Happy Are the Happy (3 page)

While waiting for her radiation therapy session at the Tollere Leman clinic, my mother scrutinizes every patient in the waiting room and says, in a barely lowered voice, wig, wig, not sure, not a wig, not a wig … Maman, Maman, not so loud, I say, everybody can hear you. What are you saying? my mother asks. You’re muttering under your breath and I can’t understand you. —Have you turned your ear on? —What? —Where’s your hearing aid? Why don’t you have it on? —Because I have to take it off during the radiation. —Put it on while we’re waiting, Maman. It’s no use, my mother says. The man sitting next to her gives me a sympathetic smile. He’s holding a Prince of Wales beret in his hands, and his pale complexion is in keeping with his outdated, English-style suit. In any case, says my mother, digging around in her purse, I don’t even have it with me. She goes back to people-watching and hardly lowers her voice when she says, that one there, she won’t last a month. Notice, I’m not the oldest person here, that’s reassuring … Maman, please, I say, here, look, there’s a fun quiz in
Le Figaro
. —All right, if it makes you happy. —What vegetable previously unknown in France did Queen Catherine de’ Medici introduce to the court: artichoke, broccoli, or tomato? Artichoke, my mother says. —Artichoke, right, good. What was Greta Garbo’s first job when she was fourteen: barber’s assistant, lighting double for Shirley Temple in
Little Miss Marker
, or herring-scaler at the fish market in
Stockholm, her native city? Herring-scaler in Stockholm, my mother says. —No, barber’s assistant. Oh, right, says my mother, how stupid of me, since when do herring have scales! If I may be so bold, madam, they’ve had them a very long time, says the man sitting next to her. I notice his tie, gray with pink polka dots, as he explains, herring have always had scales. Really? says my mother. No, no, herring don’t have scales, they’re like sardines. Sardines have always had scales as well, the man says. Sardines have scales, news to me, says my mother. Did you know that, Vincent? Like anchovies and sprats, the man adds. In any case, I deduce from this conversation that you don’t keep kosher! He laughs and includes me in his attempt at familiarity. In spite of his yellowing teeth and his sparse, graying hair, he has a certain style. I nod my head amiably. Fortunately, my mother says, fortunately I don’t keep kosher. As if it’s not enough that I don’t have any appetite anymore anyway. Who’s your doctor? the man asks, loosening the knot in his polka-dot tie a little and arranging his body for conversation. Doctor Chemla, my mother says. Philip Chemla, the best, there’s nobody better, he’s been keeping me going for six years, says the man. And me for eight, says my mother, proud of having been kept going longer. Lung too? the man asks. Liver, my mother answers, first breast and then liver. The man nods like someone who knows the song. But I’m atypical, you see, my mother goes on, I don’t do anything the same as everybody else, every time Chemla sees me, he says, Paulette – he calls me Paulette, I’m his pet patient – he says, you’re completely atypical, translation: you should have croaked a long time ago. My mother laughs heartily, and so does the man. As for me, I wonder whether a return to the quiz isn’t well overdue. He’s really a wonderful doctor, my
mother goes on – by now she’s beyond all control – and I find him personally very attractive too. The first time I saw him I said, are you married, Doctor? Do you have children? No children, he said. I said, you want me to show you how it’s done? I press her hand, dry and withered from her medications, and I say, Maman, listen. What? says my mother, it’s true, he was delighted, he laughed his head off, I’ve rarely seen an oncologist laugh like that. The man nods approvingly and says, he’s a true gentleman, Chemla is, a real mensch. One day, I’ll never forget it, he said these words to me, he said, when someone steps into my office, he honors me. Do you know he’s not even forty? My mother couldn’t possibly care less about any of that. She pursues her own line, as if she hasn’t heard a thing the man said. Last Friday, she goes on, speaking louder and louder, I told him, Doctor Ayoun – he’s my cardiologist – is a much better physician than you are. That’ll be the day, says Chemla. Oh, but he is, I say, he complimented me right away on my new hat, but you, Doctor, you haven’t even noticed it. I feel I must move. I get up and say, Maman, I’m going to ask the receptionist how much longer you have to wait. My mother turns to her new friend and says, he’s going to smoke, my son’s going outside to smoke a cigarette, that’s what that means. Tell him he’s slowly killing himself, and him only forty-three. Ah well, that way we’ll die together, Maman, I say. Look on the bright side. Very funny, says my mother. The gentleman in the polka-dot tie pinches his nostrils and inhales like a man preparing to deliver a decisive communication. I cut him short to explain that I’m not going out for a smoke, even though a nicotine fix would do me a world of good, I’m just going to talk to the receptionist. When I return, I inform my
