Life, Only Better

by Anna Gavalda

  Okay, okay. We’ll put an ellipse there. (Ha ha, yes, he did teach me one or two things along the way . . . ) Let’s just say, for the purposes of this story, that this lovely person had sent me tons of letters—love letters, as I proudly thought at the time, but which I have since had to admit were lyrics and writing exercises—that I eventually threw away one night when I thought I was free of him.

  Yep, I ended up buried under a heap of cigarette butts, empty bottles, coffee grounds, and dirty makeup-remover pads.

  Hallelujah. I’d finally gotten rid of the letters.

  Except for one.

  Oh, really? Why?

  Why that one?

  Because it was the last one. Because it belonged to me more than all the others. Because I was, and still am, weak enough to think that it was sincere, and even if it hadn’t been, that didn’t matter much anymore. I’m honest enough to distinguish between the beautiful and the true, and to choose the beautiful when it’s obvious. Because the question of figuring out whether something is art or smut has never really interested me. Because that letter reminded me that I’d been loved by a talented guy, that I’d inspired him, and that yes, despite everything, despite him, I’d been that lucky.

  And because it’s beautiful.

  And I was beautiful, too.

  Because I grew up with it. Because it watched me grow up. Just ordinary sheets of A4 paper, but loaded with little marks in black ink and placed in a series by which I was first horribly embarrassed then flattered, skeptical, nauseated, prostrate with sorrow and huddled over a wastebasket, and finally . . . changed.

  Changed. Fatalistic. Conservative. Guarded. The guardian of the little temple of what served as my life before ending up in . . .

  . . . my handbag.

  Out of discretion. So it wouldn’t fall into the hands of my roommates or anyone else. Ever.

  It was in the little pocket hidden in the inner lining. The only one that closed with a zipper. Narrow, discreet, undetectable by anyone who wasn’t specifically looking for it.

  It was still there, but it wasn’t in its envelope anymore as I was sure I’d put it in, but around the envelope instead. Clamping down around my name and my address at the time—as if telling me, I imagine, that it had been read and that it was important for me to know that.

  (Oh, stupid language! Not there; not now! Not at this exact moment in my story! And I laugh. All alone, and loudly, at being subjected to such ridiculous rules of agreement.)

  . . . and that it was important for me to be informed of that.

  There. It’s a more awkward way of saying it, but it’ll do.

  * * *

  Yes, you see, I asked a stranger to address the envelope for me. A clumsy fake-out, I know, but don’t send it back to me. Not this letter. It’s more worthy than I am, I promise.

  If you don’t want to read it now, then wait. Wait two months, or two years, or maybe ten years. Wait until you don’t care anymore.

  Ten years. I really think highly of myself.

  Wait as long as you need to, but one day, please, unfold it. Please.

  Our last conversation—or our final battle, should I say—has been haunting me for weeks. You chastised me for my egotism, my vileness, my selfishness. You accused me of using you, sucking you dry, loving what you inspired in me instead of who you were.

  You said I’d never loved you.

  You feel betrayed. You threw it in my face that you’d never read another book as long as you live. You said you hated words as much as you hated me and even more, if that kind of repulsion was humanly possible. That words were pathetic weapons in the hands of pathetic people like me. That they were worthless, they said nothing, they lied. That they destroyed everything they touched, and that I’d made you permanently disgusted by them.

  Now, tonight, in two months or in two years, you’ll read the words below and you’ll know, my love, that you weren’t always right.

  Your closed eyelids when you fell asleep in my arms, Mathilde, looked like the insides of lychee husks. The same iridescent gleam, the same pink, unexpected and poignant. Your pretty earlobes were like two plump coxcombs—tiny porcelain pebbles, made tender and meltingly soft from simmering so long in a broth of saliva from your endless frothy kisses—and their spiraling cartilage teases, like Carême’s beignets, a fricassee of birds’ heads.

  The scent of your hair, there where it grows at the back of your neck, just above that delta, that secret downy gap, that funnel for caresses, had the piquant bitterness of the inside of a loaf of bread, and your fingernails—to someone who spent hours sucking them—were like so many almonds blanched a bit too early before summer’s end.

  The hollow between your collarbones sparkled with a tangy juice that fizzed on the tongue, and the curve of your shoulder provided the fresh, fine-grained flesh, meltingly soft as the bottom of a pear, to soothe it.

  An Anjou pear suckled in the shadowy light of the saddler . . .

  At the corner of your mouth, those minuscule bubbles of saliva when you laughed sparkled like drops of pink champagne, and the tip of your tongue, my beloved, had the grain, the dusky red, the pale and delicate roughness of wild strawberries.

  The same adorable, innocent, hidden sweetness, secret, shy, and desperately, desperately sweet.

  Your nipples? Two little Provence beans, the first ones, the ones gathered in February, which must be earned, shucked while raw, and the curves of your breasts beneath my hands had the smooth golden softness of spring butter.

  The little valleys leading to your belly button, if I moistened you with pleasure, had the sweet tang of wild plums picked in forgotten hedgerows and happily awakened a mouth heavy with so much sweetness.

