The meeting place was in front of the Santiago du Chili gardens at exactly 8 p.m. Baptiste would show them how to scale the gates without getting spotted. Once inside, they’d have to stay alert and be ready to hide because a park attendant sometimes did his rounds in the evening. And there was no need to worry about the cold; the gin would warm them up.
Mathis has been thinking about it constantly since this morning.
He has absolutely no desire to go. And anyway, he can’t. Given what happened last time, when his parents went out to dinner with friends, his mother isn’t about to let him go out.
If it were just up to him, he’d say no. Baptiste and his friends kept Théo’s money to buy an extra bottle and now they’re bossing them around. He doesn’t like that. They haven’t kept their word.
He wishes Théo had refused to go. But his friend said yes and has already worked out his plan: he’ll say he’s sleeping at Mathis’s. There’s no risk of his father phoning to check. And nothing else matters. He’ll be in control of his time and his movements: a whole evening of freedom. When Mathis expressed concern about where he would really sleep, Théo just said, “We’ll see.”
Mathis would like to keep out of this whole thing, stay at home and know nothing about it. But he can’t leave Théo alone with them.
He’s going to have to find a way to be there. He’ll have to lie. Find an unbeatable reason for his mother to let him go out despite “what happened,” because that’s the way she refers to it, in a low voice.
She hasn’t said anything to his father.
He needs to think.
In fact, lying isn’t difficult when it’s for a good reason. The other day, for example, when she came back barely ten minutes after they left, furious at Théo for giving her the slip under the elevated train, Mathis swore that he didn’t have his friend’s address—neither his father’s nor his mother’s—and didn’t know how to get there either.
The week after, he went down to the cellar with his mother to look for a box that she was hoping contained some of her old things. While they were down there, she had a word with him. She told him she didn’t want him to see Théo or sit beside him in class. She was expecting him to stay away from Théo and make friends with other boys in his grade. It was out of the question that Théo would set foot in their house again or that Mathis would go to his.
He hardly recognized her voice, it was so firm and brooked no appeal. It was not up for discussion. It was an order and she wanted him to comply.
His mother’s been strange for a while. She talks to herself without realizing. She no longer seems sad in that way that made him so uncomfortable, or has the dejected look that sometimes surprised him; now she seems busy, run off her feet. The other day he saw her in the distance in the street. She was muttering to herself. You’d have thought she was crazy.
HÉLÈNE
On Thursday afternoon Théo stayed behind at the end of my class. He waited for all the others to leave. It was the last lesson of the day. I’d just finished the chapter on brain activity and how the nervous system works, which I usually spend two or three periods on. I saw he was taking his time putting his things away. Mathis left before him. I think he has singing or a piano lesson on Thursdays, so he never hangs around.
When we were alone, Théo came toward me. He was standing tall, jacket fastened, chin raised, his bag over his shoulder. I thought, he’s got something to tell me. I held my breath. I must not force things or try to rush them. I smiled at him and pretended to be straightening the papers scattered over my desk. After a moment, he asked, “Can you die if you take the wrong medicine?”
My pulse quickened. There was no room for error.
“You mean if you take medicine that’s not intended for you?”
“No, not that.”
“What then?”
“Well… if someone takes medicine that doesn’t work. You said that medicine works on the brain. On people’s moods. But I think that sometimes it doesn’t do anything. And people stay in bed. They hardly eat and they don’t get up and they stay like that all day.”
He said this very quickly. I needed to decipher it and ask the right questions.
“Yes, that’s true, Théo. That does happen. Are you thinking of someone in particular?”
He looked up at me. I could see his pupils dilate in response to the pressure.
Just then, the principal burst into my class without knocking. I turned to him, stunned. I didn’t have a chance to open my mouth before he ordered Théo to go home in a tone that clearly suggested he had no business being there. Théo cast me a final glance, his eyes dark and accusing, as though I were a bank employee who had secretly pressed the panic button under the counter.
He left without looking back.
I followed Mr. Nemours to his office.
Calmly and with a slightly theatrical firmness, he set out the situation for me.
Théo Lubin’s mother had phoned to complain. Not only had I called her in for no reason, but now, she said, I was loitering near her home. Even in her building. Of course, she’d related the conversation we’d had a few weeks back, which she’d called unfair and accusatory. The principal asked her to recall the exact tenor of what I said, which she’d had no trouble doing, judging by the detailed report he set before me.
Besides breaking the school rules and exceeding my authority, I’d failed to mention this encounter at the team meeting about the student. A meeting organized, did he have to remind me, after a first transgression on my part. Why had I said nothing? That was a mistake. A serious mistake. My behavior was damaging the smooth functioning of the public education service and harming that service’s reputation.
Théo’s mother had asked for him to be moved to another class. The principal had told her he would speak to me so that I could explain myself and then make a decision.
