He’s a sweet pupil who never loses his temper, except with himself. I encourage him. You’ll make your dreams come true some day, dear Jo, I tell him, and then he takes my hand, carries it to his lips and says: It will be thanks to you, Jo, all thanks to you, and that makes me blush.
My God, if you knew. If you knew, what would become of you?
The twins have asked me to make waxed laces into little bracelets for them to sell in their salon. Every time someone has a manicure we manage to sell some little thing, says Françoise. So after that piece in L’Observateur, bracelets from your place will sell like hot cakes, adds Danièle. I make twenty. They’re all sold by that evening. With the kind of luck you have, say the twins, you really ought to play the lottery. I laugh with them. But I’m afraid.
I’ve invited them to our house for dinner today.
Jo is charming and funny and helpful all evening. The twins have brought two bottles of Veuve Clicquot. The bubbles in the wine, bursting on our palates, loosen our tongues. We are all mildly tipsy. And when you’re tipsy your hopes and fears always rise to the surface.
We’re nearly forty, says Danièle, if we don’t meet a nice guy this year we’re all washed up. Two nice guys, Françoise specifies. We laugh. But it’s not funny. Maybe we’re fated to stick together, like Siamese twins. Have you tried online dating? asks Jo. You bet. All we met were the weirdos. As soon as they find out we’re twins, they just want a threesome. The thought of twins gets the guys excited, they suddenly think they’ve got two pricks. How about trying separately? suggests Jo. We’d rather die, they cry in chorus, before falling into each other’s arms.
Glasses are topped up and emptied.
One day we’ll have a big win, and we’ll tell all those poor guys to piss off. We’ll treat ourselves to gigolos, use them just once like Kleenex, then off they go! Into the bin! Next! They roar with laughter. Jo is looking at me; he smiles. His eyes are shining. Under the table my foot has just found his.
I’m going to miss Jo.
He’s off tomorrow for a week at the HQ of the Nestlé Group at Vevey in Switzerland, to finish his foreman’s training and become a unit manager at Häagen-Dazs.
When he gets back we’re going for a weekend at Cap Gris-Nez to celebrate. We’ve promised ourselves oysters and a big platter of fruits de mer. He’s reserved a big room at Waringzelle Farm, only five hundred metres from the sea, where we can watch thousands of birds taking off for warmer countries. I’m proud of him. He’ll be earning three thousand euros a month, and from then on he’ll be part of the bonus system and have an insurance deal with a better company.
My Jo is getting closer to his dreams. We’re getting closer to the truth.
How about you, Jocelyn? Danièle suddenly asks my husband, her voice slightly slurred because of the wine. Haven’t you ever fantasised about having two women at once? Laughter. I pretend to take offence for the principle of the thing. Jo puts down his glass. With Jo, he replies, I have everything I need. She’s sometimes so greedy that it’s as if she is two women at once. More roars of laughter. I tap him smartly on the arm. Don’t you listen to him! He’d say anything.
But the conversation is out of control, and reminds me of the discussions we have in summer, under the shade of the pine trees at the Sourire campsite, with JJ and Marielle Roussel and Michèle Henrion, when the heat and the pastis combined make us lose our heads and talk frankly about our regrets, our fears and what we lack. I must have the best collection of dil-does in the world, said Michèle Henrion with a sad smile last summer. At least they don’t leave you after fucking you. And they don’t go limp, added Jo, drunk as he was.
In time, as all women know, desire is amputated from sexuality. So we try to revive it, we offer it provocation in the shape of audacity, new experiences. In the months after my return from the Centre Sainte-Geneviève in Nice, our desire evaporated. Jo replaced it with brutality. He liked to take me quickly, from behind, hurting me. I hated that, bit my lips till the blood came so as not to scream with pain, but Jo was listening only to his own pleasure, and once he had ejaculated he quickly came out of me, put his trousers on and disappeared into the house or the garden with a non-alcoholic beer.
The twins are drunk when they leave, and Françoise has laughed so much that she has even wet herself slightly. Jo and I are left alone. The kitchen and dining room look like a battlefield. It’s late. I’ll clear up, you go to bed, I say. You have to leave early tomorrow morning.
Then he comes over to me and suddenly takes me in his arms and holds me close. Close to his own strength. His voice is soft, whispering in my ear. Thank you, dear Jo, he whispers. Thank you for everything you’ve done.
I turn pink; luckily he can’t see that. I’m proud of you, I say. Go on, go to bed or you’ll be tired tomorrow. The assistant manager of the factory is coming to pick him up at four-thirty in the morning. I’ll make you a thermos flask of coffee.
Then he looks at me. There’s a touch of sadness in his eyes. His lips are placed on mine, they open gently, his tongue slides worm-like into my mouth. It’s a strangely sweet kiss, like a first kiss.
Or a last one.
List of crazy notions (with eighteen million in the bank).
Close the haberdashery shop and go back to studying fashion.
Get a Porsche Cayenne.
A house beside the sea. NO.
An apartment in London for Nadine.
A 34C bra, I’ve lost weight. NO NO NO. Are you crazy or what? Well, like I said, this is a list of my crazy notions.
