A Secret Kept

by Tatiana de Rosnay

  Lucas is subdued, and it worries me. I cook his favorite meal, steak, fries, and ketchup, followed by chocolate ice cream. He is even allowed Coca-Cola. I make him promise not to tell his mother. Being such a health food devotee, she would be horrified. For the first time that evening, he finally smiles. He likes the idea of sharing a secret with me. I watch him devour his dinner. We haven't been alone like this for a very long time. Dealing with Margaux and Arno is a constant battle, a never-ending wrestling match. Easy, flowing moments like these are precious nuggets I want to hoard and cherish.

  As last night was a restless one, I decide to go to bed early. Lucas seems tired too, and for once, he doesn't complain when I suggest sleep. He asks if he can keep his door open and the light on in the hallway. He hasn't asked that for years. I comply. I sink into bed, praying I won't be plagued by last night's images. Pauline's dead face. Suzanne dressing her daughter's body. And now will it be my mother in the moonlit bedroom and the stranger in her arms? Surprisingly enough, sleep comes swift and fast.

  The phone wakes me, shrill in the dead of night. I fumble for the light, for the receiver. The alarm clock by the bed reads 2:47 a.m.

  A man's voice, curt.

  "Are you Arno Rey's father?"

  I sit up in bed, my mouth dry.

  "Yes--"

  "Commissaire Bruno, police department, tenth arrondissement. You need to come in, sir. Your son is in trouble. As a minor, he cannot be released without your consent."

  "What happened?" I ask, out of breath. "Is he all right?"

  "He's in a sobering-up cell. Yes, he is all right now, but you need to come right away."

  He gives me the address, 26 rue Louis Blanc, and hangs up. I stagger up, put my clothes on mechanically. Sobering-up cell. Does this mean he is drunk? Isn't that where they put drunk people? Your son is in trouble . . . What trouble? Should I call Astrid once again in Tokyo? What for? There is nothing she can do where she is now. Oh yeah, comes that inner voice again, that little voice I hate. You're the one in charge, buddy, you're the one standing there in the front line. You're the one who has to go out there into the hurricane, you're the one who has to face the enemy, that's your job, buddy, you're the daddy. You're the father. Get on with it, man.

  Lucas! I can't leave him, can I? What if he wakes up and finds the place empty? I'll just have to bring him with me. No, says the inner voice, you can't bring him. What if Arno is in a terrible state, imagine the damage. He's already upset by Pauline's death, you can't do this. You can't bring a fragile eleven-year-old into a police station in the middle of the night because his brother is in a drunk tank. Think again, Daddy.

  I pick up the phone, dial Melanie's number. Her voice is so surprisingly clear that I wonder for a split second whether she was asleep. I briefly explain the situation about Arno. If I leave the key under the doormat for her, can she come over and spend the rest of the night in our apartment? I can't leave Lucas alone, and there is no one else I can call. She says of course, she'll be on her way. She'll take a taxi. Her voice is calm and reassuring.

  The police station is somewhere behind the Gare de l'Est, near the Canal Saint-Martin. Paris is never empty on a Saturday night. There are crowds of people strolling along the place de la Republique and the boulevard de Magenta, despite the cold. It takes me a while to get there, to park. I tell the cop at the door I'm Arno Rey's father. He nods, lets me in. The place is as run-down and disheartening as the hospital morgue. A small, thin man with pale gray eyes comes up to me and introduces himself. Commissaire Bruno.

  "Can you explain what happened?" I ask him.

  "Your son was arrested with other teenagers."

  "Why?"

  His deadpan manner irritates me. He seems to enjoy taking his time, watching every muscle of my face.

  "They ransacked an apartment."

  "I don't understand."

  "Your son gate-crashed a party tonight. With a couple of his friends. The party was given by a young girl called Emilie Jousselin. She lives on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin, around the corner from here. Your son had not been invited. And once your son and his friends got there, they called more friends. Easy, with mobile phones. So a whole load of other friends turned up. Friends of friends. And so on and so forth. A hundred people at least. And everybody got drunk. They all had liquor with them."

  "What did they do?" I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.

