“It is true! Even you know it.”
Pauline took it in stride, crossed her hands behind her neck, and assumed the tone used to tell fairy tales. “No, I don’t know it. But what I do know is that Mommy, when we were little, she wanted to have an abortion. Back then, women did it with a coat hanger. The lady thrust the coat hanger into her and tried to pull out the baby, but I was holding on to you too tightly, so she couldn’t. You were the one underneath, that’s how you got coat hanger scratches on your head when you were still a baby. And that’s how you got brain damage.”
She could feel her sister shrinking into her bed, Claudine protested weakly, “That’s not true.”
“It is, Daddy’s the one who told me but I never wanted to tell you because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. I waited until we were eleven years old.”
Then Claudine started sobbing, couldn’t get a hold of herself. Their mother came back, Pauline complained in a little sleepy voice, “Mama, I can’t sleep, Claudine is pretending to cry on purpose to annoy me.”
“Claudine, you’ll stop your tantrum right now or I’ll make you regret it.”
And their mother closed the door. Then Pauline started taunting in her turn, “You think you’re tough, but you’re nothing but a crybaby.”
It was during their father’s absence that Pauline started to sing. Convinced that if she did something well enough for him, he would come back.
Every Wednesday, kids everywhere, an old lady taught them to sing pomme pâte poire while exaggerating their consonants, stretching their voices high and low and belting on pitch.
The old lady really liked Pauline, kept her after class. “You have to practice at home, don’t forget. You have a very pretty voice, you have to practice every day, it’s as important as your homework.”
And the little girl didn’t forget. She sang the best she could, better and better, always vaguely convinced that this was how she would get her father back.
And he did come back. They hadn’t seen him for three years. He squeezed their mother in his arms saying that she was the only one and that she had to forgive him. And for two whole months he was very loving.
He had this expression when he saw Pauline again, standing before him, embarrassed, ready to cry and bury herself in his arms, this funny expression: “How you’ve changed!” And a completely different expression when he saw Claudine again, making her spin around and admiring her from top to bottom: “How you’ve changed!”
One of them had become gloomy during her father’s absence, refused to be flirtatious, found it degrading. Pauline had stooped a bit, shrunk into herself, became wary. She didn’t like to wash her hair, she didn’t like to wear skirts, she didn’t like to smile. She really liked hitting others, insults and arguments. And she didn’t much like girls, who she found too stereotypical: talking about clothes, cuddling, and whining over nothing.
Claudine, for her part, had seized on the fortune of having a body matching the fashions and really learned how to show it off, her adolescence more than making up for her few awkward years.
And so their father still preferred one over the other, but his target had changed.
Some mornings, over breakfast, when he saw Pauline arrive with her ripped jeans, her flat shoes, and her big sweaters meant to hide her entirely, he would sigh, “I wonder if she makes herself ugly on purpose, just to piss me off.”
And since she would sit down without saying anything he would add, “Such a friendly little girl, it’s a real pleasure living with you.”
A few minutes later, Claudine would come down, wearing the shortest things, her eyes lightly made-up. Their father would give her a standing ovation, take her by the hand to plant a kiss on her cheek.
“How good you smell!”
Then he would look at her pensively, hands crossed under his chin, eyes staring a bit into space. Before starting to eat again, he would declare, “I love feminine women.”
He never went to see Pauline sing no matter what. She was dumbfounded. Not that she fully understood it at the time, but all that she had learned from him and nurtured so skillfully under the assumption of his return—arrogance, anger, vindictive violence—he used against her when she tried her hand at them.
What I adored about him, he despised in me.
Reading these lines long after, things would fall into place on their own, a lyric would be the key.
All that she adored about him, he despised in her.
And she set out to sing even more beautifully, and wearing even larger sweaters because one day things would fall back into place. He would recognize her, his only daughter, his only double.
NICOLAS MUST HAVE been tired of watching her blubber; he went to lie down on the sofa and now he’s sleeping. He breathes through his mouth, without snoring. All scraggly, like a dozing cat. So fragile. He will help her. She saw them together, him and Claudine, the connection between them was so strong it could have materialized, suddenly taken shape without surprising anyone. He will do everything he can for them to sign. Let’s hope he can do enough for them to get a big advance.
She doesn’t have a well-defined plan yet, but the two hundred thousand she heard mentioned before the concert keeps popping into her head. She doesn’t want to go on TV, nor see herself in the papers, nor dance in a music video like she saw her sister doing. She wants him to heat things up, get a big fat check. Then she’ll take off with Sébastien, without telling him, and he’ll sort himself out.
She gets up abruptly, it came up without warning. Mouth full of vomit, she rushes to the toilet.
THE NEXT MORNING they guzzle aspirin and Coke.
“Even if I wanted to help, it’s never going to work.”
“Stop making this into such a big deal. Ever since I was little people have thought I was her, that doesn’t just change overnight.”
He sees in them all the same vague characteristics. They don’t come out the same, but have the same source.
She goes to look for a notebook, then comes back to the telephone.
“Before you leave, can we listen to the messages together? You can brief me on each person.”
