TIDYING UP HER THINGS
November 22
11:00 p.m.
Everything is in its right place. From the laundry basket, I take the last things of hers that still bear her scent. I press them against my face every night, so that I can fall asleep with that smell of eternity. But nothing else has moved. I can’t. And yet the funeral is in two days and I must choose the clothes she will wear. I wish she could stay naked. I wish I could slip into the coffin with her, both of us naked. And let them close the lid so we can finally warm each other up.
My hand touches the fabrics hanging in the closet. Each material is a memory. The wool of her long coat is a walk through the forest one winter morning. Her nose is red, her eyes peer over her glasses. She has one hand in her pocket, the other in my hand. Hélène lived in the present. She gave herself entirely to the moments that she lived. We had a bench that was ours in those woods. That was where I asked her to marry me. She pretended to be surprised.
Under a plastic cover, a light tulle skirt, slightly off-white. Time has darkened it. It was the skirt she wore the first time we kissed. The veils danced around her. Like butterflies caught in a net. She was a dancer in a music box. This will be the one. Soon, under the gravestone, surrounded by envious corpses, a little dancer will wait for her box to be opened. From above, Melvil and I will hear the music play.
On a shelf, the cotton of her T-shirts. Relics of youthful freedom, lived for music. Led Zeppelin, the Misfits, Sleater-Kinney, the Cramps, the Ramones . . . she wore rock ’n’ roll like a badge of honor. Transcended by the riffs and the rhythms that beat inside her head. No posturing. No pretending. When Hélène let you into her bubble, you felt privileged. Chosen by a soul who gave herself without restraint. I was the one to whom she gave everything. The king of her world.
Higher up, I grab a brightly colored shirt: happy orange, with little white checks. She would tie the hem around her hips, exposing the lower part of her belly that I kissed so many times.
She was summer. Warm, alive, sometimes crushed by an oppressive heat wave. Sometimes threatened by an evening storm. But a season of freedom. In summer, the nights are short. We feel like loving.
Right at the top, boxes belonging to a collection that was just getting started: her formal shoes, her stilettos. Heels so high they seemed to go on forever. Leather laces up to her ankle, boots that were not made for walking. Hélène was a bird-woman, slender and light, and her shoes slept in their boxes most of the time. And yet I can still hear them echoing on the floorboards. One love-filled morning, half-naked, when she put them on just for the pleasure of wearing them. It didn’t matter that no one saw them except me. She didn’t care about the rest of the world. She was the fulcrum of ours. Everything revolved around her. The moon was our planet. We were its only two inhabitants.
On her dressing table, the lid is still missing from the tube of mascara, her glasses left casually aside, awaiting her return. She thought she was plain. So she wore makeup.
She would spend hours in front of that mirror, getting ready to go out. The ritual was skillfully organized. Preparing her skin, then the foundation, eyes, mouth, and finally the blush on her cheeks. It was a spectacle. And, like an actor putting on her costume, she became someone else with the mask of light in place. The gentle, reserved young woman became a majestic lady.
I loved them both equally. One lived in the other. She was the two of them, together.
In the bathroom, perfectly aligned in rows, her bottles of perfume. They bear the names of sensuality: Louve, Bas de Soie, Datura Noir. I can still taste it in my mouth, when I kissed her stretched-out body. Her mouth was cool, her breasts were soft, her back slightly arched, her hips accentuated. Together, we learned to love.
Louve was her favorite.
On the bed, her clothes are placed as they will be when she is buried. As I spray them with perfume, I seem to see them rise up. On the lifeless fabric, little by little, her body appears. Her fragile shoulders, her legs, her hands, her buttocks, her breasts. She is there, all mine.
I lie next to that invisible body. Her breath caresses my neck. She embraces me. Puts her hand on my face. Tells me that everything will be all right. This is the last time we will be able to love each other.
LETTER FROM MELVIL
November 24
4:00 p.m.
The day of the funeral. Melvil is too young to come with me. I am alone before a swarm of sadness. I don’t want to talk, I have already said too much. So I lend my words to he who does not yet have any, my voice to he whose voice cannot be heard. I no longer am. I am him.
Mama,
I am writing you this note to tell you that I love you. I miss you. Papa is helping me because I’m still very young. Don’t worry about him—I’ll look after him. I take him for walks, we play with my little cars, we read stories, we take baths together and we have lots of hugs. It’s not the same as it was when you were there, but it’s okay. He tells me everything will be all right, but I can tell he’s sad. I am sad too.
The other night, we looked at photos of you on the phone. We listened to your song too. We cried a lot. Papa told me you won’t be able to come and see me anymore. He also told me that we were a team now, the two of us. A team of adventurers. I liked that idea because Papa was really smiling when he said it. Because recently when he’s smiled at me, it’s as if he were crying.
