Lie With Me
Page 9
I got off at Jonzac, the nearest station to Barbezieux (there was no station in Barbezieux—apparently the town didn’t want it), and my mother waited for me in the car, in the parking lot. She didn’t know about the Guibert and the young soldiers. Or rather, she pretended not to know and we didn’t talk about it.
I believe that Lucas will get off at Jonzac. Or maybe Châtelaillon-Plage, a quaint resort town where I happen to own a house, a seaside villa bought on a whim that ended up becoming the inspiration for one of my novels.
He couldn’t possibly know where my thoughts have led me, yet he suddenly throws out: By the way, you didn’t tell me whether you’re working on a new book right now . . .
I stare at him, dumbfounded. Amid the pink and brown marble, in the chaos of the comings and goings, it’s as though he were suddenly revealed to me, as though everything I thought I knew about him was wrong. I found him then to be completely devoid of ingenuousness, of the innocence that had suited him so well.
The image is that of two men suspended in the middle of a moving crowd.
I say: You know that I write?
He says, Yeah, I know who you are. I knew who you were the minute I saw you on the sidewalk in front of the hotel.
* * *
He expresses himself with confidence but without boasting. At this point, I assume that he may have seen me once on television and that he must just have an excellent memory. Perhaps he has read one of my books, but I doubt it; twenty-year-old boys don’t really read my books, or very few of them anyway. Putting an end to my speculation he says: My father told me about you. One day when you were on TV, he said that you went to high school together.
He remembers how strange, even agitated, his father seemed, and it surprised him because normally he had only known his father to be calm. He put the agitation down to surprise—it’s not every day you see someone you know on TV. It isn’t every day a person emerges from your distant past without warning.
* * *
I say, But how did you remember me? If you only saw me the one time. He corrects me: No, I’ve seen you several times. Whenever the TV guide says you’re going to be on a show, we watch you. His father insists on silence, while his mother prefers to return to the kitchen. Writers don’t interest her much, nor does what her husband experienced before knowing her. The son stays with him but doesn’t dare ask questions. He suspected that his father would not have answered them anyway (a trait I recognize well). The first time it happened he remembers paying more attention to his father, whose eyes were fixed on the television screen, than to the show itself.
He says: Though my father never reads books, he’s read yours. He intimates that the books are in their house, though not in plain sight; no doubt they’re tucked away in a closet somewhere or in the attic. In any case, he knows they are there. He remembers a cover: A painting, a bar, a woman in a red dress sitting at the counter, a man next to her wearing a suit and a hat. They stand very close to each other, almost touching. There is something between them, but it is hard to tell whether the intimacy is just from the physical proximity. There’s a waiter on the other side of the counter, dressed in white, leaning forward, busy with who knows what. He says, It’s an American painting, right? I tell him the name of the painter, Edward Hopper, but I cannot articulate another word.
The tumultuous comings and goings of the travelers, all these lives intersecting, bodies brushing against each other before disappearing forever, like in the hotel lobby, and the ads on the speaker punctuated by this horrible jangling sound—this tatatala noise—exasperate me. It feels like Lucas is disappearing; even the scenery is becoming blurry, like the melting watches of Dalí. The boy’s voice brings me back: So? What are you working on right now? It takes me a few moments before I reply. First, I say that I don’t know how to talk about a book while it’s being written because it’s still in flux, too vague, and because I am not certain of going to full term (I deliberately use this expression, borrowed from the vocabulary of childbirth). I add that it’s also superstition on my part. I understand by his expression, the raised eyebrows, that he doesn’t believe a word I’m saying. I give in and say: The story of two inseparable friends who end up being separated by time. He smiles. I urge him not to read anything personal into it. I specify that my books are fiction, that memoir doesn’t interest me.
