They never talk about the car accident she had in 2004, when she was twenty-five. She refuses to ever mention it. Linden knows she nearly died, that parts of her left leg and hip were replaced, that she underwent extensive surgery and spent six months in the hospital. The accident happened near Arcangues, when she was returning to Biarritz with her best friends from a party. One of the girls was getting married the following week. They had hired a car with a chauffeur in order to be able to drink safely. At three in the morning, an inebriated driver speeding along the small winding roads smashed into their minivan. Four girls were killed on the spot, as well as their chauffeur and the other driver. Tilia was the single survivor of a car accident that made headlines. It took her years to get over it, mentally and physically. Her marriage with Eric Ezri broke up a few years later, in 2008, and she obtained custody of their only daughter. Sometimes Linden wonders if his sister has ever gotten over the tragedy, if she is aware of the toll it has taken, like a chunk out of her life.
“How’s Colin?” asks Linden carefully as Tilia switches to the news channel. They both know—the entire family knows—that her elegant British spouse, an eminent art expert specializing in old master paintings at Christie’s, her charming, bespectacled, smooth-skinned husband with his quick-witted small talk and toothy smile is a drunkard. Not the social type of drunkard who, clutching his tepid champagne glass, will careen through parties, delightfully tipsy, ensconced in a haze of innocuous gibberish, but the hard-core, bad-news type of drunkard who starts his day knocking back gin at ten in the morning and who ends it in a coma, curled up dead to the world on his doorstep at Clarendon Road in a pool of his own urine. Tilia takes her time to answer, perched on the corner of the bed, eyes on the TV screen, where old black-and-white photographs of the 1910 Paris flooding file past. She answers, tonelessly, that the situation is the same. Colin promised he would stop, that he’d go back to the clinic (for the third time), but it is not better. Things are becoming problematic at work. He had been able to hide it for a while, but not anymore. She is fed up. Colin is aware of it. He says he loves her, and she knows he does, but she is running out of patience. For the first time, Linden glimpses defiance in his sister’s face. She looks bitter, resentful. When she married Colin Favell in 2010, she had no idea he was an alcoholic. He hid it cleverly. He was dashing and handsome. Nineteen years older than she? So what! It did not show. He was marvelous to look at, such a seductive Jaggerish smile, all those teeth. He also had been married a first time and had two grown-up sons. They met in London, at an auction, where Tilia had gone with a friend. Mistral had liked him, too. In the beginning. And then, gradually, well after the wedding, the truth was revealed. The drinking, the lies, the viciousness. He never hits her, nor Mistral, but his insults are odious daggers of venom.
Tilia is going to be forty next year, she reminds her brother with a smirk; that hideous age, that ghastly number, and her marriage is a disaster. Her husband is a disaster. The fact that she has no job and is living off him is a disaster. But she never really had a job in her life, so who’s going to hire her now, at her age, with no diplomas or experience of any kind? Linden interrupts her. What about her painting? She scoffs at her brother. Her painting? Another disaster! He cannot help laughing, and so does she, in spite of herself. Yes, of course she still paints, and she loves it, and it saves her, but no one gives a shit about her paintings. No one wants to buy them, at least not her husband’s snobby friends from the art world; they turn up their noses at everything that’s not a Rembrandt. Everything around her is a disaster except for her daughter. Her daughter, born in December 1999 during a mighty storm, her baby named after the powerful northwesterly wind that blustered through Tilia’s childhood, is the apple of her eye.
