Just After the Wave

by Sandrine Collette

  Sometimes in the evening he takes her hand and tells her about his day, in a low voice as if he were at the hospital, because he has to admit he really feels as if he is, with that inert, silent body next to him, her eyes open on nothing at all, and even if he knows that during the day Madie must get up to take care of Marion, when he sees her empty of everything he wonders if anything will ever come back, if she will get better, if something will begin to resemble their former life. To not think about it, he chatters. Describes the ships, the sounds, the smells, the crane unloading the containers, the seagulls squawking. The construction sites sprouting everywhere to build houses for people like them, who have lost everything, left everything behind, maybe later they’ll be able to afford one, once he gets a better job. So, Pata is not angry with Madie, he talks to her. If he followed his inclination, he would even say, Come with me, missus, come to the bedroom, we’ll make some more little ones, but she’s already in the bedroom, and any more little ones are out of the question, because of the sadness that has paralyzed the house for a week or more, every hour, every puff of air. And Pata doesn’t know what else he can do.

  Often when he is talking with Madie, Liam gives three taps on the door and sticks his head through. A murmur.

  “Everything all right?”

  “Yes, sure, we’re talking.”

  “Is she talking?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Did she eat something?”

  “A little bit, yes.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Come in, son.”

  So Liam sits on the bed across from his father and he takes his mother’s other hand. He tidies a lock of hair that has fallen across her face, and he in turn begins chatting, looking at Madie, then Pata, tells them about his day at high school, what he understands, what he doesn’t understand, Your mother could help you, says his father, he shrugs. He goes along as he sees fit, about the food at the cafeteria, the friends he’s beginning to make, how hot it is for early September, they’d feel better outdoors. Pata doesn’t interrupt his son, lulled by the rhythm of his voice, it brings some life into the bedroom, he hopes that Madie is looking at them, that she wants to come back to them. But there is nothing. Later, when he stretches out next to her, he doesn’t dare touch her, not even for a caress, not even to say goodnight, he remembers the first night on land, her skin as cold as a corpse’s, white and stiff, he thinks, Madie is changing. She will end up like a ghost, or a pebble, he is sure of it. It’s only a question of days, or months. He waits for her to fall asleep, stretches one finger toward her to touch her, and it has no effect on him, neither on her nor on him, she goes on sleeping, he doesn’t shudder, doesn’t feel like running his hand any further along her body, and yet God knows they used to have a good time together, the two of them, before, it was joyful, between two babies, that is surely why they had so many. And now, nothing. Madie has become a stranger, he doesn’t recognize her. It hurts to feel so far away from her and not to know where to put his goddamn hands at night, they used to rest on her hips or around her belly, it hurts, too, the way she keeps him at a distance through her absence and her furtive glances, he feels sorry for wanting to live, maybe he didn’t love his kids enough, no, he did, it’s just that it won’t bring them back, lying in bed all day long, and besides there are the other four, the last four, they have to watch over them twice as carefully as before to thank them for still being there.

  So Pata rolls onto his back and opens his eyes on the night, and thinks of the only pathetic words Madie has been mumbling since they got there, and which lend her gaze an incredible force.

  “Have to go and look all the same. Maybe they went to the wrong place.”

  He knows that in the middle of the night, as she has every night since they got there, she will shake him to say this; and like every time, it will take him hours to calm her down, to explain that the rescuers could not have missed the island, what with maps and the GPS on the boat, it’s their job, they’re used to it. And anyway Pata already went back to them to make sure that they couldn’t have left anything to chance, or missed anything, but the men in uniform shook their heads, so sorry, they crisscrossed the entire former canton to look for people, there was nothing there, they swear, just a few chimney tops still poking through the surface of the water. So you see, Pata did go back to them, because Madie had woken him up with this mad idea of hers which had kept him breathless all the rest of that first night, to the point that by dawn he was almost sure of it himself, full of hope, filled with illusions, and it all came to nothing when the first responders described the sea to him, the bits of houses and belongings floating on the water, an island, yes, there was one, tiny, that would be a summit for a few more hours, with an apple tree at the top—that apple tree, thought Pata, the one that never bore any fruit, above the house. You see, Madie, they did go that far. They searched everywhere. But the mother won’t listen, she moans, hides her head beneath the pillow—You said you would go—and while she gradually drifts off once the father has forced her to take some pills, again she murmurs the unbearable litany:

  “Maybe they got it wrong.”

