Tita

by Marie Houzelle

  Probably just another lie, I reflect as I retreat to our bedroom, where Coralie is lying on her bed face down, hands between her legs, doing what Mother and Grandmother don’t want her to do.

  I sit at my desk and remember Mother saying, “I was back at work just a week after I gave birth. The salon couldn’t do without me. Obviously. All the clients were asking for me. So I had to go back. I couldn’t keep them waiting for ever.” I’ve never thought about it, but I start wondering. Who was taking care of me when Mother was in her beauty salon all day? I was born in Lyon, four hundred kilometers from here. And I don’t think Father ever left Cugnac. Why did we stay in Lyon? How long did we go on living there?

  Lyon, according to Mother, is a wonderful city with a lot of stores, chic restaurants and cafés where she has all these friends from the time when she was young and single, with her own booming business. She loves staying there at her goddaughter’s, a niece who married the owner of a large sewing-machine store. She often says that Cugnac is a one-horse town where people don’t even speak proper French.

  Cugnac has only seven thousand inhabitants, but every Wednesday lots of villagers come from far away to our open-air market. We have three cinemas, a busy promenade, many cafés. And our accent is different from hers, but she only knows French, whereas here we also speak or at least understand Occitan, Catalan, and some Spanish too, because we’re not far from the border. For Mother, the only real language is French. She looks down on all the rest. According to my brother Etienne, the Greeks (a long time ago) were like her: they called all foreigners “barbarians”.

  Downstairs, in the dining room, Grandmother is sitting near her favorite window, the one with the best view of the railway station forecourt and the avenue. I wait until she’s done with the Cugnac page of L’Indépendant. When she resumes her knitting (a brown sock), I ask, “Did Mother go back to work after I was born?”

  “As soon as she was out of the clinic. She stayed there five days, because the doctor made her, but she couldn’t wait to get out.”

  “Who took care of me then?”

  “I did. We stayed in the apartment. I cleaned, I cooked, and we went to the park in the afternoon.”

  “Was that in Lyon?”

  “Yes, up on the Croix Rousse.”

  “So I wasn’t with Mother much.”

  “Only on Sundays. On Sundays your father came to visit, and they sometimes took you out with them. When they didn’t go to the cinema. On Mondays she didn’t work but she had to check out new products, go to the stores.” She adjusts her glasses, looks at her knitting. “You always wanted your mother,” she goes on. “You howled when she left, and in the evening you never went to sleep before she was back.”

  “So you fed me, you changed my diapers?”

  “Yes. I prepared your bottle early in the morning while she got ready for work. But you never wanted it until she was gone. When she was around, you were too excited.”

  “How old was I when I stopped wearing diapers?” I ask.

  Grandmother frowns. “You started walking when you were eleven months old, and you still had them then. But after that... I’m not sure. When you and your mother moved to Cugnac, I went to stay with my sister Julie for a while. Your father had a maid who looked after you, what was her name? The one before Jeanine.”

  So I was not a complete freak. “How old was I when I came to Cugnac?” I ask.

  Even before I finish my sentence, I know I shouldn’t have asked. Grandmother stands up, puts her knitting back into her work table. “I’ll go and see about dinner,” she says.

  In the evening, I decide to try Mother. As she runs our bath, I ask again, “How old was I when we came to live in this house?”

  “Oh,” she says. “We came here... just after you were born.”

  This can’t be. We were still in Lyon when I was walking. And what about the clients she went back to? But I won’t badger her about these incongruities. I wonder why. In school, when there’s something I want to know, I ask. When the answer doesn’t satisfy me, I insist. If mademoiselle Pélican doesn’t like it, too bad.

  Going to school for the first time was such a treat. I couldn’t wait. People opened books and looked entranced: I wanted to know what that was all about. Mother often boasts that I learned to read in three weeks, as soon as I got to Sainte-Blandine, when I was two years old. Probably another exaggeration.

