The Child

by Pascale Kramer

  Gaël was still in the shower when she went back up to his room. She thought she could hear him babbling to himself. A sweet, spicy smell floated in the stuffy half-light—a smell of feet. The backpack lay tipped over on the floor, choking on a tight plug of clothes that Gaël must have tugged on too hard. Simone put up the blinds and opened the window. An armful of light raked the sheets draped over the piles of boxes. As she began to shake out the blanket, candy wrappings, a dissected pen, and a forlorn earplug tumbled out. She put them on the bedside table. Jovana presumably never made the beds, because when Gaël came back from the bathroom, he stood for a moment with his cheeks puffed out and his hands crossed flat on his head, not knowing how to react. His wet hair looked combed down with brilliantine. He had put on a bottle-green bathrobe, still creased from the packaging, which gave him the appearance of a little man. Jovana must have bought it for him specially. Simone loved her for having thought of preserving his dignity, or for having risen to its demands. She wondered how much negotiating had been necessary for him to agree to come, and whether he had partly wanted to anyway.

  Don’t you ever make your bed? she asked, in an artificial voice she hated herself for. Yes, sometimes, Gaël replied, squatting down on his heels beside the backpack, which he considered unenthusiastically. He had realized he was about to be asked to tidy his things; seeing him acquiesce so reluctantly threw her into a panic. She was sure there was nothing left of their understanding of that first day. Anxieties brimmed up at her own disappointment.

  Will you be bored if you come to work with me this morning? She was talking to his rounded back as he fumbled in the bag with what looked like deliberate clumsiness. She was just about to add that Claude would not be back before midday, when he turned around. His face was lit up by a marvelous inky smile from chewing his pen. He asked her out of the blue if she had opened the present. Simone looked at him uncomprehending, then was abashed. She had completely forgotten! Her reaction made him laugh and flop forward against the mattress. His body had a kind of affected limpness that, oddly, invited familiarity. Simone rumpled his wet hair, and he flinched as though she were tickling him. We’ll go open the package, she suggested, catching hold of the hand he held out for her to help him up. His hand was moist and dimpled and offered no grip or reaction. In fact, he was making no effort and let her take his full weight, arching backward with his head tipped back, caterwauling in a rather silly way. Simone yanked him upright sharply, oddly hurt by his clowning. He got to his feet and pretended to stagger, still cackling artificially, but he would not meet her gaze and his eyes clouded with a sly hint of anger.

  A police car drove slowly past the house in a ripple of blue and white through the thick lace of birch leaves. Simone told Gaël to hurry up and get dressed; then she picked up the candy wrappers and left the room. Their misunderstanding left a nagging awkwardness; neither of them was quite able to act normally yet. Simone went down a few stairs. There was no more sound from the bedroom and she could not help glancing up through the banister posts. She caught a glimpse of him from the side, hunched and crimson-faced, tugging endlessly at the cord of his bathrobe. He got angry so quickly; it struck her as an unfathomable violence.

  Before going out, Claude had rinsed out his mug, upended the bread on top of an unwanted slice, and put back the gift in the center of the table, where the meticulous smears of a sponge were drying out. Simone tried to untie the knot, then cut the ribbon and set about unsticking the adhesive tape without tearing the paper. There was a silver key ring for Claude with a horse’s head because that had been his sport when he was twenty, and for her, a chunky bangle also made of silver, though her name was missing because Gaël had not remembered what it was. A little card had been signed by the pair of them and said Thank you in a cloud of hearts. Simone sat down with the bracelet in her hand and felt inexplicably attacked, when suddenly she heard Gaël clattering down the stairs.

  He came and sprawled his arms and chest across the table beside her. Do you like it? he asked with wonderful impatience before admitting honestly, when he saw how touched she was, that it had been his mother’s idea. Now that his hair was nearly dry, it was bobbing messily again, making him look more childish. But Simone guessed there could be no question of kissing him. Their bare arms were so close on the table that the embarrassment between them was palpable. Still propped on his elbows, Gaël rocked back and forth, eyeing the place furtively. Simone could not stop looking at the perfect whites of his eyes under the long, dark lashes, the bee-sting purple of his lips, and that freshness and feverishness of youth that caused her a wave of nostalgia.

