Tatiana de Rosnay: A Secret Kept

There are no more cars on the Gois, and the tide is closing over from the right, the first lathered sheets of water already covering the causeway. The place is nearly deserted, not like in summer, when thick crowds gather to watch the sea conquer the land. Angèle does not slow down. In fact she drives even faster, and I tug at her jacket to draw her attention, as I cannot be heard through my helmet and hers. She ignores me superbly, gearing the Harley up, and the few people who are parked on land point at us with startled expressions as we rocket past. I can almost hear them exclaim, “Hey, are they going to cross the Gois?” I pull on her jacket, harder this time. Somebody honks loudly to warn us, but it is too late. The Harley’s wheels send impressive sprays of seawater gushing up on either side of us as they hit the paved causeway. I hope to God Angèle knows what she is doing. I read too many stories as a boy about accidents on the Gois at high tide not to know this is a crazy feat. At least thirty people have died here in the past hundred years. And God knows how many more before that. I hold on to her for dear life, praying the Harley doesn’t skid and send us plunging headfirst into the sea, praying the engine doesn’t get swamped by one of those frothy waves that seem larger by the minute. Angèle drives those four kilometers smoothly and with such cocksure self-assurance that I guess this is not her first time.

It is a wonderful, exhilarating ride. And I suddenly feel safe, gloriously safe, safer than I have felt since knowing the touch of my father’s protective hand on my back as a boy. Safe, with my body clasped against hers as we seem to glide over water, over what is no longer a road, for it can no longer be seen. Safe, as I look up at the island ahead, at the familiar rescue poles dotting our way through the sea’s glittering surface, beckoning us as a lighthouse leads a ship to security in the harbor. And I wish this moment could last forever, that the beauty and perfection of it would never leave me. We pull in on land amid the clapping and cheering of passersby who are standing near the cross guarding the mouth of the Gois.

Angèle stops the engine and takes off her helmet.

“I bet you were scared shitless.” She chuckles, a broad smile on her face.

“No!” I gasp, putting my helmet on the ground so I can kiss her wildly, more cheering and clapping going on behind us. “I wasn’t scared. I trusted you.”

“You can. First time I did that, I was fifteen years old. On a friend’s Ducati.”

“You drove a Ducati at fifteen?”

“You’d be surprised at what I did at fifteen.”

“I’m not interested,” I say airily. “How are we getting back? The Gois is closing over.”

“We’ll take the bridge home. Less romantic, though.”

“Much less romantic. Wouldn’t I love to get stranded on one of those rescue poles with you. I can think of all sorts of things to do to you.”

The huge sweep of the bridge can be seen from where we stand, although it is more than five kilometers away. The road has gone now, entirely swallowed by the water. The sea has regained its supremacy, immense and shimmering.

“I used to come here with my mother. She loved the Gois.”

“And I used to come here with my dad,” she says. “We spent a couple of summers here too, when I was a kid. But not at the Bois de la Chaise, that was too chic for us, Monsieur! We went to the beach at the Guérinière. My father was born at La Roche-sur -Yon. He used to know this spot like the back of his hand.”

“So maybe we both came to the Gois on the same day when we were small.”

“Maybe we did.”

We sit down on the grassy hill near the cross. We sit shoulder to shoulder, sharing a cigarette, near where I sat with Mélanie on the day of the accident. I think of my sister, wrapped up in a bubble of ignorance by her own will. I think of everything I now know that she never will unless she asks me. I take Angèle’s hand and kiss it. I think of the long line of ifs that led me to this hand, to this kiss. If I hadn’t decided to organize a surprise for Mélanie’s fortieth birthday. If Mélanie hadn’t had that flashback. If there had been no accident. If Gaspard hadn’t had that slip of the tongue. If he hadn’t kept that invoice. But another if surfaces. What if Dr. Dardel had sent my mother to the hospital on February 7, the day she had the bad migraine? Could she have been saved? Would she still be alive today? Would she have left my father? Would she and June be living together? In Paris? In New York?

“Stop that,” comes Angèle’s voice.

“Stop what?”

She puts her chin on her knees and looks oddly young all of a sudden, gazing out to the sea, the wind whipping at her hair. Then she says in a low voice, “Antoine, I looked everywhere for that note. As my father lay there, his blood and brains scattered all over the kitchen, before I called for help, I looked for that note, shrieking at the top of my lungs, tears streaming down my face, trembling from head to toe. I looked for it high and low, I combed that goddamn house for it, the garden, the garage. I kept thinking my mother was going to come home any minute from the clerk’s office she worked in, and I had to find that note before she arrived. I never did. There was no note. And then this monstrous why loomed up. Was he that unhappy? What was it we hadn’t seen? How could we have been so blind, my mother, my sister, and I? And what if I had noticed something, and what if I had come home from school earlier that day, or what if I hadn’t gone to school at all? Would he have killed himself? Or would he still be here today?”

I can see what she is getting at. She goes on. Her voice is stronger now, but I pick up a vibrant note of pain that moves me.

“My dad was the calm, quiet type, like you, not talkative, much more silent than my mother. His name was Michel. I look like him. The same eyes. He never seemed depressed, he didn’t drink, he was healthy, athletic. He liked to read. All those books in my house are his. He admired Chateaubriand, Romain Gary, nature, the Vendée, and the sea, and he seemed a tranquil, happy fellow, or at least so we thought. The day I found him dead, he was dressed in his best gray suit, one that I saw him wear only on special occasions, Christmas or New Year’s Eve. And he had a tie on, and his best black shoes. He never dressed like that every day. He worked in a bookstore, and he wore corduroys and sweaters. He was sitting at the table when he shot himself. I thought maybe the note was trapped under his body, as he had slumped forward after the shot, but I hadn’t dared touch him. I was afraid of dead bodies then, not like now. But when they came to get him, there was no note under him. Nothing. Then I hoped a letter might come in the mail, that perhaps he had posted us a note the day he died, but nothing turned up. It was only when I began my job as a mortician, and when I got my first suicide cases that the healing process slowly began in an unexpected way. But this was later, years later, ten years later at least. I recognized my anguish and my despair when I met the families of those who’d killed themselves. I listened to their stories, I shared their grief, sometimes I even cried with them. Many of them told me why their loved ones had chosen to die, many of them knew. Broken hearts, illness, desperation, anguish, fear-there were so many reasons. And then it hit me one day as I was tending to the body of a man who was my dad’s age. He had shot himself because the pressure at his job was too great. This man was dead, and so was my father. This man’s family knew why he had pulled the trigger, whereas we didn’t. But what difference did it make? Only death was left behind. A dead body to embalm, to put in a coffin, and to bury. Prayers to be said and grieving to begin. Knowing would never bring my father back. Knowing would never make the grieving any easier. Knowing never makes death easy.”