‘That’s okay.’ I didn’t normally leave it until the day to mention it, given everything the anniversary entailed. Philippe knew the hardest part was dealing with my mom and with a nine-hour time difference I was accustomed to having it hang over me like a dark cloth.
The ice-cream parlour had more flavours than I’d seen even in Nice or Italy. I chose strawberry and marshmallow, in need of the sickly sugar high Christopher and I used to love, the whole family toasting marshmallows on long skewers around the fire pit dad used to build. Mom used to smile when he said he’d found paradise in giant redwood country, and he said it all the time.
For once I didn’t try to push the memories away – some of them were happy. But as I was about to discover, the ice-cream was flavoured with the marshmallow herb, not the candy, and was so strange and unpleasant that once the strawberry was gone I had to throw the cone away.
By the time we were back on the road it was almost six – about as late as we could decently arrive and call it late afternoon. Philippe and Henri were back-slapping and talking about beer within seconds, disappearing inside with the wheels of our weekend bags making furrows behind them.
Geneviève and I were left giving each other stiff, awkward smiles and talking about the traffic when neither of us gave a damn. I was babbling away without thinking, a risk I could ill afford, but an overwhelming fatigue was afflicting my brain as much as my body – a regular and unwelcome counterweight to the euphoric rushes I shouldn’t have been getting.
We went into the old-fashioned kitchen with the stone floor and the local woman cooking for us looked up only briefly from the stove. Geneviève and I stood side by side at the large window, silently looking out to sea. The sky was overcast until the sun edged one cloud with a blinding mercury border, causing us both to shield our eyes. It felt like someone up there was playing games with me, the last person on earth who believed in silver linings, but it was something that I could stand here at all. There was hope for me the day I discovered I could look at the sea and be more affected by its beauty than its savagery.
‘We always spent summers in Normandy when I was a child,’ Geneviève said. ‘I would have preferred to grow up here.’ She stole a glance at me as if she knew that I’d grown up too fast by the sea, my childhood ending in the space of a day. I’d missed out on the luxury of figuring things out over time and having some fun doing it, getting my heart broken the way it’s meant to be done.
Even before she said it, I realised she did know about Christopher. ‘This must be a very painful day for you and your parents, Alexandra.’ Inside my head I could hear myself repeating the same two words:
How? in a blend of outrage and disbelief.
Don’t! in a small wounded voice.
But Geneviève couldn’t hear what I didn’t say. She placed her hand on my arm, that sterile gesture of hers that was the best she could manage. I had to restrain myself from shaking it off. And I was supposed to be the cold one?
‘When your maman spoke to me of your brother’s accident she assumed I already knew. I was so sorry to hear it. Such a tragic story.’
‘It’s not a story,’ I said bitterly. It’s our life. It’s all we are to each other, all we’ll ever be. I cursed my mother and her opposite approach to our family tragedy, her compulsion to share it with anyone who’d listen. Her need of a new confidante was so great that even one five and a half thousand miles away would do. On my territory. I cursed the day my mom’s endless fascination with the Malavoines had driven me to point out that she could call Geneviève herself.
The strongest urge to turn and walk out of the house rose up inside me but that would be pure histrionics. I wouldn’t do that to my husband, who, along with Emily, had always respected my wish not to tell other people about my past. That was how I wanted it after two whole years of being that girl and having to explain to other kids that it wasn’t drowned to death.
In the nick of time I acknowledged that my anger was misdirected. It wasn’t Geneviève’s fault she knew or that she didn’t do displays of emotion. She was trying to be nice. ‘Thank you,’ I said, touching her hand fleetingly to bring the exchange to an end.
The gift that Philippe and I had gone to so much trouble for was well received. Geneviève closed her eyes as she inhaled the orange blossom aroma of the soap, giving out a ragged sigh which took me aback. I had never seen a sensual side to her. To think that at my age she’d given birth to Jean-Luc, the defining event of her life.
