She knows her mother’s mind wanders sometimes, that she daydreams, but she’s not sure what about. Charline could never imagine the dark thoughts and unbearable flashes that push their way into Daphné’s mind whenever she’s least expecting it.
Happy people dancing in the pit. Everyone who came by the coat check to drop off their things. The young freckled woman who complained about the exorbitant prices. The guy wearing a baseball cap whose backpack weighed a ton. The teenage girl wrapped in a fuchsia scarf who had come back to get her phone from the pocket of her jean jacket. The couple who arrived late and headed into the concert holding hands, eager to enjoy the music together.
What happened to all those people? Did they get out unharmed, like her? Had they never left the Bataclan? Were they wounded? Did they die?
Daphné secretly pores over the victims’ faces, feeling like she crossed paths with them, like she knows all of them, even though she realizes it’s just an illusion. She’s memorized all their names without even trying—they’re stuck in her brain like stubborn splinters, so much a part of her now that she could recite them all in a single breath.
Those who weren’t as lucky as she was.
From time to time, Charline notices her mother grabbing hold of a chair or some other piece of furniture, like she’s about to fall, and the disconcerted little girl wonders if her mother has vertigo or vision problems. Daphné quickly catches her breath and reassures her daughter with a warm smile. So Charline convinces herself everything’s fine, that there’s nothing to worry about.
Daphné tries to push the memories away, to put them out of her mind, but they hang on determinedly, like hard water stains on an old bathtub. They’ve tucked themselves into the farthest corners of her brain, though sometimes the images that pop up seem so surreal that Daphné wonders if she imagined it all, made it all up, if maybe a few movie scenes have gotten mixed up with what she lived through. The flashes are full of bangs and screams, and they smell of fear and gunpowder, sweat and blood. She tells herself that maybe it’s the price she’s paying for being so happy to be alive, for the indecent joy that floods over her as soon as she opens her eyes each dawn. The price to pay for having survived, for managing to escape without saving anyone. Day after day, she sees the hand that reached out to her, the one she tried to help. She remembers pushing it away, how she left it to be trampled by the stampeding herd of fleeing concert-goers. She’s obsessed with that hand, sees it everywhere, wants to yell, Sorry! and to implore, beg, and plead for forgiveness. Every night, the hand comes back without fail to haunt her dreams, but Daphné can never grab hold of it. She wants to, but her arms refuse to obey the orders from her brain; they stay stubbornly limp at her sides, useless and unmoving. Only her legs agree to act, running as far and as fast and for as long as possible.
Daphné saved herself and no one else. That’s what haunts her, that’s the terrible regret that eats away at her like aggressive gangrene. The night when she had to give up who she was to survive. She feels torn between the uncharacteristic zest for life she’s been full of since November 13 and the dull, throbbing guilt that catches up with her whenever she feels a little too happy. She carries this burden she feels she deserves in silence. Her family and friends are constantly reaching out to comfort her with “We’ve been thinking of yous” and “I hope you’re holding ups”, flowers, phone calls, concerned looks, and hugs that exude both empathy and fear. Daphné can’t muster the courage to ask them to stop, and doesn’t dare explain that their attention hurts more than it helps. Because she’s not worth so much love; she did nothing to deserve it. She’s not a victim—she’s alive, she’s not even wounded, she hasn’t got a scratch on her.
So when the hand appears before her eyes, when the panicked fingers try to grab her, to take her with them, Daphné steadies herself on the first thing her own hands can find. She holds on tight, so tight, to make sure the drowning fingers can’t pull her down, to stay above the fray of bodies writhing like worms.
“Ouch, you’re hurting me!”
When Daphné comes to, she sees Charline trying to push her hand away. She must have grabbed on to her daughter’s shoulder when she didn’t find any sturdy furniture nearby. She feels ashamed and lets go immediately. Charline rubs her collarbone, a frown on her face.
“I’m sorry, honey, I forgot myself for a second.”
