“I can’t do that.”
“How many times are you going to say that? What do you wanna do, go after it with a gun?”
His cousin said that in a nasty, sarcastic way. Never had the gap between their ages seemed so wide.
“Bye, man,” he said, and went inside.
Anthony stood there alone for moment. Around him, the block remained cruelly unchanged, with its ticky-tacky houses, dried-out trees, and head-high fences. Kids had written their names on the sidewalk in chalk. Mailboxes overflowed with flyers.
After a moment, he climbed the three steps to the front door and went into the little house. His cousin hadn’t gotten very far, because his mother intercepted him as he was crossing the hall. As usual, the sound from the television filled the whole place. Anthony came in, and when Irène saw him framed by the living room door, she deigned to lower the volume a little and said:
“Well, you sure look like hell.”
She was lying on the sofa, TV remote in hand. On-screen, an American detective was driving on the Santa Monica Freeway. With its shutters closed, the little living room glowed with California light.
“What’s the matter? Did you two have a fight?”
The boys didn’t respond. With Irène, it was usually best to not bring grist to her mill, since her mood depended too much on whatever pills she happened to be taking. She started blurting out whatever crossed her mind. Where was her daughter, for starters? She was supposed to come dye her hair. The cousin didn’t know. Then it was her bills, her problems with the neighbors, her job, her colonoscopy, the laundry, the ironing, the television, everything. From time to time Irène circled back to the great story of her life, “my depression.” She said this in the tone she might use to say “my daughter” or “my dog.” This illness, which she had endured for years, had become a kind of companion, a presence. Her old boss was giving her grief. She’d been away from work for a year, and now the bastard wanted to fire her. But she actually wasn’t too worried; the doctor had reassured her. If worse came to worst, she could always contact the labor inspectors. She understood her boss, though. He had to keep the business going. But hell, those bastards were making enough dough on the backs of people like her, so she wasn’t about to start pitying them.
At that point, something happened on the TV screen, so Irène turned up the sound and forgot them. It was over. The cousin took advantage of this to go upstairs, and Anthony followed.
It was funny when you remembered what Anthony’s aunt used to be like. When he was little, Irène worked as an accountant for a shipping company that specialized in refrigerated products. Whenever she visited, she would bring them crates of yogurt and creamy Danette and Liégeois desserts that were just past their sell-by dates. She was dating a truck driver then, a bearded guy named Bruno. Anthony’s mother would often invite them and the two cousins over, and when they came, it was party time. The dinners would last until well past midnight, and Anthony always wound up falling asleep on the sofa, lulled by the grown-ups’ talk. His father would bring out the liqueurs with the words “Prune” and “Plum” written in blue ink on schoolboy notebook labels. The smell of Gauloises, the men picking tobacco from the tips of their tongues. The knock-knock jokes. The women chatting in the kitchen. The coffee maker burbling at one o’clock in the morning. His father’s arms as he carried him to bed.
Once, when the boys were in Anthony’s bedroom, his cousin pulled out a strange little catalog labeled René Château that was full of pictures of completely naked women. They looked at it in hiding with the door closed, but Carine had demanded to see, too, otherwise she would tell the grown-ups everything. Anthony was ten; his cousin, twelve. As they paged through the book, they pretended not to be especially surprised, but the business of that hair between the women’s legs puzzled them. Carine showed them hers. She didn’t have any hair, just a neat little crack in the middle that seemed intriguing. Anthony had had to pull his pants down, too. That was all a long time ago.
* * *
—
The boys—silent, hostile, and uncomfortable—hadn’t been in the cousin’s bedroom for ten minutes when someone rang the doorbell downstairs. That was unusual. The Mougels didn’t get a lot of company besides Anthony and Vanessa, and they didn’t bother ringing. The cousin leaned out the window and told the visitors to come upstairs.
“Who is it?” asked Anthony.
Footsteps could already be heard on the stairs. Looking annoyed, the cousin made a few moves to straighten up his bedroom a bit. Anthony asked the question again:
“So who is it?”
“You can’t stay here,” his cousin said with a sigh. “You’ve got to leave.”
Clémence appeared in the doorway then, with Steph right behind her. Without thinking, Anthony put two fingers to his drooping eye. What the fuck was going on?
“Hi,” said Clémence.
Her hair was in a chignon, and she was wearing eyeliner. A sweet scent like cotton candy trailed in her wake. For her part, Steph looked very annoyed. With all four of them there, the bedroom now seemed tiny, and especially ugly. The cousin, who noticed, fluffed up the pillow and hid some of the wires on the floor. Clémence walked over to him, and they kissed lightly on the lips. Anthony was blown away. A pop kiss. He looked at Steph.
“So, what of it?” she asked.
So, nothing. The lovebirds went to perch on the windowsill, sharply silhouetted against the bright outside light. They were young and gorgeous.
The next five minutes were pretty painful. Steph didn’t make the slightest effort, Anthony didn’t dare, and the other two would have preferred to be alone. This diplomatic imbroglio was expressed by tense silence, avoidance, and Steph’s sighing. Finally the cousin took Clémence’s hand to lead her out of the room.
