by Hilary Reyl
I wanted to make her okay.
“Yes, Layla, they are technically moths. But that’s not all there is. Stuff is different here. I’m starting to understand more things.”
“How is it”—her voice cracked—“that you can’t see? What about all the deceit you have learned about in Search? You should know you can’t always trust people.”
This made me angry. “You haven’t even read Search,” I said. As soon as I said it I wasn’t angry anymore, only sad. I’m in the beautiful French countryside, while she is stuck in her lonely basement in LA.
Layla says that I am the only family she has, along with Maeva at The Center, and sometimes Lady Grantham. Technically, this is not true because Layla has her parents, both of them together, along with two typically developing older sisters. Her parents and sisters let her do whatever she wants. They barely interfere, except to hire people to help her. She has overheard them say that they are throwing money at the problem.
When she didn’t respond to my comment about her not reading Search, I said, “I’m sorry.”
“Okay. Just please don’t disappear on me. Don’t pull a Michael Gregson.”
She wanted me to ask her who Michael Gregson was. So I did. “Who is Michael Gregson?”
“Please don’t do to us at The Center what Michael Gregson has done to Edith.”
I figured that Michael Gregson was a character from Downton Abbey. “What has Michael done to Edith? You haven’t given me that plot line yet.”
“Let’s say there’s potential for abandonment.”
“Abandonment? I’m not going to abandon you.”
Suddenly, I was with her in her basement, even though I was physically pacing up and down on the grass between the cottage and the pool. The grass is full of dandelions. Their softness started to remind me of the softness of her couch, which you sink into, like a furry marshmallow. At first this was a good feeling of being next to my best friend. But after a few minutes of her telling me about Edith and Michael and how Edith found out she was pregnant while she still had no idea where Michael was, and going into more and more detail, I was trapped in a dark place where I didn’t want to be. The brown sofa was sucking me in.
I interrupted her. “I’m not disappearing like Michael Gregson. Or like anyone else. I’m not disappearing from you or from The Center. I’ll be home in a month. I promise.”
“You’re not being a good listener, Martin,” she said, sadly.
“You’re not being a good listener either. You don’t trust me when I say I’m not going to abandon my roots.” I was Odette, defending myself to Mr. Swann, who thought I was lying. Which meant that Layla was acting like the jealous one. Was Layla jealous? “I’m thinking of going to a party. That’s all. Nothing has changed.”
“I thought they were coming to your party for Peter Bird.”
I did not want her to react this way. I also did not want to lie to her. Because if I lied to her, then it would be logical for her to be jealous. “They are coming to our party for Peter. Then, next weekend, I might go to a party at Simon’s house while his mom is out of town.”
“Is that wise? I think I need to hang up.”
“Thanks for calling, Layla.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
After we hung up, I picked seven dandelions and blew them all away.
Tuesday, June 7
5:50 p.m.
Every time Mom catches my eye, she smiles. She is happy that I have friends to invite to our party.
If Papa could see, he would say that I was becoming a real artisan. An artisan is someone who makes things on his own instead of repeating.
I used to spout entire books, songs, and phrases copied from adults. When speech is repetitive, it’s perfect. There is no mess. It’s the cake thing: all the ingredients measured and lined up on the kitchen counter, waiting.
The experts told my parents I had no original speech. That if I ever did start to really speak, I wouldn’t speak perfectly anymore, but in mashed-together phrases that could be called “artisanal” because they would be homemade. If I started to sound like a small child or someone speaking a foreign language, this would be a great sign. It might seem like I was sliding backward, talking baby talk. In fact, the goofy speech would be the beginning of the real me.
Papa latched on to the word artisanal.
If he asked me, “Do you want to do the puzzle of the cow?” and I answered, “You don’t want to do the puzzle of the cow,” he tried to argue that I was saying something of my very own. Dad is an optimist.
