Marie-Ange gives herself a little time. The caesarean left her with painful memories. Men are so sweet when they’re being condescending: “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a few stretch marks?” You go and have someone cut open your abs with a pair of pliers and split your uterus—then maybe we’ll have a conversation about how women are so shallow that they think twice before doing it again. And the healing process is absolute hell. This is the point when you realize that you use your abdominal muscles for almost everything. For a month, she walked around bent double. After a vaginal delivery, you can’t take any serious exercise for a month. After a caesarean, it’s more like six. By the time she went back to her Pilates lessons, she looked like a sack of potatoes. And she had no muscle tone—it took a year of grueling exercises before she could stand up straight. It takes a lot of work before you can wear a swimsuit again. This was something else she didn’t know—but as far as the competitive mothers’ club is concerned, a caesarean is only for the feckless. Motherhood is not as all as she imagined: she assumed that it meant mothers supported each other, genuine female solidarity. But giving birth is just buying a ticket to enter the race. It doesn’t guarantee you a medal.
And at the same time, she really doesn’t care. Maybe she cannot show Clara off in society, but her need for affection has never been so fulfilled, and she cannot imagine any purpose to her life without her daughter. Xavier is a brilliant father. She criticizes lots of things about him, but when it comes to Clara, she can’t fault him. He is patient, he is firm, he plays the clown, he is attentive, he sets high standards for her, he remembers to praise her. Marie-Ange has only to fall into step and everything goes well. He is crazy about his daughter, but it is a love that never excludes her mother. And you earn big points in the world of mothers. In the early days, she avoided saying, “He picks her up from day care every day,” she assumed that her friends would think she was living with an idle layabout. She was wrong. Something that she realized over time. “He’s watched The Aristocats with her sixty-three times, it was his favorite film when he was a kid and Clara loves it.” Or: “He plays all her video games with her, he wants to make sure that there’s nothing there that she can’t work out on her own,” it’s like, “He found a miniature bass guitar and he’s teaching her how to play.” You score big. In fact, the other mothers are not thinking, so your guy never tidies away the Nintendo and he still has a bass guitar in a case in the closet, or he’s a girl, you’ve married a girl. No. They’re thinking: creative guy, masculine but modern, and they say things like, “It’s so important for a little girl, having her father take an interest. If they feel valued by their father, it changes their whole conception of men and what it means to be female.” Marie-Ange knows this is bullshit: her own father was good with her. But that didn’t stop him from being an asshole. But since they seem convinced that it is true, Marie-Ange is only too happy to tell them stories about how wonderful Xavier is.
One more reason for not leaving him. You know what you have to lose, you don’t know what you stand to gain. She knows that if one of the guys she occasionally sleeps with made a big fuss, insisting that she leave Xavier, and if he had a good job, she wouldn’t think twice. But none of her lovers have ever tried to persuade her to leave her husband. Any more than they considered breaking up their own marriage. So she stays. If leaving means living alone and never being in a relationship again, she would prefer to live with the father of her child. Some mornings, when she wakes up, she feels a bitter, visceral hatred toward him. She tidies the house, going over and over all the ways in which he hinders her, suffocates her, bores her. But she never talks to him about this. And she is not sure that she would get along as well with Clara if it was just the two of them. She loves her daughter partly because she sees her through his eyes. He is so proud to be the man of the house.
You need to be wary of answered prayers. So often, when she came home in the evening, she has wished, “Let him surprise me.” She was tired of coming home to find Xavier there. Happy to see her. So loving, so dependent, so affectionate … She had to stifle the urge to recoil. He had no idea how easy it is to suffocate a woman. Sometimes, when he took her in his arms, she wanted to push him away—inspire me to dream, scare me, make me feel alive, for fuck’s sake. She prayed that he would surprise her. But this was not what she had in mind. It finally came, the surprise … These days, it is all about “the gang.” Subutex’s gang. She is no longer the center of her husband’s world. Though she would have sworn otherwise, she misses it. It all started after the coma. Doctors are morons. All their tests tell them nothing. Sometimes, she wants to beat them around the head with a baseball bat: do all the tests you like, fine, but it’s obvious to anyone that the guy has lost some neurons. And no one helped him. Vernon Subutex has become her husband’s idol. The guy’s a first-class loser. But attractive. She would have fucked him herself when she saw him in her living room, that weekend he spent looking after their bulldog. Some guys are like that—it’s impossible to say what it is exactly. They reek of sex.
