Her face wrinkles up but she makes no answer. Richard quickly raises a glass to everyone present around the table and, second after second, the silence I created gets wiped away, each one in turn finding some remark to defuse the tension created by mother and me. Conversations pick up, and my mother finally sits back down when Ralf signals her to with a tug on her arm, and I sit back down at my place next to Patrick, who asks me where something or other is located.
“Sorry, Patrick. Excuse me? Where what is located?”
“Your butcher.”
I smile at him, more or less, but behind that mask I’m wondering. I’m not sure I really want to. Or if I still really want to. One should always be wary of a man who chose to make his career in a bank, I think, as I stare at the glass of wine he poured me.
We’re still knee to knee at the end of the meal, but I don’t intend to linger at the table. I’m neither for nor against. I’d like to be able to put him on hold. I’d like him not to hurry. He asked me what I wanted and I told him I didn’t know and that this was not the place to have that kind of conversation. “And I hate whispering in a crowd,” I added, asking him to put another log on the fire.
Outside, it’s snow weather, just a hint of mist glistening in the crisp night air. Some of us are still at the table. I meet eyes with my mother twice, but once would have been quite enough. I know she’s furious at me. I know she knows that I’m furious at her.
Anna made a fabulous pie and Josie a not-so-fabulous pie. Much more not than fabulous. Much more filling. I think she just doubled the amount of butter and flour. It’s easy to see that Vincent isn’t happy, but Josie is glowing, totally proud of her masterpiece, which has purplish patches.
I go over to say a few nice things to Robert before his very frustration makes him a real problem.
“Everything is fine, Robert. But I mean, I don’t have to give you lessons in feminine cycles, do I? I can’t right now, what can I tell you? Don’t you have another girlfriend?”
“Then just explain one thing. What’s all that crap with the other guy about? What kind of idiotic flirting was that?”
He’s speaking in a low voice, but it sounds like yelling to me.
“Are you about to make a scene in my home, Robert? Tell me. Am I to expect that kind of thing from you?”
I put a plate in his hands and serve him a little of each pie, then wink at him and move my lips a tiny bit in an invisible kiss. Josie looks at us, then says that she used a Whole Foods Market recipe and that by the way they have an excellent panettone on sale right now. She once again sits down to nurse Édouard-baby. “Theoretically, there are no blueberries,” she points out, “Just the chocolate. But I just love blueberries and chestnut cream, too.” Her breasts are about the size of volleyballs. I’d be curious to know what that imbecile Vincent does with them.
Hélène comes over to compliment me on the meal and to say she sincerely hopes we can become friends. Richard keeps his distance, grinning as if he had to urinate. I actually don’t dislike her, again, but this can’t lead to anything, it can only lead to nothing, any way you slice it. What’s he hoping for? What demented contraption, what sterile association won’t a man embark upon?
“Your girlfriend is so charming,” I say when he comes over.
“Oh, great. You know, it was delicious. You should come over sometime.”
“Yeah, of course. But let’s give it time, let’s not force things.”
“Listen, Richard,” she says, “let us handle it. To begin with, I’ll call Michèle. Right, Michèle? I’ll call you and we’ll go have lunch just the two of us. To begin with.”
“Well, that,” I say, “would be just fine with me. If we keep on like this, Hélène, we’re going to get along very well.”
“Fantastic,” he says.
I’m stricken, but I don’t show it. I can just see myself ringing their doorbell with a bouquet of flowers and a box of Ladurée macaroons. Can you really endure such a thing without losing a big part of your self-esteem?
An arm slips around my waist. It’s that of my dear Anna, who has developed a very keen sense of observation and who knows what to do, depending on if I bite my lip a little or frown or knit an eyebrow or lose some color. She comes over at just the right time with her gin and tonic, which I needed very badly.
Lots of projects have fallen through these last few years. The money is hard to come by and the industry is in crisis, which is something Richard can understand. “But aren’t we also paying,” he says as he looks at Anna and me—and at that very moment I notice he’s had a lot to drink—“for your lack of imagination, for your refusal to look ahead and your incommensurate love for all things American?”