He waited for my reaction. My argument. My justification. What on earth was I doing on those stairs? I had nothing to say in my defense, so I stayed silent. Fortunately, he didn’t have punishment in mind. He’s been teaching for over twenty years. He knows the pressure, the stresses that we’re under and the responsibilities we bear. We need to stay united. Stick together. In view of the work I’d done in the school over several years, he wouldn’t be calling for an official reprimand or warning. However, he told me I needed to put things in perspective and get myself checked out by a doctor. Take at least a month. To let everyone calm down. That was a condition; it wasn’t up for discussion.
I emptied my locker and left school with the disturbing conviction that I wouldn’t be going back.
The music from Wheel of Fortune was going around in my head. “I’ll buy an A, how about an L, I’ll buy an O”; I’ve almost got it, I need to think to crack it, to find the right answer. “Oh no, Hélène. Come on. It’s not that simple. Who do you think you are? You weren’t thinking that you could change the direction of the Wheel, were you?”
I haven’t listened to the messages my colleagues have left on my machine throughout the day.
I haven’t called Frédéric, who’s tried phoning several times.
From my window I’m watching the passers-by wrapped up in their coats, hands in their pockets or protected by gloves, their shoulders hunched, hurrying and struggling against the damp air that cuts through their meager defenses. Among them there’s a woman wondering how long an onion tart needs in the oven, another has just decided to leave her husband, another is mentally calculating how many lunch vouchers she has left, a young woman is regretting having worn such thin tights, another has just heard that she got the job after several interviews, and an old man has forgotten why he’s there.
CÉCILE
The good thing about talking to yourself is that you can tell yourself jokes. I know some good ones that my brother used to tell me when we were children. They had us rolling on the floor with laughter.
The other day I was having fun talking in an English accent to myself. It was amusing. I
must say I can do it rather well. It’s crazy how much that enables you to take the drama out of a situation. It’s a bit like Jane Birkin taking it upon herself to comfort me. But it’s me and me alone who was talking to me, of course. And yes, out loud in my living room. I reviewed pretty much every topic.
I told Dr. Felsenberg about that. He wanted to know from whom or from what the English accent estranged me.
My father died a long time ago and Thierry eventually left home. Since then, my mother has lived in a little ground-floor apartment on staircase G in the building we grew up in. The council gave her a two-bedroom instead of the four-bedroom we used to live in, which means she can pay the rent and live decently. She’s not the complaining sort.
I called her the other day. I didn’t stop to think, I just picked up the phone and dialed her number. She was surprised; I don’t call often. I told her I wanted to hear her voice, to get her news. There was a short silence and then she asked if everything was OK. I said yes, and then there was silence again. My mother never asks me specific, direct questions. I live in a world that seems too distant from hers. I know that Sonia goes to see her from time to time. My mother serves tea and cookies that she arranges in a circle on a little plate. Then she puts them in a box so that my daughter can take them away with her. I said I’d go and see her with Mathis one day soon. After another pause, my mother said, “OK, I’ll be expecting you,” as though there were nothing else to hope for from life between the moment a promise is made and its fulfillment.
Ms. Destrée hasn’t responded to my request for a meeting. I think that’s a bit much. She’s supposed to be the contact for the seventh grade but doesn’t reply when it comes to seeing parents outside those interminable parents’ meetings twice a year. I logged on to the school website several times and re-sent my message. In the end I called them. They told me she was ill but not how long she’d be away. I hope I can see her as soon as she’s back.
On the surface, nothing has changed. William has never referred to the dinner party with his friends. In his eyes it’s probably just a minor incident. A mood swing. He must have gotten himself out of it with some fancy footwork, then refilled his glass. I’m not sure whether William has noticed that my body has distanced itself from his. We haven’t made love for several weeks, but this isn’t the first time. He must be telling himself that I’m going through one of those dark phases that punctuate women’s lives. Something hormonal probably, since that’s the prism through which he observes the female sex, going by Wilmor’s writing.
To be honest, I’ve stopped looking. I no longer turn the computer on since discovering that my husband has also started a Twitter account, which allows him to comment in a more incisive format and even slyer way on everything and nothing without ever assuming responsibility for the content of his remarks. It’s a funny world that lets us pour out anonymous opinions all over the place, ambiguous or extreme, without ever identifying ourselves.
The very next evening after that dinner, William sat down close to me on the sofa. He put his arm around my shoulders. I felt my body stiffen; the contact of his palm burned my skin through the fabric. He told me he still had some work to do, he was sorry—it was a complicated report he had to send the head of his department the next day.
I looked at him for a few seconds, silently at first, and then asked, “Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?”
He laughed, that nasal laugh that sometimes hides his embarrassment. He sensed that the question was not inconsequential. That it exceeded the framework of daily domestic interactions to which our conversations have been reduced. William isn’t stupid. He stared at me inquiringly. He was waiting to see what was coming next. I asked him again.
