French Leave

by Anna Gavalda

  And then crash bang boom. A change of program.

  She just showed up at my place one day, and at a time that wasn’t like her at all. At bath and bedtime story time. She was in tears, apologizing. She truly believed that it was the people around her who justified her existence on this earth, and everything else—her secret life and all the little nooks and crannies of her soul—was not really all that important. What was important was being cheerful and carrying your yoke as if it were the easiest thing in the world. And when things got harder, there was always solitude, drawing, and going for ever longer walks behind the baby carriage, and the kids’ books and family life that offered such a deep and comfortable refuge.

  So it seemed. That little red hen in the Père Castor series, she was right, the perfect model of housewifely escapism . . .

  Red Hen’s the perfect housewife:

  Not a speck of dust on the furniture,

  The flowers all in their vases,

  And carefully ironed curtains at every window.

  What a treat to see her house!

  Except that, here’s the thing, Lola had gone out and cut that little red hen’s throat.

  I was stunned, like everyone else. I didn’t know what to say. She’d never complained, never let on that she had her doubts, and she’d just given birth to another adorable little boy. She was loved. She had it all, as they say. “They” being a load of idiots.

  How are you supposed to react when you find out your whole solar system is off its orbit? What are you supposed to say? For Christ’s sake—she was the one who’d always shown us the way. We trusted her. Or at least I trusted her. We sat on the floor for what seemed like ages, knocking back the vodka. She was in tears, and over and over she said she didn’t know where the hell she was going, then she’d fall silent and burst into tears again. No matter what she decided, she’d be miserable. She could stay, or she could go: life was no longer worth living.

  Bison grass to the rescue. Together, we managed to shake her out of her apathy. Hey! She wasn’t the only one who’d been shipwrecked. When the instruction booklet is as fat as a Manhattan phone book and you’re running circles on a lawn the size of a pocket handkerchief with no one at your side, or at least not your lawful wedded, well, at the end of the day . . . time to hit the road, girl!

  She wasn’t listening.

  “And what about the kids . . . couldn’t you hang on a bit longer, for their sake?” I eventually murmured, handing her another pack of Kleenex. My question dried her tears on the spot. I really didn’t get it, did I? It was for their sake, this whole mess. To spare them the suffering. So that they’d never hear their parents fighting and crying in the middle of the night. Besides, you can’t grow up in a house where people don’t love each other anymore—or can you?

  No. You can’t. You can grow, maybe, but not grow up.

  What came after that was more sordid. Lawyers, tears, blackmail, sorrow, sleepless nights, fatigue, self-sacrifice, guilt, it hurts me more than it hurts you, aggression, recrimination, courthouse, taking sides, appeal, lack of air, heads leaning against the wall. And in the midst of it all, two little boys with clear bright eyes for whose sake she went on playing the clown, telling them her bedside stories about farting princes and airhead princesses. This is all fairly recent, and the embers are still warm. It wouldn’t take much for the sorrow she felt at the sorrow she caused to drown her again, and I know there are mornings she has trouble getting out of bed. She confessed the other day that when the kids went off with their dad she stood for ages watching herself crying in the mirror in the hall.

  As if she were trying to dilute herself.

  That was why she didn’t want to come to this wedding.

  To have to deal with family. All the uncles and aging aunts and distant cousins. All these people who didn’t get divorced. Who settled. Who found other ways. Who’ll look at her with their vaguely sympathetic expressions—or maybe they’re just dismayed. Then all the theatrics: the virginal white dress, the Bach cantatas, the vows of eternal fidelity you learned by heart, and the schoolboy speeches, the two hands joined on the knife of the wedding cake, and Strauss waltzes by the time your feet are really beginning to ache. But more than anything else: the kids. Other people’s kids.

  The ones who’ll be running all over the place all day long, with their ears red from sipping the dregs in people’s glasses, with stains on their best clothes, begging not to have to go to bed yet.

  Kids are the whole point of family reunions—and they console us for having to attend them.

  They’re always the nicest things to look at. They’re always the first ones on the dance floor, and the only ones who will dare to tell you that the cake is disgusting. They fall madly in love for the first time in their lives and fall asleep exhausted on their mommies’ laps. Pierre was supposed to be the page boy, and he’d worked out that his cybersaber would fit perfectly beneath his cummerbund; he wondered, too, whether he’d be able to filch a few coins from the collection basket. But Lola had confused the dates on the judge’s calendar: it wasn’t her weekend for the kids. So no little baskets, no rice battles outside the church. We had suggested she call Thierry to see if she couldn’t swap weekends with him: she didn’t even reply.

  But now she was coming! And Vincent would be waiting for us! We’d be able to sit down at a table off to one side behind a tent, just the four of us and a few bottles we’d grab on the way, and we could indulge our comments on Aunt Solange’s hat, or the bride’s hips, or how ridiculous our cousin Hubert looked with his hired top hat jammed down over his big sticking-out ears. (His mother would never entertain the possibility of having his ears pinned back, because “one must not undo the work of God.”) (Wow. Lovely as the day is long, no?)

