Who You Think I Am

by Camille Laurens

  Aren’t you supposed to listen to me rather than interrupt? And why didn’t you pick up on “like my mother” instead? Why don’t you want to take that idea farther? Let’s take my mother farther, shall we? Do my word games not do it for you? Are they baking your brawls? Oh, anyway, damn it, since you’re so adamant about this, I’ll tell you where I found the photo, I don’t give a damn really. It was a picture of my niece, Katia. There, happy now? A lot of good that’ll do you…

  She was a pretty brunette and Chris seemed to prefer brunettes, that’s why! You’re a pain, you know.

  I put it in the past tense because…because it’s in the past, that’s all. What would you like me to say, for goodness’ sake? What does it matter to you where she is now? What does that have to do with this? Are you fantasizing about her too? No, no, she never knew. Yes, I’m sure of that. Absolutely sure, yes.

  Because she’s dead. Katia’s dead. What difference does that make? She was already dead when I used her photo. I didn’t kill her if that’s what you’re thinking. Do you want me to confess to all the crime in the world? And now I’m out of here, it’s time for the writing workshop. See you!

  I don’t know. Perhaps just because I wanted her to keep on living. One thing really upset me when Katia died, I ended up with her computer among all her stuff, but because neither I nor anyone else knew her password I never managed to get into her Facebook account or, obviously, to shut it down. So her profile’s still there, years after she died; if you type in her name (but I won’t tell you her name and she used a pseudonym anyway), she turns up, her profile photo with sunglasses (no, another one), her cover picture with a word written in fluorescent yellow: ELSEWHERE. And if you’re friends with her, which I was, you can read her last post—her bugle call at the end of the day—some insignificant comment made two weeks before she died, and messages on her wall from her few friends—or coworkers, rather—regretting her passing, kind of paying her their posthumous condolences, sharing the grief or maybe just the news with her, the news of her death. I wonder what profiles like hers are called in Facebook jargon. Not fakes, no. More like ghosts. That’s what she’s become. A doubly virtual woman—dead but still in limbo on the Internet. So yes, I must have wanted her to keep going somewhere else, yes, ELSEWHERE, for her to be loved, and she was actually loved very little—by a man, I mean—I wanted her beauty to touch someone’s heart. We look alike, we looked alike, a little: she’s my niece, my brother’s daughter. She lived through me, if you like, thanks to that photo. And Chris loved her through me. What’s wrong with that?

  She committed suicide.

  I don’t know. We never knew. She was twenty-eight. Her father—my brother—died three years earlier from his injuries in a car crash. His wife was killed instantly, along with my older sister who was with them. He spent three weeks in the hospital, we even thought he’d pull through, he came out of his coma, but then…I had a chance to promise I’d look after his daughter. Katia was twenty-five at the time, no longer a little girl, but she was fragile, she was susceptible to depression, to drinking too much, to letting people manipulate her, and as she was very pretty…Losing her parents didn’t exactly help, of course. Soon afterward she lost her job—she was an accountant, I think she was bored out of her mind—and to keep the promise I made my brother, I suggested she come stay with us for a while, so she could get in better shape. I still lived near Rouen with my family at the time. I took the last photos of her in the garden, including the one that I later sent to Chris.

  I didn’t know her very well, really. My brother lived abroad for a long time, we hardly ever saw them. I grew close to her after her parents died, but she was always a little reserved, at least with me…She behaved like the only child she was, self-sufficient, kind of solitary actually. She didn’t tell me much about her friends, she never invited anyone to the house, just being discreet maybe, but she can’t have had many anyway because she was new to the area, to the village where we lived. She spent her time on the Internet, it was the early days of Facebook, I remember, but at the time I thought it was dumb, I didn’t really know how it worked. Katia would spend hours at her computer, which irritated me because she was setting a bad example for my kids, they were young and easily influenced—I wanted to keep them away from all those video games and other garbage. And the rest of the time she tanned herself in the garden, and played Ping-Pong with my husband, or she went to rehearsals for his shows, he gave her minor walk-on roles to cheer her up, that’s what he said, they got along well, he said she needed a new father figure.

