A Secret Kept Page 6

  With the same fascination he'd felt in his youth, he watched the water hungrily eat up the paved road. There. It was done. No more road. A small shooting pain went through him, as if a special moment had been lost forever, never to happen again. Maybe he preferred watching the Gois passage emerge from the sea, firm and gray--a long strip slicing the waters--rather than seeing it slip under the frothy waves, like witnessing a drowning. He wished they had chosen another moment to come here. There was something sinister about the place today, and Melanie's strange mood did nothing to alleviate it.

  This was their last morning here. Was that why she remained silent, heedless of what was going on around them--the gulls circling ahead, the wind biting at their ears, and people turning back inland now that the Gois had closed over? She had drawn her knees up to her body and was resting her chin on them, arms tight around her legs. Her green eyes looked dazed. He wondered whether she was getting a migraine, like their mother used to, those powerful, bad ones that would literally cripple her. He thought of the long drive back to Paris, the inevitable traffic jams. His empty apartment. Her empty apartment. Maybe she was thinking about that too. Going back to a still, silent place. No one waiting up for you. No one to greet you as you walked in, drained after hours behind the wheel, no one to hug you. There was of course the lecherous old lover, but he was probably with his wife during this long holiday weekend. Maybe she was thinking about tomorrow, Monday, going back to her office in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, and dealing with the neurotic, egotistic authors she had told him about, or her impatient, demanding boss and his depressed assistant.

  The same sort of people Astrid dealt with in a rival publishing house. Antoine had never felt part of the publishing scene. He had never enjoyed the glittering literary parties where champagne flowed and writers mingled with journalists, publishers, editors, publicists. He used to watch Astrid flitter through the crowd in her pretty cocktail dress and high heels, a smile on her face, going from group to group with the same ease, the same graceful nod, while he stuck to the bar, chain-smoked, and felt miserable, out of place. After a while he had stopped going. Maybe that had been a bad idea, he now thought. Maybe his stepping out of his wife's professional life had been his first mistake. How blind he had been. How stupid.

  Tomorrow, Monday. His sad little office on the avenue du Maine. The dermatologist he shared it with, a silent, whey-faced woman whose only apparent pleasure was burning warts off her patients' feet.

  Florence, his assistant. Her plump cheeks, shiny forehead, beady black eyes, and greasy brown hair. Her unfortunate calves, her stubby fingers. Florence had been a disaster from the start. She never got anything right--although she was firmly convinced she did and that he was the one who didn't explain things properly. She was overly susceptible, capable of suffragette-like tantrums that invariably ended with her sobbing over her keyboard.

  Tomorrow, Monday, and the future dreary evenings lining up in his mind like a traffic jam on an endless highway. A replica of the past year, woven with solitude, sorrow, and self-loathing.

  Had it been a good idea, coming back here? He stealthily glanced at his sister's drawn face. Being confronted with mementos from so long ago, bringing back their mother's eyes, her voice, her laugh, the way she flitted across this very beach. Maybe he should have left all that aside, whisked Melanie off to Deauville, Saint-Tropez, Barcelona, or Amsterdam, anywhere, anyplace, as long as those family memories would not come back to trouble them.

  He drew his arm around her shoulders and clumsily jiggled her, as if to say, "Hey, cheer up, don't ruin it all." She did not smile back. Instead she turned her head and looked at him searchingly, as if she were trying to decipher something behind his eyes. Then she parted her lips, about to speak, but she closed them again, shook her head with a grimace, and sighed.

  "What's up, Mel?"

  She smiled, and he didn't like that smile. It was a tight, unpleasant one. It merely stretched her lips and made her look older and sadder.

  "Nothing," she murmured against the wind. "Nothing at all."

  The morning inched by, and still she did not speak. It was only later, when they hauled their luggage into the car, that she seemed to ease up a little. When they were on their way, with him at the wheel, she made a few phone calls, even hummed along to an old Bee Gees song. He felt relief swamp him. She was all right, then. She was going to be fine, just a bad headache, just a tricky moment.

