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“You can’t tell me you actually agree with this outdated nonsense!” I shout at my family.

“It would be better if you just asked him,” my mother says in English.

“Ask me what?” Levi asks.

I sigh and turn to him. I take his hands. “I want you to know that I will love you no matter what you answer. What do you know about hockey?”

“There’s a lot of ice and there’s a puck.”

“Get on with it!” Dad says.

“I’m doing it!” I snap in French. “Levi, listen to me very carefully,” I continue in English. “Are you now, or have you ever been, a supporter of any Toronto-based sports team?”

He opens his mouth. The living room gets very silent.

“Toronto has sports teams?” he asks me. “I didn’t know. That’s just sad.”

There is a pause while I translate this into French for my father, who reacts by laughing heartily and embracing him, and, in a move so rare that my jaw drops, he kisses him on both cheeks. Really kisses him, not the air-kisses that women give. “Bienvenue à ma famille,” he says. “Make him a Montréal fan.”

“Bien sûr, papa,” I answer.

“Tell him I’m Army,” Levi says eagerly.

I don’t even get a chance to. “Army?” my father says in English. He points to himself in delight. “Moi aussi!” And then he hugs Levi like they were long-lost brothers and puts his hands on my shoulders.

“He says—” I start.

“I got it, baby boy,” Levi says. “Merci, Monsieur Saint-Jacques.”

The doorbell rings again. “You be with your family,” Levi says. “I’ll get it.”

“I am so happy for you,” my mother says.

“Momma!” I hear Levi say from the entryway, and as a group, we all turn and look toward the entryway to the living room. A few seconds later, a blonde woman with very curly hair comes into the room. “Which one is Bastien?” she asks in a deep Southern twang.

The rest of the family points at me. I raise my hand nervously.

“I’m Helen Nichols. Apparently, I’m gonna be your mother-in-law.” She shakes my hand and steps back, looking at me. “Does he speak English?”

“Momma! He’s my psych professor! Of course he speaks English.”

Now, everybody gasps, except my father, who looks puzzledly around, and I want to die of sheer shame.

“You were fucking your psych teacher?” she asks.

“Former psych teacher,” I say. “They fired me.”

Momma rounds on me. “Are you tellin’ me that you’re wastin’ your damned life on some no-account with no job?”

“What did she say?” Papa says.

My mother does not react. She looks at Helen Nichols with the expression she uses on cashiers when they shortchange her. She turns to Papa and says, in French, for him to sort out the coffee things.

Levi claps his hands. “Okay, people. Calm the fuck down. I met Bastien before he was my teacher, before I even knew he would be my teacher. And he’s not my teacher. I’m not in high school. He’s my professor. And before you ask, Momma, I did all the seducing, from start to finish. I know it’s a shock, but enough. This is the man I chose. I’m not asking for your permission, or even your approval.”

“C’est romantique!” my grandmother says, and takes Levi’s hand in both of hers.

There’s dead silence in the room. My mother is the first to break it. “Well then, Madame Knight, I believe we will be family soon,” she says.