“To be honest, I’ve never understood a thing. But it’s a well-known fact that it makes people odd. The only thing to do is not speak to him; then everything is fine.”
“So you don’t speak to each other?”
“My parents didn’t speak to each other, either. I once pointed this out to my mother, and she said, ‘Sweetie, we’ve been married for thirty years. What would you have us say to each other?’ I just put this into practice a bit earlier.”
Diane would have liked to ask a number of other questions. But she refrained, for fear of seeming indiscreet.
A few days later Olivia informed her that she would be having lunch the following day at the mess hall, with the professors. The mess hall was the name they gave a section at the university restaurant reserved for prominent people.
“At last you’ll be able to find out if they have their own special food,” joked Diane.
Two days later she went to the brasserie. Olivia did not show up. Nor on the day after that. Diane realized this was her friend’s vague way of telling her they wouldn’t be having lunch together anymore. She couldn’t help thinking that the professorship had gone straight to Olivia’s head.
She ran into Olivia in the corridor and greeted her coldly.
“Well, Diane, what’s going on?”
“You’re asking me?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I should have realized. Come have lunch at the mess hall with us!”
“When you were an assistant professor you said you weren’t allowed into the mess hall. And I’m not even an assistant professor.”
“I’m sure that Yves and Roger won’t take offence.”
“All the more reason not to come, given the fact that for years you kept telling me how much you despised them.”
“Shush, someone might hear you.”
These last words were too much for Diane and she walked away.
A few days later she found a note in her mailbox: “Sorry about the misunderstanding. Come for dinner at my place at eight o’clock tonight, nothing fancy.”
Diane had tears in her eyes. She’d dreamt for so long of this moment, and at last Olivia was inviting her to her home! How could she ever have doubted her friendship?
Stanislas opened the door. She recalled his modus operandi so she merely said good evening. Without a word he led her into a tastefully furnished living room, then withdrew, leaving her alone. She sat for a long time gazing at this place she had only imagined for so long, and which now turned out to be perfectly ordinary.
“What, Diane, you’re here? You should have called me,” said Olivia on entering the room.
“I didn’t want to interrupt you.”
They talked about this and that. Diane was glad to see they had lost none of their closeness. She fell once again under her friend’s spell, the sheer force of her personality.
“I’ll go get the dinner ready,” said Olivia, getting to her feet. “And please don’t expect anything special: cooking is not my thing.”
Diane went with her into the kitchen and smiled when she saw Olivia had put together raw vegetables and a salad.
“I should have known!” she said.
“Naughty girl, since you’re making fun of me, your punishment will be to go and set the table.”
While Diane was setting out the plates, she noticed a pair of furtive eyes spying on her. It must be Olivia’s daughter. She realized she didn’t even know her name.
“Is there someone there?” she murmured very softly.
A little girl stepped timidly forward: she was so small and thin that she looked only eight or nine years old, but Diane calculated that she must be twelve. The child hardly dared look at her.
“Good evening. What’s your name?”
No answer. Olivia came in and said brusquely, “Well, Mariel, has the cat got your tongue?”
The little girl immediately ran out.
“She’s so sweet!” exclaimed Diane.
“And very sociable, as you can see,” said Olivia.
“She’ll outgrow it.”
“You think so? Were you like that at the age of twelve?”
“We all grow up at our own pace.”
“Grow up? I think that’s hardly the word for it.”
Uneasy, Diane changed the subject and went into the kitchen to slice the radishes. Five minutes later, she heard an abnormally shrill voice say, “Maman, you have to sign my report card.”
Olivia grabbed the report card, quickly scanned the results, gave a sigh, then signed without voicing any comment. Mariel ran out again.
“Is something wrong?” asked Diane.
“Just the usual,” said Olivia indifferently.
“May I go see her?”
“If you want.”
Diane ventured down the corridor, knocked on a first door, didn’t get an answer, opened it and came upon Stanislas, lying on his bed, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. She quickly closed the door again and tried another one. Mariel was sitting on the floor, curled up on herself.
“May I see your report card?”
Terrified, the child said nothing. Diane gently took the pages from her and leafed through them. “Mariel Aubusson, sixth grade.” The little girl was already one year behind. As for her marks, they were alarming. Her teacher or teachers had not dared write any comments, her level was that low.
Her father is a researcher in mathematics, her mother is a professor of cardiology at the university, thought Diane, looking desperately for something positive to say. In the end she saw that in gymnastics the child had progressed from -3 to -1.
“Good girl! You’re doing well in gymnastics,” she cried, with forced enthusiasm.
Mariel looked up, stunned. Her smile was so disarming that Diane took her by the shoulders and kissed her.
On her way back into the living room, she saw a medal on a bookshelf and was intrigued. Olivia noticed her curiosity and said proudly, “That’s the Fields metal. Stanislas was awarded it when he was thirty-nine.”