Mom wasn’t buying it. She said that when I said I didn’t want to do the puzzle, I was echoing Papa, in the negative. I hadn’t changed one word of his question. She said he needed to face this.
“No,” Papa said. “These negations of Martin’s are original speech. They’re artisanal.”
“What is it with the artisanal? You’re making Martin sound like a cheese or a vinegar.”
Papa kept the faith. Maybe cheese and vinegar weren’t such bad things. He called me his “young artisan” with affection in his voice. The last words he said to me before he had to go to jail were, “I believe in you, young artisan. Always remember I love you and I believe in you.”
Wednesday, June 8
9:35 p.m.
Years from now, when this afternoon has become hopelessly out of date, it won’t seem at all hopeless to Gilberte and me.
I wanted to ask her to meet me after school at the boulangerie in town. Three times, I tried to say something. I tried in the hallway between math and history. I tried in the cafeteria. I tried right after the bell rang at the end of chemistry. All three times, I said, “I would like to ask you something.” The first time, she smiled and asked, “What?” I couldn’t respond. The second time, she laughed, then asked, “What is it, Martin?” I still couldn’t respond. The third time, she didn’t smile or laugh. She said, “If you don’t tell me what it is, I can’t answer.” I just stood there in the door of the classroom until somebody said “Excuse me” and I had to move.
There was a fourth time. It was in the yard, at the end of school, and it was my last chance. I saw her ponytail and her gladiator sandals, and I ran after them. I had to change my opening line or I was going to get stuck again. So instead of “I would like to ask you something,” I said, “Do you like madeleines?”
“Yes,” she said. “Do you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you want to get some right now?”
She looked down at her toes. I thought she was annoyed at me. Then she looked up and said, “Yes.”
We went into the boulangerie together. I bought a bag of six madeleines. Because I was with Gilberte, I had no trouble asking the lady in the pink apron for what I wanted. I paid without any problem. Gilberte picked an Orangina to drink. I got myself iced tea because there was no hot tea for sale, which was quite flexible of me.
We sat on a bench in a small shady square. At first, I didn’t open the madeleines. The scalloped ridges through the paper bag made me smile.
She asked me about my hand-painted sneakers. “Why are there butterflies on your shoes?”
“They are moths. My friend Layla back in California painted them.”
She arched her eyebrows. “Is Layla your girlfriend?”
“Of course not.”
“Why does she paint moths?”
“Moths are the people who flutter around the glamour of my mom’s movies. The big fans and the fascinated people. The ones who really hang on.”
“So you don’t like the moths.” She frowned.
“No, that’s not it. Not all moths are bad. Layla is good, and she’s a moth herself. ‘I am a moth drawn to the flame of glamour.’ That’s what she says. She copies them from insect books.”
I looked down at my Converses, then back up at Gilberte. She had her hair pulled into a ponytail like on the first day we spoke. She had even more freckles than before. She was still frowning, but not a sad frown. I recognized puz
zlement. She reminded me of when I’m trying to work out something that might be important.
I wanted to tell her again how amazing it was for me to be able to look straight at her without even flinching, but I didn’t want to seem weird.
Also, Elisabeth gave me some advice this morning to prep me for seeing Gilberte: “Remember, it’s not all about you and your perceptions. Make it about her too.”
I want to follow Elisabeth’s advice. Only I have no model for this kind of back and forth, because the love in Search is all one-sided.
I start trying to think of questions to ask Gilberte about herself. But all my questions—about her past, her parents, her habits—are what Maeva calls obsessive and inappropriate. I can’t ask a single one.
I begin to stress out. I’m sweating. I’m scared I am going to groan. My guts stretch into taut violin strings. I have no idea how to loosen them except to make horrible yowls. The groaning is coming on. I grab the bench with one hand. The other hand is gripping the madeleine bag. I stop myself from rocking, but I won’t be able to hold back for long.
I’m about to ruin everything, when she rescues me. She brushes her hand over mine and says, “Are we going to eat our cakes or what?”
