Sleeping Awake (25 page)

“Her lungs collapsed. They
have her on a respiratory machine.”

Grandpa sat down. If ever he
looked like an old man, it was then.

“She has a virus, but they
don’t know what it is just yet,” Philippe continued, taking a seat as well. “Her
white blood cell count is low; it’s a side effect of her cancer treatment. She’s
vulnerable to everything right now.”

Not only was
Maman
going to die, she was going to die a lot sooner. Someone's arms were around me.
Philippe. I leaned against something wet on his shirt’s sleeve. I hadn’t realised
that I was crying.

"I want to go in,” Cienna
announced. “I want to see her.”

I pulled away from Philippe
and wiped away the tears from my eyes. "I want to go in as well."

Philippe nodded. "I have
to warn you, she's hooked up to a lot of machines."

"I don't care; I want to
see my mother," Cienna said.

       We
walked in silence with Philippe leading the way. The room was dark; it took a
while for my eyes to adjust. Once they did, I held my breath at the sight.
There, among the sheets, was a woman. She looked so tiny, almost as if she were
about to break.

“That's not
Maman
."
I stiffened. The others turned to look at me.

"That's not my
mama." I started to back out of the room.

Grandpa's hand reached towards
me.

"No!" I jumped back
and reached for the door handle.

"Noira," Cienna said
softly. She sounded so much like
Maman
that it scared me. The way
that she said my name reminded me of the way that
Maman
would say
it whenever she wanted me to behave. It was almost as if speaking my name were
an offense.

But I wasn’t misbehaving; the
person lying beneath the sheets wasn't my mother. I opened the door and ran
outside before any of them could say another word. I ran all the way to the
waiting room and took a seat. Sooner or later, one of them would come out and
tell me that it was all a joke. The sickly woman with purplish-blue rings
around her closed eyes wasn’t the person whom I'd grown to love.

Cienna appeared from the
direction of
Maman
’s room. "Hey."

"Hey." I looked up
at the ceiling.

"She's asking for
you."

I started counting the cracks
on the ceiling. "She’s awake?"

Cienna shook her head.
"No. But she keeps saying your name in her sleep."

"You go," I said.

She shook her head again.
"You're her baby. Not me."

''I'm not a baby. Babies get
hugs and all the attention. Babies get sent out of the room when bad things
happen; I'm being called in.”

"You want a hug?"
Cienna joked.

“I don't know what I want.”

Cienna bent slightly to hug me
anyway and whispered in my ear. "Well I know what
Maman
wants
and that's you. Are you going to grant her wish, or are you going to sit here feeling
sorry for yourself when you shouldn't be?"

"Shouldn't be? She's
dying, Cienna. Right now. She's actually dying before our eyes."

"Which is exactly why you
shouldn't be feeling sorry for yourself; you should be feeling sorry for
her," Cienna said, standing straight.

I looked at my sister
differently then. Whatever happened to the self-conceited Cienna who simply
didn't care about anything that didn’t make her the centre of attention? When
did she grow a heart? Maybe I wasn’t the only one to change that summer.

Slowly, I got up from the
chair. "I suppose that I should go in there. She’s spent most of the last
few years holding vigils by my bedside, after all."

Cienna nodded. "You
should return the favour."

When we get to the room,
Philippe gave me a small smile. Grandpa sat beside Maman’s bed, like a
watchdog, and looked on sorrowfully at his dying child.

"Noira..."
Maman
wheezed.

I walked over to her bed and
the tubes that had replaced her organs.
"Je suis là, Maman."

She'd lost even more weight;
she was the one that we should have been calling Petite. I held her clay hands,
dried up from her system’s meltdown.

"Noira…” Her eyes
fluttered open.

"Je suis là."
I replied.

She nodded weakly and coughed.
“Water.”

Seconds later, Philippe was
holding a cup of water to her lips. I backed away then, away from the mocking
tubes and the abrasive scents. I went and stood beside Cienna on the other side
of the room.

Much later, after Maman had
fallen asleep and her doctor had finished examining her, Philippe made an
announcement.
“Nous
sommes aller en France.
Les médecins
…Sorry William, the doctors aren’t very
optimistic about how much time she has left. They can’t even guarantee a month
now.”

“She,” Philippe paused. I
looked away as he sniffled. “She wants to die there. I’ll call my pilot
tonight. We’ll have to be ready to leave by tomorrow afternoon. The doctors
have agreed to discharge her on the condition that we immediately return to
France and get her into a hospital there.”

Cienna squeezed my hand. I
didn’t flinch as something wet fell down my shirt. I couldn’t tell if the tears
were hers or mine.

“William, you’re more than
welcome to come with us,” Philippe added. “She’d want you there with her in her
final days.”

Grandpa didn’t respond. The
only signs of life were his shudders as he rested his head on Maman’s bed and
moaned, “Mi chile… Mi chile…”

When we returned to the house,
Camelea met us in the drive. She had been asleep while we were off playing our
various games.

“Maman?” she asked, opening
the car door.

Slowly, I shook my head.
Luckily, Grandpa Bill was there to stop her from falling to the floor.

*~*

Grand-mère invited herself to
dinner on our first day in Paris. We had just returned home from the hospital
when the housekeeper announced that she had rang ahead to be added to the
seating list.

Everyone was on high alert.
There was no time to contemplate why she’d suddenly decided to meet with us,
her half-breed grandchildren. Thirty minutes later, I joined my family in the
parlour in our mutual states of disenchantment and waited on our most
distinguished guest. The butler arrived at exactly seven and announced
Grand
-
mère
.
We rose.