  The atmosphere is quite different now, with mademoiselle Pélican, but I was happy in the nursery class downstairs. Right away. Relaxed, and utterly comfortable. Learning to tell time with the big clock on the blackboard, listening to stories of saints. Writing. Away from food. We all brought a goûter for the afternoon break, but nobody cared what we did with it. So I ate it, easily. Two slices of bread, a bar of chocolate. Safe.

  But before I started school, before I came here, I lived in Lyon. I have clear memories of being in a walker, and moving from the front door, through a passage, into a room with a lot of light. I remember enjoying the movement, to and fro, from the door, through the passage, into the room, around the room, back to the passage. The large windows, their square metal frames. Hiding behind the front door, waiting. My mother opening the door, and not seeing me behind it.

  Poppies

  Today is Mother’s birthday, and I’m expecting trouble. For weeks she’s been obsessed with crocodile handbags, stopping entranced when she sees one in a shop window, fondling them in stores, asking everybody around (especially her husband) which ones they like best, indicating her own preferences. Last Christmas it was mouton. She didn’t see or talk about anything but mouton coats, and Father finally caught her drift. Not quickly, though: two weeks at least after it had become obvious even to Coralie.

  This time, I’m pretty sure Father hasn’t been paying attention. He’s distracted. Even when reading a Série Noire thriller in his study, he stops every other minute, holds his cheeks in his hands and looks into the distance as if afraid of what’s coming. Yesterday, over apéritifs in the garden, while Estelle Vié admired Mother’s tulips, her husband Bertrand was telling Father about a storm off Cap de Creus last week, when he was sailing back from Spain with Laurent, his older son. Usually Father likes to hear every last detail of his friends’ adventures, but he wasn’t listening. Bertrand noticed, after a while. “Is anything wrong?” he asked.

  “No, no,” Father said. “Just the usual. You know. The business.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Bertrand said. “Tell me if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Thanks,” Father said, “but it’s all right. I’ll just have to find a way.”

  I was sitting in Bertrand’s lap. I’m getting a bit old for this, but I can’t resist: it’s so comfortable up there. Bertrand’s skin, his hair, smell of lavender and wood smoke. His voice is deep and light at the same time, his ruddy face always looks contented. I’d have liked Father to tell him more about his troubles, and I thought he might, since they’ve been friends for ever. Maybe Father felt Bertrand wouldn’t understand. The Viés are so rich, they have so many propriétés with olive groves and apricots and cherries, that it doesn’t matter if their wine doesn’t sell. Or maybe they couldn’t talk because the women were near, and you don’t discuss business in front of your wives.

  This morning, with breakfast, Loli brought three cards for Mother, two of them in the same envelope from my brothers who attend the same boarding school, Saint-Ignace-de-Montreuil, and one from Justine. Mother read Justine’s aloud: “To my beloved beautiful Dette who, unlike most inhabitants of this planet, becomes younger with each birthday.” We didn’t get to hear my brothers’ prose, but Mother pored over their cards with a wide smile. “Isn’t it incredible how much your children love me?” she said to Father. “What stepmother gets this kind of tribute, I wonder. I’m so fortunate!”

  At lunchtime, after Mother has blown out the candles and we’ve all eaten cake (except I discreetly give most of mine to Coralie), we get out our presents. Grandmother�
��s is a bottle of lavender oil, I embroidered a handkerchief, and Coralie made a clay pot for Mother’s dressing table. Mother looks her usual amiable self. Then Father gives her a flat, floppy parcel. Can’t be a handbag. It takes Mother so long to undo the ribbons, Coralie gets scissors from Grandmother’s worktable.

  It’s a scarf. Light-brown silk with yellow poppies. Mother’s face collapses into a sulk and, as the gorgeous fabric unfurls in her lap, she starts breathing slowly, angrily. Leaving her presents on the table, she walks into the hall. I follow her, but when she goes on towards the kitchen I decide to stay put. I can still see her, though, at the end of the passage beyond the pantry. She says something to Loli, then puts on her garden apron and gets busy with her box hedges.