  The breeze blew through the open house and raised the pages of a calendar hanging on the pantry door above an old photo of Claude and Cédric now spattered with splashes of grease. Gaël stared at it for a moment, looking greedy with secret questions. Then he flopped onto a stool and watched Simone put the gifts in a box. I didn’t even think to ask what you have for breakfast, she said, apologizing. Gaël made a face in surprise. He ate crackers and a yogurt, but it didn’t matter if she didn’t have any. He was sweetly agreeable and his face was calmer; something approaching pleasure had returned, or a wish to feel she was happy. He had seen a little boy spying on them from under the blue curtain and wanted to know who he was. That’s Malika, and she’s a little girl, Simone corrected, although she could not be sure. She had never noticed the faintest movement behind the curtain. The idea that Gaël’s presence was attracting attention in the neighborhood made her aware of their insecurity and the lack of protection Claude’s illness had brought on them.

  Gaël took ages finishing his milk and groping for his slippers under the table. Then Simone had to wait for him again while he went upstairs to put on his sneakers. Every move he made seemed dragged from the depths of a reverie that somehow slowly eased the sense of urgency to get out. Simone shouted to him from the hallway that she was about to leave. He caught up with her, panting and chattering, and insisted on carrying the bag with the folders in it and putting the empty trash can back in the garage. Just as they were finally leaving, the police car drove past the house for the second time. Gaël ran after it a few yards into the dazzling street. He had wrapped the handles of the bag around his wrist and it bounced against his leg, already a hindrance. His whole attention was again diverted from Simone. In fact, he was waiting for her to go on ahead, which she did.

  When she turned around, he was standing outside the house opposite, peering through the hedge with his hands in his pockets, displaying the same attitude of awkward gallantry that had touched her the first day. She continued on a few paces, then stopped again to wait for him. The area was sunk in Sunday somnolence, every window open or the blinds down. Here and there, the wash swung from a line, and an inflatable wading pool lay wilting in the sun. Gaël was still messing around, trying to reach his hand into the hedge, twisting his mouth. His slack belly protruded under his T-shirt. He had put the bag down at his feet and almost forgot to pick it up when he finally bounded forward to join Simone.

  The walk had bared his forehead, which was now mottled with red rings like fingerprints. Simone had only just realized that he had stopped where the cars must have gathered in the night. She wanted to know what he had found. Nothing, he admitted, disappointed, then added that he was sure he had seen one of the guys hiding something. He went on ahead of her, brushing so close to the fence that it caught his shoulder. What sort of thing? Simone asked. Her questions made him contemptuous. You know very well what it was, he trumpeted, stomping off noisily across the asphalt. Simone asked him to stop messing around. His ability to needle sometimes filled her with panic: she could not bear the thought of Claude’s irritation. The image of his bald head surveying the street in the dusk left a bitter taste of pity. She blamed herself for letting him go to the stadium on his own, with his sickness on view like that. It struck her that he was moving and walking even more slowly. The treatment didn’t seem to have slowed anything, helped anything; it
had just added the lie to the uncertainty of waiting. It was impossible to get from him so much as an echo of his visits to the hospital, and Simone dared not call his doctor behind his back. And she had not yielded to the offer of one of the dentists, who thought she might be able to get hold of his medical file. Cheating like that would have been as good as condemning him to another death. But she desperately needed to know what would kill him and how and when, and especially whether Claude expected, like her, that one day he would feel he was suffocating.

  They had arrived. Gaël had not said another word; he, too, seemed lost in his own thoughts and suddenly dejected, although he denied it, pursing his lips in a funny expression. The three dentists’ offices were on the ground floor of a former apartment building surrounded by a fence and a messy strip of garden with untended bushes. Gaël entered the gloom of the hallway behind her. He thought it stank. His voice was quizzical again and set up a faint echo between the high ceilings and linoleum flooring of the shuttered rooms with their white-tinted windows.

