When We Lost Our Heads
Heather O'Neill
Part One
CHAPTER 1
The Duel
In a labyrinth constructed out of a rosebush in the Golden Mile neighborhood of Montreal, two little girls were standing back-to-back with pistols pointed up toward their chins. They began to count out loud together, taking fifteen paces each.
Marie Antoine and Sadie Arnett had met in the park on Mont Royal behind their homes when they were little girls of twelve years old. It was 1873. The two of them seemed to have been born with the same amount of thick hair on their heads. Except that Sadie had dark-brown hair and Marie’s was blond. Sadie had large dark eyes that were almost black, cheekbones that were already high, and lips so dark red they looked as though they had makeup on them. Marie had blue eyes and a complexion that looked porcelain and a mouth that was the lightest pink. It was almost as though they were two dolls that were being marketed to girls, one fair, one dark.
That day, Marie had on a white tailored jacket with blue embroidery down the sides. It fell just below her knees, revealing her white stockings and pretty blue leather shoes. Sadie had on a burgundy hat with a black ruffle. It was about the size of a cupcake. It was propped on her head uselessly. But at least it didn’t take away from the impression her black velvet coat with burgundy buttons made. She had small black shoes with black bows on the toes.
The pistols had roses engraved on the handles.
A maid looked down from the second-story window. She was buttoning up her chemise and whistling. From her perspective, she could see into the labyrinth and its clearing in the middle. At first, she doubted what she was actually seeing. It did not seem possible at all. There is always something surreal about children embarking on something dangerous. They are oblivious to the danger. They act as though they are about to defy all the laws of physics.
For a moment the adult is suspended in the realm of childhood disbelief. The maid broke the spell. She ran down the stairs with only her drawers on and her chemise half-undone. Her red hair flew behind her, as though she were carrying a torch.
She ran out through the labyrinth screaming. Finally, she arrived there. She stood in the middle and opened her mouth to tell to the girls to stop at the precise moment they both spun around and fired their guns at each other. As the two bullets hit the maid and she fell to the ground, the words alerting the girls to their idiocy were forever silenced.
CHAPTER 2
Introducing the Lovely Marie Antoine
The amount of wealth in Montreal in the late nineteenth century was increasing exponentially, although the number of rich people was not. The personal wealth of the English-speaking elite was growing out of all proportion. The mansions being built and expanded to house this muchness were glorious. They were grand artworks. They were truly majestic. They were placed on the side of the hill as though on a pedestal. The dome of the Anglican cathedral looked like a scoop of mint ice cream in the middle of them. The streets of the Golden Mile, as it was known, snaked up the hill. You had to go up the winding roads patiently in your carriage. But it was well worth taking the ride slowly because there was so much to see. The gardens were as beautiful as the homes.
All the parks were modeled by British gardeners. They were to have a disciplined feel. They weren’t supposed to exhibit the brash, tangled almost jungle-like quality of North American nature. Some of the trees didn’t behave—they ripped up the streets and stretched the sidewalks in precarious ways. And the trees that didn’t follow the rules found themselves covered in children who perched on all their branches wearing bloomers and tiny black boots and bows in their hair. The children whispered to one another, pretending they were on pirate ships and that there were vicious sharks below. And they clung to the branches of the trees as if for safety, as though the trees were their mothers. And the trees could not help but be domesticated, and found themselves longing for children in their arms.
The most glorious house of all in the Golden Mile was inhabited by the widower Mr. Antoine and his only child, Marie.
* * *
As family legend had it, Marie’s first steps were ballet moves across the floor. Whereas most children take a few awkward and stumbling steps, she did a petit pas de chat. She walked around with her tiny ballet slippers, looking very much like a duck, with the ribbons trailing behind her like marks in the water. She performed for people. As she grew, she spent more time on the name of the dance than the choreography itself.
“And now I present to you a deer who has been separated from its family.” She put both hands with her fingers spread out to resemble antlers. And she walked around on tiptoe, looking about herself desperately for her other deer family.
Her nursery was constantly being repainted with new murals. Her father told the painters to consult with Marie, as it was her room and she was the one who had to be pleased with it. There was a life-size image of a goat sitting on a chair, sipping a glass of milk. In general, guests were never taken up to the nursery. But Louis felt inclined once in a while to bring people up to see it. Everyone was so delighted by the whimsy displayed.
It was a very new idea to regard childhood as a period of life that was to be revered and worthy of consideration on its own. People used to consider children to be inefficient adults. But now they were regarded as being in an Edenic state where they had access to an imaginative faculty superior to reason. Everything they said contained a wisdom that had been lost to adults. Childhood needed to be encouraged. People had to spend all their time focused on making this the most magical of all periods in life.
Louis often thought of himself as the originator of this kind of thinking. He thought Marie was the baby who had started the Victorian craze for babies. Ever since her mother had died, when Marie was in infancy, it had always been just the two of them. He was the owner of the largest sugar factory in the country. So there was no expense too great to develop Marie’s childhood. When she was six, he had Marie’s silhouette printed on every bag of sugar.