A Secret Kept Read online

He stares at me, shocked.

  "Why didn't you ever tell me all this?"

  I shrug. "Because you never asked."

  His eyebrows, one of them pierced with a silver stud that I find repulsive, come down.

  "That's a dumb excuse."

  "I didn't know how to talk to you about it."

  "Why?" he asks.

  Now his questions are starting to bother me. But I want to keep on answering them. I feel a strong urge to get this off my chest and tell my son about it for the first time.

  "Because when she died, everything changed for Mel and me. No one explained to us what happened. Those were the seventies, remember. People are careful with kids now, they take them to shrinks when stuff like that happens. But no one helped us. Our mother flew out of our lives. Our father remarried. Our mother's name was never mentioned. All her photos disappeared."

  "Really?" Arno mutters.

  I shake my head. "She was erased from our lives. And we let that happen because we were dazed by grief, we were kids, we were helpless. And by the time we were old enough to fend for ourselves, it was time to leave our father's house. So that's what we did, Melanie and I. And somewhere along the way we let everything concerning our mother be boxed up and locked away. And I'm not talking about her clothes, her books, her objects. I mean our memories of her."

  I find it hard to breathe all of a sudden.

  "What was she like?" he asks.

  "Physically, like Mel. Same coloring, same silhouette. She was bubbly, joyful. Full of life."

  I stop. Something too close to my heart hurts. I cannot speak. The words don't come.

  "Sorry," mumbles Arno. "We'll talk about it another day. No prob, Dad."

  He stretches his long legs and pats my back affectionately. He seems embarrassed by my emotion and doesn't know how to deal with it.

  The tall woman in the blue uniform I noticed earlier walks past us again and smiles once more. Pretty legs. Pretty smile. I smile back at her.

  Arno's mobile phone goes off, and he heaves up to answer it. He lowers his voice and moves away from me. I can't make out what he is saying. I have no inkling whatsoever about my son's intimate life. He rarely brings friends home, except a goth-type girl with dyed black hair and purple lips that disturb me, giving her a drowned Ophelia-like look. They sit around his room and listen to music full blast. I don't like questioning him. Once, my seemingly cheerful interrogations were greeted with an icy "Are you from the Gestapo, or what?" Since then, I keep my mouth shut. I remember hating my father prying when I was Arno's age. Except I would never have dared answer him that way.

  I light a cigarette and get up to take a few steps. I keep thinking about what I should do now, how to organize things around Melanie's hospital stay. What to start with.

  I feel a presence next to me, and when I turn, I see it is the tall woman in the pale blue uniform.

  "Could I have a cigarette?"?'

  My hands fumble as I offer her my packet. Another fumble with the unwilling lighter.

  "Do you work here?"

  She has interesting gold eyes. Early forties, but I'm bad at guessing ages. She could be younger. All I know is that she's nice to look at.

  "Yes," she says.

  We stand there, a little self-conscious. I look down at her badge. ANGELE ROUVATIER.

  "Are you a doctor?" I ask.

  She smiles. "No, not exactly."

  Before I can ask another question, she says, "Is that young man your son?"

  "Yes. We are here because--"

  "I know why you are here," she says. "This is a small hospital."

  Her voice is low, friendly. But there is something strange about her, something slightly aloof. I can't quite pinpoint it.

  "Your sister was lucky. That was a bad crash. You were lucky too."

  "Yes," I say. "Very lucky."

  We puff away in silence.

  "So you work with Dr. Besson?" I ask.

  "She's the boss."

  I nod. I notice she wears no wedding band. That's the kind of thing I notice now. I never used to, before.

  "I have to go. Thanks for the cigarette."

  She takes off. I admire her long, slim calves. I can't even remember the last woman I had sex with. Probably some girl I met on the Internet. Some dismal fling that lasted a couple of hours. A used condom, a hurried goodbye, and that was it.

