In fact, things had begun to get away from me long before I realized it. For example, when Édouard informed me that he was giving up his job with the government to work in a nursery, at the time, it made me smile. But if I had known what I know now, I think I would have dropped dead.
My job at the time—I was head of the marketing division—paid well enough for me to take economic responsibility for the household for as long as it would take him to get over the idea of growing trees and go back to earning a decent living. This, I suppose, was the reason for my little smile when he announced the news.
And finally, if you didn’t look too closely, everything was going okay. At first, of course, his happiness scared me a little. Perhaps because it separated him from me in a way I didn’t recognize. I now had to share my lover, and I didn’t know what I was competing with. I’m joking, it wasn’t a question of competing, only of accepting, of creating new drawers in which to file away the new data before everything was swept away.
Édouard always had his head in a book. He read everything he could find about trees and flowers. Whenever he learned something significant, he had to try it out in the garden. I thought his passion was a little out of control, but I never said anything. Not at the time, anyway. His enthusiasm was impressive to see, and sometimes I’d wonder if I had ever experienced such passion. Since he shared most of his discoveries with me, I was reassured. The botanical knowledge he tried to convey bored me—why should I have to understand all that when he understood it so well?—but I loved the time spent close to him, leaning on his shoulder watching his sturdy, powerful hands leafing through the pages of an encyclopedia, breathing in his smell, feeling his warmth and his vitality and, especially, knowing that I was the one he wanted to share it all with.
On weekends, he could easily spend five or six hours a day treating, watering, pruning, hoeing and weeding. That’s a lot, considering that he was already working thirty-five hours a week at the nursery. But in the end, his obsession served us well … when his boss, Bertolini, intrigued by everything Édouard had bought at the nursery over the past three years, decided to come and visit the house, the spectacle moved him to tears. They spent nearly two hours in the garden talking about such-and-such cross and such-and-such arrangement. From that time on, Édouard was the chief designer at the nursery and the one given the most important design and landscaping contracts.
Then one day it became clear to me that I had lost a part of Édouard. The scene was simple, even trivial, but I experienced it as a turning point. We were strolling in our fabulous garden and he was explaining the whys and hows when he stopped in front of a tree, paused for a few seconds, and asked, “Don’t you think its branches look like sick arms reaching toward the sky? Don’t you think it looks like it’s praying to God?” Those were his exact words. He continued holding forth on the loneliness of trees and how much they reminded him of humans, without using even a single one of those technical terms I would have found so reassuring, and I was so surprised that it was as if the words were coming out of his mouth in another language, in bursts, in gusts, and although I was quite capable of understanding their meaning—I’m not a fool, after all—it was where they were coming from that frightened me. A completely new side of Édouard had opened up before my eyes and, frankly, I felt more like it had opened up under my feet. I decided that from then on, I would place his work at the nursery and his strange passion for botany, that whole side of him, outside our relationship. That is, I would act as if it didn’t exist, no more, no less. I could still listen to him and pretend to share his enthusiasm, and even throw in a few words of encouragement, but in a way it was no longer my concern.
I must say, though, that I felt a certain pride in what he had succeeded in doing with our garden. The neighbours, our friends, my parents, everyone without exception would stand frozen for a few seconds in front of that spectacle. If it was a person’s first visit—even if they were just making a delivery—it would take them a few moments to regain their composure and find the thread of their thoughts again. Édouard had achieved something impressive, even exceptional, and the three municipal prizes he won—which he never claimed—proved that beyond a doubt. If it hadn’t been for his pig-headedness, our yard would have even have made the cover of a gardening magazine. Of course, if the person spent a few hours at the house and all that time Édouard was crouched over a shrub doing God knows what, the picture wasn’t so pretty. And if he opened his mouth about his intentions, everyone, even the most willing person, ended up looking at him funny. My parents, Michel and Claire, his friends, all of them sooner or later said basically the same thing with some variations: “Good Lord, he’s really outdone himself here!”
It also happened a few times that I caught him looking at me with that strange look he reserved for his “creatures.” Especially at my hands and my feet, I’d say. He looked at them sometimes with the eyes of a madman, as if they were weird plants. When we made love, I sometimes felt like a living organism he was observing with detachment. Even more embarrassing to recount, one night while we were doing it doggy-style, he pulled out and I felt—although I have no proof—that he was examining me in a way that took away my humanity. He had reduced me to a wild thing. And I’m not talking about making love like animals, nothing like that, I was quite capable of that, it was something much worse—he was looking at that bum sticking up in the air without desire, without lust, looking at its shape, the space it took up, the function it fulfilled, and putting it in a “natural” context, as if it had no more or no less value than a dog’s butt or the complex shape of the pistils of a flower. I sometimes think he would have liked me to go around like that, stark naked, on all fours, in his marvellous garden. I’m joking, I don’t really believe any of that. Even so …
Things went completely down the drain when every square centimetre of the garden had been filled. When everything that could be done had been done, when perfection had been achieved—of course, I’m not including normal maintenance, the odd transplant here and there, or treating a disease or some damage caused by a whim of Mother Nature—when his work had on the whole been completed, his attitude changed. He became preoccupied, he started going around in circles, I think he even lost weight. And then one evening, I remember, when Maxime was ten, he talked to me about separating. Of course, I didn’t take him seriously. I was sure he was just going through a bad patch and that everything would go back to normal when he found a new challenge. I had learned over the years that Édouard needed to keep moving. Inaction didn’t suit him at all. I’ve always felt it was a way of avoiding having to face reality, but I never dared to tell him that, I don’t know why.