  Before, Pata would have held her in his arms to console her. Would have tried to make her listen to reason, drying her tears, kissing her hair and her cheeks. Now he looks at this woman who isn’t really his wife anymore and he thinks, This madwoman. He keeps it to himself, utterly silent so the children won’t hear; but there is this disconcerting feeling of loving Madie through thick and thin, the mother of his children, twenty years of happiness even during the difficult times, and now this shame that runs through him when he gazes at this distraught creature, this strange scarecrow, he doesn’t want the neighbors to see her, to talk about her behind his back and feel sorry for him, he doesn’t want anyone to make fun of her.

  In the morning, when she sits lifeless at the window watching the sea as if the dead little children might emerge from it, there is only one thing he feels like doing, and that is shaking her, screaming in her ear, even throwing her out if that’s what it takes, so that she’ll get a grip on herself, gather her wits. A moment later he dreams of holding her to him and murmuring words of comfort, how much stronger they would be together, Remember, Madie, how good things were, before, but he does neither. He waits soundlessly for her to sense his presence and turn to him, tirelessly he smiles at her and murmurs:

  “How do you feel today?”

  There’s no fear of her venting her distress, pouring out the torrents of suffering and ill-being her body displays: she never replies. This is why he asks again, because he knows she will remain silent—he could not stand any more of her pain. And she looks back at him with that gray and black look of hers, berates him in silence and destroys his hopes, does he really think that one morning she will get up and it will be all gone, absence emptiness sorrow, she will toss back the sheets and begin to hum, just like that, as if nothing had happened, as if she’d been healed during that night for no reason, not before, or after: don’t even think of it. Madie will not free herself of her sorrow, it is her sorrow that keeps her going. Without her sorrow, she would have already become a puff of air, a shadow, a mote of dust of a mother. She would no longer be here.

  And this is what Pata tells himself on the eighth day following their return to land, when he goes into the living room at dawn and Madie is not standing by the window. Initially he pauses, surprised—not because this would be abnormal, but because the thought that occurs to him then is that she was still lying next to him in bed and he simply didn’t notice. Perhaps he is the one who is making her so transparent? What if it is his own gaze that no longer knows how to see her? He steps back, silently, his hands running along the walls to find his way through the declining darkness and through the door to the bedroom. Goes in. Cannot see, refrains from switching on the light. A shape under the sheet; he stretches out his arm cautiously, gropes, feels; but it’s just the pil
low rolled up underneath. He pulls on the blanket: there is no one in the bed.

  Something catching in his throat, suddenly. He runs back to the living room.

  Madie?

  He whispered, his voice hoarse, not to wake the children.

  Idiotic, this panic that has suddenly come over him, his thoughts running riot, wondering where she could have . . .

  No, not her.

  Pata runs out like a madman, around the house toward the tall trees. She wouldn’t do that, no. Why did he leave a rope in the shed, why didn’t he think of everything. He runs, one hand gripping his sweater. Of course he thought of it. It was two or three days ago, because Madie was staring at the tall, broad-leaved trees with her sad expression. So why didn’t he hide that damned rope?

  The line of beech trees with their wrinkled bark, turned toward the sky, like lanky, long-haired human shapes. Pata looks. His legs feel like jelly, his arms, his heart. He leans against a tree to catch his breath, coughing and spitting, tears in his eyes.

  A hearty laugh.

