Interference

by Amélie Antoine

  First of all, she’s a tomboy. Short mannish hair. Zero makeup: no eyeshadow, no lipstick. If I were her, I wouldn’t dare leave the house.

  Two big blue eyes dominate her face. They’re disproportionately large and make her look a bit like a manga heroine.

  She’s thin, skinny even. No chest. Her hips are her only redeeming quality, but they’re nothing to write home about.

  As for her clothes, from what I’ve seen, she has a lot to learn. You don’t seduce a man dressed in an old pair of denim Converse.

  With her camera around her neck every minute of every day, she seems to really believe she’s the reincarnation of Doisneau or something. I say Doisneau because he’s the only photographer who comes to mind. Come to think of it, there aren’t many famous photographers, are there?

  It’s weird that she’s never thought to participate in a makeover show.

  Okay, fine, she gets Gabriel to laugh. Isn’t she amazing. She distracts him, takes his mind off things. But there’s no reason to imagine anything more. No. Impossible! I would be hurt.

  Nonetheless, something is going on.

  I hear Gabriel whistling as he vacuums. It’s time to do something. To do what anyone would do in my shoes.

  Move objects and turn on the CD player in the middle of the night . . . Anything to keep my memory near and dear to my husband’s heart.

  GABRIEL

  Emma wants to be more than friends, he can tell. Maybe he’s known since the beginning, but it’s just easier to keep pretending.

  He sees her looking at him a bit too intently, her shy smiles, the expectation behind the sentences she doesn’t always finish. He doesn’t know what to think about it, but he’s beginning to realize he needs to be honest with himself. And with her.

  He finds Emma attractive, of course. Physically she’s nothing like Chloé, but she’s the kind of fragile girl that you want to protect, despite her façade of self-confidence. He knows he could take her in his arms like an abandoned kitten. She acts strong and rebellious, claims she wants to see the world and that nothing is tying her down, but he can see the chink in her armor.

  Does he want to break through her shell?

  Yes, he’s drawn to Emma. Her gamine physique is incredibly alluring. Her big, innocent blue eyes, her boyish pixie cut, the way she wrinkles her nose and pouts when she’s annoyed. It all brings back a strangely familiar tingling, but he refuses to dwell on it. Gabriel is not the kind of guy who cheats on his wife. Even if she’s dead. And Chloé was not the kind of woman who could accept being replaced so quickly. She certainly wouldn’t approve if she could see what’s been going on the past few months.

  And yet . . . Before Emma came into his life, he was dying, slowly but surely. That much is clear. He had no goals, no desires; he simply sat back and watched the hours of the day go by. Emma’s carefree eagerness and her ability to look at everything with wonderment are good for him.

  The front door rings and Lucky stands up with a bark. Gabriel finds the mailman on his porch.

  “A delivery for you. Sign here, please,” says the postal worker without so much as a glance at Gabriel. The man has just started his route and doesn’t have a second to lose on small talk. Gabriel quickly signs on the screen of the little black machine the mailman is holding out, then takes his package.

  In the living room, he opens the bubble envelope to find the latest novel by Amélie Nothomb. A black-and-white photo of the author on the back, and on the front, her name written in bubblegum pink. He didn’t order this book. Intrigued, he unfolds the invoice to see it’s addressed to Chloé. She must have preordered it on the Internet to be sure she got it as soon as it was published.

  Gabriel fans through the crisp pages, savoring the smell of freshly printed ink. Chloé will never read this new book by her favorite author. The novelist comes out with a book every year with a regularity that doesn’t fit Gabriel’s idea of what an author should be, but Chloé had made it an annual tradition to read each new volume in a single night, in the bathtub. It had become a kind of ritual.

  All of a sudden, Gabriel feels morose. Sadness and nostalgia wash over him in crushing waves. He doesn’t bother to fight it.

  He hates baths—and Amélie Nothomb. He’s always thought her novels are little more than a series of variations on the same story. The novelist has found the mother lode of themes, and while he feels she’s right to exploit it, he doesn’t understand why her readers haven’t figured it out yet.