“I’m worried about you, Mom . . .”
“There’s no reason to be worried, sweetheart! I’m doing great! Why don’t we go to the park for a while?”
Charline nods and Daphné kisses her neck, eliciting a cheerful laugh.
Hand in hand, mother and daughter head out for a walk—Charline doesn’t dare tell her mother that at eight, she’s too old to hold hands. Instead, she holds her breath, taking advantage of her mother’s eagerness, and convinces herself that these happy phases last much longer than the strange moments when her mother seems lost in an alternate reality.
When they reach the street, bundled up in their winter coats, Daphné asks Charline—with real enthusiasm—if she’d like to get waffles. “With a thick layer of chocolate and whipped cream on top? What do you think?” Her eyes sparkle and Charline agrees, reassured.
A few minutes later, she discreetly watches her mother as she chews on a bite of waffle with her eyes closed, savoring the sweet dessert. Daphné is focusing on the flavors flooding her mouth, not wanting to miss a thing. She can’t bear the thought of gobbling down her food without paying attention anymore. She has these peaceful moments of respite, where her desires fuel her taste buds. “A platter of raw oysters and a glass of chardonnay, quick, quick,” even if that means going out in her pajamas to find them. “Homemade shepherd’s pie, quick, quick, let’s peel the potatoes, you’ll see, it’s nothing like store bought, honey. White-chocolate-chip cookies, quick, quick, what do you mean we don’t have any butter? Go knock on the neighbor’s door and see if they have any, I’ll cut the chocolate into chunks in the meantime.” Daphné is rediscovering forgotten sensations and pleasures, her daughter exploring a world where frozen dinners and canned vegetables are but a vague memory.
But they’re followed by unbearable moments when Daphné doesn’t want anything, doesn’t even want to eat. When any food at all is nauseating, when the tiniest pleasure plagues her with guilt. When simply knowing that others aren’t eating anymore, that others are grieving, turns her stomach, sending waves of acid up her scorched esophagus. “I’m not hungry, sweetie. I think I ate too much at lunch.” The little girl is no dupe, but she keeps quiet.
Charline lovingly wipes a smudge of whipped cream off her mother’s nose with her index finger. She doubts a waffle counts as a real meal, but she convinces herself that it’s better than nothing.
“Look, sweetheart, aren’t the Christmas decorations beautiful?”
Daphné looks up at the lights strung up over the street, the same ones that were there last year, and every other year before that.
“They’re gorgeous. Can you believe I never looked up to enjoy them before?”
Charline smiles sweetly at her mother’s gaze, full of wonderment, glowing in the reflection of the bright stars hanging above them.
8
THÉO
Six months later
Ms. Rossignol has just noticed that today, Théo, whose desk is in the front row, isn’t wearing the same shapeless sweatshirt she’s gotten used to seeing him in since November. He seems to have exchanged the oversized navy-blue sweatshirt—he had to roll the sleeves at least three times to get them level with his wrists—for a sporty black windbreaker with green stripes.
The teacher doesn’t say anything, of course, but wonders if maybe it’s a positive sign. She’s just twenty-four; this is her first year teaching, and she doesn’t have much experience with mourning.
For six months, she’s been doing her best to help the young boy, but she still hasn’t managed to break the ice, to find a crack in the shell he’s been hiding inside ever sinc
e he lost his dad. She never said anything about him coming to class day after day in an adult-sized sweatshirt—you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out it must have been his father’s, and that the boy had focused all his energy and grief on keeping it with him. Through a chat with his mom, Ms. Rossignol discovered that Théo only let it out of his sight to be washed every once in a long while. And the first time it had gone in the washer—two and a half months after that night—he had been hysterical. “Because the cherished sweatshirt wouldn’t smell like his father anymore,” his mother had mumbled with tears in her eyes. So his mother had bought him a bottle of Hugo Boss cologne, her ex-husband’s scent, and Théo had taken to spraying the fragrance that brought back so many memories on his pillow before going to bed.
