She puts her chin on her knees and looks oddly young all of a sudden, gazing out to the sea, the wind whipping at her hair. Then she says in a low voice, “Antoine, I looked everywhere for that note. As my father lay there, his blood and brains scattered all over the kitchen, before I called for help, I looked for that note, shrieking at the top of my lungs, tears streaming down my face, trembling from head to toe. I looked for it high and low, I combed that goddamn house for it, the garden, the garage. I kept thinking my mother was going to come home any minute from the clerk’s office she worked in, and I had to find that note before she arrived. I never did. There was no note. And then this monstrous why loomed up. Was he that unhappy? What was it we hadn’t seen? How could we have been so blind, my mother, my sister, and I? And what if I had noticed something, and what if I had come home from school earlier that day, or what if I hadn’t gone to school at all? Would he have killed himself? Or would he still be here today?”
I can see what she is getting at. She goes on. Her voice is stronger now, but I pick up a vibrant note of pain that moves me.
“My dad was the calm, quiet type, like you, not talkative, much more silent than my mother. His name was Michel. I look like him. The same eyes. He never seemed depressed, he didn’t drink, he was healthy, athletic. He liked to read. All those books in my house are his. He admired Chateaubriand, Romain Gary, nature, the Vendée, and the sea, and he seemed a tranquil, happy fellow, or at least so we thought. The day I found him dead, he was dressed in his best gray suit, one that I saw him wear only on special occasions, Christmas or New Year’s Eve. And he had a tie on, and his best black shoes. He never dressed like that every day. He worked in a bookstore, and he wore corduroys and sweaters. He was sitting at the table when he shot himself. I thought maybe the note was trapped under his body, as he had slumped forward after the shot, but I hadn’t dared touch him. I was afraid of dead bodies then, not like now. But when they came to get him, there was no note under him. Nothing. Then I hoped a letter might come in the mail, that perhaps he had posted us a note the day he died, but nothing turned up. It was only when I began my job as a mortician, and when I got my first suicide cases that the healing process slowly began in an unexpected way. But this was later, years later, ten years later at least. I recognized my anguish and my despair when I met the families of those who’d killed themselves. I listened to their stories, I shared their grief, sometimes I even cried with them. Many of them told me why their loved ones had chosen to die, many of them knew. Broken hearts, illness, desperation, anguish, fear—there were so many reasons. And then it hit me one day as I was tending to the body of a man who was my dad’s age. He had shot himself because the pressure at his job was too great. This man was dead, and so was my father. This man’s family knew why he had pulled the trigger, whereas we didn’t. But what difference did it make? Only death was left behind. A dead body to embalm, to put in a coffin, and to bury. Prayers to be said and grieving to begin. Knowing would never bring my father back. Knowing would never make the grieving any easier. Knowing never makes death easy.”
There is a tiny teardrop quivering at the side of her eye, and I gently wipe it away with my thumb.
“You are a wonderful woman, Angèle Rouvatier.”
“Don’t get mushy on me, Antoine,” she warns. “I hate that. Let’s go. It’s getting late.”
She gets up and walks to the Harley. I watch her put on her helmet and her gloves and deftly kick-start the engine. The sun seems less strong now, and a chill is setting in.
We cook a leisurely dinner together, she and I, side by side. Vegetable soup (leeks, carrots, and potatoes), lemon and thyme (from the garden), roasted chicken with basmati rice, apple crumble. A cool bottle of Chablis keeps us company. The house is welcoming and warm, and I become conscious of how much I enjoy its peace and quiet, its size, its bucolic simplicity. I never thought an urbanite like me would revel in such a rustic setting. Could I possibly live here with Angèle? Nowadays, with computers, mobile phones, and high-speed trains, it was technically feasible. I think of my future workload. Rabagny was in the process of clinching a lucrative deal for me concerning the Think Dome patent. I would soon be busy again for him and Parimbert, for a highly ambitious, exciting European project that would bring money rolling in. And it seemed there was nothing I couldn’t do for them right here. It was merely a matter of organization and clever planning.
But would Angèle want me here? I’m not the marrying kind. I’m not a family person. I’m not the jealous type. Don’t get mushy on me, Antoine. Maybe Angèle’s tantalizing spell spawns from the fact that I know I will never fully possess her. I can fuck her blind, which she obviously enjoys, and no doubt she is truly moved by my mother’s story, but she will never want to live with me. She is like the cat in the Just So Stories by Kipling. The cat that walked by itself.
After dinner I suddenly remember the DVD made from the Super 8 reel. How could I have forgotten it? It is in the living room with the photographs and letters. I rush to fetch it and hand it to Angèle.
