A Good Life, page 3
Silence sets in. My sister wolfs down the sheep’s cheese brochettes, I tackle the duck fillet on bread. I don’t know whether we have nothing to say to each other, or too much and don’t know where to start. There’s a five-year hole in our story.
“D’you have a photo of Alice?” she asks me.
I take out my phone and pull up a picture of my daughter on the screen. Agathe takes the phone and scrolls through the photos:
“She’s wonderful. I wonder who she gets that from.”
“No doubt from her aunt. I warn you, there are hundreds of photos.”
“Have you gone soft?”
“Totally. I have to stop myself from gobbling her up. She has quite a temper, often reminds me of you.”
She smiles.
“And Sacha? He must have grown so much!”
I open the file containing photos of my son, and hand the phone back to her:
“He’s just celebrated his tenth birthday. His shoe size is the same as mine, and he’s up to my chin.”
“It goes by so fast . . . Do they get on well?”
“Really well. I was apprehensive, what with seven years between them, but the big brother is very protective, and the little sister adores her brother. They do sometimes fall out, sure, but they have a really lovely relationship. I hope it’ll last . . . ”
Agathe downs several gulps of wine, then lights a cigarette:
“Not much is stronger than the relationship between brother and sister. Try as you might, you can’t just get rid of a shared childhood like that, it clings to you.”
I don’t get time to react; a tall, dark guy invites himself to our table and drapes his arm heavily around my sister’s shoulders:
“I’ve been watching you since earlier, and I absolutely must ask you a question.”
“You must also take your hands off my shoulders, pronto,” Agathe warns.
“Were you in the war?” the guy asks, very seriously.
“The war? No, why?” she asks, surprised.
“Because you’re a bombshell.”
I stop myself from laughing. The punchline is cringeworthy.
Agathe frees herself from his grip and retorts, quick as a flash:
“Clear off if you don’t want a ringside seat at the explosion. Tick tock, tick tock.”
The oaf is amused, impervious to his target’s annoyance.
“Come on, stay cool!” he urges. “You’re too stunning to be snooty. What’s your name?”
“Monique.”
“Pleased to meet you, Monique. What d’you do for a living?”
“I’m a fakir, always have a bed of nails with me, got an ass like Gruyère.”
I spit my wine back out. As for the guy, he’s not laughing at all now. I put my hand on his shoulder so he notices my presence:
“Monsieur, could you leave us in peace, please?”
“Well hello there!” he replies. “You look less dumb than your friend!”
Agathe says nothing more, she knows how much I hate scenes. I can see her closing up, I fear her losing it. No one’s noticed us, I’d like that to continue, and yet I can feel myself boiling over:
“Monsieur, my sister has made it clear to you that she doesn’t want to talk to you. So would you, your sweaty armpits, and your farm-raised mussel charisma kindly go and look elsewhere.”
Agathe’s jaw drops. The guy shakes his head and makes to leave, with a nasty laugh:
“I was just doing you a favor,” he says, disdainfully. “You can’t get chatted up very often.”
He turns on his heel and disappears into the crowd. At that moment, the waitress puts two fresh glasses of wine on the table. Agathe raises hers:
“To the Delorme sisters, and to farm-raised mussels!”
YESTERDAY
JANUARY 1990
AGATHE—4½ YEARS OLD
Daddy’s got a new sweetheart. Mommy doesn’t want me calling her Mommy, but anyhow, she’s called Martine. She bought me a Fairy Barbie with the dress that shines in the dark, she’s nice.
Her son is called David, he’s a big boy.
Daddy built a shelf, with his machine that hurts my ears, and he put my favorite books on it, the ones about a lamb and a leopard. He reads the words and I look at the pictures. I have a bedroom all to myself, and Emma’s even got a bathroom.
Daddy picked a video in the store. It’s the story of a rabbit called Roger and a lady with orange hair called Jessica, but then a nasty man puts a nice shoe in some stuff and it disappears. I cry, so Daddy turns off the TV, says sorry, that I’m too little, and then we play jackstraws.
