Sleeping Awake (16 page)

We were too happy to see him
to notice anything, but the signs were all there: the way that he and
Maman
barely said a word to each other and the fact that they sat at opposite ends of
the table, when
Maman
usually sat at his left during meals. I
caught Philippe staring at us a couple of times during dinner, but it wasn’t a
normal gaze; he looked sad. Later, his voice cracked as he read a chapter of
Le
Petit Prince
to me before bed.

“Ça va?”
I asked. “
Voudriez-vous
que je lis?”

“I don’t need you to read,” he
replied. “I’m fine. It’s just a cold.”

“Okay.” I smiled then, closing
my eyes as his words lulled me into a peaceful slumber.

He was gone by the time I woke
up the next morning. I couldn’t help but notice that we were sitting in the
same order as we had that night. Once again, no one was talking.

No longer able to keep up with
the formalities, I put down my spoon. I wanted answers.

“So,” I began. “What have you
been doing with your life since you stole away in the middle of the night?”

Maman
almost dropped her water goblet. Cienna
continued eating her salad, but she sat up a little. Camelea’s ears seemed to
perk upright as she turned towards Philippe.

Philippe put down his spoon
and cleared his throat. “I did not steal away…”

I stopped him. “Cut the crap,
Philippe. You left in the middle of the night when we were asleep, and you
never said goodbye. You can live in denial all you want, but by definition, you
stole away.”

“Noira!”
Maman
exclaimed. The effect of straining her throat sent her into a familiar coughing
fit, and she shakily reached for her glass of water.

“C’est OK,”
Philippe said. “She has a
right to be angry; you all do.”

“I’m not angry,” I said. Under
the table, my hands shook.

“Well if you were,” Philippe
corrected himself, “then you’d have a right to be. I’ve been living in Belgium
and Amsterdam since I last saw you girls.”

“And for how long have you
been living in Garden City?” Camelea inquired, tilting her head towards
Philippe as if in prayer. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were wide. She
looked almost rhapsodic as she waited for her beloved to give her a sugar-sweet
answer for leaving her alone for all these years. She would obviously be the
first to forgive Philippe, if she hadn’t already done so.

“A year.”

“So you’ve been living in New
York for a year, and yet you chose now of all times to see us. Why is that?”
Camelea asked. She wasn’t the only one to stop eating when the question was
asked. The three of us stared expectantly.

He glanced at
Maman
before answering. “I wanted to see you girls but…”

I cut him off. “You know what?
Save it, because there is absolutely no excuse for not seeing us, just as you
had none for leaving in the first place.”

“That is enough, Noira! I will
not have you disrespecting your father while you are in my presence!” The veins
in
Maman’s
neck bulged against the side of her neck, struggling to
pump their way through.

“Father? Fathers don’t take
off in the middle of the night! Fathers don’t cause their children unnecessary
pain! He was not our father when he did those things, and he most certainly
isn’t our father now. He will never be for that matter!”

Those were the first words
that Cienna had spoken since she sat down at the table.

“And just who are you to be
scolding Noira?” She turned to Maman, her face splotchy and red from the tears
that were barrelling down her face. “After all that he put you through, you
actually have the gall to sit here and defend him? Don’t tell me that you
didn’t suffer,
Mother
, we saw your tears!”

The colour drained from
Maman’s face. No one could have hurt Maman more than Cienna, her baby, choosing
not to call her ‘Maman.’

After a long period of
silence,
Maman
spoke. “You're right. I did get hurt; we all did.
But you cannot let it get the best of you, because believe me when I say this,
it will turn you into something so hideous that no one will want to come around
you unless they absolutely have to. For that, you will hate yourself."

She stood and began clearing
the dishes. Philippe stood to help her, but she waved him away.

I reached under the table and
took Cienna’s hand, squeezing it gently. Despite my own pain at Philippe’s
disappearance, I knew that it could not compare to that of Cienna’s. Parents
are supposedly unable to choose favourites among their children, but Philippe
failed terribly. Everyone knew that Cienna was his darling girl. She could
always be found perched in his lap or being carried around on his back. The
only person who could control her sass was her Papa. Papa was gone, however;
all that we had left was Philippe, a man who we did not know.