“What is this?” she asks.
I explain that it was sent to me by Donna Rogers from New York. June Ashby’s partner. She slides it into her laptop’s DVD drive.
“I think you need to watch this by yourself,” she murmurs, caressing my hair, and before I can make up my mind whether I need her presence or not, she swings the Perfecto jacket over her shoulders and slips out into the dark garden amid a whoosh of cold country air.
I sit down in front of the computer and anxiously wait. The first image to flicker on the screen is my mother’s face in the sunlight, filmed from close up. She has her eyes closed as if in sleep, but a tiny smile plays around her lips. Very slowly, she opens her eyes, shades them with her hand, and with a spasm of mixed pain and joy, I look into them, incredulous. How green they were, greener than Mélanie’s, how soft and gentle they were, such serene, luminous, loving eyes.
I had never seen a film of my mother. Here she is on the screen of Angèle’s computer, miraculously resuscitated, and I can barely breathe, fraught with exhilaration and emotion. Sudden tears trickle down my cheeks and I wipe them away hurriedly. I am amazed at the fine quality of the film. I was expecting coarse, poorly colored images. Now she is walking on a beach, and with a quickening pulse I recognize the Plage des Dames, the pier, the lighthouse, the wooden cabins, and her fuzzy orange bathing suit. I experience the strangest sensation. Somehow I know I am right around the corner building a sand castle, calling out to her, but June, who is no doubt filming, is not interested in a little boy’s sand castle. The film then jumps to the rescue poles and the long stretch of the Gois passage, and I see my mother far away, a tiny silhouette, walking along the edge of the causeway at low tide on a gray and stormy day, wearing a red sweater and shorts, her black hair blowing in the wind. She seems far away at first, hands in pockets, but she walks closer and closer with her unforgettable dancer’s walk, feet turned outward, back and neck straight. So graceful, so nimble. She is walking exactly where Angèle and I drove that very afternoon, heading to the island as we were, toward the cross. Her face is still a blur. Then it becomes clearer, and I see she is smiling. She breaks into a run, right up to the camera, laughs, clears a strand of hair from her eyes. Her smile is full of love, brimming over with it. Then she puts one of her small tanned hands to her chest, exactly over her heart, kisses it, and places her palm on the camera. The pink flesh of her palm is the last image of the film. The last image I see.
I click on the video to start it over again, awestruck by the images of my mother alive, moving, walking, breathing, smiling. I don’t know how many times I watch it. Over and over again. Until I know it by heart, until I feel I was there. Until I can watch it no more because my agony is unbearable. Until my eyes are so full of tears I can no longer see the screen. Until I miss my dead mother so much I want to lie down on the uneven stone floor and weep. My mother will never know my children. My mother will never know who I am now. Wha
t I have grown into. Her son. A man leading his life the best way he can, a man doing his best, whatever that best may be. Something inside me is unleashed, snaps, lets go. I feel it go. I feel the agony go. In its place, a dull ache remains, and I know it will have a hold on me forever.
I stop the video and eject the DVD. I put it back into its cover. The door to the garden is ajar, and I slip outside. The air is sweet and cool. The stars twinkle. A dog howls in the distance. Angèle is sitting on a stone bench looking up at the stars.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.
“No.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
She leans close to me. I put an arm around her shoulders, and we share the quiet cold of the night, the occasional faraway yelp of the dog, the starry radiance that shines down on us. I think of my mother’s pink palm covering the camera. I think of the Harley gliding over the Gois. I think of Angèle’s supple back against my chest, her confident gloved hands on the wide handlebar. And I feel sheltered, as I did that afternoon, knowing that this woman, whom I may or may not spend the rest of my days with, this woman who may send me packing tomorrow morning or take me in forever, this extraordinary woman whose job is death, has given me the kiss of life.
Acknowledgments
Thank you:
Nicolas, my husband, for his patience and his help.
Louis and Charlotte, our children, for being the great people they have blossomed into.
Laure, Catherine, and Julia, my first readers.
Abha, for her feedback and advice.
Sarah, for her beady eye.
Erika and Catherine, for helping me imagine Angèle.
Lauren and Jan, for their help on the U.S. edition.
Chantal, for giving me that space on the rue Froidevaux.
Guillemette and Olivier, for introducing me to Noirmoutier.
Mélanie and Antoine Rey, for letting me borrow their names.
Héloïse and Gilles, for trusting me again.
Last but certainly not least, to the fabulous St. Martin’s team and, in particular, Sally, George, Matthew, Jennifer, Lisa, Anne, Sarah, and Mike.
Tatiana de Rosnay, A Secret Kept
(Series: # )
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