Tatiana de Rosnay - A Secret Kept

“Okay,” I say weakly. “I’ll be right over.”

The ride from la Pitié to Bastille is a slow one, even though I am not far from Mel’s place. The traffic inches on. I try to remain calm behind the wheel. I then spend ages looking for a parking place on busy rue de la Roquette. Mélanie is waiting for me with the cat in her arms.

“I’m so sorry about Pauline,” she says, kissing me. “How awful it must be for Margaux… This is the worst timing… It’s just that… It has come back to me. This morning. And I had to tell you.”

The cat jumps down to come and rub itself against my legs.

“I don’t know how to say this,” she says simply. “I think it will be a shock to you.”

“Try me.”

We sit face-to-face. Her delicate fingers play with the bracelets around her wrist. A clicking sound that gets on my nerves.

“During our last night at the hotel, I woke up. I was thirsty, I couldn’t get back to sleep. I tried to read, drank a glass of water, but nothing worked. So I slipped out of my room and went downstairs. The entire hotel was silent. No one was awake. I went through the reception area, the dining room, then finally back upstairs. That’s when it happened.”

She pauses.

“What happened?”

“You remember room number nine?”

“Yes,” I say. “Clarisse’s room.”

“I passed that room on my way up. And then suddenly I had this flashback. It was so powerful I had to sit down on the stairs.”

“What did you see?” I whisper.

“Our last summer-1973. I was frightened. There had been a storm. It was my birthday, do you remember?”

I nod.

“I couldn’t sleep that night. I crept down the hotel stairs to our mother’s room.”

She pauses again. The cat purrs against me.

“The door was not locked, and I opened it very gently. The curtains were drawn back, and moonlight lit up the room. And then I saw that there was somebody in the bed with her.”

“Our father?” I say, startled.

She shakes her head.

“No. I drew nearer. I could not understand. I was only six years old, remember. I could make out Clarisse’s black hair. And she was holding somebody in her arms. Not our father.”

“Who?” I gasp.

Our mother, with a lover… Our mother, with another man. With my grandparents and us, her children, sleeping only a couple of rooms away. Our mother. Her fuzzy orange bathing suit. Playing with us on the beach. Our mother at night with another man.

“I don’t know who it was.”

“What did he look like?” I say heatedly. “Had you ever seen him before? Was he staying at the hotel? Could you remember him?”

Mélanie bites her lip and averts her eyes. Then she says softly, “It was a woman, Antoine.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our mother was holding a woman in her arms.”

“A woman?” I repeat, stunned.

The cat jumps back up on her knees, and she hugs it fiercely.

“Yes, Antoine, a woman.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I came close to the bed. They were asleep. They had thrown the sheets back, and they were naked. I remember thinking that they were both beautiful, very feminine. The woman was tanned and slim, and she had long hair. I couldn’t tell what color it was in the moonlight. It seemed a silvery blond. I stood there and looked at them for a while.”

“Do you really think they were lovers?”

She smiles wryly. “Well, at six years old, I had no idea, of course. But what I remember very distinctly is this: the woman’s hand was cupped around one of Clarisse’s breasts. It was a possessive, sexual gesture.”

I get up, pace around the room, and stand by the window, looking down at the noisy rue de la Roquette. I find I can’t speak for a minute or two.

“Are you shocked?” she asks.

“In a way.”

Again the click of the bracelets.

“I tried to tell you. You knew something was wrong. And then I felt I just couldn’t hold it back anymore, so on the way back-”

“And did you ever tell anyone about this the next day,” I interrupt, “after it happened?”

“I tried, the very next morning, while we were playing on the beach with Solange. But you wouldn’t listen. You shooed me away. I never spoke about this to anyone, and it slipped away from me little by little. I forgot about it. I had never thought about it again until that night at the hotel, thirty-four years later.”

“Have you see this woman again? Any idea who she was?”

“No. I don’t remember seeing her again. No idea who she was.”

I come back to the chair facing Mélanie. “Do you think our mother was a lesbian?” I ask her, my voice low.

“I’ve been asking myself that very question,” she says levelly.

“Do you think this was just one affair out of the blue, or do you think she’d been having affairs with women for a while?”

“I have not stopped thinking about all this. The same questions, and no answers.”

“Do you think our father knew? And our grandparents?”

She gets up to go to the kitchen and boils some water, puts tea bags in mugs. I feel dazed, like after a sharp blow on the head.

“Remember that fight you witnessed between Clarisse and Blanche? You told me about it by the pool.”

“Yes,” I say. “Do you think it could have been about that?”

Mélanie shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t think our bourgeois, respectable grandparents were very open concerning homosexuality. And this was back in 1973.”

She hands me a mug of tea, sits down.

“And what about our father?” I say. “What does he know?”

“Maybe everybody in the Rey family knew. Maybe it made a scandal. But it wasn’t talked about. No one talked about it.”

“And then Clarisse died-”

“Yes,” she says. “And then our mother died. And so no one talked about it ever again.”

We are silent for a while, facing each other, sipping our tea.

“Do you know what upsets me most about all this?” she says finally. “And I know that’s why I had the accident. Even just talking about it hurts me here.” She lays a hand flat out on her collarbone.

“What upsets you?”

“Before I tell you, you tell me what you find upsetting.”

I take a deep breath. “I feel like I have no idea who my mother was.”

“Yes!” she exclaims, smiling for the first time, although it is not her usual, relaxed smile. “That’s exactly it.”

“And I have no idea how to find out who she was.”

“I do,” she says.

“How?”

“The first question is, do you want to know, Antoine? Do you really want to find out?”

“Of course! Why are you asking?”

The crooked smile, again.

“Because sometimes it’s easier not to know. Sometimes truth hurts.”

I remember the day I discovered the video on Astrid’s camera of Serge and Astrid having sex. The shock of it. The shattering pain of it.

“I know what you mean,” I say slowly. “I know about that pain.”

“Are you ready to face that pain again, Antoine?”

“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully.

“I am,” she says firmly. “And I will. I can’t pretend nothing happened. I don’t want to shut my eyes to this. I want to know who our mother really was.”

Women are so much stronger than we men, I think, listening to her. Yet there is nothing physically powerful about her. In fact she appears more fragile than ever in her slim jeans and beige sweater, but such force exudes from her, such determination. Mélanie is not afraid, and I am. She takes my hand in an almost motherly gesture, as if she knows exactly what is going through my head.

“Don’t let this get you down, Tonio. You go on home and tend to your daughter. She needs you. When you’re ready, we can talk about this again. There is no hurry.”