Before leaving Juliette, Étienne said, I don’t know what will happen tonight, but something will. Tomorrow you’ll be different. When he returned the following evening at the same time, Juliette’s face was full of dismay. It didn’t work, she said. I didn’t manage to make the kind of conversion you described. I can’t see the disease the way you do, in fact I don’t really understand how you see it. With me, it’s ridiculous—I see it over there, like something lying in wait for me in that armchair.
She pointed to the imitation leather chair with its metal tubing framework, passed up once again by Étienne in favor of the radiator.
(Reading this page three years later, Étienne said that the thing huddled watchfully in the chair had reminded him of my fox on François Roustang’s couch. Me, I think what Juliette said that day was the opposite of what Étienne says. She was telling him, My disease is outside me. It’s killing me, but it isn’t me. And I also think she never saw it any other way.)
Well, you’ve been through your first night, said Étienne. You’re beginning your relationship with illness. You gave it some room, but not all the room. And that’s fine.
Juliette did not seem convinced. She sighed, like someone who’s failed an exam and prefers to drop the subject. Then she said sadly, My girls won’t remember me.
You don’t remember your mother either from when you were little, Étienne replied. Nor do I mine. We don’t see the faces they had anymore. And yet, they live on inside us.
He remembers those words, which he says simply came to him. And without thinking either, I tell him, You talked a lot to me about your father but not your mother. Tell me about her. He looks at me, a little surprised; there’s a pause—nothing’s coming to mind, evidently—and then he’s off. He describes her lonely childhood in Jerusalem, where her grandfather ran the French hospital. The little girl didn’t attend school; her mother taught her at home. For a long time all she knew of the world was her anxious and limited family circle. Étienne’s father, too, was raised in great solitude, and then the two solitudes met each other. Étienne’s mother loved that eccentric, stubborn, unhappy man with everything she had. She managed to protect their children from his depression, to pass on to them a freedom and an aptitude for happiness neither she nor her husband possessed, and Étienne admires her for that. He was the third child. Before his birth, the second child, Jean-Pierre, had died at the age of one from respiratory distress. He had been taken to the hospital, where he suffocated in atrocious and incomprehensible suffering far from his mother, who had been forbidden to stay with him and who for the rest of her life never forgot that her baby had died alone, without her. That, says Étienne, is what I can tell you about my mother.
Juliette asked the doctors at Lyon-Sud to be frank with her, and they were. They told her she would not get better and would die of her cancer; they could not predict how much time she had left, but in theory it might be years. She should expect those years to be very difficult, with constant treatments and a deteriorating quality of life. But Juliette meant to make the most of things, she had a husband and three daughters to be with as long as possible, and she decided to submit to the treatments patiently. A week after her diagnosis, she began chemotherapy and Herceptin, administered once a week at the hospital. That was for the cancer. As for the respiratory problems, the anticoagulants had unfortunately already proved their uselessness. Her lungs were wrecked, “cardboard,” the radiologist had said, shaking his head sadly. He’d never seen a woman her age in such bad shape. They had no choice but to put her on oxygen. So two enormous tanks of oxygen were delivered to Rosier, trundled from the van to the house on a trolley, one for the bedroom, the other for the living room. There was a valve to regulate the flow of oxygen through a long tube that ended in a nasal cannula, a loop anchored behind the ears and fitted with two soft hollow prongs that tucked into the nostrils. Whenever she felt breathless, Juliette would wear the device and get some relief. Everyone vaguely hoped that this assistance would prove temporary, that the anticancer treatments would help on this front as well, but instead Juliette needed more and more oxygen. Toward the end she wore the device almost all the time and was saddened to think that her daughters would remember her as an invalid or some creature out of science fiction.
When Amélie asked her, Mama, are you going to die? Juliette chose to be as frank as the doctors had been with her. Yes, she replied, everyone dies one day. Even Clara, Diane, and you will die, but only in a very, very long time, and Papa as well. My death isn’t very, very far away, but at least it’s a little far away.