“
Maman
,” Philippe
greeted her. He was surprisingly calm and not at all lapdog-like, which had
been his usual form whenever his mother rang or sent for us.

Grand-mère
surveyed the three of us for a
moment. She looked like an old fuzzy strawberry with her rouged cheeks, pointed
nose and wisps of white hair pulled back in an austere bun. I could just
imagine what was going through her head as she stared at us, her impure
grandchildren.

When I was younger and didn’t
know any better, I had assumed that she favoured Cienna because she too had
been unable to resist Cienna’s charms. As I got older, however, I noticed the
difference in the way that she treated Cienna, Camelea and myself. Cienna had
inherited Philippe’s milk paste complexion, and everyone assumed that she was
white. You had to look twice to tell whether or not I was Caucasian, and most
just assumed that I was from some exotic locale like Brazil. Poor Camelea, she
got the worst of
Grand-mère
’s wrath. She tanned so easily and
always had a slightly darker tint than the rest of us. Out of the corner of my
eye, I saw her shift slightly under G
rand-mère
’s gaze.

“Camelea,”
Grand-mère
said.
“Are you feeling alright, dear?”

“Oui, G
rand-mère
,”
Camelea
replied.

“You look rather pale,”
Grand-mère
commented.

 “Je vais bien,”
she murmured. I couldn’t tell
if her deadpan voice was out of fear or our shared need to get on with the
evening and end it as painlessly as possible.

“Perhaps a tan then,”
Grand-mère
continued. “If your mother is up to it, you girls may vacation at my
villa in Monaco.”

“That would be lovely,”
Camelea replied.
“Merci,
Grand-mère.”

Cienna and I exchanged looks.
Since when did Grand-mère want any of us tanning?

Grand-mère sat, and we
followed. For a few minutes, we were in complete silence as Philippe prepared
the cocktails. What shocked me the most was that after eleven years of wishing
all manners of ill against the woman, I felt nothing as she sat across from us
with her back painfully straight in her incessant refusal to touch the back of
her chair.

“I trust that you have all
become settled into your home?”
Grand-mère
asked after taking a
sip of her drink.

“Oui, Grand-mère,”
we chorused.

“Good,”
she replied. “If there is any
way that I may be of assistance to you girls, please do not hesitate to let me
know.”

We nodded politely. The maid
came to announce dinner. I made it my personal duty to sit as far away from
Grand-mère
as possible. I didn’t trust her sudden civility.

Once the first course was laid
and the maid had left, Grand-mère spoke again. “Do you still dance, Noira?
There is a ballet that is opening next week.”

“Non, Grand-mère.”
I made sure to look directly
at Grand-mère as she spoke. You never spoke to Michèle Saint Clair without
giving her your undivided attention.

Grand-m
è
re looked
up from her soup. “Well do you still appreciate ballet?”

“Oui, Grand-mère,”
I replied.

“Good, we can all go and see
the ballet together; I’ve a box at the Palais Garnier. I’m sure that your
mother still appreciates ballet. I remember her mentioning it once.”

I really didn’t think that
Maman
would like to go anywhere with G
rand-mère, but I wasn’t about to say
anything. We continued eating in silence until the second course was laid and
Grand-mère spoke again.

“I heard that you have
developed a keen interest in fashion, Cienna,”
Grand-mère
said.

“I have,” Cienna replied.

“Then the two of us shall have
to attend a few shows during Fashion Week, won’t we?”

“Oui, Grand-mère.”
The smile on Cienna’s face
was genuine.
She’d
gladly sell her soul to attend Fashion Week in Paris.

Grand-mère smiled, and Cienna
grinned along with her.

The rest of the meal followed
that pattern.
Grand-mère
would ask questions to find out what we
liked and then arranged future outings for us.
Grand-mère
never
did anything without a reason, I knew, and eventually her motifs would have to
be revealed. The revelation came when we retired for coffee.

“I am sure that you girls are
wondering why I have invited myself to dinner tonight,”
Grand-mère
said,
setting aside her coffee.

We stared ahead expectantly.

“I have to come to make
amends,” she continued. “I am not too old to admit that I have wronged you
girls in the past, and I am deeply ashamed of this. I should not have waited
until your mother was dying, but as you know, it takes serious matters in order
for one to realise one’s wrongs.”

I took a sip of my green tea. I
was beginning to get used to it, though I still longed for a cup of either Earl
Grey or Darjeeling.

“I feel as if I have sinned
against you in tearing your family apart. I hope that you will allow me to try
and bring us together again,” she went on.
“Je suis désolée.”

She should be sorry. She was
the reason for all that was ruined eleven years ago.

Camelea finally spoke up. “The
past is in the past.”

She and
Grand-mère
locked
eyes then and slowly,
Grand-mère
nodded.

“Well,”
Grand-mère
said,
standing. “I won’t interrupt your evening any further. We can arrange
everything once your mother returns and is feeling a bit better.”

Her driver brought the car
around for her and within five minutes, she was gone.

“Well that wasn’t awkward at
all,” Cienna said, linking her arms with mine as we walked up the stairs.

I laughed, “At least it’s over
with, no?”

“I suppose,” Cienna consented.

Behind us, Camelea sniffled.
I’d no tears left for
Grand-mère
; I’d no tears left for
anyone.