  The only nice girl I had met since my divorce was a married one. Helene. One of her daughters was in Margaux's art class. But she wasn't interested in having an affair. She only wanted to be friends. That was fine with me. She became a close and precious ally. She would take me out to dinner at some noisy brasserie in the Latin Quarter and hold my hand and listen to me mope. Her husband didn't seem to mind. Not that I'd make any husband jealous. Helene lives on boulevard de Sebastopol in a rambling apartment she inherited from her grandfather and did up with great audacity. Her building has a crumbling old facade in an area squashed between the Halles and the Pompidou Centre, two symbols of overt presidential vanity. Going to visit Helene never ceases to bring back pangs of my childhood, when my father and I roamed through the odorous market stalls that no longer exist. He was fond of getting me out of the sixteenth arrondissement and showing me the vieux Paris and its Zola-like reminiscences. I remember ogling the garishly dressed hookers lined up and down the rue Saint-Denis until my father sternly told me to stop.

  I watch Astrid and Margaux come back from the hotel, refreshed after their shower. Astrid's face has smoothed out; she seems less tired. She is holding Margaux's hand and swinging it the way she did when Margaux was a little girl.

  I know it will soon be time for them to leave. I know I need to get ready for that moment. It always takes me a while.

  At the end of the day Melanie's face seems a little pinker against the white pillow--or perhaps it is my hopeful imagination. Our families have left, and we are alone now in the slowly abating August heat, with the whirring noise of the fan in our ears. This afternoon I called her boss, Thierry Drancourt, her assistant, Lucie, her close friends, Valerie, Agnes, Victor. I tried to explain the situation in the best way possible, with the smoothest, most reassuring voice--accident, broken back, hospital, rest, will be okay--but they had all sounded worried. Could they send something, could they be of any help, was she suffering? I briefly calmed them down with a confident tone. She was going to be fine, just fine. On Mel's phone, which I had gotten hold of, I found a couple of messages from the old beau, but I did not call him back.

  Then, in the privacy of the men's toilets down the hall, I phoned my own close friends, Helene, Didier, and Emmanuel, and told them with a very different, trembling voice how afraid I had been, how afraid I still was, looking at her lying there in her cast, motionless, a dead look in her eyes. Helene sounded tearful, and Didier could hardly speak. Only Emmanuel managed to comfort me with his deafening baritone voice and warm chuckle. He offered to come down to be with me, and I toyed with the idea for a while.

  "I don't think I want to drive ever again," Melanie says feebly.

  "Forget it. It's too early, anyway."

  She shrugs, or tries to, and winces. "The kids have grown. Lucas is a young man. Margaux with her orange hair. Arno and his goatee." She stretches her parched lips and smiles. "And Astrid . . ." she says.

  "Yeah" . . . I sigh. "And Astrid."

  She slowly reaches out and takes my hand. She squeezes it. "Whatshisname didn't show up, huh?"

  "Thank God."

  The doctor comes in with a nurse for the evening checkup, and I leave the room after having kissed my sister goodbye. I walk up and down the corridors, the rubbery soles of my tennis shoes making squeaky noises. As I head out to the main entrance, I see her again, just outside.

  Angele Rouvatier. She is wearing black jeans and a sleeveless black T-shirt. She is sitting astride a magnificent vintage black Harley-Davidson, helmet tucked under one arm. With the other hand she is holding a phone to her ear. Her brown hair falls against her face,
and I cannot make out her expression. I stand there and watch her for a while, my eyes running down the slim length of her thighs, down the tapered back, along the round, feminine shoulders. Her forearms are tanned; she must have spent some time in the sun recently. I wonder what she looks like in a bathing suit. I wonder what her life is, whether she is married, single, a mother, childless. I wonder what she smells like, just there, under the glossy curtain of hair. She must have sensed something because she whips around and sees me checking her out. I step back fast, my heart thumping with discomfiture. She smiles at me, pockets her phone, and makes a little gesture with her finger: come here. I plod toward her, feeling idiotic.

  "How is your sister this evening?" she asks.

  Her eyes are gold, even in this light.

