A Good Life, page 13
“I don’t know how I’ll get over it. I love him so much . . . I have to go and fetch my things from his place, I couldn’t face it.”
“Come along, let’s go.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
I fucked up at her last split. I invented my friend Sonia, whom I had to console, when in reality, I panicked, I’d never seen Emma so fragile. She’s always been the steady one, the one who takes control of situations and makes decisions. I felt overwhelmed by her suffering, preferred to run away than see my pillar collapsing. I’m determined to make up for that.
Alex isn’t there, Emma has the keys. I go in with her. While she gathers the few belongings she left at his studio, I check out the place. Small, light, in a total mess (leftover hamburger and some cold fries languish on the table) (nothing more gross than cold fries). Photos of my sister and Alex hang on the wall. In one, Emma looks straight at the camera, I can see in her eyes that she’s happy. It’s a shame, him I did rather like.
I hear my sister sobbing in the bathroom. I need to distract her.
When she emerges, her eyes red, she discovers my work. I’m not sure I’m proud of it, it’s junior-high level, but it has the merit of making her laugh. With the black marker I always carry around in my bag, I’ve written on the wall—in very big letters—the first insult that came to me:
YOU FUCKING COLD FRY
YESTERDAY
OCTOBER 2005
EMMA—25 YEARS OLD
Once again, Agathe has moved all the furniture around. It’s the third time this year, and much as I’ve explained to her that I don’t like change, she can’t stop herself. Okay, so I do spend two nights a week at Alex’s, but it’s my home, too.
“Look, this way you can see the sky from the sofa-bed!” she says to convince me.
I lie down beside her, the stars twinkle directly above our heads.
“You see? It’s wonderful!”
“I’ll give you that, Agathe, but now we can’t open the bathroom door.”
“You’re so pernickety.”
I give up, she’ll change everything around again when her bladder’s bursting.
I try to ignore the drawbacks of cohabitation by thinking that, one day, I’ll look back on this period with nostalgia. Most of the time, we get on well. We laugh a lot, we share TV’n’duvet nights, we take care of each other. I have loads of faults, I readily admit. But Agathe is exhausting. I feel like I’m on a roller coaster. She swings from all to nothing, knows no in-between. She goes around with all her emotions on display, and anyone spending time with her has to get used to it. You just have to go with her, on her real highs, on her real lows. Lately, she has a new obsession: writing a comic strip. She devotes all her free time to it, spends all her money and some of mine on notebooks, felt pens and how-to books. She always manages to infect me with her enthusiasm, so I encourage her, listen to her talking about it for hours, but deep down, I fear her passion will end up evaporating, just as it did with Jean Paul Gaultier, tattoos, and watercolors.
There’s a knock on the door.
“I’ll go!” Agathe cries, diving towards it.
Our mother stands in the doorway.
“Hello, girls. I’m so sorry to come without warning, but I can’t take living without you anymore. If you don’t want to see me, I can go.”
Agathe looks questioningly at me. I don’t react at all. We haven’t seen our mother since we left her apartment. She hasn’t tried to contact us for two years, and now here she is, out of the blue, expecting us to welcome her with open arms.
“How did you know where we live?”
My tone is curter than I’d have wished. Agathe ushers her in, Mr. Potato Head gives her a warm welcome. She crouches to stroke him:
“Your sister gave me the address.”
That sister avoids my gaze.
My mother’s patchouli scent fills the studio. My stomach is in knots. Her hair is short, her hands shake a little. I’d like to be angry enough to throw her out, not to feel her distress. But in reality, it upsets me to see her so vulnerable. The moment she stands up, when she stops focusing on the dog to avoid facing her girls, I’m in her arms.
TODAY
AUGUST 9
AGATHE
3:17 P.M.
She’s having a nap. Clearly, her massage really was relaxing. Mine revealed parts of my body I wasn’t aware of, and would have gladly remained unaware of. I’m trying to find a suitable position in the armchair to doze off when the doorbell rings. Emma springs up, eyes still sleepy:
“Yes? What?”
I burst out laughing:
“That’s good, you’re completely relaxed.”
I go to open the door while she comes to. A man stands behind the gate. He has white hair and a cat in his arms.
“Robert Redford!”
I invite the man in. He pushes open the gate and joins me. The cat doesn’t even look at me. If he could unscrew his head to show his lack of interest, he would.
“I saw the posters,” the man says. “Seems you’re looking for him.”
“Yes, he’s my grandmother’s cat.”
“I know. We were friends.”
The words of Madame Garcia, the neighbor, come back to me. She’d mentioned another neighbor Mima was close to. Instantly, the way he speaks of her makes me like him. I usher him inside. Emma is now totally awake; the same cannot be said of her hair.
“He was a friend of Mima’s,” I tell my sister. “What’s your name?”
“Georges Rochefort. I live at no. 14.”
Emma offers him a coffee, which he accepts. I suspect that, like me, she wants to hear this man talk about our grandmother. Bring her to life through his words.
With the cat on his knees, Georges Rochefort drops half a sugar lump into his coffee.
“Did you know Mima for a long time?” Emma asks.
