The Divine Economy of Salvation (7 page)

I had my money in my pocket. Twenty-five dollars. I didn't
know how to spend it, if I should offer it up all at once, or if they would ask me for it when they wanted to purchase something. Everything in the Market was for sale, and everything pleased me with its novelty and up-to-date style: the synthetic fabrics and cheap designer copies, the pungent food fare encapsulating all. I had been to the city nearest our old town and realized that markets in all cities were probably alike, but to me this was the grandest and most exotic market I had ever seen. It was Rachel's market, and she and her friends were showing it to me. The girls were content just to look for a while, retracing steps from previous weeks, accustomed to the regular merchandise and searching out newer, just-in necklaces or shirts. We walked around the square, past flower stands of irises and pink roses, carnations and sunflowers, and vegetable stands with baskets of squash and corn, large pumpkins lining the sidewalk waiting for holiday tarts and pies and salted seeds.

Rachel suggested we visit an Italian café on the corner where they had desserts and coffee, and which was one of the few establishments besides the restaurants that would admit underage girls in the evening. The circular glass case in the window turned electrically and was filled with treats, the slices carefully removed by the young woman behind the counter, who seemed less interested in the chocolate and caramel cheesecakes and the bowl of whipped cream into which she dipped her spoon to top off the slices than in two young men who flirted with her each time she strode by, which was often.

As soon as I saw the double-chocolate cheesecake with carved chocolate flowers on top, I knew I had to have it. Rachel had one too, I remember. I felt as if we had shared a secret when we both
pointed to the same cake and smiled with anticipation at the same time. Again, I was struck by her beauty: the way her cheekbones lifted when she smiled and how the skin around her eyes stretched into half moons. She had the brightest blonde hair I'd ever seen, like gold thread, without a hint of white or brown. When she looked directly at me, I could feel myself go slightly numb.

The young woman served us our cakes and milkshakes and we dove in, hardly speaking for a few moments as we enjoyed our dessert. The music from a couple of the clubs had started, taunting us a little, but for the moment we were happy where we were. I was beginning to relax in their company, not to feel so guarded, when Caroline asked about my mother and father again.

“So what do they do?”

“My father's a carpenter,” I said, placing the cloth napkin over my lips so as not to talk with my mouth full and wide open. “My mother doesn't work.”

I hoped my answer pleased them. I had no idea what their parents did for a living, and I still didn't want them to know about my mother's illness.

“My mom works on the weekends. She's also taking a class to learn English. She can get by around here. Ottawa's full of French people anyway, but she wants a promotion,” Caroline said. “It doesn't matter that she knows English. Because of the rules she has to have a certificate.”

I was relieved that they might not all be as well off as I'd first thought. I knew the school was expensive, but it was evidently not out of reach for parents who really wanted their children to go there,
if they made sacrifices. Like my own parents had supposedly done.

“Maman says she doesn't want me to turn out like my sister. That's why I'm getting a solid Catholic education.” Caroline tightened her lips and pointed her finger at me in imitation of her mother as she furrowed her brow. The girls laughed so I joined them.

“Aimée's not so bad,” Francine blurted between mouthfuls. “I mean, from what you've told us.”

“No, but Maman thinks she is. Says it's why she's all over the boys. That she's never going to get anywhere wasting her time working in a store and going to the clubs at night. Maman's old-fashioned.”

“You should hear my mother,” Francine said, putting her fork down and speaking quickly as if afraid she wouldn't get another chance. “My mother wants me to become a nun. She said that would be her greatest achievement, if I became a nun like her Aunt Madeline!”

Rachel folded her napkin around her head like a wimple. Caroline followed suit. As I didn't want to offend Rachel and Caroline by assuming I could participate in their teasing, I simply chuckled. Francine took it well.

“Who wants to be like them? Sister Marguerite's freaky and Sister Aline's a bore! I don't even want to know what Mother Superior does in that office of hers all day.”

