Catherine Villeneuve was a little younger than me; her brother Jacques was about my age. Catherine was always the prettiest of us, she had huge brown eyes and brown hair that she wore in a perfect pageboy with bangs. I always wished I looked like her. I didn't really know her parents very well, although I spent a lot of time there. They were strict and followed the doctrine that "Les enfants devraient etre vus and pas entendu" ("Children should be seen and not heard"). Their house was across the street and about 2 or 3 houses down from us. They had a huge willow tree in the front yard where we used to hide when it rained.
One day I was banned from their house for a week because Mme. Villeneuve was having a bridge party and Catherine and I ran into the living room with a dead rat we had found under the willow tree. The reaction was definitely worth the punishment. I was a bad influence on Catherine.
Mizou's real name was Monique Brossard. She was about a year older than me. She looked a little like a monkey. She had an older sister, Claire, who was about 3 or 4 years older than us. Claire was very smart and didn't want to have much to do with us, although she did babysit on occasion.
I remember one time, Claire broke her kneecap falling off her bicycle. It sounded terribly painful to me. I pictured it shattering into a million pieces. (To this day, when I type about patellas I think of Claire).
Mizou's parents were very close friends of my parents. Her dad, Roger Brossard, worked at the refinery at Port Jerome with my dad. He was great, all the kids loved him. On the other hand, her mother, Jacqueline Brossard, was just like my mother, maybe more so. She had been given permission by my parents to treat me exactly the way she treated her own children, and she was strict.
One day I talked back to her and instantly I got a slap across the face. I was furious and ran home crying. When I arrived and my mother found out what happened, she immediately called Jacqueline, to read her the riot act no doubt. Well, not exactly. I was grounded for a couple of days after that. But I loved Jacqueline like she was my mother. Mizou and I lived apart a block apart and we were in and out of each others houses like they were our own. Catherine's house was much more intimidating to me.
Mizou wasn't very brave when it came to defying her parents. Neither was Catherine actually. The two boys, Fifi and Jacques, were much better at it.
Claire went into a career in science, and when we lived in New Jersey, she visited New York for a conference. My mother went to New York to see her (I couldn't go because it was a school day). When she got home, she was upset. She said Claire didn't look well at all; she looked very thin and run down. She wrote to Jacqueline about it.
About six months later, we learned that Claire had died of anorexia. It was an incredible shock. My mother felt a lot of guilt that she had not known what was going on, but how could she? It was a family secret and not something that was acknowledged or discussed in the 1960s.
It was very sad.