  The mother isn’t there.

  Not hanged, not dead. He shakes his fist at the clouds.

  Sets off again.

  Where?

  Hears his rapid breathing while he hurries to the house. One by one he opens the doors, to the rooms where the children are still sleeping, to the bathroom, the toilet. She is nowhere to be found. He even pulls back the curtains to make sure she isn’t hiding behind them, of course it’s stupid, only he’s run out of ideas, under the stairs, in the basement, under the bed, even, Madie cannot be found. Gradually the relief he felt on seeing the empty branches of the tall trees is transformed into growing anxiety. No, she can’t have vanished into thin air—so, once again, where?

  He goes back out to the garden. The shed, the hedge, empty.

  The water: the thought goes through him with a shock.

  He scrambles down the grassy embankment and suddenly hears voices, down there, by the sea. His heart is pounding, he puts one hand to his temple. He would like to call out, doesn’t dare, there’s a little group of people by the water’s edge, looking at something. His eyes wide with fear, Pata murmurs, No, not this. Not this. He is trembling all over.

  Please make it not be her.

  The same fear as a few minutes ago but this time the trees are no longer involved. The water—why didn’t he think of it sooner? The others have seen him. Watch him come running, and it seems to him that they are whispering among themselves, staring at him, at him and then at something where they are, Please God, no, they are bending over it, and he comes up to them abruptly and stops and shouts:

  “What’s going on?”

  At the same time he looks all around for—a body, even part of one, a clump of hair, he is prepared for anything.

  But this?

  The man to his left is staring out to sea, and points to the rope that has been left in an untidy pile on the shore.

  “My boat’s gone. Someone stole my boat.”

  Long after the neighbors have scattered, Pata stays alone by the sea. He did not protest, he did not say it was impossible; and they were sure it was Madie. So maybe. Deep down he knows it’s true. Where else could she be, now that he has searched the house and the garden? He promised them he would pay for the boat. Once they were gone, he heard the neighbors quietly voicing their pity.

  So now he is looking at the sea and wondering what to do. Later, he will go to the police station to declare his wife’s disappearance and they will react exactly as he expected: she is a grown woman, she hasn’t endangered anything or stolen anything—the neighbor had assured him he would keep quiet about the stolen boat—it’s not a matter for the police. Their advice? Wait. She’ll come back. Or not. Maybe she went off with another man, he’d be surprised to learn how often that happens. Pata shakes his head, and so do they. He goes home, disoriented. The children wonder where their mother is. He tells them.

  Emily and Sidonie clap their hands: Louie, Perrine, and Noah will be arriving soon! Liam has to explain to them, and then they frown:

  “But then why did Mommy go to get them?”

  “She made a mistake.”

  “And when she finds out she’s made a mistake will she come back?”

  Liam and his father exchange a quick look.

  “Yes,” says the father.

  “Who’s going to take care of us?”

  “We are, Liam and me.”

  “And Marion? Who’s going to look after her?”

  Again that quick glance.

  “We’ll find someone to help us.”

  “Who?”

  “We don’t know yet. We’ll look for someone.”

  Standing by the water that morning, Pata wondered whether someone should go after Madie. But who? There have been too many losses since August, too many departures; he feels as if there are traps everywhere, into which they could fall one after the other, fooled by certainty, rumors, hopes—and the ambushes of nature gone mad, he clenches his fists just to think of it, they’ve had no storms for quite a while now, so the mother is bound to encounter one on her way, he is sure of it. The neighbor’s boat has a little motor, but not enough fuel for more than a few hours, and after that Madie will have to reckon with the oars she took with her, with the craft’s greater weight, with the paltry amount of supplies she took. Pata counted a ham, some ewe’s cheese, and a big loaf of bread.

  What if he followed her.