She showed me to the room Philippe and I had stayed in some four years ago. As soon as I saw the carved wooden headboard I knew Philippe was mistaken: I remembered making love in this bed, and that it was good. Geneviève left me to freshen up and before I could get roped into anything, I slipped out of the house with my phone and down the steep path to the side of the garden which led to a sandy beach.
My mom is a great one for anniversaries. For a long time I didn’t understand it but I do now. Her grief for Christopher was so overwhelming that she never acknowledged mine or my father’s, driving him to seek comfort elsewhere and when that wasn’t enough, to leave the country. But for me it had been there all along, some days more than others. Sometimes a handsome dark-haired stranger on the Metro made me think of the man my brother might have become. Sometimes I thought of the wife and family he may have had and the joy that would have brought my mother, of all the happiness that could have occupied the space taken by sadness in our lives.
I used to believe that because there can be no solution to grief there was no point talking about it. It’s a shame I couldn’t do this before. But here we are, and I think the time has come.
Chapter Forty Three
For Mom, the anniversary of Christopher’s death was the one day she could legitimately air her loss and have it acknowledged. She’d have brought it up with her hairdresser, the mailman, our neighbour Lenny, as if he could ever forget. They’d heard it all a thousand times so no wonder she was always on the lookout for fresh sympathy, the inevitable change in demeanour when you land that on someone. But the two of us still had to go over it every year, without any prospect of comfort. Since my dad left, first for the woman in the next town, then to pursue his career in the Amazon rainforest, I was the only one bound by her grief. It followed me everywhere I went.
She’d wanted me to be with her where it happened today so I could say it again to her face: I’m sorry. The round decade anniversaries are the worst. I’d accepted by the first of them that I’d never hear her say It wasn’t your fault, Alexandra.
Mom would be waiting for the call, likely pacing up and down near the point where Christopher was swept away. I pictured a beautiful California morning, as far removed from that day as could be imagined, the kind of calm that makes such horrors seem impossible.
* * *
We knew a storm was closing in but after several days of being cooped up with us, Mom sent me and Christopher out with our dog Gershwin in a break between downpours. It wasn’t a large house and we were driving her nuts with noisy games I’d dreamed up. I was forever giggling and acting the fool and Christopher, much quieter by nature, was my audience. He adored me.
I was ten years old, so innocent I’d only found out about sex the week before, from a friend who’d got most of the facts right. That morning on the beach I passed my new knowledge on to my little brother, only eight – it was an irresistible chance to show off once we were on our own. I can still recall Christopher’s expression as the wind whipped our hair so hard against our faces that it stung. The beach was deserted, the sky so dark it felt closer to late afternoon than lunchtime. At first he didn’t believe me, then he was so frightened and appalled (as I secretly was too) that he burst into tears and was inconsolable, even when I pretended I’d made it all up.
If we went home with him like this it would all come out and I’d be in big trouble with Mom. I let Gershwin off the leash despite her strict instructions because Christopher loved to chase him along the beach. But Ger
shwin did something he’d never done before, bounding up onto the rocks and leaping at the waves as if daring them to wash him away.
My brother would have done anything for that dog. I’ll never know if Christopher heard me screaming not to go after him. So I was forced to go after both of them, my useless Keds slipping on the slimy boulders, taking me down almost immediately. I bashed the side of my head so damn hard when I fell, just out of the water’s reach, registering overwhelming pain in the seconds before everything went black. It could easily have been both of us.
As little chinks of daylight reappeared I fought my way back to consciousness. I was no use to Christopher knocked out. I was no use to him at all. The wretched mutt survived.
So you see, I have prior knowledge of situations like this. Enough understanding not to judge those whose instinct is to judge me. When terrible things happen it helps to have someone to blame.