  We would be reunited, the four of us, life picking us up where we’d left off.

  Trumpets, sound! Larks, sing! It was time for some sibling swashbuckling—all for one and one for . . . and all that jazz.

  Why did you take this exit?”

  “We’re going to pick up Lola,” said Simon.

  “Where?” said his lady, in a strangled voice.

  “At the station in Châteauroux.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “No, not at all. She’ll be there in forty minutes.”

  “And why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I forgot. She only just called.”

  “When?”

  “When we were at the freeway rest stop.”

  “I didn’t hear the phone.”

  “You were in the restroom.”

  “I see . . . ”

  “What do you see?”

  “Nothing.”

  Her lips said just the opposite.

  “Is there a problem?” asked my brother.

  “No. No problem. None at all. It’s just that next time you should put a taxi sign on the roof of the car, it would make things clearer.”

  He didn’t react. His knuckles went white.

  Carine had left Léo and Alice with her mother so that, quote, We can have a romantic weekend, ellipsis, close quote.

  But it looked like it might well be a hot, hot, hot one.

  “And the rest of you . . . do you intend to sleep in the same hotel room as us, too?”

  “No, no,” I said, shaking my head, “don’t worry.”

  “Did you book a room?”

  “Well . . . no.”

  “Of course not. I suspected as much, to be honest.”

  “But it’s not a problem! We’ll sleep anywhere! We can go to Aunt Paule’s!”

  “Aunt Paule is full up. She told me as much already on the phone the day before yesterday.”

  “Well we just won’t sleep and that’s it!”

  She muttered godyerrude, fiddling with the fringe on her pashmina.

  I didn’t understand.

  Worse luck, the train was ten minutes late and when finally all the passengers had disembarked there was no sign of Lola.

  Simo
n and I squeezed our butts.

  “Are you sure you didn’t confuse Châteauroux and Châteaudun?” squawked the shrew.

  And then—yes, look . . . There she was . . . All the way at the end of the platform. She was in the last carriage, she must have boarded the train at the last minute, but there she was, walking toward us, waving her arms.

  True to form and just the way I’d hoped to find her. A smile on her face, swinging her hips, wearing ballet flats, a white shirt, and a pair of old jeans.

  And an amazing hat. With a huge brim and a wide black grosgrain ribbon.

  She hugged me. “You look lovely,” she said, “did you cut your hair?” She hugged Simon and stroked his back then she took off her hat so she wouldn’t muss Carine’s curls.

  She’d had to travel in the bicycle carriage because she couldn’t find a place to put her sombrero and now she asked us if we could make a detour by the station buffet so she could buy a sandwich. Carine looked at her watch and I took the time to grab a trash celeb magazine.

  The gutter press. All that pretentious posturing . . .

  We climbed back into the car, and Lola asked her sister-in-law if she would be willing to hold her hat on her lap. Oh, no problem, said she, with a somewhat forced smile. No problem.

  My sister raised her chin as if to ask, What’s going on? And I rolled my eyes skyward to reply, same old.

  She smiled and asked Simon to put on some music.

  Carine replied that she had a headache.

  I smiled, too.

  Then Lola asked whether someone had some nail polish for her toes. She asked again: no answer. Finally our favorite pharmacist handed her a little red bottle: “Mind the seat, okay?”

  Then we swapped sister stories. I’ll skip that scene. We have too many codes, shortcuts and grunts. Besides, without the soundtrack, it’s meaningless.

  All you sisters out there will know what I mean.

  We were out in the boonies, Carine was reading the map and Simon was being raked over the coals. At some point he said, “Give that fucking map to Garance, she’s the only one who has any sense of direction in this damned family!”

  In the back, we looked at each other and frowned. Two swear words in the same sentence, with an exclamation mark to close . . . Things weren’t going too well.

  Shortly before we arrived at Aunt Paule’s castle, Simon came upon a little lane with blackberry bushes on either side. It reminded us of the arbors in Villiers; we rushed over to the bushes and our voices were trembling. Carine didn’t shift her butt from the car and called out to remind us that foxes piss on blackberry bushes.

  We didn’t take any notice.

  Our mistake . . .

  “Naturally. You’ve never heard of echinococcosis. The larvae of parasites are transmitted by urine, and—”

  Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, I lost it there for a minute: “That’s all bullshit, big time! Foxes can piss wherever they like, they have the entire great outdoors! Every path and hedge and tree, wherever you look, why in hell would they come and piss right here? Right on our blackberries? What the hell are you saying? It drives me crazy, in the end . . . That’s what makes me sick, people like you who always have to go spoiling everything . . . ”

  Sorry. Mea culpa. My fault. My very great fault. And I had promised myself I would behave. I had promised myself I’d stay calm and infinitely zen. This very morning, when I was looking at myself in the mirror, I wagged my finger at my reflection: Garance, don’t go getting pissed off with Carine, okay? No drama-queen routine for once. But there, I blew it. I’m sorry. My humble apologies, etc. She spoiled our blackberries and the little bit of childhood that remained along with it. She presses all my buttons, I cannot stand her. One more remark and I’d make her eat Lola’s sombrero.