  Simone was only going to be an hour, and he passed the time rummaging around and leafing through the magazines but kept coming in to ask her what she was doing. She had never been in charge of a child before and was amazed how quickly she took on the constant distraction of a mother. The time comforted her. Gaël was not expecting to be looked after; he must be used to getting no reply to his questions and staying home alone, probably for whole evenings. It would have been tempting to ask him about his life, but Simone was afraid of giving herself away. The gifts plagued her with disturbing, insistent self-reproach. Claude had never paid Jovana any money. That had been the agreement, but it was so out of step with the situation. Simone wondered if Jovana had been hoping for something when she saw this sick man resurface in her life. Claude intended to acknowledge parenthood for Gaël and at least catch up on that, but Simone was sure Cédric would disapprove. She felt little compunction about judging him. Despite his extreme concern for them, Cédric never seemed to do things from the goodness of his heart. She saw Claude again as he had been the day before, after Jovana had left, his hand feeling the round hole in his bald scalp, the knotty veins of his feet in his new shoes. It was terribly painful to imagine how sorry he must be not to have had a more generous life.

  The midday sun cast spangled slashes over the slate-colored linoleum. The heat was filtering through the shutters; the smell of ether was cloying. Gaël was both very pale and flushed. He kept coming in and hanging under the fountain at the sink in the office. A film of vapor glistened on his forehead. He wiped it off and pulled at the hem of his T-shirt, asking if he could go and play outside. A glimpse of his chubby belly revealed fine streaks of moisture beads. Again, Simone was struck by his cellulite bumps. She suddenly felt sure he must be diabetic.

  Cédric’s car was parked at an angle and sat half up on the sidewalk, right outside the garden gate. He must have gone to join Claude at the stadium and brought him back. He was biding his time out in the street and had apparently waited for them and even walked some of the way to meet them. A breeze had ruffled his hair and was blowing it back over an incipient bald spot, which Simone was surprised to see he was bothered about. He had one hand on his hip and was staring at something over the rooftops, as though to indicate to them that they need not hurry.

  Gaël fell silent when he caught sight of him. Simone could not even hear the sound of his steps behind her. Cédric had not yet greeted them, or at least not openly. When she was almost at his side, he turned to her suddenly and straightened his shoulders. The shock of having seen his father bald and waxen was still written on his face. He was traumatized almost to the point of tears, she realized in astonishment as he came forward to kiss her. His cheek bulged with a lump of chewing gum and smelled of aftershave. He had put more weight on, and Simone suddenly knew that he had given up smoking. She had never imagined that his anguish and fear could be so irrational.

  Gaël had stopped on the other side of the street and was kneeing the fence to bring down a great shower of seeds from the hedge, indulging an odd resentment by ignoring her and Cédric. You know we’re kind of brothers, Cédric bantered, turning toward him with his arms folded. Gaël nodded with poor grace, stubbornly facing the hedge. Cédric was wearing a suede jacket and gray pants made of a nasty synthetic fabric. She thought he must look old to Gaël, from another world, or maybe the little boy sensed Cédric’s perfectly controlled hostility. Simone went to ask Gaël to say hello, but he came forward of his own accord and held out a limp hand to shake. His lowered eyes seemed to be searching for a way out. The study window was open, and Simone suddenly realized what he had seen: Claude was on the phone. Cédric followed his gaze, too. That must be your mother, he confirmed, she called just as I was leaving. Cédric’s attempt to get rid of him was thinly disguised. In answer, the little boy darted forward unexpectedly. He seemed about to leap over the gate but changed his mind, aware of his clumsiness and of other people’s eyes on him. His gestures belied a kind of violence, a real rage against tears, which Simone suddenly realized she had seen him hiding since that morning behind sidelong glances.

