But I’m already tired of le P’tit Pinson. My first week’s wages will barely cover my expenses, and Laurent is far from easy to please. Worse, he has begun to notice me: I see it in his colors and in the way he slicks his hair, in the new, special care he gives to his appearance.
It’s always a risk, of course, I know. He would not have noticed Françoise Lavery. But Zozie de l’Alba has a different charm. He doesn’t understand it; he dislikes foreigners, and this woman has a certain look, a gypsy look that he mistrusts— And yet, for the first time in years, he finds himself choosing what to wear: discarding this tie (too loud, too wide); balancing the merits of this suit and that; considering that old bottle of eau de toilette, last used at someone’s wedding, vinegary with age now, leaving brown stains on the clean white shirt. . . .
Normally I might encourage this, play up to the old man’s vanity in the hope of a few easy pickings: a credit card, some money, perhaps; maybe a cash box hidden somewhere, a theft that Laurent would never report.
At any normal time, I would. But men like Laurent are easy to find. Women like Yanne, however—
Some years ago, when I was somebody else, I went to the cinema to see a film about ancient Romans. A disappointing film in many ways: too slick with fake blood and Hollywood redemption. But it was the gladiator scenes that struck me as particularly unrealistic, those audiences of computer-generated people in the background, all shouting and laughing and waving their arms in neat patterns, like animated wallpaper. I’d wondered at the time if the makers of that film had ever watched a real crowd. I do—I generally find the crowd far more interesting than the spectacle itself—and though they were convincing enough as animation, they had no colors, and there was nothing real about their behavior.
Well, Yanne Charbonneau reminds me of those people. She is a figment in the background, realistic enough to the casual observer, but operating according to a sequence of predictable commands. She has no col-ors—or if she has, she has become adept at hiding them beneath this screen of inconsequence.
The children, however, are brightly illuminated. Most children have brighter colors than adults, but even so Annie stands out, her color-trail of butterfly blue flaring defiantly against the sky.
There’s something else as well, I think—some kind of a shadow in her wake. I saw it again as she played with Rosette in the alley outside the chocolaterie, Annie with that cloud of Byzantine hair torched into gold by the afternoon sun, holding her little sister’s hand as Rosette splashed and stamped at the speckled cobblestones in her primrose yellow Wellington boots.
Some kind of shadow. A dog, a cat?
Well, I’ll find out. You know I will. Give me time, Nanou. Just give me time.
Thursday, 8 November
Thierry was back from london today, with an armful of presents for Anouk and Rosette, and a dozen yellow roses for me. It was twelve-fifteen, and I was ten minutes away from closing for lunch. I was just gift wrapping a box of macaroons for a customer, and looking forward to a quiet hour with the children (Thursday is Anouk’s free afternoon). I looped pink ribbon around the box—a gesture I’d performed a thousand times—tied the bow, then pulled the ribbon taut against the blade of the scissors to curl it.
“Yanne!”
The scissors slipped, spoiling the curl. “Thierry! You’re a day early! ”
He’s a big man, tall and heavy. In his cashmere coat he more than filled the little shop doorway. An open face; blue eyes; thick hair, still mostly brown. Moneyed hands still used to working; cracked palms and polished fingernails. A scent of plaster dust and leather and sweat and jambon-frites and the occasional guilty, fat cigar.
“I missed you,” he said, and kissed my cheek. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it back in time for the funeral. Was it terrible? ”
“No. Just sad. No one came.”
“You’re a star, Yanne. I don’t know how you do it. How’s business? ”
“OK.” In fact, it’s not; the customer was only my second that day, not counting the ones who just come to look. But I was glad of her presence when he arrived—a Chinese girl in a yellow coat, who would no doubt enjoy her macaroons but who would have been far happier with a box of chocolate-coated strawberries. Not that it matters. It’s not my concern.
Not anymore, anyway.
“Where are the girls? ”
“Upstairs,” I said. “Watching TV. How was London? ”
“Great. You should come.”
