I get to the end of the street. If I turn left, down the rue de la Pompe, it would lead me straight to my grandmother’s place on the avenue Henri-Martin. I toy with the idea of going to visit her now. Slow, gentle Gaspard would let me in, beaming, so happy to see “Monsieur Antoine.” I put it off for another day and head back toward my father’s.
In the mid-seventies, I remember, after our mother died, the Galerie Saint-Didier was built just beyond, an unsightly, gigantic triangle that ate up part of the exquisite hôtels particuliers of the area and sprouted malls and supermarkets in their wake. As I walk past, I notice that the huge construction has not aged well, its surface marred by rust and stains. I hurry along. Somebody has left two messages on my voice mail. I don’t listen to them, because I know it has to be Rabagny.
My stepmother opens the door and pecks me on the cheek. Régine sports a dark, toasty tan that makes her look older and more withered than she actually is. As usual, she is wearing one of her Courrèges revival outfits and exudes Chanel No. 5. She asks me how Mel is. I answer, following her into the living room. I have never liked coming back here. It is like going back in time, back to a place where I was unhappy. My body remembers it, and I can feel every part of me clenching up in self-defense. The apartment, like the Galerie Saint-Didier, has not aged well either. Its daring modernity has faded and now looks impossibly unfashionable. The maroon and gray decor, the fluffy wall-to-wall carpet have lost both brightness and texture. Everything seems scruffy, spotted.
My father comes shuffling in. I am taken aback by his wizened appearance, although I saw him barely a week ago. He looks exhausted. His lips are colorless. His skin has an odd, yellowish hue. I can hardly believe this is the formidable lawyer who had his opponents quaking as soon as he marched into the courtroom.
The infamous Vallombreux affair, in the early seventies, launched my father’s career as an eminent lawyer. Edgar Vallombreux, an influential political counselor, had been found half dead in his country house near Bordeaux after a presumed suicide following a disastrous result for his party in recent elections. Paralyzed, unable to speak, depressed, he was confined to a hospital bed for the rest of his life. His wife, Marguerite, never bought the suicide story. It was clear to her that her husband had been assaulted because he was aware of fiscal indiscretions concerning a couple of highly placed ministers.
I remember when Le Figaro printed an entire page about François Rey, the young, impudent lawyer who dared take on the Ministry of Finance without a qualm, and who, after weeks of a palpitating trial that had the entire country holding its breath, proved that Vallombreux had indeed been the victim of a substantial financial scandal that left several heads tumbling in its aftermath. In my adolescence I was often asked if I had anything to do with “the legendary lawyer.” Sometimes, embarrassed or annoyed, I used to say I didn’t. Mélanie and I were kept out of our father’s professional life. We had seldom seen him in action in the courtroom. We simply knew that he was respected and feared.
My father pats me on the shoulder, makes his way to the bar, and hands me a whiskey poured out with a shaking hand. I dislike whiskey, but I don’t have the heart to remind him. I pretend to sip at it. He sits down with a groan and rubs his kneecaps. He is retired now and not happy about it. Younger lawyers have stepped into his shoes, and he is no longer part of the legal scene. What does he do all day long? I wonder. Does he read, see friends? Talk to his wife? I know nothing about my father’s life. He knows nothing about mine. And what he thinks he knows, he disapproves of.
Joséphine appears, mumbling into the mobile phone caught between her cheek and shoulder. She smiles at me and hands me something. I glance down to see a folded five-hundred-euro bill. She winks at me and makes a sort of gesture explaining that the rest will come later.
My father talks to me, something about plumbing problems in their country house, but I don’t listen. I look around the room and try to remember what it was like when my mother was still alive. There were plants by the windows; the floorboards glistened a lustrous chestnut. There were books in one corner and a chintz-covered sofa, and a desk where she used to sit and write in the morning sun. What did she write? I wonder. And where did all her stuff go? All her books, her photos, her letters? I want to ask my father, but I don’t. I know I cannot. He is now complaining about the new gardener Régine hired.
