On the left side of the photo Clarisse is slightly turned outwards, as if looking for something to support herself with. Clarisse is the baby of the family, the wild princess who went on with her life while we spent so much time taking care of Agathe.
In the middle is the tall Émilie, the journalist who describes herself as the “square” one; “deep into self control,” Agathe would say in her psychology jargon. Determined to follow her own path: Émilie is the child of my first marriage, and has built her path out from between the two families, in her own way. My three daughters share that same strong independent streak.
Agathe is at the edge of the bench on the right, smiling. She’s wearing a black tank top and loose navy-blue pants. Bandages on her sternum mark the various entry points for the “port,” some scars, and a bit higher up, at the base of her neck, the marks from the tracheotomy. With the sun right in her eyes, her left eye squints, and she is smiling. She says something funny that makes her sisters laugh. And also, “Get on with it, Dad, take the damn picture, anyways I’m sick so I’m going to look horrible.”
Maybe that’s not exactly what she says. Maybe she says she’s going to look like crap in this picture, because that’s how we are, we use a lot of that type of language. Especially Clarisse, Agathe, and me. When Agathe was little she made us cringe when she spoke that way in front of strangers. She quickly learned to clean up her language, even if at times she still swore like a sailor.
The tea is scrumptious. On this Sunday, the only thing that matters is enjoying life, to taste something sweet, something from outside, and to see Agathe eat a bit.
All those years and in all those hospitals the big question was always how to get Agathe to eat. She was so thin, so frail, pumped up with antibiotics that cut her appetite, unable to swallow anything because of the continuous coughing and all the mucus. We were constantly tuned in to her wishes, her desires, to her appetite that was so abundant at home, and almost nonexistent in the hospital. And so when she would declare, eyes shining, game and eager, “I’m dying for a …” we ran to fetch that food, dessert, or cooked meal that would do her so much good.
This Sunday afternoon, to have the tea at Foch is also to recreate a semblance of our weekly family meals before Agathe’s health really began to deteriorate. All five of us would always have Sunday lunch, a ritual we all loved. These gatherings were full of laughter. Agathe would talk about her week in her inimitable way. She was funny, out-of-bounds, and had a sharp tongue. Her sisters would protest that Agathe was being too harsh. I would try to make a goofy face to change the subject. Agathe would laugh and keep eating. After dessert we played music or listened to songs one or the other had discovered. From the Spice Girls to Monteverdi, Charlie Haden to Tom Jobim, and Bach to Michael Jackson.
On this day I observe my three daughters sitting on that bench in the courtyard at Foch, and think of all those Sundays. I have a smoke. We all smoke, except for Agathe, of course. Like addicts. Sabine and I accompanied Agathe through all her respiratory struggles, the ups and downs of her life, while we smoked. Was it to relieve stress? Somewhat perhaps, but we already smoked before she was born. To tempt the devil, defy death, some other denial? Maybe.
In 1998, after my first heart attack, I stopped smoking. It was the summer of 1998, when we moved to the island of Oléron for the year, right after the heart attack. I had three other infarctions while living in Oléron.
In 2006, another year of major life changes, I went back to my daily pack of Silk Cut. Agathe didn’t like to see me smoke, it worried her. And she wanted us to be strong to support her in any circumstance, to be with her.
Sitting on the bench in the courtyard at Foch, so thin, Agathe is radiant in the June sun. But not in the way she used to be. Looking at that photo I have the strange feeling of having her back, completely, and yet there is a dark shadow over her aura. She smiles, she shines, and yet is a bit absent. I’ve seen that vague shadow over her before, five years earlier in Hyères.
That night of October 2002, it’s mild on the peninsula of Giens. Why are the pines, the odors of the sea air, so paradisiacal, when I’m going out of my mind? Not from anger, I’m out of my mind with sadness. Agathe is here, in this room in the Renée-Sabran hospital that looks out over the trees, at the tip of this enchanting peninsula. Lying down, waiting for we have no idea what. For the first time, the team of doctors talks of a lung transplant. The night is outrageously beautiful.