At the end of her rant, Tilia turns to Linden and says brightly, “And how’s Sacha?” Sacha’s fine, quite a bit of work at the start-up, a fair amount of stress, but Sacha knows how to handle stress. The only problem is that they don’t see each other much right now, with Linden always on a plane, and that wedding date, which always gets postponed because of traveling, well, they are going to have to do something about it. Tilia asks if their father has ever met Sacha. Linden says no, he hasn’t. Lauren and Sacha were introduced to each other in New York in 2014, and they hit it off fine. They met again, later, in Paris and it had gone just as well. Their father leaves Vénozan only to save remarkable trees, not to visit his family. Doesn’t Tilia know that? Linden adds drily. Tilia plays with her necklace. Does Linden think their father perhaps doesn’t want to meet Sacha? Linden is aware that question is coming; his sister has always been outspoken, so he is not surprised. But he finds he has no answer. He glances toward the TV, where a map of the Seine is now being shown, alarming red arrows darting here and there, marking possible flooding. He says cautiously that he does not know. He has never asked his father outright and he has not discussed it with Sacha. All he knows is that Sacha and he have been together for nearly five years, that they plan to get married, and that Sacha has never met Paul. Tilia observes that San Francisco is not exactly close to Vénozan. Linden agrees, but he reminds her that there was that one time, not very long ago, when their father had flown to California, somewhere near Santa Rosa, to prevent a plantation of an uncommon species of redwood trees from being axed to enlarge a railroad. Paul had spent a week battling the authorities with his cluster of followers, composed of arborists, dendrologists, scientists, botany students, activists, historians, nature lovers, and ecologists. He ended up saving the trees, but he never went to visit his son and meet Sacha, a mere hour’s drive away. There had always been an excuse: He was too busy, or too tired, or there was another rare tree to save.
Linden changes the subject, focuses her attention on the news. The previous November’s flooding had apparently been a narrowly averted disaster, thanks to the four giant lakes created upriver between 1949 and 1990. A drone films from above the lakes, situated near Joigny and Troyes, roughly two hundred kilometers away from Paris. They act as reservoirs when the flow is too high, and the past November’s swell was reduced at least half a meter due to the lakes. However, the present problem, the journalist continues, is that the lakes are still full from the previous inundation, unable to empty themselves, and the rain has not stopped falling for the past few weeks, which means that the ground is thoroughly sodden, no longer absorbing water.
“Shit, that looks bad,” mumbles Tilia. If only the bloody rain would stop. They can’t even go out, it’s so wet. Will the river truly flood? Surely the authorities, or whoever, will prevent a catastrophe. Surely nothing bad will happen. They go on watching; the same topic comes up on each channel: the Seine rising, the unstoppable rain, the growing anxiety. Oh, why don’t they turn it off, Tilia groans, and Linden reaches for the remote control. The only noise now is the pitter-patter outside. They talk about the presents for their parents. Linden was able to get his hands on the only Bowie vinyl Paul was missing, Station to Station, which he somehow misplaced years ago and could not locate. Tilia had procured the latest biography in French about Bowie. As for their mother, for her wedding anniversary, they decided on a joint present, which Tilia went to get on Old Bond Street, a diamond-studded Tiffany key, snug in its turquoise box.
“I think I’ll have a snooze,” Linden tells his sister diplomatically. His jet lag is not overpowering—he travels too frequently to suffer from it—but he wants to be alone for a while, before his parents arrive. Tilia takes the hint and gets up to leave. On her way out, she mutters, ironically, that he does indeed look shattered, but the older he gets, the more gorgeous he becomes, while she looks like a hag; it’s too unfair. He good-humoredly throws a pillow at her as she slams the door.
Layers of weariness have been building up in the past weeks, and he can feel their hold in the tightness around his neck and shoulders. He misses Sacha’s warm, supple hands, kneading away his tiredness. There is a list of things about Sacha that he misses, he realizes. Let him count those thin
gs, he thinks as he lies down on the bed: the sense of humor, smile, wondrous cooking, laugh, hazel eyes, sometimes brown, sometimes green, depending on the light, the entrancing fragrance just below the jawbone, the love for opera and La Traviata in particular, the enthusiasm, sensitivity, creativity, and sheer magnetism. Sacha and he have never spent much time in Paris together. Their story started in New York in 2013.