  Coralie goes into the garden too, the other end of it, and for a while I watch her from the hall, through the tasting room windows. She’s making ragout in her bucket with soil from Mother’s hydrangea beds and water from the hose. She hasn’t noticed anything but the scarf’s beautiful colors. When I go back to the dining room, Loli is clearing the table and Grandmother sitting near her window with L’Indépendant. All as usual, except Father is still standing in front of the gifts with questions on his face. When he sees me, he starts and walks across the hall into his study. As he leaves the door half open, I follow him.

  He’s sitting at his desk, with an open book in front of him. I stand beside him, and read, “May 10. I am no longer here. I’ve stopped existing long ago. I just occupy the place of someone other people think is me.”

  The sentences, the tone, feel familiar. “Who wrote this book?” I ask.

  Father closes the small white volume, and I can see the front page: André Gide, Journal 1942-1949, Gallimard.

  “So it’s a journal?” I ask. “Like Anne Frank’s?”

  “Yes,” he says. “It’s a detailed account of Gide’s daily life and thoughts in Tunis then Algiers. He was there during the war, and not writing much else.”

  “Because of the war?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe he was just tired of fiction, and politics. Or just tired. In 1942, he was seventy-three.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “He died last year.”

  “Do you like his books?”

  “A lot.” He smiles. “But they’re not for you. Not yet. Maybe Isabelle in a year or two.”

  In Father’s opinion, practically nothing is for me. Books, films. I don’t understand this. I love the comtesse de Ségur, but I know all her books practically by heart. I’ve read all the children’s books we have here, many times, even the dreary ones about brave wolf dogs or endearing wild horses. So I have to check out the adult shelves. As Justine has to lie when she wants to go out with boys. Justine says Father is old-fashioned. Last time she was here, for Easter vacation, he told us once again how sorry he was that he won’t be able to give us dowries. “Dowries!” Justine said as soon as Father was gone. “Why would we need dowries? My mother had one, but that was ages ago. I’m pretty sure Odette didn’t.”

  It does sound like a word from the past. I’ve read several novels that belonged to my grandmother Clara (she wrote her name on the title page), which take place at a time when dowries were essential. If you didn’t have one, nobody would marry you. Which meant you had to become a governess, or starve.

  Father is inspecting the surface of his desk, vaguely pushing around pens, ashtrays, paperweights, a newspaper open at the crossword puzzle. His shoulders are stooped, his face confused.

  “I love the scarf,” I say. “I’ve never seen one like that.”

  “Maybe it’s too… different for your mother?”

  “No,” I say. “I’m sure she likes it.”

  He stops moving, his chin on his fist. “Then why…? Was there something else she wanted?”

  I shrug.

  “Didn’t she mention a crocodile handbag? But she has so many handbags. Didn’t she get a lizard skin one in September?”

  “If she wants a crocodile one,” I say, “she’ll get it for herself.”

  “Maybe,” he says. “Maybe not.”

  He looks so sad. I kiss him, and go out to get my bike. I don’t feel like calling Coralie or Eléonore. I pedal to the end of the back street, down the slope along Eléonore’s parents’ orchard, across the outer boulevard, into the vineyards. I’m pushing against the north wind, which is wild today. My plaits are undone, my hair flies. I decide that I’ll never want a gift. Or anything, from anybody.

  Communist

  Our friends Monique and Nicole live at the top of the Maison Bousquet on the avenue. It’s a large townhouse, higher than the rest and divided into apartments. Monique and Nicole are on the top floor. Usually, when we go to fetch them, we run up the four flights of stairs, and our footsteps resonate all through the staircase. Before we get to the top, under the glass roof, Monique and Nicole have come out and we can all barrel down the stairs immediately.

  But this Thursday morning, when Coralie and I get to the fourth floor, only Monique is out on the landing. “Can you wait?” she says. “Nicole isn’t dressed. Two buttons are missing from her blouse, Mother needs to sew them on. Or tell me where you’re going, we’ll join you soon.”

  Now her mother comes out too, holding a needle and thread. Her eyes look tired behind thick round glasses. “Come in,” she says, “I won’t be a moment, come into the kitchen and sit down. Would you like some coffee?”