Earlier that night I went to fetch a McDonald’s meal in Hyères, Avenue Gambetta, driving as fast as I could so it would stay warm. She had to eat something. We went through the list of what she might like.
“Hey, you know what I’d really like? A super-sized Mickey D’s meal.”
I floored it.
But here, in this room that smells like medication, half an hour later, her excitement was gone. She took two bites of her hamburger, and then her appetite vanished. Her little thin face had closed down.
“I’m not hungry anymore, Daddy, I’m so sorry.”
“No problem, my love, it was worth a try. It’s beautiful out, do you want to see the garden?”
You look at me with a little disbelief. “No, Daddy, I can’t walk, I’m too tired.”
You say that but you really mean: “Jesus, just look at me and stop fooling yourself, come back to earth!”
And how I understand you, my Agathe. That year, 2002, is a year out of time, unreal, unrealistic. I work night and day on the French launch of the free paper Metro. I’ve lost the respect of all my friends in the press. The heads of the regular newspapers send the CGT union mobsters to intimidate us. All the while, our Swedish shareholders put pressure on me. Each day is a battle. My private life is in shambles. Ever since I left Oléron and “blew the family apart,” as you put it, “your family,” I don’t know where I live. I feel like I’m living despite myself. I don’t take care of those around me, those who love me. I come see you in Oléron every other weekend like every other divorced father and during vacations, whenever I can, not often enough. I am not there when I need to be near you.
It’s early July, right after your written baccalaureates, and the doctors did surgery on you to implant a “port” on your chest, just under your skin, that goes directly to thorax vein to make drips easier to administer. It went badly, you were coughing too much. I went to see you at the La Rochelle hospital, between two high-speed train rides, round-trip in one day, July 10. It was the first time I let them put the paper to bed without me. I found you reading Spinoza for your orals. You were so tired. Happy to see me, but so weak. I was there, next to you, and yet we missed one another. All I spoke of was my work. I missed the essential.
A few weeks later, in August, when you could hardly stand up, I forced you to come to a house in the Gironde for a week’s vacation in the heavy vineyard heat. I set up your oxygen tank in the bedroom of this luxury villa that I’d rented with my then girlfriend. You spent most of the week in your room. You came out briefly, for meals and to hang out next to the pool with your sisters. To make me happy.
I’ve found the photos of that vacation. You are very thin, hunched over, teetering. Unbelievable: you are unable to smile anymore, in any of the photos. I’m totally disconnected. All I think of is my newspaper, my job, and of course my new chaotic and absurd life in Paris. The only thing that makes you and your sisters smile is the bathing suit I wear in the pool, which is a bit on the small side. That red bathing suit that didn’t quite fit would go down in history as the symbol of a forty-eight-year-old dad who was totally out of touch. That and my tight leather pants, a gift from my girlfriend. That vacation was a disaster. Even your birthday was ruined by my fake enthusiasm. From trying so hard to believe that everything was fine, and staying upbeat, I had lost touch with what was really going on.
In September of that same 2002, in a high school in Poitiers, Agathe passed the baccalaureate oral exams, exhausted as she was, and with difficulty breathing. She went without her oxygen, obsess
ed as she was with being a high school student like any other, when in reality she had more and more trouble breathing. Another of her triumphs is that she never had to repeat a grade despite the hospitals and the absences. But once she had that baccalaureate she collapsed. I’d never seen her that way. For someone who always seemed so full of life she now seemed lost, disoriented. She didn’t make any plans. On the weekend, when I came to visit, I would take her to her psychoanalyst in Saintes. She would remain silent. So close for so long, we now had trouble speaking to one another, to find words, to pick up our old conversations where we left off.
One Saturday morning in September she burst into tears: She was slipping. Caught off guard, I said the first thing that came to mind: I suggested she set herself short-term goals. “Can you be happy that way?” she asked me before sinking back into silence.
