In the Shade of the Light

By MARIE-ROSE MARCOUX

Shattered by the suicide of her growing-up child, Fanny Laflamme is searching for some way to go back alive herself. She looked deep in her past to find a reason of the drama. Who is the guilty? Is there a guilty? Inspired by a real fact, this poetical journey took place in a province of Canada, New Brunswick, who got such astonishing point of view of the never-ending ocean.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Aug 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466947474

MARIE-ROSE MARCOUX

De citoyenneté canadienne, Marie-Rose Marcoux est avant tout québécoise. Native du nord de cette province, très tôt voyager est devenu pour elle le moyen rêvé de connaître le monde. Elle a parcouru les États-Unis, l’Europe, l’Asie et le Canada d’est en ouest. Par deux reprises elle a participé à des immersions d’apprentissage en langue espagnol, d’abord au Mexique puis en Espagne. Bachelière en pédagogie, elle a enseigné l’histoire et le français au secondaire. Puis elle a travaillé en Ontario comme professeur de français langue seconde. Titulaire d’un cours de rédaction, elle a touché à la poésie. De plus, elle a suivi des stages de formation en nouvelle et en roman. Ce premier roman psychologique est l’aboutissement d’une longue démarche littéraire.

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© Copyright 2012 Marie-Rose Marcoux.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4669-4749-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-4748-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-4747-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012912698

Trafford rev. 08/17/2012

SKU-000579730_TEXT.pdf

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This novel would not have been born

without support from my husband

Contents

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  1

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.

  2

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