Louis looked out the window, having a cigarette during the conversation, antsy to leave. He didn’t appreciate spending time with other factory owners. They reminded him of the way he used to feel in society before he had married Hortense. Some of them had inherited their factories and enterprises. But none had come to their factories through marriage. He remembered why he avoided men mostly. He felt judged by them. They made him feel effeminate, as he had once been, standing at parties, being desperately social in an attempt to be purchased.
He felt Marie was his ambassador. He didn’t have to worry about making an impression himself because Marie made such a good one. The factory owner was left with the impression he had spent time with the Antoines, even though he was essentially speaking to Marie. And he came away from the meeting with a good, warm feeling.
* * *
Louis grew bored and irritated visiting factories and was very much looking forward to returning to Montreal. He was the richest man in the city. Everyone knew who he was and he didn’t have to prove anything. He knew people in Montreal would be expectant of his return. He would not disappoint them. He would bring them wonders. It would be as though he had a time machine and had traveled to the far, far future to bring them back delights. People would tell him he was wonderful and marvelous and very rich. He wanted people to tell him these things over and over again, so he could believe them. That chorus of approval would drown out the small voice in his head that liked to remind him he was a nothing and a nobody.
The thought of returning to Montreal made Marie remember Sadie, and the fear of the absence she would feel returning home struck her. One afternoon in Florida, Marie sat down at a natural history display to fill in the back of a postcard that had a photograph of an automaton of a man with little screws for dimples on its cheeks. She had got it in New York. She thought the automaton looked handsome, like someone she could talk to. She had been carrying the postcard around in her coat pocket since then. Suddenly, she wanted to send the handsome automaton to Sadie, as a sort of valentine. A pride of taxidermied lions was mounted all around her, as though they were waiting for her to fill in the back of her postcard before they could descend and eat her.
She inscribed a note to Sadie. She had once snuck through her father’s papers and had found a receipt for Sadie’s tuition at a boarding school. She had written down the address and now copied it on the card. She held it up and looked at it. The cursive letters were like a wrought-iron fence dividing the two of them now.
CHAPTER 15
Sadie Lives on the Other Side of the World
During the years she was at the boarding school, Sadie became the leader of all the girls. She was the most adventurous. Sadie flirted with the man who came with a cart to collect all the sheets. She put anonymous love letters in the basket so that when he returned, he didn’t know which girl it was. They all leaned out the window and flirted coquettishly at him. His face went mordantly red.
She made a fishing rod out of a stick and some string. At the end of it she attached a pair of bloomers. When the grocer arrived with his crates of vegetables, she let the bloomers descend in front of him. He moved to the right, and so did the bloomers. He then tried scurrying to the left and the bloomers were still in front of him, the ghost of a shameless pretty girl who wanted to dance.
Sadie organized betting tournaments. She snuck a chicken out to the yard and the girls gambled on who could catch it. They were so delighted with the game, when it started raining they didn’t want to stop playing. They ended up slipping around in the mud. They were all horribly dirty when they came in. The chicken, meanwhile, had run off and was on its way down the road. It would not stop running until it was crushed under the wheels of a cart.
Some of the girls would visit Sadie in bed. A girl named Alice arrived one night. Sadie lifted up the girl’s chemise. She began to draw on Alice’s belly with the tip of her finger. The illustrations became more and more ornate. She was drawing a rosebush with flowers blooming all over it. Then she would put her fingers between Alice’s legs. Alice sounded as though she had stopped breathing.
“Imagine that my name is Frank.”
“Oh, Frank,” Alice whispered. “Frank. Frank.”
It was all about pleasure. It was as though she were panning for gold and had finally come across it. A nugget. When they were done, Sadie and Alice both climbed out the window and sat on the ledge. Their bare legs swinging. As though the night sky were a pond of water. They smoked a cigarette together. It was the first cigarette the girl had ever smoked. And she went on to be a lifelong smoker afterward.
One afternoon, Sadie received a postcard from Marie. There was a strange-looking automaton gentleman on it. At boarding school, Sadie was in many ways sheltered from the wild changes and ambitions of the times. This was a deliberate act by the school. There was no need for girls to be kept abreast of the technological changes in the world. Being ladylike was an idealized existence that should not be affected by external considerations. External considerations were for men. When they returned home, what they wanted was a timeless bubble. A lady should be able to have a pretty tea party regardless of whether there were saber-toothed tigers or bombs dropping outside.
Sadie held the postcard and noted with a slight resentment how Marie was out in the world, traveling, seeing new and wonderful things, while she was being confined in the strictest way. Her friend had always been interested in technology. She contemplated the meaning of the card. Marie believed that technology was better than human nature. If one followed the path of technology and modernity, one’s better nature would be revealed. Marie was trying to tell her something about the two of them. But whatever it was, Sadie did not answer it. What would be the point? They were so far away from each other. To send a postcard would be to feel the distance, and that would be unbearable.
When she looked carefully at the robot’s face over the years, she found some days it didn’t look male at all. All its features seemed feminine. It was an androgynous robot. In the future there would be no male or female, simply people.
INTERLUDE
All the Marys in Montreal