Strangers in the House. Candace Savage
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I can’t find any trace of it online, no Crestwood Blvd. or Cresc., not even a cul-de-sac. Odder yet, when I consult the listings in the civic directories—the year-by-year inventories in which Diana had first encountered “Blondin, Napoleon S.”—there’s no sign of it there, either. So it’s not a street name that was used in the past and has since been forgotten. As I’m running through other possible explanations (maybe he built a house in some other town?), an email from Lorena’s husband arrives and saves the day again. It reads:
“Lorena says, ‘I have spoken to my Uncle Charles and [your place] is indeed the house that N. S. built.’ So there you go.”
So there you go, indeed. My unlikely hero, Napoléon Sureau dit Blondin, had not only lived here with his family; he had built the place with his own hands. Every nail hammered into place. Every windowsill leveled and planed. Maybe his wife and kids had moved in partway through construction, allowing those bits and pieces of intimate memorabilia, the shed skin of everyday living, to be absorbed inside the walls. (“I’m sorry, Teacher,” young Ralph might have said. “The house ate my homework.”) From my phone conversation with Lorena, I know that Ralph was her father and that I’d missed my chance to meet him. He had died just over a year earlier, in the spring of 2013, aged ninety-three. Later, I will look up his obituary: “It is with heavy hearts that we have to say goodbye to Ralph Ernest Blondin.” Of Napoléon and Clarissa’s six children, only two are still alive. One, their eldest daughter, has closed the door on the past.
“I’ve tried, but she won’t answer any questions about the family,” Lorena tells me. “She says, ‘It’s over, my childhood is over.’ She says, ‘Why would you want to go back there?’ ”
But the other, her uncle Charles, is different. Although he lives near Calgary, six hours’ drive to the west, and although the Blondin clan has never been especially close, he has always been approachable, always been ready to help. “He’s a good guy,” Lorena says. What’s more, even as an octogenarian, he has a prodigious memory, with perfect recall of every phone number and street address from his youth. If Uncle Charles says this is the place, there’s no doubt about it. It is.
When Lorena and I pick up the phone again, there is only one subject to discuss. When would she like to come for a visit? Having pestered her with my intrusive questions, I am gratified to have something of value to offer in return. Come and see this lovely little house that your very own grandfather built. And you’d like to bring your sister? Yes, of course. And so, the next thing I know, not one but two of Napoléon and Clarissa’s granddaughters are wheeling under the leafy canopy of the gracious street their grandfather chose for his home. Admittedly, the house that stands before them is no longer exactly as he intended it to be. For instance, Keith and I know, from scraping away at the siding, that the building was originally painted white with pale “heritage”-green trim. We have done it up in a soft turquoise, with white window frames and a cherry-blossom-pink front door. We hoped it would look like a place where happy people lived, and if it ended up resembling an ice cream parlor, well, we’d have to take that risk.
The other change we’ve made to the facade is the addition of a small window in the wall of the former-master-bedroom-that-is-now-my-office so that I can look outside as I work. As a result, by craning my neck ever so slightly, I am able to watch as two petite women—one with dark hair piled on top of her head, the other wearing multicolored leggings and sporting locks of reddish gold—climb out of their car, glance around to get their bearings, and step toward the front door. Their shoes ring on the painted boards as they climb the front steps, almost as solid today as they were more than eighty years ago, when their grandfather put them in place.
Once the introductions are over—the dark-haired one is Lorena, as I’d guessed; the redhead, her sister, Fran—we make a looping tour through the house, kitchen to dining room to living room to office to den and then up the steep back stairs. I can’t remember if I mentioned the possible connection between the flow-through layout of the upper floor and the houses of New France. But I do remember how relaxed and at home the sisters seemed to be, as if they were walking through a space that was already familiar to them.
“This must have been where the children slept,” one of them says, considering the connected rooms upstairs. “There were four of them then, weren’t there? The two girls, Don, and Dad.”
“And, remember how Dad used to say he’d sit on the stairs—”
These stairs.
“—and listen to the adults talking in the kitchen?”
“Not just talking. Arguing. There was a lot of shouting. That’s what Dad always said.”
A small figure slumps in the narrow stairway, his ear pressed against the wall. The house rings with angry words: Crisse! Ostie! He is eight years old in 1928, the year the family moves in. He will turn twelve in 1932, the year they leave for a house across the river, a shack with no indoor toilet. Napoléon Sureau dit Blondin built a home for his family, and he lost it. No wonder there was shouting.
THROUGH THE INTERMEDIARY of Lorena’s husband’s emails (“I just leave the computer to him,” she tells me with a wry grin), she has offered to share what she knows about her family’s story. Now, true to her word, and having seen all there is to see of this little house, she produces an ordinary-looking three-ring binder, the kind you can buy in any stationery store. But there is nothing at all ordinary about what it holds. This is Lorena’s collection of family treasures. Look, here is a photo of this very house when it was being built. The earth around the site is bare and trampled, and the structure lacks windows and doors, but from the line of the foundations to the curve of the eaves, the place is unmistakable. If there were any doubt about the authorship of the house—which there isn’t, since Uncle Charles has spoken—this picture would lay it to rest. Napoléon must have downed tools for a moment to document his work-in-progress.
In the background, across the side street, the photo also catches a glancing view of the house where, as I know from perusing those invaluable civic directories, one of his brothers lived for a while. That dwelling was torn down a couple of years ago (a handsome clawfoot tub on the second floor dangling, suspended in midair, before plunging into a cloud of dust and debris) to be replaced by a modernist fortress.
If there was strife and shouting in the Blondin household, it is not evident in the family photos that Lorena is handing around. One snapshot shows three of the Blondin children, aged perhaps eight to twelve, standing up to their knees in a luxuriant patch of potatoes. From the houses in the background, it is clear that the picture was taken on the boulevard outside our back door. “That’s Dad in the middle,” one of the sisters says, pointing to a boy with slicked-back hair and hands stuffed into his trouser pockets. The children are neat and well-dressed and look healthy; their smiles are sweet. And the same sweetness infuses the portraits of their parents, Napoléon and Clarissa, captured (I’m told) on their wedding day, in 1916. The bridegroom is appropriately dark and handsome, with a broad forehead, aquiline nose, and laughing eyes. A faint smile plays around his mouth, as if he cannot quite believe his good fortune. The bride is cherubic, with a glowing complexion, soft curls, and a clear, direct gaze.
“My grandmother was beautiful,” Lorena says, reading my thoughts. “So tiny. Blue eyes. Fair skin.” Her voice softens. “We all loved her. And how she loved to dance.”
“Remember how she’d just show up, unannounced, for a visit?” Fran interposes. “Wouldn’t tell you she was coming. Wouldn’t even let you pick her up from the bus. She was a real free spirit.”
There are lots of pictures of Clarissa in the album. “Clara,” Fran corrects me. “She was always Clara.”
Okay; there are lots of pictures of Clara. Head held high, on a dock, gazing into the distance. Looking adorable in a bicorne hat, a baby in her arms. Squinting into the sun, a hand wrapped protectively around one of her daughters’ shoulders. I recall what I’ve learned about her from my research, in all those weeks when I’ve been pursuing phantoms. Like the Sureau dit Blondins, the Parents are certifiably Québécois de souche. The family’s foundational male ancestor, Pierre, was a master butcher, recruited