“I backed Cabbage Patch Hurricane to win, mom,” cries Judith. “He was sixty-seven to one!”
“And I backed Oscars Night to place,” adds Maud. “At thirty-eight to one!”
The girls’ excitement raises a smile from Louise.
“They really are a dead loss, the pair of them,” Thomas says apologetically, “but the girls liked their names so much. They spent ten euros each. Is that okay? It’s pretty reasonable.”
“Twenty euros in all? It’s far too much, Thomas. It’s ridiculous.”
“The second race will start in one minute,” says the announcer.
“The horses are on the track over there,” Thomas explains. “They’re going to line up in front of us for the start, and when the pistol’s fired, they’ll set off at top speed, turn over there to the east and come back in front of us for the finish.”
“Which one is Cabbage Patch Hurricane?” Judith asks.
“He’s number 12, over there. With the purple hat.”
The little girls are startled by the bang of the starting gun, then they giggle at their jumpiness and start screaming the names of their respective horses. Thomas roars with laughter, Louise is embarrassed.
“Not so much noise, girls, you’re disturbing other people.”
The geldings are already tackling the sweeping turn. Judging by the commentary, Judith’s horse is in quite a good position. The favorite, Piet van Dresde, has slightly grazed his pastern and is not at his best. His rival, Orus de Bruxelles, is finding the heavy going difficult. The others are giving a mediocre performance. When the horses cross the finish line, the commentator announces: “First: number 12, Cabbage Patch Hurricane. Second: number 10, Oscars Night. Third: number 3, Piet van Dresde.”
“Did they win?” Louise asks, astonished.
Thomas is no less surprised.
“I can’t believe it. Yes, your daughters have won. And both of them, too.”
Judith and Maud jump and dance for joy, jigging in a circle and singing, “We won, we won!”
“Did they back Hurricane to win?” a tall man asks with a note of astonishment as he tears up his own betting slip. “That bag of bones? Some people have all the luck.”
“Hu-rri-cane! Hu-rri-cane!” the girls chant.
“Stop! Calm down, girls. But … Thomas … how much have they won?”
“It’s incredible. Almost a thousand euros between them.”
“A thou-sand! A thou-sand! A thou-sand!”
“Quiet!” Louise barks furiously. “Come on, we’re going home.”
“But, mommy, can’t we bet again?” Judith asks.
“No, I said we’re going home. Do you hear me?”
“Please, mommy,” Maud wheedles. “Thomas said we could bet again on the fourth race.”
“I said no. And it’s me who decides, not Thomas. Okay?”
Louise snatches her daughters by the hand and drags them down from the grandstand in spite of their protestations. Thomas does not argue. He goes to collect the winnings and meets them back at the car, where they are already sitting in their seats. Louise is at the wheel, silent; the engine is running and the girls are chirping away in the back. Thomas produces a roll of bills.
“What shall we do with this honestly won money?”
Louise does not reply. She drives off and slips onto the beltway, staring at the road ahead, stony-faced.
“Can you explain, Louise? What’s going on? I thought the whole thing was funny.”
“You don’t understand anything. No, Thomas, it’s not funny. The girls are so overexcited, you might as well have given them cocaine.”
“Cocaine?”
“That’s exactly right. Gambling’s addictive, didn’t you know that? And I don’t even recognize my own daughters. I’m angry with you.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“Sorry … Well, it’s too late. I know plenty of people who blow everything in casinos, even their pension. Do you really want to know? My own mother, that’s who. My mother. In Enghien. And even now she goes whenever she can. I can’t tell you the memories this brings back.”
“You should have told me …”
“I didn’t want to go to Vincennes, but you insisted. There. You won.”
They sit in silence. For a long time. The traffic moves sluggishly. In the back, the girls have stopped talking. Thomas turns around: they are asleep, exhausted. The dashboard gives off a long beeping sound.
“Damn. I’ve run out of gas,” Louise says irritably. “And I don’t have my credit card.”