Théo doesn’t talk much, and only speaks at all when spoken to. His grades are great, nothing to be said there, so Ms. Rossignol has simply been looking out for him, ready to pick him up if he should fall, both literally and figuratively.
She’s noticed that he wistfully watches the clouds drifting by from his windowside desk all too often. That when his eyes lose focus, he’s not really in the classroom anymore. That he’s lost in his thoughts, in his memories, and that no one can make that any easier for him. That when she asks him to read aloud or recite his multiplication tables, he does it in a distant monotone. That when he’s called to the board, he picks up the chalk and writes wordlessly, like a robot.
But she’s also noticed that he perks up during art lessons, that he comes back to life when he uses his pencils and markers to draw extraordinary worlds and winged creatures born only of his imagination. Every now and again, a smile even tries to work its way onto his face, when he forgets and lets himself be happy, if only for a moment.
At recess, Ms. Rossignol keeps her eye on the little boy, to the point of ignoring the other students, who take advantage of this lack of supervision to tease each other and fight. She almost never lets Théo’s little ash-blond head and big brown eyes out of sight. There are occasional days when he has fun with his classmates, playing soccer or trading marbles and popular stickers with the other children. He yells and horses around as much as the others. Those are the good days. The rest of the time, he sits alone on the only bench on the playground, and no one goes near him, as if they have somehow established an implicit agreement to let him be. He stares into space, and his eyes don’t even track the ball rolling from one side of the playground to the other.
Today the teacher’s walking on egg shells but thinks that maybe this activity will be a chance to shake the boy out of his stupor, to coax him out of mourning. Théo’s mother told her a week ago that he refuses to talk about his father, that he’s never said a single word about that night. Never. Not even with the child psychologist she’d taken him to see out of desperation. Théo had gone mute about the tragedy, and no one in the family knew if that was good or bad, if they needed to worry, or just let him grieve slowly, in his own way.
“Children, Father’s Day is in a month, so I’d like us to spend one afternoon a week making gifts . . .”
She glances discreetly at Théo, who’s fixated on the tall, unmoving maples outside.
“I’ve collected enough small glass jars for each of you to have one. The idea is to make shadow-projection candleholders using crepe paper and black construction paper.”
The other students are excited, but Théo doesn’t budge. The teacher quickly lays all the materials on her desk.
“The first step is to decide what shapes you want to draw on the black paper. You could choose people, trees, a castle, a heart—whatever you like!”
She shows them examples from pictures she printed at home last night, and the class lets out a round of enthralled oohs and aahs.
The bell rings through the school, and the children hurry to leave their desks for the playground. Théo is about to stand up too, but the teacher motions him over to her desk. He reluctantly walks toward her.
“I know this isn’t easy for you, Théo, so I wanted to talk to you about this candleholder project.”
The boy waits for her to finish, staring at his fingernails, and Ms. Rossignol realizes he’s not going to make this easy for her. She wants to find the right words and is so afraid of hurting him.
“Victor won’t be able to give his present to his dad either,” she begins hesitantly, “but last year he gave it to someone else in his family, an uncle, I think. Would you like to give yours to someone else you’re close to?”
Feeling helpless, she wonders why no one’s ever taught her how to handle a situation such as this, how to avoid making things worse. Maybe she should have kept quiet and let Théo come to her himself. Or talked to his mother first. But it’s too late now, and when she sees flashes of fury in the boy’s eyes, she concludes she’s said something she shouldn’t have.
“Victor’s dad left! He left his wife to move to some other part of the country and live with someone else! Victor told me! That’s nothing like me!”
“Yes, of course, I understand. I just meant that maybe you could—”
“That’s nothing like my father! He didn’t abandon me, okay? He didn’t leave me, he didn’t want to let go of my hand, I know that, I’m positive . . .”
