In Transit: "Notes from the Montreal Underground"

When I was five my grandmother took us on the metro for the first time. We walked to Jolicoeur Station and down into the tunnel, where she had us stand with our backs against the orange wall when the train came, afraid we’d be pulled onto the tracks and crushed under the metro wheels.

She would make us walk around grates in the sidewalk, too, holding onto our hands, afraid we’d fall in, the rattle of the train rising to meet us from underground. 

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When I was nine my father drove to Langelier so we could take the metro downtown, our annual trip to the bookstore and the ice-cream parlour that used to be under the Sports Experts. They had wood booths and fake Tiffany lamps and upside-down cone sundaes with Smarties for clown eyes and licorice for a mouth. 

I walked down Sainte-Catherine Street holding his hand, bouncing on the balls of my feet, feeling older, able to leap over sidewalk grates, then catching my reflection in the windows of a passing bus and slipping my hands into my pockets. 

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When I was 13 my friends and I took the metro to Place des Arts to see Crowded House perform. It was our first concert and the only tickets we could afford were terrible—upper balcony, last row, alone on our feet, dancing, bothering everyone around us. A spotlight swept over the audience and stopped, the top corner of the venue suddenly the stage, all eyes turned our way. 

We can see you girls! Words like lyrics to a song meant only for us. We can see you dancing up there!

Someone was selling knockoff T-shirts in the tunnel back to the metro—the band’s faces a horrible shade of orange, features melted into the cotton. They smelled slightly damp, as if they’d been stored next to a sewer, but we bought them anyway. 

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When I was 15 I lost my wallet somewhere around St-Laurent Station. It was in the pocket of the charcoal and pink coat that was way too big for me—the one with only two buttons and the oversized lapel and the pockets that could never hold anything. I had no money for the movie we were going to see—I don’t remember which one now—so some boy we were with, who I ended up dating for two weeks, paid for me. 

The next day a metro driver handed my wallet in to the STM’s lost and found. It must have slipped, he said, through the crack between the metro door and the platform and fallen onto the tracks. Everything was still in it—my ID, some pictures, the $10 I’d brought for the movie. Only my ticket stub for Crowded House was missing. 

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When I was 16 I was in the metro—somewhere in the east, Prefontaine or Papineau—as my boyfriend tried to cover my legs with his winter jacket. I was wearing the Au Cotton dress I got for Christmas, tight black cotton with long sleeves and a round neckline, gold faux hieroglyphics across the hem, which ended mid-thigh. 

Les gens t’regarde! He said it over and over again, sitting next to me in a T-shirt. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole. Tu fais exprès!

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When I was 17 I took the metro back from Atwater, headed home, holding my head between my hands. A girl no older than me had pierced my ears at the jewellery store—off-centre, the nail gun driving hair strands through tissue, my ears bleeding, her saying That’s never happened before!

I wore silver hoops for a while, threading them through crooked holes, wincing at the shock when my skin touched the metal. At some point I let them close for good. 

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When I was 19 the metro came to a sudden stop between Honoré Beaugrand and Radisson. The lights went off and we sat in silence until someone came along to pry open the doors and help us down into the tunnel. I ran a hand along the railing in the dark and emerged, finally, on the platform, my palm covered in black, the friend I was supposed to meet nowhere to be seen. An employee let me wash my hands in their breakroom sink and I went to find a phone.

I was standing next to her when she jumped, my friend said. The woman next to me screamed. 
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When I was 21 I was reading Crime and Punishment in a corner seat of the metro, headed to university, waiting to get off at Guy-Concordia.

God, do you remember Dostoyevsky? a girl said to her friend. 
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Do I? Should have kept his notes underground where they belonged. 

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When I was 23 I walked into Guy-Concordia metro—back before the university was connected by tunnel—and descended to the platform for what felt like the last time. I’d left the last class of my undergraduate degree and the structure of my life had suddenly shifted, sending me into freefall, unsure of who I was supposed to be or what I was supposed to do next. 

I can’t remember what class it was or what day it was on. Only the feel of the grey tile wall against my back as I waited for the train headed east, the man playing guitar at the top of the stairs, strumming the same two chords no matter what he was singing. 