“I have some cash,” Thomas whispers. “Quite a lot, even.”
She does not answer. He looks sideways at her. Louise’s lips sketch a smile, which grows wider. Gradually they succumb to hysterical laughter, the car zigzags slightly. The girls do not wake.
STAN
• • •
LOOKING OUT OF A HOTEL ROOM WINDOW, Stan watches the wintry night fall over Lisbon.
A long line of waiting taxis coils around Rossio Square, sheltered by plane trees. The evening shower has stopped, the pedestrians are no longer a ballet of black umbrellas. The next fare is a hefty woman weighed down with bags. She huffs and puffs, railing against the wind and the rain, everything is making her life difficult, her shopping, her soaked raincoat, her own weight. She is bound to go by some respectable name, Senhora Costa perhaps, yes, that’s it, Senhora Manuela Costa. She is in a hurry to get home so she can put it all away in closets before Senhor Costa comes home, and she is probably persuading herself that, as she has so much to carry, a taxi isn’t an unreasonable expense after all. She smiles and tells herself life is sometimes as beautiful as a large department store.
Behind Stan, under the sheets, a woman lies sleeping, her cheek crushed on the pillow. In this unconscious state, the vague resemblance to Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring that Stan managed to grant her evaporates altogether. The sleeper’s name is Marianne Laurent, she is married, admits to being thirty-five, laughs for no reason, and works in Lyon, at the Edouard Herriot Hospital, in Bongrand’s department, where she operates on corneas, which explains why she was at the sixth congress of the European Association for Vision and Eye Research. Stan now also knows that she has had work on her lips and breasts, has a pronounced predisposition to oral sex and a tendency to give short squealing sounds. They drank port together, too much of it, at the hotel bar. She was the one who dragged him to her room, her mind made up; he let her take the initiative before inverting the roles with a physical fury he did not know he was capable of.
Stan rests his forehead against the windowpane, his skin hoping to feel a bite of cold. Each taxi completes the same slow revolution around the fountain and Dom Pedro IV’s column. Stan has time to look at each driver’s face, to pick out the one who wears an ugly gray wool cardigan whatever the weather, the one who prefers a short-sleeved shirt to a polo shirt. They each have their own way of getting the customer inside. One turns around with a genuine smile, another waits for instructions, grumbling and keeping his eyes pinned on the steering wheel. If a driver has to put bags in the trunk, the routine procedure reveals everything about him, his sciatica, his filthy mood, his habits. Stan can give him a whole life, a wife, a mistress, one, two, or three children, he pictures the dog, a poodle or a bulldog, snoozing on the passenger seat.
Marianne Laurent snores artlessly, her mouth open. Anna used to say that for men, and sometimes for women, the sexual act could be—and this was her word—“vacuous.” Stan has to face the facts. He gave in to this woman’s moves, to the point of succumbing to his own body’s voracious appetites, and he took her without tenderness or love, striving for annihilation in a state of appalling loneliness. He closes his eyes. He would like to forget himself again in the passionate eagerness of those unfamiliar lips, lose himself one last time in that pliant, yearning flesh.
But the taxis keep circling the square and Stan is drawn into their slow spiral, which suddenly takes his thoughts back to Anna, to the gri
m thought of Anna’s naked body beneath someone else’s, and the image that looms in his mind pulverizes him.
THOMAS AND LOUISE
• • •
I remember when rock was young,
Me and Suzie had so much fun,
Holding hands and skimming stones,
Had an old gold Chevy and a place of my own,
But the biggest kick I ever got
Was doing a thing called the Crocodile Rock
Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s song dates back to the sixties, but the Farfisa organ and its honky-tonk have not aged that much. Louise has danced to “Crocodile Rock” so many times that it reminds her of being thirteen as readily as it does of being thirty. Later, she does not yet know this, it will remind her of being forty. After a Radiohead song, Thomas was out of breath and he abandoned Louise for a stool by the bar. She is spinning in some tall blond guy’s arms, her skirt twirling up. Louise has had a bit to drink.
