Mon amie américaine (6 page)

You substitute a sluggish acceptance of the other person's thinking for your need to speak your mind no matter what or show how you're different. When you know the other person to the point of guessing what will make him fly off the handle, you've reached a time when it's less of a kick but more advisable not to argue. What good is displaying your point of view when you can guess which arguments are going to be used to counter it, when you know that when you're finished each of you will feel that much more offended because the issue can't be settled?

Decorating your apartment took up all your time and energy in the weeks before your coma; well, two people living together evolves the way a living room gets furnished. You move from confrontation, with each of you sitting opposite the other in a chair, your spines very straight and
wedged against the chair back, to more of a slump that feels ever so much more comfortable, on a two-person sofa on which each has his favorite side, just like the bed you share to such an extent that instead of looking at each other, you're both looking at the same wall. Renouncement means the absence of argument and leads to forgetting to discuss anything at all. You stop asking the other person his opinion; you simply want to keep track of his state of mind: “You all right?” “Yes, what about you? Everything OK?”

Each has blunted his claws. However, life hasn't lost its harshness. Battles grow more numerous outside, with others. So, when you're home, you long for a little peace and quiet to replenish your strength. You savor the harmony, the feeling of well-being. With both of you having reached the summit, it's sweet to take a breath together, side by side, before climbing back down the mountain. You take the time to live, before watching yourself grow old.

You and I had that conversation again very recently, in London. I was explaining to you that Vincent and I were coming out of that trouble spot you encounter when the children are very little,
that time was flying by fast and moving pretty much in a straight line, that Benoît and Clara were getting bigger and taking up all the room there was, and that they were also practically the only cause of our arguments.

A student. Can you imagine how ridiculous that is? What does he talk to her about? What does a barely legal teenager understand about the problems of an adult's life? How could she change the course of an existence like Vincent's, which is so full already?

I'm asking you that question. It helps me. It reminds me of what I'm sure of, something three words on a cell phone have chucked out the window.

I know what your answer is.

Opposites attract. That's what it's about.

Obviously. It's stupid to cry. She's young, free, available. Getting involved with her is coming closer to a world where everything is possible because it all still remains to be lived. For Vincent, it's as if he'd discovered that he had the use of a pause button. It's our family life that he's bringing to a standstill. He's gone off the beaten path. He's experimenting. He's discovering the pleasure
of wasting time, frittering it away, squandering it. And in this unhoped-for time he's discovering and taking a kind of pleasure whose taste, fragrance, memory he'd lost track of. It's from a fleeting period when nothing weighed on you, hurried you, where every day was like an open window and your own desire was law, where you went forward and faced the rest of the world with a swagger. It's a time that neither you nor I really savored, because we were in such a hurry to learn, understand, accumulate experience; and now Vincent is rediscovering it with delight, now that he's an adult. He needs to fill his lungs with that ultrahackneyed elixir so distrusted by those who've left it forgotten behind them. And I've suddenly discovered, Molly, that I'm one of them. It's so very simple. This isn't a demon, it's a rediscovery. For Vincent, it's unexpected. Youth. Feeling young again. Giving yourself the illusion that life is a road still to embark upon, when in reality, you've already covered half the path. How could it be possible to resist such a temptation?

There were other students before. Some even more beautiful, more brilliant, more available. But it wasn't the right moment.

Why now? Now, exactly? Our life is pleasant, our children thriving … our family harmonious … Is the fact that everything is so calm what's boring him? I never imagined that this stability we built together could fulfill me to such a degree and weigh on him so terribly. I don't know when we stopped having the same dreams. You see, while I was only seeing us, he began to question himself. While black screens were telling me stories, he was rethinking his.

Molly, tell me the truth, have I become that conventional mother who's blind and deaf? Have I become that cliché? Such a bad farce? Really? Since when?

You know how much I hate reading that kind of predictable scenario. The husband, the wife, and the other woman, that intruder who embodies the serpent of temptation.

In that type of story, the resolution is completely binary. Like your two-column sheet. For or against?

Say something or keep quiet.

Leave or stay.

Protest or forgive.

Suffer or forget.

Molly, what would you say in my place? Enough is enough or more?

As you're finally coming back from your planet Comma, I'm going out on the attack, in a land that was unknown to me and that I thought I'd never have to visit someday. I have no choice. I have to confront it. Jealousy. That bad counselor. That scorching lava that blinds the senses and muddles the brain. If I surrender to it, I'm done for.

FOR THE MOMENT, I'M KEEPING MY MOUTH SHUT
. I'm much too crazed to start the battle. I'm not armed for that kind of combat. Quite the opposite — it feels like all my strength has left me. During the day, I deal with it. I have no choice in front of the children. At night, I drift from one nightmare to another. I dream we're divorcing, that I'm single again, that I'm invited to dinners where they seat me at the end of the table, that I go out with men I don't know anything about, and to whom I have nothing to say. I understand that you're supposed to talk, to explain who you are, to seduce, to sell yourself, but I'm not capable of it. I live alone. Vincent has made a new life for himself, but I can't stop undoing mine. You're going to laugh; in my dreams I've changed occupations. I've become a librarian, and I've got all the answers when it comes to the books in the romance section. Some
nights, I've gained forty-five pounds. On others, I'm anorexic, have lost my teeth, my hair. I smoke filterless Gitanes and live in bed. In the morning, I wake up crying, but I feel Vincent's breath on the nape of my neck, so I hurry out of bed to keep him from noticing how red my eyes are.

I haven't said anything, haven't made the slightest remark; but it's obvious to me that I'm different. I've stiffened. Vincent must have guessed that I'm not myself. He seems particularly considerate. In normal times, I would have said thoughtful, but now I see him more as attentive, as if he were on his guard and had a foreboding of everything I've guessed.

