A Secret Kept

  The way she says that makes me look at her closely.

  “Yes. Our mother, father, and grandparents,” I say.

  “You never talk about your mother,” she says.

  Twenty-five years old. Not dumb. A little vain, although to me her gamine looks are nothing to write home about. The fact that she and I share our father’s blood has never made me feel brotherly toward her.

  “We don’t talk about anything much, you and I,” she goes on.

  “Does that bother you?” I ask.

  She twists her rings around her fingers, her cigarette hanging mannishly from her mouth.

  “Yes, it does. I don’t know a thing about you.”

  People come into the cafeteria and give us outraged looks because we are smoking. We stub out our Marlboros.

  “Don’t forget I had already left the avenue Kléber when you were born,” I say.

  “Perhaps. But you are still my half brother. I’m here because I do care. I care about Mel. I care about you.”

  This is so out of character coming from her that I can only gape.

  She smirks. “Close your mouth, Antoine.”

  I chortle.

  She says, “Tell me about your mother. No one ever talks about her.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  She lifts an eyebrow. “Anything.”

  “She died in 1974. She had a brain aneurysm. She was thirty-six years old. It happened very fast. We came home from school and she had been taken to the hospital. She was dead.” I glance at her. “Hasn’t Régine or Papa told you all this?”

  “No,” she says. “Go on.”

  “That’s it.”

  “No, I mean what was she like?”

  “Mélanie looks like her. Petite, dark, green eyes. She laughed a lot. She made us all happy.”

  It seemed to me that our father stopped smiling after Clarisse died and that he smiles even less since his marriage to Régine. I don’t want to say this to Joséphine, so I shut up. But I’m sure she knows as well as I do that her parents lead two different lives. My father meets his retired lawyer friends, spends hours in his study reading or writing, complains a lot, and Régine patiently puts up with his grumbling, goes out to play bridge at her ladies’ club, and tries to pretend all is well at avenue Kléber.

  “And her family? Do you ever see them?”

  “They died when she was young. They were from a modest rural background. I remember she had a sister, older than she, who she never saw much. And after her death that sister fizzled out of our lives. I don’t even know where she lives.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Clarisse Elzyère.”

  “Where was she from?”

  “The Cévennes.”

  “Are you okay?” she asks suddenly. “You look awful.”

  I grin. “Thanks.”

  Then I say, after a slight pause, “Actually, you’re right. To tell the truth, I’m exhausted. And then him turning up.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “You don’t get on with him, do you?”

  “Not much.”

  Which is a half lie, because I did get on with him when Clarisse was still alive. He was the first one to call me Tonio. We had a quiet complicity that suited the calm little boy I used to be. No rushing about playing football. No sweaty, manly activities on weekends, but contemplative strolls through our neighborhood and frequent visits to the Louvre, to the Egyptian wing, my favorite. Sometimes, among the sarcophagi and mummies, I’d catch a whisper. Isn’t that the lawyer François Rey? And I was proud to be seen holding his hand, proud to be his son. But that was more than thirty years ago.

  “His bark is worse than his bite.”

  “Easy for you, you’re his little chouchou, his favorite.”

  She had the good grace to acknowledge this with a certain elegance.

  “Well, it isn’t always easy being the chouchou,” she mutters. Then she says, “How’s your family?”

  “They’re on their way. You’ll see them if you stick around for a bit.”

  “Great,” she says a little too brightly. “And your job, how’s that going?”

  I wonder why she is doing her best to keep up this falsely concerned questionnaire. Joséphine has never asked me for anything except cigarettes. The last thing I want to talk about is my job. Even thinking about it brings back something stale. “Well, I’m still working as an architect and I’m still as unhappy about it.”

  Before she can ask why, I throw her one of my own questions.

  “And what about you? Boyfriend, job, all that? Where are you at? Are you still seeing the guy who owns a nightclub? And are you still working for that designer in the Marais?”

  I don’t bring up the married man she had an affair with last year, or the long stint without a job when she appeared to be spending most of her time watching DVDs in her father’s study or shopping in her mother’s shiny black Mini.

  All of a sudden she flashes a smile at me. It looks more like a grimace. She smooths her hair back and clears her throat.