Dimitri, her current fuck-buddy, is like that. Handsome as fuck. So young. He has his shoulders and chest waxed and shaves his balls before he sees her. He works as a window cleaner at the office. They ran into each other a couple of times before they hooked up. When she found out he got waxed, she felt sorry for him. Apparently all the guys his age do it. Why the hell would they put themselves through it … it’s not as if women need it to find them attractive! She often wondered whether Xavier cheated on her. It would hardly be surprising, given all the free time he has … All she asks is that he doesn’t tell her. When he started going to the park every day, she couldn’t help but wonder. She was jealous. He said “we” when he talked about his friends, and he seemed so happy. She took a couple of days’ leave to spy on him. She was convinced there had to be another woman. She stalked him. He spent his days in the park, sitting on the grass, smoking blunts. With his famous “gang.” Seeing them, she thinks of stories she read about the Middle Ages, whole villages in the grip of mass hysteria. He’s enjoying himself. And it’s not as though he enjoys himself with her. He suggests that she come with him, he even wants to bring Clara, but Marie-Ange refuses. She has no desire to be part of this ship of fools. He is changing. He is happier. This is what most infuriates her. Compared with him, she feels worthless. Nothing has ever happened, not even something stupid, that might make her feel happier. She cannot understand what he sees in this bunch of hacks and misfits. But he has come out of his shell, he has been reborn. He is drifting away. She often thinks about giving him an ultimatum: it’s them or me. It would be ridiculous. But she needs him to reassure her, to tell her that he would do anything for her. She misses it, this thing she had complained about for years, this obsessive, unconditional love. And she does not know who he is anymore. She doesn’t want to lose him. She doesn’t love him, but she could not bear to be without him.
Joyeux, the poodle, is first to bound out of her daughter’s room. That means she is awake. He comes and laps from his bowl, then nuzzles his head against her thigh, begging to be stroked. At first Marie-Ange couldn’t stand the sight of the dog. He reminds her of Xavier. A big, useless lump. It’s unbelievable. How much she loved that man, how much she admired him. And now, the sight of an aging, foul-smelling poodle sprawled on the sofa reminds her of her husband. They loved each other, in the beginning. No one ever tells you the truth about these things. That’s all it is. Everyone gets bored after the first few years. She can see it all around her—you do your best to hide it, but everyone in a relationship ends up bored. The most important variable is how much effort you put in, playing to the gallery. There are couples who are in love with the effect they have on other people. As long as there is an audience, they continue to pretend. But as soon as they’re in the bedroom, they’re bored senseless.
Clara appears, padding barefoot across the parquet floor. Marie-Ange shouts: “Slippers!” and feels guilty for starting the day by critici
zing her daughter. She has a tendency to snap at her. When Xavier is around, she is more careful. The little girl reappears in her red tartan slippers, hair tousled, eyes puffy from sleep, she looks like an angel. She wraps her arms around her mother’s neck. She smells so good in the morning. “Can I have my Nesquik?” “I’ll make it for you now, darling. Do you want a big bowl of Froot Loops or a little one?” This is a little secret they have when Xavier is not around: Marie-Ange gives her sugary cereals. They’re bad for her, but Clara loves them.
“Can I watch a cartoon while I eat my breakfast, Maman?” Marie-Ange sighs. When her father is around, Clara never asks if she can watch television in the morning … Marie-Ange is happy to plonk her in front of the TV sometimes so she can do the housework or check her emails. It’s not good for her, every parent knows that. She should get her dressed and suggest an activity. But it is very practical. She says: “Okay, but just the one,” and feels guilty, because it suits her.