We’re used to getting severely criticized every time we refuse a screenplay, even some wildly obscene insults once in a while, and we know how to handle these situations. We duck and dodge. My mother looks a little tipsy, too. Her cheeks are the color of ripe apricots. “Richard,” she says, “you’re always moaning and groaning! For heaven’s sake!”
“Those are moans of agony, Irène.”
She grabs his arm, and that’s the right thing to do. Someone has opened a box of chocolate and it’s getting passed around. When Hélène sits down, she crosses her legs and that, in itself, is a small celebration. “Don’t be so negative,” she says to Richard. “It’s so annoying, you know?”
“I’m not negative, Hélène, I’m realistic. Taking one step off the crosswalk has become impossible.”
Anna leans over and whispers in my ear, asking how exactly Richard’s screenplay stepped off the crosswalk while Richard goes on with his summation, playing the apostle of difference, originality, singularity, of which he himself is a good example. “You know,” I reply, “Richard is first and foremost a theorist.”
Right now it’s snowing without snowing. There are a few flakes spinning around, hanging in midair. Ralf is on the phone. Josie puts her equipment away. Robert stares sadly in the distance. Vincent and Patrick are seated in armchairs. I go by them on my way to the kitchen and so I hear Vincent say, “We are the people, so we’re used to getting fucked.”
Shorter days, lower temperatures. Winter often and for some people sets off a rise in general testiness and incredulous rage, especially, I’ve heard, those who draw a salary from a fast-food restaurant. I plug in the kettle. Every time I’m about to feel sorry for him, I think again of what life dealt me at his age and I stop. My mother and I weren’t treated like lepers, we were treated like dirty lepers. Adults cursed us, children pulled our hair, bawling parents threw things at us, whatever they had handy, like the man in the butcher shop who had paid for his steak and threw it in my face.
“What are you thinking about?” my mother wants to know. I turn around.
“Oh, nothing special,” I say.
She doesn’t move. Head down, she nods a little, almost alarmingly. Then she looks up.
“Do you have any idea how brutal you were when you addressed me before?”
“Yes, of course. But that’s nothing, you know? You ain’t seen nothing yet.” She giggles in bitter resignation, collapses onto a chair, and holds her head in her hands.
“He’s been in prison for thirty years! What would he care?”
“I’m the one who cares. I have no father, so how could I have a stepfather?”
“I’m going to spend my whole life shaking in my boots? Is that what you have in store for me? That I just shake until the end, winding up in a public nursing home? With all those poor people and foreigners?”
“What?”
“All right. Oh, for God’s sake, relax. I take back what I said.”
The kettle whistles. “When Ralf is no longer around, when that whole thing blows up in your face, as expected, I your daughter will still be here. I’m a better insurance policy than he is, Mom. Objectively speaking.”
I can feel a ray of hope glowing at the bottom of her heart. When she holds out her empty glass I warn her against certain ex
cesses, but she tells me to go to hell. I fill the glass and turn to go. She wears me out. And I can hear her collapsing behind me, I can hear the sound of a chair thrown over and crashing to the ground.
So here we are on the way to the hospital. She passed out. I’m scared out of my mind. I’ve become her little girl again, but her face also really frightens me. Ashen, almost bluish. Patrick drives very quickly and he knows the quickest route. I’m not even sure she’s breathing. I hold her hand and tears run silently down my cheeks and there’s nothing I can do to stop them. Only my lips tremble a little. “Don’t do this to me,” I rail while we speed along, horn blaring, running a few lights, getting cursed by guys who are sleeping near the canal, in tents, in this cold. A biting, raw wind is blowing and when I pull her close to get her out of the car that icy breeze hits her in the face and she stiffens against me in a spasm and, holding on to me and twisting her face, says in my ear, “Go see him, Michèle.” Those words terrify me—it’s all I can do to keep from dropping her. “Go see your father,” she begs me.