“You'll see,” added Caroline to me. “Those nuns are nuts! All they do is think about God and keeping their fingernails clean. Maman says they should tell us about their lives and we'd be fascinated, but I tell her they don't do anything, so what do they
have to tell except spelling lessons and choir sheets?” Caroline placed her makeshift wimple back down on the table.

“Well, my mom's probably never thought about it,” Rachel said and then went silent, as if she didn't like where the conversation was headed. She didn't pout, but she used her fork to poke through the layers in her cake without eating her icing. I hadn't yet learned what Mr. M. did for a living or what kind of relationship Rachel had with her mother. I couldn't imagine her having any troubles, though. Her mother wasn't going blind and losing all her energy like mine was, of that I was sure. And her father probably didn't have conversations with his wife about what God might be punishing her for. Rachel seemed to have everything she wanted. I got up to use the washroom.

By the time I returned, they were speaking about a girl named Adrienne. I sat down and Rachel eyed me up and down. I checked to see if I had any crumbs on my shirt, but there weren't any. She snickered.

“Adrienne was a good friend of ours,” she said. “You have her room.”

“Oh,” I replied, wondering if they resented me taking her place, filling her room with new things except for the shoeboxes. “Where did she go?”

“Her mother won the lottery, took her out of school that very week. School just started.”

Caroline thumped her hand on the table, shaking the sugar dispenser. “Maman's played ever since I can remember, and Adrienne's mother wins the first time she plays. Can you beat that?”

“Sister Aline says it's not Christian to gamble,” mumbled
Francine as she sipped on her straw, her front teeth holding it in place.

“Who cares?” Rachel snapped back. “My father says that since they won so much money, they should have donated some to the school like he does. But they went to live in France instead. Bought a vineyard or something ridiculous.”

“I'd go live somewhere else if I had all that money,” Caroline said wistfully, her elbows on the table. She'd finished her cake and her drink. “Wouldn't you?”

“I don't know,” I answered honestly. “I've never thought about it.”

“Nobody likes to be broke,” she continued.

“No, I guess not,” I replied.

The cakes were expensive when buying for four and with a milkshake each, but I didn't care. We were out on the town and I felt grown-up sitting at the table being served without being chaperoned. We were eating in a place that had tablecloths and candles and where I would receive the bill from the waitress. The double-chocolate cheesecake melted in my mouth deliciously. I can still taste its sweetness if I concentrate hard enough.

LATER THE SAME EVENING
I found my opening. Although the girls were treating me well, I was painfully aware it was due largely to the fact that I was treating them all. Since it was the emergency money my father had given me, and because I'd never received an allowance and didn't know how long it would be before my father or mother would give me any more, I knew I couldn't count on money to keep me in their company. For the night, however, I enjoyed being able to provide for our short-term happiness. We went from the café to the Hudson's Bay Company, the largest store in the city, located near the Market where the canal passed. Boats lined the sides of the canal, some with their lights on, others dark, attached by ropes and buoys to the concrete shore. With winter approaching, their residents would soon need to vacate their temporary homes. I wondered where those people went and where the boats were taken when the canal froze over. I bought the girls Cokes and plastic bags filled with candy to take home. I also bought them each a fashion magazine from the newsstand near the store exit. This way we could all trade after reading them and enviously admiring the glamorous women on
the covers and in the layouts, their bodies thin and attractive to men, not much unlike our own except that they were comfortable in them. The male clerk gave us a wink and we amused ourselves by speculating on what his girlfriend might be like, whether she resembled any of the women in the magazines we had just purchased.

By the time we browsed the clothing, I hadn't much left in my pocket, and we resigned ourselves to window-shopping. We touched the alluring fabrics on mannequins and tried on some of the complimentary perfume at a stand. I picked a lily scent, knowing it was my mother's favourite flower, spraying the liquid on my wrists and under my ears as I had watched her do before her skin became so sensitive she no longer could. Rachel managed to get us samples from a clerk she knew because her father bought perfume for her mother there. “She doesn't leave her room in the morning without it,” said Rachel, flinching at the sight of the bottle, one of the most expensive brands, kept in a glass case with a key. The clerk gave us each a small tube of skin lotion and explained how to brush it in an upward motion on our cheeks to avoid lines and wrinkles. “They come sooner than you think,” she said. We practised in the mirror, taking her directions as seriously as if she were explaining procedures to follow during a medical emergency or a fire. I circled the cream around my eyes, aging myself in the process, imagining what I would look like when I started to get wrinkles like my mother. Whether I might end up with skin as sensitive as hers.

