13 SHE HATED SURPRISES
13
S HE H ATED S URPRISES
Tuesdays and Fridays. Mamie Margaux marked down the two days her granddaughter came to visit her at the retirement home. They were sacred, invariable. After lunch on Sunday, while dozing off in front of the television to an episode of Columbo , she was told she had a visitor. She did not expect to see Barbara enter her room. Right away, she feared something awful had happened.
“It’s nothing, Mamie. I just wanted to see you. Simple as that.”
“But you came two days ago ...,” she said, surprised.
“They say there’s a spell of bad weather coming, and I felt like visiting. Does it bother you?”
“Me? Quite the opposite.”
Sitting in the tall armchair, Mamie put a little spritz of fresh cologne on her temples and the nape of her neck to smarten up. Barbara approached the chair to grab her hands. She liked caressing her grandmother’s fingers, warped by the oboe. Sometimes she traced a blue vein, the unavoidable furrows of age.
Seated next to one another, their teas steaming on the little table, they spoke for almost two hours. Before Barbara left, she passed along greetings from Jasper, the neighbor for whom not a day went by without a thought of Mamie, and she asked teasingly if Margaux knew what she wanted to be when she grew up.
“Now, don’t you start with me too, Barbara, because Anine is getting on my nerves.”
“She’s still asking you?”
“Every day. Three times a day. Poor girl, her mind doesn’t work anymore.”
“And what do you say?”
“That I’m thinking about it, you know. What am I supposed to say? I ask for only one thing.” Her grandmother became serious. “That I don’t end up like her.”
“I’m sure you won’t. Your mind is very lucid.”
“Bah, with this head.”
“See you Tuesday, Mamie.” She kissed her once on each cheek.
Before leaving the retirement home, Barbara buttoned up her coat and put on her wool cap. She crossed Square Viviani like she was being followed. She noticed how alone the oldest tree in Paris was, due to the inhospitable winter cold, and she ran home. She wanted to tell Roger about the conversation. She hadn’t directly brought up the subject with Mamie. She hadn’t told her she’d seen a photo of her. Nothing about the bicycle or her radiant happiness. She hadn’t told her the name of the exhibition on the occupied city. She hadn’t thought about hinting that she’d been a model for the Germans. She’d only asked if she could tell her again how she’d met Grandfather Damien, and, like a fireside tale, she let her speak, let her pour her heart out over a story Barbara had heard dozens of times since she was a child but that she liked listening to again. And, in that moment, she needed it. Now that she’d seen the picture of her grandmother, she searched for some indication, some hint, some inconsistency, some comment that could lead to the hidden side of her family’s past. Suddenly, she sensed that Margaux’s experience of the war was not the way it had been explained to her throughout her whole life. When the story is always told using the same words like they were rehearsed, when the same anecdotes are repeated like they were invented to make the story more believable, you start to become suspicious that something unknown is hiding behind it all. And that was the worst part: not knowing. She couldn’t stand how, from one day to the next, a mistrust began growing within her. But there was a mystery eluding her, and she no longer had her mother to clear her doubts and set the facts straight, if her mother had ever heard a different version of the story. Forty-eight hours had not even passed since Barbara’s visit to the exhibit at the BHVP, and now, she looked at her grandmother in another light. Her story, told in the same voice as always, no longer sounded the same. Barbara hurried home, half on foot, half on the train, to tell Roger about that uncomfortable feeling. The dilemma flustered her. But she finally had someone to share the anxiety with. Blessed news.
Floor by floor, she climbed up to the fifth landing, eager to chat and urgently needing to pee. But she knew she shouldn’t run up those dilapidated steps if she didn’t want to fall or have her lungs collapse early. She measured each step and took on each floor like a moving finish line. Between the second and third floors, she removed her wool cap. Between the third and fourth floors, she started unbuttoning her coat. On the last flight up to the fifth floor, she already had her key in hand. She hadn’t peed since before she left the house, and the tea was starting to take its effect.
She entered the house and threw it all—coat, keys, cap, and bag—onto the red sofa and headed straight to the bathroom. The light was on. When she opened the door, she ran into a naked woman emerging from behind the shower curtain.
“Sorry!”
“Hello?”
Laurence was dripping from head to toe. She hadn’t had time to grab a towel, and Barbara threw her a damp one that had been hanging behind the door.
“Can I know what the hell you’re doing here?”
“He told me ... You scared me too, you know? I thought we were alone,” she said, excusing herself and wrapping the towel underneath her armpits. “It’s just a shower. No need to act like that.”
“But in my home?” Barbara asked emphatically, angry not only about the scare. Running into that woman again made her stomach turn. “In my shower?”
Barbara’s possessiveness appeared twofold, emphasized by the fluorescent light. She was mad about the steamed mirror, the dark nipples pointing at her, and the violation of her most sacred space. Her whole life, there had been only two women who showered in this apartment. Mamie and herself. That’s it. And she wasn’t prepared for more. She hated surprises.