At night I’m too scared on my own, so I get into Emma’s bed. She doesn’t say anything now, I get into her bed every night at Daddy’s, she budges up a bit, and then I can fall asleep.
Later, Daddy gives us a surprise, we go to the place with lots of dogs in cages. Daddy has hidden a leash in his pocket and the man gives us a dog that was waiting for us. He’s called Snoopy, he’s brown, and I’m happy. He’s funny, Emma says “sit” and he sits, his tail is always wagging, and he comes everywhere with us, even when I go to pee. Daddy doesn’t want him up on the sofa, so me and Emma sit on the carpet, and Daddy comes down beside us.
I’m sad when Daddy takes us back. He just keeps talking, but his eyes are all wet. I say bye-bye to him with my hand and he drives off, and Mommy opens the door and she says she missed us, and she kisses us, and she asks if Martine was there, and she puts Fairy Barbie into the trash can.
TODAY
AUGUST 5
AGATHE
10:13 P.M.
Emma didn’t want to admire the sunset. I’d forgotten that it’s not her thing. As for me, it’s one of my favorite spectacles, along with Brad Pitt’s face. I’ve watched Legends of the Fall so many times, my name should appear on the credits. Particularly the moment when Brad, having been away for years, reappears, galloping, in the majestic Montana setting, escorted by wild horses. I’d have gladly auditioned to play his nag.
“I’m off to bed,” Emma announces, opening Mima’s gate.
“Already?”
“The drive here did me in, and I still have the bed to make. Can I take Dad’s room?”
“If you like. I’ll sleep in uncle’s.”
She goes up the first few steps, then stops:
“Good night, little sister.”
“Good night, big sister.”
For a moment, I get the impression Emma wants to say something more to me, but she carries on up the stairs.
I go to the back of the house, root out the cushions in the storeroom, and lie on the swing seat. The sky is studded with stars—stare at it without blinking and you can make out the Milky Way.
Little sister. That’s what I am. I was born a little sister, and I’ll die a little sister. I’m firmly convinced that one’s position among siblings affects, even determines, the adult one becomes. I’d doubtless be different if I’d been the elder sister. The first child traces the path, fills all the space, sucks up all the attention. The parents focus on that child’s very existence, the anxieties surrounding that child, the impact of all those first times. For many, the family is born with the first child. Those that follow enlarge it, the first starts it. So the firstborn assumes an importance and a responsibility that the siblings who follow can’t know. They arrive in an occupied space. The attention is divided, the anxieties are eased, the first times already experienced. They have a model as they develop, whether they emulate it or oppose it. Their character defines itself in reaction to, in comparison with: they make more noise or less waves, are more this or less that. I don’t know which position is the more enviable. Each has its advantages and drawbacks. I only know that I’m the second one, the last one, the little one, the one who came after, and that I’ve felt it deeply, viscerally, all my life.
I light a cig and turn on my phone. Mathieu hasn’t replied to my message. He’s seen it, or so the little blue symbol at the bottom of the screen tells me. In my mind, I compose the next one I’ll write to him before forcing myself not to send it. My pride went missing at the same time as him. I’m aware that I’m doing myself no favors by bombarding him with pleading messages, but I can’t help it. I’m fiddling frantically with the beads of my bracelet when Emma’s head appears at the upstairs window.
“Agathe, come and see!”
“Coming.”
I stub my cigarette out on the ground—I can almost hear Mima cursing—and join my sister in her room. She’s facing her phone. On the screen, a little girl and a curly-haired boy.
“Children, say hello to your aunt.”
“Hello, auntie!”
Sacha can’t have any memory of me, he was five the last time he saw me. Alice only knows me through the words of others. It’s facing them, so grown, that I become aware of the time that’s passed. That is, an absence of five years. A pregnancy, those first steps, all of elementary school, grazed knees, drawings on the wall, wobbly teeth, bedtime stories, shoes on the wrong feet, funfairs, lisped words. One sure gets through some memories over five years.