Lots of stuff from the Chanel boutique. NO.
A full-time nurse for Papa. (To have a new conversation with him every six minutes!!!)
Put some money aside somewhere safe for Romain. (He looks like he’ll end up badly.)
Jo left two days ago.
I’ve gone to visit Papa. I tell him about my eighteen million again, the cross I have to bear. He can’t believe his ears. He congratulates me. And what are you going to do with all that money, darling? I don’t know, Papa. I’m scared. How about your mother? What does she think? I haven’t told her yet, Papa. Come over here, my little girl, and tell me all your news. Jo and I are happy, I say, my voice unsteady. We’ve had our ups and downs like all couples, but we’ve managed to get over the bad times. We have two lovely children, a pretty little house, friends, we go on holiday twice a year. The shop is doing very well. The Internet site is developing, we already have eight people working on it. In a week’s time Jo will be made foreman and put in charge of a production unit at the factory, and he’s going to buy a flat-screen TV for the sitting room and ask for a loan to buy the car of his dreams. It’s all rather fragile, but it holds together, I’m happy. I’m proud of you, murmurs my father, taking my hand in his. But about that money, Papa, I’m afraid it may . . . Who are you? he suddenly asks.
Bloody six minutes.
I’m your daughter, Papa. I miss you. I miss your cuddles. I miss the sound of the shower when you used to come home. I miss Maman. I miss my childhood. Who are you?
I’m your daughter, Papa. I have a haberdashery shop, I sell trouser buttons and zip fasteners because you were ill and I had to look after you. Because Maman died on the pavement when we were going shopping. Because I haven’t had any luck. Because I wanted to kiss Fabien Derôme and it was that geek Marc-Jean Robert with his sketches on squared exercise-book paper, designed to score with the girls, who had my first kiss.
Who are you?
I’m your daughter, Papa. I’m your only daughter. Your only child. I grew up waiting for you and watching Maman draw the world. I grew up with the fear of not being pretty in your eyes, not lovely like Maman and brilliant like you. I dreamed of designing and creating dresses to make all women pretty. I dreamed of Solal, of a white knight, I dreamed of a perfect love story; I dreamed of innocence, of paradises lost, of lagoons; I dreamed that I had wings; I dreamed of being loved for myself without having to be kind and nice.
Who are you?
>
I’m the cleaning lady, monsieur. I’ve come to see if everything’s all right in your room. I’ve come to clean your bathroom, the same as every day, empty the rubbish bin, put in a new plastic bag and clean up after you.
Thank you, mademoiselle, how charming you are.
At home, I reread the list of what I need, and it strikes me that wealth means being able to buy everything on it all at once, from the potato peeler to the flat-screen TV, by way of the coat from Caroll’s and the non-slip mat for the bath. Go home with everything on the list, destroy the list and tell myself: Right, there we are, there’s nothing else I need. All I have left from now on are wishes. Only wishes.
But that never happens.
Because our needs are our little daily dreams. The little things to be done that project us into tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the future; trivial things that we plan to buy next week, allowing us to think that next week we’ll still be alive.
It’s the need for a non-slip bath mat that keeps us going. Or for a couscous steamer. A potato peeler. So we stagger our purchases. We programme the places where we’ll go for them. Sometimes we draw comparisons. A Calor iron versus a Rowenta iron. We fill our cupboards slowly, our drawers one by one. You can spend your life filling a house, and when it’s full you break things so that you can replace them and have something to do the next day. You can even go so far as to break up a relationship in order to project yourself into another story, another future, another house.
Another life to fill.
I went into Brunet’s bookshop in the Rue Gambetta and bought Belle du Seigneur in the Folio edition. I’m taking advantage of the evenings while Jo is away to reread it. But this time it’s terrifying because now I know what happens. Ariane Deume takes a bath, soliloquises, gets ready, and I already know how the story will end in Geneva. I know about the dreadful triumph of boredom over desire, flushing passion away, but I still can’t help believing in it. Weariness carries me off into the heart of the night. I wake up exhausted, dreamy, in love.
Until this morning.
When everything falls apart.
I didn’t scream.
Didn’t cry. Didn’t lash out at the walls. Or tear my hair. Or break everything within reach. I didn’t pass out. I didn’t even feel my heart racing or a dizziness creeping over me.
All the same, I stayed sitting on the bed, just in case.
I looked around me. At our bedroom.
The little gilt frames with photos of the children at all ages. Our wedding photograph on Jo’s bedside table. A portrait of me by Maman on my side of the bed; she painted it in a few seconds, starting with a violet swirl and using the blue watercolour she had left on her brush. That’s you reading, she said.
My heart stayed steady. My hands didn’t shake.
I bent down to pick up the blouse that I’d dropped on the floor. I put it on the bed beside me, and my fingers creased it before letting it fall. I’d iron it again in a moment. I ought to have listened to my inner prompting to buy the Calor steam turbo iron that I saw in Auchan at three hundred and ninety-nine euros, number twenty-seven on the list of things I need.