  Chloé, of course, had been of a different mind. She had L-O-V-E loved almost all her books. Whenever her favorite author was doing a signing at a bookstore, Chloé put it in her calendar—even if that meant canceling appointments or taking a day off. Once, a few years ago, Gabriel went with her to meet her idol at the Virgin Megastore on the Champs-Elysées. He hadn’t expected to see so many fans waiting happily in line for a few hasty scribbles. Chloé got more and more excited as they neared the novelist. Gabriel mostly remembers how much his feet hurt from standing around.

  “You don’t have to wait in line with me, you know. We can meet up in a café later if you want.”

  “No, I’m happy to stay. I just hope the wait will be worth it,” Gabriel sighed.

  When they finally reached the table where Amélie Nothomb was signing books like an assembly-line machine, the author took the copy of Tokyo Fiancée that Chloé shyly held out and asked, “Who should I make this one out to?” without looking up.

  Her awestruck admirer mumbled, “Chloé,” and hurriedly opened the front cover when the novel was handed back to her to see the sought-after autograph: For Chloé, followed by a signature that vaguely resembled an intertwined A and N.

  A redhead behind them in the line sighed loudly and nudged Gabriel to move, so Chloé slipped the book into her purse.

  But Gabriel didn’t budge. He stopped in front of the novelist, who was waiting for the next book to sign. “That’s it?” he demanded. “We waited hours for that? My girlfriend knows almost all your books by heart, and all she gets is the same chicken scratch you scrawl on every copy in less time than it takes to say your name out loud?”

  He was suddenly furious for Chloé, disappointed for her, despite the fact that she was thrilled just to have had the chance to walk past her favorite author. When Chloé pulled on his sleeve, embarrassed to see him act that way, he obediently fell in behind her, but not without glaring at the burly security guard who had quickly made his way to the scene.

  “Please forgive him, he doesn’t know what he’s saying . . . Thank you so much for the autograph,” Chloé mumbled with a smile and a kind of bow to the surprised writer.

  “Next year I’ll come alone,” she said once they were outside. “You were so rude! And if there’s an author who cares about her readers, it’s her! I don’t even know why I brought you . . .”

  After they’d walked in silence for several minutes, Chloé finally smiled at Gabriel, a knowing look in her eyes, and continued in a different tone, “I can’t take you anywhere! But I’m sure she’ll remember me, thanks to you. Maybe her next protagonist will even be named Chloé—who knows!”

  Gabriel sighs, remembering the scene. How many novels will Chloé miss out on? How many would she have devoured if her life hadn’t been so suddenly and unfairly taken from her?

  He stands up, novel in hand, and climbs the stairs to the bathroom. He plugs the drain and runs the hot water. He takes his shirt off without undoing the buttons and pulls down his jeans and boxers. He steps into the bathtub, lies down, and puts his head under the water. Everything goes quiet. He stays there until his lungs can’t take it anymore.

  Wiping his hands on the towel sitting next to the sink, he grabs the book. He gets comfortable and starts reading to the soothing sound of running water slowly filling the tub.

  EMMA

  Everything is going too slowly. Sometimes I feel like Gabriel and I are on the same wavelength, but other times he seems so cold. He can be attentive one minute and distant
the next, as if he’s not even there.

  Yesterday we were in the car together and everything was great. He was taking me home after a quick bite in a little brasserie, telling me what he likes about his job, trying really hard to convince me that it isn’t as boring and tedious as people think. I absentmindedly pushed the power button on the stereo and a CD started playing. “Send Me an Angel” by Scorpions filled the inside of the car.

  Gabriel stopped talking midsentence, as if he’d lost track of his thoughts.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  He stayed silent. After a few seemingly endless seconds of me trying to figure out what I could possibly have said that was out of line, he turned off the music. He didn’t say a single word the whole rest of the drive. Just a terse, “Good night, Emma,” when we got back to my apartment.

  I just don’t get it.

