Chapter 27 #2
I lean against a wall, away from where Florian is being shown like a pageant girl to some expensive-looking men in expensive-looking suits.
I like looking at him from a slight distance; it’s like I can see him more clearly, the whole picture, not just a fragment of an emotion.
I think of Ettie, of how he could never quite give up on his little brother, that he always knew that this version of Florian would be worth sticking around to see.
He just couldn’t quite make it to the finish line himself.
When another person pats him on the back I decide to head towards the bathroom.
‘Avoiding the crowds?’ I look in the mirror above the sink to see Madame Grenaud watching me from the door of a cubicle. I try to not shrink away from her gaze. Ettie had joked that you had to treat interactions with his mother the same way you would with a black bear: stand tall and don’t run.
‘Something like that.’
‘Me too,’ she shrugs.
‘Why? Your son’s the man of the hour, isn’t that what you want?’
‘Ha.’ She comes to the sink next to me, we continue to catch glances at each other through the mirror as if looking directly at each other might turn us both to stone.
‘People keep talking to me as if I know who he is.’ She rummages into her bag for a lipstick and begins applying it delicately to her lips, pursing and unpursing, letting the vagueness of her comment stick.
She always had a quality about her that I imagined some celebrity would have: the ability to say anything, do anything and people would listen.
She could make reading the weather forecast sound momentous.
‘I don’t think anyone knows who he really is.’ I pull a couple of handtowels from the wall, dry my hands quickly and then manage a half smile before grabbing my bag. ‘Have a nice evening, Maxine.’
‘I think that’s a lie, Ava,’ she says as I reach for the doorhandle, within touching distance of freedom, so close to getting out of this altercation unscathed.
‘I think you know him better than most people.’ I stop, try to ignore the daggers in her voice.
‘And by the looks of things earlier, it’s all getting a little incestuous, wouldn’t you agree?
’ I don’t turn around. I let her comment soak into me, the implication, the venom, the satisfaction that here I am, the girl she always knew I was, one who clearly never loved her favourite son as much as I should have.
I open the door and disappear back into the noise.
The gallery’s attendees are thinning out.
I look at my watch: it’s nearing ten and these things rarely lasted until the early hours, especially on a Monday.
Florian’s fans have aged significantly, and he is now being cornered by four elderly ladies who lay their hands on his arms and tell him how wonderful he is.
I slip in next to him, stringing my arm through his.
He looks mildly alarmed that I have broken the wall between us, the private and public spheres of physical touch.
He leans over to me whilst one lady is deep into telling her crowd a story. ‘You okay?’ he murmurs.
‘Your mother,’ I manage with a grimace. Something passes over his face – anger?
An understanding? It’s hard to translate but his hand snakes its way around my waist and rests itself on my hip.
I feel the weight of it, the way it pulls me into him, the way it feels like the most intimate thing we have done and yet we’re still fully dressed.
One by one the crowd disperses until it’s only waiting staff and a few stragglers. Florian gestures to the door and I follow him. As he holds open the door I look back for any signs of Madame Grenaud.
‘She’ll have gone home.’
‘Thank God.’ It’s cold out, there’s a wind that ricochets off the wide bend of the river – the end of the premature heatwave. Florian throws something heavy and warm at me from where he stands a few metres ahead, arms crossed, jacketless.
He drops back, offers me the crook of his elbow as we walk up the sideroad. ‘What did she say to you anyway?’
I think about telling him, but I don’t see what good it’d do; it would only mean that I stoke an already established fire. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
Florian stops as if the thought is only just dawning on him. ‘How are you getting home, Ava?’
‘Not sure,’ I shrug, play the idiot. ‘I hadn’t planned that far ahead.’
‘That’s very adventurous for you.’
‘Well, I figured that if this whole plan blew up in my face then I would probably have enough time to call another taxi.’
‘And if your plan worked? How were you planning on getting home then?’ He smiles, watching me try to grapple with some excuse.
‘Like I said, hadn’t thought that far ahead.’
