Free Following the Summer by Lise Bissonnette Page B

up, pause, probably swallowing, then climb up the stairs of one of those square blocks stacked with Depression-era apartments. Their musty smell touched even the people who lived there.
    First thing the next day, Diane was swaggering. During the prayer that was read over the intercom she had unbuttoned her collar to show the two big girls behind her something that made them giggle. At recess she showed the little girls what she called love bites, two perfect bruises at the top of her barely formed breasts, and explained to them how a boy can give them to a girl. She claimed to have met one the night before, a friend of her brother’s, who had left them alone. She laughed and continued to tell her story until Marie could hear her, so that she could hear her.
    Later that day, when she expressed her concern, a colleague said that some months ago Diane’s father had been accused of incest and released for lack of evidence. The mother had gone away, no one knew where. And Diane was constantly proclaiming her admiration for the man who was, apparently, very handsome. The colleague turned away. “You’ll have all kinds of suspicions,” he said, “but you won’t be able to do a thing. Just stay calm.” She was on the lookout though, ready to respond to the smallest sign of distress. There were none. Perhaps after all she’d confused tears with rain, silence with refusal. Diane was robust and insolent, she masterminded the minor disturbances of the day, and she was the first to disappear when school was over.
    At best, thought Marie, she’ll turn out to be a Corrine. The drama, if there is one, would vanish with what remained of her childhood. And she had enough of the toughness needed to keep her distance from any torments, to take from others the scrap of life that had been snatched away from her. When she turned sixteen, unless some priest got mixed up in it, the father would be just another man among men, and Diane would have restored to her once again laughter come in from the cold. A survivor, a thistle.
    The frost had settled in, but through this child-woman with her tarnished gaze the summer came back to her throat every day. At noon once, she went out for no particular reason and walked along the park, now closed. Behind the bare trees she could make out the line of the water tower which was giving off smoke. The banks had disappeared under the snow, now it looked like Ervant’s village, the one he never mentioned anymore, which in winter resembled scenes in picture books, with the only breath coming from chimneys. Corrine wouldn’t have gone back there, to contend with the frost and a badly ploughed road. She took what was within her reach.
    But at noon hour the warm places where she might find her were closed, or deserted. In the main room of the Union Hotel there would be two or three solitary drinkers and a man washing the floor who would stare or insult her. There would be no Corrine, she would still be sleeping upstairs. She must ask someone, but who? A caretaker in slippers who would take her for a social worker, an informer who needed something to spy on? Her hair was loose and it fell freely to the beaver collar of a heavy navy wool coat, her tawny leather boots were freshly polished. A schoolteacher on the doorstep of a tavern.
    Several times she was in the vicinity, buying a paper from the newsstand across the street, browsing in a store she’d never been to, going to the bank from which she could observe the front of the hotel, the ladies’ entrance now blocked by the snow, and the storm door whose window was opaque with dirt. The street was bright, there really was no one walking past, but the whole town would see her go in.
    She finally decided one Wednesday at five o’clock, when it was snowing and dark. There was no counter, no board with keys, no grimy manager. A bar where a boy in a black shirt was tidying up; he smiled at her. “Looking for the