  Coffee? For us? Monique has been loitering on the landing, but now she follows us into the kitchen, takes out three glasses, fills them with water from the tap, and sets them on the table. She leaves the door open, and I soon realize why: there are no windows in this room, no windows that open. Just a square piece of translucent glass through which a little light comes in, so the room is not completely dark but nearly. The air doesn’t move at all. Monique’s mother goes on with her sewing. There’s only one bulb hanging from a wire above the table, and it doesn’t give off much light either. Coralie has drunk all her water and is fidgeting in her chair. “Where’s Nicole?” she asks.

  “In the bedroom,” Monique says. “I’ll get her.”

  Outside the kitchen door, beyond a narrow passage, there’s another door. Monique opens it, and Coralie follows her. “Don’t!” I say. But she’s quick, and to stop her I have to follow her into the passage, from which I get a glimpse of the bedroom: a double bed on one side, where the father is asleep, and another where Nicole is feeding her teddy bear with a tiny bottle. The bedroom is exactly like the kitchen, but without any window. I pull Coralie back into the kitchen.

  “Why can’t I?” she cries.

  “Hush!” I say. “We need to wait here. Can’t you see that monsieur Delpech is asleep?”

  “He’s resting,” madame Delpech says, cutting the thread with her teeth. “He hasn’t been well. It’s his chest.”

  Nicole and Monique are back in the kitchen. Monique helps her sister put on her blouse. “Okay, let’s go,” she says. They both kiss their mother, we say goodbye, and as we walk down the stairs I wonder: Monique and Nicole have been my friends for ever and until today I had no idea how they lived when we weren’t playing together. There must be so much more I don’t know. It makes me dizzy.

  Roseline and Eléonore are waiting for us in the back street, playing hopscotch, and we all walk to an abandoned stone hut in the middle of the vineyards that we’ve decided to clean out and set up as our new base. It’s beautiful, a perfect square with a tile roof, but full of chaff, dung, and broken tools. We all work steadily, and manage to clear about a quarter of the space. When we get home at the end of the morning, Mother is appalled. “Have you been rolling in garbage? Whose idea was this?” Actually, I think it was mine. She sends us up with Loli to shower and change.

  After lunch Father asks us if we want to go to La Fourcade with him to see the new chicks. Of course we do. Ginette told me that, a long time ago, we had hens in our back garden. When Grandmother Clara died, Mother had them moved to La Fourcade b
ecause they did too much damage to her flowers.

  Coralie runs ahead of us on the dirt road, but I walk with Father, holding his hand. “Do you know where the Delpechs live?” I ask him.

  “Yes, they have an apartment in the Bousquet building, don’t they?”

  “Have you ever been to their place?”

  “No, why?”

  “It’s... not an apartment. Just two rooms, with windows that don’t...” As I explain, I feel I’m going to cry, so I breathe deeply before I start again. “There’s no air, no light from outside, it’s... like a prison. And they look so weary, so... The parents. As if they’ve been... forgotten. They live in the dark! Why can’t they have a house, or at least windows? And we have so many rooms, it can’t be right.”

  “Would you like them to come and live with us?” Father asks.

  “Would I? I don’t particularly want to live with them, I don’t think they want to live with us, but why do we have all this, and they’re shut up in those two murky rooms!” My voice is horribly shrill and teary.

  “Yes,” Father says. “It isn’t fair at all, and thank you for telling me about it. I’ll talk to Rigaill.”

  Talk to Rigaill? I have no idea what Father means, but the chicks are all around us, not at all shy. Coralie wants to feed them, to hold them; I have to show her how to do it without hurting them. Father is discussing something with Achille, the gardener. Rigaill plays bridge with Father twice a week, and he is the headmaster of the boys’ primary school. What can he do about the Delpechs?

  Five days later, Father tells me that a social worker went to look at the Delpechs’ place and signed them up as an emergency case. They’ll have a house near the stadium in three or four months. “Before the end of September at the latest,” he says.