  Somewhere after Nantes they stopped on the highway for a coffee and a snack. She said she felt like driving. She was a good driver, she always had been. He switched places with her, watching her slide the car seat forward, fasten her seat belt, and lower the rearview mirror to her level. So small, so dainty, her slim legs, her slender arms. So fragile too. He had always felt protective of her. Even before their mother died. During the somber, confusing years that had followed Clarisse's death, he remembered how frightened Melanie had been of the dark, how she always had to keep a night-light on while she slept, like Scarlett O'Hara's little girl, Bonnie. He remembered that the constantly changing au pair girls, even the nicest ones, didn't know how to comfort her when she had a nightmare, and only he was able to do that, cuddling her, gently singing the same lullabies Clarisse sang to lull them to sleep. Their father seldom came. He didn't seem to be aware that Melanie had nightmares even when the night-light was burning, and that night after night she cried out for her mother. Antoine remembered how Melanie could not understand Clarisse's death. She had asked, over and over again, Where is Maman? Where is Maman? When is Maman coming back? And nobody answered her, not even Robert and Blanche, or their father or Solange, or the endless string of family friends who came to the avenue Kleber after their mother's death, who would smear lipstick on their cheeks and ruffle their hair. No one knew what to say to this desperate, frightened little girl. He knew, intuitively, at ten, what death was. He understood the finality of it, that their mother was never coming back.

  Melanie's small, delicate hands on the steering wheel. Only one ring, on her right hand, a simple, broad gold band that had belonged to their mother. The traffic ahead was growing dense toward Angers as they made their way back to Paris. They would probably end up in a mammoth jam, he thought, his lungs aching for a cigarette.

  After a long silence Melanie spoke.

  "Antoine, there's something I need to say."

  Her voice sounded so strained that he quickly swiveled to look at her. She had her eyes on the road, but there was something tight about her jaw.

  She fell silent.

  "You can tell me," he said softly. "Don't worry."

  Her knuckles were white, he noticed. His heart started to pump a little faster.

  "I've kept it back all day," she said hurriedly. "Last night, at the hotel, I remembered something. Something about--"

  It happened so fast he scarcely had time to draw breath. First she turned her eyes to him, dark, troubled. Then she turned her face, and it seemed to him that the car was also turning, veering right, Melanie's hands suddenly helpless on the wheel. Then came the sharp whine of screeching tires, the loud blast of a horn behind them, and the strange, sickening sensation of losing balance when Melanie loomed overhead above him, her shriek thickening as they lurched to one side, the rush of air blocking his ears as the air bag bloomed painfully white into his face. Melanie's scream was a strangled moan, lost in the splintering of glass and crumpled metal. Then only the muffled sound of his heartbeat.

  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--

  The doctor waits for me to speak. To answer her question: "What was she telling you?"

  But how can I pronounce the words Melanie uttered before the car veered off the highway? I don't want to bring this up with the doctor. I don't want to talk to anyone about what Melanie said, not yet. My head aches, and my eyes feel itchy and red, still stinging with tears.

  "Can I see her?" I ask Dr. Besson
at last, breaking the silence between us. "I can't stand sitting here and not seeing her."

  She shakes her head firmly. "You'll see her tomorrow."

  I stare at her blankly.

  "You mean we can't leave now?"

  The doctor stares back at me.

  "Your sister nearly died."

  I swallow. I feel dizzy.

  "What?"

  "We had to operate. There was a problem with her spleen. And she broke a couple of vertebrae in her upper back."

  "Which means--what?" I stammer.

  "Which means she'll be staying here for a while. And when she can be moved, she'll be taken to Paris in an ambulance."

  "For how long?"

  "It could be a couple of weeks."

  "But I thought you said she'd be all right!"

  "She is, now. She will need time to get over this. And you were lucky, Monsieur. You got away unharmed. I need to examine you now. Can you come with me, please?"

