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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466947474 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Trafford Publishing |
| Publication date: | 08/27/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 174 KB |
Read an Excerpt
IN THE SHADE OF THE Light
NOVELBy MARIE-ROSE MARCOUX
Trafford Publishing
Copyright © 2012 Marie-Rose MarcouxAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4669-4749-8
Chapter One
Like stubborn soot on the color of our actions, the flame of a lascivious desire surrounded me completely. So like a scrollwork moving, his kiss crackled like a burn on my silence. The ember of his lips, foreign and desired on my mouth, brought a tangible warmth between the thighs of the infidel I was about to become.Then he whispered in my ear, "Oh, Fannie Baby, I love you!"
At this very moment, my last reserve of modesty flew up in smoke. At the time, I'd be his lover.
Suddenly, click, click! The sound of a key in the lock—the door opened!
Thus began the novel that Fannie Laflamme Black was set about doing to put some order in her life. To date, she was persuaded to have missed her own existence. Yes, she was happy to attach her name to the one Réal Black. But after three decades of living together, it occurred to Fannie that she had almost nothing in common with her partner. Even though he seemed conservative in a smart dress, the latter had attracted the interest of Fannie with its revolutionary aspect that appeared in wearing a silver earring in his left ear and hair half long—fashionable beatlemania in the early seventies.
But Fannie was no longer in search of the mysterious male. Now she would seek a return to her origins. First, she would have to find out who the actual Fannie Laflamme was. Because as time gone by, her mind had reached an advanced stage of degradation between the absence of a workaholic husband and the departure of the three kids who had definitely left the nest.
Although Fannie was solitary by nature, the idleness left by the abandonment of her family sapped her spirit since the only career that she never was passionate about was to pamper that one. Fannie now was well over fifty, and what was left from all dedication there were images—some glossy and millions of others in her fevered mind.
Consequently, it was no longer possible to remain neutral in front of an existence that she believed had become futile. She had to shake herself and this, notwithstanding her apathetic nature that made the revolt so difficult.
In the past, she had witnessed the agony of her father who died of cancer without a complaint. She had admired such courage and vowed to follow his example. She decided to carry the torch whatever would happen.
Chapter Two
Flash back to the primary school. Ms. Babin was teaching in vain. In fact, Fannie, the schoolgirl, was looking by the window, unconscious of the present moment. She was fantasying on the trip to Paris, which was supposed to be the prize of a drawing contest that she participated in. As well Fannie yearned for something as simple as the Prismacolor sixty-four-crayon box who owned her friend Gilles.Even though the Laflamme family was scraping through the upper poverty line, the young Fannie was kind of rich. Well, she had the talent of getting almost everything she wanted. Which of the imagination, she could transform all reality. Abracadabra! Abracadabra! A touch of her magical stick was her capacity to dream even when she was awake, and that was enough for her to materialize those mythologies that she invented herself.
The power of the dream was taking so much space in the life of the little girl that had difficulty telling the difference between the illusions of the day and those of the night. In 1958, the black-and-white Dupuis & Frères catalog offered the opportunity to buy thousands of objects. Those ones were available by postal service in this otherwise inaccessible country life, one that Fannie's family had.
Full of desire for what she had been looking for all day long in one night, Fannie had been sure, at last, to possess the complete kit of an artist painter: easel, painting canvas, brushes, and color tubes. Then when the alarm clock went off, there was nothing left of those treasures that had made her so delighted while she was asleep.
As the years passed by, Fannie discovered the magic of words. They had the power to transform any reality in a credible fiction. Hidden deep in the soul, they were available anytime. The teenager developed the habit of jotting down her thoughts on paper. Wherever she was, in a restaurant or the emergency room, Fannie was inspired to write when she founded herself lost in middle of a crowd. Paradoxically, the excess noise was a virtual screen. Thus, the apparent silence by its uniformity, a sort of background hum, favored her inspiration. Quieter places offered her the chance to catch scraps of conversations here and there. These head-to-head were some stolen secrets and committed crime that thrilled Fannie.
"Could you bring me a glass of water?" The waitress did not flinch. Busy setting up the lunch, she tried to keep his concentration. Faced with the indifference of the servant, the client said to the ponytailed blonde girl who was sitting in front of him: "My god, I think she's deaf!"
In the small town of Shediac in New Brunswick, all the French people came to their chatter to date at the Dalia's Snack Bar.
While the eager client stretched his neck to look in the direction of the employee, once more, he said, "Hey there! Bring me a glass of water!"
Finally, the girl seemed to understand and slowly started to go toward the couple. In her hand, she held a gray plastic glass full of water and placed it on the table of the ill-bred customer.