Yet Paris is clandestinely special to Linden. He keeps a personal bond with the city, an intimate history of love, sadness, and pleasure, buried deep within him, like a bittersweet secret, and often thinks back to the twelve years he spent here, from 1997 to 2009. He sees himself, gawky and skinny, painfully self-aware, turning up on Candice’s doorstep with his backpack and his joy of being here, away from Sévral, his parents, Vénozan. What the hell did he mean, leaving home, his mother had thundered, to go where, do what? Linden’s grades weren’t all that good; the English teacher even wrote to say Linden was “arrogant.” As he listened to his mother’s remonstrance, Linden was aware he could never explain, never describe how different he felt, in every way; he was a stranger, yes, even in the very town where he was born; he was a stranger because his mother was an American who had never lost her accent, and he was therefore half American and reminded of it every single day in class, even if his father came from an old Sévral family, even if his great-grandfather, Maurice Malegarde, had made a fortune with his lucrative carton-packing factories and bequeathed a touch of magnificence on all descendants to come by creating Vénozan, an early-twentieth-century folly built to resemble a Tuscan villa. As for the English teacher, cantankerous Madame Cazeaux, how could he explain to his parents she was infuriated by his perfect English, which only drew out her own abysmal accent? No, he could not reveal how uncomfortable he felt at school, with no one to talk to, no one to confide in; it was almost as if he came from another planet, as if the others intuitively sensed his difference and rejected him. He did not fit in, and it made him miserable. It had gotten worse with puberty, when he shot up in one go and the others felt belittled. He almost told his mother they spitefully nicknamed him “l’Américain,” increasing his wretchedness, which he found despicable, considering he was born in the Sévral clinic, like most of them. They used other names, other insults. He felt unwanted, unhappy, lonely. And the worst part was that when his mother sometimes came to fetch him in the old pickup, wearing her short jean dress and her cowboy hat, each one of them, boys and girls, ogled her. How could they not? She was the most beautiful woman they had ever seen, a vision of loveliness with her honey hair and curvaceous figure. The only person who was aware of his daily agony was Tilia. She had flamboyantly taken his side once his mind was made up, and had faced their parents, sputtering with wrath, why on earth couldn’t Linden go and live with Candice, attend a Parisian lycée, spend a couple of years with his aunt? What was their problem, for Christ’s sake? Why were they being so old-fashioned? What a bunch of fuddy-duddies. Linden was going to be sixteen in May. There was nothing complicated about changing schools in the middle of term; these things were done, had been done before! Linden needed to get out, to go see the world, to discover other places. Couldn’t they see that? There had been a silence, his parents had glanced at each other, then back at him, and then Paul had shrugged. If that’s what Linden wanted, deep down, then he wasn’t going to stop his son. Lauren had added she was going to call Candice right away and make arrangements for a school transfer. Linden had stared at his sister with overt admiration, and she had winked back, flaunting a V for victory at him. It is amusing to think that most of those contemptuous, insufferable pupils of the Sévral lycée he put up with for all those years now flock to his Facebook page, liking every single one of his posts, and he has even seen some of them turn up at his exhibits, groveling, patting him on the back, saying they knew he was going to become a star.
His aunt Candice lived at 1, rue de l’Église, in the unremarkable fifteenth arrondissement. Her building was on the corner of rue Saint-Charles, a long, bustling street stretching from rue de la Fédération all the way south to place Balard. It was not considered a hip area, but he did not care. When he arrived on that nippy March day in 1997, Linden felt free for the first time in his life. He stood on the balcony of Candice’s sun-filled sixth-floor flat and looked out, elated, his hands gripping the railing. How well he remembers standing there, like a captain at the helm of his boat, Paris enticingly spread out at his feet, the rising roar of the traffic sounding like music to his ears, thrusting bucolic Vénozan and his parents farther and farther away. He did not mind the uncomfortable sofa bed, the complications of Candice’s love life, the new faces at the lycée on boulevard Pasteur. He did not miss spring at Vénozan, the cherry trees boastfully blossoming first, the scent of fresh air and lavender whipped up by the merciless wind. He did not miss the twitter of the birds, the exquisite perfume of bloodred roses that grew outside his bedroom window, the view over lavender fields studded with fig trees, inky green cypress, and silvery olive trees. There was nothing from Vénozan that he pined for. Not even his father’s arboretum, which he had loved so as a boy. He embraced his new life as a Parisian. He blended in at school. He was popular for the first time ever. No one realized he was a country boy, born in rural territory, not afraid of insects, not even the black scorpions lurking on the stone walls; a boy who knew the power of the wind, the supremacy of a storm, the Latin names of trees, and no one could tell he had been raised in the company of eagles, deer, boar, hornets, and firebugs. The others thought he was “cool,” with his flawless bilingualism, his impressive command of American swearwords, and his faint southern accent. They did not make fun of his first name; they did not care who his father was. He was invited to parties; girls had crushes on him, mooned over his blue eyes and wide smile. He was even considered good-looking. No one here thought he was different.