As a matter of fact I know it well; my mother and I lived there for nearly a year. I’m not sure why I haven’t told him this, or why I have allowed him to believe that I was born and raised in France. Perhaps a yearning for ordinariness: perhaps a fear that if I mention my mother he may look at me differently.
Thierry is a solid citizen. A builder’s boy made good through property, he has had very little exposure to the unusual and the uncertain. His tastes are conventional. He likes a good steak; drinks red wine; loves children, bad puns, and silly rhymes; prefers women to wear skirts; goes to mass through force of habit; has no prejudice against foreigners but would prefer not to see quite so many of them about. I do like him—and yet the thought of confiding in him—in anyone— Not that I need to. I’ve never needed a confidant. I have Anouk. I have Rosette. When did I ever need anyone else ?
“You’re looking sad.” The Chinese girl had gone. “What about lunch? ”
I smiled. Lunch cures sadness in Thierry’s world. I wasn’t hungry; but it was that or have him in the shop all afternoon. So I called Anouk, wheedled and struggled Rosette into her coat, and we went across the road to Le P’tit Pinson, which Thierry likes for its dilapidated charm and greasy food, and I dislike for the same reasons.
Anouk was restless, and it was time for Rosette’s nap, but Thierry was full of his London trip: the crowds, the buildings, the theaters, the shops. His company is renovating some office buildings near Kings Cross, and he likes to oversee the work himself, going down by train on Monday and coming back for the weekend. His ex-wife Sarah still lives in London with their son, but Thierry is at pains to reassure me (as if I needed it) that he and Sarah have been estranged for years.
I don’t doubt it; there’s no subterfuge in Thierry, no side. His favorites are the simple wrapped milk chocolate squares you can buy from any supermarket in the country. Thirty percent cocoa solids; anything stronger, and he sticks out his tongue like a little boy. But I do love his enthusiasm—and I envy him his plainness and his lack of guile. Perhaps my envy exceeds my love—but does it matter so very much?
We met him last year when the roof sprang a leak. Most landlords would have sent a workman—if we were lucky—but Thierry has known Madame Poussin for years (an old friend of his mother’s, he said), and he fixed the roof himself, staying for hot chocolate and playing with Rosette.
Twelve months into our friendship now, and we have already become an old couple, with our favorite haunts and our comfortable routines, although Thierry has yet to stay the night. He thinks I’m a widow, and touchingly wants to “give me time.” But his desire is there, unvoiced and untested— and would it really be so bad?
He has broached the subject only once. A single oblique reference to his own mansion flat on Rue de la Croix, to which we have been invited many times and which longs, as he says, for a woman’s touch.
A woman’s touch. Such an old-fashioned phrase. But then, Thierry is the old-fashioned type. In spite of his love of gadgetry, his mobile phone, and his surround-sound stereo, he remains loyal to old ideals; to a simpler time.
Simple. That’s it. Life with Thierry would be very simple. There would always be money for necessary things. The rent for the chocolaterie would always be paid. Anouk and Rosette would be cared for and safe. And if he loves them—and me—isn’t that enough?
Is it, Vianne? That’s my mother’s voice—sounding very like Roux these days. I remember a time when you wanted more.
As you did, Mother? I told her silently. Dragging you
r child from place to place, always, forever on the run. Living—just—from hand to mouth, stealing, lying, conjuring; six weeks, three weeks, four days in a place and then move on; no home, no school, peddling dreams, shuffling cards to map our journeys, wearing seam-stretched hand-me-downs, like tailors too busy to mend our own clothes.
At least we knew what we were, Vianne.
It was a cheap comeback, and one I would have expected from her. Besides, I know what I am. Don’t I?
We ordered noodles for Rosette and plat du jour for the rest of us. It was far from crowded, even for a weekday; but the air was stale with beer and Gitanes. Laurent Pinson is his own best customer; but for that, I really think he would have closed down years ago. Jowly, unshaven, and bad tempered, he views his customers as intruders on his free time and makes no secret of his contempt for everyone but a handful of regulars who are also his friends.