  “Actually, Antoine, I would really appreciate it if you could . . .” She pauses, clears her throat again. “If you could lend me some money.”

  Her brown eyes, both pleading and brazen, stare back at me.

  “How much?” I ask.

  “Well, say, a thousand euros.”

  “Are you in trouble?” I ask, using the Daddy voice I use with Arno.

  She shakes her head. “No, of course not! I just need some cash. And, you know, I’d rather not ask them for anything.”

  I assume that “them” means her parents.

  “I haven’t got that kind of money on me.”

  “There’s a cash machine right across the street,” she says helpfully.

  She waits.

  “I take it you need it now?”

  She nods.

  “Joséphine, I don’t mind lending you this, but I will need it back. Since my divorce, it hasn’t exactly been the lap of luxury.”

  “Sure, no problem. Promise.”

  “And I don’t think I can withdraw that amount.”

  “Well, what about whatever the machine gives you in cash and the rest by check?”

  She gets up and sashays out, swinging her scrawny hips triumphantly. As we leave the hospital to go to the bank, lighting up cigarettes on the way, I can’t help feeling conned. So much for her new sisterly attitude.

  After handing the bills and a check to Joséphine, who pecks me on the cheek and saunters off, I stroll into town, not wanting to go back to the hospital for the moment. It is one of those provincial boroughs, with nothing remarkable about it. A little town hall, sporting a withered tricolor flag, facing an austere church. A bar-tabac and a boulangerie. An unpretentious-looking hotel called L’Auberge du Dauphin. I see no one around. The bar-tabac is deserted. Too early for lunch. A glum young man lifts his chin to me as I walk in. I order a coffee and sit down. An invisible radio blares out the news on Europe 1. The plastic-topped tables are greasy to the touch. Should I make a couple of phone calls, tell my close friends what happened? Call Emmanuel, Hélène, Didier? I keep putting it off. Is it because I don’t want to pronounce those words again? To describe the accident over and over? And what about Mélanie’s friends? And her boss? Who is going to tell him? Probably me. Next week is a big week for Mélanie—with the beginning of the fall literary season. The busiest time of year for anyone who works in publishing, and this includes my ex-wife. And then there is my own workload, Rabagny and his fits of temper, the layouts he wants to alter yet again, the assistant I need to find after I manage to fire Florence.

  I light a cigarette.

  “You won’t be able to do that next year,” sneers the young man with a churlish smile. “Everybody will be going outside to smoke. Or not coming here at all. Bad business ahead. Real bad business. Might as well close up the place.”

  He looks so worked up that I decide, in a cowardly fashion, not to venture into the conversation. Instead, I
smile, nod my head, shrug, and plunge myself into the blithe study of my mobile phone.

  I took up smoking again when Astrid told me she loved Serge. I had stopped for ten years. And in the flick of a lighter I became a smoker again. Everybody gave me hell about it. I didn’t care. Astrid, a true health freak, had been appalled. I still didn’t care. Smoking was the one thing no one could take away from me. It was the only part of my present life that gave me some kind of satisfaction. I knew I was a bad example for my children, especially at Arno’s and Margaux’s fragile, impressionable ages, when smoking is considered a risqué, hip thing to do. The apartment at the rue Froidevaux smells of stale smoke. When I get home, that’s what greets me. And the view over the cemetery. Looking over death. Of course, I can’t complain, my deceased neighbors are a prestigious bunch: Baudelaire, de Maupassant, Beckett, Sartre, de Beauvoir. But I soon learn to look away from the living-room window. Or I only look out at night, when the austere crucifixes and stone monuments are no longer visible, when the long stretch to the Tour Montparnasse is just a mysterious black space full of nothingness.

  I had spent time trying to make that apartment look and feel like home. In vain. I had pilfered Astrid’s photo albums, ruthlessly tearing out my favorite photos of the children, of us, plastering them all over my walls. Arno at birth in my bewildered arms, Margaux in her first dress, Lucas triumphant on the top of the Eiffel Tower, brandishing a sticky lollypop. Ski vacations, summer vacations, Loire châteaux visits, birthdays, school plays, Christmases: an endless, desperate exhibition of what our happy family once was.

