Out of Bounds

By Sheila McLeod Arnopoulos

Out of Bounds features Montreal women of different ages and cultural backgrounds facing a range of contemporary challenges and adventures at home and in other countries. Indigenous individuals, immigrant women, aging women, victims of domestic violence, addicts, and Holocaust survivors face making difficult choices at dramatic turning points in their lives. The stories are linked partly through one character who appears at key stages of her life, starting when she is sixteen and finishing when she is a retired anthropology professor and meets a fascinating but mysterious man she knew when she was a young reporter. She plays a role in the lives of several women featured in the book.

One of the women, who starts as an accountant and ends up helping poor women in Mexico start small businesses, has a rambling Montreal house where she welcomes women needing a safe place to escape to while making life-changing decisions. Settings include Montreal, Vancouver, and New York, as well as Portugal, Mexico, Antigua, Tunisia, Morocco, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and rural India.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886930375

Sheila McLeod Arnopoulos

Sheila McLeod Arnopoulos is the author of a novel and three non-fiction books. Her latest book, Saris on Scooters: How Microcredit Is Changing Village India, was a finalist for the Canadian National Business Book Award. She has won a Governor-General’s Literary Award and earned several journalism prizes for exposés about marginalized women and minorities. While an investigative journalist for the Montreal Star, she worked underground in several Montreal sweatshops and wrote about the exploitation of immigrant women. She has also reported from Tunisia, India, and China. For many years, she taught journalism at Montreal’s Concordia University. Website: www.microcreditwomenindia.com

Book preview

1

The Sometime Friends

Moira hesitated for a long moment at the top of the steps. Jill had invited her for an evening among childhood friends she hadn’t seen for twenty years, to celebrate the publication of Moira’s first book. The air was crisp but she felt a growing snowstorm on the horizon.

It’ll be fine, said Nancy. She put her hand on Moira’s shoulder.

Maybe, said Moira. She held her sides in tight. It’s been so long since I’ve seen Brenda and Jill.

All four had been close during elementary school. They used to skip Double Dutch together on the street and celebrate birthdays together. In high school, they learned how to fancy skate as a team at the Y rink.

After McGill University, they went their separate ways.

Brenda and Jill had married during the seventies, right after they graduated. All they cared about, Moira had thought, was their looks and snagging a well-placed man. They now lived in big houses on high-class streets and had their teenagers in expensive private schools.

Moira and Nancy lived in the trendy Plateau district which attracted artists, writers, and community activists. Nancy was a social worker who worked in down-and-out Pointe St. Charles. Both were unmarried and living alone, although they had had boyfriends. They often took Nancy’s Italian-born parents to Little Italy on Saturday nights. Her father still worked as a cobbler. Nancy’s mother was a retired gym teacher. For Moira, they had been like second parents. Now, they lived in an apartment on Monkland Avenue near new restaurants and boutiques.

During the day, Moira covered women’s issues for the Lifestyle section of the Montreal Tribune. At night, she had been writing a novel inspired by the life of an exploited street woman dominated by a biker-gang boyfriend. She had died of an overdose of crack. Moira had been attracted to the story because of what she’d seen as a teenager in a park in lower Notre-Dame-de-Grace. Gangs of hard-looking men, who used women to deliver their drugs, hung out there.

She had set the pre-teen side of the woman’s story in the mixed neighborhood of their real-life childhoods near the railroad tracks. Moira’s father, once an Alberta farm boy, had become a struggling older McGill university student. To make ends meet, he worked nights as a dishwasher in a restaurant. A family on welfare with ten children, some of them delinquents, lived at the corner of their street. Greek immigrants from two families crammed into two converted garages. Nameless dropouts fired stones at the clotheslines in the back alley and noisy drunks often roamed around in the middle of the night. Except in their memories, it was not a place any of her friends revisited.

* * *

Hello girls! said Jill. She was dressed in a navy-blue pantsuit and designer running shoes. She air-kissed Moira and Nancy awkwardly and ushered them into her living room, which was adorned with intricate Persian rugs, Royal Doulton figurines, and fusty dark-colored antiques. Jill’s husband Michael, now a senior manager at a big company, had clearly done well. Jill had stayed at home with the kids.