  In a sort of daze, I follow her to a nearby consulting room. The hospital seems empty, silent; I feel as if Dr. Besson and I are the only ones around. She tells me to sit down, rolls up my sleeve, checks my pulse. As she gets on with her work, I remember lifting myself out of the car, which was resting on its flank like a wounded animal. Melanie was hunched up in the far left corner, motionless. I couldn't see her face. The air bag had blown up over it. I remember calling out to her, yelling her name at the top of my lungs.

  After a while Dr. Besson tells me I am fine, with slightly high blood pressure. "You can stay here tonight. We have rooms for next of kin. The nurse will come."

  I thank her and leave, heading back to the hospital entrance. I know I have to call our father. I have to tell him what happened. It cannot wait any longer. It is nearly midnight. I step out of the building and light a cigarette. The parking lot in front of me is deserted except for a couple of smokers. The town seems asleep. Above me, the sky stretches dark blue. Stars twinkle. I sit down on a wooden bench. I finish the cigarette and toss the butt away. I try the home number on the avenue Kleber. The answering machine with Regine's nasal whine comes on. I hang up and try his mobile phone.

  "What is it?" he barks before I can pronounce a single word.

  I relish the small power I now have, the tiny power I can at last wield over our aging, domineering, tyrannical father, my father who still makes me feel twelve years old and useless in every way, who disapproves of my job as a mediocre, unexciting architect, my recent divorce, my smoking, the way I bring up my kids, my haircut, which according to him always leaves my hair too long, the fact that I wear jeans and not suits and never ties, my non-French car, my sad new apartment on the rue Froidevaux overlooking the Montparnasse Cemetery. The pleasure I glean from this is as sharply sweet as a quick jerk-off under the shower.

  "We had an accident. Melanie's in the hospital. She's broken something in her back, and they had to operate on her spleen."

  I savor the swift intake of his breath.

  "Where are you?" he finally gasps.

  "The hospital at Le Loroux-Bottereau."

  "Where the hell is that?"

  "Twenty kilometers from Nantes."

  "What are you and Melanie doing there?"

  "We went on a little trip for her birthday."

  A pause.

  "Who was driving?"

  "She was."

  "What happened?"

  "I don't know. The car just drove off the highway."

  "I'll be there in the morning. I'll take care of everything. Don't worry. Goodbye."

  He hangs up. I groan inwardly. Him, here, tomorrow. Bossing the nurses around. Being respected. Looking down at the doctor. Our father is no longer a tall man, but he still feels that he is. When he walks into a room, faces turn to him like sunflowers to the sun. Nor is he particularly good-looking: receding hairline, bulky nose, glaring dark eyes. He had been, in his youth. I'm often told I look like him, same height, same brown eyes. But there is nothing bossy about me. He has gotten stout. I noticed that the last time I saw him. Which was six months ago. We don't meet much anymore, and now that the children are old enough to visit their grandfather without me, I see him even less.

  Our mother died in 1974. Since then, Melanie and I have spoken of her by her first name. Clarisse. It seemed too hard to say Maman. Aneurysm. Francois--yes, that is our father's name, Francois Rey, does it not ring out with true authority and grandeur?--was only thirty-seven when his wife died. Six years younger than I am now. I cannot remember where and when he met the blond, thin-lipped, ambitious Regine (an interior decorator), but I do remember the pompous wedding in May 1977 at Robert and Blanche Rey's apartment overlooking the Bois de Boulogne, and how dismayed Melanie and I had been. Our father did not seem in love at all. He never glanced at Regine, had no tender gestures toward her. So why was he marrying her? we wondered. Because he felt lonely? Because he needed a woman to look after his bereaved household? We felt betrayed. There Regine was, all of thirty, simpering in a beige Courreges suit that did nothing for her behind. Oh, yes, she had made a good catch. A widower, but a wealthy widower. One of Paris's most brilliant lawyers. Heir to a well-known, respected family, his father a renowned lawyer, his mother the daughter of a famous pediatrician, granddaughter of a wealthy property owner, the creme de la creme of the demanding, conservative, Right Bank Parisian bourgeoisie from Passy. A superb apartment on the bon chic bon genre avenue Kleber. The only hitch was two children of thirteen and ten who were still stricken by their mother's death. She put up with us. She took it all in her stride. She redecorated the apartment, transformed its splendid Haussmanian proportions to ultramodern square white spaces, gutted the fireplaces and stucco, ripped up the old, creaking floorboards, and turned the whole thing into a maroon and ash decor that looked like an airport boarding gate. All their friends thought it was the most audacious and clever makeover they had ever seen. We hated it.