  Your hips were like two beautiful brioche tops, and the small of your back had—always, I imagine—no, I remember—the delicate taste of acacia blossoms. A heady, imperious fragrance that continued along the curves of your buttocks until the exquisite creases where your thighs met. That tender, dimpled flesh, soft and shining, which so often imprisoned overly daring fingers . . .

  The arches of your feet were musky, the hollows of your ankles bitter, the lengths of your calves fruity, the backs of your knees salty. The insides of your thighs tasted mineral, and what ran between them, and what came next, and what dripped at the end, was a reduction of everything that had led me there. A core. The core of you and of the whole universe.

  That taste, the taste of your being, modern-day princess, delicious, unseemly, and tattooed, to which I helped myself then and overindulged in . . . well, now I have only words with which to savor it.

  Alas, these miserable tools—and it’s you who reminded me of this—they’re worthless. They know nothing, invent nothing, and teach nothing when they remember, and relate the tale . . .

  More than your skin, your hair, your fingernails or your scent, it’s your essence, your humors, the lifeblood of your insides, your pectin, your vaginal juices—that messenger, elevator operator, telltale of your hunger, your thirst, and your giddiness—that altar boy of your desires—that still, even tonight, makes my mouth water.

  “What did she taste like, your beloved?” ask all 26 letters of the only alphabet I ever learned, “and what order would you put us in, if you challenged us to tell her?”

  Swallow’s nest. Warm fig. Overripe apricot. Tiny raspberry swallowed beneath an icy drizzle.

  Sometimes, wood shavings. Sometimes, tides, soul blood and menstrual blood. Or soft roe. Or milkiness. Aphrodite’s colostrum.

  A terrifying mixture of mother’s milk and the snot of an animal in heat.

  Truffle in aspic. Bouquet garni of labias and hems of flesh poached to moistness. Eviscerated stingray. Pink flesh attached to a fish bone. The water from shellfish. The juice beneath the shells. Emulsion of sea-urchin coral. Suction of ink from jigboat-fished calamari. Crazy calisthenics. Pussy aga
inst the flat of my tongue. Ambrosial candy. Citron. The iodine-tinged zest of a red grapefruit. Vi . . .

  Oh, Mathilde.

  I give up.

  I loved you.

  I loved you more than I can say.

  And much less well.

  2.

  My hands shook. Something—I don’t know exactly what; lingering shame, modesty, secrets torn open, deflowered—rose up in my throat, turning my stomach on the way.

  I didn’t understand what was happening to me. Hey now, you’re getting all worked up. Calm down, old girl, calm down. It’s nothing, it was nothing, just a little highbrow wank job by a nerd telling himself a story while he sucked himself off.

  Plus he couldn’t even pass the qualification test in cutlery and charcuterie.

  Doesn’t matter. I burned it in the sink straightaway.

  I was shaking and sweating. I was nauseated. I put great effort into pushing the little shreds of blackened paper toward the drain, one hand cupped over my mouth.

  I was rushing, I was ready, I was late. Cold sweat stung my face and I felt my makeup streaming off in rivulets.

  I threw up.

  3.

  I scrubbed the sink out with Javel and rinsed it copiously with water. For a long time. Meticulously. It was time for all that misery to disappear into the sewers of Paris.

  “Are you okay?”

  Pauline’s voice.

  I hadn’t heard her come through the front door. It wasn’t my health that was worrying her; it was the waste of water.

  “Are you sick?”

  I turned around to reassure her, and I could see that she didn’t believe me.

  “My God! What’s happened to you now? Did you drink too much last night? Is that it?”

  What a reputation.

  “No!” I babbled stupidly, trying to fix my mascara with an index finger. “It’s just, tonight—tonight is a big night—I look chic, right? I’m going to my friend Charlotte’s wedding . . . ”

  She didn’t smile. “Mathilde?”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t understand the way you’re living your life . . . ”

  “I don’t either!” I laughed, wiping my nose with the back of my hand.

  She shrugged and headed for her beloved kettle.

  I felt stupid. It was rare for her to take an interest in me like that. I wanted to make amends. And I needed to confide in someone.

  “Do you remember . . . the guy who found my bag?”

  “The weirdo?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you heard from him again? Is he bothering you? Oh, damn, there’s hardly any tea left . . . ”

  “No.”

  “I’ll have to tell Julie to get some more.”

  “He’s a chef.”

  She looked at me strangely. “Oh . . . oh, really? So what? Why are you telling me this?”

  “I just . . . look, I’m going out, otherwise I’ll just screw everything up again.”

  “When will you be home?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She followed me to the door. “Mathilde?”

  “Yes.”

  She straightened my collar. “You look pretty.”

  I smiled at her, bowing my head piously.

  She thought I was charmingly embarrassed, but really I was fighting back tears.

  4.

  Then . . . nothing. Then is now, and I have nothing left to tell. Plus I don’t even want to anymore. Now, and even if you can’t tell with the naked eye, I’m curled up on the edge of life and I’m just waiting for it to go by.

