“In love with Adèle?” Richard lets out a sardonic laugh.
“You don’t believe me? Do you want to see the message? I have it with me . . .”
Richard leans slowly toward the phone that Sophie holds out to him and deciphers the message like a child, syllable by syllable. “I have to escape. I’m suffocating without you. I can’t wait for Wednesday!”
“They had plans to meet on Wednesday. He was the one who mentioned Adèle. He told me it was her. If you could only hear him talk about her, it’s . . .”
Sophie starts to sob. Richard wishes she would leave. Now. She is preventing him from thinking. She is preventing him from feeling the pain.
“Does he know you’re here?”
“Oh no, I didn’t say anything to him. He would go crazy. I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I almost turned back when I got to your door. It’s so ridiculous, so humiliating.”
“Don’t tell him. Whatever you do, don’t tell him anything. Please.”
“But . . .”
“Tell him he has to deal with this, put an end to it. Whatever happens, Adèle mustn’t know that I know.”
“All right.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise, Richard. Yes, I promise.”
“And now, you have to go.”
“Of course, I’m sorry. But Richard, what are we going to do? What will become of us?”
“Us? Nothing will become of us. We’ll never see each other again, Sophie.”
He opens the door.
“You know, it’s Xavier you should feel sorry for. Forgive him. Or . . . Well, do what you want. It’s none of my business.”
For a child, flip phones are a source of great amusement. They light up when you open them. You can snap them shut and trap your fingers. It was Lucien who found the white phone. Adèle had gone out to buy a stool so that Richard could use the shower. She called from Castorama. “They don’t have any here. I’m going to try Monoprix.” Lucien was in the living room, playing with the flip phone.
“Who does that phone belong to, sweetie? Where did you find it? Where was it?”
“Where?” the child repeats.
Richard takes the phone from his son.
“Hello? Hello? Is Mommy there?”
Lucien laughs.
Richard looks at the phone. An old model. Someone could have forgotten it here. A friend who dropped by. Lauren, perhaps, or maybe even Maria, the babysitter. He opens it. The wallpaper is a photograph of Lucien. In the photo he is a baby, asleep on the sofa, his little body covered by one of Adèle’s cardigans. Richard is about to close it.
He has never gone through his wife’s things. Adèle once told him how, when she was a teenager, Simone used to open her mail and read the letters her lovers sent her. While she was at school her mother would rummage through her desk drawers; one time she looked under the mattress and found the ridiculous private journal that Adèle kept. She used a knife to open the padlock and then she read out the contents that evening over dinner. She was laughing so hard she could barely breathe. Fat, mocking tears rolled down her cheeks. “Isn’t that hilarious? Kader, come on, it’s hilarious, isn’t it?” Kader said nothing. But he didn’t laugh.
For Richard that episode was a partial explanation of Adèle’s character. Her obsession with locks, with tidying everything away. Her paranoia. He told himself that that was why she slept with her handbag on her side of the bed, with her little black notebook under her pillow.
He looks at the phone. In front of the picture of Lucien a yellow envelope is flashing, with the words “Unread message.” Richard lifts his arm out of reach of Lucien, who is trying to grab the toy. “I want the phone!” Lucien squeals. “I want hello!”
Richard reads the message. That one and the others that follow it. He clicks on the contacts list. Scrolls through the staggering number of men’s names.
Adèle should be home soon. That is all he thinks. She will come back and he doesn’t want her to know that he knows.
“Lucien, where did you find the phone?”
“Where?”
“Yes, Lucien, where. Where did you find it?”
“Where?” the child repeats.
Richard holds him by the shoulders and shakes him, shouting: “Where was it? Where was the phone? Where?”
The boy stares at his father. His mouth twists and, head down, he points with his chubby little finger at the sofa.
“There. Under.”
“Under the sofa?”
Lucien nods. Using his hands to support himself, Richard maneuvers himself to the floor. The plaster cast bangs against the wooden floorboards. He lies flat, turns his head to the side, and sees, beneath the sofa, several envelopes, a pink leather glove, and a familiar orange box.
The brooch.
He grabs his crutches and uses one to slide the orange box toward him. He is sweating. His leg hurts.
“Lucien, come here, we’re going to play. You can see Daddy’s on the floor, right, so let’s play with your trucks. You want to? You want to play with me?”
He sleeps beside her. He watches her eat. He listens to the sound of the water when she takes a shower. He calls her at the office. He makes remarks about her clothes, her scent. Every night he asks her, in a deliberately annoying voice: “You’re home very late. Where have you been? Who did you see? What were you doing?” He refuses to wait for the weekend to pack their stuff into cardboard boxes, knowing perfectly well that this drives her mad. Let her worry, let her fear, day after day, that he might, despite all her precautions, find something: a document, a mistake, some kind of proof. He has signed the sale agreement and Adèle has initialed the pages. He has hired movers and paid the deposit. He has enrolled Lucien in the local school.
* * *
*
He says nothing about his discovery.