  "The place was trashed. Somebody sprayed graffiti on the walls, broke china, cut up the parents' clothes. Stuff like that."

  I gulp.

  "I know it's a shock, sir. Believe it or not, it happens regularly. We have to deal with this kind of thing at least once a month. Nowadays parents leave for the weekend and don't even know their kids are planning to have a party. This young girl hadn't told her parents. She is fifteen. She just told them she was having a couple of girlfriends over."

  "Is she from my son's school?"

  "No. But she advertised her party on her Facebook page. And that's how it all started."

  "How do you know my son was part of this?"

  "We were called by neighbors who realized the party was getting out of hand. When my men got there, they arrested as many youths as they could. Most of them got away. But your son was very drunk. He could hardly move."

  I look around for a chair to sit on. There isn't one. I glance down at my shoes. Regular leather loafers. My everyday shoes. My feet in my everyday shoes. Yet today my feet have carried me into the hospital morgue to view Pauline's dead body, then to Melanie's apartment to hear the truth about what had caused the accident, then here, now, in the middle of the night, in a police station, about to confront my drunken son.

  "Would you like a glass of water?" offers Commissaire Bruno.

  So he is human, after all. I accept and watch his thin form walk away. He is back almost immediately, hands me a glass.

  "Your son is coming now," he says.

  A couple of minutes later two policemen appear, shouldering Arno, who shuffles along with the unsure gait of a drunkard. His face is pale, his eyes bloodshot. He doesn't look at me. I feel shame and anger shoot through me. How would Astrid react? What would she say to him now? Would she scold him? Soothe him? Shake him?

  I sign a couple of papers. Arno can hardly stand up. He reeks of alcohol, but he is sober enough to know what is going on. Commissaire Bruno tells me I will probably need to find a lawyer, in case the young girl's parents press charges, which they probably will do. We leave the police station. I don't want to help my son. I let him shamble along behind me to the car. I have not said a single word to him. I don't even want to touch him. He repels me. For the first time in my life I am disgusted by my own flesh and blood. I watch him as he ineptly gets into the car. For a split second he looks so young, so frail, that I experience fleeting pity. But the revulsion takes over again. He fumbles with his seat belt, cannot buckle it. I do not move. I wait till he finally manages to secure it. He is breathing loudly through his mouth, the way he did when he was a kid. When he was a nice little boy. The little boy I carried around on my shoulders, who used to look up at me the way Lucas still does now. Not the lanky, supercilious teenager with the frosty sneer. I marvel ironically at what hormones do, how they transform our children overnight into beings we no longer recognize.

  At nearly four o'clock in the morning, the streets are empty, Christmas lights glowing merrily in the cold darkness with nobody to see them. I still have not spoken to my son. What would my father have done in this situation? I cannot help smiling sardonically. Beaten me to a pulp? He did hit me, I recall. Stinging clouts across my face. Not often; I was a subdued teenager, not the defiant, uncouth sort sitting to my right.

  The silence stretches between us. Does he find it uncomfortable? Does he have any idea of what happened tonight? Is he afraid of me? Of what I will say to him? The inevitable lecture? The consequences? No pocket money, no more going out, better grades, better behavior, writing to the parents to say sorry . .
.

  Slouched toward the car door, he appears to be falling asleep. When we arrive at rue Froidevaux, I give him a dig in the ribs that jolts him awake. He makes his hesitant, vacillating way up the stairs. I don't wait for him. Melanie has left the keys under the mat, and as I open the door, I see her curled up on the sofa, reading. She gets up, hugs me, and we both observe Arno as he enters, swaying unsteadily. He takes in his aunt, and a lopsided grin broadens his face. But nobody smiles back at him.

  "Aw, come on, you guys, give me a break," he whines.

  My hand reaches back, and I slap him across the face with all my might. It happens fast, yet oddly I can see my gesture in slow motion. Arno gasps. The traces of my fingers are outlined on his cheek, bright red. I have still not uttered a single word.

  He stares at me, outraged. I stare back. Yes, says the little voice, that's right, you're the daddy. You're the father, and you are setting down the law, your law, whether this little asshole who happens to be your son likes it or not.