In how much time?
The doctors don’t know, but not right away. I promise, not right away. So don’t be afraid.
Amélie and Clara were afraid, naturally, but less, I think, than if they’d been lied to. And in a way, these frank words reassured not only the two little girls, allowing them to keep living their little-girl lives, but also their father. Patrice lives in the present. What sages throughout history have proclaimed the secret of happiness, being here and now, without regretting the past or worrying about the future, is something he practices naturally. We all know in theory that it’s useless to agonize over problems that might arise five years down the road, because we have no idea if they’ll still be the same problems in five years or even if we’ll be around to deal with them. We know this, but it doesn’t stop us from fretting. Patrice doesn’t fret. His carefree attitude goes along with candor, trust, renunciation, all the virtues praised in the Beatitudes, and I suspect that what I’m writing here will puzzle him because his anticlerical culture is so intransigent, whereas I’m surprised that fervent Christians like his in-laws don’t recognize this confirmed secularist’s attitude toward life as simply the spirit of the Gospels. Like a child snug in bed repeating a magic formula that soothes him, Patrice kept repeating, like his daughters, Not right away. In three, four, five years. During those three, four, five years Juliette would grow ever more fragile and dependent; his task would be to care for her, help her, carry her the way he had from the beginning. I don’t mean to paint an idyllic picture; Patrice was beaten down by anguish and insomnia like anyone else, but I believe—because he told me so—that he quickly put this program in place: to be there, to carry Juliette, to live the time allotted to them together while ignoring as much as possible the moment it would end. And he says that carrying out this program helped them all—him, her, and their girls—immeasurably.
Hearing of Juliette’s illness, Patrice’s mother produced out of nowhere an unorthodox medical researcher named Beljanski, whose plant-based compounds were said to have cured (not just helped, cured) patients with cancer and AIDS. Unconvinced by the supportive material she cited, only half believing—if that—her claims, but reluctant to rule anything out, Patrice tried to convince Juliette to bolster her chemotherapy with these compounds, which their family doctor could procure for her. Ever her parents’ daughter, Juliette told him that if there were a miracle pill for cancer or AIDS, the world would know it. Ever his parents’ son, Patrice explained that it would be more widely known if Beljanski’s discoveries didn’t threaten the vested interests of drug companies, which were in league against him. This kind of talk exasperated Juliette, and they’d often argued about it. She couldn’t stand the conspiracy theories he openly admitted favoring, and although he beat a retreat, he did not give up. Even if she didn’t believe in the pills, he asked her to try them for him, so that if she died he would not reproach himself for neglecting even the tiniest chance to save her. She sighed. If it will help you feel better, that’s different, all right. Their doctor arrived with the capsules, explained the instructions, and when she finally gave in, although concerned that the treatment might counteract the effect of the Herceptin, the doctor simply shrugged and said it was a dietary supplement that wouldn’t do any harm even if it didn’t do any good. Juliette went along all the more reluctantly in that she didn’t dare admit to her oncologists what she was doing. When she stopped taking the
capsules after a few weeks, Patrice hadn’t the heart to argue with her.
She was exhausted, sleeping poorly, and hardly an hour went by during the day when she didn’t need her oxygen. None of the little miseries that attend a serious illness gave her a pass: an allergy to the portacath, the device inserted beneath the skin to facilitate injections and chemo; a thrombosis that turned her arm purple up to the shoulder and sent her back to the emergency room. The doctors did feel, however, that she was doing well with the chemotherapy—better than she’d feared and better than Étienne (remembering his own) had thought she would do. It was encouraging. Patrice even began to wonder if it might work after all. What if the doctors, honestly wishing to avoid encouraging hopes that might be crushed, had been too pessimistic? What if she were cured? What if she at least had a long remission, without too many treatments, too much suffering? They could do things once the nice weather returned: walks in the forest, picnics …
There was a kind of respite in February, which was why Juliette allowed Hélène, Rodrigue, and me to come visit, with the wig in our luggage. Juliette, who had always worn her lovely, thick black hair long, had just had it cut but had not yet begun to lose it, had not yet acquired what she called her “cancer look.” A few days after our visit, Patrice shaved her head. From then on he did that once a week, carefully shaving her skull smooth. It was a moment of great intimacy and tenderness between them, he says. They’d wait until the girls weren’t there, enjoying their time alone, making it last. I thought: Like a couple who meet to make love in the afternoon.
