Tatiana de Rosnay: A Secret Kept

The doctor urges me on.

“What was she telling you?”

Mélanie’s eyes. Her hands clasping the wheel. Antoine, there’s something I need to say. I’ve kept it back all day. Last night, at the hotel, I remembered something. Something about… Her eyes, troubled, worried. And then the car driving off the road.

She fell asleep as soon as they were able to make their way through the sluggish suburban gridlock that circled Paris. Antoine smiled as her head dropped back against the car window. Her mouth opened, and he thought he heard a tiny snore. She had been irritable that morning when he came to pick her up just after dawn. She hated surprises and always had. He knew that, didn’t he? Why the hell was he organizing a surprise trip? Honestly! Wasn’t it bad enough turning forty? Getting over an agonizing breakup? Never having been married, not having any kids, and people mentioning biological clocks every five minutes? “If somebody utters that word one more time, I’ll hit them,” she hissed between gritted teeth. But the idea of facing the long weekend alone was unbearable for her. He knew that. He knew she couldn’t stand thinking about her hot, empty apartment above the noisy rue de la Roquette, and all her friends out of town leaving joyful messages on her voice mail: “Hey, Mel, you’re forty!” Forty. He glanced across at her. Mélanie, his little sister, was going to be forty. He couldn’t quite believe it. Which made him forty-three. He couldn’t quite believe that either.

Yet the crinkled eyes in the rearview mirror were those of a man in early middle age. Thick salt-and-pepper hair, a long, lean face. He noticed that Mélanie dyed her hair brown. Her roots were unmistakably gray. There was something touching about her dyeing her hair. Why? he mused. So many women dyed their hair. Maybe it was because she was his kid sister. He simply could not imagine her growing old. Her face was still lovely. Perhaps it was even lovelier than it had been in her twenties or thirties, because her bone structure had such class. He never tired of gazing at Mélanie. Everything about her was small, feminine, delicate. Everything about her-the dark green eyes, the beautiful curve of a nose, the startling white smile, the slim wrists and ankles-reminded him of their mother. She didn’t like being told that she looked like Clarisse. She had never liked it. But to Antoine it was like their mother peeping out from Mélanie’s eyes.

The Peugeot gathered speed, and Antoine guessed they’d probably be there in less than four hours. They had left early enough to beat the traffic. Despite her questions, he hadn’t breathed a word about their destination. He had just grinned. “Pack enough for a couple of days. We’re going to celebrate your birthday in style.”

There had been a minor problem with Astrid, his ex-wife. A little smoothing out to do. That long weekend was normally “his.” The kids were supposed to be leaving Astrid’s parents’ place in the Dordogne to come to him. He had been firm on the phone. It was Mel’s birthday, she was forty, he wanted to make it special for her, she still wasn’t over Olivier, she was going through a bad patch. Astrid’s voice: “Oh, merde, Antoine. I’ve had the kids for the past two weeks. Serge and I really need some time for ourselves.”

Serge. Even the mere name made him cringe. A photographer in his early thirties. The muscular, rugged outdoor type. He specialized in food. Natures mortes for luxurious cookbooks. He spent hours trying to get pasta to glisten, veal to look savory, fruit to look luscious. Serge. Every time Antoine shook his hand when he came to pick up the children, he was confronted with the hideous recollection of Astrid’s digital camera and what he had discovered in its memory card while she was out shopping that fateful Saturday. At first, puzzled, he had seen only a pair of hairy buttocks clenching and unclenching. And then he had realized with horror that the buttocks were actually pumping a penis into what looked extraordinarily like Astrid’s body. That was how he had found out. He had confronted Astrid, laden with shopping bags, on that doomed Saturday afternoon, and she had burst into tears and admitted that she loved Serge, that the affair had been going on ever since that trip to Turkey with the kids, and that she felt so relieved that he now knew.

Antoine felt tempted to light a cigarette to ward off unpleasant memories. But he knew the smoke would wake his sister and she would make some cantankerous comment about his “filthy habit.” Instead, he concentrated on the highway opening up before him.

Astrid still felt guilty about Serge-he felt it-about how he, Antoine, had found out about their affair. About the divorce. About the aftermath of it all. And she loved Mélanie dearly. They had been friends for a long time, and they worked in the same field, publishing. She hadn’t had the heart to say no. Astrid had sighed, “Okay, then. The kids can come to you later. Give Mel a hell of a birthday.”

When Antoine stopped at a gas station for a refill, Mélanie at last yawned and rolled the car window down.

“Hé, Tonio,” she drawled, “where the hell are we?”

“You really have no idea?”

She shrugged.

“Nope.”

“You’ve been asleep for the past two hours.”

“Well, you did turn up at dawn, you bastard.”

After a quick coffee (for her) and a quick cigarette (for him), they got back into the car. She seemed less petulant, Antoine noticed.

“It’s cute of you to do this,” she said.

“Thanks.”

“You’re a cute brother.”

“I know.”

“You didn’t have to. Maybe you had other plans?”

“No other plans.”

“Like a girlfriend?”

He sighed.

“No girlfriend.”

The thought of his recent affairs made him want to stop the car, get out, and weep. Since the divorce there had been a string of women. And a string of disillusion. Women he had met via the Internet on those infamous websites. Women of his age, married women, divorced women, younger women. He had thrown himself into the dating process with gusto, determined to find it exhilarating. But after the first couple of sexually acrobatic stunts, coming back heavy-hearted and drained to his new empty apartment and his new empty bed, he found the truth staring him in the face. He had shied away from it long enough. He still loved Astrid. He had finally admitted that to himself. He still loved his ex-wife. He loved her so desperately it made him feel sick to his stomach.

Mélanie was saying, “Probably had better, more exciting things to do than to take your spinster of a sister on a long weekend.”

“Don’t be silly, Mel. This is what I want to do. I want to do this for you.”

She glanced at a signpost on the highway.

“Hey, we’re heading west!”

“Clever girl!”

“What’s west?” she asked, ignoring the affectionate irony in his voice.

“Think,” he said.

“Um, Normandy? Brittany? Vendée?”

“You’re on the right track.”

She said nothing, listening to the old Beatles CD Antoine had turned on. As they drove on, she uttered a little scream. “I know! You’re taking me to Noirmoutier!”

“Bingo,” he said.

But her face had sobered up. She looked down at her hands in her lap, her lips tightening.

“What’s wrong?” he said, concerned. He had been expecting laughter, whoops, smiles, anything but her static face.

“I haven’t been back there.”

“So?” he said. “Neither have I.”

“It’s been”-she paused to count on her slim fingers-“1973, right? It’s been thirty-four years. I won’t remember a thing! I was six years old.”