Roger, shut in his room, heard noises in the distance and guessed at the reason. He thought about going out to show face, but he would have had to get dressed, and he wasn’t sure if, still erect, it would have made things better. It might have even produced the opposite effect.
“You’re here again?” Barbara wasn’t one for mincing words, having taken two steps back due to the lack of space in the bathroom. “Can I know where you come from, at the very least?”
“I was invited by ...”
Roger. His name is Roger. You fuck him and you still don’t know his name ... She held back her thoughts. She only signaled the hall with an emphatic finger: “Go.”
Laurence, on the short walk to Roger’s room, left wet footprints on the tiles. Barbara entered the bathroom, threw the hand towel on the floor, put her foot on it, and angrily dried up the dampness Roger’s unexpected friend had left. She slammed the door so it could be heard, bolted it, and pulled down her pants and underwear to sit on the toilet. She remained there awhile, her head in her hands. She didn’t even know how to handle the situation.
Roger didn’t know how to act either. He simply asked Laurence to dress quickly, go out quietly, and leave, please. He told her he was sorry for the situation and that he’d go to Chez Richard for lunch on Monday.
On her way from the house to the restaurant, Laurence had never seen so much snowfall. The flakes created a curtain of ice crystals that pricked you from their heaviness.
The cold war that was established from that moment on in the Montmartre apartment could be won only with negotiation and diplomacy. But when an atomic bomb goes off in your house, there’s always one side that’s not ready to make things easy. And you have to respect the anger before moving forward. Despite the tension, Roger tried to fix things. In his own way.
“Désolé.”
It didn’t help that he left his room with the look of a priest. Frowning, Barbara didn’t respond. She sat at her work chair and turned on her computer so Roger knew she was giving him the cold shoulder. Facing the window, she put on her headphones and worked for a couple of hours. She answered emails she’d left pending for the last few days. From time to time, interrupted by the dull roar of the storm, she looked up and stared at how the snow blew in front of her. She couldn’t even see the building across the street. Always a fan of moderation, she thought that if that excessive snow fell much longer, there’d be less than forty-five minutes left in the world. And then, if this was the end, what did anything matter? The shower, Laurence, the bike, the war, and the history. And men. Men mattered even less. Bomb them. If everything was going to hell, maybe it was their fault. And, far from calming herself down, the pit in her stomach got deeper.
Roger decided to make noise in the kitchen so Barbara could hear his presence. They’d have to talk at some point. They couldn’t keep the conflict going forever, nor could they continue to act like nothing had happened. But the more time that passed, the more Roger became angrier. He didn’t understand why he was being punished with that childish silence. After all, he hadn’t done anything wrong.
He decided to sit on the couch and wait for her to take off her headphones and let the screen sleep. Twenty minutes later, when she finally turned around, he was already waiting with words on the tip of his tongue.
“I’m sorry. I’m not aware of having broken any rules, but if I have to apologize, I’ll apologize. I’m sorry.”
“What are you talking about now?”
“You imposed them on me yourself on the first day. The rules.”
“The fault might be mine, you’ll see ...”
“You said whoever cooks, cleans. Whoever spreads out, picks up. Don’t touch the heater. Something, something, something.”
“Very good. Nice memory. What else?”
“I don’t know ...”
“You only remember the ones that are convenient for you. The half bathroom, for men. Do you remember I said that?”
“Yes, but I can shower in the big bathroom. We agreed on that.”
“You can. She can’t.”
“In the men’s bathroom, there’s no ...” He dared to object. “I don’t think it’s such a big deal.”
“And remember what you said when I finished reciting the rules? I sure do remember. That it was a monk’s life. Frankly, hon, it doesn’t look like it to me.”
It spilled out. Barbara wouldn’t put up with nonsense. The last thing she needed was for her not to be able to say what she pleased in her own home. On top of it all, Roger understood that their conversations couldn’t continue to end like this. He lowered his voice but got straight to the point.
“You mean, if I understand correctly, what bothers you is that I brought her up?”
“I don’t—” Barbara wasn’t expecting this. “You know what bothers me? That you’re all the same. You know when the last time I ran into a woman in my own bathroom was? It was at my house, and she was fucking my husband. They were lathering each other up. They weren’t expecting me, and they didn’t hear me arrive. What? That’s funny, huh?”
From that perspective, this wasn’t too serious. Roger thought it but kept himself from saying the words. Barbara picked up two mugs from the little table, carried them to the kitchen, threw out the tea bags, and washed them.
“Have you gone to see your mamie?” Roger asked without moving from the couch.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Because you told me—”
“Yes, I went.”
“And?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I was just asking in case you spoke about the photo.”
“Good night.”
She shut off the kitchen light, locked herself in her room, and, burying her head into her pillow, let herself fall into the bed. There are days that aren’t worth getting out of bed for.