  I want to live my life in the fast lane. I don’t have time to wait for someone who takes one step forward and three steps back.

  This month the group is talking about guilt. Each of the participants was asked to make a list of the things that make him or her feel guilty. Edith is trying to help them with those feelings, to lighten their load.

  Oscar talks for a long time. His mother committed suicide when he was sixteen. She’d been depressed for several years, but nobody had noticed that she was getting worse. In the end, she swallowed several bottles of sleeping pills and anxiety drugs, and Oscar was the one who found her body when he came home from school. He explains that he’s racked with guilt, yet knows that blaming himself for the past four years has kept him from moving on.

  “I’m mad at myself for not noticing . . . Or, really, for noticing and not doing anything out of habit. I feel like I never knew my mother any other way. She was always apathetic like that. I never saw her get excited about anything, and I thought that was normal . . . I’m mad at myself for not coming home earlier that day, for not being able to bring her back. I blame myself for not being enough, for not making her happy, for not being a good enough son, for not being able to make her want to stay here with me . . .”

  The air in the room is heavy when Oscar stops talking. His quiet sniffling, which he’s clearly trying to stop, is the only sound to be heard. I can tell he’s really opened up. He’s let out all the pent-up emotions he’d never shared with anyone until tonight.

  “I blame myself for not being there when Chloé drowned,” says Gabriel softly, almost inaudibly. “I wasn’t with her when she died. I don’t know if she was scared, if she was surprised, if she was in pain. I don’t know any of that because I wasn’t there. Of course, it’s no use dwelling on it. It’s not going to get me through this. But my wife is dead and she was all alone. That’s what haunts me. Every single day. That she was all alone, that nobody was there to help her, to save her . . .”

  The others nod. They all understand his feelings of powerlessness. Marie-Hélène, who’d left the hospital for just half an hour: “Sacha didn’t wait for me. He died before I could hold him one last time.” Laura, who regrets letting her husband buy a motorcycle though there’s nothing she could have done. Gisèle, who found out over the phone while she was in line at the grocery store that her husband had had a fatal heart attack: “I actually took the time to pay for everything. It was too late anyway . . .”

  One step forward, three steps back.

  CHAPTER 9

  OCTOBER 2013

  CHLOÉ

  Fall is just around the corner and I’m standing still. Gabriel is moving on, and I’m stuck here. “For better or for worse,” he said once.

  But only “until death do us part,” I suppose . . .

  Memories of our wedding are running through my head. The months of preparations for the big day. I’d wanted everything to be perfect. I’d planned the most beautiful ceremony, something so stunning our guests would remember it as the best wedding they had ever attended. I had dreamed of it since I was a little girl, wrapped in a white sheet for a dress . . .

  Gabriel simply went with it. It wasn’t his dream, but since it was mine, it was just as important to him. If we had done it his way, we would have gotten married at the town hall and had a barbecue in his mother’s backyard.

  I chose “Starry Night” to be our theme, and Gabriel spent hours cutting stars out of construction paper, painting them gold, then adding glitter with a paint brush. On our wedding day, he had to admit that the result was magnificent: I had covered the ceiling with dark-blue fabric and glued the sparkling stars to it one by one. For the place cards, he had even agreed to make more than one hundred and fifty origami stars, on which I then carefully wrote the names of each of our guests in gold pen. We spent a lot of evenings together, side by side, working on the decorations for our wedding.

  I’d hired the best caterer in the Paris metro area and selected the most expensive champagne and wines. I begged Gabriel to let us have gospel singers at the church and worked on him for days about renting a castle with extensive grounds—making sure to highlight the fact that I’d let my dream of a pond go as proof of how reasonable I could be. In the end, he always gave in, even though he wasn’t thrilled about having to go into debt to pay for most of the wedding.

  “Don’t you think it would be smarter to have a smaller wedding and use our savings for a down payment on a house in a few months?” Gabriel tried.

  I hated when he sounded like a banker.

  “I’m not one of your clients, sweetheart. This wedding is all I’ve ever dreamed of and I want it to be stunning. I want us to remember it for the rest of our lives . . .”

