Dinah remained for six more months. After her there was Sally, then Nancy. Right now it’s Eva, a Puerto Rican. I don’t know where they come from, whether they’re from an agency. I’m unaware whether it’s your father who still chooses them. It really doesn’t matter. They’re all built from the same model: patient, calm, available. Incredible girls. Lalas for adults who, inevitably, end up assuming the power. Depending on the personality of each, the blackmail takes different forms but remains the same. Life is a jungle. And you, my Molly, are now like Babar in the big city. You’ve lost your defenses.
I NEVER DID FIND OUT WHAT HAD REALLY HAPPENED WITH THE YOUNG STUDENT. Vincent’s cell phone once again lies around anywhere at all without him worrying about it.
He barely remembers to recharge it.
We’ve never spoken about that episode again.
For the first time in my life, I gave up.
Instead of taking it all the way and doing battle, I let it slide.
Out of wisdom or cowardice?
I keep the marks of it inside me.
An indelible, painful, humiliating scar. Jealousy.
I hated it.
You’re still living in the same apartment. You never went back to work.
Films interest you a lot less than before. At least, that’s what you say. I think instead your short-term memory continues to play tricks on you. You’re completely refocused on music, and you’ve got a talent for digging up rhythm-and-blues singers who are as obscure as they are talented. But Tina Turner is still your favorite.
You never forget your friends’ birthdays, nor their spouses’ or their children’s.
The day Tom got married, you ended up admitting to me that if you had had someone like him to love, maybe you would have fought harder.
You’re still the most caustic, the most brilliant girl I know.
The most direct, too.
Last week, I told you that I’d spent ten hours in a plane next to a delightful passenger and had only discovered when we arrived that she was in a wheelchair. “There are plenty of people who get along on their own despite their handicap and who travel. Don’t you want to come back to Europe, to see Venice and Paris again?” Your answer was cutting: “As long as I can’t piss alone, I’m not going anywhere. Get that?”
THE MOLLY TO WHOM I WAS WRITING NO LONGER EXISTS.
However, when I think of you, when I wonder what you’d say, how you’d react to things that I am experiencing without you, you’re always the same.
A fighter and a conqueror.
I never think of your wheelchair.
That Molly only materializes when I see you.
When I am with you, in that living room where you have again put up all the photos of your previous life, I become aware that you still can’t drink without a straw, that you’ve gained weight, that the television is always on, that you are hooked on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and all the social networks, that you can’t succeed in concentrating on any book, any DVD, that you sometimes fall asleep in the middle of a sentence.
When I’m with you, I rediscover your devastating repartee, the precision of your memories, the distinctive nature of your intelligence.
I rediscover to a small extent how we are in league.
At the moment of leaving you, I feel your sadness and I try to hide mine from you.
I spend the rest of the day with a lump in my throat.
With all my strength I’ve wanted our friendship to remain intact.
I’ve got to face facts: that’s far from being the case.
I lack courage.
Molly, I’m admitting it to you.
There have been times when I’ve been in New York and haven’t told you.
MICHÈLE HALBERSTADT is a journalist, author, and producer of such films as Monsieur Ibrahim, Farewell My Concubine, and Murderous Maids, which she also cowrote. Her novels include La Petite and The Pianist in the Dark, which won the Drouot Literary Prize and was short-listed for the Lilas literary prize in France.
BRUCE BENDERSON is a novelist and essayist as well as a translator. He is the author of a memoir, The Romanian: Story of an Obsession, winner of France’s prestigious Prix de Flore in French translation, and the novels User and Pacific Agony.
OTHER PRESS
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OTHER PRESS www.otherpress.com
Mon amie américaine Page 9