Xavier has nerve, leaving her on her own over the long weekend. The three of them could have gone away together. He might have thought of that. Or thought, why don’t I look after Clara so Marie-Ange can get a little rest. This is the third time he has gone to see “them.” It just gets better and better. It was bad enough when he was going to the park, but now he has to take the train. And he didn’t say where he was going. He’d better get a grip, and soon, because she is not going to put up with this much longer. She has no idea where he is. And his phone is switched off. Well, she wanted him to surprise her, and he has. But not in the way that she wanted.
Clara puts on the DVD of Frozen. Marie-Ange cannot suppress a shudder of loathing as she hears the opening credits theme. She hates this song … Clara has always been like this, when she decides she likes a cartoon, you have to watch it on a constant loop until you’re sick of it. Clara is snuggled between the dog’s paws. Marie-Ange sits down for two minutes, strokes her daughter’s ankle, and watches the screen, where two sisters are playing together, the elder is using her ice magic, while her little sister is playing in the drifts of white powdery snow she is magically conjuring in the ballroom … When she accidentally hurts her little sister, she is inconsolable and resolves never to use her powers again. Marie-Ange starts to doze, but is woken by a thought. How can she have watched this film so many times without realizing that it is the story of Xavier? She couldn’t work out what he saw in this fucking film, but it’s blindingly obvious. Two children separated by white powder. Each crying on opposite sides of the door of their lost relationship. It is Xavier and his brother. Why does she feel so infuriated every time he mentions the emptiness he feels because he was unable to protect his brother? Everything he finds moving irritates Marie-Ange, puts her on the defensive. What happened to the tenderness between them? She sees Elsa in a different light, the young queen who builds a wall of ice between herself and the world. Is she like Elsa? Who can get close to her now, without her immediately becoming defensive? She suddenly becomes aware of the rage that has been swelling in her chest all morning. What has her husband done that is so terrible that she hates him so much? What do you do when your relationship has become a factory churning out frustrations? Xavier is changing. He took a blow to the head, and he is not the same as he was. So what? Before it happened, she was the one complaining that he never changed. She doesn’t want to leave him, she doesn’t want him to stay—it is a circle that cannot be squared. She is afraid. But of what?
Marie-Ange bends down and kisses her daughter’s ankle, the round, bony protuberance. She will never again love the girl’s father. Never feel physical passion for him. That is reserved for others. He will no longer make her dream. She no longer believes in the stories of “flames of brilliant red / bursting forth anew / from mountains long thought dead,” etc. What do you do with love when there is no love left? In the film, Hans, the villain, says to the heroine, “I would never shut you out.” And Marie-Ange feels the urge to cry.
AS HE DOES EVERY DAY when he wakes up, Vernon wonders what the weather in Paris is like. He misses the city. Pamela has given him a pair of Ray-Bans, gold frames, tinted glass like the ones drug dealers used to wear in the eighties. When he wears them, he looks like an idiot, but he likes the color they give things, it looks as though summer is soaked in whiskey. There is a campsite five hundred yards away, they are organizing the first party of the season. On the beaches, the beach huts will soon be open. The music is carried in the breeze—Daft Punk, “Get Lucky.” In the distance, a train is passing. It connects the little villages along the coast. There is a little station ten minutes’ walk away. Today, the last tourist will disembark, in clusters, into this godforsaken corner of L’Île-Rousse … In the little house that serves as their headquarters, there is a shower outside on the terrace. The water runs along the steps made of interlocking blocks of stone. Sometimes, during the day, Vernon looks around and has trouble believing that what is happening here is his life. He knew nothing about Corsica. They have been here for two weeks. This is the third place they have set up house. He goes with the flow. A family of wild boars passes by every night, and grass snakes slither across the terrace during siesta time. Spiders as big as his fist hide in the bushes and huge birds flap their wings above the rooftops. The beach is not far away. But he never goes there. He doesn’t like getting sand in his boots. He preferred Brittany. Here, everyone wears flip-flops. Too many toes for his liking.