He tolerates Thierry, who plays the brash Parisian for the occasion, erupting into the café with a “Hé, Laurent, ça va, mon pote! ” and the slap of a big banknote on the bar. Laurent knows him for a property man— has enquired about the price his own café might fetch, rebuilt and refurbished—and now calls him M’sieur Thierry and treats him with a deference that might be respect, or perhaps the hope of a deal to come.
I noticed he was looking more presentable today—shiny suited and smelling of cologne, shirt collar buttoned over a tie that had first seen the light of day some time in the late 1970s. Thierry’s influence, I thought; though later I came to change my mind.
I left them to it and sat down, ordered coffee for myself and Coke for Anouk. Once we would have had hot chocolate, with cream and marshmallows and a tiny spoon with which to scoop it—but now it’s always Coke for Anouk. She doesn’t drink hot chocolate nowadays—some diet thing, I thought at first—and it feels so absurd to be hurt by that, like the first time she refused her bedtime story. Still such a sunny little girl; and yet increasingly I sense these shadows in her, these places to which I am not invited. I know them well—I was the same—and isn’t a part of my fear just that: the knowledge that, at her age, I too wanted to run, to escape my mother in as many ways as I possibly could?
The waitress was new and looked vaguely familiar. Long legs, pencil skirt, hair tied up in a ponytail—I finally recognized her by her shoes.
“It’s Zoë, isn’t it? ” I said.
“Zozie.” She grinned. “Some place, eh? ” She made a comic little gesture, as if ushering us in. “Still”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“I think the landlord’s sweet on me.”
Thierry laughed out loud at that, and Anouk gave her a sideways smile.
“It’s only a temporary job,” Zozie said. “Until I come up with something better.”
The plat du jour was choucroute garnie—a dish I associate somehow with our time in Berlin. Surprisingly good for Le P’tit Pinson, which fact I attributed to Zozie and not to some renewed culinary zeal in Laurent.
“With Christmas coming up, won’t you need some help in the shop? ” said Zozie, transferring sausages from the grill. “If so, then I’m a volunteer.” She flung a glance over her shoulder at Laurent, feigning disinterest from his corner. “I mean, obviously I’d hate to leave all this—”
Laurent made a percussive sound, something between a sneeze and a call to attention—mweh!—and Zozie raised her eyebrows comically.
“Just think about it,” she said, grinning, then turned, picked up four beers with a deftness born of years of bar work, and carried them, smiling, to the table.
She didn’t say much to us after that—the bar filled up, and as usual, I was busy with Rosette. Not that she’s such a difficult child—she eats much better now, although she dribbles more than a normal child, and still prefers to use her hands—but she can behave oddly at times, looking fixedly at things that aren’t there, starting at imaginary sounds or laughing suddenly for no reason. I’m hoping she will grow out of it soon—it has been weeks since her last Accident—and although she still wakes up three or four times a night I can manage on only a few hours, and I’m hoping the sleeplessness will pass.
Thierry thinks I overindulge her; more recently he has begun to speak of taking her to a doctor.
“There’s no need. She’ll talk when she’s ready,” I said, watching Rosette eat her noodles. She holds the fork with the wrong hand, though there are no other signs that she is left-handed. In fact, she is rather clever with her hands and especially loves to draw. Little stickmen and women, monkeys—her favorite animal—houses, horses, butterflies, clumsy as yet, but recognizable, in every available color—
“Eat properly, Rosette,” said Thierry. “Use your spoon.”
Rosette went on eating as if she hadn’t heard. There was a time I feared she was deaf; now I know she simply ignores what she feels to be unimportant. It’s a pity she does not pay more attention to Thierry; rarely laughs or smiles in his company; rarely shows her sweet side, or signs any more than absolutely necessary.