“What, Mom?” I say in a groan. The wind is howling around us when a fat nurse comes running, followed by Patrick and an orderly equipped with a long golden ponytail wagging and wiggling in the wind. “Mom’s in a coma.” That’s all the news I have. I wait. We wait. Patrick has made up his mind to keep me company. I speak to Richard and to Vincent, allowing them to talk to the others and take over for the rest of the evening. I don’t feel very well. Something inside me is coming apart. A terrifying shadow is hanging in the air. Patrick puts an arm around my shoulders, which is the best thing to do under the circumstances. I never thought my mother could be gone because that eventuality is unbearable, and I’m suddenly thrust into an abyss and I don’t have the strength. In the past, we often worked out of a tight spot or just muddled through, by the simple fact of being together, and there’s nothing to indicate that things are going to get any easier from now on. I look at Patrick. No investment banker is going to argue with me about this.
It’s just about daybreak when a doctor comes along, suggesting that I go home because that’s the best thing I can do. She’s being watched, I’ll get a call if there’s any change. Instead of asking him questions, requesting information, I concentrate on controlling my breathing. Patrick holds me up. I had finally more or less calmed down during the night, but the very sight of a doctor, of a man in a medical smock, once again throws me for a loop, submerges me in the present moment. I am unable to have a normal conversation with the doctor on duty. My body no longer functions normally. He advises me to take a sleeping pill and to go to bed, assuring me that Irène’s condition is stable, that he’ll call me this evening. I nod. I hunch over. Patrick is there. “At least go home and take a shower, change your clothes,” he advises me, putting his hands on my shoulders. I have been lying on a hard bench for hours, never closing my eyes, not knowing if she was going to live or die. Sitting up sometimes, curled up with my knees to my forehead, in any case, my arms crossed, busy trying not to shake like some poor fallen leaf. It was the darkest night of my life—well, a tie with the night my father went toe to toe with the police before they arrested him and spirited him away, out of reach of the mobs. I look at Patrick without seeing him. I put up no further resistance as he leads me to the exit. It’s like drifting down a river of warm water. I don’t even feel the cold outside when we cross the parking lot, gleaming with frozen sleet.
He turns on the heat, flashes me a compassionate smile as he turns onto the practically empty avenue in the wee hours.
At a red light, he touches my knee. He tries to reassure me. “Nothing is lost,” he says, trying to lift my spirits as we cross the Bois de Boulogne, flooded with a bright white mist. I don’t say anything.
I’m aware that he immediately volunteered to take us to the hospital, that he spent the whole night by my side, that he’s been perfect—attentive, thoughtful—that only a few days before I’d found him attractive, that I rather desired him, of course I have all these things in mind. But am I still at an age to try to explain, do I still want to force myself to do anything at all?
When we get home, Richard is still there—which quickly answers the rather mundane question I’d been asking myself since we left the hospital, to wit, how do I explain to Patrick that I’m not going to be able to take our relationship any farther for the moment and that I’m sorry I let him believe that I would sleep with him the first chance we got.
Richard sits up on an elbow and gives me a questioning look. He knows. Richard is the only person who does know—well, Vincent sort of vaguely knows—just how much the idea of losing Irène leaves me in disarray, just how disarmed I am and certain I’ll be crushed by the first obstacle thrown in my way. Irène sometimes stayed up all night and watched over me, back then, when there was danger out there, when some mother crazy with grief or something else might seek justice by taking it out on us. How would things happen now? Now that she’s no longer here to watch over me?
He gets up and holds me tight. I don’t object. Of all the men I’ve known, he’s probably the best, yes, but is that enough? Is that admirable? Can’t one dream of something better?
I collapse into a chair. The two men look at one another. I discover I’m not dead by how quickly I discern the rivalry immediately established between them—and of which I am the actual object. There is some—slight, halting—comfort in that. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I say with a sigh. “I don’t even know if you’ve been introduced.”
They say they have been. With that, Richard thanks Patrick for being so much help to me and tells him he can go home now and not to worry. I look away. I don’t want to be dragged into their little game. I’m so weary. Richard pulls me closer to his shoulder. “Oh, thank you so, so much,” I say a beat too late, while he’s already turning to go. “Thank you so much. I’ll call you, I’ll let you know what happens.”