Moira quickly spied Brenda, standing silently in a corner, smartly dressed in an expensive herringbone suit. Her arms were crossed over her chest. She inspected Moira like a police officer.

Hello, neighbor, Brenda said. When they were kids, Brenda had lived in the flat above hers. Long time no see.

Brenda, Moira said, trying to sound enthusiastic. Great to see you again. They shook hands. Brenda looked sharper and more beautiful in a leaner way. Her formerly wild dark hair was held down in a smoothed-over wedge, suitable for banks and boardrooms. As in the old days, her skirt revealed the well-rounded curve of her behind. Boys had always noticed her.

Now, Brenda was married to the president of a bank.

Congratulations on the MBA, Moira said. A few years before, Brenda had been written up in the Tribune for leading her class. Now, she was often quoted on financial matters. How’s banking these days?

I can’t complain, she said.

Moira smiled to herself. Dealing with money had always been Brenda’s special thing. She’d had more of it than any other kid on the street. When they were eleven, after a game of marbles, Brenda had dragged Moira upstairs to her flat, thinking no one was home. In her parents’ room, she pulled out a drawer. Inside, it was piled high with coins and bills. Moira was wowed by the sight.

Open your bag, Brenda had ordered and shoveled a handful of bills and coins into Moira’s sack of marbles. Moira had felt like a sneaky shoplifter. Now we can buy all the comic books we like, Brenda had boasted.

As they were leaving, Brenda’s live-in Oncle Gaston appeared and Moira froze like a deer in the headlights. Run, Brenda had shouted and bolted down the stairs, but Gaston grabbed Moira’s wrist before she could get away. "Ouvre ton sac," he ordered. He was a small man from the Gaspésie who shopped, cleaned and did the washing for Brenda’s family, having no other job. He was someone Moira usually ignored, but at that moment, Gaston seemed all-powerful. With shaking fingers, she pulled open her bag.

"Criss de petite voleuse, he muttered, and scooped out the money. Then he belted Moira across the head. She yelped with pain and dashed down the stairs, losing all the marbles from the half-opened bag as she flew. What kind of friend you are! Brenda gonna pay, he yelled. She know how."

Brenda’s muscular father, Alfie, had been a manager at the Blue Bonnets Raceway, though his real business, Moira later learned, was as a bookie who did his own collecting on outstanding debts. A few weeks after the incident, Brenda told Moira that when her father found out about the theft, he threatened not to take her on a promised trip to the big horse race at Saratoga Springs, where he knew the top jockeys. He changed his mind, Brenda had said, when I told him it was all your fault.

* * *

So Brenda, Nancy said, arranging the folds of the orange and fuchsia skirt she’d sewn herself, how are Naomi’s soccer games coming along?

Super, said Brenda, smiling whole-heartedly. Star of the team.

Nancy turned to Moira. Brenda’s daughter Naomi is an absolute knockout, the spitting image of her mother at fifteen. Can you spell trouble?

That’s what the soccer’s for, said Brenda with a smirk.

Moira remembered Brenda at fifteen in a revealing red tank top, hair in a ponytail, eyes all made up, hanging around the nearby park with a stud who’d once been on the football team. It was the look Moira had given her fictional Leanne character as a teen, never thinking she would ever see Brenda again or that Brenda would ever read her book.

Jill presented a tray with four long-stemmed glasses of Chardonnay and they clinked.

To Moira’s new novel, said Nancy. Watch out, Stephen King!

Well, it’s hardly in the horror category, Moira said.

Are you sure about that? Brenda asked, her blue eyes icy.

Moira looked up at her. Have you read it?

Mmm, she said, sipping her wine. Every last word.

Moira slowly blinked. How much of Brenda, she thought, had she pasted onto Leanne?

Time to eat, said Jill, and she herded the women through a swinging door into her spacious marble-tiled kitchen. Moira noticed a small crucifix over the sink. Jill had gone to the English Catholic School. Moira at six had been so envious of her in a beautiful white dress with a veil for her first communion. Moira and Nancy were in the English Protestant school while Brenda attended the French Catholic one.

Was Jill still a practicing Catholic? If so, Moira thought, she must have planned this party before reading her novel. Catholics would despise Leanne for having an abortion.