  "She seems better," I mumble. "Thank you."

  "You have a beautiful family. Your wife and daughter and son."

  "Thank you."

  "They've gone?"

  "Yes."

  A silence.

  "I'm divorced." I don't know why I say that. It sounds pathetic.

  "So you're stuck here for a bit, it seems?"

  "Yes. She can't be moved."

  She nods, gets up from the Harley. I admire the lithe way she swings her leg over the saddle.

  "You have time for a drink?" she says.

  She looks straight at me.

  "Sure," I say, trying to sound like this happens to me every day. "Any idea where?"

  "Not much choice. There's a bar over there, near the town hall. But it's probably closed at this hour. Or there's the bar at the Dauphin Hotel."

  "That's where I'm staying," I say.

  She nods. "There's no other place to stay. It's the only hotel open at this time of year."

  She walks faster than I do, and I get breathless trying to keep up with her. We are silent, but the silence is not heavy. When we get to the hotel, there is no one in the bar. We wait around for a while. The place seems totally empty.

  "You must have a minibar in your room," she says.

  Again that direct look, straight at me. There is something both terrifying and exhilarating about her. She follows me to my room. I fumble with my keys. The door slides open, clicks shut, and there she is in my arms, the glossy hair against my cheek. She kisses me deeply, thoroughly. She tastes of mint and tobacco. She is stronger, taller than Astrid or any other woman I've held in my arms recently.

  I feel stupid, standing there being kissed, like a clumsy teenager, swamped by my own inertia. My hands suddenly come to life. I grasp her. Like a drowning man clasping a life jacket, I clasp her to me feverishly, my palms flat against the small of her back. She melts into me, makes small, crooning sighs that come from deep within her. We fall onto the bed, and she straddles me with the same easy movement she used on her motorbike. Her eyes seem to glow like a cat's. She smiles slowly, then unbuckles my belt, unzips my fly. She touches me with a precise yet gentle sensuality that has me rock hard in seconds. She never stops looking at me, smiling at me, even as I enter her. She immediately slows me down, masterfully, stops my hips from bucking, and I know this will not be one of those rapid, rudimentary fucks that is over in minutes. This is something else.

  She rides me, and I watch the tawny lines of her body. She leans down to clasp my face between her hands, and she kisses me with a tenderness that surprises me. She takes her time, revels in it. What happens is something slow, unhurried, but the buildup is so powerful that I can feel it searing up through my toes to my tailbone and spine, scorching me, almost like pain. She lies flat out on me, breathless. Beneath my palm, the skin of her back is damp.

  "Thank you," she whispers. "I needed that."

  I manage a dry chuckle. "I beg to differ. I needed that as well."

  She reaches across to the table, grabs a cigarette, lights it, and hands it to me.

  "The moment I laid eyes on you, I knew."

  "Knew what?" I ask.

  "That I'd have you."

  She takes the cigarette from my fingers.

  I suddenly notice I am wearing a condom. I have no recollection of her putting one on me. She must have slipped it on with a dexterity that I had not even fathomed.

  "You still love her, don't you?"

  "Who?" I say that, but I know exactly who she means.

  "Your wife."

  Why bother hiding anything from this unusual, beautiful stranger?

  "Yes. I still love her. She left me for another man a year ago. I feel like shit."

  Angele stubs the cigarette out. Then she turns to face me again.

  "I could tell. Just by the way you looked at her. It must hurt."

  "It does."

  "What do you do? Your job, I mean."

  "I'm an architect. But the boring kind. I refurbish offices and warehouses. Hospitals, libraries, labs. Nothing exciting. I don't create."

  "You like putting yourself down, don't you?"

  "No," I say, stung.

  "Then stop it."

  I remain silent, discreetly sliding the condom off. I get up to throw it away in the bathroom. I avoid looking at myself in the mirror, as always.

  "And what about you, Madame Rouvatier? What do you do?" I say, coming back to the bed, keeping my stomach in.