mother that her radiation will start in ten minutes and that Doctor Chemla has not yet come into the office. Ah, that’s just like Chemla, he and his watch don’t get along, he can’t imagine that we might have a subsidiary existence outside this office, says the man, happy to let the sound of his voice be heard again and hoping to hold the floor. But my mother returns to the attack at once and declares, I’m on the best of terms with the receptionist, she always puts me at the top of the list, I call her Virginie. My mother lowers her voice somewhat and adds, she adores me, I say to her, be a sweetheart and give me the first appointment, my dear Virginie. She’s delighted by that, that personal touch. Vincent, my love, shouldn’t we bring her some chocolates next time? Why not, I say. —What? You’re muttering under your breath. I say, it’s a good idea. We should have been able to get rid of Roseline’s
vanillekipferl
before now, my mother says, I haven’t even opened the box. She doesn’t know how to make them, you think you’re eating sand. Poor Roseline, these days she quivers like a bunch of keys. You know, she’s a different woman since her daughter disappeared in the tsunami, one of the twenty-five bodies that have never been recovered, and Roseline believes she’s still alive. Sometimes that irritates me, I feel like telling her, sure, right, she’s being raised by chimpanzees that have given her amnesia. I say, don’t be mean, Maman. —I’m not mean, but sometimes you have to be fatalistic, everybody knows the world’s a vale of tears. Vale of tears, one of your father’s expressions, you remember? I answer, yes, I remember. The man in the polka-dot tie seems to be lost in some rather somber thoughts. He’s bending forward, and I notice a crutch lying beside his chair. It occurs to me that he’s suffering in some part of his body, and I tell myself that other
people in this waiting room on the basement floor of the Tollere Leman clinic must also be suffering in secret. You know, says my mother abruptly, leaning toward the man with an amazingly serious look on her face, my husband was obsessed with Israel. The man straightens up and smoothes the creases in his pinstripe suit. Jews are obsessed with Israel, but not me, my mother goes on. Me, I’m not at all obsessed with Israel, but my husband was. I’m having trouble following my mother along this tangent. Unless she’s trying to correct the misimpression caused by the scaleless fish. Yes, that’s it, maybe she wants to make it clear that her whole family is Jewish, including her, despite her ignorance of some fundamental dietary laws. Are you obsessed by Israel too? my mother asks. Naturally, the man replies. I approve of his concision. If I had my way, I could discourse at some length on the profundity of that reply of his. My mother, however, has a different apprehension of things. When I met my husband, she says, he had nothing at all, his family ran a notions shop on Rue Réaumur, a tiny place, a real dump. By the end of his life, he was a wholesaler, he owned three warehouses and an apartment building. And all that, he wanted to leave all that to Israel. —Maman, what’s got into you? What’s this tale you’re telling? It’s the truth, my mother says, without even taking the trouble to turn in my direction, we were a very close, very happy family, the only black spot was Israel. One day I told him the Jews didn’t need a country and he almost hit me. Another time, he threw Vincent out of the house because he wanted to take a trip down the Nile. The man prepares to make a remark, but he’s not fast enough. By the time he opens his pallid lips, my mother has already segued into Chemla wants to give me a new treatment, I can’t take Xynophren
anymore, my hands are falling into shreds, as you see. He wants me to have another round of chemo, a chemo drip this time, which is going to make me lose all my hair. Maman, that’s not certain, I say, Chemla said one chance out of two. One chance out of two means two chances out of two, my mother says, sweeping aside my statement with a gesture, but I don’t want to die like they did in Auschwitz, I don’t want to face my end with a shaved skull. If I have this treatment, it’s good-bye to my hair. And at my age, I don’t have enough time for it to grow back. And it’s good-bye to my hats, too. My mother shakes her head and mimes distress. She’s been holding herself bolt upright while talking nonstop, stretching her neck out like a pious young girl at prayer. I don’t delude myself, you know, she says. I’m here in this dreadful room, chatting with you, but only as a favor to my sons