I was thinking about using the last of my money to buy Rachel the cheap perfume in a cute yellow glass sitting on the counter until we saw the red satin bra. Rachel was the first to notice
it. She had rushed ahead to the women's underwear section and was pointing at the skinny mannequin with the large breasts who was wearing it when we caught up to her. We were pinched with envy at how elegant and beyond us it was.

The bra was bright red and the cups only covered half the plastic breasts, the cloth stopping just above the nipple line. There were two layers, one of satin and one of lace, both the exact same shade of fire hydrant red. Rachel stood behind the mannequin cupping its breasts with her hands.

“Could you imagine wearing that to a club?” she cooed, fingering the material.

Caroline, Francine, and I were speechless. It seems a bit ridiculous now, the fuss we made over a bra in the department store. Even if it was red. We were wearing bras; my mother had bought me two, although mine were white and completely cotton, and because of my late development the cups were flat as doilies. The other girls, from what I could gather through their white blouses in the washroom in the morning and the changing rooms for gym class, were sporting bras of similar practicality. But the red bra attracted us with more than just its exotic fabric and flashy colour. You would need to be a woman to wear a bra like that; you would need to wear it for a man. When a middle-aged saleslady with feathered hair walked by, eyeing us suspiciously, Rachel took her hands off the mannequin and smiled.

“It's so pretty,” she said to her.

“It is, isn't it?” the saleslady replied, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose and herself examining the cloth between her fingers. “It's new.”

She left us, her hand lingering on Rachel's shoulder as she turned to adjust a display on the other side of the racks. She had decided we were harmless.

Rachel grabbed the price tag.

“Twenty-five dollars,” she read, the exact amount I had started the evening with. There were duplicates of the bra on the table beside the mannequin, and she sorted through them. “I don't think they have my size,” Rachel said.

“They probably don't make them that small,” Caroline replied.

“Who asked you?”

“It should be here for a while if it's new,” Francine offered.

Rachel let go of the price tag and pouted. The saleslady glanced at her sympathetically and then went back to work. Rachel fumbled through the bras on the table with a fierceness that made us all silent. Then she pushed Caroline aside as she went to the other racks. But she flipped the underwear on the hangers with disinterest. She even checked her watch. Our good time was threatened by the simple knowledge that we were not old enough and didn't have enough money to wear a red satin bra.

“My dad will never buy me one of those,” she said to me, walking back over to the table with the red bras. “Look.” She grabbed one with cups that were barely curved. “I know this would fit me.” She held it up against her chest, pressing the cups against her shirt and prancing in front of the display mirror. Then she handed it over to Caroline, who stroked it a little, folded it, and returned it to the table. Rachel made her way to the exit, buttoning up her jacket.

“Well, are you coming? We don't have any more money, so we might as well go back.”

Caroline exchanged an annoyed expression with Francine. Then she whispered to me, “She can't stand not having something she wants. Her father spoils her rotten.” But they followed her command nonetheless, edging towards her.

“I'll meet you in front,” I said. “I've got to use the washroom.” I followed the sign that directed me left of the women's underwear section.

When we returned to the school, the large iron gates closing behind us as we held our magazines and candy, I was bursting with pride. Although Rachel was disappointed by not getting what she wanted, Caroline and Francine had warmed up to me, and they thanked me for the stuff I'd bought them before they settled in their rooms for bed. Sister Marguerite was monitoring the dormitory building, but she was barely alert. She perused a newspaper and didn't speak to us as we passed. The girls shut their doors and turned off the lights, but they had flashlights hidden in their beds so they could read after hours, and I was sure Caroline and Francine would do just that, flipping through their new magazines, shoving toffees and mints into their mouths until their teeth hurt.