She’s already in place, ready to take notes, she adds, “There’s some mail too . . .”
He sits down, ready to comply. Pauline has drawn three large columns: work, personal, unknown. She fills them in painstakingly, especially the work column. When they’ve finished she goes to look for the unopened letters, which she hands to Nicolas, then she writes something in her notebook. Very busy, taking charge of things, not panicking at all.
Despite what he had said at the beginning, it’s eerie how closely they resembled each other.
And staying with her, taking part in her schemes, at least he’s not losing everything in resuscitating Claudine. It’s like when someone starts doing coke: convinced that he’s in control, that it won’t get out of hand. He does it under the pretext of lame excuses: I’ll let her think I’m going to do it, but I’ll convince her to stop this charade, I’ll reason with her. He does it while managing to convince himself that he’s not doing it.
Pauline conscientiously writes down what he tells her.
“That’s a card from Julie. Claudine adores her but they don’t see each other often. She’s a girl with a kid, who’s cool. I don’t know her very well, she’s pretty, really really pretty, and she’s a stripper. I think she lives in the thirteenth arrondissement. I don’t really know. That’s a note from Laurent, an old friend of hers.”
“I recognize the handwriting, I know him, it’s okay.”
“What are you going to do about the people you both know?”
“I’ll act like I’m her, I’ll laugh like an idiot as soon as someone opens their mouth, if they touch my ass I’ll say, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ and as soon as any topic is introduced I’ll pout a little and say, ‘Oh that, I don’t know anything about it.’ You know, it’s not rocket science to be a moron.”
LIGHT OF MY life, my true
love. It’s a little cold, I feel it in my fingertips. I just made myself tea, I’m putting the bag in the ashtray, if you were here you’d grimace, “You can’t put it in the trash?” I’m taking advantage of being all alone here to do the things that would bother you. The days without you here don’t really feel like anything. But I’m not sure it would be too wise to complain. Otherwise I have nothing to report. I do nothing at all except wait for you, rest often, and read a lot. So things are fine. Please write me soon, tell me if you need anything, I’ll write you more later.
Pauline
Nicolas says it’s not possible to make an album in less than six months. Pauline says nothing, it doesn’t change the fact that everything needs to be done by then. Or rather: it doesn’t change the fact that they will need to have a big advance by then. She couldn’t care less about the rest.
When Sébastien gets out, she’s convinced herself, she’ll have money, enough to travel around the world.
The visiting room. She doesn’t go often. Sébastien told her in his letters, “Don’t worry about it, don’t come, write me every day, but don’t come. It would do me a lot more harm than good.”
And that’s what she did. Stopped going. Stopped seeing him there for the allotted time and then leaving him behind. It drove her crazy each time. A useless rage of helplessness.
Don’t even show how much it weighs on her, this lack of him, don’t even show it, smile, be cheerful, and invent a little life for herself in which “things are fine.”
She watches herself dress up, put on red lipstick, and train herself to walk, she watches herself attempting the impersonation. And she’s half mad at him.
Where are you while I’m doing all this to myself? You should be here stopping me. He should have been there the day she said yes to Claudine for the concert. He should have been behind her to ask, “What are you doing?”
But it’s bad to be angry at him, she’s confusing everything. Blaming others for how we are.
Only it’s not so bad, because everything will be fine. Nicolas will go to the meetings, and he’ll come back with a big smile. Because everything will come together as it should.
PAULINE IS SITTING at the kitchen table.
She opened the shoe closet, nothing flat.
At twenty-five years old, she has never thought to put on high heels, and she finds herself grotesque in a red dress, like she’s in drag, trying to walk in the living room with the lowest heels in the entire collection. Absurd attempt at a dignified walk that’s even remotely passable. Ankle, in jeopardy, jerks to the side, knee knocks against the other knee. So she has to walk carefully, think: Which do I put down first, the sole or the heel? Think: Where do I put the weight of my body so that I don’t slouch? Hold myself upright, move the leg. But it doesn’t work, she looks like a drunk crab, nothing like a woman.
She looks at her feet, destroyed. Her heel is red from the abuse. Her toes are stunted, sensation of ground-up bones, because the toe of the shoe contracts and compresses with no regard to the form of a foot.
It will never work.
Her rage turns black. Claudine, poor idiot, where did you get the idea to wear such things, who were you trying to make happy, to look like what, stupid pathetic slut.
The telephone is ringing off the hook, ten times worse than yesterday.
“Claudie? Claudie, pick up I know you’re there, I called five minutes ago and the line was busy. Come on, my dear, scamper over and pick up. Claudie, I have good news for you, come pick up . . . You’re not there? Listen, I don’t get it, call me back, it’s Pierre.”
She takes off the impossible shoes, immediate relief. In less than an hour she’s gotten herself some magnificent blisters, transparent skin bubbling up from the rest.
Takes a bath, a little later. The vials, the bottles, the tubes, she puts everything in the bathwater, childhood memory of playing games with the toys floating around.
Eye pads, lotion, soft foaming cleanser, pulverizing exfoliator, mask of fruit acids and vitamin C or ceramide, things of every color, creams for nourishing this or that, silky skin, shiny hair, radiant complexion—relentless battle against yourself; whatever you do, don’t be what you are.
