Mon amie américaine

by Michéle Halberstadt

  All the same, books dedicated to child raising hammer one thing in: it’s important for children to have a mother who is fulfilled. And what if the thing that fulfills me isn’t taking care of my children exclusively from morning to night, but also working, traveling, using my brain cells, and experiencing life on my own? That’s too bad, but that’s what Lalas were invented for. They’re hard to find; they make themselves indispensable, hold you hostage, and take your place in the hearts of your children. They possess the key to the harmony of your family, a key worth its weight in gold; and you willingly pay the price for it, without understanding that you’re losing more than they are getting from it. Of course, there is life outside of them: Sundays, holidays, vacations, and school. Little by little, time will pass and children will grow. One day, Lalas will leave your home. Then it will be your children who will leave.

  In the meantime, a pattern has been established. Your absences. Your negligence.

  There it is, Molly. Something you’ve escaped. It’s the lot of mothers who work. A special tax, a dash of daily anguish added to all the others. Forming a decoction men don’t have to stomach. That night, I was truly aware that you would exchange your life for mine without hesitation; your trauma for my anguish, your concrete fear of tomorrow for my conjugal trivia. With or without Vincent, my future is in front of me. Yours is a nebula that you’re in no condition to apprehend.

  On the television screen, an ad for Nike is ending on its famous slogan: Just do it. It never struck me how stupid, naive, and untruthful such an expression is. Infuriating. I stretch out my arm to shut those idiots up. When you want to, you can? If only that could be the case for you. You’ve managed to come back from your planet Comma, Molly. You achieved it all on your own. You’ll definitely find a way to overcome this last ordeal in your obstacle course. Won’t you?

  THREE WEEKS AFTER MY VISIT, YOU STILL DON’T HAVE THE STRENGTH TO ANSWER THE TELEPHONE. I call your mother, Suzie, Tom, and your three European friends, who all ended up making the trip.

  Everyone’s account is along the same lines.

  It’s not encouraging.

  You spend your time lying down without sleeping, your eyes staring into space. You don’t want the television turned on. You don’t read the magazines that are brought to you. You don’t want anything. Especially not talking. You were able to summon enough energy in yourself to send away the rabbi and the psychologist your mother had called in. You made it understood that she hadn’t a clue, that you had nothing to say, to anyone.

  You do say that you need to put your thoughts in order.

  All you’ve asked for is your iPod. You listen to music nonstop, the earphones glued to your ears. You’re loath for anyone to remove them, even for medical treatments.

  You’re experiencing head-on the repercussions of your weeks in a coma. You’re sizing up the enormity of what has happened to you. Of what is coming. But instead of this giving you a desire to fight, you’re not really making an effort. You put up with your daily rehabilitation exercises. The doctors say that your heart isn’t in it. You don’t believe in it. You aren’t fighting. You find the effort too painful, the result too uncertain.

  You say that you’re ill and that unremitting effort is pointless.

  You say that you’re too tired, that you can’t do it.

  Molly, what are you doing?

  Don’t you understand?

  Time, Molly, time is passing, and the days are piling up.

  You’re not getting any better.

  You say you don’t give a damn.

  The doctors are discouraged. Peter and Paul are becoming pessimistic. Tom is becoming more important every day and, for lack of having been officially hired to do your job, he’s replacing you on a day-to-day basis. He says that he comes to see you every three or four days to keep you informed, but that you interrupt him by saying that it no longer interests you. Molly, I can easily imagine that movies are the least of your concerns, but you’re being thrown a line to help you come back to us, understand? You’ve got to grab hold of it, even if you don’t feel like it. It’s the same with appetite: it’s true — I promise — it comes back as you eat.

  Molly, I can’t believe that you’ve lost interest in everything apart from chocolate milkshakes. You’ve got to find a reason inside yourself to fight. Do it for yourself, for us, for the children you don’t yet have, for the beaches of the South Seas you haven’t yet discovered, for the memories that are still waiting to be made by you, for the years you have left to live. Do it for the miracle your surgeons have accomplished. Do it so that you won’t have come back from your planet Comma in vain. Do it to give your life meaning. Do it so we can go back to seeing films and traveling the globe.

