This is the shortest in the cycle of Carette family stories, available to read online, with a short introduction by Lynne Tillman, on the Center for Fiction’s website. It’s one of their “model stories”—for good reason.
It’s concise, yet still manages to highlight so many of Gallant’s trademarks: acute observations about relationships, her wit, and her focus on class and status (and how revelations about it are contained in language and religion and buying habits).
In Gallant’s short stories, single word choices matter. Raymond’s wife’s eyelashes could be described in many different ways. Raymond’s mother describes them as “stubby”.
When Raymond introduces his mother to the neighbourhood, he complains that the place “was full of Canadians and [they] stole like raccoons”. (She’s visited eight times previously, but he moves around a lot, as did the Carette sisters when they were young, but Marie would prefer that we not remind her of that.)
Raymond is as eager to identify with the Americans as his mother is to distinguish herself from them. When something is out of order architecturally in Montreal, people say that it’s as bad as it is in Cleveland, a city about as far south of the U.S./Canada border as Montreal is north of it.
He’s also happy to focus on his Canadian childhood when that’s more convenient. “People in Montreal move more often than in any other city in the world. I can show you figures. My father wasn’t a Montrealer, so we always lived in just the one house.”
What figures, I’d like to ask (like a fact-oriented reporter in a White House “press briefing” these days). Gallant isn’t looking at the data either. She inhabits the liminal space, in which Raymond’s father’s New Brunswick relatives left in a huff after the funeral, all too aware that their kin lived his entire adult life and was buried in Montreal, against his wishes. Can anyone say where someone else belongs?
Gallant leaves the question of Louis’ true affinity unanswered but clearly states that Raymond is living in and managing a different motel every time his mother visits. Raymond is always trying to establish a future in the motel industry, but “his motels seemed to die on his hands”. He is a transient presence in an industry built on transience. (Ouch.)
Language can also be used to massage social awkwardness out of a situation (so take note, the whole dying on his hands thing is a deliberate statement). As, for instance, when Marie mentions a dinner that Berthe had with a man who works in the Cleveland office of the business that employs them.
Raymond describes the man as a “widower on the executive level”. Readers understand that the man’s wife has left him, so at best the man’s divorced. But that’s “objectively the same thing”, Raymond notes. (Is it? Does anyone have figures for that?)
Marie tells Raymond’s wife later that he’s a thief too. That he stole his father’s watch. And then he lost it. Raymond’s wife doesn’t offer commentary on whether Raymond stole the watch or not. But it matters to her that Marie understand that the watch was never lost.
She corrects Marie by saying that Raymond “probably sold it to two or three different people”. That’s better than it being lost. Like being a widower is better than being divorced. Like buildings town down in Montreal are never worse than all the buildings torn down in Cleveland.
“He’ll find out what it’s like, alone in the world. Without his mother. Without his aunt. Without his wife. Without his baby.” This is Marie’s judgement upon Raymond. As if it’s a condition unique to Raymond. As if he could avoid all that loss by marrying a woman with longer lashes.
Already I resent the fifth story, daring to bring other characters onto the scene of this collection. But, I know, as soon as I start reading, I’ll be just as intrigued by whomever Gallant introduces next.
Across the Bridge’s Stories: 1933 / The Chosen Husband / From Cloud to Cloud / Florida / Dédé / Kingdom Come / Across the Bridge / Forain / A State of Affairs / Mlle. Dias de Corta / The Fenton Child
Note: This is part of a series of posts on Mavis Gallant’s stories, as I read through her short fiction. This is the fourth story in Across the Bridge. Please feel free to check the schedule and join in, for the series, or for a single story; I would love the company. Next story: “Dédé”.
Many thanks for the link to the story. I will definitely read it sometime soon, especially as your posts have piqued my interest in the Carettes. It’s fascinating how the use of a particular word, especially an adjective, can changes our perceptions of a character. The description ‘stubby’ makes me think that Raymond’s wife is not particularly attractive, diminished in some way. It also suggests to me that Raymond’s mother doesn’t much like her son’s choice of wife!
That’s how I read “stubby” too. Although I’m not sure it’s a fair evaluation. I doubt that Raymond’s mother would have thought any woman was “good enough” for her Raymond. If you happen to have a subscription to TNY, most of Gallant’s stories are available in their archives. (I don’t, but I would love one, for this alone!)
Well, I am sorry to see the end of the Carette sisters.
For some reason this story had me imagining Raymond as a sleezy sort. Is it because he can’t seem to keep his motels going? Is it because he’s in the motel business? Is it because he’s married quickly without telling his mother, and his wife seems to feels as though he plans to leave her? Is it because I picture him with a mustache and bell bottoms?
I found this story especially funny – with the static electricity thing, and the way Marie still expects “husband service”, and her “sherbet tone” outfits, and her fixation on fur coats and why would someone need a husband if they can afford their own fur coats?
And I love the way it began with static shocks and ended with static shocks.
Hah! Because any mustachioed fella in bell-bottoms is a sleaze? Was there no hope for him, in your mind, after that image settled in? Freshly trimmed mustache? Designer bell-bottoms? Is there any saving Raymond in your mind? 😀
For me, I think it was the sequence of motel investments, so straight away he seemed to be the sort who’d rather move on and leave a mess behind, rather than really work hard to make one (perhaps difficult, tedious, even tiresome) situation more successful. This is one that I felt like I could envision, like the kind of show they’d dramatize on CBC on a Sunday evening: you can imagine the expressions on the women’s faces, the sense of camaraderie when they finally get down to serious talk near the end.
Yes, I liked the shocks too, a nice sense of connecting end-to-beginning. Do you think we are meant, then to assume that Raymond is not long for this world? Given the fact that we can now imagine a new generation, grandchildren for the sisters, and maybe a father who “departs” suddenly?
I think you’re right – it’s more the moving from motel to motel that I don’t like. The problem, for me, with the look I’m picturing – I think – is that I’m picturing Larry from Three’s Company who was kind of sleazy.
Anyway, yeah, I think he’s likely to leave her one way or another based on his past. Maybe she’ll move in with Marie and Berthe!
Thank you for sending me down the rabbit hole of Three’s-Company fandom: I had to see if Larry actually had a mustache and that led to an unreasonable amount of curiosity on related matters.
You’re very welcome. I hope it was fun! 🙂