Bye Bye Blondie

by Virginie Despentes

  Véronique plunges into the TV listing for that evening. Gloria is shredding a cardboard beer coaster to pieces, and in her mind formulating her request in several ways: I’ve got this little problem, I don’t know where I’m sleeping tonight, or, Are you by any chance looking for a lodger? Michel rolls himself a cigarette, the Sonics are singing, “’Cause she’s the Witch,” and he beats time with his foot.

  Véronique taps her finger on the two-page spread showing Eric smiling, with the drawn-on mustache.

  “Apparently you used to know him when he lived in Nancy?”

  “Yeah. I was a teenager, so was he. It was a long time ago, I have to say . . .”

  “What was he like?”

  “Oh, cool. We got on okay. But, ouf, he was fifteen. Not hard to be cool at fifteen.”

  Michel agrees and adds: “Yeah, after thirty it gets harder.”

  Many of their mutual friends have left the cool scene, as the years have gone by: they’ve changed drastically, often in surprising ways. How can a punk with a Mohawk, who listens to the right music, has the right attitude, the right leathers, who’s good fun, a real amigo, mutate in a season into a solid respectable citizen, with buried dreams and a mortgage? With the pariah’s meaningless excuse: “That’s life, eh?” as if he’d had good reason for falling into line, conforming, putting up with things. It’s a subject she’s often thought about: in Nancy, it’s true, you can often bump into your old school friends. Beautiful teenagers who’ve turned into fat slobs. Bitter, freaked out, wounded egos, losers, or victims of their pathetic successes.

  Michel sits up. “Oh, yeah, you didn’t finish telling me. You saw him again?”

  “Yes I did, I just told you everything, it lasted all of two minutes. I was completely out of it, I’d just walked out on Lucas, I was switched off. I didn’t say anything. Not a word.”

  “And him?”

  She puts on a silly precious voice and speaks with her mouth wide open: “Blah blah blah, I’m sooo glad to see you, why don’t we get together tonight, blah blah, oh really you know a nice bar? Blah blah blah, a glass of bubbly perhaps? Can my driver drop you off?”

  Then she drops the voice and concludes: “Poor guy, what a dope he’s turned into.”

  “You could tell that in two minutes?” asks Véronique doubtfully.

  “Course I could, it was written all over his face, he was putting it on like crazy.”

  She doesn’t get angry while blaming him. Michel’s looking at her attentively out of the corner of his eye. He rubs his lips.

  “So, that, ‘Oh really, you know a nice bar,’ means you’ve made a date for tonight?”

  “He said he’d drop in here this evening. But I know guys like him: he won’t. Anyway, see if I care, I’m not going to hang around all night.”

  Unwisely, Véronique asks: “Oh, you’re doing something tonight?”

  “Well, I was just going to ask you, I was hoping I might crash at your place.”

  VÉRONIQUE HAS AGREED at once to take her in: “But just for three or four days, okay?” Admiring the friendly, straightforward way she states her conditions, Gloria replies, “Of course, thanks, that’s so cool,” while telling herself that once she has her feet under the table, she’ll manage to extend the stay.

  Véro’s living room: pale yellow walls, postcards pinned up with little clothes pegs, teapot in the shape of a blue elephant, cups with big Japanese fish on them, piles of videos and DVDs, books lined up neatly by size. The graphic albums are stacked on the floor, probably because they won’t fit on the bookshelves. A Batman is sitting down in a corner, arms outstretched and no head. Must belong to some little nephew. Véronique has throngs of sisters, there were eight daughters in the family. All the others have reproduced in multiple copies. She often looks after a kid or two for a day. That’s one of the secrets of her hospitality: she doesn’t mind getting stains on the carpet.

  They’ve hardly arrived before Véronique offers Gloria a spliff. “I wouldn’t say no,” anything to dull the anguish will be welcome tonight. While listening to her voice mail, Véronique has switched on the television and guess what, Eric’s face fills the screen. Clean-shaven, dark blue suit, full of health and well-being. He’s presenting a totally stupid game show, one that Gloria has never been able to understand. He teases the contestants, who all blush pink with pleasure before they make fools of themselves in front of the whole of France, giving ridiculous answers to dopey questions.