When his wife called him, the laureate, winner of the world’s highest distinction in mathematics, sat down at his place, chose his salad leaves one by one, then gazed guardedly at them in his plate. He eventually chewed them in silence. Mariel was no more talkative, nibbling timorously. In the meanwhile, the lady of the house, charming, made conversation, not the least bit offended by their silence. Diane would have enjoyed listening to her had it not been so obvious that the little girl was unhappy.
After dinner, as Stanislas was leaving the room, his wife called out, “Don’t work too late, darling.”
When she saw that Diane was giving her a puzzled look, Olivia added, “Did you see him lying on his bed staring at the ceiling with his eyes wide open? That’s how he does his research in topology. He gets up for four minutes a day to write down his thoughts on a piece of paper. Impressive, isn’t it?”
She shone with pride when she talked about her husband.
Diane had brought a box of chocolates. Olivia opened it to have with the coffee. Mariel looked at her mother for permission to take one.
“Help yourself, sweetie,” said Olivia.
Was it because of the “sweetie” or the chocolate? The little girl’s face lit up with pleasure. She sighed with delight. Diane smiled and suggested she have another one.
“It’s out of the question,” Olivia intervened. “They’re fattening.”
“Mariel is as thin as an rail!” protested Diane.
“And she has to stay that way.”
Her tone was so harsh that the little girl ran out of the room.
Diane was speechless. Her host misread her and came out with a slew of platitudes: “It’s never too late to adopt a healthy lifestyle,” or “Excessive consumption of milk chocolate has played a significant role in the rise of cardiovascular disease,” and she failed to notice how uneasy Diane was.
Diane found a pretext to leave without further ado. Olivia must have realized she was in a no-win situation, socially, bec
ause she piled one entreaty upon another (“What? You’re not leaving already? I’ve been waiting so long for this moment . . . ” and so on). Diane cut her short, adding that she had to run but that she could come again the following evening.
“That’s a good idea,” exclaimed her host, but her tone was neutral.
“I’ll come at around six if that’s not inconvenient.”
Sitting at the wheel of her car, Diane figured she was imagining things. How could there be any similarity between herself as a child and that poor traumatized kid? Above all, how could the oh-so-brilliant Olivia Aubusson resemble her mother in any way? She refrained from digging any deeper.
It became a ritual: every other day, Diane came at six to help Mariel with her homework. In the beginning it was alarming: it turned out the girl knew how to read and write and that was it. Diane carefully avoided asking awkward questions such as, “Didn’t your mother or father ever explain to you that . . . ” so that the little girl would not realize she was suffering from a grave parental deficiency.
As for Olivia, she never missed an opportunity to pretend to be angry with someone while in fact blaming someone else:
“Diane, don’t you think it’s dreadful, the way they make mothers feel guilty nowadays? Have you noticed that every pretext is valid to make them feel ashamed they don’t look after their children properly? But never a word about fathers.”
“You’re right, it’s intolerable, the fact they don’t target fathers as well when apportioning blame. Unless, of course, the fathers are borderline autistic.”
“Stanislas is actually amazing, you know. He’s always on time to take Mariel to school and pick her up afterwards. It breaks my heart when I see all those children hanging around outside the school waiting for their parents.”
“Stanislas is indeed a paragon of precision when it comes to doing his share of the chores.”
“Your devotion is touching, Diane, but don’t waste your precious time. Mariel will never be a genius, you know.”
“I’m just trying to help her get through the year. She’s making a lot of progress.”
“And what about your dissertation? And your studies?”
“I’m spending less time on your daughter than I did on you, when you were preparing your habilitation.”
“But that must have been a bit more enriching for you, I would think.”
“There’s no comparison. But I get along very well with Mariel.”
“Such children are endearing, it’s a well-known fact.”
How is this possible? thought Diane when she heard remarks of this nature. To put it mildly, she viewed Olivia in a very different light now. The only thing that mattered to her was her reputation. Her CV was impressive: a brilliant career, a remarkable husband. As long as you did not try to talk to him, Stanislas was the ideal spouse, and she even had a child, so no one could reproach her for having “sacrificed her womanhood.” The very expression raised Diane’s hackles. How could someone as intelligent as Olivia have given birth to a child solely for that reason? Diane knew that Mariel had not been an accident: Olivia had told her she’d had trouble getting pregnant.
She’s your friend. Don’t judge her she told herself, over and over. An inner voice then immediately queried: Is she your friend? To convince herself that she was, Diane had to think back to the time before the habilitation. Alas, what was left of that magical complicity they had once had?
The same Olivia who had once made her laugh hysterically when she mocked the mannerisms of the academic establishment had now adopted every one of them. She no longer spoke formally with the professors, but said tu to them and was on a first-name basis, and seemed surprised if anyone did not understand who she was referring to (“What do you mean, which Gérard? Michaud, of course!”). She had enrolled in their sports club, and never missed an opportunity to meet up with them. Deep down, even if it irritated her, it also suited her to have Diane act as babysitter, as she put it: it freed her to get on with her social obligations, leaving Stanislas and Mariel in the young woman’s care.