  Leaving Liam, the two little girls, and the baby. He shakes his head. There has been too much abandoning, he can’t, not anymore. Save what is left, that’s all he can do; and the mother . . . let her go, then, let her break her heart among the drowned houses, go round in circles amid the driftwood, the scraps of plastic, get it through her head once and for all, so there is no more ambiguity, no more useless hope. Basically, Pata doesn’t mind, he figures it’s the only way for her to turn the page. What does fill him with a different despondency altogether is not knowing whether she’ll have the strength to make it back. So he wonders how long it will be before he has to go back to the police station to try and persuade them to equip a small boat and go and get her, or work something out with Gabriel, who also has a good motorboat, even if it would take him weeks to reimburse the fuel, these things Madie makes him do, after all, there are times he could give her a good slap in the face. Pata bites his nails, bleeds a little.

  * * *

  But Madie knows nothing of the thoughts running through his head, how Pata would gladly slap her just now, his rancor, his urge to scream that they are still there, the ones who survived, the ones she should be looking after instead of chasing after phantoms. No, the mother sees only one thing, the boat plowing through the water and taking her closer to their island, she knows the boat will run out of gas long before she gets there, but this is already a start, she thinks, with something bubbling inside her for the first time, and she thinks, hope—no, wait, not hope: certainty. This effervescence in her guts, it can’t just come out of nowhere, it can’t be a simple illusion, she feels it as a sign, she will find them, she doesn’t know where or how or why, but she will find them and bring them back. She cannot deny that their little clan has dropped from eleven to nine, she witnessed it herself; but not six. She has not seen them dead, those children, she has not seen them swept away, she doesn’t believe in it. Therein lies her strength: unless she comes upon their bodies floating on the surface of the water, she remains convinced they are alive and that she can still save them. She is convinced, too, that it was another house the first responders saw, and this one chance remains, that of error, she just has to seize it, and that is why she is there.

  She cannot hear Pata’s reproaches, and if she could she wouldn’t care. What he does not understand is the breach into which Madie is making her way, the breach that may allow her to forgive herself for letting go of Lotte in the s
torm, for not grabbing Matteo as he leapt overboard.

  Her eyes glued to the GPS, she has set her course straight to Levet. She brought an additional jerry can of fuel that she stole out of the father’s shed, and she figures she will have four or five hours on the outboard, during which she hopes to cover nearly three quarters of the distance. Her face is lashed by wind and spray; frowning, she feels ready to confront anything, and she knows she has to keep up the pace. When the motor and the battery give up, she’ll have to go back to rowing, to her compass, and to the map.

  At 11:20 the outboard begins to sputter.

  Madie pinches her lips, says nothing. Just thinks, Here we go. This far her escapade has felt like a picnic. She slices a piece of bread, a hunk of cheese, and some dried ham, and wolfs them down while pushing the boat to its last drop of fuel, then she rediscovers silence after the noisy clattering of the motor. At the same time the sea’s mute hostility comes back to her.

  “On we go,” she murmurs, to give herself courage.

  She reaches for the oars. She hasn’t done a lot of rowing in her life, she left it to Pata, and to the children because they thought it was fun. For a quarter of an hour she struggles with the oars, they swoop up too high or plunge too deep in the water, or get muddled in her hands—this thing that looked so easy when the father and Liam went at it all out. What an idiot! she scolds herself, tears welling when she realizes she is going sideways, wasting time, zigzagging despite her efforts, making no headway. Bit by bit the boat gets back on course; she finds it too heavy, and hesitates to dump the outboard into the sea to be rid of its weight, but gives up at the sight of the bolts which keep it in place. Their neighbor must be happy, she thinks with a sigh. She has put on some gloves because of the blisters she knows she will get, but half an hour later, neither the leather around her hands nor the hope that grips her have allowed for the fact that her shoulders, arms, and back are pleading for mercy, already, her face is covered in sweat, her body shakes every time she pulls the oars toward her; Madie’s mouth is wide open and suddenly there is doubt, huge doubt all through her.