I exchange a few words with them, they’re very natural, I’m awkward, I laugh a bit too loudly, don’t want them imagining that I’m moved.
Alex decides to join in, on the screen:
“Hi Agathe! Good to see you.”
“Same!”
He, too, has gotten through quite a few things over these five years, including nearly all of his hair.
“When are you coming to see us?” he asks.
“Oh yes!” Sacha exclaims. “Come and see us at home!”
“Is she coming later?” Alice asks.
I laugh once again:
“No, sweetie, but I’ll come another day. Promise!”
The phone shakes slightly. I take it from my sister’s hand and prop it up against a pile of clothes on the shelf. I ask the children questions, my brother-in-law his news, I see Emma in her role of mother, of wife, when I mainly know her in that of sister. Then Alex announces that it’s already late, that the little ones must go to bed, and the screen goes dark, and my sister whispers that she’d like to go to bed, too, and kisses me, and the door closes. I return to the swing seat, the cigarette, and the bracelet of beads, thinking how, despite the screen between us, despite the distance between us, that thing I was just part of, for a few moments, was very like a family.
YESTERDAY
JUNE 1990
EMMA—10 YEARS OLD
Dear Journal de Mickey,
I saw that readers can write to you to ask you questions, and I’ve got one. Since I watched The Big Blue, I dream of working with dolphins. I’d like to know what I should study. I hope I’ll get an answer (I wrote to Star Club magazine, they didn’t reply.)
Emma
PS: I’m not mad on Donald Duck, he’s always annoyed.
TODAY
AUGUST 6
EMMA
7:10 A.M.
I can’t sleep. Keeps happening, lately. Dark thoughts drag me from sleep and, to escape them, I have to get up.
This used to be Agathe’s thing. Anxiety, her territory. Mine was being practical. Emma can sort out tricky situations. Emma will straighten things out. Emma is so mature. I wore the outfit that I’d been dressed in without asking myself whether it fitted me. At forty-two, I’m discovering how cramped I feel in it.
I can hear Agathe snoring, through the partition wall. She got to bed late. I heard the front-door handle at two in the morning. I get dressed and go downstairs, avoiding the creaky step. The sun, only just awake, sneaks through the slits of the shutters. I open them, the morning freshness fills the sitting room, and I flop onto the armchair.
This was Mima’s place. For sixty-two years, she sat here every morning. She read hundreds of books here, knitted numerous cable sweaters, wrote poems, graded her pupils’ work, peeled potatoes, rocked her sons, mourned one of them, did my hair. On the pedestal table beside the armrest, I recognize the notebook she’d write all her recipes in. She’d gotten most of them from her mother, who’d gotten them from her own mother, and the notebook was meant for us. She was of a time when women did the cooking; it would never have occurred to her to pass the recipes on to our male cousins. I turn the pages, some stained from frying or icing, and each recipe summons a memory. Spaghetti with meatballs, couscous, polpettone, oreillettes, tiramisu, mias, ricotta ravioli, farfalle with zucchini, lasagne, campanare, kiwi ice cream, orange cake . . . I can see her once more, apron tied around waist, in her little kitchen with no countertop. I must have been sixteen when she decided she had to teach me how to make gnocchi. I was keener to go to the beach with the girl from next door, but I sensed that this passing-on was important to her. Magnanimously, I agreed to give Mima some time, telling my friend I’d join her soon, convinced that in an hour, at most, I’d be done. Four hours later, the dish was ready, Mima was delighted, my sister was starving, and I was ready to slit my wrists with onion peel. My grandmother stuck a fork into some gnocchi and popped it into my mouth before I had time to react. I chewed, gazing heavenwards, then declared that, truly, it was just as good as the vacuum-packed gnocchi from the supermarket.