Xavier is already up. He is playing with Emma, a pedigree pit bull bitch that Olga rescued. The bitch has teats that trail along the ground. Farther off, three young guys are sitting, chatting under an olive tree. They are about twenty. Vernon has never seen them before. The campsite is already full. After tomorrow, it will gradually begin to empty out, like a bathtub when the plug is pulled. The three silhouettes move, one of them scratches his throat. They are joined by a girl who tries to persuade them to get up and go with her. They would rather stay sitting there, drinking beer. They slept in one of the dozens of tents that have blossomed all around the house in the past two days. With every party, more and more people come. None of this makes any sense. And it can’t last. Vernon woke up with “A Day in the Life” running through his head. Already, the sun is beating down like a blind drummer. In Corsica, the summer is beginning. It is only the middle of May. Wasps buzz over his coffee. Émilie comes and sits next to him. She arrived last night. She doesn’t feel as though she fits in, she is tense as always. She is wearing a blue ’50s dress that really suits her. Vernon lays a hand on her shoulder and says, “So, are you ready for a little Julos Beaucarne?” It is a record he played in Brittany, Émilie had spent the whole of the next day mocking him. “I still can’t believe you had the balls to play it.” “Well, did it work or didn’t it?” It was dawn. There were hundreds of people much younger than them on the dance floor. “Everything is about starting afresh.” He knew that he could play it. On the dance floor, they were prepared. The segue had worked, perfectly. Except for Émilie, who is still giggling about it weeks later.
* * *
All this started after the funeral. Sylvie had remained stoic while Loïc was buried, hands stuffed into the pockets of her black trench coat, her shoulders hunched, staring blankly as people filed past to lay a rose at the grave, then followed the gang as they discreetly headed for the cemetery gates.
In the RER on the way back, they all had a vicious hangover. They all sat at the back of the train car, and at first, no one had said anything. Lydia Bazooka made her lips quiver with every breath, as though trying to relax them. Then she had said to Daniel: “I didn’t realize that Loïc had so many neo-Nazi friends … It was really sleazy, the funeral.” Daniel raised his hands above his head, stretching: “When you see the state of them, you have to think they’ve got fucking nerve, claiming to be the defenders of the white race … If that’s our genetic inheritance, we’re completely fucked. If we leave them to it, France will have the ugliest population in the world.” Lydia shifted her hip slightly closer to h
is to let him know that if he could manage to forget his little tattoo artist for a couple of minutes, she would be happy to carry on this conversation, tonight, at her place. At that point, Sylvie had burst into tears. Noisily. This was not I’ll-shed-a-little-private-tear-and-hope-nobody-notices. Oh, no. She was sobbing loudly enough to shatter windows. “Can’t you see, everything is fucked. Everything. It’s all fucked.” Everyone around her was dumbstruck. No one really knew what she was getting at: was she talking about the grim atmosphere at the funeral, the fact that summer was almost over and they would no longer be meeting up in the park, or was it something more personal? Sélim had taken her in his arms and comforted her. Xavier had slumped, depressed, against the side of the car. Daniel and Lydia had exchanged a worried look as if to say, shit, we’ve obviously said something terrible without realizing it. And Pamela Kant had stepped into the middle of the group, gripping the handrail so as not to fall: “I love you all. I refuse to let us go our separate ways like this.” Vernon had waited for someone to crack a joke to break the tension, but everyone remained silent. As though thinking.
This was the day when everything had changed. Now he was not the one who hovered over the group. He had been the astonished witness to a rare phenomenon: group hysteria. It had less to do with what was said than with the atmosphere in which it was said. He had sat in his corner, thinking about Loïc, picturing him dancing. He could see him, fists raised, chest thrust out, stamping his feet and shadow boxing. A frenzy of pure joy. Pamela had slipped her arm through his, in that particular way of hers, a gesture of intimacy that was not sexual enough that it gave someone permission to slip a hand between her thighs, but tender enough for them to put an arm around her waist so that what followed took place in a twilight that was half-erotic, half-platonic—and in a serious voice she had asked Vernon whether he would come away with her for a few days to think about “all this” and he had immediately pictured a beach, not the sand, just Pamela Kant in a swimsuit, the two of them sitting on a terrace, thinking about “all this.” Obviously, he had said yes, wherever you want, whenever you want, whatever you want. He had not followed the rest of the conversation. He had drifted off into his own world, as he often did. The gang found it difficult to go their separate ways when they reached the Gare du Nord.
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