Looking after Stanislas was easy: as long as dinner was served at eight o’clock on the dot, he showed no signs of discontent; in other words, he showed nothing. Diane was filled with retrospective indignation at the thought that for over two years the little girl’s sole companion had been this silent, brooding father.
Olivia’s attitude has changed, that’s true, but less than my attitude towards her, she admonished herself. How could she feel the same friendship toward Mariel’s mother as before?
I’m not being objective, I’m seeing her through my own childhood memories, she thought. It was clear that the little girl’s unhappiness was reactivating her own. And I had my grandparents, my father, and my brother. During all these years she’s had no one to give her either attention or affection. It didn’t take a genius to infer that the little girl had no friends her age and never had.
Mariel and Diane grew very fond of each other. The moment Diane arrived at the house, the little girl threw her arms around her. Diane did not merely help her with her homework. When she saw that her hair was dirty she suggested she should wash it more often. The little girl replied she didn’t know how and that it was her mother who washed it, “sometimes.”
Diane washed Mariel’s hair above the bathtub. Then she took hold of the hair dryer and told Mariel to lean forward: while she was drying her hair, she could feel that the little girl was pressing her forehead against her belly and she shivered, because she recalled positioning herself in exactly the same way with her mother when she used to have her hair dried as a child. And she remembered the emotion she had felt at the time, on discovering this potential for contact with her goddess.
But I was six years old when I did that. When you’re twelve, it’s a bit late.
She taught Mariel how to wash her hair.
“I have to speak to you,” said Olivia one evening, once Mariel was in bed.
“I’m listening.”
“I would like to spend more time on research. Since the habilitation, I’ve been tending to rest on my laurels. That won’t do. But as it happens, I have a lot of ideas.”
“Good for you!”
“That’s where you come in. Could you take over my lectures every other time?”
“I’m no professor, I wouldn’t know how.”
“Oh go on. Of course you would! You are an exceptionally intelligent young woman. You can do whatever you set out to do.”
Flattered, Diane registered the compliment:
“Thank you. But it will demand a lot of time.”
“I’ve thought about it. Your time won’t be wasted. It will be extremely useful for your dissertation, for your studies, and it goes without saying, for obtaining your title as assistant professor.”
“I’m nowhere near ready for that!”
“We’ll get there.”
Diane did not fail to pick up on the “we,” and wondered how she ought to interpret it.
“Obviously,” continued Olivia, “you’ll have less time to look after Mariel.”
She had her answer. All the same, she pretended she hadn’t understood:
“I’ll always have time for Mariel.”
“Of course. It’s so kind of you,” said Olivia.
Diane recognized that bitter line at the corner of her lips. She remembered her grandmother’s words: to impose its reign, jealousy needs no motive. That had been true for her mother. And now it was so true for Olivia! So, you could be a university professor, not to mention a charming, accomplished and beautiful woman, and still be jealous of the attention a former admirer paid to your sickly, traumatized daughter.
Because this was not nostalgia for a fading friendship. If that had been the case, Olivia would have resorted to a sentimental register. The worst of it is that it would have worked, thought Diane. It’s a good thing she doesn’t see me as anything more than simply ambitious. Let’s pretend to go along with that.
Diane was mo
re overworked than ever. Between her own classes and Olivia’s, her dissertation, her ongoing studies, her nights on duty, and the hours she devoted to Mariel, she got an average of two hours’ sleep a night. “I don’t know how I’m coping,” she thought. Her fatigue was so intense that if she had the choice between eating and sleeping, she never hesitated: sleep had become her holy grail. At this rate she was losing more weight than ever.
“Watch out,” said Olivia, “you’re losing your looks.”
In the light of such ambiguous solicitude, Diane played the role her former friend had assigned her: the woman who wants it all.
Her engine was running on an explosive mixture of love and hatred. The love was for the little girl, whose progress was encouraging: Mariel was now obtaining near-satisfactory results in every subject. Diane never failed to congratulate her with hugs and kisses. The little girl’s radiant face was reward enough for her efforts.
Olivia was right: Diane was a brilliant stand-in at the lecture podium. Initially disconcerted by this teacher who was scarcely any older than they were, the students, on the whole, were enthusiastic about Professor Aubusson’s assistant. At the end of her presentations Diane felt a feverishness she could not explain.
As for hatred, that was more complicated. When she was in Olivia’s presence she sometimes wondered, “How do you know when you hate someone?” It was easier to hate her in her absence: she would think of how she sometimes behaved toward Mariel, and she felt an urge to shove the woman’s face in a mud puddle. “That must be hatred,” was her diagnosis. Apart from these intense moments, what she felt for Olivia was more like fathomless disappointment. “That’s a generous thought: it proves I expected great things of her.”
Just as she was finishing a tricky passage in her dissertation, someone knocked at the door to her office.
“Come in,” said Diane.
It was Élisabeth. She had neglected her for so long that she was astonished to see her there in the flesh.
“You never answer your phone, so here I am.”
“Forgive me, I’ve been working like a madwoman.”
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