  Latent depression. I can’t remember where I picked up that two-faced rat of an expression, but I used it again with pleasure. It suited me. The latent part, I suppose. For years people had cited me as an example of it, put it into my head even with my strength, my cheerfulness, my courage, and . . . well, it was only too easy for them, the cowards. Much too easy. It’s true that I’ve tried to protect you, and held on as long as I could, but I can’t go on with it anymore.

  I’m exhausted.

  Because it was all an act, my friends. Oh yes, all of it. All of it was just an act. I knew that my mother was filling out those testing form thingies any which way, checking boxes wherever she had to. She’d leave them lying around on purpose, to reassure me. I knew that all the good news she spent hours talking loudly on the phone to my grandmother about was nothing but hot air. I knew they were both lying to me. I knew my father went straight off to fuck his whore after he dropped my mom off at the hospital for her chemo, and I knew she knew it too.

  I knew he’d be out of the house even before her body was cold. That I’d end up living with my older sister, that I’d shave my head and my eyebrows, that I’d fail my high school exams and babysit my sister’s kids to earn my keep. I knew I’d act sweet, classy, above suspicion; that I’d be Auntie Yoyo, who jumped on the beds and knew how to arrange the Pokémon and Bella Sara cards perfectly. I knew I’d let my hair grow back. That I’d make up for lost time, sleep around like crazy, drink like a fish. That I’d build a reputation for myself as a major party girl, tough and always up for anything, so that people would label me as they should, and write me off for good when they did.

  I knew that my brother-in-law worked me as hard as he did so he could pretend to be Mickey Corleone, that family was sacred and blah blah blah, but I also knew that if I stopped doing his dirty work, someone else would come along in my place and do it just as well. Yeah, I knew all that, and if I never told you anything it’s because I’m generous.

  The only thing I found beautiful during all those years spent at the front—the only time I didn’t lie—an asshole turned it into a book. So there you go. It might be polite to be happy, as they say, but today I don’t care about being polite anymore.

  Today I am flat on my back. I’m sticking out my middle finger and pulling the plug.

  But, unfortunately, you can’t fight your own nature, so—good girl that I am—I’m going to finish out this story. I’m warning you, though: you can push fast-forward a few times. You won’t miss much.

  ACT THREE

  1.

  One day, once upon a time, I forgot my handbag in a café near the Arc de Triomphe. In that bag there was an unsealed envelope containing a hundred 100-euro bills. A hundred green bills straight from the bank. Nice and crisp, well-ironed and clean as new money. A big guy found it and gave it back to me four days later, intact.

  Carefully hidden inside that bag, there was also a letter that told the life story of my cunt and my tits in 3-D. These things happen, I guess. Maybe not quite as juicy a letter as that, but photos, videos, compromising texts, indiscreet attachments; seductive, disgusting, and malicious pixels. With all these snitching thingamajigs, all this paraphernalia of narcissism and shamelessness we’re all so determined to equip ourselves with in this day and age, some major heartache is bound to result, don’t you think?

  Oh yes, it is. There’s no way these things won’t pour salt in wounds and on shredded hearts. So why was I taking it so badly? Why was I acting like a freaked-out virgin all of a sudden? Why should it matter to me that a guy I was never going to see again had gotten a little taste of me? My squawking didn’t make sense. When had I become so delicate? Fucking hell. I felt it anyway.

  Nothing made sense anymore, least of all me.

  I went to that wedding with two Spasfon tablets under my tongue and the certainty that I’d end up torpedoed. I might have looked pretty, but it wouldn’t last. I could depend on that.

  2.

  I arrived out of breath and, in my mandatory killer stilettos, I twisted my ankle running headlong up the front steps of the 20th Arrondissement courthouse.

  Grimacing, I caught up with a guy who was as dressed up as I was, though he seemed to be in much less of a hurry. “Excuse me, you . . . uh
. . . I . . . I’m looking for the wedding hall . . . do you know where it is?”

  He offered an arm for me to lean on while I got my glass slipper back on, then said in a very friendly way:

  “The funny farm? It’s over there! I’m in too—going to the ceremony, I mean. Stick with me, wobbly one, we’ll be less conspicuous that way.”

  Bingo; I’d found my second thief. He was probably the one who put me in a taxi sometime well after midnight; I’d lost my shoes hours ago.

  The newlyweds never called me again, or thanked me for my wedding gift. I don’t remember what state I was in, let alone what I might have said to their guests, but it must not have been very nuptial.

  3.

  But that was the last time I got plastered.

  And because they don’t seem like much, those six virtuous little words all lined up in a row: the-last-time-I-got-plastered, I wasn’t suspicious of them.

  Big mistake.

  It was a very bad sign.

  Because what’s left for people who have stopped drinking, even though they were using it as a last refuge against despair?

  Despair.

  It was all muddled. It’s a muddle, despair. Especially in my case, as a three-card trick player who’d known how to mix it all up so well for so many years.