The final page of the notebook is covered in shaky handwriting, in contrast to that, steady and clear, of the first recipes. Seeing this breaks my heart. In my little girl’s mind, my grandmother had always been an old person. I became aware quite recently that when I was born, she wasn’t even fifty. No doubt my children see me as I saw her. I wasn’t there as she grew old. I missed her last years. We’d call each other regularly, I’d send her photos, but I didn’t visit. I thought I had time, never imagined she might actually disappear one day. She was the only person never to let us down. She was the dependable figure, the unchanging point of reference. When I ran away, I turned my grandmother into collateral damage.
I need to get out for some air.
I grab my bag, my car keys, and leave the house.
7:42 A.M.
I don’t know how I ended up here. I drove aimlessly, carried along by memories of bygone summers. The ocean is at my feet, the water lapping at my toes. It’s calm today. The sun warms my back, I lift my dress and walk a few steps. The beach is almost deserted. An old man ambles towards the water, followed by a flock of seagulls. He’s in swim shorts and has shoulder-length white hair. I recognize him, he’s been part of the Basque landscape for a long time. Every morning, come rain, or wind, or snow, he arrives to feed the birds. He plunges his hand into his bag, and the ballet commences: he throws the food into the water, the gulls dive on it, one of them, being swifter, snatches it and flies off with its meal, while the others wheel around the man. The story goes that he only likes animals, that he hurls insults at anyone who dares speak to him. I avoid doing so and watch the spectacle in silence.
I’m up to my thighs in water. A bigger wave is forming in the distance. I turn around to beat a retreat, try to run, but the current holds me back, my strides more like running on the spot, I don’t give up, I use my arms, too, I propel myself, I strain forward, and go under headfirst.
The old man has turned in my direction and is staring at me. Smiling, I give him a wave.
“Fuck off!” he shouts back at me, charmingly.
Not a wave on the horizon anymore. I let my body float on the surface and stretch out my arms. My ears are underwater, all I can hear now is the muffled silence. The sun warms my face. The swell of the sea rocks me and instantly soothes me. I breathe in slowly, I breathe out slowly, several times, then I get out of the water before a fresh lot of waves start up.
I stay there for about ten minutes, watching a lady walk her dog and a young man prepare to surf. My hair dries fast, one of the things I appreciate about wearing it short. I gather up my bag and shoes and make my way back to the parking lot. My sodden dress weighs a ton and clings to my legs. The man is still on the sand, even though the gulls, having got what they wanted, have deserted him.
“Have a nice day, monsieur!”
He looks at me as if I’d seriously offended him, and replies in the same tone:
“Screw you, bag of shit!”
YESTERDAY
DECEMBER 1991
AGATHE—6 YEARS OLD
I’m top of my class. I was already top last month, but I couldn’t believe it because Céline’s better at capital letters than me. The teacher makes me pick a picture out of the box. I’ve already got all of them, they’re the ones you get in boxes of cocoa, but I don’t say anything—I’ll give it to Céline.
Daddy and Mommy will be pleased, and Emma will give me her slot-in record player, she promised she would. She won’t need it anymore seeing as she’s getting a radio cassette player and recorder. She said she’d also give me the Roch Voisine record—I know the words by heart. Mommy loves it, too, but she prefers Patrick Bruel.
The principal comes into the classroom and calls out my name. Everyone looks at me, I don’t understand, I hope it’s to give me another reward. I follow her, I’m a bit scared, and I see Mommy in the schoolyard. She’s wearing her green coat and her eyes are red, she cries when she sees me. Maybe it’s because she’s pleased. She tries to speak but can’t, so it’s the principal who tells me that Daddy’s had an accident.
YESTERDAY
DECEMBER 1991
EMMA—11 YEARS OLD
Mommy wasn’t sure if we should go to the funeral, but Mima said it was important.
There aren’t many people there. The only funeral I’ve seen is the comedian Coluche’s on the TV, and there were loads more people. And yet my father was kind, too.
Mima won’t stop stroking our hair. Papi is holding her arm, she almost fell over as she entered the church. The priest got Daddy’s name wrong: he called him Alain, when his name is Michel. It made my cousin Laurent laugh, and he couldn’t stop so Auntie Geneviève took him outside.