Ta-da! said Jill, motioning to a long kiddie table with brightly colored balloons attached to the backs of four small chairs. A smiling Barbie doll sat at each place setting, arms extended toward a central platter of peanut butter and jam sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

Remember your eighth birthday? asked Jill, giggling as she nudged Moira forward.

She does now! Nancy laughed.

Moira had a queasy moment of déjà vu. The table looked exactly the way her mother had set it up thirty years ago.

Sandwiches just like your mother made, said Jill, a quaver of nostalgia entering her voice. I have such fond memories of those years. On the table was a tiny arrangement of beautiful daisies.

Jill turned to Moira. Your mother taught me about flowers, showing me how to make flower boxes, since we had no back gardens. Just the crummy back lane where we played. Now Moira’s parents were living in Montreal West, and her mother had a beautiful flower garden.

That back lane, Nancy chimed in, strewn with bits of garbage and castoff appliances. Remember Madame Ladouceur? Pouring water on our heads from her balcony? Moira thought of how they called her ‘the witch’ because of her stringy black hair. "Va-t’en, ou je vais appeler la police," she shrieked when a baseball landed in her balcony and she refused to throw it down.

Sit down, sit down, Jill said. The chairs were too small and too low, but everyone played along. Moira’s retro-fifties swing skirt, with its explosion of colors, matched the table and balloons in a way that made her feel like an overgrown child.

Brenda managed to lower herself quite elegantly, her grey business skirt sliding up her well-toned thighs. Moira thought of Brenda back in grade ten in a leather miniskirt riding up to her crotch. She’d seen her walking near a local biker bar with a guy who sold hard drugs. Many a night she watched out her bedroom window as Brenda climbed off his motorcycle, taking small packets before he zoomed off. Moira remembered overhearing Brenda’s mother screaming, If he made you preggers, he should pay to get rid of it! Had she used that exact expression in her book? Yes, she had.

Jill began passing around sandwiches and topping up the wine. Moira picked up a too-sweet sandwich and washed it down with some Chardonnay.

So Moira, said Brenda, narrowing her eyes, tell us where you get your ideas.

"Well…a while back, I got to know a frightened older addict, a woman in her late thirties, about our age, for a story on street women for the Tribune. She grew up in a rough neighborhood like ours. I was struck by how different her life had turned out. Tragically, in fact. I started writing scenes with her as a character under the name Leanne, and things started rolling from there."

Is that so? Brenda said, drawing back in her chair.

Moira looked away. In her book, she had written that Leanne’s mother had been a former call girl. That’s what people said about Brenda’s mother, Violette. Alfie used to escort Violette to the racetrack, tits hanging out of her tight red dress. During the day, she sat around in a greasy dressing gown getting drunk. Maybe, Moira thought, she should have come up with something different for Leanne’s mother.

Riff-raff, said Brenda and shook her hair as if casting off a disgusting thought. Moira’s father, a retired manager with a pharmaceutical company, also dismissed her book, calling the characters misfits, but Moira didn’t respect his opinion.

Easy, Brenda, said Nancy, laughing. I work with riff-raff every day.

There are all kinds of exploited girls and women out there, Moira said, almost knocking over her glass of Chardonnay. Not talking about it doesn’t make it better. To bring about change, we have to face unpleasant truths.

Moira’s mother agreed. She valued the book, but then she’d worked as a nurse with the Cree and was a volunteer at the Native Friendship Centre. Partly because of her, Moira was studying the lives of marginalized Indigenous women.

Ha, said Brenda. Do you fancy yourself some kind of radical, some Gloria Steinem?

What’s wrong with that? Moira said. Steinem’s made a difference.

We’ve all had difficult patches, Jill pitched in.

Moira thought about Charlie, Jill’s sports writer father, known around the newspaper for womanizing. When they were teenagers, he sometimes came home so drunk the taxi driver had to help him up the steps to their flat.

But I have to say, Jill said, your book goes too far. Drug pushers and pimps, teen addicts? And that coat-hanger abortion? That was the worst. She threw her hands into the air.

Moira lowered her head. She wondered whether Jill or Nancy knew or suspected that Brenda had had a teenage abortion. She had never told Nancy what she had overheard in grade ten.