Everything is so crystal clear when I think about it! I'm an idiot, Molly. I would have made a lousy detective. How couldn't I have noticed that Vincent, who never knew where he'd put his cell phone, now never lets it out of his sight? It's with him everywhere, even — and especially — in the bathroom, where the flowing of the faucets is getting noisier and noisier. No, I'm not paranoid. It's simply that all these things I hadn't noticed, at least not consciously, are exploding in my brain and in front of my eyes in very big close-ups, in
3-D and Technicolor. Vincent forgets his doctors' appointments, a hypochondriac like him; but it does occur to him to stop in for a haircut, whereas usually I have to force him to do that. He's wearing a new cologne, despite the fact that he used to swear only by his Penhaligon's English Fern, which the two of us went and bought for him in London, and that you insisted on paying for because you'd forgotten his birthday. He has bought a collection of shirts, even though he hates wearing new clothes. He's jaunty, absentminded, flippant. More than anything, I sense he's unavailable, faraway, vague, elsewhere …

I'm losing faith, can no longer hope that tomorrow will be another day. I'm out of patience. You know my motto: The best defense is to attack. It isn't very far away from yours: The best way out is always through.

Molly, I've got to act, make a decision, do something. I can't stand waiting any longer. Waiting for you to wake up. And waiting for him to announce his desires to me.

Since I sense that he wants to be able to do as he pleases, I leave him alone. Never mind if it's
suicidal. I'm the one who leaves. I'm traveling more and more, to the great displeasure of the children, who hate to see me go and start sulking as soon as they catch sight of my little red suitcase, the one I take out when I'm traveling without them. Benoît opens the drawers, helps me with a sad look, whereas Clara, who is always more drastic, runs away to entangle herself in our nanny Lala's apron strings, who will toss her some crepes whenever as she thinks Clara is sad. And it enrages me to see her stuffing my daughter like that, but I can read in her eyes that if I wasn't absent so often, she wouldn't need to give her substitute pleasures. So I let her go ahead with it, feeling contrite, guilty.

My life feels like water flowing from my clenched fist as I try in vain to hold on to it. I'm running away. Without you, Molly, I don't know where to turn. You're the only person I can tell all this to.

I think I've never felt so alone.

I sleep in impersonal hotel rooms in which I burn incense that Vincent is crazy about and that makes me feel like I'm home. I try to escape through the films I'm watching, but now I can't stand any
of them. The comedies exacerbate me, the misunderstandings are oppressive, the cross-purposes give me a stomachache, the dramas bore me, the science fictions fill me with anguish. I'm not interested in any kind of thriller. I'm focused on the burdens in my own life, my marriage, my family. The future terrifies me, Molly. A life without him? It doesn't make sense.

FINALLY!

You're finally conscious, finally awake, finally allowed to see a few visitors.

I'm coming!

I'm so delighted to be going to your bedside before everybody. Only your family and the boys have this privilege. I've promised to give your three other friends news about you, to call them as soon as I leave the hospital.

This morning I got up very early, printed out these pages; and I put them in an envelope the same bright pink color as your baggage labels. I'm sure it's going to make you burst out laughing. I've just deleted the parts about Vincent. For the time being, to hell with my married life. You're the one who counts, you, my enduring spirit. You stayed lost for more than three months on your
planet Comma; you've practically beat all records, but we're going to forget fast about all of that.

Molly, I'm too excited to have the patience to reread what I've written. All of these sentences are probably meaningless now that you've woken up. I'll bring them to you anyway. It's my way of showing you in concrete terms that I didn't stop thinking of you.

I don't know a thing about what state you're in. I don't want to think about it. I want to see you and decide for myself how you seem to me. I know that you became conscious again three weeks ago, that you recognized your family. You were transferred to another hospital two hours away from Manhattan. I don't know if you were told of my visit. I hope not. You've always adored surprises.

My head's spinning, my ears ringing, my throat dry. Visits aren't allowed after six p.m. I didn't even take the time to stop by the hotel and drop my suitcase off. In any case, the instructions are not to stay in your room more than fifteen minutes, because you're too tired to sustain a conversation. My hands are sweating. I'm shaking a little. If the taxi driver were a smoker, I think just this once I would have asked him for a cigarette.
Have you gone back to smoking? Have they cut your hair? And your fingernails? They must be long; for once you weren't able to bite them. Have you lost weight, gained it? Do you already have permission to wear one of your pairs of striped men's pajamas that I love, or are you wearing an off-white hospital gown like the ones in those American films, the kind that are tied with a knot at the left side? I realize that I've avoided imagining you concretely until now. My legs are giving way. You're the one who's sick, and I'm the one who's afraid.

The taxi driver tells me that he's very familiar with the route to the medical center, that it's a renowned establishment that specializes in extensive rehabilitation. What's he talking about? What does it mean? That ready-made expression annoys me. What's the meaning of such an impenetrable adjective?
Extensive
. Is it a PC word to avoid saying
serious
?

I half-open the window and breathe the humid air. It won't be long before it snows. I close my eyes. I've never so much wanted to have faith as I do at this second.

For pity's sake, make it be that you're well.

It was the girl at reception who called the taxi to take me back. The driver must be used to it. He made note of the address, turned his music all the way up, and belted into the night without so much as a look at me. Curled up in back, I watch the scenery flash by. I would really like to cry, which would soothe me. I can't. I spend the trip bushed, frozen stiff, moving my head slightly to the rhythm of the potholed road and the monotonous Hindu tunes the driver hums along with.

It doesn't bother me. It keeps me from hearing the sounds of the car.

Your voice is playing in a loop in my ears.

A thick voice that croaks to me, “You know I almost died?”

You repeated that to me four times.