Ms. Rossignol is distressed and disconcerted by this unexpected wave of anger. Théo’s eyes fill with tears, as if the dam has finally been swept away.
“My father never would have left me! And I’m not going to give the candleholder to anyone else, because no one will ever be able to replace him!”
She mumbles again that she understands, hoping that the principal won’t suddenly burst into her classroom. Théo goes quiet all of a sudden, wipes the trail of tears streaming down his cheeks, and sits back down at his desk without a sound. He focuses his gaze once more on the maples, and Ms. Rossignol can tell he’s trying to escape back into his cocoon.
“What would you like to do, then?” she asks gently.
Without turning to look at her, the little boy replies drily, “I’m going to make a candleholder for my dad, like everybody else. I’m going to draw a fist with the pinky and the pointer finger in the air on the black construction paper. I know he’ll like that. And on Father’s Day, I’ll take it to him.”
“That’s a great idea, Théo. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings . . .”
The boy reluctantly pulls his attention from the blue sky and looks at his teacher, who’s fiddling nervously with her nails. His anger gives way to sadness, and he adopts a calmer tone.
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not really okay. I want to help you, because I’m the adult, but apparently I’m only making things worse, and I’m truly sorry about that.”
She realizes she’s exposing her weaknesses, admitting that she’s just as lost as he is, but she’s been feeling so helpless for months, and honesty seems like the best option. He nods in agreement.
“This morning, when my mom dropped me off at school, a bus drove past. It slowed down right in front of me because the stop was right down the road. I saw my dad inside, leaning against the window, standing, holding on.”
Ms. Rossignol frowns, but does not interrupt him.
“I was sure it was him, so I ran over. The bus had stopped and the doors were open, but when I looked through the window, he wasn’t there anymore. I got on the bus while the driver sold a ticket to an old lady, but my dad was gone.”
The teacher wants to hug the boy, but she holds back, sure that’s the last thing he would want her to do.
“Every time I think I see him, it turns out not to be him. It’s never him. But I still keep seeing him everywhere. In line at the grocery store, with the other parents waiting at the gate after school, on street corners, in the bleachers at the boxing gym, in the waiting room at the doctor’s office . . . I look up and I see him. I blink and he’s gone. It’s either someone who doesn’t even look like him, or nobody at all. I run after him, to see him again, but I can never catch up. It’s
so frustrating. It’s like a giant ball of anger is growing inside me, little by little, made up of all the times when I’m disappointed, every time I get my hopes up for no reason. I almost feel like I’m suffocating by the end of the day, so I take my pillow and scream into it, pushing as hard as I can against my face so my mom won’t hear. But the yelling doesn’t make me feel better, it just tires me out. Sometimes I think it’s so exhausting seeing Dad everywhere that I wish it would stop happening, but at the same time at least this way I won’t forget about him. Because I’m so afraid of forgetting, of not remembering what his face looks like or the sound of his voice. I don’t want him to disappear, to think I don’t need him anymore. I don’t want to lose him a second time . . .”
Théo stops short, nearly out of breath from opening up, and Ms. Rossignol offers a sad smile. She has no idea what to say, but she’s also not sure the boy expects any reply at all.
The bell breaks the silence, and both of them jump.
“Do I have time to go to the bathroom?” asks Théo, shaken.
“Yes, but hurry up.”
He springs out of his chair and dashes out of the room as the teacher begins laying the sheets of black construction paper on the students’ desks.
9
LUCAS
Nine months later
“What can I get you, miss?”
The bakery employee’s tone grows insistent as she notices that the line of customers behind Anouk will soon be out the door.
“Miss?”
The couple behind her puffs with impatience, and Anouk forces herself to decide.
“I’ll have a small lemon tart and a mille-feuille, please.”
Just as the annoyed woman behind the counter closes the pastry box, Anouk realizes she doesn’t need the second dessert, but she can’t change her order now. She hurries out of the bakery with her ribbon-bedecked box in hand.
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