  Despite the photos, despite the colorful curtains (Mélanie had helped choose those), the cheerful kitchen, the comfortable Habitat sofas, the clever lighting, there is something heart-wrenchingly empty about the place. It seems to come to life only when the kids turn up on their allotted weekends. I still wake up in the new bed, scratch my head, and wonder where I am. I can’t stand going back to Malakoff, being confronted with Astrid and her new life in our old house. Why are people so attached to houses? Why does it hurt so much to let a house go?

  We bought that house together, twelve years ago. It was an unfashionable area then, considered unglamorous and working class, and our move to that “grotty little suburb” south of Paris had sprouted raised eyebrows. And there had been so much to be done. The high and narrow pavillon de banlieue was crumbling, damp and run-down. That was why it was cheap. We took it on as a challenge. We loved every minute of it, even the setbacks, the problems with the bank, with a fellow architect, with the plumber, the mason, the carpenter. We worked on it day in, day out. And it finally became perfect. Malakoff, our little paradis. Our envious Parisian friends realized how close it was to the city, how easy it was to get to, just beyond the Porte de Vanves. And we even had a garden—who can boast of a garden in Paris?—which meant we had our meals outside in the summer, despite the muffled roar of the nearby périphérique that we soon got used to. A garden, which I tenderly looked after, and a dog, a clumsy old Labrador who still couldn’t understand why I had moved out and who this new guy in Astrid’s bed was. Good old Titus.

  My heart still aches for that house. The winters, and the cozy fireplace. The big living room, shabby with the wear and tear of three children and the dog. Lucas’s drawings. Astrid’s incense sticks that gave me headaches. Margaux’s homework. Arno’s size twelve sneakers. The dark red sofa that had seen better days but remained comfortable enough to sleep on. The sagging armchairs that embraced you like old friends.

  Our home. The day I had to leave it. The day I stood on the doorstep and turned around and looked at it for the last time. The last time as my home. The children weren’t there. Astrid watched me, her eyes wistful. You’ll be okay, Antoine. The kids will come and see you every other weekend. You’ll see, it’ll be fine. And I had nodded, not wanting her to see tears welling up. She had said, Take what you want. Take what you think is yours. I had started to fill up cardboard boxes with all my junk, savagely, angrily; then I had slowed down. I didn’t want any memories, except the photos. I didn’t want anything except the photos. I didn’t want anything from this house except for her to love me again.

  I used to have my office on the top floor. The ideal office. Space, light, and silence. I had planned it myself. When I was up there, overlooking the reddish roofs and the gray strip of the ring road always cluttered by traffic, I felt like Leo DiCaprio when he gloats, “I’m the king of the world!” on the doomed Titanic’s deck, arms outstretched to the horizon. My doomed office. It was my lair, my den. In the good old days, Astrid used to creep up when the children were asleep, and we’d make love on the carpet, listening to Cat Stevens sing “Sad Lisa. Lisa Lisa, sad Lisa Lisa.” Serge has his office up there now, I guess. I don’t want to think about what they do on the carpet.

  As I sit there in that dingy café, waiting for my family to turn up, listening to a corny song by Michel Sardou, I wonder if my father wasn’t right after all.

  I never fought for her. I never kicked up a fuss. I never let all hell loose. I let her go. I was meek and well-behaved, like the little boy I used to be. The one with the combed-back hair and the navy blue jacket. The one who said s’il vous plaît, merci, and pardon.

  At last I glimpse the familiar Audi, coated with dust. I watch my family get out of the car. They don’t know I’m there, they can’t see me yet. I leave the café and hide behind a large tree near the parking lot. My heart swells. I haven’t seen them for a while. Arno’s hair is blonder, bleached by the sun. He wears it down to his shoulders. I see he is trying to grow a straggly goatee, which oddly enough suits him. Margaux has a bandanna around her head. She has filled out, she is no longer so skinny. She walks clumsily, not comfortable with herself. Lucas is the one who surprises me the most. The plump kid is now all arms and legs. I can see the future teen inside him struggling to get out, like the Incredible Hulk.

