JACQUELINE ANN GIBBS

Then, like Gallant and Huston and Hébert before me I’ll expatriate myself abroad, the better to grasp the quintessential element of the Canadian psyche. I can see it now: aspiring young writers looking for me in every Parisian café…

Secrets are barely hinted at through the upward curling smoke of their cigarettes, dark eyes flash collusively, soft laughter muffles unfinished sentences. Instinctively I downplay my achievements in the hope of gaining acceptance, but to no avail. I’m the outsider still.

In the winter of 1951, my mother’s parents came to the city to die, less than a week apart, in a tiny flat buried deep in the bowels of Ville Émard. It was a poignant end for a lifetime spent entirely in the sunny little hamlet of Saint-Télesphore, surrounded for miles around by neighbours and relatives they had known since childhood.

Old Midge held together for several days, gamely putting up with her crew’s rough handling. But the years of neglect finally took their toll. She gave her last gasp one day and simply came apart, dumping the boys in the middle of the canal. They scrambled ashore, and silently watched Midge’s remains float towards the locks as they sat shivering on the grass, waiting for their clothes to dry before going home.

Jack sighed. His mother wouldn’t understand.

We were a couple. Indissoluble, unassailable. Nothing, it seemed, could break us up. It was always with an immense satisfaction every time I would check “married” for marital status on official forms. A premonition, perhaps, would make me shudder whenever my eyes fell on the word “widow.”