. At first it’s just a peck, but it quickly turns more passionate. When their tongues make an appearance, Véronique flees, disgusted.
A little while later, lying in her bed, she can hear them having sex through her bedroom wall. It starts with her mother moaning, her father grunting, the bed creaking rhythmically. She listens, sickened and fascinated at the same time. The noises get louder, more violent. Their four-poster bed is scraping the wall so forcefully it feels like her bed is rumbling. Her mother starts yelping like an animal; her father is swearing and calling out her mother’s name over and over again: “Lisette! Lisette! Câlice! Lisette! Câlice!”
They don’t seem the least bit concerned about Véronique in the next room. Pierre warned her. He said, “You know they’re going to screw like crazy tonight.”
“Shut up. That’s gross.”
“He hasn’t done it in over ten years! My dad says he’s going to erupt like a goddamn volcano.”
Véronique reaches for a cassette and pops London Calling into her ghetto-blaster. She turns up the volume. “Clampdown” mercifully drowns out her parents’ sex noises, and she tries to sleep.
But long after they pass out and the apartment falls silent, Véronique is still awake. All she can think about is what tomorrow and the day after and the day after that will look like. Will her mother still make her toast with butter and maple syrup, or will her father request something else? Eggs? French toast? Will his dirty underwear and socks and razors and manly deodorant clutter their only bathroom?
Will he be here when she gets home from school, invading her space? She likes having the place to herself after school, when her mother is at work.
Will they still watch their favorite shows together on the couch every night—Edgar Allan, Détective; Chez Denise; Boogie-Woogie 47; Peau de Banane—or will Léo take over the TV with hockey and politics?
She closes her eyes, her chest knotted with apprehension. Everything is about to change.
A few weeks later, on a Friday night, Léo takes Véronique to McDonald’s. He’s been dying to go ever since he got out. The first Montreal McDonald’s opened after he’d gone to jail, so he’s never even had a Big Mac before. Maybe this is what he meant when he said he was going to take her places.
They drive all the way to Atwater, which is closer to downtown than she ever goes, and that in itself is exciting. Being with Léo is also exciting. She didn’t realize how good it would feel to be out in the world with him. For the first time ever, she feels like she belongs to that rarefied caste of girls who have fathers. She never realized how much of a void it left until he filled it. Léo is so self-assured and charming, so eager to protect and take care of her. Sometimes his eagerness borders on cloying—even at twelve she is aware how much he needs her to accept him, to return his affections. His guilt is constant and unabashed, but she feels safe with him, adored.
It happened quickly, her falling in love with the idea of him. He does take over the TV every night, watching the news and sports and dumb comedy shows; his stuff is everywhere, driving her and Lisette crazy. He doesn’t wash his dishes, doesn’t put the lid down on the toilet. He’s loud and opinionated, and he fills every bit of space in their once quiet lives. He’s at home waiting for her every day when she walks through the door after school with a million annoying questions. And yet none of that matters. Lisette and Véronique are smitten, both constantly absolving him of all his minor transgressions.
They get in line at McDonald’s behind a tall man in a belted trench coat the color of pale sand. The fabric is so smooth it looks like velvet. Léo looks up and studies the menu.
“What are you getting?” she asks her father.
“You tell me,” he says, lighting a smoke.
The man in front of them steps up to the counter and orders his meal in English. The girl serving him is French. She doesn’t understand him and asks him in French to repeat his order.
“You don’t understand ‘Big Mac with no sauce’?” he says impatiently.
The girl looks flustered; her cheeks are turning red.
“Large fry and a medium orange drink?”
The girl shakes her head. The man sighs and looks around for some solidarity. “Can you believe this?”
The girl interrupts her coworker and asks for help.
“You need to learn English,” the man says, raising his voice. “How hard can it be? Big Mac? French fries?”
Véronique looks over at her father. Léo’s expression is inscrutable. He takes a long drag off his cigarette and exhales into the man’s back. She wonders if he’s going to say something and embarrass her.
Léo does not say a word. Instead, he leans in a little closer and nonchalantly presses the tip of his cigarette against the man’s trench coat, burning a hole in the beautiful fabric.
Véronique looks up at her father in shock, but he pretends not to notice. When Léo finally pulls his hand away and the guy shuffles off to wait for his food, there is a perfect black sphere in the coat.
Léo approaches the counter and orders in French. He winks at the girl, and she smiles, relieved.
“Don’t worry about assholes like him,” Léo says. “Things are going to change in this province. The time is going to come when guys like him won’t be able to order in English.”