and Doctor Philip Chemla. I’m his pet patient, he enjoys taking care of me. Just between us, these radiation treatments are useless, they do no good whatsoever. They’re supposed to make me see as well as I used to, and every day my eyes are worse. Don’t say that, Maman, I say, the doctor explained that the treatment wouldn’t produce immediate results. What are you saying? my mother asks, you’re muttering under your breath. The results aren’t instantaneous, I repeat. Not instantaneous means not guaranteed, my mother says. The truth is that Chemla’s not certain about anything. He’s groping around. I’m his guinea pig, fine, someone has to do it. I’m a fatalist. When my husband was on his deathbed, he asked me whether I was still an enemy of Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people. I answered, but no, of course not. What do you say to a man who’s not going to be around much longer? You tell him what he wants to hear. It’s strange to cling to
such idiotic values. In your final hour, when everything’s about to disappear. A homeland, who needs a homeland? After a while, even life is an idiotic value. Even life, don’t you think? my mother says with a sigh. The man reflects. He could make a reply, because my mother seems to have suspended her babbling, and on a curiously meditative note. But at that instant a nurse calls for Monsieur Ehrenfried. The man grabs his crutch, his Prince of Wales beret, and a Loden overcoat that’s lying on the chair next to him. Still seated, he leans toward my mother and murmurs, life, maybe, but not Israel. Then he braces himself on his crutch and laboriously gets to his feet. Duty calls, he says, bowing, I’m Jean Ehrenfried. It was a pleasure. You can tell that every movement is quite difficult for him, but he continues to show a smiling face. The hat you’re wearing today, he says, is that the one that elicited compliments from your cardiologist? My mother touches her hat to verify her answer. No, no, she says, this one’s the lynx. The one I wore to Doctor Ayoun’s office is a kind of Borsalino with a black velvet rose. The man says, my compliments on the one you’re wearing today, it brought a touch of class to this waiting room. It’s my little lynx toque, says my mother flirtatiously. I’ve had it for forty years, does it still look good on me? It looks perfect, says Jean Ehrenfried, saluting her with a whirl of his beret. We watch him walk away and disappear behind the door to the radiotherapy room. My mother thrusts her bruised hands into her purse. She pulls out a compact and a lipstick and says, he’s got a bad limp, the poor man, I wonder if he hasn’t fallen in love with me.

We didn’t see this coming. We never imagined things could fall apart this way. Never. Not Lionel, not me. We’re alone and confused. Who can we talk to about it? We ought to talk about it, but a secret like this – who could we tell it to? We ought to be able to discuss it with people we trust, with very compassionate people who wouldn’t so much as suggest that they found anything humorous in it. We don’t tolerate the smallest hint of humor on the subject, although we’re well aware, Lionel and I, that we might laugh about it if it didn’t involve our son. Actually, given the slightest inducement, we’d probably laugh about it in company. We haven’t even told Odile and Robert. The Toscanos have been our friends forever, despite the fact that it’s not so easy to maintain a friendship between couples. An in-depth friendship, I mean. In the end, the only truly intimate relationships are those between two people. We should have seen one another in twos, separately, just the women or just the men, or maybe even one of each (assuming that Robert and I would have managed to find anything to talk about in private). The Toscanos make fun of our mutual devotion. They’ve developed a certain attitude toward us, a kind of permanent irony that makes me tired. We can’t say a word without them reacting like we’re the very image of a congealed couple, suffocated by well-being. The other day, I made the mistake of saying that I’d prepared a turbot
en
croûte
for dinner (I’ve been taking cooking classes, such fun). A turbot
en croûte
? Odile asked, as though I’d spoken in a foreign language. —Yes, a turbot cooked in a fish-shaped crust. —For how many people? Just for the two of us, I said, for Lionel and me, just for us two. Just for the two of you, that’s scary! Odile said. Why? asked my cousin Josiane, who was with us. I could cook a turbot
en croûte
just for myself, she said. Just for yourself, all right, that takes on another dimension, Robert said, upping the ante. Cooking a turbot
en croûte