“Alors,”
Camelea began. “
Vous
aimiez votre séjourne en Belgique?
Did you live in Wallonia or at the house
in Brussels?”

On the table, Cienna’s right
hand formed a tight fist around her knife.

“J’ai habité à Wallonie pour
un an. Je suis allé éventuellement à Brussels.”

“Let me guess,” I began. “You
hid out in Wallonia for a year to give Paris a while to get used to the fact
that you were single again and then find a new cover story, right?”

Saint Camelea began trembling,
revealing her manipulative nature.

“I was painting actually,”
Philippe replied.

“Painting?”
I demanded. Surely I had
heard incorrectly.

Philippe nodded, smiling
boyishly. “Yes. I painted all the time as a child. I came across some old
pieces when I was wandering the chateau and realised how much I’d missed doing
it. That’s why I ended up staying for the year in Wallonia. I got caught up
once again. The grounds are magnificent. I spent the year painting the scenery.”

I tried, and failed, to
process what he was saying. Philippe
painted?

“I remember you showing me
your drawings as a child, Noira,” Philippe continued. “Perhaps I passed these
talents down to you.”

“You
could
say
that,” I replied. “But I may have gotten it from whomever it was who passed it
on to you, if you want to get into specifics.”

“You should see her work,”
Camelea interjected.

Almost instinctively, Cienna
grabbed my hand under the table. Had she not done so, Camelea would have had to
dodge my wine glass.

“I’d like that,” Philippe
replied.

I shot Camelea a dangerous
glare. My jaw chattered as I struggled to swallow the words that were on the
tip of my tongue. Instead, I replied, “I don’t think so.”

Philippe looked like he had
taken a gunshot.

Camelea reached over and
squeezed his hand. He looked down at her hand over his and then back up at her.
I could have laughed when I saw his struggle to not let his the tears fall from
his watery eyes.

**~*~*~**~*~*~**

The apple really didn’t fall
far from the tree, and Saint Camelea stepped in line as Maman’s partner of
treacherous acts. Once it was time to retire into the parlour for coffee, I sat
as far away from Philippe and Saint Camelea as possible. All that they had left
to do was have a tearful embrace with soft murmurs of “I’m sorry,” and “I love
you,” to make the perfect end to those stupid family sitcoms that television
stations insist on airing. It’s all about learning lessons, forgiveness, and
healing on those shows. Bullshit. Real life didn’t work like that.

Had I not expected anything
better from Camelea, I would have been disappointed. Cienna took my hand and
squeezed it. I knew what she must have been thinking: her desire to heal had
willed the bastard into existence. God was surely a sadistic pervert who got
off from other people’s suffering.

 “Would anyone like to
inform us as to the real reason why we’re gathered here on this rather
unpleasant evening?” I asked.

The mother and donor exchanged
yet another nervous glance before, quite surprisingly,
Maman
spoke.
“Your father didn’t just decide to move to America last summer; he moved here
because I asked him to.”

“What?” Camelea asked.

I smiled at the thought that
her little fantasy of his maddening desire to once again be reunited with us
was crushed by Maman’s news. He hadn’t been stricken with regret and an
uncontrollable need to see us, after all.

“I asked him to move to New
York because I knew that one day something like this would happen, and he’d
need to be here.”

Cienna stopped pouring her
coffee. “Something like what?” she demanded. Her head seemed to spin 360
degrees as her rays shot between Maman and Philippe. “And why the hell does he
need to be here? He needed to be there for us eleven years ago and he didn’t
come back then, did he?”

Maman closed her eyes for a
few moments. “This is different,” she said.

“How?” Cienna snapped.

Maman’s eyes were so narrow
that they appeared to have black daggers shooting through them. The tick in her
jaw ran wild. I’d never seen Maman look like that before, not even when she was
scolding me. After staring each of us down, Maman continued. “A little over a
year ago, I went to the doctor for my annual check-up. Everything seemed fine
at first, then I fell ill shortly afterwards.”

At the same time, Philippe
rose. My eyes followed him as he walked through my house, as if he lived had
always lived there, and disappeared up the stairs. When he returned, it was
with a glass of water and the unlabeled prescription bottle that I’d once had
to run and get. He handed them to Maman before resuming his position beside
Camelea on their loveseat. I stared at Maman. She wouldn’t look at me as she
took two of the small pills.