  She left…she left because she had to go sometime, didn’t she, she wasn’t going to stay with us ad vitam aeternam, was she? I found her a little job as an accountant’s assistant in a cleaning company near Rodez. How? By scouring the work pages of the local paper myself, seeing as she wasn’t doing it. “Seek and ye shall find: it’s true of work as well as husbands,” my grandmother used to say. She didn’t really want to leave, obviously, she was happy with us. But I thought my brother and sister-in-law wouldn’t like her to be idle, at her age. I thought I was doing the right thing. But I got it wrong. I helped her move to Rodez. She took up her job, she wasn’t earning much but it seemed to be working okay. Even if she never got in touch herself to tell us her news, whenever I called her, she seemed to be doing okay. I couldn’t have guessed, you see. We never found out what happened. The police didn’t investigate because they quickly concluded that it was suicide. Not murder or an accident. Suicide.

  Why? First of all the studio door was locked from the inside. There were no signs of a struggle. No note to say goodbye either, mind you. A bottle of gin with quite a dent in it. But most significantly her wrists weren’t broken, that was established at the autopsy. Apparently if you’re pushed or you fall accidentally, you instinctively put your hands out, even if there’s no point, even from the fifth floor, and you break your wrists. But if you throw yourself out voluntarily…

  It reminds me of the story about the guy who fell from the twenty-fifth floor. At each floor he thinks, “Everything’s fine so far…” Do you know that one? Wait, I have a better one. It’s a woman who’s falling from the twenty-fifth floor. She’s caught on the twentieth floor by a man on his balcony and he asks, “Do you fuck?” She says no and he drops her. On the fifteenth floor she’s caught by a man who asks, “Do you suck?” “No,” she stammers. He lets go of her. She continues to fall but on the tenth floor she’s stopped by a man and she frantically stutters, “I’ll fuck and I’ll suck.” “Whore!” says the guy and throws her on down.

  Okay. You don’t find that funny. I love jokes, especially dirty ones. You’re a puritan. Shame. What I mean is, she didn’t find the right man, who would accept her as she was.

  When I was allowed into Katia’s place, they’d done their searches and hadn’t found anything, no clues, no suspect connections. The people where she worked said she was nice, not very sociable; no one had ever known her to be in a relationship despite how beautiful she was. They described her as the dreamy type, often gazing out the window.

  There wasn’t much in her studio, a few folders with administrative papers, bills—I sorted through everything in search of the tiniest detail to shed some light on her private life in the three months she’d spent in Rodez. Nothing. I’d been given her cell phone: nothing—numbers for her coworkers, for a hairdresser, the bank, our numbers. And her parents’, which she hadn’t deleted. There was just one unknown number, and I called it to see: it was unavailable. I thought her computer would have more to say, but her emails didn’t tell me anything, not one was compromising, or even private, maybe she’d deleted them before deleting herself. Her life—twenty-eight years of life—seemed empty, smooth, with not a hitch except her parents’ deaths, she’d kept all the newspaper clippings. The only thing that intrigued me were the ads on her computer, the cookies, you know what I mean, the ones that follow you and keep tabs on you the whole time. There were ads for dating sites, Meetic, eDarling,
that kind of thing. She must have had an account, and I did everything I could to find it, but without the password what could I achieve? I even asked the police to run a computer inquiry to decode Katia’s digital secrets. They didn’t want to. They felt there was nothing to justify such an intrusion into her private life—the dead are entitled to respect too, they told me. But what if some creepy guy on Meetic or something like it drove her to this, I screamed, isn’t that a crime?

  Is that not a crime?

  Is that not a crime?