No one ever talks about my mother. Especially here. She died here. Her body was carried out through that very entrance, down those red-carpeted stairs. Where did she die, exactly? I was never told. In her room, which was just beyond the entrance? Here, in the kitchen, all the way down the endless corridor? How did it happen? Who was there? Who found her?
Aneurysm. I had looked it up recently on the Internet. It happened. Like a bolt of lightning. It happened to people at any age. Just like that.
Thirty-three years ago my mother died in the very apartment I am sitting in now. I don’t remember the last time I kissed her. And it hurts me, not remembering.
“Are you listening to me at all, Antoine?” asks my father sarcastically.
When I get home, my children are already there. I can hear the din of their presence as I toil up the stairs. Music, footsteps, loud voices. Lucas is watching TV, dirty shoes on the sofa. As I come in, he rushes up to greet me. Margaux appears in the doorway. I still can’t get used to the orange hair, but I don’t say anything.
“Hey, Dad . . .” she drawls.
There is a movement behind her, and I see Pauline appear over her shoulder. Her best friend since they were small. Except that Pauline now looks like a twenty-year-old. A minute ago she was a scraggy little thing. Now it is impossible not to notice her full bosom and womanly hips. I don’t hug her the way I used to when she was a kid. In fact I don’t even kiss her on the cheek. We sort of wave at each other from a polite distance.
“Is it okay if Pauline sleeps over?”
My heart sinks. I know that if Pauline spends the night, I will not see my daughter, except at dinner. They will then retire to Margaux’s room, giggle and whisper all night long, and there will be no “quality time” with my child.
“Sure,” I say halfheartedly. “Is it all right with your parents?”
Pauline shrugs. “Yeah, no problem.”
She has grown even more, it seems, during the summer, looming over Margaux. She is wearing a short jean skirt and a tight purple T-shirt. Fourteen years old. Nobody would believe it just looking at her. She probably has her period. I know Margaux has not started yet. Astrid told me not very long ago. With a body like that, Pauline attracts all sorts of men, I realize. Kids from school, and older. Guys my age. I wonder how her parents deal with those issues. What they tell her. What she knows. Maybe she has a regular boyfriend, maybe she has sex, is already on the pill. Fourteen years old.
Arno comes breezing in, clapping me on the back. His phone chimes, and he answers it, saying, “Hold on a sec.” He disappears. Lucas turns to the TV and the girls take off. I am left alone in the entrance. I feel like a fool.
I go into the kitchen, my feet making a lot of noise on the creaky floorboards. There is nothing else to do but to cook them dinner. A pasta salad, with mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, fresh basil, and ham cubes. As I stand there chopping up the cheese, my life feels so empty, I almost laugh. I do. Later, when the food is ready, it seems to take ages to get them to come and sit. They all have something better to do.
“No iPods, Nintendos, or cell phones at the table, please,” I say firmly, plunking the food down.
My words are greeted with shrugs and sighs. Then silence punctuated by slurps and munches as they tuck in. I look at our little group as from a distance. My first summer without Astrid. Yes, I hate every minute of it.
The evening stretches out in front of me like a parched meadow. The girls are closeted up in Margaux’s room, Lucas is glued to his Nintendo, and Arno is riveted to the Internet in his own room. It was a mistake, I now realize, to have Wi-Fi installed here and computers f
or each of them. They revert to their personal spaces, and I end up hardly seeing them. Nobody watches TV anymore en famille. The Internet has taken over, silent and predatory.
I lie down on the couch and watch a DVD. A Bruce Willis action movie. At one point I press pause to call Valérie and Mélanie and to text Angèle about our next rendezvous. The evening wears on. Muffled giggles come from Margaux’s room, little pings and pongs from Lucas’s Nintendo, and from Arno’s I can just make out the brassy beat emanating from his headphones. The heat gets to me, and I doze off.