“For twenty years.”
I hide my surprise, I’ve never heard mention of him.
“Did you know each other well?”
He smiles:
“We were good friends, yes.”
Suddenly, a memory hits me. At Mima’s funeral, one man had struck me as particularly upset. I hadn’t dwelt on it, too choked up with my own grief, but it had touched me. I wasn’t the only one sobbing noisily. He was wearing a hat, but I think I recognize him.
“I’ve come to ask you if I might keep Robert Redford,” Georges says while stroking the cat, who hasn’t moved from his knees. “We were on our way to the Quintaou market when we found this cat, injured by a c—”
“You were together?” I ask, surprised.
The story of Robert Redford’s rescue, told to me by Mima, is taking on a new shape.
“We always went to the market together.”
Emma gives me a knowing look. I can’t believe it.
“We had what might be called shared custody,” the man jokes. “The cat would come and go between our two houses. He’d spend the day at mine and, once it was evening, he’d return to your grandmother. While she was in hospital, he stayed at mine one night, then a second. I told her about it by phone. She grumbled, fearing he’d abandon her. I promised her that he’d be back as soon as she got home.”
He breaks off, looks away. His grief his palpable. Discreetly, Emma forms a heart with her fingers. I shake my head. Mima wasn’t attached, I’d have known about it.
“You can keep the cat,” Emma says. “We’ll take down the posters.”
“It’s nice that he’s with you,” I add. “I have a small question, Georges. Did you see each other often, you and Mima?”
His eyes light up, he smiles broadly:
“As often as possible, yes. We liked being together . . . I miss her dreadfully.”
He lowers his head, seems to hesitate, then takes a deep breath:
“I have something else to ask you. It’s a rather delicate matter, but I’m sure you’ll understand.”
YESTERDAY
JULY 2006
EMMA—26 YEARS OLD
We look around our studio one last time and then close the door for good.
“It was really lovely living with you,” Agathe murmurs.
I wrap my arms around her. She’s the only person I can do that to.
I got my degree, she got hers. In September, I’ll start my teaching diploma—it’s always been my dream. She’s off to live with Mima, there’s an opening for a youth worker in a home.
The car is loaded to the max. Alex really helped us, he’s a Tetris champion. When I’m back, I’ll move in with him. I played hard to get for a while. I wanted to be sure he had no more doubts, after his meltdown. He was soon back, he’d been scared, but then realized that he didn’t want to live without me.
“Drive carefully,” he says, slamming my door shut.
“Don’t worry about us, Cold Fry!” Agathe says back.
In the car, we listen to RTL. It’s very easy to pinpoint the moment one enters adulthood: it’s when one switches from music radio stations to general-interest ones.
We arrive in the dark. Mima welcomes us with a potato omelet, which we devour as if we’ve not eaten for months. We postpone dealing with Agathe’s boxes until tomorrow, preferring to get started on a game of Chinese checkers, which Mima wins, in keeping with tradition, since she bends the rules and we don’t dare tell her we’ve noticed, and then we all retire to our rooms. I inherit my father’s old room, as usual, and Agathe gets Uncle Jean-Yves’s.
I’m half-asleep when the door opens and I sense my little sister sliding into my bed.
YESTERDAY
DECEMBER 2006
AGATHE—21 YEARS OLD
December is my favorite month, here. The tourists have gone; rock, sky, and sea become one; and, especially: Christmas is coming. Every year, I wait, like a kid, for the decorations, and rush to the stores to look for the perfect gifts for those I love. I’ve found a splendid scarf for Mima. She had her thyroid removed last month and won’t go out anymore without some accessory to hide her neck.
In the warmth of a café, eyes riveted on the illuminations outside, I share a chocolate mousse with Joachim.
“It’s really good,” I say.
“It’s you who’s good.”
I must really love him to put up with such a corny line.
Things got off to a bad start, between us. For a long time, he was the friendly neighbor with greasy hair, the one I’d go and find when Lucas wasn’t available for surfing but forget the rest of the time. Over the years, we became friends, but it would never have entered my mind to fall in love with him.
And then, this summer, bang, head over heels in love. A revelation. He returned to live with his parents after being dumped, and it was as if, suddenly, I was seeing him. Luckily, he was seeing me, too, and apparently had been for some time. When I kissed him, he said, “Aha, thought so!”
We kept our relationship secret for a while. I’d only told Mima about it because I can’t hide a thing from her. Madame Garcia, Joachim’s mother, isn’t exactly crazy about me. He confessed that she called me “the wild girl,” just because I don’t wear frumpy outfits like her. She looks straight out of the granny pages in the 3 Suisses catalogue, so I can see why she’d be rattled. When Lucas heard about us, he had the same reaction as Joachim: “Aha, thought so!” Apparently, I was the last to know, even though I was the chief concern.
We leave the café and head back to my wild-girl’s scooter (it’s fluorescent pink). On the way, I buy some roast chestnuts and burn my tongue because I can’t wait to taste them.
“Want me to kiss it better?” Joachim teases.