  No one from the profession is rallying to your cause any more. Now that you’ve come out of the coma, your case is less interesting. It’s no longer a question of life or death. About you they say you’ve pulled through, that you’re resting. Until when? No one knows. No one in the group of people around you will dare to make a prognosis.

  The official communiqué from your “major company” states: “We’ve advised her to take the time she needs to recover.” Enough time for everyone to forget you?

  I no longer know what to tell you about. Six weeks have passed since I went to see you.

  It feels as if I’m writing to your shadow. I’m writing to the Molly you seem not at all in a hurry to become again.

  You don’t really believe that I’m going to tell you about the vagaries of my days, my meetings, the films I’ve seen, the dinners I’ve gone to, the trips I’m planning to take, or other anecdotes that are even more trivial, like the one about my car breaking down in a tunnel today, when I know the ordeals you’re going through.

  I think about those ordeals all the time. I know that every morning, after the doctor’s visit, they come to get you out of bed so that you can try to move your left leg, arm, and hand. They make you work, first lying down and then standing on a treadmill. I know that you tire very easily, that your head spins, that the ground beneath your feet slips away, that you get nauseous and feel like crying. I imagine the conflicting emotions sweeping through you, the determination to get through this, your discouragement about the immense amount of work such a thing entails, your lack of understanding about what has happened to you, the lethargy into which your condition plunges you, the isolation of your room, the permanent presence of a mother you’ve never felt close to … I think of you, I visualize you, I imagine you, I feel you, and I experience a pang of anguish. Forgive me, I can’t seem to talk to you about anything else. Compared to what you endure each day, my daily life is so laughable …

  I’m also not going to vent my depressing story, tell you about the efforts I make every day not to ask Vincent any questions, the hate his cell phone inspires in me, my sleepless nights, the money I stupidly blow on lavish outfits that I’ll never have a chance to wear, just for the pleasure of feeling desirable when I slip into them. I’ve never spent so much on beauty products, treatments for the face, creams for the body, like a true geisha. Only Clara notices and registers all these details, which are new for her. The nail polish I put on. The skirts I’m suddenly more willing to wear than my jeans. The hats that, like you, I’ve begun collecting. My new glasses. Lipstick. She summed it up her way: “Mommy, you’re like Babar, you’re getting dolled up.” Her favorite book is the one in which the elephant has come to the city and buys green suits and patent leather shoes in the department stores. In her eyes, I’m like that pachyderm. She’s right. I feel as clumsy and out of place as he did. I’m fighting against the desire to chuck all of it, but I’m trying to put up a good front.

  Molly, you’ll be glad to learn that I’m following your advice to the letter. You’ve always claimed that wearing stiletto heels and a tight skirt was like putting on a battle dress that gave you a boost in facing a difficult situation. “It makes me take little steps, pull in my backside, and stand straight with my head high
. It’s like armor. On five inches, you’re a warrior, believe me.”

  This morning, when I walked into the kitchen, teetering three inches above the floor (I can’t manage any higher), Clara studied me from top to bottom and winked at her father. “Daddy, are you jealous?” I opened the refrigerator door to put all that off track and pretended to be looking for the milk, which was already sitting right there on the table. Vincent shrugged indifferently. Clara insisted: “Well, Daddy?” Vincent stroked her head. “No, my princess. Jealousy doesn’t do any good.” He looked at me with a scoffing smile and added, “But you’re right, Mommy looks very stylish this morning.” I kept my eyes on the coffeepot. Fortunately, Benoît came in with great excitement because the tooth fairy had visited during the night. He placed his piggy bank on the table and asked his father to help him unscrew it so he could count his fortune. I watched them do it and told myself that if Vincent’s head were a porcelain pig’s, I would have shaken and opened it, to finally discover exactly what was inside.