  But no. Nothing illegal in that. Or you’d have to prove moral harassment, find evidence of intent to cause harm. And then some…What about me, then, did I have any intent to cause harm? The police also told me that with suicides, it isn’t always premeditated, and there isn’t necessarily a specific reason. Hence the absence of clear warning signs, or a suicide note. Katia could have opened the window for a bit of fresh air, because she was hot, and could have propelled herself over the railings on an impulse, a sort of raptus, before anyone has time to see, I’m gone. As if bringing an end to a problem, a terror, a colorless existence, or just an attack of the blues, that’s all. But I don’t believe that. I think she’d met someone on a dating site or on Facebook, who knows which? and she landed herself a nutcase, a cruel guy who made her suffer so much it killed her. A “go die,” in other words! So she’s dead. That’s what she died of. People don’t die, they’re killed. I kill, I am killed. It’s the natural trajectory of life, to kill and be killed. No one gets away.

  Right, bye. There goes the bell.

  I’ve brought you some evidence of what I was saying the day before yesterday. It’s the book Katia was reading when she died. I’ve left the bookmark where I found it, on page 157. She’d almost finished it, and she’d turned some pages over, you’ll see, they’re significant. I was shocked when I saw it on her bedside table. All her books were neatly lined up on shelves, nothing very exciting, I looked at them one by one—some Famous Fives that she’d kept since childhood, accounting manuals, a few detective stories, a treatise on happiness. On happiness! And then this book. I can tell you, I went through it with a fine-tooth comb, read it and reread it. And not just because it was the last depository of my niece’s life, in a manner of speaking. I also read it simply because I was interested in it. I’d just met Joe. Here, listen to this, she highlighted it in yellow:

  Much as this contradicts common preconceptions, the hysterical man (HM) does not like making love. In the worst cases, sex can even be a chore to him and affords him very little pleasure. What HM is interested in is the process of seduction, of arousing expectations and then systematically disappointing them. At this point he dumps you unceremoniously and starts fantasizing about his next prey, the next dupe. The typical HM: Don Juan, condemned to wandering from one woman’s needs to the next, but frustrating them all. His motto: The grass is always greener somewhere else. The modern-day HM is increasingly widespread and spends his life online: on porn sites, dating sites, or gaming, they all shield him from making real-life connections. He is infinitely happier masturbating or meeting up with his buddies. If you commit the folly of marrying him, he will very quickly turn you into a fishing widow, golf widow, or the like. HMs make women suffer but we should not forget that they suffer too. Indeed, unlike narcissists, they feel guilty because they are unable to stop themselves from sabotaging any situation that appears smooth and harmonious, and from making potentially successful relationships fail. They always look for the flaw in a woman, and they find it: with one fatal sentence they get through the crack in your armor, and leave you there. To be avoided at all costs if you are looking for love: an HM will never have the same agenda. Unless you yourself are a hysteric, in which case the relationship will function on the principle of reciprocal frustration! Food for thought!

  Yes, I know, I know, I can see you wincing, okay, so it’s not Freud! Mind you, reading this makes me think Katia must have been hiding a lot. She earmarked lots of other pages, you’d think she’d met every lunatic on earth. There was probably a parallel dimension to her social life, full of fantasies, neuroses, and dubious acquaintances. My brother was pretty strict, she had a sheltered upbringing, she withdrew from the world. You can see that in the photo: she’s smiling but in a restrained sort of way, she’s holding back her smile. The problem with playing hide-and-seek is when you stay hidden and nobody notices. If everyone stops playing when you’re still tucked away behind a bush, what happens to you? Losing the game isn’t about being found; losing it is when no one’s looking for you. The only solution left is to open a window and fling yourself out of this life.

  Yes, neuroses. That word brings you up short, doesn’t it?