The phone on the bedside table beeps, startling him. It is the receptionist, announcing the arrival of his parents. Does Monsieur Malegarde wish to come down? He says he will do so immediately. He flings off the bathrobe and fishes around the closet for clothes. A moment later, dressed, he leaves the room, using the stairs to go faster. The first thing he notices when he gets to the lobby is how exhausted his father looks. It is a shock. Paul is slumped in an armchair, his hand propping up his face, his skin crumpled and unnaturally pale. He is wearing a dark anorak, which makes him seem even whiter. He looks thinner, too, almost gaunt.
“Oh, sweetie, there you are!” His mother’s voice, husky, warm. She hugs him, then steps back to look at him. And he, in turn, looks at her, his stunning mother, still a beauty at sixty-one, standing tall and long-legged in her boots and jacket, ash-blond hair swept back. Wrinkles and sags, although they have insidiously appeared, have not been able to tamper with the symmetry of her face, her elegant beak of a nose, which he inherited, her full mouth, the slant of her almond-shaped blue eyes, framed by the dark sweep of lush eyebrows. As usual, she wears no makeup, and, as usual, she turns heads. He leans down to embrace his silent father, then swivels backs to Lauren questioningly. Yes, Paul is not feeling too good, his mother tells him, lowering her voice, he must have caught cold, he just needs a rest, a hot bath, he’ll be fine. Tilia comes down; more hugs ensue. His sister notices their father’s state instantly. Concerned, she squats down to speak to him; he opens heavy eyelids, mumbles something about a headache. Well, why doesn’t he go up and have a rest? It’s raining far too hard to go out, and no one wants to anyway, so why not make the most of it? Lauren motions to the receptionist, and the luggage is carried up to their room. Linden listens to his mother telling Agathe that her husband is tired, could they possibly have a cup of tea, something to eat? Her French, after all these years, is still hesitant and slow. But it adds to her charm, and he can already see how the receptionist has fallen for it. Once his parents have gone upstairs, he turns to his sister.
“Papa’s face! So awful, so white…” he murmurs. She nods, concerned. Paul usually
has a healthy glow about him, even in the middle of winter.
For the first time, their vigorous, hardy father looks like a shriveled old man. The thought sobers them and they do not speak for a while, sitting in the hotel lobby, shoulder-to-shoulder, hushed, while the rain drenches the city.
* * *
At the end of the day, Linden goes to check on his parents. He knocks softly on the door of room 37, and his mother opens it. She is wearing her reading glasses; her phone is in her hand. Over her shoulder, he sees his father in bed. Lauren whispers he is having a good rest. She canceled the dinner plans for that night. Dining at the animated Rotonde on boulevard du Montparnasse was not the best idea for Paul in his present state. She’ll order room service for them later on, which means Tilia and Linden can do as they please. Linden toys about having a meal with his sister. On the one hand, he is tempted; Tilia’s company is diverting, her stories amusing. On the other, this is a family weekend, and they will be together for three entire days. Maybe he should make the most of his unexpected freedom and look up an old friend. He tells his mother he’ll do that. Tilia won’t mind.
The Rain Watcher Page 2