  YOU LEFT THE HOSPITAL FIFTEEN DAYS AGO. There’s still no question yet of your moving into your new apartment. You’re at your parents’ in a Manhattan suburb. I’ve planned to come for the weekend. Despite your mother’s insistence, I’ve turned down her invitation to stay and sleep there. No matter how much she explained to me that I wouldn’t find anywhere better to spend the night than a motel on the expressway, I stuck to my guns. You know how much I detest sleeping at anybody’s place. I’d rather have the solitude of a room with regulation decor and doubtful hygiene than the unpleasantness of a night spent in someone’s home. Whether I know them intimately or not at all doesn’t change anything. I’m always afraid I’ll damage something. I don’t dare go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and I can’t sneak away to the kitchen if I can’t sleep. I never know what time one is expected to get up. Finally, why show them the most personal thing about me, the way I look when I’m just out of bed?

  We’ve had this discussion a hundred times. In the beginning, it irritated you; but you ended up understanding my arguments. You even invented a saying intended for me and had it stamped into a wooden ruler that sits prominently on my desk: FRIENDS FOREVER, IN THE DAY BUT NOT AT NIGHT. It’s one of my rare principles, but it’s an inflexible one.

  It’s clear you haven’t had the time to explain it to your mother.

  I haven’t spoken to you since my visit to your bedside. That was four months ago. You sent me a few emails. In the end, you’ve had to ask someone to write them for you. Messages that were warm but that didn’t reveal much, and which didn’t tell me how you’re really doing. The very last email I received was from your father. He was informing me of the exact route for getting from the airport to your place, but he made no mention of your mental condition. He mentions “tenuous but continual progress.” There’s an embargo on your state of mind. It makes me that much more in a hurry to come and see you.

  Hauppauge is an ordinary suburb like the ones I’ve seen so many times in films. As a result, when I travel to the United States, I always have the feeling that I recognize a place, even one I’m visiting for the first time. It’s a wide, peaceful avenue lined with houses that all look alike, with a corner garage on the right, a basketball hoop on the left and a small, well-kept backyard. The weather is mild on this Saturday morning in June. The windows are open, and several cars with gaping doors are being meticulously cared for by an exclusively male population.

  In front of your place, the Volvo station wagon has been parked in a hurry. The lawn hasn’t been mowed, and the windows are closed. On such a beautiful morning, your parents’ house seems to have withdrawn into itself.

  A thick wooden board has been placed over the entire width of the stairs leading to the door.

  I don’t have time to draw any conclusions before the door opens on your mother’s ample figure, belted tightly into a royal-blue tracksuit. Your father has left on an emergency call to treat a neighbor’s toothache, but she is so happy I’ve come; and I can tell her enthusiasm is genuine. With palpable emotion, she takes me in her arms and whispers in my ear that you’re in such a hurry to see me that she’s almost jealous of it, something that makes her laugh but causes me to feel uncomfortable.

  As she hugs me and I drown in billows of her heady perfume, I catch a glimpse at the entrance to the living room of the object I hadn’t yet thought of.

  Your wheelchair.

  Blocking the entrance is this contraption with wheels in silvered steel and a black-leather back.

  Dora has followed my eyes and points at the immaculate beige floor of her living room with a tragic expression. “I know. And to think that I just changed the carpeting! What bad luck. It leaves horrible marks. I don’t know how to get them out.”

  “Come on in! The popcorn is still a little warm.” You’re lying against three thick pillows in a bed cluttered with magazines, bags of candy, chips, boxes of chocolate. Your right hand, which had been buried in the greasy paper bag set in front of your eyes, takes hold of the remote, which you hold toward the screen to mute the sound, but not the image. You’re wearing a violet cotton turtleneck that goes all the way up to your chin. Your hair has grown back a bit, but far from its usual length. Your body is engulfed in a thick flowered quilt of some synthetic material whose wrinkle-free surface must please your mother. There’s no question about the fact that you’re better. Your eyes are more animated, their color clearer (you obviously haven’t started smoking again). Your cheeks are rounder as well, the result of all those snacks, which you push aside to make room for me next to you. “Come and lie down next to me. Welcome to Molly’s Ark.”