“Yeah, we are.” Miraculously, my voice is steady, but it’s a disconnected, underwater voice.
“Okay then, let’s go!”
Slowly, I open the bag, hand her a madeleine, and take one myself. I am with Gilberte eating Proust’s madeleines. I wait for fireworks to begin bursting in my chest. What happens is that my heartbeat slows down to normal. For a few seconds, I’m as calm as I’ve ever been. The leafy square around us comes into focus.
The first madeleine tastes good.
“These are famous from Proust,” she says.
“You’ve read Proust?” I whisper. I start to tingle. I brush the top of her hand the way she brushed mine a few moments ago, and I touch the tiny soft hairs on her skin. Then I rest my hand on top of hers. When I do this, I think time might stop. Only it doesn’t and she keeps on talking.
While she is talking, she turns her hand over so that our palms touch and our fingers interlock. It’s so much better than any dream.
This is what she is saying: “In France, everyone has to read passages of Proust. You can’t escape. It’s part of our culture. Even if you don’t ‘know’ it, you have to have some idea. I’ve only read that first section about when he eats the madeleine and remembers stuff. And then I saw a super-boring movie once about a guy named Swann who was obsessed with some woman.”
“Wow.” She’s talking about Search. She’s holding my hand for real. The groaning is gone. I smile at her.
“You’ve read Proust?” she asks me.
“I have read it a few times,” I answer, “but only the first volume.”
“That’s bizarre for an American, no? To read a French author.”
“My dad is French.”
“Oh, right, I forgot.”
“Maybe this seems bizarre for a kid my age?”
“No, no. It’s not bizarre,” she says. “It’s different. I don’t know very many different people.”
“So different is good?”
“Yeah. It makes people curious. Like your music at the pool. No one else plays violin music like that. It makes me want to know you.”
She moves her hand and resettles her fingers around mine. This is fun. Holding hands seems almost normal. I’ve never adjusted to anything this fast.
She asks if school is different in America. I admit that I don’t attend the most typical school, so I might not be the best person to answer her question. I tell her that in most schools in America, kids are encouraged to express themselves and ask lots of questions. This is supposed to be good for critical thinking, although you could argue that it also wastes a lot of everyone’s time.
She nods.
Then she asks about how Mom’s movie is going, and her fingers start to wriggle in my grip. They are like wings beating against glass. She glances at my sneakers. Could she be nervous? I don’t want her to be nervous.
Making my voice calm, I tell her that the movie is going well and that we should go check out a shoot together. Maybe we can go when they are doing one of the crowd scenes that Simon will be in? I say I really want to go on set at Chenonceau to see her parents gardening, like we talked about at the pool. When she laughs at this, I am happy.
She lets go of my hand to take another madeleine.
We ate all six. Three each. I told her that I’ve always thought that the experience of eating madeleines in France would have to somehow stick to the book, like a blueprint. I said I’d never been able to picture just how this perfect symmetry would happen, because I am not exactly an old man trying to recapture my life.
I could see that she wasn’t following what I was saying. Her eyes were moving all around the square, and she was peeling the label off her Orangina bottle with her fingernails. They were painted green. She had something else on her mind besides madeleines. Something that had nothing to do with Proust. I recognized this because I have watched Layla when her mind is so full of music that she doesn’t see the world around her.
Gilberte was in her own bubble.
We sat for a while without talking.
At some point, I asked her if she liked white hawthorns or pink hawthorns better. I tried not to care about her answer, but pink hawthorns are rarer and more exciting to Marcel, so it was hard not to hope.
Her gaze went down again. “Listen, when you said you saw me in the hawthorn bushes—”
“I didn’t see you!” I said too loudly. “You saw me.”
It’s very hard for me not to correct inaccuracies. I was overdoing it, but she seemed to forgive me because she looked back up at me and she smiled. A little sadly, but she smiled.
“Well, I should get going,” she said.