  She must have felt the back draft from the cannonball because she closed the car door and switched on the ignition. For the A/C.

  That gets up my nose, too, that sort of thing, people who keep the engine on when they stop somewhere just so that they can keep their feet warm or their head cool. But anyway, never mind. We’ll talk about global warming some other day. She’d locked herself in, which was something. Let’s stay positive.

  Simon stretched his legs while we got changed. I’d bought a magnificent sari in the Passage Brady right next to my house. It was turquoise, embroidered with gold thread and pearls and tiny bells. I had a little bodice with sleeves, a very tight straight long skirt slit high on the thigh, and a sort of huge cloth to wrap it all up in.

  It was gorgeous.

  Dangly earrings, all the amulets from Rajasthan around my neck, ten bangles on my right wrist and nearly twice that on my left.

  “You look great,” said Lola. “Incredible. Only you could get away with something like that. You’ve got such a lovely belly, all flat and muscular . . . ”

  “Hey,” I said, feeling radiant but keeping a lid on it all the same, “six floors without an elevator . . . ”

  “Having kids has put my belly button between parentheses . . . You’ll be careful, won’t you? You’ll use cream every day, and—”

  I shrugged. My little spyglass couldn’t see that far.

  “Can you button me up?” she chirped, turning her back to me.

  Lola was wearing her black faille dress for the umpteenth time. Very sober, sleeveless, with a round neckline and a million tiny cassock buttons all the way down the back.

  “You haven’t gone to too much expense for dear Hubert’s wedding,” I said.

  She turned around with a smile.

  “Hey . . . ”

  “What?”

  “How much do you think I paid for the hat?”

  “Two hundred?”

  She shrugged.

  “How much?”

  “I can’t tell you,” she laughed, “it’s too awful.”

  “Stop laughing, stupid, I can’t do the buttons . . . ”

  Ballet flats were in that year. Hers were soft, with a little bow; mine were covered in golden sequins.

  Simon clapped his hands. “C’mon, Bluebell Girls . . . All aboard!”

  Holding tight to my sister’s arm so I wouldn’t stumble, I muttered, “I warn you, if that codfish asks me whether I’m going to a costume ball, I’ll make her eat your hat.”

  Carine didn’t get a chance to say a thing because I immediately had to get up again the minute I sat down. My skirt was too tight and I had to take it off if I didn’t want to split it.

  Sitting in my thong on those alpaca viscose car seats, I was . . . priestly.

  We put on makeup using my compact while our resident echinococcosian double-checked the position of her clip-on earrings in the mirror on the sun visor.

  Simon begged the three of us not to put on perfume at the same time.

  We arrived in Podunk-on-Indre in good time. Behind the car I slipped on my skirt and we went to stand outside the entrance to the church while the good Podunkians looked on in astonishment from their windows.

  The pretty young woman in gray and pink chatting with Uncle Georges over there was our mom. We rushed over to hug her, careful not to let her smudge us with lipstick.

  She very diplomatically kissed her daughter-in-law first, complimenting her on her outfit, and then she turned to us with a laugh.

  “Garance . . . You look superb . . . All that’s missing is the bindi on your forehead!”

  “That would take the cake,” blurted Carine, before rushing over to our poor withered uncle. “Last I heard, this is not supposed to be a carnival . . . ”

  Lola made as if to hand me her hat, and we burst out laughing.

  Our mother turned to Simon. “Were they this unbearable the entire trip?”

  “Worse, even,” he said gravely.

  And added: “Where’s Vincent? He’s not with you?”

  “No. He’s at work.”

  “What do you mean, at work?”

  “Well, back at his château . . . ”

  Our elder brother shrunk fo
ur inches in one go.

  “But . . . I thought . . . He told me he was coming.”

  “I tried to persuade him but nothing doing. You know, Vincent and petits fours . . . ”

  Simon seemed devastated.

  “I had a present for him. A really rare vinyl LP. Plus I really wanted to see him. I haven’t seen him since Christ­mas. God, I’m so disappointed. I think I need a drink . . . ”

  Lola made a face.

  “Caramba. Simon he no look very happy.”

  “I’ll say,” I muttered, glaring at Miss Spoilsport who was in the process of sucking up to all our aged aunties. “I’ll say.”

  “Well, girls,” said our mom, “you are splendid at any rate! You’ll cheer him up, won’t you, get your brother to dance some this evening, okay?”

  And she moved away to pay the customary compliments here and there.

  We followed her with our gaze—such a tiny little woman. Graceful, charming, full of energy, elegant, so much class . . .

  A typical Parisienne.

  Lola’s face clouded over. Two adorable, laughing little girls were running to join the procession.

  “Right,” she said, “I think I’ll go over and join Simon.”

  I stood there like a dork in the middle of the square; the folds of my sari suddenly felt all limp.

  But not for long, in fact, because our cousin Sixtine came up to me with a cackle.