That was when I began to laugh. Laughing at myself.
I’d known it.
The plaster dust on the heel of my shoe confirmed it even before I looked.
Jo had repaired the hanging rail in the wardrobe, but more importantly, he had fixed the wardrobe itself to the wall, because it often looked as if it was about to fall over. So he had made two large holes in the back of the wardrobe and in the wall, which explained the plaster dust inside the wardrobe itself and on my shoes.
Once he had fixed the wardrobe to the wall, he must have wanted to wipe the floury dust off my shoes, and that’s how he found the cheque.
When?
When had he found it? How long had he known?
As long ago as when I came home from Paris and he went to meet me at the station? When he murmured in my ear that he was glad to see me back?
Was it before Le Touquet? Had he taken me there knowing the harm he was going to do me? Did he take my hand on the beach already knowing that he was about to deceive me? And when we clinked glasses together in the hotel restaurant, and he vowed that nothing would change and it would all stay the same, did he already not give a shit? Was he preparing to make his getaway from our life?
Or was it after that, when we came home?
I don’t remember when it was that he worked on the wardrobe. I wasn’t there, and he hadn’t said anything. The bastard. The thief.
Of course I called the Nestlé headquarters in Vevey.
They didn’t know a thing about any Jocelyn Guerbette there.
The receptionist split her sides when I persisted, telling her that he was spending all week with them, training to be a foreman in charge of a unit at their Häagen-Dazs factory in Arras, yes, yes, Arras, mademoiselle, in France, in the Pas-de-Calais, postcode 62000. He was telling you the first thing that came into his head, dear. This is the headquarters of Nestlé Worldwide, you think we train foremen or stock controllers here? Oh, come off it! Tell the police if you like, or ask yourself if he has a mistress, but believe me, madame, he’s not here. She must have realised that I was close to panic, because her voice suddenly became gentler, and before hanging up she added, I’m so sorry.
At the factory, Jo’s boss confirmed my fears.
He had applied for a week’s holiday and hadn’t been in for the last four days. He’s due back next Monday, I was told.
You don’t say! You won’t be seeing Jo again. No one will see the bastard again. He’s made off with eighteen million in his pocket. The bird has flown. He’ll have scratched the final e off my first name, and the cheque was suddenly made out in his name. Jocelyne minus her e. Jocelyn Guerbette. Four days will have given him enough time to get to the furthest reaches of Brazil. Canada. Africa. Switzerland, maybe. Eighteen million euros put a lot of distance between you and what you’re leaving behind.
A hell of a lot of distance. A distance that can’t be crossed.
The memory of our kiss five days ago. I knew it. It was a last kiss. Women always have presentiments about such things. It’s our gift. But I hadn’t listened to myself. I’d been playing with fire. I’d wanted to think that Jo and I would last forever. I’d let his tongue caress mine so incredibly gently, without daring to let my fear speak that evening.
I’d thought that after surviving the unbearable sadness of our little daughter’s death, after the bad beers, the insults, the ferocity and the wounds it left, the brutal, animal sex, we had become inseparable, united, friends.
That was why the money had frightened me.
That was why I’d kept the astonishing win quiet. Why I’d controlled my hysteria. That was why, at heart, I hadn’t wanted it. I’d thought that if I gave him his Cayenne he’d go off in it, drive a long way away, fast, never come back. Making other people’s dreams come true means that you risk destroying them. He had to buy his car himself. For the sake of his pride. His wretched masculine pride.
I was right. I’d had a foreboding that the money would threaten us both. That it was fire. Incandescent chaos.
I knew in my bones that while it could do good, the money could also do harm.
Daisy Duck was right. Greed burns everything in its path.
I thought my love was a rampart. A dam that nothing could breach. I hadn’t dared to imagine that Jo, my Jo, would rob me. Deceive me. Abandon me.
That he would destroy my life.
For, in the end, what was my life?
A happy childhood – until the middle of my seventeenth year, until Maman cried out in the street, and then a year later came Papa’s stroke and his childlike wonder all over again every six minutes.
Hundreds of drawings and paintings recording those wonderful days: the long drive in the Citroën DS to the châteaux of the Loire, Chambord where I fell into the water and Papa and some other men jumped in to save me. More drawings: self-portrait
s of Maman in which she looks pretty, no suffering ever seems to show in her eyes. And a painting of the big house where I was born in Valenciennes, but I don’t remember it myself.
My schooldays, simple and sweet. Even Fabien Derôme’s non-kiss was a blessing, really. It taught me that ugly girls dream of handsome men, but all the pretty girls in the world stand between them and what they want, like so many peaks that can’t be scaled. So from then on I had tried to see beauty where it might be hidden: in kindness, honesty, delicacy, and that was Jo. Jo and his forceful tenderness; he won my heart, married my body and made me his wife. I was always faithful to Jo, even in days of torment, on tempestuous nights. I loved him in spite of himself, in spite of the malice that disfigured his face and made him say such terrible things when Nadège died on the point of being born; as if, putting her nose out, she had sniffed the air, tasted the world and decided that she didn’t like it.
The List of My Desires Page 6