At home, with Anouk, she laughs and plays; sits for hours with her book; listens to the radio; and dances like a dervish around the flat. At home, barring Accidents, she is well behaved; at naptime we lie in bed together, as I used to with Anouk. I sing to her and tell her stories, and her eyes are bright and alert, lighter than Anouk’s, and green and clever as a cat’s. She sings along—after a fashion—to my mother’s lullaby. She can just hold a tune, but still relies on me for the words:
V’là l’bon vent, v’là l’ joli vent, V’là l’bon vent, ma mie m’appelle. V’là l’bon vent, v’là l’ joli vent, V’là l’bon vent, ma mie m’attend.
Thierry speaks of her being “a little slow” or “a late developer,” and suggests that I get her “checked out.” He has not yet mentioned autism, but he will—like so many men of his age, he reads Le Point and believes that this makes him an expert on most things. I, on the other hand, am only a woman, besides being a mother, which has addled my sense of objective judgment.
“Say spoon, Rosette,” Thierry says.
Rosette picks up the spoon and looks at it curiously.
“Come on, Rosette. Say spoon.”
Rosette hoots like an owl and makes the spoon perform an impertinent little dance on the tablecloth. Anyone would think she is making fun of Thierry. Quickly I take the spoon from Rosette. Anouk pinches her lips to stop herself from laughing.
Rosette looks at her and grins.
Quit it, signs Anouk with her fingers.
Bullshit, signs Rosette with hers.
I smile at Thierry. “She’s only three—”
“Nearly four. That’s old enough.” Thierry’s face takes on the bland expression he adopts when he feels I am being uncooperative. It makes him look older, less familiar, and I feel a sudden sting of irritation—unfair, I know, but it can’t be helped. I don’t appreciate interference.
I am shocked at how close I come to actually saying it aloud; then I see the waitress—Zozie—watching me with a frown of amusement between her long blue eyes, and I bite my tongue and keep silent.
I tell myself that I have much to be grateful for in Thierry. It’s not just the shop, or the help that he has given us over the past year; or even the presents for myself and the children. It’s that Thierry is so much larger than life. His shadow covers the three of us; beneath it we are truly invisible.
But he seemed unusually restless today, fidgeting with something in his pocket. He looked at me quizzically over his blonde. “Something wrong? ”
“I’m just tired.”
“What you need is a holiday.”
“A holiday? ” I almost laughed. “Holidays are for selling chocolates.”
“You’re going to keep on with the business, then? ”
“Of course I am. Why shouldn’t I? It’s less than two months to Christmas, and—”
“Yanne,” he interrupted me. “If I can help in any way—financial or otherwise—” He reached out his hand to touch mine.
&nb
sp; “I’ll manage,” I said.
“Of course. Of course.” The hand returned to his coat pocket. He means well, I told myself; and yet something in me rebels at the thought of intrusion, however well meant. I have managed alone for so long that the need for help—any kind of help—seems like a dangerous weakness.
“You’ll never run the shop alone. What about the kids? ” he said.
“I’ll manage,” I repeated. “I’m—”
“You can’t do everything on your own.” He was looking slightly annoyed now; shoulders hunched, hands jammed into his coat pockets.
“I know that. I’ll find someone.”
Once more I glanced at Zozie, busy now with two platters of food in each hand, joking with the belote players at the back of the room. She looks so very much at ease, so independent, so very much herself as she hands out the plates, collects the glasses, fends off wandering hands with a laughing comment and a pretend slap.
Why, I was like that, I told myself. That was me, ten years ago.
Well, not even that, I thought, because surely Zozie could not be so much younger than me, but so much easier in her own skin, more thoroughly Zozie than I was ever Vianne.
Who is Zozie? I ask myself. Those eyes see much farther than dishes to be washed, or a banknote folded under the rim of a plate. Blue eyes are easier to read, and yet the trick of the trade that has served me so often—if not so well—along the years, for some reason fails to work at all with her. Some people are like that, I tell myself. But dark or light, soft-centered or brittle, bitterest orange or rose cream or manon blanc or vanilla truffle, I have no idea whether she even likes chocolate at all, still less her favorite.
So—why is it I think that she knows mine?
I looked back at Thierry, to find that he was watching her too.