  My eyes bore into his like gimlets. I have never looked at my son this way before. At last he glances down.

  "Come on, young man," says Melanie briskly, grabbing his arm. "You are heading straight to the shower and then to bed."

  She leads him out of the entrance, away from me. My heart is beating painfully. I am out of breath, although I have hardly moved. I sit down slowly. I hear the sound of the shower running, and Melanie comes back. She sits next to me and lays her head against my shoulder.

  "I don't think I've ever seen you so angry," she whispers. "You were intimidating."

  "How's Lucas?"

  "In the Land of Nod."

  "Thank you," I murmur.

  We sit there together. Her familiar, sisterly smell. Lavender and spice.

  "Astrid has missed out on so much," she remarks. "Pauline's death. Arno, tonight. Our mother."

  Strangely, it is not Astrid who comes to my mind right now. It is Angele. It is her presence that I crave, her warm, supple body, her sarcastic laugh, her surprising tenderness.

  "When you hit Arno, you looked so much like our father," Melanie says softly. "The way he used to get angry with us."

  "This is the first time I ever hit Arno."

  "Do you feel bad about it?"

  I sigh. "I don't know. All I feel is anger. You're right. I've never felt such anger."

  I don't admit to Melanie that I am angry with myself because I feel Arno's behavior is somehow my fault. Why have I been such a limp, transparent father? Because I never put my foot down, never spelled out the rules the way my own father did? Because when Astrid left me, the one thing that scared me was this: that being bossy with my children would make them love me less?

  "Stop thinking, Tonio," comes Melanie's comforting voice. "Go to bed. Get some rest."

  I'm not even sure I feel sleepy anymore. Melanie goes to Margaux's room. I stay up for a little while longer, looking at the old black-and-white photo album with all the Noirmoutier photos. I look at the photographs of my mother, and it is a stranger I see. I doze off into an uneasy slumber.

  On Sunday morning Lucas and Melanie go for brunch on the rue Daguerre. I shower and shave. When Arno finally emerges from his room, I still have absolutely nothing to say to him. He seems disconcerted by my silence. Bent over the Journal du Dimanche and a coffee, I don't even raise my head as he shuffles noisily around the kitchen. I don't have to look up to know he is wearing his wrinkled, unclean navy blue pajama bottoms, no T-shirt. Scrawny back, jutting ribs. A flock of red pimples between his bony shoulder blades. Long, greasy hair.

  "Is there a problem?" he finally mumbles, crunching his cornflakes loudly.

  I remain absorbed by my reading.

  "You can at least, like, talk to me," he bleats.

  I get up, fold my paper, and walk out of the room. I need to physically get away from him. I feel the same revulsion I experienced last night in the car. I never thought such a thing could be possible. You always hear about children being disgusted by their parents, not the other way around. Is this a taboo subject, something no one talks about? Am I the only parent to feel this way? Would Astrid ever feel this way? No, she couldn't. She gave birth to these kids. She carried them.

  The doorbell rings. I glance at my watch. Getting on for noon. Too soon for Mel and Lucas to be back, they only just took off. Probably Margaux, who forgot her keys. I feel nervous about confronting my daughter. I don't know how to express my tenderness for her, all my concern at this fragile, difficult moment in her life. I open the door almost fearfully.

  But it is not Margaux's slight figure waiting for me on the doorstep. It is a tall woman wearing a black Perfecto jacket, black jeans, and black boots, holding a helmet against her hip. I quickly gather her into my arms and crush her wildly against me. She smells of leather and musk, an intoxicating combination. I hear Arno's step on the creaking floorboards behind me, but I don't care. He has never seen me with any woman apart from his mother. "I thought you could do with a little sexual healing," she murmurs against my ear.

  I draw her into the warmth of the apartment. Arno stands there stupidly. Gone is the impertinent teen. He cannot take his eyes off the Perfecto jacket.

  "Hello. I'm Angele. Your father's number one fan," says Angele slowly, looking him up and down. She holds out her hand and bares her perfect white teeth in a wolfish smile. "I believe we met at the hospital this summer."