  You look a little like a rag doll. All of your movements occur in slow motion. But you speak clearly, in your trademark sarcastic tone. That huskiness has finally returned to your voice, even if it still sounds weak and cottony, as if you’re out of breath. I’m relieved to see that your expression no longer looks like you’ve come back from the dead. But I see no spark in your eyes. Only the weight of an indescribable fatigue.

  I’ve picked up a pillow and set my head down against yours. Both of us close our eyes at the same time. I’ve found you again, at last. You kiss me on the cheek and let out a sigh.

  “Look where we are. Do you realize I left this room seventeen years ago, planning never to come back? Which just goes to show, you should never say never.” You gesture toward the paper bag. “Have some. I asked for salty, your favorite.” I dip my hand into the popcorn. Your eyes follow mine. You smile sadly. “See, I speak a lot better. But that’s all. I don’t move any better.”

  There. It’s been said. By you, of course, in your way of letting the cat out of the bag, to get a rise out of me.

  Just don’t react. I shrug. “Sure, for the time being.”

  You don’t answer. I straighten up. You look up at the ceiling, your features closed. “It’s not going to come back. And neither will the life that goes along with it.”

  Tears come from my eyes without my being able to hold them back. They’re flowing in silence. You point the remote at the screen again and put the sound back on. Children’s voices are singing the praises of a honey-and-caramel-flavored cereal. You take another handful of popcorn and point at the screen: “He’s cute, looks like Benoît. He must be about that size, right? What about Clara? Does she still look like you? Got any photos? How old are they now?”

  I blow my nose, pick up my phone. I tell you their ages, show you our vacation shots and others taken at their last birthdays. I try to tell some stories and you pretend interest. You ask for news of Vincent, and I avoid the issue by saying he’s working too much. I tell you about the renovations being made in our summer house, the surprise I’m planning for my parents’ anniversary. You interrupt suddenly: “How old is Clara?” The question throws me because I told you that five minutes ago. On the other hand, you remember perfectly the year you gave her the stuffed kangaroo. You ask me if I know the singer whose video is playing on the screen. It�
�s a sweet song about love and childhood, and you’re humming along, but halfheartedly. Suddenly you turn on your right side, shutting your eyes. “I’m going to rest before lunch.” By the time I leave the room you’re asleep.

  On the first floor is a very tall man, a bit stooped, busy in the living room with some bottles on a wheeled table. “Molly told me you liked your tomato juice very spicy. I’ve put some vodka in mine, should I do the same for yours?” I’ve seen photos of your father, but I never realized the extent to which he was a reference point for you. I think everyone you’ve been in love with is this same type: tall, lean, and dark.

  Your father studies me with his head tilted slightly to one side, as I’ve always seen you do when you’re concentrating. “You see, Molly remembers the kind of drinks you like, but she asked what day you were coming three times today. She has all her wits about her, but her short-term memory could be a lot better. Supposedly that can still be fixed.” He hands me my glass. “I’m not counting on the rest any more.” His voice is trembling a bit, as is his hand, and he pours another glass before going on, indicating the wheelchair. “That thing’s there for good. You can imagine all the consequences that entails.”

  Suddenly he raises his voice to call toward the kitchen, where a spoon has just fallen. “You need some help, sweetie?” He waits for an answer, which doesn’t come, and goes back to what he was saying. “Her mother doesn’t want to hear it, but Molly has adapted to it. Too quickly, in my opinion. The physiotherapist said that to me, too. She isn’t giving her all. And I don’t understand why. I know there’s not much chance she’ll recover, but they’ve already seen miracles with patients who refuse to consider their life in a wheelchair. They put everything they’ve got into trying and get results that go beyond all expectations.” He leans closer to me. “Do you understand why she’s given up so quickly?”