Papa told me that we’ll get by, and that when things aren’t going well, we will think about you because you’ll be there, with us. He asked all your friends to write me a letter that I’ll be able to read when I’m older. He told me we weren’t the only ones who loved you, but that no one else loved you as much as we did. He also told me that children do not have memories before they are three, but that the seventeen months I spent with you will make me the man I will become.
There have been lots of things happening around us recently. I think it’s partly because of Papa, but he didn’t do it on purpose. There are ladies who stop us in the street to say hello, the telephone never stops ringing, and I get presents from people I don’t even know. I tell him it doesn’t matter, that you always loved us as we were and that you would have forgiven him for all of that.
You have to forgive me too because I couldn’t be here today. You know me—I don’t like it when there are too many grown-ups. And Papa told me it took a long time and it was cold. But Papa also promised me that we would come to see you tomorrow, the two of us.
Okay, well, I can’t wait to see you tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and all the days after that. I miss you, Mama. I love you.
Melvil
THE END OF THE STORY
November 24
10:00 p.m.
I started writing this book the day after I posted the letter on Facebook, maybe even that same evening. Whenever Melvil is in day care, I sit at my computer to disgorge all these words that live inside my head. Like the neighbors upstairs who listen to music too loud. I type them on my keyboard to quiet them, so they will stop fighting and let me sleep.
As soon as they appear on the screen, I look at them like foreign bodies, I read them to understand them, I reread them to understand myself, and end up loving them. I watch them from afar, holding hands. Sometimes I try to call out to them, but my voice doesn’t reach them. The words don’t belong to me anymore.
I had to write quickly. I am the one who loves Hélène, not the one who loved her. Before death drops the curtain down on the person I was, without a final encore, I am still this naive fool prevented from falling by hope. Who knows what I’ll become tomorrow, when my grief has let me fall?
Like a brief, fleeting love, an all-consuming passion, it is just passing by. A vivid reflection of the love that shone so brightly. It is beautiful, intense, I hold it tight against me. But I know that it has almost left me already.
In search of another lover to torment, it goes on its way, aban
doning me to its sad traveling companion. Mourning.
I spot its mark, a gray stain that appears on my side. I have already seen it grow, in the same place, a few years ago, when I lost my mother. This one is darker. It spreads faster too. It is only a question of days, weeks now; I am besieged. It covers almost the whole of my stomach. I no longer feel like doing anything. Eating is torture.
Soon it will insinuate itself into my chest, press against my thorax to prevent me from breathing. Penetrating what remains of my heart, it will discharge its death-colored venom through all of my veins and arteries. My legs will no longer be able to hold me up, my knees will lock in place, and my feet will turn to clay. It will drag down on my shoulders to make them slump, and I won’t be able to lift my arms. My body will abandon me, but there will still be my mind. Given a suspended sentence, so I can watch myself sink.
But I am not afraid. I am waiting for it, I know it. Sometimes I try to convince myself to be patient, but the gray stain is remorseless, meticulous. From the base of my neck, it will rise at last up my throat, its grip growing tighter and tighter. My nose will no longer be able to recognize the smell of a memory. My eyes will see only what is in front of them.
I would have liked my first book to be a story, not mine. I would have liked to love the words without fearing them.
There have been times when, as someone else whose opinion I have sought has read out loud the words I typed on my computer, it seemed to me as if I were discovering those words, hearing them for the first time. I was almost surprised to find out how difficult life was going to be for those two little guys. I wanted to help them. I loved them too, the pair of them. With their ladybugs and their supermarket meals and the day-care ladies who will never replace Mama.
I couldn’t tell a story. That was not how things appeared to me. I have no beginning, no end, and every hour overwhelms my entire being. My present must become past, and I drift through this everyday life without time, through these days without hours.
Since Hélène’s death, there is no tale to tell. It’s the end of the story. There are only these instants that rise up, taking me by surprise. It was these moments I had to write about, Polaroids of a life that has not yet gotten its breath back.
I await that evening when, my face already darkened, I press my still-pink lips to my son’s forehead as he lies in bed. One last kiss from the man I was, the one who loved his mother like no other, the one who saw him born, eyes open to the world, the one who dreamed of a life where they would take the time to love each other. The last moment of our life before.
When he falls asleep that night, I will abandon myself completely to darkness.
Tomorrow, we will go to see his mother. This book is almost finished.
It will not heal me. No one can be healed of death. All they can do is tame it. Death is a wild animal, sharp-fanged. I am just trying to build a cage to keep it locked in. It is there, beside me, drooling as it waits to devour me. The bars of the cage that protect me are made of paper. When I turn off the computer, the beast is released.
MAMA IS THERE
November 25
7:45 a.m.
