Tatiana de Rosnay - A Secret Kept

“Some surprise,” he mutters.

Anger rises. He still gets at me, I marvel. He can still do that, I still let him do that.

“She loved it,” I say hotly. “We had three wonderful days. It was-”

I stop. I sound like an irate kid. Exactly what he wanted. His mouth twitches the way it does when he is amused. Is Mélanie pretending to be asleep? I somehow know she is listening to every word from behind the closed door.

Our father wasn’t always like this. After Clarisse died, he closed up. He became tough, bitter, and always in a hurry. It was hard to remember the real father, the happy one, the one who smiled and laughed, the one who tweaked our hair and made us crêpes on Sunday morning. Even if he was busy, even if he came home late, he’d make time for us. He would play games with us, take us to the Bois de Boulogne, or drive us out to Versailles to walk in the park and fly Mélanie’s kite.

He never shows us his love anymore. He hasn’t done that since 1974.

“I’ve never been fond of Noirmoutier,” he announces.

“Why not?”

He raises his bushy eyebrows.

“But Robert and Blanche liked it, didn’t they?” I ask.

“Yes, they did. They nearly bought a place there. You remember?”

“Yes,” I say. “A big house near the hotel. With red shutters. In the woods.”

“Les Bruyères.”

“Why didn’t they?”

He shrugs. But again, he doesn’t give me an answer. I knew he never got on well with his parents. Robert, my grandfather, hated being contradicted. And although Blanche had a softer disposition, she certainly wasn’t the doting mother type. And he was never close to his sister, Solange.

Is my father such a hard man because his parents were everything but loving with him? Am I a soft and gentle father (Too soft, way too gentle! Astrid would complain after another fight with Arno) because I am afraid of breaking Arno’s wings the way my father broke mine? In fact, I realize I don’t mind coming across as weak, because there is no way I could ever reproduce my father’s harshness with my own son.

“How’s that good-for-nothing teenager of yours?” he asks. He never asks about Margaux or Lucas. Something about Arno being the heir to the name.

Arno’s pale, pointed face comes to me. His spiky, gelled haircut, his sideburns, his pierced left eyebrow. His uneven stubble. Sixteen. A child in a man’s body.

“He’s fine,” I say. “He’s with Astrid now.”

I instantly regret pronouncing her name. I know he will pounce on it and it will spark an endless monologue. How could I have let that woman leave me for another man? How could I have accepted the divorce? Didn’t I know what it would do to me, to the children? Didn’t I have any pride, any balls? Des couilles. With my father, it always boiled down to balls. As I brace myself while he launches into full swing, the doctor appears. His eyebrows come rushing down. His jaw bulges.

“You tell me exactly what the situation is, Mademoiselle. Now.”

“Yes, sir,” she replies very seriously.

And as he turns to open the door to Mélanie’s room, her eyes meet mine. To my astonishment, she winks.

So he does come across as an exasperating little old man. No one is afraid of him. He is no longer the sharp-tongued, impressive lawyer. And somehow that makes me sad.

“I’m afraid your daughter cannot be moved for the moment,” says Dr. Besson patiently, her eyes only barely tinted with impatience.

My father blusters on. “She needs to be in the best of hands, in Paris, with the best doctors. She can’t possibly stay here.”

Bénédicte Besson hardly stirs. But I can tell how deeply the blow strikes by the hardening of her mouth. She says nothing.

“I need to see your superior. The person who runs this place.”

“There is no superior,” says Dr. Besson quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean this is my hospital. I run it. I am responsible for the hospital and for every patient here.”

She says this with such quiet command that my father shuts up at last.

Mélanie has opened her eyes. Our father grabs her hand, hanging on to it for dear life, as if this were the last time he will ever touch her. He leans toward her, half of his body on the bed. The way he clasps her hand moves me. He is realizing he has nearly lost his daughter. His petite Mélabelle. Her nickname from long ago. He wipes his eyes with the cotton handkerchief he always keeps in his pocket. He cannot say a word, it seems. He can only sit there and breathe audibly.

Mélanie is disturbed by this display of emotion. She doesn’t want to see his ravaged, wet face. So she looks at me. For so many years now, our father hasn’t ever shown his feelings, only displeasure or anger. This is an unexpected flashback to the tender, caring father he used to be, before our mother died.

We sit in silence for a while. The doctor leaves, shutting the door behind her. My father’s hand gripping his daughter’s brings back all the times I’d been to an emergency room for my children. When Lucas fell from his bike and sliced his forehead open. When Margaux fell down the stairs and broke her tibia. When Arno had the highest fever I had ever seen. The rush. The panic. Astrid clinging to me. Her face as white as chalk. The clasping of hands.

I look at my father, and I am aware that I am silently sharing something with him for once, although he doesn’t know it, although he can’t see it. We are sharing that bottomless pit of fear you feel only when you have become a parent and something happens to your child.

My thoughts revert to this room and why we are here. What had Mélanie tried to tell me just before the accident? That she remembered something during her last night at the Hotel Saint-Pierre. That she had held it back all day. What could she have recalled? I mentally go back to our stay. So many memories had come flowing in. What could this one have been? Why had she held it back? Was that why she seemed strange since breakfast, almost dazed? Sitting next to her by the Gois, I had asked her what was wrong and she’d shrugged it off. Hadn’t slept well, she’d mumbled. And all morning long, she had been remote. Her strange mood had only just started to wear off when we got into the car to drive back to Paris in the afternoon.

A bustling nurse enters, pushing a cart in front of her. Time to check Mélanie’s blood pressure, make sure her stitches are okay. She asks my father and me to step out for a moment. Stitches? Then I remember. Her spleen was operated on. My father and I stand outside, awkward, tense. He seems to have regained his composure, although his nose is still red. I rack my brains to try to think of something to say to him. Nothing comes. I inwardly laugh at the irony of the situation. Father and son reunite by ailing daughter’s bedside and are incapable of speaking to each other.

Thankfully, my phone buzzes in my back pocket. I quickly step out of the building to answer it. It’s Astrid. Her voice is tearful. I tell her I think Mel is going to be fine. I tell her how lucky we were. She asks if I want her to come with the kids. I feel a surge of pure joy sear through me. If she says things like that, doesn’t that mean she still cares? Doesn’t that mean she still loves me somehow? Before I can say anything, Arno’s raspy voice comes on. He too sounds upset. I know how fond of my sister he is. When he was small, she used to parade him around the Luxembourg Gardens, pretending he was her son. He loved it. So did she. I tell him Mel is going to be stuck here for a while, that she has a cast from her waist to her neck. He says he wants to come and see her. He says Astrid is bringing them. The thought of seeing my family again, all of us together, like the good old days-not just exchanging kids on doorsteps with harassed remarks like “Oh and don’t forget her cough syrup, this time” or “Do remember to sign the report cards, will you?”-makes me want to burst out into a song and dance. Astrid takes the phone again and asks for directions. I try to keep my voice cool and collected. Then she puts Margaux on. Soft, whispery, feminine. “Papa, tell Mel we love her and we are on our way.” She hangs up before I get a chance to speak to rambunctious number three, Lucas. We are on our way, she said.