Unlike Étienne, who without being vulgar likes talking about sex so much that he feels no serious conversation should do without some, Patrice is rather prudish and I was surprised, looking through the panels of one of his comic strips full of willowy princesses and gallant knights, to spot an angel equipped with an obvious dick. When I ask him about it, he replies—unfazed—that during Juliette’s pregnancy and after Diane’s birth, desire had been at a low ebb between them, that to their joy it had quietly returned in the fall, but by then Juliette had grown more and more tired: there’d been her breathing problems, then the embolism, and so … they’d made love one more time, right after the news about the cancer. They’d both been clumsy, out of synch. He’d been afraid of hurting her. He hadn’t known it would be the last time. Outside of intercourse, they had from the beginning had a very tender and close relationship, as if they’d been joined at the hip. They were always touching each other; they slept fitted together like two spoons. When one turned over, the other turned over as well; she would adjust her legs with her hands, and they’d wind up in the same position, facing the other direction: he’d fall asleep against her back and wake up with her against his, her knees folded into the hollow of his. This had become impossible with her illness. There was the oxygen tank, and she had to sleep with her upper body raised; the bedroom was like a hospital room. They had never been without their nightly intimacy until now and they missed it, but they still held hands and felt for each other in the dark, and even though the extent of their contact had diminished, Patrice does not remember a single night, up to the last, when their bodies weren’t touching somewhere, at least a little bit.
At the end of February Juliette’s condition was reviewed and found disappointing. There’d been no new metastases, the cancer was not progressing, but it wasn’t regressing, either. That’s what’s so difficult with young patients, one doctor said; the cells proliferate so quickly … Honestly, they’d hoped for more from the treatment, which they decided to continue without any great conviction, almost as if, thought Juliette, they just didn’t know what else to do.
During the drive home, she told Patrice she’d avoided dealing with things long enough. It was time for her to get ready.
24
She made no secret of her illness. After her embolism, she’d told her neighbor Anne-Cécile: Listen, I had a real shock, I thought it was serious although now it seems it isn’t, but it could have been, and you should know that I’m counting on you, for the girls. A month later, when the bad news hit, she shared it with their friends in her blunt, efficient way: I’ve got cancer, I’m not sure I’ll make it, so I’m going to need you. Patrice and Juliette were very close to two other couples in the village, Philippe and Anne-Cécile, and Christine and Laurent. They had children the same age and matching lifestyles. They were all from elsewhere, not Rosier; in fact, few people in Rosier were from the village, and that’s probably why newcomers fit in so easily. Their homes, where I had coffee occasionally, were furnished in the same cheery, unpretentious fashion, their mailboxes each decorated with a funny sticker drawn by Patrice saying No Flyers Please. They had barbecues in their yards, looked after one another’s kids, and exchanged DVDs (action films for the boys, romantic comedies for the girls), which Patrice and Juliette watched on their computer because they were the only villagers without a TV. This radical choice, a legacy from Patrice’s family, was the subject of constant teasing in their circle, as was Patrice’s tendency to take seriously even the most outlandish things anyone said. He and Philippe were like a vaudeville team, the idealistic dreamer and the showy cynic, and Patrice smilingly admitted that sometimes, when their wives formed an affectionate audience, he might lay it on a bit thick as the innocent dummy.