In her book, Leanne had a coat-hanger abortion, like the street woman she knew. It had happened in the 1960s when abortions were illegal and dangerous. Maybe that’s what Brenda had had. Moira felt a headache coming on. She should never have made the teen Leanne look like Brenda at the same age.

Jill, I’m surprised to hear you so lightly dismiss addicts, said Nancy in an even tone. She swept her palm over the bangs of her short brown hair. Am I wasting my time working with at-risk girls in the Pointe?

No, no, that’s not what I mean, said Jill, pulling at the strap of her wristwatch in frustration. What I mean is, why does Moira need to dwell on, well, perverted people?

Moira recoiled. Perverted?

Jill passed Moira a plate of egg salad sandwiches, as though a little food might make up for her remark.

There’s a place in the Gay Village near my apartment that specializes in sandwiches in little squares, just like these. I’ve seen Colin around there a few times, said Moira. He seems to be doing very well. She didn’t mention that she’d had coffee with him. He was living with his former high school teacher and studying design.

Jill looked up at Moira, her eyes glassy, then down at her Barbie doll. Yeah? I wouldn’t know. We’ve lost touch, she said.

The table grew silent.

Nancy turned around to look up at Jill’s family photo gallery on the wall behind. There was Jill wearing a fluffy white dress. Next to her stood her uncle, Father Jude, the priest of ill repute who had prepared children in grade one for their first communions at St. Augustine’s church. Jill’s mother, who had taught the girls how to sew, made quilts for the beds in the parish house where he lived. He often came for dinner, especially after Jill’s father left her mother for a secretary at the newspaper.

Is your uncle still around? Nancy asked.

Jill didn’t reply. The women knew he’d been transferred to Nova Scotia because he’d been caught molesting altar boys. No one said a word.

The phone rang and Jill jumped up from her chair and left the kitchen. From her daughter’s room above, Moira could hear the relentless thump-thump of hip-hop music.

Brenda looked directly at Moira. Moira, I can’t believe how much of my life you’ve stolen for your book.

Stolen?

Oh, come on. When Leanne goes to the movies with her friends, a loudspeaker in the theatre says: ‘Leanne, go home, your house is on fire.’

They had been watching Mary Poppins in the old Monkland Theatre when Brenda’s mother, probably sloshed, called the theatre and told them to make that announcement. They stopped the film and everyone had watched Brenda leave.

"But there is a fire in Leanne’s house, Moira said. There wasn’t in yours. It was just your mother calling the theatre." She didn’t dare ask where Brenda’s parents were now.

And, Brenda bared her teeth, that’s not all you took!

Girls, girls, said Nancy.

Speaking of fires, Brenda bludgeoned on, remember when your father set the Christmas tree in your living room, on fire, on purpose? Your mother called the fire department.

It wasn’t on purpose, Moira shouted. What do you know about it anyway?

"I was standing right there the whole time. Some church elder he was! Why didn’t you put that in your book?"

Moira didn’t recall that Brenda was there. But she did remember that he did it on purpose. She took a choking breath.

Brenda glared at Moira, For someone like you, everything is material. Even your oldest friends’ deepest secrets.

Moira’s chest tightened.

I don’t really care, said Brenda, tossing her head and taking a sip of wine. I just think you should own up to it.

Brenda, come on, said Nancy, these days you’re riding high. A top job, a successful, good-looking husband, a beautiful daughter, a home right in Westmount. What do you have to complain about?

Some things, said Brenda, are better left alone.

Brenda, Leanne’s not you, said Moira. Were you turfed into the street? Pushed into stripping? Then into addiction? You’re being paranoid. Leanne’s a lost soul. Exploited by nasty men at every turn.

What do you think I was? said Brenda heatedly. I had a hard time, harder than any of you. You have no idea. But maybe you knew and didn’t bloody care. None of you ever asked me if I needed help.

Moira gripped the sides of her chair. She had to face it, she had exploited Brenda. She imagined her at fifteen feeling terrified in front of the nuns in their long black habits. Why hadn’t she thought of that while she was writing about Leanne?

Who knows, said Brenda. Maybe Moira’s next book will be about a young woman who was adopted and lied to about it. She glanced at Nancy. My mother always knew you were adopted.

Nancy turned white.