He asks if I have a title yet, because they are important, titles. I answer that I’m not sure yet, but he insists. I tell him that the novel will probably be called The Betrayal of Thomas Spencer. He seems to consider whether or not this is a good title. I’m afraid he’ll be jarred by the name of the hero and give me a knowing smile again. But no. He raises his head toward the departure board, as if to check whether his track number is displayed yet, and then returns his gaze to me. He says: So, your Thomas Spencer, he’s betraying his friend, right? I say: It’s a bit more complicated . . . In fact, it’s his youth he betrays.
He says: It’s the same thing, no?
Suddenly, his track number appears on the giant board. In the throng of people, he announces that he has to go now, that he would have liked to have talked more, but that he’s very happy to have met me. He shakes my hand and then leaves. There is no emotion or ceremony. He just walks away. The parting takes less than ten seconds.
After a few steps, he stops and comes back to me and says: You have something to write with? I’ll give you his number. Call him. I’m sure he’d like to hear from you.
I enter the ten numbers into the phone as he gives them to me. The ten numbers that make Thomas accessible to me for the first time in twenty-three years.
He looks at me for a long time afterward. I don’t understand his insistence. I say: What? What’s the matter?
He says, What’s your number? I’m asking because you’re not the type to call.
He takes down my number. I say: And your father, do you think he’s the type to call?
He stares at me again for a long time. Once again I’m confounded by the resemblance.
He says: That’s for you to say. I’m sure you know him a lot better than I do.
And this time, the twin child goes away for good. And I feel a profound loneliness, the kind you feel when you are alone in the beating heart of a crowd. The only thing to do now is to leave the station. And to walk. To walk for a long time.
I will never call Thomas.
* * *
However, I will hesitate often. More than once, I will grab a phone and dial the numbers. I will only have the last key left to press and then each time, I will hang up.
The reasons? They will change according to the days. At the time, I live with a man who is fifteen years younger than me and doesn’t like boys but loves me. Who knows why? It’s a vulnerable relationship, and I will be scared to disturb this precarious equilibrium. Calling Thomas, talking to him, asking to see him again, would be anything but innocuous. I cannot say: This is only a phone call. I know it’s more than that. Even if I were granted immunity, the act of calling him has the allure of betrayal (we come back to that, we always come back to it) or without going to that extreme, a gesture toward Thomas would be a gesture of mistrust toward the man I live with—a decision to put distance between us, to admit to a love that is not enough.
I also dread the cruelty of reality. We were eighteen—now we are forty. We are no longer who we once were. Time has passed, life has rolled over us and transformed us. We will not recognize one another. It doesn’t matter how well appearances have been preserved, it’s who we are, at the root. He is a married father who takes care of a farm in Charente. I am a novelist who spends six months of the year abroad. How could the circles of these two existences have even one point of intersection?
Above all, we will no longer find the thing that first pushed us toward one another that day. That singular moment. The pure urgency of it. There were circumstances—a series of coincidences and simultaneous desire. There was something in the atmosphere, something in the time and the plac
e, that brought us together. And then everything broke—like a firework exploding on a dark night in July that spirals out in all directions, blazing brightly, dying before it touches the ground, so that no one gets burned. No one gets hurt.
* * *
Thomas will never call either.
Chapter Three
2016
A few weeks ago, I received a letter from Lucas, originally addressed to my publishing house, then forwarded to my home. He wrote to me nine years after our one and only meeting. In the letter, he said he would be in Paris during the last week of February (I noticed the letter was postmarked Charente) and that he would like to see me, in fact, he absolutely has to see me, because he has to give me something. He remained enigmatic, as if this enigma were necessary to get a favorable answer, or as if he were not sure that the letter would really come to me, and maintaining a certain mystery was necessary. He imagined that I was very busy, mentioning the title of my latest novel, but hoped that I could find a moment for him. He left a phone number, assuring me that he could adapt to my schedule since his was flexible.
I was on a book tour but mostly available during this last week of February and had no reason to decline his invitation.
And, I admit, I was intrigued.