When I open my eyes, groggy, it is nearly two in the morning. I stagger up. Lucas is fast asleep, his cheek squashing his Nintendo. I gently put him to bed, doing all I can not to wake him. I decide not to knock on Arno’s door. After all, he is still on vacation, and I can’t face another altercation about how late it is, that he should be asleep at this hour. As I walk to my daughter’s room, the unmistakable whiff of a cigarette tickles my nose. I pause, my hand on the doorknob. More stifled laughs. I knock. The laughter ceases. Margaux opens the door. The room is hazy with smoke.
“Are you girls smoking in here?” My voice comes out strangled, almost humble, and I cringe, hearing myself.
Margaux shrugs. Pauline is flat out on the bed wearing nothing but flimsy blue panties and a frilly bra. I avert my eyes from the roundness of her breasts, which seem to leap out at me.
“Just a couple of cigarettes, Dad,” says Margaux, rolling her eyes.
“But you’re only fourteen,” I bluster. “This is such a dumb thing to do . . .”
“Well, if it’s so dumb, why do you do it, Dad?” she sneers.
She closes the door in my face.
I am left there, arms akimbo. I lift my hand to tentatively knock again. I don’t. I retreat to my room and sit on my bed. What would Astrid have done in this very situation? I wonder. Shouted at her? Punished her? Threatened her? Does Margaux dare smoke under her mother’s roof? Why do I feel so useless? It can’t get any worse than this. Or can it?
Even in her severe blue hospital uniform, Angèle is sexy. She wraps her arms around me, heedless of the fact that we are in the hospital morgue, that corpses lurk on the other side of the door, that bereaved families sit stricken in the nearby waiting room.
Her touch electrifies me.
“When are you free?” I whisper. I haven’t seen her for more than three weeks. The last time I came to see Mélanie, I was with my father, and there wasn’t the slightest possibility of spending time with Angèle. My father was tired and needed to be driven back home.
She sighs. “Pileup on the highway, couple of heart attacks, one cancer, one aneurysm—everybody seems to have chosen the same time to die.”
“Aneurysm . . .” I murmur.
“A young woman in her thirties.”
I keep her close to me, stroking her smooth, glossy hair.
“My mother died of an aneurysm in her mid-thirties.”
She looks up at me.
“You were a kid.”
“Yes.”
“Did you see her in death?”
“No. I closed my eyes at the last moment.”
“Aneurysm deaths usually look good. This young lady is lovely in death. I hardly had to work on her.”
The place where we are standing is cool, quiet, a little corridor off the waiting room.
“Have you checked on your sister yet?” she asks.
“I just arrived. She is with the nurses. I’m going back there now.”
“Okay. Give me a couple of hours. I should be done by then.”
She kisses me on the mouth, a warm, wet kiss. I make my way back up to Mélanie’s ward. The hospital seems fuller, busier than usual. My sister’s face is less pale, almost pink. Her eyes light up when she sees me.
“I can’t wait to get out of here,” she whispers. “They’re all very nice, but I just want to go home.”
“What is Dr. Besson saying?”
“She says it could be quite soon.”
She asks how my week was. I grin, not quite knowing how to begin. A wretched week, in every way. Tiresome paperwork for the car insurance. Another argument with Rabagny about the day-care center. More exasperation with Florence. Our father and his aging, tired face, his short temper. A difficult weekend with the kids. School had just started and everyone was tense. Never had I felt more relieved to drop them off at Malakoff. I just tell Mélanie it was one of those crappy weeks where everything goes wrong.
I sit with her for a while. We talk about the letters she has been getting, flowers, phone calls. The old beau has sent a ruby ring from a place Vendôme jeweler. Sometimes I think she is going to talk about the crash, but she doesn’t. Nothing is coming back to her yet. I need to be patient.
“I can’t wait for fall, for winter.” Mélanie sighs. “I hate the end of summer. I hate the heat, I hate everything about it. I can’t wait for chilly winter mornings and hot-water bottles.”
Dr. Besson comes in, shakes my hand. She tells us that Mélanie can be driven back to Paris by ambulance within the next weeks, probably after the middle of September. She will be allowed to convalesce in her own home for at least two months, under the care of a physiotherapist and with regular visits to her doctor.
