Tatiana de Rosnay - A Secret Kept

I think again about what Mélanie wanted to tell me when the car drove off the highway. This has not left my mind since the accident. It has been with me since, at the back of my mind, like a dead weight pressing down on me. I wonder whether I should talk to Dr. Besson, how I should put it to her, what she might think. What she would suggest. But the only person I want to talk to about this right now is my ex-wife, and she is not here.

I turn on my mobile phone and listen to messages. One from Florence about a new contract. Three from Rabagny. I had accepted his state-of-the-art day-care center project near the Bastille only because the pay was good and I couldn’t afford being fussy these days. The alimony I transfer to Astrid each month is considerable. Our lawyers had worked it out. There was nothing I could do about it. I had always earned more money than she had, and I suppose it was a fair deal. But by the end of the month I feel the pinch.

Rabagny can’t understand where I am and why I am not calling him back, although I did send him a text message yesterday explaining the accident on my way back to Paris, not going into any more detail. I hate the sound of his voice. High-pitched and whiny, like a spoiled kid’s. There is a problem with the playground surfaces. The color is wrong. The consistency is wrong. He rants on and on, spits out his words. I can almost see his ratlike face, protruding eyes, oversize ears. I didn’t like him from the start. He is barely thirty, as arrogant as he is unpleasant to look at. I glance at my watch: seven o’clock. I could still get back to him. I don’t. I erase all his messages with satisfying savagery.

The next message is from Hélène. Her soft, dovelike voice. She wants to know how Mélanie is, how I am since our last talk a few hours back. She is still in Honfleur with her family. Since my divorce I have often been to that house. It overlooks the sea, and it is a happy, untidy, cozy house I feel good in. Hélène is a precious friend because she knows exactly how to make me feel better about myself and my life. For a short while, anyway. What I loathed about the divorce was the split between our friends. Some of them chose Astrid, others chose me. Why? I never knew. Do they not find it strange to go have dinner at the house in Malakoff with him sitting at my place? Do they find it sad to visit me in the empty rue Froidevaux apartment, where it is obvious that I can’t get myself together? Some of those friends chose Astrid over me because she exudes happiness. It’s easier to socialize with someone happy, I guess. No one wants to sit around and brood with the loser. No one wants to hear about my lonesomeness, about how all at sea I felt those first months when I found myself without a family after eighteen years of being a paterfamilias. How silent those early mornings seemed in my IKEA kitchen, with just the smell of burned baguette and the jingle of the RTL News on the radio to keep me company. I used to stand there, numbed by the lack of noise: Astrid yelling for the kids to hurry up, the tremendous sound of Arno thundering down the stairs, Titus barking in excitement, Lucas shrieking because he couldn’t find his gym bag. A year later, I admit that I have become used to the new morning silence. But I still miss the noise.

There are also a couple of messages from other clients. Some of them are urgent. The summer break is over. People are now back at work, into the swing of things. I start thinking about how long I should be staying here. How much longer I can stay here. It will soon be three days. And Mel can’t be moved yet. Dr. Besson is not giving me more details. I think she wants to wait to see how Mélanie is doing before she gets precise. More messages from the insurance company about the wrecked car and paperwork I need to fill out. I diligently write all this down in my little notebook.

I turn on my computer and use the phone line by the bed to check my e-mail. A couple from Emmanuel and a few business ones. I answer them swiftly. I then open AutoCAD files concerning projects I should be working on. I am almost amused at how uninterested I am by the sight of them. There was a time when imagining new office spaces, a library, a hospital, a sports center, a lab, gave me a thrill. Now it turns me off. Worse still, it makes me feel as if I’ve wasted most of my life and my energy in a field that simply does not fuel me. How did this happen? When did it all fizzle out? Probably when Astrid left me. Maybe I am going through a depression, maybe it really is a midlife crisis. I just didn’t see it coming. But do you ever see these things coming?

I close the computer and lie down on the bed. The sheets still smell of Angèle Rouvatier, which pleases me. The room is a small modern one, devoid of charm, comfortable enough. The walls are pearl gray, the thinning carpet a faded beige. The window looks out onto a parking lot. By this time Mélanie has had her dinner, served ridiculously early, as always in hospitals. I have the choice between a McDonald’s on the town’s outskirts or a little pension de famille on the main avenue, where I have already been twice. The service is slow-moving, the room full of toothless octogenarians, but the meals are wholesome. Tonight I decide I shall fast. It will do me good.

I switch on the television and try to concentrate on the news. Political unrest in the Middle East, bombs, riots, death, violence. I flick from channel to channel, sickened by what I see, till I finally end up in the middle of Singing in the Rain. As ever, I am mesmerized by Cyd Charisse’s sculptural legs and her tight-fitting emerald corset as she gyrates around a gawky, bespectacled Gene Kelly.

As I lie there marveling at those long, rounded, firm thighs, I feel a sort of peace come over me. I go on watching the movie with the placidity of a drowsy child. It is a quiet happiness that I have not felt for a long time. Why? I wonder. What on earth do I have to feel happy about tonight? My sister is in a cast from the waist up and will not be able to walk till God knows when, I’m still in love with my ex-wife, and I hate my job.

But the potent, peaceful feeling sweeps through me, stronger than all those negative thoughts. It wipes away the pain of the Astrid memories that keep popping back up like a jack-in-the-box, it soothes the worry about Mélanie, it erases the anger and frustration of the job issues. I lie there and surrender to it. How beautiful Charisse is with that white veil wrapped around her, arms outstretched beseechingly against the purple stage set. Her legs are so long that even when she is barefoot, they seem endless. I feel I could lie there forever, comforted by Angèle Rouvatier’s musky smell and Cyd Charisse’s thighs.

My phone bleeps, telling me a text message has come through. Regretfully I tear my eyes away from Charisse to pick up my phone.

Dream a little dream of me.

The phone number belonging to the text message is an unknown one. I smile. I know who this is. It can only be Angèle Rouvatier. She probably got my number from Mélanie’s file, which she has access to as part of the hospital staff.

The quiet, content feeling slowly wraps itself around me like a purring cat. I want to make the most of it because somehow, somewhere, I can see that it is not going to last. It is like taking shelter in the eye of a hurricane.

No matter how hard I try, I can never prevent myself, again and again, from going back in my mind to that fateful trip when Astrid met Serge. This was four years ago. The kids had not yet entered the turbulence of adolescence. We had booked a vacation in Turkey, at the Club Med at Palmiye. This had been my idea. We usually spent most of the summer with Astrid’s parents, Bibi and Jean-Luc, in their house in the Dordogne region, near Sarlat. My father and Régine had a place in the Loire Valley, a presbytery Régine had transformed into another glaringly modern horror, where we were rarely invited and seldom felt welcome.