“Where are you going?” grumbled Steph.
“We’ll be back.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“We’ll be back in a minute. Just smoke yourself a joint.”
The couple disappeared, and Anthony found himself alone with Steph. This was mind-blowing, unhoped-for, magnificent. He again touched his fingers to his right eye.
For her part, Steph started examining the VHS tapes along the walls. Head bent, she read the titles, from time to time raising an eyebrow in dismay. The very short sleeves of her white T-shirt revealed a vaccination scar on her left shoulder. Anthony could have just reached over and touched it. She looked a bit like a kid with her bib-overall shorts, round calves, the crease of her neck, and the curls on the back of her head. She picked up a magazine and started to fan herself with it. The room was like a furnace, and her skin took on a damp sheen. She was sloppy and heavy. The kind you ate with your fingers, licking them clean afterward. She plopped onto the bed and leaned on her elbows, crossing her legs. As her right foot waved in the air, her sneaker came loose. Anthony noticed that when her thighs pressed on the quilt, they changed shape and acquired a touching orange-peel texture.
“Hey there!” she snapped, when she caught him staring.
Anthony turned bright red and scratched his head. He announced he was going to roll a joint.
“What about his mother?” she asked.
“No sweat. She never comes upstairs.”
“You sure?”
“Not a chance, I promise.”
This answer didn’t completely reassure her. Anthony found rolling papers and hash in the little desk and started assembling them. What he would’ve liked to do was to talk about his little visit to Manu. That was sure to show her he was a real man. But Steph had other preoccupations.
“What about his mother, though? Doesn’t she work?”
Anthony didn’t know how to answer that, so he said:
“She has health problems.”
“Like what?”
“Her heart.”
That was pretty un
iversal, and it satisfied Steph. Anthony finished rolling the joint and held it out to her.
“Here.”
“Nah, I’m good.”
In fact, Steph was wondering how Clémence could possibly have dragged her here. This house was disgusting. How many people could live in here? It smelled of dog, and the carpet was vile. She was especially thinking about the crazy lady downstairs who let them in. She’d asked if they were of age and then bummed a cigarette. That was certainly a new one.
Right from the first hit, Anthony felt his mouth becoming dry and pasty, and he was sorry he’d suggested rolling a joint. On the other hand, the odds of him sharing a kiss with Steph in the next hour seemed pretty remote. From lots of little details—her bracelet, the way she held herself, her perfect hair, the smoothness of her skin—he sensed that she came from an exclusive, chic world. Feeling envious, he confusedly imagined summer houses, family photos, an open book on a deck chair, a big dog under a cherry tree—the kind of clean happiness he saw in magazines in the dentist’s office. This girl was definitely out of his league.
“Do you know if they’ve been going together for a long time?”
“No,” said Steph. “Anyway, I don’t care.”
He held the joint out to her again.
“I told you, no. It’s too hot. That’s disgusting.”
Seeing the effect of her words, she was almost sorry she’d been so curt. This kid with his closed eye was sort of funny. He was a change from Simon. Just thinking about Simon made her sick. She jumped at the chance to resume being a girl unlucky in love, wallowing in her heartache. At bottom, she would’ve liked to think about nothing else all day long. Which was more or less what she was doing when Anthony interrupted her:
“What the hell are they up to?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t understand why he didn’t tell me anything.”
“Clémence gets me into stuff like this all the time.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know…Like, what am I doing here, really?”
“I see what you mean,” he admitted.
His sincerity amused her. She kicked off her Converses and sat cross-legged on the bed. Anthony was definitely tormented by her ponytail.
“C’mon, give me that thing,” she said, pointing to the joint.
She relit it and took three quick hits. From then on, the situation became a lot more relaxed. Steph lay back on the bed and gazed at the ceiling. That way, Anthony could look at her legs, the blond fuzz on her thighs, the sharpness of her shin. Very high up, almost on her hip, a rainbow-colored bruise was visible. Her right hand dangled in midair, holding the joint between her index and middle fingers.
“What about you? You have a girlfriend?”
Taken aback, Anthony said yes. Steph turned to look at his face to see if he was telling the truth, and laughed mockingly.
“What?” he said.
“How old are you?”
“I’m fifteen,” said Anthony, lying again.
“Have you already kissed a girl, at least?”
“Sure.”
“So how do you do it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Which way do you turn your tongue?”
This was a debate that had greatly preoccupied Anthony during the school year. Opinions on the point varied, but he had decided to go with the majority. So he answered that you were supposed to go clockwise.
A mischievous look crossed the girl’s face, and Anthony frowned.
“What about you?” he asked after a moment.