  When she’s at home, Gloria zaps it off as soon as it comes on. It’s an acquired reflex. It doesn’t make her feel in any way happy to have known in flesh and blood someone who’s on TV. She thinks it just shouldn’t happen. There are the little people on screen in one world, and then there’s the big, real people in the other. If everyone stays in their place, it’s fine—if not, it creates confusion. She doesn’t dare ask Véro to switch channels, seeing that she seems to like the show.

  Gloria comments, making her voice sound impressed: “Well, get him, great, isn’t it, the older he gets, the younger he looks. Nice to have lots of dough.”

  “Apparently they have loads of makeup on for the cameras. What did he look like for real?”

  “Good-looking. Ghastly.”

  “You don’t like him?”

  “Couldn’t care less. But I like to trash the people on TV. Good way to let off steam, eh?”

  “And you slept with him?” asks Véro, right away. Gloria takes advantage of the moment to show off.

  “Yeah, course. Mind you, in those days I slept with anyone at the drop of a hat, they had to run to get away from me.”

  Eric carries on hosting the show on the small screen, Véronique is staring at him, absolutely glued to it, as if the fact that someone she knows actually went out with him makes the program fantastic. Gloria drinks some tea, burns her tongue, makes a face and adds, “He wasn’t as bad as all that. At least he was interested. Not like some guys who make a song and dance to get you into bed, and say, ‘Okay for you?’ after three pathetic little pokes.”

  Gloria follows Véro into the kitchen, spliff in hand. That familiar lump in her throat. She’s trying to resist calling Lucas. She wants to tell him how sorry she is, how ashamed. She’s lonely, she’d like him to say he loves her and wants her back. Only that’s not what he would say. He’d say, “I’ve had it up to here,” he’d say, “I can’t take anymore of this.” He’d say he was sorry, and would sound sincerely exhausted. And in less than two seconds, she’d have started snarling hysterically that she’d find him and kill him. She knows herself of old. So she’s not going to call him, the same way you’re not going to pick up a cigarette when you’ve just decided to give it up.

  Be patient with the pain, suffer in silence, grit your teeth, wait.

  Gloria unfolds an IKEA chair, such a weird color green, whoever designed it ought to be caught and questioned: Why did you make it that color? The tablecloth has a pattern of fruit. Everything in this house is pretty, it looks grown-up and at the same time definitely feminine. It actually says “respectable housewife,” the kitchen is so well kept, everything in its place. Colored magnets on the fridge, pinned to photos of holidays, Christmas parties, friends laughing with their noses pressed up against the camera, red-eyed like rabbits.

  The frozen vegetables are hissing in the frying pan, and the microwave is humming to warm up some mini pizzas. Between comfort and despair, Gloria is gently getting drowsy.

  Lucas had taken fright. Too many tantrums, too many mornings when she would get up quietly to go and cry, lying in the empty bath, and end up on the bathroom floor, hitting herself and covering her stomach or her face with scratches. She liked to bang her head against the wall as well, scaring herself with the violence of the blows. It gave her a weird feeling inside her skull. An unusual echo. Your skull is a solid piece of work, in her experience. It can be fractured, yes, but it’s fucking solid. She’d realized gradually that he was going to freak out. First it was the mornings, when he found her in
that state, then the evenings when he got home. Then he started getting scared to put his arms around her, because he never knew what her reaction would be. He’d panic when she phoned him. He’d see her number come up on his phone and he wouldn’t know what shape she’d be in.

  And the worst of it was, she couldn’t reproach him with anything. No cracks in his wall where she could hang on and attack him. Of course he didn’t want to have a child with her. Who’d want to, with a madwoman?

  She attacks her belly with her fingernails, as she’s now in the habit of doing. So much so that it’s covered with blue semicircular bruises and nail marks digging into the flesh. Or long red welts that take months to disappear where she’s drawn blood. Stupid belly—prominent and empty.

  She’s at the age when women who haven’t had children realize that they won’t ever now. To be born a woman, the worst fate in practically every society. Just one trump card: the ability to give birth. And in her case, she’s missed the boat. As with everything else. She’s really missed out on everything, from start to finish.

