| Written by Dorothy Cummings,
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I got the call at 6:30 on Sunday morning. “The baby is coming,” said my brother, his voice low and edged with sleeplessness. “Apparently he is really small. They have kicked me out of the room.”
“Oh,” I cried. “Wonderful! Thank you for sharing this moment with me, George. God bless you!”
“Uh,” said George unenthusiastically. “I’m really nervous, D.”
I went back to bed, and George was allowed back in the room, and his baby was born at 8:22 a.m. On Friday I took the train to Montreal to see what he looked like.
The baby looks like a very small Cummings, but he sounds like a goat. He keeps emitting bleats: “Wa-ha-ha-ha-ha! Wa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” My brother, his wife, his in-laws and I went out into the garden to smoke celebratory cigars. My new nephew’s grandfather looked at his with distaste and asked us the significance of this tradition.
“They’re expensive,” I said.
On Sunday, my brother and I went to Mass. Going to Mass in Quiet Revolutionary Montreal is always an exciting experience. What if nobody else comes? What if the priest defects right there and then? What if the mailbox blows up? But the church was in an anglophone neighbourhood, and nobody bothered to translate the apostasy memo for the anglos. Thus, the church was respectably full.
There was much gurgling and wailing of babies and small children, always a good sign. The cantor was self-effacing and the choir made the hymns sound pretty. But the priest told us that “if we reach perfection on this Earth, it is usually through the Grace of God.” Usually?
“Pelagianism!” I hissed to my brother.
“Mrph,” said George.
Perhaps the priest noticed me and my little notebook, for at that point he began to ramble and repeat himself, and I felt embarrassed for him. One of the drawbacks of higher theological education for women is that the women sit through bad homilies thinking, “I could do that so much better,” but there’s nothing we can do about it. Or is there? I imagined visiting a different Toronto parish every week to write a review of its Sunday homily. Being the Archdiocesan Mystery Shopper would be enormous fun. But would it be good for my soul? What would happen to it if every priest in town prayed that I not appear in his church that week?
On Monday, my brother, his wife and their baby moved into a house in another traditionally anglophone neighbourhood. The street signs are aggressively English and feature the names of important battles. My brother now lives at the intersection of two massacres. But the surroundings belie the bloody memories, for the houses are elegant, the trees are old, the landscapers are legion and there’s even a public rose garden. It is named after Pierre Elliot Trudeau. This in itself is a sign of the neighbourhood’s aggressive anglotude.
On Tuesday, I got an e-mail from an old friend whose marriage and family life I have admired for years. She announced her divorce. I sat in my brother’s new house, as he chatted upstairs with his lovely wife of one year and looked at his wonderful baby of nine days, and felt utter panic. If marriage is public, so is divorce. If marriage affects everybody, so too does divorce. I went upstairs and told my brother that if he got divorced, I would kill him.
“There will be no talk of divorce in this house,” rumbled George.
On Thursday, I was weary of envying my brother his beautiful Montreal house, his cute Montreal baby and his wonderful Montreal spouse, so I went downtown to try and find a Montreal spouse for myself.
My French is rusty these days, so I started with English-speaking McGill University. I ordered a beer in the wood-panelled, tartan-carpeted Centre for Post-Graduate Studies and looked eagerly around. But, alas, the only handsome man in the room was entirely absorbed in the pretty bartender. So next I went to the McGill bookstore café where, unfortunately, the men were entirely absorbed in their books.
Journalists, I thought. Journalists, the beasts, will surely attempt to pick me up. Rascals! I hustled eagerly towards the offices of The Gazette, Montreal’s only English-language daily. And, lo, although it was not yet five o’clock, there they were, rushing irresponsibly out of the building. I ascended the escalator of the gilt and marbled halls and was arrested by the sight of a security lady at a desk. She so unnerved me that I went back out again, still spouseless.
On Friday, I went for a walk through the beautiful neighbourhood. I passed through the rose garden. I bought a croissant and coffee at a chic café and wondered why, when the day, the neighbourhood and my nephew were so beautiful, I felt sad. And then I knew. I was homesick. Time to think about going home.
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