“What about me?”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
Steph sighed. It was complicated and she’d rather not talk about it. So that was what she did, and at great length. In this way Anthony learned that there was this guy, see, who was too cute, who behaved badly but was still too cute in spite of everything. Sometimes he liked her; other times he acted as if she didn’t exist. But she understood him, sort of. He was complicated. Besides, he was reading Camus and Go Ask Alice. Anyway, he was driving her crazy. Anthony very soon regretted his curiosity. He eventually took back the joint and consoled himself with it. Steph continued her monologue, happy to revive her pain and display it to someone else. While she talked, Anthony could observe her at leisure. He watched her chest rise, and he could see the outline of a bra under her T-shirt. She had stretched out her legs, crossing her ankles at the foot of the bed, a position that accentuated the triangle of her crotch. After a while, she stopped talking. When she did, Anthony noticed that she was rocking gently on her ass. He needed to touch her. He went downstairs to get them something to drink.
* * *
—
He was popping ice cubes from a tray for their Cokes when his aunt burst into the kitchen.
“Who are those girls?”
Three ice cubes shattered on the tiles, shooting chips all over the floor.
“Jesus Christ! You scared me!”
“So who are they? I don’t know those girls.”
“They’re just friends.”
Anthony mopped up the damage with a paper towel as his phlegmatic aunt watched, remote in hand.
“Where are they from?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did they come here to do drugs?”
“Of course not. They’re just friends.”
He put the tray back in the freezer and took the Cokes to go upstairs. But his aunt blocked his path, standing at an angle in the doorway with her shoulder against the frame. She watched as he came closer.
“Is the fat one your girlfriend?” she asked sarcastically.
“She isn’t fat,” said Anthony.
As they melted, the ice cubes in the glass made a subtle tinkling. Anthony could feel the cold gradually seeping into his hands. As often happened when he was uncomfortable, he kind of wanted to take a piss.
“Well, she ought to watch what she eats, anyway. So where do they live, these friends of yours?”
“No idea.”
“They’re cute, anyway. Tell them to say hello next time.”
* * *
—
Anthony and Steph weren’t alone for very long after that. The other two came upstairs looking fresh as daisies; their hair wasn’t even mussed. It was enough to make you wonder what they could have been doing. Then the girls left the way they came, on their scooter. Clémence gave a little wave before taking off. Steph did nothing at all.
9
On Thursday morning, Hélène got up early. Her son had finally told her the whole story, in detail. She had turned the matter over in her mind every which way and had come to a decision. So she went to Anthony’s bedroom, opened the window and shutters wide, and sat down on the edge of the bed. Outside, you could hear birds singing, and the hum of the highway in the distance. It was going to be a beautiful day. Hélène had given a lot of thought to what she would say to Anthony. She felt that her family’s whole future depended on the impact of her words.
“We’re going to go to this boy’s house,” she said. “I’m going to talk to his father, talk to the kid. I’m sure we can work things out.”
“You’re completely crazy,” said Anthony.
He tried to talk her out of it, but it was a waste of effort. Once his mother made up her mind about something, there was nothing you could do about it. She left for work on time, all dressed up, in high heels and blue eye shadow. Now that she had come to a decision, her worry had almost completely dissipated.
Anthony mulled the thing over all morning while squeezing blackheads in the bathroom mirror. Hélène came to fetch him in the early afternoon, as agreed. He didn’t say a word during the entire ride. He’d told her a dozen times that there wasn’t any point in discussing things with those people. She didn’t agree. They would t
alk things over among grown-ups, she said; everything would be fine. She felt confident, but not so confident as to park right next to the towers. They covered the last stretch on foot.
The ZUP housing project where the Boualis lived wasn’t especially impressive. It wasn’t like those huge projects, the maze-like dormitory towns in Sarcelles or Mantes-la-Jolie. This one consisted of fewer than a dozen low buildings, which seen from the sky were arranged like five pips on a die, and three higher, fifteen-story towers, including the famous Manet tower.
Built during the prosperous Trente Glorieuses years between 1945 and 1975, the ZUP had been steadily losing tenants recently, and the ones who stayed thought it perfectly natural to extend their personal domains into the vacated apartments. By swinging a sledgehammer, they created nice five-room apartments for themselves, with two kitchens, two bathrooms, and a bedroom for each kid. The rents, meanwhile, remained unchanged, since the housing authority office chose to ignore this private real estate expansion. Anyway, there was nothing you could do about those towers. Between the satellite discs and the clotheslines, you could see peeling stucco as rust spread to the balconies, lined the downspouts, and stained the facades. Anyone who could get out was long gone, to Luxembourg or the Île-de-France, or back to their home countries if they had pensions. The luckiest ones were able to buy themselves a house, the fruit of twenty years of sacrifices. Basically, the shabby ZUP buildings reflected the world and its architects’ failure. They would be coming down soon, and not in some grand collapse, like on television. They would be bulldozed one wall at a time, as if attacked by insects. Like in London during the Blitz, the gutted buildings would display flowered wallpaper, rebar, Formica, and open cabinets. In two weeks it would be all over; fifty years of life turned to rubble. And the sooner the better, thought the planners. Meanwhile, though, the place was still very much alive in its modest way, with long-settled families that had been living there for at least thirty years.
* * *
And Their Children After Them Page 10