  Let’s say I tried to piece together what might have happened to her. And I wanted to give her a second chance, in a way. A second life. But that was after the fact. First I fell in love with Chris, then I sent the picture of Katia. Not the other way around. That’s significant. And if there’s one person who didn’t seem to be a tricky personality, it was Chris. I already told you “cool” was his catchphrase. He adapted to me so easily it was touching. So I loved children? Well, he wanted three. I couldn’t have any? He didn’t mind at all. I longed to travel? He had wanderlust in his soul. I dreamed of a little love nest? He wanted to settle down. I hated jealous men? He wasn’t the jealous type. I was looking for a close, almost symbiotic relationship? So was he. He wanted to be my Prince Charming. I was moved by his eagerness to please me, to accept me, till then I’d experienced pretty much the opposite, I’d always complied with my partner’s wishes and tastes, so I suddenly thought: this is what love is. It’s someone who agrees to share me with me.

  Guilty, yes, of course, because I couldn’t do anything, plus I’m the one who drove her out of the house. Well, I mean, not drove. I just needed to be alone with my family again, especially as things weren’t that good with my husband, I wanted to focus on us again. That failed in a big way: we separated three months later, and Katia’s dead. And then there was Joe. And Chris. And I went crazy.

  Crazy? What I mean by crazy? Are you asking me? Are you the one asking me?

  It means seeing the world as it is.

  Smoking life without a filter. Poisoning yourself right at the source.

  Katia must have seen with that sort of clarity. At some point, she saw the absence of love, so she absented herself.

  It’s different for me. What I saw was loss. Not someone absent. Someone lost. Like lost time. The time I spend with you, for example, that’s lost, it’s wasted. I get the feeling you want to make me say something, but only you know what!

  My husband came this morning with the kids, yes, your information is correct, news travels fast. I couldn’t see them, I was afraid he’d be with his new wife—and their visits upset me, it’s all over, all that business, I’m no longer part of that world. Let’s talk about Chris instead if you’re keen to keep talking. I’ve been dreaming about him and in the writing workshop this afternoon I wrote a page of beautiful text about him, well, I thought it was. Camille seemed pleased.

  After that first phone call, there were others. It was very sweet and very ordinary, but every time we ended a call I had this love anxiety—a fear of loss that I always experience alongside love. I tried reasoning with myself, saying, “This whole thing’s a fabrication. He’s in love with you, but it’s not you. You’re in love with him, but you don’t know him.” But I also kept thinking of Antonioni’s wonderful words from I’m not sure which film: “Love is living in someone else’s imagination.” A fabrication, yes. So what? Being loved means becoming the heroine. Love is a novel that someone else writes about you. And the other way around. It has to be reciprocal, otherwise it’s hell. So the two of us loved each other, Chris and I really loved each other: I lived in his imagination, there’s no doubt about that, and I could tell I was alive inside his head. And I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I tried to picture his life from the information he gave me. An adolescent phrase such
as “I went to the dentist with my mother” or “My grandfather is in the hospital” precipitated me into a state of delirious, loved-up empathy. He talked earnestly about being short of money, his artistic ambitions, and how the one was thwarting the other. And everything he said was laced with very gentle, slightly naive words which left me defenseless: “You’re my ray of sunlight,” “Don’t forget me,” “I want to talk about you to everyone all the time.” But he still called what we had friendship, and so did I. I wondered what Joe—assuming Chris was confiding in him—what Joe thought of such a platonic relationship. He must have thought it completely ridiculous!

  Our conversations almost always happened late in the evening. I often talked quietly so as not to wake my kids during the weeks when I had them, and Chris even ended up asking me why. I hung up quickly without answering, but that triggered a whole new raft of lies. The lies became even more essential when he left Lacanau in June because Joe’s family was taking over the house for the whole summer. Chris didn’t move to Paris where he couldn’t afford the rent, he explained one evening in a very soft, controlled voice, so he went to his parents’ in Sevran. Not very glorious, he said, at nearly thirty-seven, to be back in the suburbs with Mommy and Daddy but he had no choice. How about you, he asked, are you happy where you’re living? You’re in Pantin, is that right? That’s real close to Paris. I hope I’ll come see you soon.