  She raised us in that stiff, traditional bourgeois French way. Bonjour, Madame. Au revoir, Monsieur. Impeccable manners, excellent results at school, Mass every Sunday morning at Saint-Pierre de Chaillot. Emotions of any sort were kept in check. Children were seen and not heard. Never talk about politics, sex, religion, money, or love. Our mother's name was never uttered. We soon understood that we were better off not pronouncing it. We never talked about her death either. Or anything whatsoever concerning her.

  Our half sister, Josephine, was born in 1982 and became our father's favorite. There was a fifteen-year difference between Melanie and her. And I, at just eighteen, was sharing a place on the Left Bank with a couple of friends and studying political science at the rue Saint-Guillaume faculte.

  I had left home--that is, if the avenue Kleber and what it had become since Clarisse died could ever be called home.

  I wake up the next morning feeling stiff all over. The bumpy hospital bed is the most uncomfortable thing I've ever slept on. Had I even slept? The thought of my sister looms. Is she all right? Will she pull through? I look across the bare room at my suitcase and my laptop in its special bag. They got through the accident unscathed. Not even a tear or a scratch. I tried the computer before I went to bed last night, and it had switched on smoothly. How was that possible? I had seen the state of the car. I had been inside that car. And yet despite the wreckage, my suitcase, my computer, and myself are fine.

  The nurse this morning is a different, plumper, dimpled one.

  "You can see your sister now." She beams. I follow her down a couple of corridors where half-asleep old people shuffle by, then up a flight of stairs into a room where Melanie is lying on a complicated bed with all sorts of contraptions around her. Her entire torso is plastered from shoulders to waist. Her neck emerges, long and thin, like a giraffe's. She seems taller and leaner than she actually is.

  She is awake, her green eyes dark, smudged with shadows. Her skin is very pale. I have never seen her so pale. She looks different, I can't quite understand how or why.

  "Tonio," she breathe
s.

  I want to be strong, big brotherly, but the sight of her moistens my eyes. I daren't touch her. I am worried I may break something, harm her. I sit down in the chair by the side of the bed, feeling gauche.

  "Are you okay?" she mouths.

  "I'm fine. And you?" I whisper back.

  "Can't move. This thing scratches like hell."

  Fleetingly I wonder if she really is okay, if she really will be able to move one day, if Dr. Besson has told the entire truth.

  "Does it hurt?" I ask.

  She shakes her head. "I feel strange." Her voice is slow, weak. "Like I don't know who I am anymore."

  I caress her hand.

  "Antoine," she says. "Where are we?"

  "In a town called Le Loroux-Bottereau. We had an accident on the highway after we left Nantes."

  "An accident?"

  I realize she doesn't remember anything at all.

  I decide not to remind her. Not for the moment. I tell her I don't remember either. She seems pacified by this and squeezes my hand back.

  Then I say, "He's coming."

  She knows who I mean. She sighs and turns her head, and I watch as her lashes flutter down against her pale cheek. I go on looking at her. I feel like her guardian angel. I haven't watched a woman sleep since Astrid. I used to watch Astrid for hours. I'd never tire of gazing at her peaceful face, the quiver of her lips, the mother-of-pearl eyelids, and the slow heave of her bosom. In her sleep she seemed fragile and young, like Margaux now. I haven't watched Astrid sleep since our last summer together, a year ago.