The tall blond man is called Boris, and Thomas has gathered the fact—because the guy was going to great lengths to make it known—that he has a talk show on a cable channel. He is a pretty good-looking boy, the sporty type, with a very newscaster haircut, probably the best catch at this party. He is taking a very close interest in Louise. Earlier, when they were chatting, Boris stood facing her, his shoulders turned toward her, his head bent slightly forward, blinking his eyes rapidly and looking away a couple of times. Thomas had no trouble recognizing these instinctive codes of seduction that behaviorists have identified. Louise herself is not entirely indifferent to his efforts. She did that thing, brushing aside a lock of hair, which with her is a sign of tension.
They are dancing and Boris is holding her to him, caressingly. With every move, Louise’s top rides up, baring her skin, and Boris puts his hand on her hip to turn her. Thomas discovers a feeling of almost physical jealousy that he did not know he had in him. When “Crocodile Rock” comes to an end and Boris suggests they continue dancing to a less feverish number, Thomas intervenes.
“Do you mind?” he says with a smile. “I’m just going to borrow my wife from you for one dance.”
The tall blond man pretends to be amazed, but bows and kisses Louise’s hand before moving to the bar. Louise’s cheeks are pink from so much exertion. She relaxes indolently in his arms, rests her head on his shoulder.
“I never saw you as macho and possessive.”
“I have to admit it was beginning to bug me watching him maul you. I’d also had enough of you wriggling about like that, in a state of excitement.”
Louise steps back for a moment and gauges Thomas’s expression. He was not joking.
“Excitement?” she protests. “And you say I was wriggling?”
“Yes. And I can also say you smell of alcohol, my love.”
“You’re not my father.”
Louise stumbles, Thomas catches her and laughs.
“I’d just like to point out that you’re drunk. And I will concede that the guy’s not bad looking.”
“Better than that. He’s a really good dancer.”
“Granted. Still, he was holding you a bit too close for my liking.”
“Are you jealous?” She cocks her head.
“Yes, I’m jealous. Wasn’t your husband ever?”
“Romain trusted me completely.”
“It must just be me then, I know you can leave a man.”
“I’m certainly not going to leave you for some Boris Fern.”
“Oh? Is his name Fern?”
“If you put the TV on from time to time,” she replies, “you’d know that. Everyone knows him. But I’m not the sort to fall in love with a TV announcer. I prefer psychologists who bet at the races. Are you picking a fight? Is that what’s going on, you’re picking a fight?”
“I’d never pick a fight with you. It would be stupid, and inappropriate. But when I’m jealous, I’ll say so.”
“I love you, you idiot,” Louise whispers. “Anyway, you know that when I go out it’s to show off my ass.”
Thomas smiles, kisses the nape of her neck. In spite of everything, he doesn’t actually mind if she shows it off, that ass of hers.
KARL AND LEA
• • •
KARL AND LEA HAVE PUT lots of gifts on the kitchen table.
Forty of them because this morning Anna is forty years old. Gifts in every shape, every color, wrapped in crepe paper, in velvet, in tissue paper. A real surprise. Anna plays the part accordingly.
“Open them, mommy, open them,” Karl and Lea cry while Stan cuts the little cake. She has already blown out the candles.
Anna opens them, alternating between large ones and tiny ones. In one, a stone painted bright red with a letter A in gold. In another, one of Lea’s drawings, which Anna unfolds carefully. A ginger cookie that she eats immediately. A salmon pink hair band. A red rose that she quickly puts in a glass. A queen of hearts, drawn by Karl … Anna wants to open a small one with a star design, but Karl and Lea protest, insisting she save it for the very end. A small glass for drinking tea. A plastic knight, “to defend her,” Lea explains …
One gift is different from all the others, smaller, more regular, more expensively wrapped too. She has seen it, she wants to put off the moment, but Stan nudges it toward her with one finger.
“Open it,” he says. “Happy birthday, my darling.”