I remember how worn the neck of his guitar was from where he’d moved his hand back and forth, over and over, for years. I remember how his voice never changed, all the words bending to the shape of the rhythm he’d made for himself. 

When the metro arrived I got on and sat down, the blur of the station disappearing into the tunnel.

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When I was 25 I was taking the metro home from my job at the hotel, feeling lucky that I’d managed to catch the metro at all. I’d spent the day sorting towels and sheets in the laundry room—windowless, stifling, two floors below street level, only the emergency lights working. Someone said the prime minister was staying upstairs. There were hardly any clean towels left. Housekeeping staff were no longer changing the sheets.

When we got to Frontenac the metro stopped. The electricity was off again. We climbed out of the tunnel and I found an emergency bus going east, riding in the dark all the way home, low-hanging branches, covered in layers of ice, knocking against the windows. 

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When I was 26 I called a friend from a phone booth at Bonaventure Station and told him I thought the interview had gone well. The job was for a copywriter—something I’d never heard of until I’d applied.

If I get this job I’m going to write every day. I can hardly believe it.

The office was on the 36th floor of the IBM building, and as much as I tried to look at the creative director, my eyes kept wandering to the view over the city—the buildings, the river and bridges, the mountains in the distance. I wondered if the windows opened, if I was destined to sink to the bottom or if the city would catch me before I fell.  

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When I was 31 I took the metro to Lionel-Groulx with my suitcase—a Roots duffel bag that was awkward and heavy. It was packed with warm clothes for Ireland, some presents I’d bought for my boyfriend and his family, a few mixed CDs. I was nervous. I’d only met him the year before. This would be the longest time we’d spent together. 

The bus let me off at Dorval Circle and I walked down into the pedestrian underpass, the wheels of my bag rattling against the sewer grates, before crossing the parking lot on foot. 

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When I was 35 I would take the metro from Square-Victoria to McGill then walk up to the Royal Vic. As the weeks went on it got harder and harder, my belly getting bigger and bigger, my husband’s hand at the small of my back, pushing me up the hill. 

Why don’t we just take the 144? he would say. It stops in front of the hospital. 

But I liked the way I could lean against his hand, the way he shared the weight of it, keeping us from falling. 

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When I was 41 I got off at McGill metro and walked halfway up the hill with my daughter to her new school. She wore pink shorts and a striped top, a purple backpack half as tall as she was on her shoulders, shiny black shoes already scuffed from the commute. She was holding my hand, smiling up at me with teeth not yet changed by braces, happy and afraid, so tiny against the yellow-brick backdrop of her downtown school. 

Have a good day I said, and she carried the first words with her, leaving the last for me to hold, alone at the entrance to the schoolyard, my hands in my pockets as I made my way back down the hill and descended into the metro. 

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Now I am 48 and I take the orange line from Sherbrooke to Berri-UQAM, then switch to the green line. I used to do this in a straight shot—Honoré Beaugrand to Guy-Concordia—but that was 25 years ago and I’ve moved many times since. 

I stand on the platform. Montreal and its transit system are built on a grid, straight lines running from one other, yet I am back here again. 

There used to be a man in a tweed jacket and matching flat cap who would sing old Irish songs at the top of his voice here—sounding less like a soloist than a singer without a band. I would see him in the library at Concordia sometimes, turning the pages of a travel book, castle ruins against an endless green. 

Now there’s a man with a white dog mask pulled over his head, playing Chopin on violin, and the metro tunnel leads to a series of new tunnels so that all the university buildings have become extensions of the metro—the Henry F. Hall line, the John Molson line, the Guy-de Maisonneuve line. 

I walk down one of these until it splits in two and pause—wondering if I’m going to fall through the cracks here, if I will be crushed under the weight of going back to school. 

I stand for a moment with my back against the concrete tunnel wall. Then I climb the stairs up into the library building. 

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Beneath me the metro continues its journey down the green line to Angrignon, emptying its contents onto the platform before turning around in the tunnel to make its way back across the city.