In the Maritime Provinces, the work remained in short supply despite an economy that was desperately trying to be scalable. It was amazing that people settled there to seek his fortune. Instead, the unemployed tend to flee to find work outside the province, except perhaps in Saint John, as well as an important Canadian seaport.
Sometimes, sailors stayed in Saint John longer and at the end decided to settle there for good. But some of these immigrants did not adapt to the duality of language as well as the slower pace of life on the peninsula of New Brunswick, especially in Acadia, the French part of the province, which shared a bread drier than in the Capitale.
—Yesterday, I bought a 6/49 lottery ticket. If I win, I swear I get myself out of here. I am disgusted. There's nothing to do in the Maritimes. If only I can go back to Quebec, I'll be the happiest man.
—Have you seen the newspaper, the madman who attacked his mother?
It was a kind of game between the men and the women. One was talking about a thing and the other about another. The apparent indifference of the blonde was intended as a shield. Inured to the complaints of her interlocutor, she could not change anything. But the man replied. The macabre story from the paper diversified him from his own boredom. "I swear you that if I was the judge, in a business suit like this, everything would be fixed quite rapidly. A bullet in the forehead, it would not be expensive to the state, and it would be over for good."
Then the couple gets up from the table of the snack bar and walked through the exit. They continued to chat. The woman went out first while the man put on his hat and buttoned his coat while heading for the cashier to pay.
"Two number seven? You owed me fifteen bucks and thirty cents, please." The man paid the bill and added a few coins for the tip. "Thank you, sir, and have a good day! "Said the waitress as the man kept silent and went out to meet his partner.
As the waitress turned away to gather the dirty plates, the customer at the next table called out while holding a dirty coffee cup in his hand. "Miss, please, can you bring me a clean one?"
The man must have weighed 225 pounds. The smooth skin of his face and the lack of gray hair gave the impression that he was in his forties. The waitress went off again toward the serving coffee when the obese addressed her again, this time showing her the sugar bowl.
—Ah! Would it be possible also to have other bags of Sucaryl?
—Yes, my good sir. I'm back right away.
The waitress was relieved that not all the clients went crazy and treated her as nothing. The big man was busy at breakfast while flipping through the L'Acadie Nouvelle periodical wedged between the back of the seat and the metal edge of the table on which was deposited a plate filled to the brim with eggs, potatoes, ham, sausage, and buttered toast. Then his cell phone rang, and as he answered it, he met the gaze of Fannie.
The latter was confused and, being caught in the very act of observation, bent her head on her notes. In Saint John, with its fifth percent of the French origin, it was an achievement to live in that dialect despite federal law which advocated that New Brunswick was an officially bilingual Canadian province. Since French was taught in school or almost everyone, more or less, knew the basics of the idiom of Molière.
But in the street, it was a great deal of luck to come across someone who can hold a conversation. For its part, our heroine dawdled in small neighborhood restaurants, no matter the language, to observe the people and to gather notes for the future.
Obsessed with her new life plan, Fannie could not resist to the obsession to scrutinize the lives of other human beings. She was collecting information on the human soul. These intrusions would paint the ends of existence that would be used later to expand the frame of a possible best sellers. Why not? Though he was, the writing project was of long-standing. Recently, an e-mail received from Elvis Robichaud became a stimulus size in the revival of an ambition buried under the ashes.
Hi Fannie,
I like to read your mails. I think you have a talent for writing, and you must develop it. For my part, I cannot put as much emotion in my words. Continue to write to me.
Elvis Robichaud
Fannie had clung to this evocation. A new zeal had appeared in it. Warmed by the automation of survival, it seemed possible to take interest in life because the fate of the last month had turned into a rag. However, Fannie was not at all ready to follow the tragic fate of his daughter who committed suicide. The kindness of a friend brought so appreciated support. The same friend who asks her a question that she didn't had known what to answer him. "Fannie, tell me why do you always hide yourself behind your husband?"
Yes, Fannie had taken refuge under the wing of her rock and roll husband since he was part of her life. But now, she was aware of having lost her identity. How could that be? Why didn't she realize before that she had to live her own thing?
Equipped with a high sensitivity, Fannie stepped out of the ranks. She was not amalgamating with the crowd. Yet the emotional aspect of his personality that had often put her in embarrassing situations would be the advantage to begin the first one-hundred-eighty-degree turn to take.
Chapter Three
Before making any changes whatsoever, Fannie had to do her duty. She had to extract the pus of wounds of her past life. That work had to be done because the unspoken was pressing too heavily on the unconscious.Here, planted in the theater of natural rock landscapes of the Bay of Fundy, the enchantment of nature was a precious facilitate. Fannie had to remember and then write a fictional life under the guise of invented characters. Obviously, the most powerful memories remained were that of the Lisa's death, her baby.