I didn’t dare call him. I was reluctant to start a conversation on the phone, thinking he would feel it necessary to fill me in on the intervening years and postpone entering directly into the heart of the matter. I thought that this kind of exchange would put us on shaky ground. I decided to send him a text proposing a time and a place. Less than a minute later, he replied: I’ll be there.
I chose the Beaubourg café in the morning because it’s near where I live and, on the second floor, it’s calm. Almost no one ever goes up there. I also like the view onto the Pompidou museum.
* * *
I arrive first, a little nervous, and flip through the newspapers I purchased at the kiosk below without really reading anything in particular. I merely glance at the coverage of the American primaries and the photos of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton accompanying the articles. This billion-dollar pre-election frenzy would ordinarily obsess me, but not this morning. Not on the morning of the reappearance of Lucas Andrieu.
When he appears, I recognize him immediately. He climbs the spiral staircase slowly, looking for me. As soon as he spots me, he walks in my direction. He is less the casual and carefree boy that I remember, the gracefulness of adolescence has faded. More solid and built, a man has come in his place.
There is no smile either. I remembered his radiance, his vitality. A kind of solemnity has taken over his features now. But perhaps it’s only reserve, a little reticence for this reunion after all these years. A scheduled meeting absent of all chance can’t help but take on an air of gravitas.
And yet what strikes me the most is his tanned complexion. I remark on it right away, which serves as a point of entry into the conversation, and like that, we manage to avoid the formulaic embarrassed greetings. He says: It’s because I live in California now, it’s sunny all the time there, as you know. He explains the “as you know,” telling me that he came across an interview where I mentioned that I live part of the year in Los Angeles. He says: Sometimes I thought we would run into each other there. Of course LA is huge, I don’t need to tell you that, endless even. But sometimes coincidences . . . Anyway, it never happened. And I couldn’t call you because I didn’t keep your number.
I ask what he’s doing in California. He says that he works for a grand cru, one of those vineyards that buy French grapes and develop them on the spot. He tells me that he’s the “sales manager,” using the American term. I think to myself, At least someone realized his youthful ambition.
I say: And you returned to Charente to spend a few days of vacation? Immediately I notice a very quick but distinct shadow pass across his face. He begins to wring his hands, his eyes blink rapidly, and it’s then that I understand that something has happened.
I understand that something terrible has happened.
He searches for the words but I don’t want to hear them, as if one can refuse words that hurt as a horse refuses an obstacle.
Getting ahead of what he is about to tell me I say: When did it happen?
He says: Fifteen days ago. I came back as soon as I could.
He tells me about the shock of receiving the unexpected news, the call that came in the middle of the night because of the time difference, the sense of being suspended in limbo, the strange buzzing he had in his ears. He asked that they repeat it just to be sure he grasped what was being said, even though that was obviously useless; still, he needed to hear it again.
As he speaks, I go back to a Monday in May 2013. It was around nine thirty in the morning. I had turned my phone back on (I always keep it off at night) as I was getting ready to go to an appointment. I was on time (I’m always on time). Just as I was about to leave the apartment, my phone alerted me to a voicemail. I looked at the call list and saw that “Mom” had phoned me at 8:21 a.m.
I knew right away.
And yet, I had always imagined that it wouldn’t happen like that. I had always assumed that I would pick up the phone on the day she called to tell me my father died. For months, my pulse would race every time I had to answer one of her calls. I had never considered that she would have to leave a message, that she would have no other choice.
Afterward, I thought she could have simply said: Call me back, and then have told me in person. But that would have been stupid, of course. Even the sound of her voice—exhausted and wracked by sobs—would have been enough of a confirmation.
She said: It’s Mom, it’s over, Dad’s gone. It’s the most simple words that destroy us. Almost words for a child.
And after? After I called S., who was in the bathroom. I had to tell him twice: The first time I tried, barely any sound emerged. At the tone of my voice, he too immediately understood. He didn’t ask any questions, but just came to hold me.