He goes into the bedroom when she’s getting dressed and notices the scratches at the base of her neck. The thumb-shaped bruise just below her elbow. He stands in the doorway, face pale, hand tensed around his crutch. He watches as she covers herself with a big gray towel to put on her panties, like a little girl.
At night, lying next to her, he thinks about compromises. Arrangements. About his parents’ arrangement, which no one talked about but everyone knew about. He thinks about Henri, his father, who used to rent a small apartment in town where, every Friday afternoon, he would meet a thirty-year-old woman. Odile discovered this. They argued about it in the kitchen. A frank, almost moving argument. Richard, an adolescent at the time, could hear scraps of their conversation from his bedroom. They came to an agreement, for the good of the children, for the sake of appearances. Henri ultimately gave up his bachelor pad and Odile, triumphant and dignified, welcomed him back into the bosom of the family.
Richard says nothing. He has no one in whom he can confide. He can’t stand the idea of anyone looking at him as a pathetic cuckold, the poor naive husband. He has no desire to hear anyone’s advice. Above all, he does not want anyone’s pity.
* * *
*
Adèle has ripped up his world. She has sawn the legs off the furniture, she has scratched all the mirrors. She has spoiled the taste of everything. Memories, promises . . . none of it means anything any more. Their life is a fake. For himself, even more than for her, he feels a profound disgust. He looks at everything now through new eyes, and what he sees is dirty and sad. If he says nothing, perhaps it will hold firm anyway. What do they matter, really, those foundations that he worked so hard to lay? What does the solidity of a life matter, or honesty, or transparency? Perhaps if he keeps quiet, it will somehow not collapse. Probably all he has to do is close his eyes. And sleep.
* * *
*
But Wednesday arrives and he is restless, anxious. At five in the afternoon he receives a text from Adèle. She says
they’re behind schedule and it looks like she’s going to have to work late. Without thinking, he writes: “You have to come home. I’m in a lot of pain. I need you.” She doesn’t reply.
At seven she arrives at the apartment. She avoids looking at Richard with her bloodshot eyes and asks him irritably: “What’s going on? Is the pain really that bad?”
“Yes.”
“But you’ve taken your pills, haven’t you? What else can I do?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. I just wanted you here. I didn’t want to be alone.”
He opens his arms and gestures for her to sit next to him on the sofa. She approaches, rigid and cold, and he holds her tight. He could strangle her. He can feel her tremble in his arms, can sense her staring into space, and he presses her close to him, seething with hate. Both he and she, in each other’s arms, wish they were elsewhere. Their repulsion merges, and this false tenderness turns to outright loathing. She tries to free herself and he tightens his grip on her. Into her ear, he says:
“You never wear your brooch, Adèle.”
“My brooch?”
“The one I gave you. You’ve never worn it.”
“There really hasn’t been an occasion to wear it, since the accident.”
“Put it on, Adèle. I would like that.”
“I’ll put it on next time we go out, I promise. Maybe even tomorrow when I go to work, if you want. Let me get up, Richard. I’m going to make dinner.”
“No, stay here,” he orders. “Sit with me.”
He grabs her arm and squeezes it.
“You’re hurting me.”
“Don’t you like that?”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Doesn’t Xavier do that to you? Don’t you play these little games?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, stop. You disgust me. If I wanted to, I could kill you, Adèle. I could strangle you right now.”
“Richard.”
“Shut up. Just shut your mouth. Your voice sickens me. Your smell sickens me. You’re an animal, a monster. I know everything. I read all those vile messages. I found the e-mails, I put it all together. My head is filled with it now. I don’t have a single memory that isn’t mixed up with one of your lies.”
“Richard.”
“Stop it! Stop saying my name like an idiot!” he screams. “Why, Adèle? Why? You have no respect for me, for our life, for our son . . .” Richard starts to sob. He covers his eyes with his trembling hands. Adèle stands up. She is petrified by the sight of his tears.
“I don’t know if you can understand, if you can believe me. But it’s nothing against you, Richard. It never was, I promise. I just can’t help myself. It’s beyond my control.”
“Beyond your control. What a load of crap. Who knows about this?”
“No one, I promise.”
“Stop lying! Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage already? No lies.”
“Lauren,” she murmurs. “Only Lauren.”
“I will never believe you again. Never again.” He tries to reach his crutches, to stand up, but he is so upset that his leg trembles and he falls back helplessly on to the sofa. “You know what disgusts me most of all? Being dependent on you. I can’t even tell you to piss off, I can’t even stand up to hit you, to throw your clothes out the window, to kick you outside like the dog that you are. Oh, you’re crying now? Go ahead and cry. I’ve got no tears left. I always hated it when you cried; now it makes me want to gouge your eyes out. What have you done to me? You’ve turned me into an idiot, a cuckold, a pathetic loser. You know what bothers me most? Your little black notebook. Yeah, the black notebook on your desk. I read what you wrote in there, about how bored you are with this shitty bourgeois life of ours. So not only have you been fucked by half the men in Paris but you despise everything we built. Everything I built, working like a dog so that you would have everything you wanted. So you wouldn’t have to worry about a thing. Don’t you think I want something more than this life too? Don’t you think I have dreams, that I wish I could escape? Don’t you think I’m also ‘romantic,’ as you put it? Yeah, go ahead and cry! Cry your fucking eyes out. I don’t care how many excuses and explanations you come up with, the truth is you’re just a slut, Adèle. You’re scum.”