“Are you sure you have nothing to tell me… about you, about what you’re doing?”
I couldn’t say more. I didn’t have the strength. But I’m certain that at that moment he understood.
He hesitated.
A tenth of a second.
I saw it because, though I don’t know Wilmor, I do know William very well: a tiny twitch of his eyelids, the way he clasps his hands, the little embarrassed cough that lets him put an end to a conversation.
Then he stroked my cheek, furtively, a gesture from before, from a very long time ago: before the children, before computers, cell phones, before the spider on the web.
He stood up. He was already turning away when he answered, “You’re imagining things.”
William shut himself in his office. I watched a TV documentary about mass-produced pizzas. It was about the flavoring agents and condiments added to mask the poor quality of the toppings, a trick revealed at the end of a big investigation carried out against a backdrop of mafia codes of silence and dramatic music. A real thriller. I really couldn’t have cared less, but I watched it to the end. The Sunday before I’d watched one about coconuts. Since when have prime-time documentaries been about things like kittens and ground beef?
I talked to myself for a few minutes. I needed to debate. My voice no longer limits itself to reassuring me. Now it also expresses opinions.
Through the door I told William I was going to bed. I put away a couple of things that were lying around the kitchen and drew the curtains in the living room.
Then I went through the bedtime routine (makeup remover, orange-blossom water, night cream, hand cream) in a sort of ritual that I imagine all women of a certain age have.
I lay down. I turned out the light and this phrase came to my mind as clearly as if I’d said it aloud: I want out.
MATHIS
This evening he’s waited until his father has shut himself in his study and his mother is on her own in the living room. He’s well prepared.
He takes one last breath.
“You know, on Saturday we’re going to the Philharmonic with Mr. Châle.”
She’s surprised, as he expected.
“Oh really? Since when? Haven’t you already been?”
“No, that was the opera. Don’t you remember? It was on that form you filled in a while ago. You even gave me the money.”
“And where is this form?”
“I gave it back to Mr. Châle because he has to keep all the parents’ consent forms.”
She stops for a moment (she’s spent the past two days sorting through things as though they were on the point of being evicted from their apartment). Mathis feels dozens of insects swarming in his stomach. He can only pray she doesn’t hear them.
His mother looks puzzled. But he’s ready for all her questions.
“On a Saturday night?”
“Yeah, the school managed to get tickets because a group of senior citizens canceled. Mr. Châle said it was a great opportunity, even if the seats are a long way from the stage.”
“The whole class?”
“No, just the ones who take music.”
“And what are you going to hear?”
“The Grand Orchestre de Paris. Henry Purcell and Gustav Mahler.”
He’s prepared the details: how they’ll go, how they’ll return, which teachers are in charge of the trip. His mother is the sort of mother who is prepared to believe that they would have a trip to the Philharmonic on a Saturday evening.
Lying is really easy. He even experiences a certain pleasure in overdoing it. He puts on his good-little-boy voice.
“Ms. Destrée was supposed to come with us, but it’s going to be someone else because she’s ill.”
Strangely, this detail seems to reassure his mother and establish the credibility of what he’s saying.
She says she’ll come and pick him up after the concert so that he doesn’t have to come home by himself. He begs her not to. He’ll feel embarrassed, look like a baby. The others will make fun of him. Mr. Châle has said he’ll bring back the students who live near the school so as not to inconvenience parents who have plans for the evening.
Eventually she gives in and he has the impression she’s already thinking about something else, or doesn
’t have the strength to pursue her investigations any further. For several days she’s been like someone leading a secret life that’s very hectic and very tiring.
A little later, just as he’s about to turn out his light, she comes into his bedroom.
She asks him a question, direct and unexpected. “Tell me, Mathis, you’re not making things up?”
Without a second’s hesitation: “No, Mom, I swear.”
THÉO
The cold has covered the city in tissue paper. An incredibly fine white powder has come down on the lawns of the esplanade in front of Les Invalides. The benches are empty and the wind has chased away any passers-by.
They meet at exactly 8 p.m.
Baptiste told them to wait at the street corner, close to the entrance to the gardens, in front of a no entry sign.
They wait for his signal.
One by one, with the same alert, silent movement, they scale the gates and disappear into the bushes. A first stop, just long enough to make sure they haven’t been seen.
After a few minutes, they set off again toward the back of the gardens. In single file, following Baptiste.
Behind the trees there’s a small empty space. On the ground the shape of an old sandbox is visible, now filled in with dirt. Baptiste tells them to sit in a circle with gaps between them so that they can play a game.
Baptiste and his friends have brought several soft-drink bottles in which they’ve mixed gin and fruit juice. Half and half. He suggests a first round to get them going and hands out plastic glasses.
The Loyalties Page 10