Tatiana de Rosnay - A Secret Kept

My father talks to me, something about plumbing problems in their country house, but I don’t listen. I look around the room and try to remember what it was like when my mother was still alive. There were plants by the windows; the floorboards glistened a lustrous chestnut. There were books in one corner and a chintz-covered sofa, and a desk where she used to sit and write in the morning sun. What did she write? I wonder. And where did all her stuff go? All her books, her photos, her letters? I want to ask my father, but I don’t. I know I cannot. He is now complaining about the new gardener Régine hired.

No one ever talks about my mother. Especially here. She died here. Her body was carried out through that very entrance, down those red-carpeted stairs. Where did she die, exactly? I was never told. In her room, which was just beyond the entrance? Here, in the kitchen, all the way down the endless corridor? How did it happen? Who was there? Who found her?

Aneurysm. I had looked it up recently on the Internet. It happened. Like a bolt of lightning. It happened to people at any age. Just like that.

Thirty-three years ago my mother died in the very apartment I am sitting in now. I don’t remember the last time I kissed her. And it hurts me, not remembering.

“Are you listening to me at all, Antoine?” asks my father sarcastically.

When I get home, my children are already there. I can hear the din of their presence as I toil up the stairs. Music, footsteps, loud voices. Lucas is watching TV, dirty shoes on the sofa. As I come in, he rushes up to greet me. Margaux appears in the doorway. I still can’t get used to the orange hair, but I don’t say anything.

“Hey, Dad…” she drawls.

There is a movement behind her, and I see Pauline appear over her shoulder. Her best friend since they were small. Except that Pauline now looks like a twenty-year-old. A minute ago she was a scraggy little thing. Now it is impossible not to notice her full bosom and womanly hips. I don’t hug her the way I used to when she was a kid. In fact I don’t even kiss her on the cheek. We sort of wave at each other from a polite distance.

“Is it okay if Pauline sleeps over?”

My heart sinks. I know that if Pauline spends the night, I will not see my daughter, except at dinner. They will then retire to Margaux’s room, giggle and whisper all night long, and there will be no “quality time” with my child.

“Sure,” I say halfheartedly. “Is it all right with your parents?”

Pauline shrugs. “Yeah, no problem.”

She has grown even more, it seems, during the summer, looming over Margaux. She is wearing a short jean skirt and a tight purple T-shirt. Fourteen years old. Nobody would believe it just looking at her. She probably has her period. I know Margaux has not started yet. Astrid told me not very long ago. With a body like that, Pauline attracts all sorts of men, I realize. Kids from school, and older. Guys my age. I wonder how her parents deal with those issues. What they tell her. What she knows. Maybe she has a regular boyfriend, maybe she has sex, is already on the pill. Fourteen years old.

Arno comes breezing in, clapping me on the back. His phone chimes, and he answers it, saying, “Hold on a sec.” He disappears. Lucas turns to the TV and the girls take off. I am left alone in the entrance. I feel like a fool.

I go into the kitchen, my feet making a lot of noise on the creaky floorboards. There is nothing else to do but to cook them dinner. A pasta salad, with mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, fresh basil, and ham cubes. As I stand there chopping up the cheese, my life feels so empty, I almost laugh. I do. Later, when the food is ready, it seems to take ages to get them to come and sit. They all have something better to do.

“No iPods, Nintendos, or cell phones at the table, please,” I say firmly, plunking the food down.

My words are greeted with shrugs and sighs. Then silence punctuated by slurps and munches as they tuck in. I look at our little group as from a distance. My first summer without Astrid. Yes, I hate every minute of it.

The evening stretches out in front of me like a parched meadow. The girls are closeted up in Margaux’s room, Lucas is glued to his Nintendo, and Arno is riveted to the Internet in his own room. It was a mistake, I now realize, to have Wi-Fi installed here and computers for each of them. They revert to their personal spaces, and I end up hardly seeing them. Nobody watches TV anymore en famille. The Internet has taken over, silent and predatory.

I lie down on the couch and watch a DVD. A Bruce Willis action movie. At one point I press pause to call Valérie and Mélanie and to text Angèle about our next rendezvous. The evening wears on. Muffled giggles come from Margaux’s room, little pings and pongs from Lucas’s Nintendo, and from Arno’s I can just make out the brassy beat emanating from his headphones. The heat gets to me, and I doze off.

When I open my eyes, groggy, it is nearly two in the morning. I stagger up. Lucas is fast asleep, his cheek squashing his Nintendo. I gently put him to bed, doing all I can not to wake him. I decide not to knock on Arno’s door. After all, he is still on vacation, and I can’t face another altercation about how late it is, that he should be asleep at this hour. As I walk to my daughter’s room, the unmistakable whiff of a cigarette tickles my nose. I pause, my hand on the doorknob. More stifled laughs. I knock. The laughter ceases. Margaux opens the door. The room is hazy with smoke.

“Are you girls smoking in here?” My voice comes out strangled, almost humble, and I cringe, hearing myself.

Margaux shrugs. Pauline is flat out on the bed wearing nothing but flimsy blue panties and a frilly bra. I avert my eyes from the roundness of her breasts, which seem to leap out at me.

“Just a couple of cigarettes, Dad,” says Margaux, rolling her eyes.

“But you’re only fourteen,” I bluster. “This is such a dumb thing to do…”

“Well, if it’s so dumb, why do you do it, Dad?” she sneers.

She closes the door in my face.

I am left there, arms akimbo. I lift my hand to tentatively knock again. I don’t. I retreat to my room and sit on my bed. What would Astrid have done in this very situation? I wonder. Shouted at her? Punished her? Threatened her? Does Margaux dare smoke under her mother’s roof? Why do I feel so useless? It can’t get any worse than this. Or can it?

Even in her severe blue hospital uniform, Angèle is sexy. She wraps her arms around me, heedless of the fact that we are in the hospital morgue, that corpses lurk on the other side of the door, that bereaved families sit stricken in the nearby waiting room.

Her touch electrifies me.

“When are you free?” I whisper. I haven’t seen her for more than three weeks. The last time I came to see Mélanie, I was with my father, and there wasn’t the slightest possibility of spending time with Angèle. My father was tired and needed to be driven back home.

She sighs. “Pileup on the highway, couple of heart attacks, one cancer, one aneurysm-everybody seems to have chosen the same time to die.”

“Aneurysm…” I murmur.

“A young woman in her thirties.”

I keep her close to me, stroking her smooth, glossy hair.

“My mother died of an aneurysm in her mid-thirties.”

She looks up at me.

“You were a kid.”

“Yes.”

“Did you see her in death?”

“No. I closed my eyes at the last moment.”

“Aneurysm deaths usually look good. This young lady is lovely in death. I hardly had to work on her.”