“Your sister has been very brave,” she says later, as we fill out paperwork in her office. She hands me a stack of social security papers and insurance forms. Then she looks right at me. “How is your father?”
“You think he’s ill, don’t you?”
She nods.
I say, “He hasn’t told me or my sister what’s wrong with him. I notice how tired he is, but that’s all I can tell you.”
“What about your mother?” she asks. “Does she know something?”
“Our mother died when we were young.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says quickly.
“Our father is remarried. But I’m not sure what my stepmother can tell me about his health. We aren’t very close.”
She nods. Pauses awhile. Then says, “I just want to make sure he’s under medical supervision.”
“Why are you worried?”
She looks at me. Shrewd hazel irises. “I just want to make sure.”
“Do you want me to talk to him?”
“Yes,” she says. “Just ask him if he’s been seeing his doctor.”
“All right,” I say. “I will.”
As I make my way back to Angèle’s office, I wonder what it was about my father that Dr. Besson noticed. What did her expert medical eye see that I didn’t? I feel annoyed, concerned. I haven’t seen my father since my last visit. Nor have I spoken to him. But I have dreamed of him in the past few weeks, as I have dreamed of my mother. Noirmoutier coming back to me, like the tide rising over the Gois passage and the gulls circling over the rescue poles. Dreams of my father, my mother, when they were young, on the beach. My mother’s smile, my father’s laugh. Dreams of my recent stay with Mélanie. The night of her birthday, how beautiful she looked in her black dress. The elegant couple next to us, raising their glasses of champagne in our direction. The chef exclaiming, “Madame Rey!” Room number 9. My mother’s room. Since the night of the accident, I have dreamed of Noirmoutier again and again. Noirmoutier has never left me.
Hospital morgue, reads the sign. I knock once, then twice. No answer. I stand outside Angèle’s door for a long time. I guess she isn’t done yet. I go and sit in the small waiting room reserved for the bereaved. It is empty right now, and I feel relieved that I’m the only one there. Time creeps by. I check my phone. No missed calls. No voice messages. No texts.
A small noise makes me look up. A person wearing goggles, a mask, a paper skullcap, latex gloves, and light blue overalls tucked into rubber boots is standing in front of me. I rush to my feet. A gloved hand takes off the goggles and the mask. Angèle’s beautiful, chiseled features appear.
“Hell of a day,” she says. “Sorry I kept you waiting.”
She looks tired, her face drawn.
> Behind her, the door to her offices is partially open. I glance into the space I can see from here. A small blue room. Completely bare. Linoleum. Beyond that, another door, open as well. White walls, white tiled floors. Gurneys. Vials and various tools I can’t make out. A strange, powerful smell floats in the air. She smells of it too. I can pick it up on her overalls. Is it the smell of death? Of formaldehyde? All I know is that this is the first time I ever smell it and the first time I smell it on her.
“Are you afraid?” she asks gently.
“No,” I say.
“Do you want to go in?”
I don’t hesitate. “Yes, I do.”
She takes off her gloves, and the warm flesh of her hand meets mine.
“Come into Morticia’s lair,” she whispers. She closes the heavy door behind her. We are standing in the first room. “This is where the bodies are wheeled in so that their families can see them for the last time. The viewing room.”
I try to imagine what goes on here. Was it in a place like this that Mélanie and I were shown our mother’s body? It must have been. Something in my mind goes blank, and I can’t imagine or remember anything. If I had seen her in death all those years ago, if I hadn’t closed my eyes, it would have been in a room like this one. I follow Angèle into the larger room beyond. The odor here is stronger, almost overpowering. Like sulfur. There is a body covered with a white hospital sheet, on a gurney. The place is very clean. Pristine surfaces. Shining instruments. No stains. Light pouring through the blinds. I can hear the hum of air-conditioning. It is cooler in here, cooler than anywhere else in the hospital.