Melvil has just guzzled down the contents of his bottle. He hasn’t lost his appetite. He sits between my legs and we savor the early-morning calm in the still-warm bed. We both try to prolong the pleasure. I softly hum songs to him. He lists all the elements of my face: “Papa’s nose,” “Papa’s mouth,” “Where are Papa’s ears?” Neither of us wants to leave the comfort of that morning.
We have to get ready, get washed. Before, a shower was just a shower: hot water, soap, shampoo. This morning, it is an adventure, and Melvil is the hero. And the villain of the story is the showerhead, a strange metal face that spits hot, smoking liquid from its many mouths, making Papa its prisoner. Melvil must do everything he can to liberate me from this curse. He paces around outside the bathroom, coming up with a plan of attack.
Leaving the door open enables him to combat the smoke, which flees instantly.
“Melvil, close the door, I’m cold!”
First victory.
Putting his hands, his arms, his hair, anything he can, under the water seems to accelerate Papa’s liberation.
“You’re going to get all wet. . . . Get out of the bathroom!”
Second victory.
Going away and being silent is the only way to be called back into battle.
“Melvil, where are you, sweetie? Come here!”
Third victory.
But his secret weapon is the picture book. The metal snake stops spitting as soon as it goes in the bathtub.
“No, don’t put the book in the water!”
The fatal blow is delivered. The battle is over.
I break down. I lose it. Tears flood my face. Today, we are going to his mother’s grave.
—
Yesterday, Melvil did not go to the funeral. Too cold, too long, too tough for a little boy. Anyway, this is a moment that we must go through alone. Before going to the funeral, I told him everything. That his mama was going to be buried, that our memories would live with us but that her body would remain down there. I also promised him that we would go to see her the next day.
And yet, today, the closer the moment draws, the more afraid I am. Afraid that he won’t understand. Afraid that he’ll understand everything. Afraid that I haven’t prepared him properly. Afraid that I’ve told him too much. But we have to go.
His eyes like two marbles, he looks at me forgivingly. He knows it is not the wet book that is making me cry. He tries to take the burden of all I can no longer carry. “But you’re too little for that, my love.” A wet hug is enough to reassure him, to reassure me.
We have to get ready. In an intimate silence, we go through the stages of our morning routine, one by one. Diaper, clothes, shoes, jacket, hug. He knows this is not just an ordinary day.
I bring the photo of her and him. I will place it on the headstone so he understands that Mama is there. They are beautiful. Even though there is a drawing of a rocket on it, the pacifier does not leave Melvil’s mouth. His head leans gently toward her so his cheek touches hers. Just the faintest touch, enough to feel her presence. She looks serene, smiling inwardly, eyes trusting. The time is ours. We are on vacation.
Closing the door of the apartment that day is like leaving a life behind us. From now on, it will be strange to us. A place where we no longer live. A place where it feels as if we never lived. Like a little house inside us, full of familiar smells, rituals, and habits, a place we love, a place we feel at ease, but we can never go in there again.
We knocked, scratched at the door, tried to smash it down, but Hélène is locked in, alone in our empty house. The key is with her, buried in Division X of Montmartre Cemetery.
The weather is mild today. A cloud scatters and sunlight pours down on the cemetery like honey flowing from the sky. Only yesterday, it was blood that fell from the clouds. An icy blood that pounded in time with our footsteps against the crowd of umbrellas that filled the wide path. Today, the funeral procession is over. It is toward our new life that we walk.
Melvil holds my hand. His head barely reaches the middle of my thigh, but he looks so big. He has fun jumping in a puddle left by the rain. Little by little, my fear is diluted in the water that noisily splashes as he stamps his feet in it. The game is his weapon, the next bout of silliness his horizon. A child is not weighed down by grown-up things. His innocence is our reprieve.
Left after the central square, that’s where her tomb is. We approach it. We are there. My whole life lies below my feet. Held in a few square feet of stone, cold, and mud. It’s a small thing, a life. I put the photograph in the middle of the white flowers that spangle the gravestone. Like a swarm of stars hung in the night sky. A moonless night. Locked in her vault, she will never reappear.
“Mama is there.”
Suddenly Melvil lets go of my hand. He climbs on the gravestone, crushing the roses and the lilies that are no match for his determination. I am afraid he is looking for her. He keeps going through the jungle of regrets. Grabs the photo. Takes it with him. Then comes back to me, and holds my hand. I know he has found her.
He wants to leave. Right away. No hanging around. He wants to take Mama back home with us. I don’t resist. He wants arms around him. I hold him tight against me. She is with us. There are three of us. There will always be three of us.
On our way out, I see the puddle. I hop into it. He laughs.
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You Will Not Have My Hate Page 4