  Arno's face is a perfect mixture of surprise, shock, discomfort, and delight. He shakes Angele's hand and scuttles off like a shy bunny.

  "Are you okay?" she says to me. "You look--"

  "Like hell." I grimace.

  "I've seen you look perkier."

  "The past forty-eight hours have been--"

  "Interesting?"

  I take her in my arms again, nuzzling the top of her glossy head.

  "Devastating, is more like it. I don't know where to begin."

  "Don't begin," she says. "Where's your room?"

  "What?"

  The slow, greedy grin.

  "You heard me. Your room?"

  As I lie in bed, her scent still on my skin, I hear the muffled roar of the Harley cut through the Sunday-night silence. She is gone. She stayed for the entire day. But I know she will be back, and the mere thought of that comforts me. Angele seems to propel a new vitality into me, the way the embalming fluid she pumps into her patients restores their lifelike color. I don't mean only the sex, which of course is an important and thrilling part of our affair. I also mean the matter-of-fact, down-to-earth manner she has of dealing with the agonizing issues of my life. We had gone over each different issue, in my bed, holding each other.

  Margaux. Had she been seeing a grief counselor? Someone she could talk to about her best friend dying in front of her very eyes? That was absolutely necessary. I made a note of it. Angele went on about the way teenagers dealt with death, how some of them were lost, upset, in shock, and how others, as she had all those years ago, grew up instantly but gained a certain hardness that would never wear off.

  Arno. Slapping him probably made me feel better, but it was not going to help us communicate. There would come a time, she said, when I would have to sit down and talk to him, really talk to him. Yes, he needed limits, and yes, I was right to put my foot down, but I would have to stick to this new inflexibility. I had smiled when she said that and stroked the curving softness of her naked hips. What did she know about teenagers? I murmured. Did she have one hidden somewhere that she had forgotten to mention? She had turned around to glare at me in the dim light. What did I know about her life, apart from her job? Nothing much, I admitted. Well, she had a sister, a little older, divorced, who lived in Nantes. Nadege had three unruly teenagers, eighteen, sixteen, and fourteen. Their dad had remarried and was no longer involved enough to give a hand in their upbringing. Angele was the one who gave a hand. She held them on a tight rein, but she was honest and fair with them. Every week, she spent a night in Nantes at her sister's house. It was
easy, as the Le Loroux-Bottereau hospital was only twenty kilometers away. She loved those kids, even if they were sometimes hell to deal with. So yes, she knew all about teenagers, thank you very much.

  Clarisse. I had shown Angele the photographs. "What a beautiful woman!" she exclaimed. "The spitting image of your sister." Then I told her why Melanie lost control of the car. Her face sobered up instantly. I could tell she was trying to find the right words. She knew how to deal with death, she knew how to deal with teenagers, but this particular issue was a tough one to cope with. She remained silent for a couple of minutes. I tried to describe my mother, her straightforward simplicity, her rural upbringing we knew nothing about, the contrast between the prosperous Rey family and her country girl childhood, but I found myself faltering, powerless to summon her back, to explain to Angele who my mother really was. Yes, that was it, that was the heart of it, the dark heart of it. Our mother was a stranger. And even more so since Melanie's flashback.

  "What are you going to do about this?" Angele had asked.

  "When I am ready, and I think I will be quite soon, after the funeral, after Christmas, I want to go see my grandmother, with Melanie."

  "Why?"

  "Because I'm sure she knows something about my mother and this woman."

  "Why can't you talk to your father?"

  The question was so simple, so easy. I was taken aback.

  "My father?"

  "Yes, why not? Don't you think he knows about this? He was her husband after all."

  My father. His aging face, his shrunken silhouette. His rigidity. His authority. The Commendatore's marble statue.

  "I don't talk to my father."

  "Oh well, I didn't speak to my dad either," she drawled. "But that's because he died."

  I had to smile.

  "You mean you had a fight and you're no longer on speaking terms?" she asked.

  "No," I said, knowing full well how odd this would sound. "I have never talked to my father. I have never had a real conversation with him."