“What’s wrong with Maman?”
Camelea turned to look at Philippe. There was no love in her eyes, only vapours.

Maman coughed again, and it
was then that I saw the bruise, as faint as white against snow, on the back of
the hand that brought a napkin to cover her mouth. I thought back to the night
of my arrival from Connecticut. I stood.

“You lost weight because
you’re sick, didn’t you?” I demanded.

Maman looked away.

“And that night when you were
in pain, you made me get you those pills.” I placed my hands on my hips. “What
are they for?”

Maman
tried to respond, but ended up finishing
her water as she struggled to recover from yet another coughing fit. I couldn’t
breathe. Why hadn't we noticed that her slight cold had carried on for a month?
I already knew the answer. We were too busy with our own lives. Like a
sleepwalker, I wasn’t aware that I had crossed the distance between myself and
Maman until I was standing in front of her.

"Which type?" I
whispered. For the first time since the evening had begun, I acknowledged
Philippe as a person and not an annoyance.

"Leukaemia." He ran
a weary hand through the mop of his hair.

Like paper swept up by the
wind, I floated down, down, down, until the current faded and I was on the
floor. I thought of all of the ways that I had ever given Maman some sort of
trouble over the past year. The breakdown, the subsequent hospitalization,
snapping at her on the first night that I returned. I’d been bitter about her
incessant need to check up on me. I all but refused to speak to her as she sat
during her vigilant watch in the evenings and juggled answering office emails
and writing up briefs between my sulks and protests that I was old enough to be
by myself. She never complained. It was as if her illness never really existed,
when in reality, it had been eating her alive.

"Which type?" I whispered.

Philippe’s boyish features
disappeared as he looked at me. He looked like an aged undertaker who was ready
to settle into his own crypt. “Chronic myeloid leukaemia. She's stopped
responding to local treatment. Those pills are to ease her pain." Philippe
replied.

"Now what?" Camelea
asked.

Philippe glanced at
Maman
.
"Now she flies to Switzerland."

"Switzerland?!"
Behind me, Cienna shrieked.

"Yes, she has to go to
Switzerland." Philippe repeated. "It's only for two weeks."

"
Only
two
weeks?" Cienna snapped. "We
only
just
found out that
she has cancer. Why does she have to leave?"

"They have a new
treatment there that they'd like to try on her. It’s too late for her to get a
bone marrow transplant; this is her last option."

"So when does she
leave?" Camelea asked.

My heart started slamming over
and over again against my chest. All of the 'she' and 'her' made it seem as if
we were talking about a dead person.

"The flight is at six
a.m." Philippe added.

“WHAT?” Cienna howled. “And
you waited until the night before to tell us?”

“I was scared,” Maman replied.

“You should made her tell us
earlier, Philippe!” Cienna screamed.

In the middle of the
subsequent argument between her and Philippe, I stood. I doubted that anyone
noticed my disappearance until the front door slammed and the sound
reverberated off the walls and into the parlour.

*~*

I followed the cracks on the
sidewalk, but I did not walk on them.
Step on a crack, break your momma’s
back.
I laughed. At least broken backs could be repaired; they didn’t
require last resort trips to Switzerland for experimental treatment.

The cracks led me further and
further away from my neighbourhood. When they disappeared, I let the sidewalk
be my guide. I didn’t quite know where I was going, but I knew that I couldn’t
go back to that house of cards. I didn’t want to see what other surprises those
tricksters had in store for us.

I walked past the park where
Maman used to take us when we first got to New York; the organic food store,
where Maman shopped; and my old middle school, where my teachers ganged up on
me and made Maman send me to my first psychiatrist. I walked past my life, and
I did not look back.

My legs started to feel like
lead, but I did not care. My body had been through suicide attempts and had
replied with a resonating “Fuck you!” It could handle a little walk. I trudged
onwards and arrived at another park. It had nothing but a three-person swing
set and a couple of trees stretched out over less than a mile or so of land. I
cared neither for the trees nor the swings.

The rain started to fall. Its
fat welts slapped my shoulders as I resumed my march towards the forest across
the park.
Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of
Jesus going on before
. Jesus had long since forgotten my name.

