Eyes Shut

September 21st, 1994 - After dinner, Simon Denomme (15) goes to buy popsicles at the convenience store with his bicycle. He never returns home. The next day, his body is fished out of the river. He jumped off the bridge. He offered no omen nor left an explanation. But come to think of it, he had several reasons for contemplating suicide.

27 years later, Elise (38), his younger sister, attends his high school reunion. She wants to learn more about her brother of whom she keeps few memories. His classmates tell her stories that support the generic theory that he was a confused teenager affected by his parents’ recent divorce. He was also the black sheep of the high school staff. On her way out, Elise finds a note on her windshield: «There are things you don’t know about your brother.” Intrigued, she searches thoroughly through his bedroom. The mother kept it intact after all these years. Lorraine (72) is a bitter woman, eaten away by guilt and who refuses to stir up the past.

Elise revisits family archives, dissects photo albums, and tracks down the protagonists of that period. Is it Lorraine’s fault who slept with her brother-in-law and caused the family nucleus to implode? Bantering that Simon suffered through at school? From the violence of a humiliated father who abandoned his family to start a new life in Alberta? From a broken heart? A quarrel with Berge, Simon’s best friend and stooge? And what about the beautiful school nurse, Nathalie, who has already been accused of flirting with a student?

Elise’s relentless quest highlights her own wounds inflicted by a ghost that ended her childhood carelessness and sense of security. She learned to ignore her needs to better take care of her invasive mother, to always remain on the lookout, not to get too attached; knowing that everything can change dramatically.

The more Elise digs, the more the fog surrounding the circumstances of Simon’s disappearance thickens. She discovers that her brother was part of a self-help group made up of teenage delinquents and led by a charismatic young priest. The former pastoral animator, today bishop, is an accomplice in Elise’s search, evoking too many questions remained unanswered. Simon documented those days in a diary. Elise dissects it, searching for meaning in the smallest entries, sometimes ambiguous. It alludes to a mysterious character, «M», who seems to have been decisive in the days preceding Simon’s suicide.