A couple of months before, when her parents revealed the truth, Nancy had told Moira she wanted to find her birth mother, even though her adopted parents, who had always loved her, were against it. Moira went with Nancy to the center that handled adoptions. They discovered that her young birth mother had died at the Douglas mental hospital a year after Nancy’s birth. Maybe a suicide, Nancy had said. I think she was committed there because of the shame of her pregnancy. I was in an orphanage until she died.

By the way, said Brenda in a loud voice, cutting into Moira’s thoughts, why did you mention Colin and the Gay Village to Jill? We all know they don’t see each other. Why rub it in?

Suddenly, Jill’s daughter Lois, her hair in a mass of cornrow braids, bounced into the kitchen.

Can I take some sandwiches? she asked.

Sure, said Brenda.

Lois turned to Moira. "Hey, aren’t you Mom’s childhood friend who wrote Striking Out?"

Yes, Moira said.

Cool book. It felt so real. Some of my friends are reading it.

A few minutes later, Jill came in holding a huge cake with flowers etched into the icing like Moira’s mother used to do.

Flowers everywhere, said Moira. She’d noticed a row of little bouquets set out along a long side table.

I dream of starting my own garden design business, said Jill. I should get active outside the home, just like you guys. She cut everyone a piece of cake.

Sounds like a great idea, said Moira.

Jill poured herself more wine. It would take my mind off worrying about my kids. However, Michael says no. He wants me here at home. He invites business associates home for dinners I have to prepare. She sighed. Here and at our place up north. Running two households is a lot. Also, Lois is going to university next year and he wants me to keep her on track.

Oh, she said, I almost forgot. She dug into her pocket and presented Moira with a card. In swirly letters on the front were the words Our Congratulations. Inside was a photo from 1962 of Moira at ten, skipping Double Dutch, Nancy and Jill holding the ropes, Brenda about to jump in. They’d been in grade five.

Oh my, she said and put the card and photo in her pocket.

Ten o’clock came and Brenda left first, speeding off in her Mercedes.

Nancy motioned to Moira.

Thanks so much, Moira said to Jill at the door. You really know how to throw a party. About your gardening enterprise, why don’t you start small, here in the neighborhood? I could help you plan publicity.

Maybe later. I’m on call all the time. A husband and kids means responsibilities. Hard maybe, for you singles to understand.

Blowing snow blinded Nancy and Moira as they wove down the walk to Nancy’s beat-up red Honda for the drive back to their side of town. Moira felt totally exhausted.

Listen, Nancy said, as they inched their way along snowy Sherbrooke Street, what matters is that each one of us made it out. She patted Moira’s arm. Including Brenda. We got away from that street and our pasts. I see girls like Leanne all the time, dressing up sexy, courting trouble. The descriptions you have in your book could belong to any girl with difficult parents and looking for someone to love her.

You really think so? Moira asked.

Yes. We could have turned out like poor Leanne in your novel, but we were the lucky ones.

When Moira got home, she stared at the photo of the four them. In their shorts and T-shirts jumping rope, they looked so eager and innocent.

2

Mexican Doughnuts and Green Carnations

As soon as they stepped off the train, a man with bright blond hair yelled, Martha and sailed into her grandmother’s arms. Then he stepped back. He was wearing a shirt with orange and green butterflies and bright green pants. So this is Moira, Donald said. Welcome to Vancouver! He smiled and gave her a hug.

Donald drove them to his oceanside house painted several shades of red. Moira thought it looked like a dollhouse, with pansy-filled flower boxes in all the windows and rabbits in the backyard. She could hardly believe she was still in the same country after going through the Prairies and the Rocky Mountains. Their cross-Canada train trip from Montreal was a gift from her grandmother for her sixteenth birthday, which was coming up.

In their flower-filled garden, Donald said, Moira, meet Diego. He’s originally from Mexico. Small, olive-skinned, with black hair and sparkling brown eyes, Diego was wearing tight, pale green pants and a white top.

Are you an acrobat? she asked, thinking back to the circus that her parents had taken her to the year before in her hometown of Montreal, during Expo 67.

Donald shrieked with laughter. Yes, go on, Diego, show Moira your cartwheel.

They both seemed well-acquainted with her grandmother, who lived most of the year in Edmonton, where she was the Alberta film censor. She had worked