Getting out of the water, she sniffs her arms, a mess of scents, all the things she had tried, an irritating odor, annoying because it’s meant to be calming. Like how when we really badly want to fall asleep, fearing insomnia, we end up tossing and turning in the sheets fifty times, in a rage. A frenzy of serenity.
Red dress, her whole chest exposed, like a cow showing off her udders; the top of her ass, which no one should see, is visible. She spins around suspiciously in front of the mirror. A pang in her heart—she already doesn’t look like herself.
Leafed through the pile of magazines that Claudine had been reading. Sheer panic. In a tone of amused complicity, a cornucopia of little tips for being a trendy slut. And getting into every single detail, making sure everything is in its right place: how you should orgasm and how you should break up and how you should shave and how you should dye your hair down to your pussy and how you should be, inside and out. A deceptively charming tone, idiotic propaganda dictating what we should be.
After centuries of having to completely cover themselves, women are now commanded to bear everything, to prove that everything about them conforms to society’s expectations, to show they have recalibrated themselves: look at my endless legs, clean-shaven and tanned; my ass with just the right amount of muscle; my flat stomach and pierced belly button; my enormous, firm, and shapely breasts; my beautiful, healthy, ageless skin; my long eyelashes, my shiny hair.
Contrary to what she had believed, it isn’t about submission to men’s desires. It’s an obedience to the advertisers, required of everyone. They determine the fad, page after page: here’s what we’re selling, so here’s what you have to be.
“YOU SEE HOW well I’m managing?”
He agrees. “I do, and it must not be easy.”
He watches her thrash about. She spins around, hops a bit, walks back and forth with some skidding, she can do a half-turn without her ankle buckling. She gets up on a chair, hands on her hips. She adds, “It’s not perfect yet. There are some things I won’t be able to do.”
“Those aren’t the right shoes for it.”
Good progress, she was comical to watch at the beginning.
But she’s been at it for a week, and now Pauline can manage in heels. Even though she has the same legs as Claudine and a similar walk, one thing clearly distinguishes them: how they present themselves.
Pauline gloats, “I’ll be able to go outside soon!”
She hasn’t gone out even once in the two weeks since she switched over. She says that it wouldn’t be very smart, that you never know.
She’s not exactly overflowing with common sense, another commonality between them. She has her little methods, extremely personal rituals that she has to follow to the letter “for it to work.”
Nicolas remarks, “No denying it, they make your legs look great . . . but maybe you should shave them. Or else get waxed.”
“Are you crazy?”
He scratches his head, not convinced he’ll be able to get his point across.
“You’re really thinking of going out like that? In a dress, in heels, and your legs not done?”
“My legs are done, my mother put me in the world with them. It’s barbaric, shaving, completely barbaric.”
As if he had just proposed that she shave her pussy and show it to the whole world. A blatantly indecent proposition. In the past two weeks he’s grown used to her bizarre reactions.
She strikes him as a babe in the woods. For years she’s lived behind closed doors with nobody but her boyfriend, who seems to be extremely weird. She has never cheated on him, she has never thought about it, she doesn’t have close friends, no one to miss, she doesn’t have TV because it propagates too much bullshit, doesn’t read magazines for the same good reason. Being that sheltered, she has her odd r
eactions.
He thinks it over, she certainly won’t learn from the books she reads that women never show their body hair. Nevertheless, he attempts a demonstration.
“Still, you’ve gone into town in the summer, right? At Bar-le-Duc, there are people outside?”
She acquiesces. Fairly stubborn, for her the issue is resolved: she’s already done enough of this, she doesn’t want to hear talk of painful finishing touches. Nicolas continues, “Have you ever seen a single girl with hairy legs in a dress?”
“I don’t look at girls’ legs.”
“That thug you’re dating never asked you to wax?”
“No. He’s not a thug, maybe that’s why.”
Why does he fundamentally believe that just because she’s a girl she has to rely on artifice or else no one will want her? With all her heart, she wishes Sébastien were there so he could see what it’s like, when you’re different.
Nicolas goes rifling through the cabinets, takes out sugar and water. He’s in a good mood, her reluctance really seems to amuse him. He proposes, cheerfully, as if they were about to play a game, “Come here, I can do it with sugar. I did it to my sisters when I was a kid.”
“I said no.”
“Listen, I, personally, don’t give a shit. But since you really seem to want to make people believe you’re her, I’m here to help, that’s all. Otherwise, you can’t wear a dress.”
“No, I want to wear a dress.”
She never wore dresses. Except at home, her big T-shirts. Otherwise, she never went out with bare legs. The usual drill: be as far as possible from Claudine, opposite, different.
And when she went out with Sébastien and they passed a girl showing off her legs, he always found it shameful that women always feel obligated to parade themselves about, exhibit themselves in order to please. He’d say, “Your purpose isn’t solely to conform. It’s like they’re complicit. I don’t understand them.”
Now she’s doing exactly what she shouldn’t do, just to see, that’s all. She absolutely wants to go out in a dress.
Pretty Things Page 6