  I don’t want to look at Astrid right away, but I can’t hold out much longer. She is wearing a long, faded jean dress that I love, buttoned up in the front and close-fitting. Her blond hair, a little more silvery I notice, is tied back. She looks wan. But still so beautiful. Serge is not there. I breathe a sigh of relief.

  I watch them leave the parking lot and head to the hospital. I make my appearance. Lucas howls and flings himself on me, his arms and legs wrapping themselves around me. Arno grabs my head and kisses me on the forehead. He is definitely taller than I am now. Margaux stands apart, on one leg, like a flamingo, then comes forward and buries her head in my shoulder. I discern that under the bandanna her hair is dyed bright orange. I recoil, but say nothing.

  I save Astrid for last. I wait till the children have had their fill of me, and I reach out for her and hug her with a sort of feverish hunger she probably mistakes for anguish concerning my sister. It is unbelievably good holding her close again. Her scent, her softness, the velvet touch of her naked arms make me reel. She doesn’t push me away. She hugs me back, hard. I want to kiss her and nearly do. Then I remember they haven’t come here for me. They’ve come for Mel.

  I take them in to see her. On our way, we bump into my father and Joséphine. My father greets everybody with his brutal hugs. He pulls on Arno’s goatee. “What is this, for God’s sake?” he roars. He slaps Arno on the back. “Stand up straight, you good-for-nothing nincompoop. Doesn’t your father ever tell you that? He’s as bad as you, honestly.”

  I know he is joking, but as always, there is a bite to his jesting. Ever since Arno was a small child, my father has been on me about the way I raise him—always the wrong way, in his eyes. We all tiptoe into Mélanie’s room. She is still sleeping. Her face is even paler than it was in the morning. She looks frail, all of a sudden older than her forty years. Margaux’s eyes well up, and I see tears glisten. She seems horrified by her aunt’s appearance. I wrap my arm around her shoulder and draw her close to me. She has a sweaty, salty smell. No longer the little-girl cinnamon smell. Arno stares, his mouth open. Lucas fidget
s, looking from me to his mother, then back to Mélanie.

  Then Mélanie turns her head and slowly opens her eyes. She sees the children, and her whole face lights up. She gives a weak smile. Margaux bursts into tears. I see that Astrid’s eyes are wet too, that her mouth is trembling, and all this is too much for me. I back away discreetly and slip out into the corridor. I take a cigarette out and just hold it.

  “No smoking!” booms a matronly nurse, waving an irate finger at me.

  “I’m just holding it,” I explain. “Holding, not smoking.”

  She glares at me as if I were a shoplifter caught red-handed. I put the cigarette back in the pack. I suddenly think of Clarisse. She is the only one missing here. If she were still alive, she would be here now, in that room, with her daughter and her grandchildren. Her husband. She would be nearly seventy. Even if I try as hard as I can, I cannot imagine my mother at sixty-nine years old. She will always be a young woman. I am the middle-aged man. She never knew middle age. She never knew what it was like to raise teenage children. She died before all that. I wonder what kind of mother she would have been to us when we were in our teens. It would have been different had she been alive. Everything would have been different. Mélanie and I had kept our puberty in check. We had been coerced into submission. No outbursts, no screams, no slamming doors, no insults. No healthy teenage rebellion. Uptight Régine had muzzled us. Blanche and Robert had looked on in approval. It was the done thing, in their eyes. Seen and not heard. And our father had overnight turned into someone else. Someone who wasn’t really interested in his children, nor in whom they would end up being one day.

  We had not been allowed to be teenagers.

  As I accompany my family back outside, a tall woman wearing a pale blue uniform walks past me and smiles. She has a badge, but I can’t make out whether she is a nurse or a doctor. I smile back. I wonder fleetingly who she is and think how nice it is in these provincial hospitals that people actually greet you, which is never the case in Paris. Astrid still seems tired, and I begin to think the drive back to the city in the grueling heat is not a good idea. Can’t they stay a little longer? She hesitates, then mumbles something about Serge waiting for her. I add that I have checked into a nearby hotel, as Mélanie can’t be moved yet. Why doesn’t she go and rest there for a while? The room is small, but cool. She can even have a shower. She tilts her head and seems to like the idea. I hand over the key and point out the hotel to her, just beyond the town hall. I watch her and Margaux walk away.