Adèle leans against the wall and slides down to the floor. She is sobbing.
“What did you expect, eh? Did you think you could get away with it? That I’d never find out? There’s always a price to pay for lying, you know. And you’re going to pay. I’m going to hire the best lawyer in Paris, and I’m going to take you for everything you’ve got. You’ll have nothing! And if you think I’m going to let you have custody of Lucien, you’re completely nuts. You will never see your son again, Adèle. Trust me on that: you’ll be out of his life forever.”
Men like to look at their dicks while they’re having sex. They support themselves with their arms, lean down, and watch their shaft penetrating the woman. Just to make sure that it’s all working properly. They spend a few seconds appreciating this movement, enjoying the simple, efficient mechanics of it. Adèle knows there is a kind of arousal to this self-contemplation. And that it is not only their own genitals that they like to watch, but hers too.
* * *
*
Adèle has spent a long time looking up. She has examined dozens of ceilings, followed the curved lines of moldings, the rocking of lamps. Lying on her back, on her side, her feet resting on the shoulders of a man, Adèle has inspected her surroundings. She has scrutinized the cracks in a painting, spotted water damage; once, she counted the plastic stars in a living room that also served as a child’s bedroom. For hours on end she has stared at blank ceilings. Sometimes a shadow, or the projection of a neon sign outside, will divert her attention.
Since Lucien is on vacation now, Adèle spreads out a foam mattress on the lime-tree-lined driveway. She makes a picnic lunch, then they take a nap together in the shade of the trees. Lucien lies next to her and, as he falls asleep, he makes her promise that they will take their nap outside tomorrow too. Her eyes full of the sky, pupils disturbed by the slight movement of leaves, Adèle promises.
“Christine? Christine, can you hear me?” Richard shouts.
The secretary, a blond woman with a face like an albino owl, comes into his office.
“Sorry, Doctor, I was looking for Madame Vincelet’s file.”
“Could you call my wife for me, please? I haven’t been able to get hold of her.”
“Should I call your home number, Doctor?”
“Yes, please, Christine. And her cell too.”
“Maybe she’s gone outside. It’s such a lovely day . . .”
“Please call her, Christine.”
* * *
• • •
Richard’s office is located on the first floor of the clinic, in the center of town. In the space of a few months Dr. Robinson has won over a large number of regular patients who appreciate his devotion and his competence. He sees patients three days a week and operates on Thursdays and Friday mornings.
It is eleven o’clock on a particularly busy morning. Richard has not yet told the mother of the Manceau boy this, but his symptoms are extremely worrying. Richard has an intuition for things like that. And Mr. Gramont refused to get out of his chair. Even though Richard kept telling him that he wasn’t a dermatologist, Mr. Gramont insisted on showing him his moles while claiming that all doctors are thieves and that they wouldn’t steal from him.
“She’s not answering, Doctor. I left a message asking her to call you back.”
“What do you mean, she’s not answering? That’s not supposed to be possible! Shit!”
The owl rolls her round eyes.
“I didn’t know. You didn’t tell me . . .”
“I’m sorry, Christine. I slept very badly last night, an
d Mr. Gramont pushed me over the edge. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Please send in the next patient. I’m going to wash my hands.”
He bends over the sink and puts his hands under the cold water. His skin is dry and covered with little scabs from being washed. He brings the soap to a lather and rubs his hands frenetically, fingers writhing.
He sits down, his elbows on the armrests of his chair, his legs outstretched. Slowly he bends his knees. Six months after the accident, his knees still feel rusty. He knows that he still has a slight limp, even if everyone else tells him that it’s not noticeable. He walks slowly, awkwardly. At night he dreams that he’s running. A dog’s dreams.
He is hardly even listening to the patient who sits facing him. A woman in her fifties, anxious, hair tied in a bun to mask her baldness. He asks her to lie down on the examining table and places his hands on her abdomen. “Does that hurt?” He doesn’t notice that she looks disappointed when he says: “You’re fine. Nothing to worry about.”
At three o’clock he leaves the clinic. He drives very fast along the winding road. In front of the house the car skids on the gravel. It takes him two attempts to get out of the car. He draws back then propels himself forward into the garden.
* * *
*
Adèle is lying on the grass. Next to her, Lucien is playing.
“I called you and called you. Why didn’t you answer?”
“We fell asleep.”
“I thought something had happened to you.”
“Of course not.”
He holds out his hand and helps his wife to her feet.
“They’re coming to dinner tonight.”
“Oh, can’t you cancel it? It’d be so much nicer with just the three of us.”
Adèle Page 10