* * *
The beach was almost deserted at the hour when vacationers leave the shore in search of hot showers, apéritifs and dinner. In the distance a big family group was traipsing toward the car park, laden with the equipment of a day’s fun. Despite myself, the traces of these strangers’ enjoyment made me smile: a fairy-tale château de sable with a moat, names scored in the sand waiting to be washed away by the tide (Jérôme, Clarisse, Ludovic, Marie-Jeanne), a swirl of shells.
Since I had left for Coldwater my mom and I had spent just two of Christopher’s anniversaries together (doubling the misery, it seemed to me) and I had never had this ritual conversation whilst actually on a beach.
The clarity of the ringtone told me it was going to be a good line.
‘So you did call in the end,’ my mother said, without saying hello. ‘I was starting to think you’d forgotten.’
I knew it would be best to keep moving, to step out of my flip-flops and douse my feet in the spray, but the lurch of anger in my chest made me sit down, pulling my knees in tight to contain it.
‘There was nothing to stop you calling me.’ That idea had never occurred to me but now it was like something I’d picked up and couldn’t shake free from my hand. ‘You never have called me on Christopher’s anniversary, which is odd, really, when you think about it.’
‘What exactly is your point, Alexandra?’
‘It’s like you’re the only one who lost someone that day. Do you ever think about me and Dad? Do you ever think about the fact that I was there? Don’t answer that,’ I said, although my mother had not attempted to. ‘You do, but only so you can pin it all on me. You’ve never thought what it was like for me to see it happen. Christopher was my brother. I tried to save him!’
‘He was my little boy,’ my mother said, playing the trump card. There was something theatrical about the tremor in her voice. A stoking rage lifted me to my feet and my finger hovered over the end call button but I was powerless to press it.
‘I don’t care that you loved him more than me, I honestly never did. But only one of your kids died and you could never seem to see that. I was only ten years old and I used to wish I’d died too because that would have been easier on both of us. You wouldn’t even look at me.’ She was crying now. Again. I used to think she’d never stop. ‘You told me not to call you Mom anymore.’
‘I never did such a thing! I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You think I’d make that up? Or imagine it?’ Maybe she never meant it and just blurted it out in the agony of those early days, not realising the words would remain for ever carved into me, growing as I did, never healing over. ‘I was there that time Dad came back from Brazil, I know you didn’t fight for me. Do you remember what I said when he told me I had to go to school in England?’
‘No,’ she said. Of course she didn’t.
‘I said, I can’t leave Mom all alone.’
‘Your father made the right decision. He was holding up better than me. Christopher’s death didn’t affect him the same way.’
‘It broke him!’ I was shouting now. ‘And it broke me. Other people cared’ – I thought of Emily and her mother and big sisters, all the different-shaped hugs I got used to, and I was grateful for them – ‘but it was you I wanted, and you were never there.’
‘So I was a terrible mother. Are you done? Anything to add before we say goodbye?’
‘Nothing.’ I said. ‘Nothing at all.’
Chapter Forty Four
At dinner we were served poulet Vallée d’Auge, a sublime chicken dish with mushrooms and apple slices in a heavy cream sauce laced with Calvados liqueur. I was about to comment on it being a traditional Normandy recipe when I stopped myself. There was making an effort, and there was trying too hard.
It’s been a dilemma ever since I married Philippe. Should I be trying to act French? That’s not something you can consciously decide, it would just happen. France may have been my home for a long time, but I still don’t belong here. And if home is where you feel whole, it’ll never happen now.
Making a virtue of my otherness hasn’t been an option either. As Americans go I’m aware that I’m a disappointment. Not having lived there in years I’m not in tune with life in the States and I don’t possess the qualities everyone expects: I’m not super friendly or effusive. It’s too boring to explain about my British half and the French don’t make much distinction anyway, but I do have some supposedly British traits: reserve, sarcasm, hang-ups about sex… (I guess I can cross that off now).
