Month 17.4. Returns.

An homage can end up sounding eerily similar to an obituary. Maybe it’s the overtone of nostalgia. Maybe it’s the distance the writer creates between himself and the object of his love. He confronts the pitiful truth that the most beautiful things are the ones just out of reach.

Cheesy’s time in Europe was quickly running out. Would she soon need her own obituary? Someone wise suggested that Cheesy would need to reinvent herself if she wanted to survive. But sometimes, when we think we’re reinventing ourselves, we’re just returning to something we were previously.

And so, as a new future opened up to Cheesy, the past was sucking her back in. She was reminded that life is circular, not linear. The following homage is therefore both an obituary and a birth song.

…

The best place in Montreal is high up on the balcony of Saint Joseph’s Oratory. Go there alone one evening in late autumn, when it’s cold enough to see your breath. Watch the city sparkle through the steam. Track the cars creeping north along Decarie Boulevard. The highway disappears into a mass of glowing orange lights, which in turn fade to blackness. Sometimes on the horizon you can see a plane land at Mirabel airport.

One time Cheesy went to the balcony during daylight. Far below her, at the foot of the oratory, she could see a pilgrim beginning her climb up. She was a large black woman. The woman stooped clumsily to her knees. She clasped her hands together and was still for a few seconds. Then she pulled herself up to the first step, her heavy bosom rocking back and forth. She paused again, pulled herself up to the next step. After fifteen minutes, the woman was about halfway up the steps. Cheesy turned away from the balcony and went home.

Cheesy remembered Halloweens in N.D.G. One year, she and her two friends dressed up as a three-headed dragon. They took a large green bed-sheet and cut three holes in it for their heads. They stumbled around the neighborhood together. It snowed a little that night, but the bed-sheet protected them.

During high school, Cheesy walked to school. It took half an hour, straight up Monkland Street. She’d first pass Benny Park. In January, when the sun was just rising, she could see hoarfrost on the trees. The sky glowed salmon pink behind the branches. The ice and salt crunched under Cheesy’s boots.

When Cheesy lived downtown on Saint-Marc Street, she would sometimes walk down to the train tracks. The tracks were overgrown with grass, and sometimes she would pass a dog-walker. Sometimes she went over to the canal and watched it flow black under the orange city lights.

On Saint-Laurent Street, Cheesy would come home from work around 3:30 a.m. The crowds would be pouring out of the bars and into the streets. The fast-food joints would all be packed. The traffic would be jammed to a halt. The air would pulse with the shrill cries of revelers against the rhythmic boom of club music. Drunks and bouncers would banter in French, English and Franglais. One time Cheesy struck up a conversation with a kid sitting on a doorstep eating a poutine. He described himself as homeless by choice. When he got bored with his snack, he tossed the container into the basket of a locked-up bike and walked away.

One time, they were replacing the sidewalk outside of Cheesy’s loft on Saint-Laurent. They hadn’t warned her. She opened her front door and stepped ankle-deep into wet cement.

One time Cheesy woke in the middle of the night to the blaring of an alarm. The loft was filled with smoke and a bunch of people were running out into the hallway (there were often random groups of people partying in the loft). Cheesy rushed out after them. She burst into the club in pajamas, only to find out it was a false alarm set off by the smoke-machines. A few people smiled at her.

One morning Cheesy locked herself out of her apartment while getting the newspaper from downstairs. She had to walk across the neighborhood in pajamas and slippers to her aunt and uncle’s house to get the spare keys. Somehow Montreal lends itself to outdoor pajamas.

Cheesy remembered sitting out in the garden of their house during the summertime. One summer she developed a passion for milkshakes and discovered that peanut butter and ground coffee beans go great with ice cream. Lying on the lawn chair, smelling the barbecue smoke, listening to the dogs’ collars jingle, feeling the sweat trickle down her back, the garden was an island on an island. She remembered looking at the sky through the apple tree leaves. It was so deep blue that you could almost reach up and touch it, like satin.

In their first house, Cheesy and her brother used to make umbrella forts on the porch when it rained. When it was sunny, they’d crawl along the fence to the neighbor’s house where their friends lived. Together they’d go to Trenholme Park and climb trees. Years later, the municipality set closing hours on the park to ward off teenage drinkers.

Montreal unfolds along Saint-Catherine Street. (Pumping life into a city, streets are nicknamed “arteries” for good reason.) Saint-Catherine’s starts off in the heart of big money and big houses, Westmount. The street flows east into the Dawson College ghetto, dotted with girls in miniskirts just discovering the world of cigarettes and pool halls. Then it runs through Concordia University’s territory. Cheap Chinese restaurants and low-rise buildings line the street. Finally Saint-Catherine emerges into commercial downtown, harboring the underground city and spawning sidestreets filled with bars and businesses. A few churches stand watch like chaperones over men in designer suits and women in stilettos. The street slopes eastward and disintegrates into a strip of sleazy sex shops and art studios. It opens up into the Place des Arts, the district of open-air shows, opera concerts, and theatre performances. Beyond is Saint-Denis Street, where artsy professionals and carousing students bond over sangria.

Living in Montreal is like living in the head of a schizophrenic. A change of street, a change of lighting, a change of season is enough to renew your entire perspective. You think you’ve gotten to know Montreal. It laughs and throws a new personality in your face. Sure, many cities are multifaceted. But Montreal is denser. It’s swanky and sleazy, cultured and carefree, showy and secretive. Its strict Catholic past gave birth to a hedonistic rebel. It is utterly egotistical, but will give you anything you ask. True Montrealers are romantics – they believe in passion, be it the seductive or intellectual kind. What’s funny is that no one seems to love Montreal more than those who leave it. The most beautiful things are the ones just out of reach.