  Cédric waited for the child to turn up in the study, where Claude’s silhouette cast a stooping shadow. It’s totally weird seeing him like that, he blurted out, turning to Simone with a panicky smile. It took her a moment to realize that he was talking about Claude. She told him that his hair had fallen out in tufts and that he had shaved the rest off the day before, just before the child arrived. Cédric listened, jangling his keys in his pocket. His own vulnerability to his father’s illness made him ill at ease and strung out. Simone would have liked him to comment on Gaël; she had a spiteful, pointless wish to see him drop the mask, a wish he had gauged perfectly well, because he would only agree that the resemblance was undeniable. But it was Claude who was bothering him, and it was not a distraction, but genuine shock. Simone could tell, just from seeing him so unhinged, how rapidly the sickness had progressed. It must be just as awful for a son as for a wife to see a man’s dignity flake off in dead skin, diarrhea, and stale, scaly odors.

  Gaël had replaced Claude on the other side of the open study window. Simone could see him twisting his cheek about on the receiver, bumping his hip against the desk, and fiddling with the pens in the metal goblet. His wriggling irritation depressed her. Everything about him had suggested grumpiness and defiance since that morning, apart from a brief moment of abstraction when cheerfulness had gotten the upper hand. But there was not much chance that he would ever really feel relaxed or at home here. Simone blamed herself for letting him be foisted on them and for having expected a bit of happiness. She just didn’t have the energy to attend to anyone’s suffering but her own.

  Claude had wandered right, to the end of the garden. He had put on his invalid’s tracksuit, and his bare neck stuck out of the top as though stretched by elastic bands. Cédric bent to watch him between the house wall and the birch tree’s silver trunk. I managed to talk to his doctor yesterday, he announced almost absently, although that was clearly the whole reason he had come. The foci in the brain are stable, and the tumor in the lung has shrunk marginally, but not enough for them to operate, he added, still without looking at Simone and still as though it was incidental. Then at last he looked at her, took a deep, shuddering breath, and concluded that there was still hope that the treatment would keep him going, maybe even for another year.

  His face was harried by bitter pain. Could it be that he hated fate so much, that his filial loyalty had stayed so pure, despite the slights he had had to put up with? Simone felt herself blushing, surprised by her own feelings. She had wanted to believe that Claude was deteriorating; that was the truth of it. She could have started to yell, because the news had touched on the most shameful, most sensitive part of her. She felt as though her body had just registered, with sudden, treacherous force, the constant tension of seeing Claude turn into somebody else. She felt as if she were choking on cotton wool and revolt. Cédric h
ad approached her and took her by the shoulder, shaking her gently to comfort her, but for what? His affection did not come naturally or easily to him, but Simone guessed he was moved to real sympathy. She said, I’m sorry, I’m stupid, then opened her mouth and took a slow, helpful breath, pausing before exhaling.

  Claude was still at the bottom of the garden, as though arrested in his wandering by the wall of leaves that had taken years to hide them from the neighborhood. He stood stiffly looking up at the sky; then he let his head flop onto his breast and roll in an attitude of disbelief. What feelings of despair, what new desire to end it all had tempted him again? Simone was less and less able to bear witnessing his outbursts of regret. Cédric had moved away from her and was bouncing his keys in his hand. Yolande is waiting for me; I’m leaving, he announced, rubbing his face.

  The car gave a little bleep, then a click as all the doors unlocked together. Cédric’s face instantly hardened with worry of a different kind. Hey, come and look at this, he said, pointing to one of the wing mirrors, which was all but ripped off. That was done this morning, he declared with odd satisfaction. It wasn’t yet midday and I was just coming into the parking lot.

  For years, he had been trying to alert them to dangers that Claude refused so much as to comment on. Over the years, Claude had grown tense with disgust at these futile arguments, and it was impossible to know what his mute obstinacy meant, what it was trying to cure or prevent. Having been beaten up by one of his students had finally locked him into his opinions and silences. Simone guessed that the morning’s incident must have revived the old arguments.