As the rain fell harder, the
grass squished under my feet and turned into mud. It was like a sinking pool of
cement, sticking to my feet and trying to suck me in. I kicked my shoes off my
feet and continued at a steady pace, murdering the grass as I stomped across
the clearing. What use was life? There would be no purpose if Maman died.
Thunder roared and lightning clashed in the sky. I wished that the lightning
would strike me as I crossed the middle of the clearing.

Even when my body yelled at me
to stop, I marched further. Finally, my knees buckled, and I was tossed onto a
flowerbed, taking more life as I fell. I felt no pain as I sank into the mud.
The rain fell into my nose and went straight into my nasal passage. I inhaled
deeply; drowning didn’t seem like a bad idea. I closed my eyes hoping that the
rains would push me downwards.

Sometime later, I fell asleep.

“Noira!”

I covered my ears.

“Noira!”

I wished that the noise would
stop. I thought that dying was supposed to be peaceful.

“Noira, damn it! Is that you?”
The voice got closer. “Noira!”

My eyes rolled upwards.
Nicolaas.

“Jesus Christ,” Nicolaas said.

“Adonis!” I gave him a toothy
smile. “Are you here to bring me to Saint Peter?”

I was being carried like the
weightless angel that I had become, cradled by a god. Eventually, I felt myself
being lowered and blankets were tucked around me. Heat poured on me.

“Noira are you okay?” Nicolaas
looked over the front seat at me, a fretful look on his face.

I smiled drowsily. Dying apparently
felt like falling asleep. The car hummed to life, and we were off at the speed
of light, where Saint Peter surely awaited. But we didn’t go to the pearly
gates; we went to my personal hell.

“No!” I croaked as we sped up
the drive.

“What?”

“I don’t want to go to Hell,”
I mumbled into my blanket.

“Noira, what are you talking
about? You’re not going to Hell.” Nicolaas parked the car in front of my
doorway and turned to look at me again.

“I’m not dead?” My eyebrows
knitted. I took a better look at my surroundings. No devil, no roaring fire, no
instruments of torture to punish me for revelling in the Seven Deadly Sins. I
was alive.

Fuck.

“Noira are you feeling
feverish?”

When I didn’t reply, he opened
his door and came around. In one swoop, I was on his lap, and he was feeling my
neck with the back of his hand. I pushed him away.

“She has cancer,” I simply
said.

“I know,” Nicolaas replied,
hugging me closer. “I’m sorry.”

“How did you find me?”

“Cienna called,” he replied
stroking my hair. “She thought that you were at Bryn’s; I answered. When you
didn’t show up, I went looking for you. I almost gave up, but then I saw
something fall to the ground in that clearing and decided to see if it was
you.”

I burrowed my face into his
chest. I liked the way that it felt in his arms. “You’re my guardian angel.”

Nicolaas chuckled. “I guess
so.”

“I’m scared to go back in
there.”

“I know.” He kissed my
forehead. “But your mother needs you.”

I sighed.

“If you don’t see your mother
before she leaves, you’ll never be able to live with yourself,” he pressed.

“Damn you for always being
right!” I cursed.

He chuckled. The vibrations
tickled my face as I smothered myself in his chest.

“You have to go inside.”

“Fine.” I pulled away from
him. “Get rid of me.”

He pulled me closer, and I
eagerly drank him in. As quickly as the kiss began, it ended. I bit my lips.

“Arrête,”
Nicolaas commanded.

With a quick peck to his lips,
I stole another kiss. Knowing that I would not be able to hold myself back if I
was forced to be in such close proximity to him, I opened the door and
disappeared into the rain before he could so much as comprehend what just
happened. I did not stop running until I was in the house. It was only once I
was safely indoors that I took a peek at the car inching further and further
away from me. I still wanted him.

“He’s gone.”

I jumped backwards almost
knocking over the table in the foyer.

“Who is?” I asked Cienna. She
had entered the room almost as soon as the front door had opened.

“Our sperm donor.”

“Oh.”

Cienna looked down at my feet
and frowned. “Where are my shoes?”

“Shoes?” I walked past her in
an attempt to get up to my room to change.

“The black pumps that I lent
you last week to wear on your date; you had them on at dinner this evening,”
she said following closely behind me.