, a fish with a fish-shaped crust, just for yourself alone, that rises to the level of tragedy. As a rule, I play dumb to keep things from going downhill. Lionel doesn’t give a damn. When I talk to him about it, he tells me the Toscanos are simply jealous, other people’s happiness often seems somehow aggressive. If we were to describe what’s happening to our family, I don’t see how anyone could be jealous of us. But confessing the disaster that’s befallen us is so hard precisely because we’re such paragons of domestic felicity. I can just imagine the snide remarks people like the Toscanos would make if they knew. Let me back up a little and explain. Our son Jacob, who recently turned nineteen, has always loved the singer Céline Dion. I say always because this passion dates from when he was still a little boy. While riding in a car one day, the child heard Céline Dion’s voice on the radio. Love at first sound. We bought that album for him and then the next one, the walls of his room got covered with posters, and – like a million other parents, I suppose – we found ourselves living with a little fan. Before long we were invited to concerts in his room. Jacob would dress like Céline in one of my slips and lip-synch her songs. I remember him unspooling some of the cassette tapes everybody
had back then and using them to make himself a hairdo. I’m not sure Lionel thoroughly appreciated the show, but it was very amusing. At the time, we already had to put up with Robert’s teasing – he’d congratulate us on our tolerance and open-mindedness. But it was very amusing. As Jacob got older, he gradually stopped being satisfied with merely singing like Céline; he started speaking like her and giving interviews to absent interviewers in a Canadian accent. He’d do Céline, and he’d do her husband René, too. It was funny. We’d laugh. Jacob imitated her to perfection. We’d ask him questions, I mean, we’d talk to Jacob and he’d answer as Céline. It was very amusing. It was really very amusing. I don’t know what went wrong. How did we go from a childish passion to this … I don’t know what to call it … to this derangement of his spirit? Of his very being?… One evening when all three of us were at the kitchen table, Lionel told Jacob he was tired of listening to him and his Québécois clownery. I’d made salt pork and lentils, a little dish my two men were usually crazy about, but this time there was something sad in the air. It was like the feeling you get when you’re alone with someone and the other person withdraws into himself and you see that withdrawal as an omen of abandonment. Jacob pretended not to know the meaning of the word
clownery
. He replied to his father in Québécois French, declaring that although he’d been living in France for some time, he was a Canadian woman who had no intention of disavowing her origins. Raising his voice, Lionel said Jacob’s act was getting to the point where it wasn’t funny anymore, and Jacob answered that he couldn’t keep up this “squabbling” because he had to protect his vocal cords. After that awful night, we started living with
Céline Dion in Jacob Hutner’s body. We were no longer called Papa and Maman, but Lionel and Pascaline. And we no longer had any relationship with our real son. At first we thought we were dealing with a temporary crisis, one of those little delirious phases teenagers go through. But when Bogdana, our cleaning lady, came and told us that Jacob had very graciously (she was on the point of finding him too good-natured for such a major star) requested a humidifier for his voice, I sensed that things were taking a turn for the worse. Without saying anything to Lionel – sometimes men are too prosaic – I consulted a magnetic therapist. I’d heard about people being possessed by entities. The magnetic therapist explained that Céline Dion wasn’t an entity and that therefore he wasn’t in a position to disengage her from Jacob. An entity is a vagabond soul that attaches itself to a living person. The therapist couldn’t liberate a boy inhabited by someone who sang in Las Vegas every night, he said, and he advised me to make an appointment with a psychiatrist. The word
psychiatrist
stuck in my throat like a cotton-wool plug. A certain amount of time had to pass before I felt capable of uttering that word at home. Lionel proved to be more realistic. I would never have been able to get through this trial without Lionel’s stability. Lionel. My husband. My own. True to himself, never pushy, never inclined to devious ways. One day Robert said Lionel was a man on the lookout for joy, a man in search of happiness, but happiness of a “cubic” kind. We laughed at this roguish remark, and I even gave Robert a little slap. But all things considered, he had a point: cubic. Solid. Upright on every side. We got Jacob to see a psychiatrist by persuading him that the doctor was an ear, nose, and throat specialist. The psychiatrist