I was standing in front of the window, staring out over the treetops at the buildings on the rue Froidevaux, where we lived at the time, and he slipped behind me to hold me in an embrace. Then the tears came. I don’t really know if I ended up saying anything. I don’t think I did but I would have to ask S. His memory is so precise, he never forgets anything.
* * *
Lucas continues. In the aftermath, he had to take care of logistics—to return to Barbezieux, booking a ticket on the next flight from Los Angeles to Paris, and then another ticket for the train. He was lucky that there were still seats. (He smiles when he says “lucky.”) He packed a suitcase, canceled his meetings, all the concrete and material things that distract us from grief, if only for a few moments. He did everything he could do to just hold on, one moment to the next, minute by minute, and on into the next day, when he finally reached his destination. Twenty-four hours later, he viewed his father’s body in the mortuary.
When he pushes open the door upon which hangs a sign with the name of the deceased (this is how Thomas ends up, with his name on a door at the morgue), what strikes him the most is the bluish light and the smell of what he presumes to be the chemical used for embalming. It takes him a moment to look at the coffin, some last-minute bargaining with himself before giving in. When he finally brings his eyes to the open coffin, a sensation that he is unable to qualify takes hold of him: his father seems to be somewhere between life and death. The waxy stillness obviously proves he no longer belongs to the world of the living—not to mention the fact that he’s lying in a coffin—but the makeup provides a strange sort of luminousness to his skin, which gives Lucas the impression that his father is only sleeping, that somehow his presence in the room might awaken him. He approaches carefully to touch his father’s forehead. It’s cold and hard, making his death undeniable at last. The only thing that Lucas finds reassuring is that the embalmers have done a remarkable job. You can’t even see the trace of the rope around his neck.
* * *
* * *
I would prefer not to visualize the scene, I would like to spare myself this masochistic impulse, but I can’t help it. Even in these circumstances, it is the writer who wins. The writer who imagines everything; the one who needs to see it first to have it be seen. Against my will, the image forms in my mind. I see the body suspended at the end of the rope, the head bent, the compressed carotid artery. I see the rope hanging from a beam, gently swaying, with the chair turned over on its side, the rays of a winter sun filtering down through the planks and coming to rest in the bales of straw below.
* * *
A memory is superimposed onto this. It’s the spring of 1977 or 1978—a teaching colleague of my father’s was found hanged in her classroom. Her name was Françoise. I remember her great height, her long, unbrushed hair, the floor-length floral dresses she wore, the kind that were in fashion at the time. She must have been in her mid thirties. Some said that she killed herself to escape the stress of teaching. It’s possible. In any case, everyone expressed their shock and sorrow. I was ten years old then and as inconceivable as it may seem, I explained to everyone that I was not surprised, that you could see the unhappiness on her. I said she had simply decided not to go on. At that age I knew nothing about death, let alone suicide, but that’s the phrase that came to me. I was told to be quiet.
* * *
A confession: I do something else too. I ask myself: what did Thomas think about in those last moments, after having put the rope around his neck, before toppling the chair? Once he made the decision, how long did it last? A few seconds? A minute? But a minute is interminable under these circumstances, so how then did he fill the time? With what thoughts? And then I come back to my question. Did he close his eyes and revisit scenes from his past? From early childhood? His body stretched out like a cross in the fresh grass, face turned toward the blue of the sky, the feeling of the sun on his cheeks and his arms? His adolescence? A motorcycle ride with the wind pressing against his chest? Was he lost in the details of things he thought he’d forgotten? Did he scroll through faces and places, as if he could take them with him? (In the end, I am convinced he never considered changing his mind, that his determination never faltered, that no regret, if there even was any, weakened his will.) I try to imagine the last image that formed in his mind, plucked from his memory, not expecting to figure it out, but believing that if somehow I could discover it, I could renew our intimacy. I would once again be what no one else has been for him.