And then the end really came. It hurt a lot, but I got through it very well. I think it was having all those procedures to follow. I particularly enjoyed my appointments with my lawyer. Not that I wanted to bleed Édouard dry or make him pay for leaving me in such a despicable way—and, despite what he says, so suddenly—but knowing I was paying her a hundred and eighty dollars an hour helped me a lot. Again, I want to make it clear, it wasn’t a question of money, except that number divided so well by sixty that every minute that went by in her office, three dollars fell into a little metal cashbox in the back of my mind. The time was so neatly divided up, so organized in a certain sense. And at another level, my lawyer organized my immediate future. While she talked to me about the proceedings she intended to initiate for alimony and custody of Maxime, I suddenly saw a bunch of little steps marking out my time, my days. It was kind of for the same reasons that I saw a psychologist. Although her rate of seventy-five dollars an hour didn’t divide as well into fifty minutes. I’m joking, of course. But knowing that twice a week, always at the same time, I would be in her office helped me contain what I was feeling. I didn’t stay in therapy very long. I felt sad and filled with negative emotions every time I left her office, so it seemed sensible to stop seeing her. Instead, I enrolled in a power yoga class. And th
ings slowly fell back into place. I was able to observe Édouard’s slide downhill from a distance, and although I was touched by it, I realized above all that all those years we had spent together, all that time, I had been the one who had kept him in one piece. The proof is that after I left, his whole structure gradually crumbled and his magnificent garden, gone to seed, became the symbol of his desolation.
I knew I couldn’t do anything for him. So I simply put him outside of me. But when Maxime showed up here with his father’s suitcases to live with me full-time, the wall came down and the outside contaminated the inside. I pitied Édouard. In spite of everything I had to reproach him for, I was sensitive enough to know this would be a hard blow for him. So I went to see him. I was intending to comfort him, to make him feel that his son still loved him, that it was only a passing phase, that things would be back to normal sooner or later. But as soon as I saw him pitch half a dresser out Maxime’s bedroom window, I immediately wanted to put an end to his collapse, to lay down a few rules of conduct that he could follow easily. My desire to do this frightened me a great deal and I felt an urgent need to put things back in their place, the outside on the outside, and the inside on the inside. And to leave Édouard outside. So I was mean to him. I’m joking, no, I wasn’t really mean. Perhaps a little tough, but not mean. Or not very.
Then he had that attack. That damn attack. I don’t know if he’d planned the whole thing, but I could have done without it. When he threw me on the floor, God how I hated myself, when he threw me on the floor and his head ended up between my thighs, how can I put it, I wish that moment had never happened, when his head landed between my thighs, I had two thoughts simultaneously. They were exactly, precisely simultaneous. I thought, and I’m a little ashamed to say it, “If he could just die, things would be so much simpler.” And at the same time, and this is the thought that was the most terrible, I was trying to remember which panties I’d put on that morning. They were plain white cotton panties. And I was relieved. Hugely relieved, because those were his favourite ones.
Outside, in front of the house, I watched the attendants slide him into the ambulance. He wasn’t looking at me, in fact I think he was trying to see a patch of sky, but the doors closed on him. The ambulance drove off and I found myself all alone in front of our house. For a brief second, I had the impression that I’d never felt so alone in my entire life. I tumbled into the void, just for a fraction of a second, but so fast, so dizzyingly fast, I fell into a hole so black, so bottomless, at such speed, and I was so afraid of smashing into the ground that I kind of started, or shivered maybe, and at the same time I cried a little oh! without meaning to.
I jumped into my car, drove back home and told Philippe, my lover—did I mention Philippe? I keep forgetting that guy—that we were going away for the weekend. I also asked Maxime to go see his father in the hospital. That was my way of punishing him. I’m joking, it was actually my way of punishing them both. I’m joking again, of course. No, I just thought it was the right thing to do.
I opened a suitcase on the bed, put my clothes into it, carefully folded, in piles, tops with tops, underwear with underwear, a pair of pants and a skirt laid on top. All the space in the suitcase was filled without anything being crushed. I closed the top, slipped a pair of high heels into a side pocket, and already things were better. Everything was slowly falling back into place.
17
I PRESSED THE DOORBELL with the barrel of the revolver, telling myself that this would make things clear from the outset. A few moments later, my son opened the door. He had just got out of the shower and his wet hair was slicked back. Wet, his eyelashes looked longer and darker than usual. The tan he had acquired over the summer was more pronounced, probably from being under the hot water. I found him so beautiful that it wouldn’t have taken much for me to pack up my new toy and take off.