A few weeks before Juliette announced she had cancer, Anne-Cécile had had some wonderful news: she was expecting. She remembers as particularly horrible the parallel progress of her pregnancy and her neighbor’s illness. Both women suffered from nausea, but Juliette’s was from the chemo. One was carrying new life, the other her own death. To welcome their fourth child, Anne-Cécile and Philippe immediately began some major renovations in their home, and Patrice and Juliette had talked about remodeling as well: knocking down walls, repainting, transforming the basement into a real office. All four of them had been swept up in the renovations, spreading floor plans, catalogs, color charts out on tables, but now, for Patrice and Juliette, those plans had faded. Anne-Cécile and Philippe were ashamed of being happy, of growing and prospering when misfortune had struck their friends, whose lives had always been so like their own. Anne-Cécile felt that in Juliette’s place she couldn’t have helped resenting her neighbors’ good fortune, and what often happens in such cases almost did: awkwardness, uneasiness, visits falling off … But she came to understand that Juliette really didn’t resent her contentment, that she took a sincere interest in her pregnancy and her plans for the future. Anne-Cécile and Philippe realized that they could keep sharing their happiness without feeling cruel or inappropriate and that they could be a help to their friends without having to look sad.
Late one March evening, on their way back from the Chinese restaurant in Vienne, Patrice and Juliette decided to drop by Anne-Cécile and Philippe’s house. Juliette’s parents were visiting for a few days, and they’d sent the couple off to dinner while they babysat the girls. The four friends went into the living room, where Philippe added fresh wood to the fire and suggested a whiskey, while Anne-Cécile offered to make herb tea. Juliette waited until they were all settled to tell them that her last checkup had been bad, that she and Patrice had discussed two important things over dinner, and she wanted to talk about them now. The first concerned her funeral. At these words, the other couple had the tact not to exclaim in well-intentioned protest, and I’m sure Juliette appreciated that. She said, Patrice is not religious, and I don’t know about myself, it’s complicated, but you two are. You’re our only friends who are and I like the way you live your faith. I’ve thought about it and I’d like a Christian burial; it’s less gloomy, people can come together, and anyway I just couldn’t do otherwise, it would be awful for my parents. So I’d like you to be the ones to arrange that. All right? Fine, replied Anne-Cécile, as calmly as possible, and Philippe, always the joker, added solemnly, We’ll plan the funeral as if it were our own.
Good, now the second thing. I know that if I die Diane won’t consciously remember me. Amélie
yes, Clara a little—but Diane no, and I’m really having trouble accepting this. Patrice takes pictures, of course, but Philippe, you’re really good at it, and I’d like you to take as many pictures of me as you can from now on. If you take a whole bunch, maybe a few of them won’t be too awful.
Philippe said he would and he did. But what was appalling, he remembers, was that the simple gesture of getting out his camera and pointing it at her began to mean: You are going to die.
Everything had to be wrapped up, the case files left in order, just as if she were going on vacation, and she was afraid she would run out of time. She didn’t know how much time she had left, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t much. She divided up tasks among her friends, asking everyone what they could do for her, and whatever was decided, that was it, she moved on. Philippe was in charge of the photos and the funeral mass. Anne-Cécile, a speech therapist, would be dealing with Clara’s lisp, and Christine, a schoolteacher, would oversee the children’s education. Laurent, a human resources manager, was promoted to chief financial officer, responsible for death benefits, home loan, social security for Patrice and the girls—all things that had been preying on Juliette’s mind. She went over the choices with Laurent: long-term illness benefits or short-term death benefits? The long-term illness benefits entailed a reduction in salary, which was almost the more worri-some option, financially speaking, because the family budget was already tight. One solution was to cheat, to return to work for a week only to take another leave of absence; another solution was to opt for reduced work time in an environment adapted to her illness, but she wasn’t sure she had the strength for that. When she died, the home loan would be paid off by insurance, and the administrator of the local justice ministry pension plan, whom Juliette and Laurent went to consult together, told them Patrice would be covered by her health plan for another two years. But after that?
Other Lives But Mine Page 19