We stop next to my beloved old car. ‘Fine, I’ll drop you home.’ He sighs dramatically, patting the bonnet of the car with his hand. ‘Or better yet…’ He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the keys, swinging them from his finger.
‘I’ve had a drink.’
‘Thank God. I’ve had two.’ He throws the keys at me and immediately heaves himself into the passenger seat. I reluctantly make my way to the driver’s door, pull it twice until it eventually gives way and I smooth out the dress before slipping into the seat.
The familiarity hits me again, how it feels like my own personal time-capsule, the smell of the cigarettes still ingrained into the leather. ‘How does it feel?’ he asks.
I grin at him. ‘Like yesterday.’
Florian reaches over the gearstick and pats my thigh playfully. ‘Just so you know, if you hit another deer then it’s your problem.’
‘Fuck off.’ I put the keys in the ignition and the car spits into life.
‘So where exactly am I driving us?’ I keep my head looking straight out of the windshield, my eyes darting over to his lap where he starts to tug again at the leather bracelet around his wrist.
‘To yours and then I’ll drive back to mine.’ He clips his words at an attempt to sound definitive, entirely sure of himself.
‘And will you be coming in?’ I look over then, allow myself the luxury of watching the idea pass over his face before he steels himself.
He chuckles. ‘Not tonight.’
‘Am I allowed to ask why?’
‘Because I don’t want to give you a reason to freak out on me again.’
‘Freak out on you?’
‘I just think that this, whatever this is, is complicated enough at the moment and there’s feelings involved, big confusing feelings, and I don’t want to rush into something that you’re going to turn around tomorrow and regret.’
I prickle at his assessment. ‘What if you were the one who’d regret it?’
He looks at me, one eyebrow raised so high it disappears into his fringe. ‘I know that simply wouldn’t happen.’ I focus on the road to try to hide the triumph on my face. ‘Look, Ava, I want us to go out.’
‘Go out? Where?’
‘I don’t know, dinner maybe? That feels like a normal thing to do.’
‘We did dinner… didn’t exactly go to plan.’
‘I mean a dinner where both of us are on a date with each other, wouldn’t that be nice? A good, uncomplicated dinner where no one ends up crying?’
‘Okay,’ I nod. ‘Dinner sounds nice. I should probably let you know that I don’t put out on the first date though.’
‘Your track history tells me otherwise.’
I pretend to be offended. ‘I wasn’t going to sleep with you the other night!’
‘Oh, you weren’t? Sorry, must have misinterpreted your hand when it slipped down my—’
‘Yes, very much misinterpreted!’ I shut him down quickly. I don’t need a play-by-play. I had already committed my version to memory.
‘Well, I’m glad we cleared that up.’
‘Me too.’ I let a comfortable silence envelop us. He’s humming a song I don’t know, tapping his fingers on his thigh. He is content; it feels good to know that I have had some part in it.
I indicate off the main road towards Monpazier. ‘So, you want to do Wednesday?’ I ask. His humming stops abruptly. He looks at me a little too long and I wonder if I have managed to land in some parallel universe where the earlier conversation had been entirely imagined by myself.
‘Wednesday?’ he repeats.
‘Yeah…’ I turn to look at him, the way his face is slightly paler than it had been before. ‘I mean isn’t it moules frites night at L’Octave?’
‘You don’t remember?’
I screw up my own face, rack my brain for whether we had already made plans, whether he had told me about some other exhibition he was hosting perhaps. ‘Remember what?’
‘On Wednesday it will be four years since Ettie died.’ He says it slowly, his voice void of any inflections, emotions.
‘No… it’s…’
‘May the ninth,’ he fills in. I start to do the calculation. May had snuck up on me; the fact that we were only two days away from it being four entire years since I lost him was impossible.
‘Oh my God.’ I feel sick, a kind of wave of panic spreading through me. Florian gawps at me as if I’m having a stroke.
‘Are you okay?’ he asks and I’m unsure if he means physically or mentally. I am not doing great on either front.