recommended a stay in a private hospital. I was shattered when I saw how easily our child could be manipulated. Jacob strode cheerfully into the mental clinic, convinced that he was entering a recording studio, a kind of studiohotel reserved for stars of his stature so they wouldn’t have to go back and forth every day. When we stepped into the bare, white room on that first morning, I came near to falling at his feet and begging his forgiveness for such treachery. We’ve told everybody that Jacob has left the country to do an internship abroad. Everybody, including the Toscanos. The only person in on the secret is Bogdana. She persists in baking him Serbian cakes with walnuts and poppy seeds, even though he never touches them, for Jacob no longer likes what he used to like before. He remains normal physically, he doesn’t imitate a woman. His condition is something that goes much deeper than mere imitation. Lionel and I have wound up calling him Céline. In private, we sometimes even refer to him as “she.” Doctor Igor Lorrain, the psychiatric physician who’s treating our son in the clinic, tells us that Jacob’s never unhappy except when he watches the news. He’s obsessed by the arbitrary nature of his good fortune and privileged status. The nurses talk about taking away his television because he cries straight through all the evening news programs, even stories about a harvest wiped out by a hailstorm. And there’s also another aspect of his behavior that worries the psychiatrist. When Jacob goes down to the lobby of the clinic to sign autographs, he first wraps several scarves around his neck so he won’t catch cold. He has his world tour to think about, the doctor jokingly explains (I’m not crazy about that doctor). Jacob positions himself in front of the revolving door, convinced that
the people who enter the hospital have traveled great distances just to see him. When we arrived yesterday afternoon, he was at his post. I could see him from the car before we turned into the parking lot. He was visible through the glass panels of the revolving door, bending down toward a child, looking absurdly friendly, and scribbling something in a little notebook. Lionel knows my silences well. After parking the car, he looked at the plane trees and asked, is he downstairs again? I nodded and we hugged each other, unable to speak. Doctor Lorrain tells us Jacob calls him Humberto. We’ve explained that he probably takes him for Humberto Gatica, his sound engineer – well, I mean Céline’s sound engineer. Which is logical enough, if you think about it, because both of them look like Steven Spielberg. In the same way, we’ve heard Jacob call the nurse from Martinique Oprah (as in Oprah Winfrey), whereupon she starts wriggling as though she feels flattered. Today was such a difficult day. First he said to us, using that pronunciation I’ll never be able to imitate, you don’t look very happy at the moment, Lionel and Pascaline. I have a lot of empathy for other people, and it upsets me to see you like this. Would you like me to sing something to cheer you up? We said no, he needed to rest his voice, he already had enough work to do with cutting his records, but he insisted all the same. He sat us down side by side, just the way he used to do when he was little, Lionel on a stool and me in the leatherette armchair. And then, standing in front of us and demonstrating a fine sense of rhythm, Jacob sang us a song called “Love Can Move Mountains.” When he was finished, we did what we used to do when he was a little boy: we burst into loud applause. Lionel put one arm around my shoulders to keep
me from weakening. Evening came, and as we were walking down the corridor on our way out of the clinic, we heard people calling out to one another in Canadian French. Hey, David Foster, take a look at this! Has Humberto come down yet? Ask Barbra! That one should go on a two-year break, too! Then we heard them laughing, and we realized that the nursing staff was making fun of Céline and her entourage. Lionel couldn’t take it. He went into the room where the laughter was coming from and said in a solemn voice that sounded silly even to me, I’m Jacob Hutner’s father. There was a silence. Nobody knew what to say. And so I said, come on, Lionel, it doesn’t matter. And the nurses started mumbling apologies. I tugged at my husband’s sleeve. Disoriented, no longer sure where the elevator was, we went down some stairs that echoed under our footsteps. Outside it was nearly dark and raining a little. I pulled on my gloves and Lionel headed for the parking lot without even waiting for me. I said, wait for me, my own. He turned around, squinting through the raindrops, and I saw how very small his head looked and how thin his hair was in the light of the streetlamp. I thought, we have to return to our normal life, Lionel has to go back to his office, we have to stay cheerful. After we got in the car, I said I felt like going to the Russian Canteen and drinking vodka and eating piroshki. And then I asked him, who do you suppose Barbra is? Barbra Streisand, Lionel said. —Yes, but in the clinic. Do you think she’s the head nurse with the long nose?