He wasn’t as surprised as I would have liked. I mean, when a guy with a fat lip is pointing a gun at your belly, and that guy is your own father … Still, everybody is entitled to react in their own way.
“What are you doing?” he asked in a tone of voice that betrayed a certain uneasiness.
“We’re going for a little drive in the country.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized they sounded like a line from a gangster movie. Since I didn’t want him to imagine that I was planning to eliminate him in a deserted spot in the woods, I added that we too were going away for the weekend. To the same place as his mother. He protested feebly, without much conviction—the way he did everything: he had other plans, didn’t really feel like it and, most of all, he wondered about my intentions with regard to Véronique and her Philippe.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea, if you want my opinion.”
“Why do you think I’m pointing this gun at your solar plexus, son? And besides, two hours on the road alone with your dad, wouldn’t that be what they call a ‘father-son activity’? Don’t you think it would be a great opportunity to bond with your old man?”
He looked so disheartened that I felt like weeping and slobbering and putting the gun to my head and begging him to love me.
“Go on, pack your bag. And don’t forget your inflatable ducky.”
Twenty minutes later, we were turning onto the highway, leaving behind us the goddamn city and, I must admit, a smell of burning oil. My son had stretched out his legs and was getting ready for a snooze, and I wondered if he had any memory of the drives we used to take when he was a kid. It was perhaps thanks to that, although he would never have admitted it, even under torture, that he was able to calmly fall asleep next to me. Was there still an impression in his body of the times he’d spent with me asking me questions about anything and everything, whatever as long as Papa thought gravely for a few moments and then revealed one of the incredible secrets the world held? Did he remember his little hand under mine on the gearshift, and the feeling of power that sometimes made him burst out laughing when we shifted gears at just the right time? Did he remember the old ladies we’d wave to just for fun, so we could laugh at their expressions of uncertainty and confusion? And on our return home, the disappointment he often felt when I turned off the ignition in the driveway? What had become of that strange impression, when we opened the car door, of bursting a bubble that had contained us and feeling the rest of the world come in once again, dissolving the salts of intimacy that had crystallized within us minute by minute during the trip? Did he remember saying to me in a moment of genuine anxiety, one radiant day in May when he was six years old, in these exact words, which I still hear sometimes in my head: “I’m scared, I think I love you too much, Papa.” And I saw that as the most beautiful thing in the world, not because it was addressed to me, but because it revealed a generous heart. That let me hope for the best for him, and for us all! And it also made me fear the worst for that little body that was in danger of exploding at any moment under the pressure of a heart that was too big. Where did you go, my son? Reassure your worried father, tell me you’re going to come back to me one day, when my back is stooped and my eyes tired and there are only a few grey hairs left on my head, and reveal an extraordinary secret of the new world, the world you’ve known.
“Are you asleep, Maxime?!”
He gave me an impressively cynical look. I asked what, in his opinion, the topics of conversation might be between his friends and their dads. He shrugged, he had no idea. So I tried to find out what he thought about the sexual exploitation of refugees in the camps in Guinea and Liberia by local NGO workers. I wasn’t expecting much from him. I didn’t dare hope that he knew what I was talking about. I would have been satisfied with any sign of resistance, a fit of anger, an outburst of abuse, anything but the indifference I found.
“Okay, I’ll give you another chance. I’ll try something a little more in your department: the ENVISAT satellite they sent up to find out once and for all if it’s really man that’s responsible for global warming. In your view—and I really
want your opinion—do you think that little three-billion-dollar marvel will put pressure on the critics of the Kyoto Protocol?”
I was intrigued by his silence, which was lent eloquence by the pout of his lower lip.
“Did I lose you with ENVISAT and Kyoto? Or is the concept of global warming totally foreign to you?”
He rolled his eyes skyward.
“Really, Maxime, I’d like you to make an effort. I wouldn’t want to have to leave you at the side of the road.”
“What do you want me to say?!”
“I don’t know—react, dammit, show some sign of life! Okay, let’s focus on more down-to-earth problems. Are you anxious to go back to school?”
“No.”
“All right now, this is an interesting topic. Do you want to talk about your low opinion of school? You know I’ve always been open to that view. What’s more, I’m sure you get it from me … ”
“I like school, it’s just that I prefer the holidays.”
“Great. I’m discovering another side of my son. And?”
“And what?
“I don’t know. Have you tried any new drugs lately?”
“I don’t take drugs.”
“Of course not … ”
“You should be glad.”
“Why? Why should I be so thrilled about that?”
“Well, why do all parents worry about their kids taking drugs?”
“Because most parents hate knowing their kids are having fun. But that’s not the case for me.”
“I think you can have fun without taking drugs.”
This wasn’t a son I had, it was a public service announcement.
A Slight Case of Fatigue Page 13