‘I forgot.’ I screw my face up a little, the sourness of those words sitting heavily on my tongue.
‘You’ve had a lot going on…’
‘I forgot, Florian!’ I say again; this time the words are cutting, fierce. I grab my wrist on the steering wheel, pinch a bit of skin with my nails until I can feel the sharpness, wince a little from the pain.
‘Stop that,’ he scolds. ‘Ava, it’s okay,’ he lies, a poor attempt at making it seem alright, to forget the landmark date now automatically etched into my calendar, which should be this big red beacon in my year that makes the grief almost unbearable.
Instead, I’ve been playing dress up and fantasising about getting with his brother.
He tries to reach out, rescue my hand that is starting to redden, but I snatch it away and I drive the last mile up to Rue Saint Jaques in an uncomfortable silence.
As soon as we park up, I throw myself out of the car and slam the door, the hem of the dress getting caught and ripping a little as I pull it away.
‘Fuck!’ I yell and slump myself down on the steps of my front door. Florian hangs back, leans against the car, arms crossed. I cry. I properly cry. All the anger and fury dissipates and despite the dress, the intentions, the bravery of tonight, I’m just a girl, sobbing on her own doorstep.
‘Hey.’ He takes a few slow steps towards me until he knows I’m not going to lash him again and slips his body down beside me. He wraps his long arm around me and strokes my arm gently. ‘He would be happy.’
‘That I forgot the day he died?’ I ask incredulously.
‘Yes. Of course. It’s a horrible day, Ava. He would be happy that you aren’t living your life around a dead man.’
‘He’s my husband… was my husband.’
‘What, and he never forgot an important date, your birthday, a Valentine’s Day perhaps, your anniversary?’
‘I – ’ I stammer, remember the dinner reservation that I made on that first year, him entirely unaware why we were there, me breaking apart a little at his lack of awareness of what I considered a pretty vital day in our lives. ‘Did he tell you?’
‘He didn’t need to,’ Florian chuckles softly. ‘I know Ettie; he’s not exactly the kind of man that would have tried too hard to purchase a calendar.’
‘But you remembered Wednesday?’
‘Only because it’s my least favourite day of the year.
’ He presses his lips into my head and I relax a little, feel the strange sensation of genuine care wash over me.
‘Mum makes us go to the graveyard, lay down some shitty flowers and then we have this awkward little dinner, just the two of us, and we both get entirely too drunk until it gets late enough that we have an excuse to go home.’
‘That sounds disgusting.’ I manage a stifled snigger.
‘Oh it is exactly that.’
‘Don’t tell her that I forgot.’ I sound like a child, my voice warped by the aching void of sadness that has set up camp in my throat.
‘Ava, I would never.’ He sounds sad that I would ever think that he would. ‘Here’s an idea.’ He clears his throat. ‘Maybe this year you can join us?’
‘Seriously?’
‘Why not? It would be nice to have the company. You can absolve yourself of your guilt about forgetting and I get to have someone there who I genuinely want to talk to.’
‘And your mother?’
‘Well maybe we can both revel a bit in the fact that it will really piss her off.’
‘Ha,’ I splutter and then the sadness descends again. ‘I’ve never been back there.’
‘Why would you? It’s a shitty place.’
‘Okay.’ I sniff and then wipe the snot that has accumulated around my nose with the back of my hand. Hardly the glamourous impression I was hoping to give.
‘I’ll pick you up at three on Wednesday.’
‘Are you sure I can’t tempt you inside for a drink? Am I not the definition of sexy right now?’ I gesture to my face, how I know the eyeliner and mascara will be forming little rivers down my face.
‘Quite sure.’ He pats me on the shoulder, groans as he gets to his feet. I watch as he stretches out his long body until he stands there, hands slipping into the comfort of his pockets.
‘I’m really happy you came, Ava,’ he says earnestly. ‘But if you hadn’t, I was going to head here tomorrow anyway. There’s no way on earth I was going to let you get away that easily.’
I am flooded with a delicious relief.
‘I’ll see you Wednesday.’