I don’t say no, he kisses me, I quiver, we jump on the scooter, I run the lights to get home as fast as possible, and then pounce on him.
It’s my longest relationship. It’ll be six months next month. I know he’s the one, and this time, even Emma doesn’t tell me otherwise. She’s clearly seen that it’s different.
He’s the first person I’ve found a gift for. For Christmas, I’m giving him a life with me.
TODAY
AUGUST 9
EMMA
3:45 P.M.
Georges Rochefort is waiting for us at the bottom of the ladder. His request isn’t as sensitive as he suggested: he’d like to recover a painting, done by a Spanish artist for Mima and him, about fifteen years ago. All perfectly reasonable, in fact.
“It’s surprising she didn’t hang it up!” Agathe says.
“The painting is rather unusual,” Georges replies. “It doesn’t fit in easily with the décor.”
Agathe and I had no idea the house even had an attic. Georges showed us the trapdoor to access it (in the utility room, just above the water-heater), and the location of the ladder (in the garage). Brave as ever, Agathe lets me climb up first.
“I saw a movie about a guy living in an attic for years without the homeowner realizing,” she says. “If you see someone, shout ‘Danger!’, and I’ll understand.”
“Are you sure about that?”
I push the trapdoor, it doesn’t give.
“Must have been closed for a long time,” I say.
“That’s reassuring,” Agathe says. “If there is a squatter, he’ll be dead by now.”
I think I hear Georges chuckling. The trapdoor finally opens, and I hoist myself into the attic.
“You can come now, Agathe!”
“Are you sure? No one on the horizon?”
“The man holding the gun to my temple is ordering me to tell you there’s no one.”
“Ha ha, very funny . . . You’re joking, aren’t you?”
She finally joins me. A small dormer window lets some light in. The attic extends right across the house, which isn’t huge, and, to my great surprise, it’s all fitted out. The floor is carpeted, the walls papered. Shelves are groaning with all manner of things: plates, books, folded clothes, a toaster, shoes, an electric whisk, cushions, a carafe, porcelain figures, sheets, curtains, Christmas baubles, strings of lights, a mirror, some perfume miniatures. I recognize the twenty-two-volume encyclopedia in which Papi would find the answer to all the questions we asked him, the electric razor he used every morning in the bathroom, his carpet slippers.
“Come and see this,” Agathe says, in front of an open chest.
We understand without having to rummage. Dad’s belongings are stored here. His school exercise books, a wooden train, his watch, his checked shirts, his scent. Scorpio. I’d given him a bottle one Father’s Day, my mother had steered me to it because it wasn’t expensive, it was sold in the supermarket. He’d stuck with it and wore it on special occasions. Agathe grabs the red bottle and presses the atomizer. The fragrance enters my nostrils and brings my father back to me. Just for a second, he’s there, in front of me, his broad shoulders, his moustache, his smile, his voice. Agathe’s hand slips into mine.
Further along, we fall on my Speak & Spell and Agathe’s firefly. Our slot-in record player is there, too, beside a Popple toy.
In her notebook of poems, Mima often wrote about time passing. One poem, dating to the year of my birth, is imprinted on my memory.
It’s over there that my father now lives
There, too, that Mom went
I left my little ones’ laughter there
And my youthful years remained there
Our first dance disappeared there
I turn around, but I see them no more
If only for one moment I could
Freeze time and find Yesterday again.
It isn’t an attic, it’s a mausoleum. Mima preserved her passing time here.
“Have you found it?” asks Georges.
“I’d forgotten about him,” Agathe mutters.
“Not yet!” I answer. “Do you remember where you put it?”
“It was to the right. Near a barrel, I think.”
Agathe shows me the barrel, made by Papi, at the back of the room. We make our way over, stooping due to the sloping roof. The painting is there, facing the wall. I grab it and turn it around.
“Oh my god!” I exclaim.
“Not an improvement,” Agathe says, covering her eyes.
Georges didn’t lie, it sure is an unusual painting. A portrait of him and Mima, to be precise. Smiling, neatly coifed, and stark naked.
9:32 P.M.
He answers at the first ring.
“Hi, sweetheart.”
Hi, sweetie. How are you doing?”
“Fine. I’m missing you.”
“I’m pleased to hear it.”
“I’m pleased to feel it.”
Silence.
“Are you annoyed with me?”
“It isn’t easy, I can’t deny it. I’ve definitely felt that you’ve been distant lately.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t worry, I understand. With all that’s happened, you’ve every right to be shaken up.”
“No doubt. But so have you.”
From his voice, I can tell he’s choking up.
“Let’s just say we’re quits. Remember, at the start of our relationship, it was me who needed air.”
“True. I hope, when I get home, I won’t find anything scrawled on the wall.”
He laughs.
“Promise. I leave that privilege to your sister. How’s it going, with her?”
“Well. Very well, even. It’s good to have her back.”
“I’m happy for you.”
“How are the children?”
“They come back exhausted from the outdoor center, they enjoy it. They can’t wait for you to come home. Alice is doing lots of drawings for you, we won’t have enough walls to hang them all up.”
I laugh:
“Don’t throw a single one away!”