  She looks at me coolly.

  "I'm a mortician."

  I swallow.

  She smiles. Perfect white, square teeth.

  "I handle dead people all day long. With the same hands that were stroking your dick a few moments ago."

  I glance at her hands. Strong and capable. Yet so feminine.

  "Some men are turned off by my job. I don't tell them. If I do, they lose their hard-on. Are you upset?"

  "No," I say truthfully. "Surprised, I guess. Tell me about your job. I've never met a mortician."

  "My job is about learning to respect death. That's all. If your sister had died last night in that accident--and thank God, she didn't--it would have been my job to make her look peaceful. So that you and your family could lay eyes on her one last time and not be afraid."

  "How do you do that?"

  She shrugs. "It's a job. The same way you do up offices, I do up death."

  "It is tough?"

  "Yes. When you get children. Or babies. Or pregnant women."

  I shiver.

  "Do you have any of your own? Children or babies?"

  "No," she says. "I'm not a family person. That's why I admire other people's."

  "Are you married?"

  "You sound like a cop. I'm not the marrying kind either. Anything else?"

  I smile. "Nope."

  "Good. Because I need to go now. My boyfriend will be wondering where I am."

  "Your boyfriend?" I cannot keep the bewilderment out of my voice.

  She flashes her teeth at me. "Yes. I do have a couple of those."

  She gets up, passes into the bathroom. I hear the shower run briefly. She appears wrapped up in a towel. I watch her. I cannot help but find her fascinating. She knows it. She slips on her underwear, jeans, T-shirt.

  "I'll be seeing you again. You know that, don't you?"

  "Yes," I breathe.

  She leans over and kisses me full on the mouth, hungrily.

  "I'll be back for more, Monsieur Parisian. You don't have to suck your tummy in like that. You're hot enough as it is."

  The door clicks. She is gone. I try to get myself together. I still feel wiped out, as if a tidal wave has hit me. I cannot help chuckling as I shower, recalling her boldness. But behind the audacity, there is something incredibly appealing about her, a warmth, an irresistible charm. She has achieved something excellent, I decide as I change into a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. She made me feel good about myself, and this has not happened for ages. I catch myself humming and nearly laugh out loud.

  I look at myself straight on in the mirror. I haven't done that for a long time. My longish face. Thick eyebrows. Lean limbs apart from the big belly. I grin. The man facing me no longer looks like Droopy. No, he's ev
en rather sexy, I think, with his ruffled salt-and-pepper hair and a devilish glint in his chestnut eyes.

  If only Astrid could see me now, I think. If only Astrid could want me as much as Angele Rouvatier-who-is-coming-back-for-more did. I groan. When am I going to stop pining for my ex-wife? When am I going to be able to turn that page and move on?

  I think of Angele's work. I have no idea what morticians do, exactly. Do I want to know? It fascinates me in some obscure way I do not want to delve into. I remember a TV documentary about what was done to bodies after death. Serums being pumped into them, crumpled-up faces smoothed out, wounds stitched together, limbs rearranged, special makeup applied. A grim job, I had remarked to Astrid, who was watching it with me. Here in this provincial hospital, what kind of deaths does Angele Rouvatier get every day? Old people passing away. Car accidents. Cancer. Heart attacks. I wonder all of a sudden if a mortician tended to my mother's body all those years ago. I remember the day we were taken to the hospital. I had closed my eyes. I wonder if Melanie had too. The funeral took place at Saint-Pierre de Chaillot church, ten minutes away from the avenue Kleber. My mother was buried in the nearby Passy cemetery, at the Trocadero. In the Rey family grave. I had taken the children there years ago to show them her grave, the grave of a grandmother they never knew. How is it that I have such little recollection of her funeral? Only short flashes of the dark church, few people, whispers, white lilies and their overpowering perfume, strangers hugging us over and over. I need to talk to my sister about this, to see what she remembers, if she remembers our mother's dead face, but I know this is not the moment.

  I think again about what Melanie 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.