Anna knows it is a piece of jewelry, probably a ring, probably gorgeous, probably priceless. She looks at her husband, shakes her head, her eyes shining.
“Thank you,” Anna breathes. “You shouldn’t have, Stan, you know very well why you shouldn’t have. I can’t accept it, you’re setting a trap for me. You shouldn’t do that.”
“Shush. It’s a ring, not a chain, not a padlock. I’m not buying you. You know that.”
“I’ll open your daddy’s present later, kids.”
Anna continues. So as not to disappoint Karl and Lea, she takes her time, but her high spirits have evaporated, every second suddenly weighs so heavily on her. Is this the last time they will celebrate her birthday as a family like this? In two months’ time, Karl will be eight. Can she ask him to celebrate that birthday without his father, then without her? Anna’s hands are shaking.
“The last present’s the most important,” the children cry. A scarlet envelope, inside, a sheet of white paper.
Lea has drawn a frieze around the margins, Karl has written on it in colored felt-tip pen.
The letter begins with “Lovely little mommy.” It is the most banal children’s letter, but every word cuts right through Anna. She reads it slowly, out loud at first, then quietly, ending in silence. When she has finished, she squeezes her children in her arms. There is a question in the letter. She replies with tears in her eyes: “Of course, my darlings, of course I’ll never leave you. You’re the loves of my life. The loves of my life.”
THOMAS AND JUDITH
• • •
THE WIND BLOWS through Louise’s blond hair streaked with the white she now allows to grow in. It is a very mild winter day on the Normandy coast.
“Come and help us, mommy,” says Maud, “Judith and me are going to dig a hole down to the water.”
Thomas squints in the light. Louise is rolling on the sand with her daughters, all three of them wave. With every move Louise makes, Thomas feels a sense of wonder as he glimpses the cheeky little girl he never knew.
Judith runs over to him, she wants a waffle, she is the one who takes his hand and drags him over to the crepe stall. Because Thomas “saved her life,” the child thinks, by some mischievous inversion of logic, that he is now her property. A waffle with sugar.
“Thomas?” Judith asks when Maud and Louise join them. “How did you meet mommy?”
She does not look away: she wants to know. Her cheek is white with sugar, Thomas wipes it with a napkin. Maud is also listening closely.
“I’ll leave you to explain it,” says Louise. “Make sure you tell it properly. I’ll be right back.
And can you order me a tea?”
Thomas tells them, in his own way. He tries to be accurate, talks about the first evening, the first exchange of e-mails, he even talks about the Galápagos iguana whose skeleton shrinks when there is not enough food. But Judith is not at all interested in the reptile.
“And did you fall in love with mommy right away?”
“I think I did,” Thomas smiles, before correcting himself. “I’m sure I did.”
“And did you know about daddy?”
“Yes,” Thomas replies, as frankly as the question was asked.
Louise is back, she takes his hand.
“You know, my darlings,” she says, “I’ve told you, there were already lots of things that weren’t right between daddy and me. We used to be very happy and the proof is that you’re both here, but we hadn’t been happy for a few years, even if it didn’t show. And then I met Thomas, and I really, really fell in love with him—in spite of his gray hair, I know—and everything felt so clear to me.”
“What wasn’t right, mommy?” Judith asks.
“For example, daddy and I didn’t want to have any more children together. But I, well, I still wanted a baby.”
“You want a baby, mommy?” Judith reiterated.
“Yes. Very much. Your daddy could still have one in five years, or ten years. But I’m a woman, it’s not the same. I’m nearly forty, and if I don’t have one soon, I won’t be able to anymore, because I’d be too old, and that would make me so sad. Do you understand, girls?”
“Yes, mommy,” Judith says, concentrating.
Maud nods her head. Louise drinks her cup of tea.
“Well, I think we’ve managed it, Thomas and me. And we’re all going to have to move in together soon, into a bigger house. I’m pregnant. I’ve got a baby in my tummy.”
Enough About Love Page 16