When we were saying good-bye, she asked, “So, day after tomorrow?” I heard shyness, which made me think that she was nervous about saying she wanted to see me again soon.
“Of course.”
“You sure it’s cool if we all come to the party? Your mom doesn’t mind?”
“Very cool. It’s only dinner on our terrace at the little house we’ve rented. Nothing fancy. My mom is fine with it.”
I almost told Gilberte that my mom can hardly believe I have friends and is so psyched you’re all coming that she’s pinching herself to make sure she isn’t dreaming.
Thursday, June 9
10:35 p.m.
A sparagus Man had the nerve to tell me at breakfast that I was acting like a crazy man in a book called Don Quixote. I told him that was impossible because I’ve never even read Don Quixote, so I can’t be copying him. Asparagus Man laughed and said it didn’t matter. He told me Don Quixote was a type. Don Quixote believed he was an errant knight from out of his books of chivalry, and he wasted his life defending the honor of a woman he didn’t even know. She was some milkmaid he had “elevated in his fantasy.” Asparagus Man said I too am trying to live according to some code in an outdated book.
I can’t stand him.
I wished Layla was here to stun him with a quote from Lady Grantham or play the first few bars of “Paint It Black.” But I was on my own. I also wished I hadn’t told everyone at dinner last night about spending the afternoon with Gilberte eating madeleines. It was none of his business. He should never have been there at our dinner, scarfing our goat cheese with our lavender honey, listening to our conversation. With his Don Quixote thing, he was trying to be my pal by acting literary. I wasn’t biting.
I wanted to say to him that he didn’t get it, that at first I loved Gilberte because of Proust, but now I loved Proust because of Gilberte. I didn’t say anything.
Asparagus Man asked me if I was cooking for Peter’s dinner tomorrow night.
I did not want to answer, but I have been taught through years of behavioral therapy not to leave a question hanging.
I said that I had been plannin
g to make fish soup, but it now seemed too hot for soup, so I was making a tomato-and-olive salad and a green-bean-and-shallot salad. Mom is ordering cold poached salmon and roast chickens from the traiteur in town.
He seemed satisfied and left me alone.
The food at the party is going to be delicious.
Bernadette is making clafoutis for dessert, which is a kind of flan with fresh cherries. In France, they don’t take the pits out. Mom has asked Bernadette to pit the cherries for the Americans, otherwise there is sure to be some drama, like a broken tooth or swallowed pits or choking. Bernadette says this is ridiculous, and my guess is that she will leave some of the cherries intact to show us who is boss.
When I met Bernadette, I asked her if she had ever wrung the neck of a chicken because I’d read in a French novel about a cook named Françoise chasing a chicken around a yard and calling it a “dirty beast.” I wondered if this still happened in real life. She twisted together her own gnarly hands. Then she told me that her father used to wring the necks of chickens, ducks, and geese, and that she had watched him. Even though she had never done it herself, she had a good idea how it must feel. “The idea does not shock me at all,” she said. This was good enough for me.
Friday, June 10
4:50 p.m.
This is the note, written on lined paper ripped out of a spiral notebook, that Gilberte handed me at school this morning.
Hey Martin,
We are not coming to your party tonight. At least I’m not. We are assholes. We are using you like the glamour moths your friend draws on your shoes, okay? You need to understand this. We’ve all been treating you like a fool, lying to you about wanting to be your friends, but I’m the worst one because I could tell that you liked me and I led you on. I never saw you in any hawthorn bushes. I have no idea what you are talking about a lot of the time. My name is not Gilberte. I didn’t correct you when you said these things because I wanted to meet movie stars and to help Simon get into the scenes he wanted to get into because he’s upset about his dad and he has all these dreams. So we are users. We don’t deserve your trust. Everyone will be mad at me for writing this, but they should also be ashamed because you are a nice, trusting guy. Anyway, I’m not going through with it. And I doubt the others will now either.