I thought of all this a few weeks later, in the midst of the pine trees of the peninsula of Giens. I so love the scent of pines, those of Oléron, those of Saint-Trojan, those of her beach in Treuil.
That fall, I take an Air Liberté flight to Toulon-Hyères every weekend to come be with you. We slowly resume our talks. One night we can’t take our eyes off the TV screen for the pilot episode of the 24 series. At the end of the episode you sigh: “Those bastards, they’ve figured out how to leave us hanging.” We talk about the screenplay, the characters, the photography. We talk. Every weekend I try to get you to eat something: Italian prepared food, cakes. Slowly your smile returns. I bring you a new computer. Music. You send me texts with tidbits of news. It makes me so happy to read them, and throws me into despair that there is no hope for your condition.
One night when you are hooked up to your IV and on oxygen, pale and feverish, you hand me a sealed envelope “to read on the plane home.” In those two pages you have written about how worried you are … about me! It is plain to see that you understand my state of mind and my confusion perfectly, and you ask me to take care of myself, to believe in life, that life can be wonderful. You wrote the word “wonderful.” You encourage me on, emphasize that you need me to be in good shape, you need my good cheer, my love of life …
I read this letter as the plane flies out over the sea, over the peninsula. You are down there. Waiting.
MONDAY, JUNE 25, 2007
At the hospital it’s the witching hour, the end of the day, the time when the day shift passes the baton to the night shift. During the handover the hallways are empty. On trays the leftovers from dinner turn cold.
We’ve turned the TV off, sickened by the useless images. We wait for something, night, no doubt, oblivion. Another day.
Agathe just received a transfusion. Her red-blood-cell count was too low. She’s back on oxygen. She only weighs eighty-three pounds. Her tiny form rests on the yellow hospital sheets as she watches me enter the room. Smiles. Her eyes express a strange mix of calm, exhaustion, questions without answers, and well-concealed terror. During the day she focuses on the daily medical routine. Something that’s not possible to do at night.
“How to think?” she wrote after what Marc told her. Yes, how to think one’s own death. That dark hole, the plunge, the slipping away, the catapult … there isn’t a single word that can tell of it. And yet you have to approach the ledge, look, try to understand. Her own death—at age twenty-three.
Tonight it’s just the two of us when she calmly asks the question.
“Dad, what comes after? Do you know?”
I feel dizzy but I catch myself. Trying to appear as calm as she is, I tell her what I believe. I’ve known death. My father, then my mother, both died young. I have faith. I can tell her, like a “useful idiot” of Catholicism, the words of my faith. I who am rendered anxious by all organized religion, who gets exasperated by catechisms, I can tell her without faltering that I believe in the immortality of the soul.
The soul doesn’t die, my love, you will always be with us my angel, here, but elsewhere. “Just round the corner,” Henry Scott Holland, an Anglican priest, once wrote in a poem often read during funeral services. I add “Don’t you worry now,” my go-to expression through all those years.
“After, my Agathe, there is still you. After, you are elsewhere, but it’s you. This is what I believe with all my might …”
“Okay, Dad.”
She is so young. She hears what I say, she absorbs it, and then we move on to talk about something else. It’s as if she wants my words to be engraved, sheltered, not diluted by ordinary thoughts about death and the hereafter. We talk about the others, how we’ll let them know. Others—Agathe’s main preoccupation. To get out of herself and her illness, to be focused on others.
She worries about her sisters. We haven’t told them the entire truth. Clarisse had her oral exams for the baccalaureate the day we found out. Naturally she feels the tension and is on tenterhooks, sharing a deep bond with Agathe. “She’s so fragile at the moment,” Agathe says.
She worries about everything, and adds that we must make sure to tell Émilie at the same time: “She seems strong, but you also have to take care of her.” She says it seriously, calmly, this tiny woman alight on her bed, an exhausted little body out of which only the eyes still shine.