He gives me a sad, relatively touching little wave as he walks out the door into the icy air, which growls in the chimney.
“Bit of a leech, isn’t he?”
“I wouldn’t have invited him if I thought so. Think for a second.”
“Hang on, you’re serious? Are you putting me on right now?”
I laugh out loud. “My God, you’re making a scene, Richard! A scene! This is the end of the world. Did you get hit in the head or something? Have you lost your mind?”
We haven’t been very kind to Patrick, which is why I’m being so testy. “Look,” I say, “let’s not go any farther down this road. I’ve got other things to worry about, okay? I didn’t sneak off in order to flirt with him all night, in case you’re asking. And by the way, why on earth would you have a right to know anything? In your capacity as what? I must be dreaming.”
“All right, don’t start.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, Richard. We separated so we could live in peace with one another. I don’t ask you what you do with your receptionist who’s barely out of high school. So follow my lead.”
Outside, the mist is lifting and the sky is clearing up. Daylight slips between the tree trunks and the almost bare branches. I breathe. As if daytime were a haven, as if I had been granted a reprieve until evening.
I run a bath. After Richard leaves, after making sure a thousand times that everything was all right from here to the doorstep, I turned on the washing machine for a third complete cycle, including soak, on the hottest setting, so that my sheets would be rid of their filth once and for all. Then I go upstairs. Marty follows me. I have locked the door behind us.
He takes up a position in the sink and waits for me to run a trickle of cool water. He’s thirsty. Because he’s now the only one who hasn’t abandoned me in one way or another—now that Irène got into the act—I hurry up and serve him so he’ll show me a little love or whatever. While he drinks and purrs—a delicate endeavor that only an old cat can master—I call Anna and apologize for not answering her messages the night before. “Poor darling,” she says. “Is every
thing all right?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to take a bath and then I’ll see. I’m tired. I think it’s a concussion, I don’t really know.”
“But are you okay? You want me to come over?”
I say I’m going to rest, that I’ll stop by to see her this evening, after the hospital. That she can take me out for a drink. Even as we speak, I slip into my bath. It would be best if I could forget what Irène told me to do, not to even think about it for a second ever again, but I’m not there yet.
“I can’t get over her telling you that,” says Anna. “I think that’s really terrible.”
“And right after that, she’s gone. Anna, that could be her last breath, you know? Can you imagine?”
“What are you going to do?”
“What do you mean, do? Huh. Nothing, I guess. No, there’s nothing I can do. Let him rot away in prison.”
She feels I’m right, that there’s nothing binding about unwritten last wishes, poorly heard whispers, badly translated moans, and indistinct groans, which can’t quite be made out, hardly audible and moribund ravings. She’s sorry to be so blunt, not the product of the most rudimentary common sense, she’s quick to add. One must grant the last wish of the dying, to a certain degree, she points out. Otherwise you may as well be in a cult, you may as well be that kind of crazy person. “You know I love your mother,” she says, “but not this. It’s over the line. Forget about it.”
At the moment I’m going to bed, there’s a knock on the door. It’s Patrick. He’s stopping by to see if everything’s all right. He’s off to work and wants to know if he can bring me anything when he gets back. I don’t want anything, but I say thank you. He looks at once jolly and sad, seems to be waiting for something. I clutch my bathrobe to my throat while a flock of black birds silently crosses the sky behind him. “Well, Patrick,” I say, “I was about to lie down, actually. I want to get my strength back a little before I go back to the hospital.”
He smiles. For an instant, I wonder if he’s going to jump me. Then I’m horrified when I realize that I put my short blue print robe on instead of the other blue print one, the long one, and I’m wearing nothing but panties underneath. I’m so exhausted that I went to the door dressed like that! It’s too late to do anything about it, I can only make it worse by acting like some embarrassed virgin or God knows what. I tug at my belt. If I had been worried he wasn’t attracted to me, this would have reassured me.
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