  Gloria sighs, then realizes that she’s suddenly been seized with a burst of enthusiasm. Part of her is rubbing her hands with glee and rolling up her sleeves: Right, who’s next? Through suffering, by a mysterious kind of emotional alchemy, the heart generates its own bursts of sunshine. Alas, they don’t last long.

  “Would you like some herbal tea?”

  If Gloria wasn’t sleeping here, she’d have snapped back: “That stuff? Stupid, money-saving, middle-class fad.”

  Instead, she asked, “No beer left?”

  Terrible feeling as night falls, a cold monster is prowling around her, wanting to grab hold of her and suck out what remains of her reason. Or self-control.

  Véronique has pulled a pile of children’s exercise books out of her big black satchel. She puts them on her desk and starts marking them. Gloria is interested in what she’s doing.

  “You give them grades? Even in nursery classes?”

  “Yes, I draw a little red man with his mouth down when something’s wrong, and a green one with a smile when it’s right. If it’s just peculiar, I draw an orange man with a funny nose.”

  “Poor little kids,” Gloria says with sympathy, “even when they’re five years old, they get to feel they’re failures.”

  “We have to assess them, it’s compulsory. I don’t know what to say really . . . it’s not the worst thing we have to deal with just now.”

  “Yeah right, that’s why you’re on strike all the time.”

  “I’ll let you take my place for a year, and you’d soon see whether we’re on strike all the time. Three weeks and you’d be on your knees, then you’d know what I’m talking about.”

  The telephone rings. Véronique freezes, glances at the time, and picks up, looking anxious. It’s the sort of time when you get bad news. Gloria watches the expression on her face, praying that it’s not some serious crisis. She wants to be able to cry herself to sleep on her pillow, not to have to comfort the friend who’s putting her up. But Véro stands stock-still, opens her eyes so wide she looks like she’s had a face-lift, gasps, replies, “Yes yes yes,” and holds out the phone, pointing to it and whispering excitedly, “It’s him!” Gloria’s heart is jumping under her ribs, she imagines it’s Lucas.

  “So, we meet for the first time in twenty years, and the first thing you do is stand me up!”

  In other circumstances, indeed, she would be amused, or flattered, or mad with rage that he might imagine she’d forgotten the past . . . but this evening she’s simply desperately disappointed that it’s him.

  She replies dully, “Sorry. I couldn’t wait. But honestly, I didn’t think you’d turn up.”

  He’s super excited, in a good mood, cheerful.

  “You’re not far away, is that right? Jérémy told me. Come over here and join us! I’d so like to see you again.”

  He shouts the last bit, she pulls the phone away from her ear. If she had set out to impress Véro, she’d do exactly this. She wouldn’t have minded basking in a little reflected glory, but all she feels is sad, like someone who’s going to be sleeping alone because she’s been thrown out again. She has tears brimming in her eyes and is in no mood to joke, she sighs and replies, “Listen, I’m going to be straight with you. What the fuck makes you think I want to see you?” She articulates every syllable. “You and your fucking stupid TV face, do you get it, go back to your studio and don’t imagine for a second that I’ve forgotten anything, GET IT? ANYTHING AT ALL. Right, bye.”

  She hangs up. Now, as well as feeling sad, she feels ridiculous. Véronique stares at her in astonishment. Gloria feels tears running down her cheeks, her confused feelings are upsetting. She shrugs.

  “Okay, it’s silly to insult him. But it all started with him.”

  “What? Insulting people?”

  “Having anything to do with men. Him, that prick, he was the first Hiroshima in my life. You have to understand, I don’t care if for him it’s all buried in the past, but for me . . .”

  She’s weeping softly now. Sweet tears running down to her lips, she can feel the floodgates about to open, she’ll be bawling soon. Véronique holds out a whole box of Kleenex and asks again, “Sure you don’t want some herbal stuff?”

  “You haven’t got any pot left, have you?”

  Véro goes to look in a drawer, finds a little joint and hands it over. Then she hesitates, but ends up asking all the same, “You really know each other that well?”

  Funny how everyone’s so interested in that.