She also brings up Alex, their life together, their difficulty communicating, being like before, lovers, together. I look at her worried face, knit brows. I don’t say another word. I can’t imagine Agathe gone. She won’t be “here.” Where then?
She interrupts the silence. “I want to be cremated, like you … And I want my ashes scattered on the same dunes as yours, at Le Treuil.”
Sabine and I have often expressed our wish for our ashes to be scattered on the beach on Oléron where we used to love to go for picnics, meet friends and family, Le Treuil beach, facing the setting sun. That was before the divorce. Agathe has made herself clear. She wants to be with her parents.
But for us, how will we get on without her?
After you left us, Agathe, my first instinct was to look for you. You see, your absence hurts so much sometimes I feel my heart breaking for good. It snaps in half, right here, inside my chest. A hole emerges. A dent, and then a hole. This absence makes no sense. Where are you? You must be here somewhere. It’s true that you were already simultaneously here and not here. I wasn’t always with you even if I could see you, or talk to you every day. But where are you now? I need to talk to you. For twenty-three years we shared conversations, laughs, and looks; it can’t just all stop this way. Good Lord, Agathe, you can’t just be nowhere.
I dial your cell phone and get that greeting that annoyed us so much: “Hello. Hello! Helloooo? … Okay, just kidding, I’m not here, leave a message.”
Eventually we had to shut down your account. The Orange France recording turned into the unbearable “the number you are trying to reach, etc …”
But I’m not asking for a number, a name. I’m looking for my daughter. Could someone please put my daughter on the line?
Where is she? Where did all that life go? She overflowed with life. It can’t just stop like that, that energy, that vitality, that love for living.
“Where’s Agathe?”
Something a child might ask. On the street where she lived, rue du Bourg-l’Abbé, in front of her building, number 5, I sometimes speak to her. It’s not that far from my house, so I come often. I stare at the beautiful sculpted door, heavy, shut, that entryway I don’t have the access code to anymore. And here I speak with her.
Hey Agathe, where are you? Say something, speak to me, send me a sign.
I thought I might write a novel. A detective novel in which I would search everywhere for her, would follow every lead, all the streets, the places she used to hang out, track her digital footprint, do searches on social media, seek out her acquaintances, even past ones (when was the last time you saw her?); an investigation where I interviewed mediums too, even the phony ones, the Madame Irmas in their trailers, the fake African witch doctors, the fortune-tellers in chic neighborhoods.
&nb
sp; Yes my Agathe, I was tempted to go see mediums, the real ones, those who really connect you to the dead. I’d done it before, remember I even told you about it, that 25th of June.
Five years after my father’s deadly accident, I met a medium, on rue Pajol, behind the Gare de L’Est train station. She met with people at her kitchen table. She asked me to tell her about my father, to ask him questions. I did what she asked. And suddenly he spoke to me, through this woman’s voice. I recognized his words, his stark sense of humor, even his intonations. He told me what he made of my life. Gave me some advice. Everything was true, precise. I left the “meeting” at once exhausted and thrilled. My father was there somewhere. It was strange imagining him roaming around my life, but, at that instant, I was happy to have spoken to him.
I went back to rue Pajol a few years later, to try to communicate with my mother this time. She had just died in my arms. After twelve months of battling a cancer that had spread and that she refused to name, right up to her last breath. Denial, there again. She weighed next to nothing, and the look in her eyes showed that she was lost in the fathomless depths of her anguish.
“Enough already, what is all this fuss about? I do NOT have cancer! I’m not going to die for goodness’ sake!”
Those were her last words, her last scream rather, before going silent forever.
The medium explained to me that she needed to be left alone, that she was not at peace, that she roamed ceaselessly … I would get nothing more. That was where I left it.
I didn’t go see a medium to speak to you, Agathe. I can speak with you when I want to, but you don’t answer, I don’t know where you are. I would so like to know. And to chat, too …
Agathe's Summer Page 3