Mavis Gallant - Overhead in a Balloon

“Brazilians,” said Simone, who watched educational television in the afternoon. “They send all their money home.”

“But in broad daylight,” said Roger.

“They don’t earn as much as you think.”

“There could be little children playing in the Bois.”

“We can’t help our children by living in the past,” said Simone. Roger wondered if she was having secret talks with Father Rousseau. “Stop that,” she told the barking dog.

“He’s not deliberately trying to hurt their feelings,” Roger said. Because he disliked animals — in particular, dogs — he tended to make excuses for the one they owned. Actually, the dog was an accident in their lives, purchased only after the staff psychologist in Luc’s old school had said the boy’s grades were poor because he had no siblings to love and hate, no rivals for his parents’ attention, no responsibility to any living creature.

“A dog will teach my son to add and subtract?” said Roger. Simone had wondered if a dog would make Luc affectionate and polite, more grateful for his parents’ devotion, aware of the many sacrifices they had made on his behalf.

Yes, yes, they had been assured. A dog could do all that.

Luc was twelve years old, the puppy ten weeks. Encouraged to find a name for him, Luc came up with “Mongrel.” Simone chose “Sylvestre.” Sylvestre spent his first night in Luc’s room — part of the night, that is. When he began to whine, Luc put him out. After that, Sylvestre was fed, trained, and walked by Luc’s parents, while Luc continued to find school a mystery and to show indifference and ingratitude. Want of thanks is a parent’s lot, but blindness to simple arithmetic was like an early warning of catastrophe. Luc’s parents had already told him he was to train as an engineer.

“Do you know how stiff the competition is?” his mother asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you want to be turned down by the best schools?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to be sent to a third-rate school, miles from home? Have you thought about that?”

Roger leaned on Simone, though he did not need to, and became querulous: “Sylvestre and I are two old men.”

This was not what Simone liked to talk about. She said, “Your family never took you into consideration. You slept in your father’s study. You took second best.”

“It didn’t feel that way.”

“Look at our miserable country house. Look at your Cousin Henri’s estate.”

“His godmother gave it to him,” said Roger, as though she needed reminding.

“He should have given you compensation.”

“People don’t do that,” said Roger. “All I needed was a richer godmother.”

“The apartment is mine,” said Simone, as they walked arm in arm. “The furniture is yours. The house in the country is yours, but most of the furniture belongs to me. You paid for the pool and the tennis court.” It was not unpleasant conversation.

Roger stopped in front of a pastry shop and showed Simone a chocolate cake. “Why can’t we have that?”

“Because it would kill you. The specialist said so.”

“We could have oysters,” Roger said. “I’m allowed oysters.”

“Luc will be home,” said Simone. “He doesn’t like them.”

Father Rousseau sent for the Clairevoies again. This time he wore a tweed jacket over a white sweater, with a small crucifix on one lapel and a Solidarność badge on the other. After lighting his cigarette he sat drumming his fingers, as if wondering how to put his grim news into focus. At last he said, “No one can concentrate on an exam and on a woman. Not at the same time.”

“Women?” cried Simone. “What women?”

“Woman,” Roger corrected, unheard.

There was a woman in Luc’s life. It seemed unbelievable, but it was so.

“French?” said Roger instantly.

Father Rousseau was unable to swear to it. Her name was Katia, her surname Martin, but if Martin was the most common family name in France it might be because so many foreigners adopted it.

“I can find out,” Simone interrupted. “What’s her age?”

Katia was eighteen. Her parents were divorced.

“That’s bad,” said Simone. “Who’s her father?”

She lived in Biarritz with her mother, but came often to Paris to stay with her father and brother. Her brother belonged to a political debating society.

“I’ve seen him,” said Simone. “I know the one. She’s a terrorist. Am I right?”

Father Rousseau doubted it. “She is a spoiled, rich, under-educated young woman, used to having her own way. She is also very much in love.”

“With Luc?” said Roger.

“Luc is a Capricorn,” said Simone. “The most levelheaded of all the signs.”

So was Katia, Father Rousseau said. She and Luc wrote “Capricorn loves Capricorn” in the dust on parked cars.

“Does Luc want to marry her?” said Simone, getting over the worst.

“He wants something.” But Father Rousseau hoped it would not be Katia. She seemed to have left school early, after a number of misadventures. She was hardly the person to inspire Luc, who needed a model he could copy. When Katia was around, Luc did not even pretend to study. When she was in Biarritz, he waited for letters. The two collected lump sugar from cafés but seemed to have no other cultural interest.

“She’s from a rich family?” Simone said. “And she has just the one brother?”

“Luc has got to pass his entrance examination,” said Roger. “After he gets his degree he can marry anyone he likes.”

“ ‘Rich’ is a relative term,” said Simone, implying that Father Rousseau was too unworldly to define such a thing.

Roger said, “How do you know about the sugar and ‘Capricorn loves Capricorn’ and how Luc and Katia got to know each other?”

“Why, from Katia’s letters, of course,” said Father Rousseau, sounding surprised.

“Did you keep copies?” said Simone.

“Do you know that Luc is of age, and that he could take you to court for reading his mail?” said Roger.

Father Rousseau turned to Simone, the rational parent. “Not a word of reproach,” he warned her. “Just keep an eye on the situation. We feel that Luc should spend the next few weeks at home, close to his parents.” He would come back to Rennes just before the examination, for last-minute heavy cramming. Roger understood this to be a smooth Jesuitical manner of getting rid of Luc.

Luc came home, and no one reproached him. He promised to work hard and proposed going alone to the country house, which was near Auxerre. Simone objected that the place had been unheated all winter. Luc replied that he would live in one room and take his meals in the village. Roger guessed that Luc intended to spend a good amount of time with Cousin Henri, who lived nearby, and whom Luc — no one knew why — professed to admire. Cousin Henri and Roger enjoyed property litigation of long standing, but as there was a dim, far chance of Henri’s leaving something to Luc, Roger said nothing. And as Simone pointed out, meaning by this nothing unkind or offensive, any male model for Luc was better than none.

In the meantime, letters from Katia, forwarded from Rennes, arrived at the Paris apartment. Roger watched in pure amazement the way Simone managed to open them, rolling a kitchen match under the flap. Having read the letter, she resealed it without trace. The better the quality of the paper, the easier the match trick, she explained. She held a page up to the light, approving the watermark.

“We’ll need a huge apartment, because we will have so many children,” Katia wrote. “And we’ll need space for the sugar collection.”

The only huge apartment Simone could think of was her own. “They wish we were dead,” she told Roger. “My son wishes I were out of the way.” She read aloud, “ ‘What would you be without me? One more little Frenchman, eternally studying for exams.’ ”