Garlic & Cigarettes
My maternal grandfather graduated from university when he was still a teen and began to teach mathematics shortly after, for the Jesuits. One fine day, he got a divorcee, my grandmother, pregnant with the child who would one day become my aunt. The scandal proved lethal to his occupation. Over the ensuing years, he hauled his growing family out of poverty, joined the department of defense, played the violin like a virtuoso, performed in countless plays, became a hypnotist, and learned to speak several languages, including German and Mandarin.
My mother idolized him.
The year we moved from France to Quebec City, my grandparents lived on the third floor of a walk-up, a dark, labyrinthine set of rooms, most of which my brother and I were forbidden from entering. One gorgeous morning in April, I woke in the front room as light streamed in from the windows.
“I saw the Easter bunny,” I told my grandmother excitedly.
“You did not see the Easter bunny,” she snarled, pushing my hand away from her forearm before grabbing her husband as he readied to leave the premises. She turned to me. “Va dans la chambre,” she pointed and I returned to the front room, but not before hearing her hiss, “Stay away from her. She is your granddaughter for crying out loud.”
“Fucking Nora, I didn’t touch her,” he retorted, shutting the apartment door behind him with such excessive gentleness that the silence resonated for minutes afterward.
My grandparents moved from that apartment to a more modern building. They each had their own room. My grandmother’s was dark and filled with knick-knacks as well as boxes of half-eaten chocolates and nearly empty bottles of gin that she stashed under the bed. My grandfather’s was large, airy, organized and bright.
“Can I go play in your room?” I asked my grandmother after school one day.
She stubbed her cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray and kept her eyes riveted on Days of our Lives. “Yes, but stay out of his room. He’s due home any minute.”
At a sleepover with a younger neighbourhood friend, I woke up on the pull-out sofa to see my naked grandfather standing by my side of the bed. I screamed. My friend’s mother rushed over, wrapped in a blanket, but by then, my grandfather had retreated to the washroom. He denied my story, claiming I’d likely seen him go from the bedroom to the facilities in his birthday suit.
That summer, my grandfather outfitted his hatchback with a mattress and bedding and drove my friend, her mother and I to a picnic. I can’t recall the picnic, but I do remember that the mattress felt soft and that my friend’s mother was so tired afterward that she had to be helped into the car.
“Why does grandfather sleep at my friend’s apartment?” I asked my mother.
“Be quiet,” she ordered. “Stop asking questions.”
My grandfather had a heart attack soon afterward and began to eat raw garlic once the hospital released him. “Good for heart health,” he told me when I wrinkled my nose. He lit up a cigarette, “This will kill the smell.”
I was twelve when my grandfather passed away. By then, we had moved out of Quebec City and lived in a high-rise in the suburbs of Toronto. My father did not allow my brother and I to miss school to attend the funeral.
My mother never forgave him.
I cannot say for certain whether something happened, but the sense of darkness, of something not quite right lingers, and to this day, the smell of garlic and cigarette smoke sends shudders down my spine.