  I made pleading Puss-in-Boots eyes, and Gabriel couldn’t resist.

  I controlled everything, down to the tiniest detail. There was no room for improvisation and even less for mistakes. I chose the texts for the religious ceremony and checked the speeches the best man and maid of honor were going to give, because while I was fairly sure that Oriane would come up with something acceptable, I didn’t have much faith in Geoffrey. I tasted all the dishes that would be served, made a list of songs for the DJ to play in a precise order. I even chose the plastic cake topper of a bride and groom myself at a specialized boutique and got all the thank-you cards ready before the wedding took place. I didn’t leave a single thing to chance.

  Gabriel didn’t understand why I was so frenzied, but decided that if it made me happy, that’s what mattered. He knew that spontaneity wasn’t my strong suit. I liked to think ahead, plan, and control every situation.

  When the big day arrived, it was perfect. Not a single incident. By four in the morning, we were the only ones left. Our guests had gone home, exhausted. The DJ had packed up his equipment and offered his best wishes for a happy marriage before taking off in his van. Gabriel and I sat outside on the grounds of the castle, under the starry night sky.

  “Wait here, okay? I’ll be right back,” Gabriel said as he ran off.

  He reappeared a few minutes later and sat down next to me. He held something that looked like a tiny hot-air balloon.

  “What’s that?”

  “Our very own firefly. We’re going to make a wish and watch it fly away. I thought it went pretty well with the ‘Starry Night’ theme . . .”

  At that exact moment, I wanted to cry. Instead, I leaned over and rested my head on my husband’s shoulder.

  We lit the burner together and the paper balloon inflated from the heat. The “firefly” rose slowly into the sky, and we watched the spot of light until it disappeared. I think it was the most touching moment of our whole wedding.

  The only one I hadn’t planned.

  It’s seven o’clock in the morning. The alarm clock goes off in our bedroom.

  I watch as Gabriel gets up, his eyes still heavy with sleep. He walks, only half awake, to the bathroom to take a shower. He yawns as he turns on the faucet. The spray of hot water hits him square in the chest. He reaches out to grab his shampoo from the edge of the bathtub and accidentally knocks over two bottles of glitter paint. Br
ight yellow and dark blue.

  He picks one up, confused. Now he’s awake.

  I smile.

  Hello, sweetheart. I’m still here.

  GABRIEL

  For the past few days he’s been feeling almost harassed by his wife, or rather, by memories of his wife that keep fighting their way to the surface at the most unlikely moments. A song that they both liked starts playing at the grocery store while he’s shopping. A little note she scrawled on a Post-it turns up in a kitchen drawer.

  Just yesterday the television screen turned to static, so he had to move the entertainment unit to check the cable wires. After three minutes of shoving with all his might, he finally managed to move the thing a few inches and found an earring on the floor. A small silver feather Chloé had spent weeks looking for.

  He wants to scream. Leave me alone, Chloé! As if she were somehow responsible for these painful everyday coincidences. Part of him believes it’s his guilt messing with him.

  Because Emma kissed him two days ago. Or maybe he started it?

  They were walking in silence along the levee after a nice dinner out. He wishes he could say he’d had too much to drink, but that would be a lie.

  All of a sudden, she stopped and he turned around to see why. Her blue eyes staring right at him, she waited.

  A silent ultimatum.

  She wouldn’t stop staring, and he stared back.

  He moved in closer. Took her face in his hands and stroked her hair.

  Yes, he had kissed her. Innocently at first. His lips brushed shyly across hers. Emma stood on her tiptoes and grabbed hold of his collar. She pulled Gabriel in closer, still staring.

  The second kiss was anything but hesitant.

  When they finally caught their breath, Emma looked at him inquisitively. He hugged her tight without a word.

  Ever since, he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about Chloé. And Emma too.

  He’s lost. He’s racked with guilt, but can’t keep his heart from skipping a beat when he thinks about the kiss. He wants to call Emma, but hangs up before he finishes dialing her cell number.