  She avoids talking about it, because it fascinates them so much, and that really drives them nuts.

  “Big fucking deal. He’s on TV, what’s so special about that?”

  “Well, to be honest, I really like his show.”

  “Well, to be honest back, are you out of your mind?”

  She feels as though she’s stuck in the last century, the olden days, when if you did something at home, you didn’t go telling everyone about it next day. One of Gloria’s big problems is that recently she hasn’t stirred outside her bar. She’s not up to speed with the huge changes that have happened to her contemporaries. For instance, their recent passion for watching trashy TV shows. As if it were fun, as if it were innocent, as if it were anything but pure surrender, and as such, totally unacceptable. She could give them a hard time about it, but she senses that other people are tired and discouraged. Not everyone is like her: still ready to go mad with rage and smash the place up. Most people need rest and something to amuse them, otherwise they wouldn’t get up in the morning.

  Véronique is avoiding her eyes, looking unhappy and embarrassed to have brought it up. She brings a prebaked pie out of the oven and cuts them two large slices. Gloria’s irritation vanishes as she watches her, with a slight feeling of shame. It’s not because her friend likes watching stupid TV shows that she’s in this state. Gloria pushes out her lips to look like a duck, as if it is going to help her think, then decides to try and tell the story. But it won’t come out easily, it was all a long time ago, and she hasn’t thought it through properly since.

  “You know quite well where I met him. Everyone knows it, in this stinking town full of hicks with nothing better to do than gossip about everyone.”

  At that moment, she understands what the “id” means that psychoanalysts go on about. Because right now, the id is talking through her. She can hear herself spitting out the words, spluttering as she speaks, aggressive and unhinged. But the moment when she “makes a decision” to express her anger, that exact moment, she can’t quite reach it.

  Once more, Véronique stiffens in her chair, embarrassed to have provoked this reaction. She apologizes: “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business. I was acting like a groupie, it was indiscreet.”

  The nicest people are always the only ones who ever apologize for being annoying. Pity, that.

  But Gloria’s memory is stuck in a groove, she has a flashback to the same image, almost twen
ty years since it happened, the same image that stays with her: her father is standing in a corridor and watching her disappear. She’s being dragged backward, held up under the arms by two men. Alongside her father are the doctor and her mother.

  They too are looking wretched. The pain spreads around her. As usual, she’s the one causing the pain . . . To get back into her memory, she has to get past the barrier of that image: she’d dropped to the floor screaming, the two men had picked her up and forced her into that place, the institution where they were going to deal with her. For her own good. She’s looking at her father: “No, no, please!” Her screams are hardly noticed. In this place they’re used to them, she finds out later. And he watches her vanishing, his eyes are sad—never has she caused him so much pain. But she’s the one who’s being locked up, and who won’t be able to bear it.

  She must try and keep that image at bay, stop it from turning into a loop, or else . . . But that’s exactly what happens. She holds her head in her hands, the first hot tears burn her eyelids as they well up, then they roll, comfortingly, down her cheeks and fall on the table.

  “It was just after dying that I met Eric.”

  IT WAS IN 1985, days after Christmas. It had been snowing nonstop, the countryside was white everywhere, as it can be in eastern France.

  An acquaintance, a fan of the Cure, always dressed in black, had taken advantage of his mother’s absence to have parties at his place every night. He lived in Jarville, near the railway bridge. Gloria didn’t know him well, but they’d bumped into each other that morning on the twenty-one bus. Impressed no doubt by her look, he’d invited her. Preferring to avoid long negotiations with her parents, she simply didn’t tell them. As usual, and like many other teenagers at the time, she’d climbed out of the window and gone there on foot, it was only five minutes away.

  They were listening to Lydia Lunch. Gloria was wearing a dog collar with a leash, far-out. She’d spent much of the evening walking around a bedroom, listening to the same song on loop. Other kids were out of it on the couch. Two of them were necking, covered with studs and chains, the pair of them, very thin, like two little birds who’d fallen into the water. The bedroom floor was covered with a dark blue fitted carpet, scratchy to the touch, when you put your hands on it. Next door, the TV was on, playing Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.”