Philippe and Henri had been laying into the booze ever since we arrived and Geneviève’s expression told me this had not passed her by. She may have delivered the invitation but there was an indefinably strange atmosphere that made me wonder how she felt about us being here, whose idea it had really been. I don’t think she wanted it any more than I did.
The men were speaking loudly, occasionally using words of Niçard dialect not even Geneviève would understand; hotly debating one controversial topic after another although they mostly agreed, thumping the table for emphasis.
‘This country’s going to shit,’ Henri said. ‘Record unemployment, l’islamisation, our inability to think globally. We’re basically ruined. What do you think, Alexandra?’
Why was he asking me?
Geneviève looked so pained that I felt sorry for her. The longer I had known them, the more I suspected that Henri had married her for the advantages her wealth and connections would bring to his career. He had probably only ever done one thing right in her eyes – giving her Jean-Luc. Yet instead of turning her attention to her husband or to me in anticipation of my reply, Geneviève was staring at Philippe, or in his direction. In her mind she was probably somewhere else entirely. It was tempting.
‘Well,’ I said; it was easier for me to neutralise the discussion with platitudes than it would be for someone with a firmer grasp of the issues. ‘It’s true you like the good life in France. You take more time for family and friends.’ Lovers, I added silently, certain that Philippe and Henri would be thinking the same. ‘That’s not such a bad thing. There has to be more to life than work and money.’
After agreeing with me, the men immediately returned to their theory that socialism was damaging the art market. ‘Everyone’s so depressed in Paris,’ Henri said. ‘Successful people, happy people, they all want to move to London. That’s where they’re buying art…’
‘Exactement!’ Philippe said. ‘Depressed people make art, they don’t buy it.’
When Geneviève went to clear the table for cheese and dessert, I got up to help whether it was the done thing or not. She set the stack of dirty plates down on the counter and it fell to me to scrape the remains into the garbage. The sight of curling chicken skin was making my stomach churn. As usual I’d eaten too much, leaving no morsel untouched. When Philippe and I were first together Geneviève once complimented me on my appetite and I’d felt self-conscious about it in her company ever since. But I was so tormented by the cruel and heartless tirade I’d unleashed on my mother that I accepted what
ever sustenance I could to make it to the end of this miserable day, all the while counting the hours until we returned to Paris and Philippe and Vanessa left for the south. I’d get Jean-Luc out of my system for both our sakes, before we got in any deeper. And then I’d finally get my head together. It’s good to have a plan.
My mouth began to water as Geneviève arranged tiny raspberries on the tarte au citron with architectural precision but I expressed my admiration as if for an object of beauty, not one I was desperate to devour. It was time to start taming my hunger.
Henri made a lewd remark about Valérie Trierweiler, which was followed by a particularly raucous burst of laughter from the dining room, and one of the men, I couldn’t tell which, shushed the other almost as loudly. I was embarrassed for them, behaving like a pair of overexcited frat boys at their age; mostly for Philippe, of course – we were guests here – but also Henri. He was a cultured and intelligent man but right now his son seemed far more mature.
‘Like little children, aren’t they?’ I said, though there was nothing endearing about their antics.
Geneviève arched her immaculate eyebrows and my ridiculous observation merited no further response. ‘How is your charming friend from Montréal? Didier, was it?’
That threw me. Was she just trying to change the subject or did she actually think there was something going on between me and him? Surely not. She would never be so indiscreet as to raise it.
‘Daniel,’ I corrected, deciding not to take issue with ‘charming’, since he’d been so smooth with her. ‘Oh, we say “Hello” when we pass each other running but we haven’t really spoken since that day at Bon Marché.’ Which we hadn’t, despite Daniel’s many attempts to waylay me. It would be so much easier if I were sleeping with him, a player, someone I could cut loose when I wanted out, especially as he planned to leave Paris soon. If I’d set out to have an affair, Daniel would have been ideal. With his sense of humour he’d probably be good in bed. A bit of harmless fun. Trust me to go for the other kind.
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