Nearly two weeks after the tube that fed her had been disconnected, Terri Shiavo died at a clinic in Florida. Shiavo's husband had obtained permission to disconnect her feeding catheter on March 18. Ms. Shiavo was in a neurovegetative for fifteen years. Ms. Shiavo's parents had tried unsuccessfully several legal remedies to replenish their daughter.
This incident called out. For the reader stunned by the media, the news that appeared on the website of Radio Canada was intended almost trivial. With the last sip of morning coffee, no one will remember the news. But it was quite otherwise for Fannie. The news revived the gall of her daughter's coma. Thus, to Fannie, the similarity of the facts brought out of the shadows a letter written by her and who had never been read by the applicant.
Lisa,
You do not resist to the lure of death. Often in the past, you took money in my wallet to buy drug on purpose to feel more in peace with your body and soul for a while or so. Most of the times, you find yourself in awfully circumstances for having tried to feel better.
Now you are directly connected to morphine because your life has become vegetative. The drug flows in your veins to keep pace with your blood. That's a real junky's dream. You just have to let go.
There you are, my poor little darling, now to complete your young life that has not been used extensively. I remember something that you said as a joke because you could not go on to suffer in your body and in your head. "I feel like a ninety-year-old lady."
In fact, it was more the weight of your thoughts which undermined your existence. There on that cold hospital bed where the end is imminent, we do not see now that this skeleton made you suffer so much. It is a bundle of translucent skin. Such a painting watercolor, pastel shades of the covers here and there. Gradually, I do know it; the yellow of the death will clothe you completely for your last trip.
...
With love, Mom
Fannie saw again the disturbing scene. She was sitting on the chair that was placed in a corner of the room of her dying girl. Standing beside the deathbed, her husband Real was moistening Lisa's lips with a cotton swab. The resuscitation performed on their daughter had been successful in a way. Unfortunately, five months later, the multiple electroencephalograms proceedings had revealed the failure evidence. The hope brought by the various practices of rehabilitation was limited to the maintenance of a fake life.
Realistically, the neurologist had explained the contents of the pathology.
"A reality is obvious: the cerebellum, the body which allows the mechanical operation of the human machine, is alive. But the brain, atrophied by lack of oxygen, is injured irrevocably. There's no room for any prospect of decent life for the comatose. At best, your daughter will have a future of a paraplegic. You will have to feed her with the bottle feeding. She must wear diapers. Above all, she will have no awareness of the world. In this case, I'm sorry, but the hospital system is so structured that we cannot allow the cessation of care without the express request of parents. It is up to you to decide what to do: stop all feeding and let her go or persist in treatment. We will respect your will."
Fannie and Réal couldn't believe that they will have to take such terrible decision. It was a pity that the medical system wanted them to kill their own child by stopping the weaning. Fannie thought that she had preferred to be a kamikaze. The latter go to the death because he believed in a cause. Despite her heartbreak, Fannie refused an existence so decreased for her daughter. In fact, the parents could not agree on the delicate subject of euthanasia.
Thereupon, Judith, the elder sister of Lisa, had a strong opinion.
—Mom, can you imagine the scene? Lisa comes to her senses and finds that she became paraplegic? While her life was totally sabotaged, she would have missed her death too. And nobody could do anything about it.
—You're absolutely right; we should support her choice till the end. Do you remember the song that I invented for your sister when she was little?
—Yes, mom. It was something like:
Mamy hold Lia strong, strong.
Lia will not fall into the water ...!
I remember, Mom; you sang her the song by holding her in your arms to teach her how to swim in the pool. She was afraid of falling, and you reassured her. She was named herself Lia because she could not pronounce the s of Lisa. She was so cute, my little sister. But I was jealous of my young sister because you and Dad gave all the attention to her. It was as if my brother and I didn't exist.
—You're perfectly right, but what can I say? Lisa needed us all the time. Today, she may breathe her last breath because that's what she wanted to do so. My only wish is that she no longer suffers.
For the mother, the choice of putting an end to the aggressive therapy was clear. For the father, the speech wasn't the same.
"I think that medicine is still evolving. If we are patient, maybe one day, in the future, Lisa could benefit of a new discovery to bring back to life a neurovegetative person. We must wait and see the events coming."
As for Eric, the son of the family, unlike the jealousy he had shown against the little Lisa who had usurped his place as youngest, he would not issue opinions as sharp. In the present time, he preferred to devote himself to take care of his sister.
Many nights in a row while Fannie and Réal were resting, he remained at her bedside. Thus, a weapon of survival courses in college, he gave people the opportunity to admire his dexterity to clean tracheotomy tube that Lisa had been submitted at some point during her final hospitalization. As fate, the medicine of the year 2000 had been requiring the support of caregivers.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from IN THE SHADE OF THE Light by MARIE-ROSE MARCOUX Copyright © 2012 by Marie-Rose Marcoux. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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