Chapter 5
Back in her own house, Tiphaine rushed to the bathroom, a helpless hostage to waves of nausea.
She stuck two fingers down her throat but couldn’t get rid of the feeling of disgust. She coughed and retched and expectorated, trying to vomit up her repulsion.
It didn’t work. A little boy had moved in next door, into the house where Maxime had lived and died, trapped inside the walls of a life extinguished forever.
This child, filled with life, had just annexed her son’s bedroom, his memory . . . his home.
“Tiphaine?”
Alerted by the sounds coming from the bathroom, Sylvain grew worried.
“Tiphaine! Are you okay?”
Instead of replying, Tiphaine came out, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. White as a sheet, she looked at Sylvain with an expression of sadness and despair.
“What the hell is going on?” he said in a voice filled with both concern and exasperation.
Tiphaine shook her head. “She has a son,” she moaned.
“What are you talking about?”
“The new neighbor . . . She has a little boy. He’s eight. He’s called Nassim, but at the beginning I thought—” She stopped, unable to articulate Maxime’s name.
She didn’t have to. Sylvain understood.
“Did you see him?”
Tiphaine nodded.
“Damn it, Tiphaine!” he began through clenched teeth. “You can’t let yourself get into a state like this . . . I—”
“He’s in his bedroom.” She cut him off, distraught.
“It is not his bedroom anymore!”
“It’ll always be his bedroom to me.”
“No! It hasn’t been his bedroom for eight years. Do you hear me?”
“Eight years!” repeated Tiphaine, as if she had only just become aware of the passage of time. Then she added in a broken voice, “This child was born the year ours died.”
Sylvain looked at her without a word, his heart shattered at the sight of his grief-stricken wife.
Tiphaine was only a shadow of the woman he’d fallen so madly in love with seventeen years earlier: life, sorrow, the intolerable ordeal of having lost a child had slowly eaten away at her, gnawing at her soul, her heart, her mind.
She wasn’t crazy, at least not in the conventional sense; but since Maxime’s death, she’d been living in a world without a bulwark to keep her from falling.
And he, Sylvain, mired in his own suffering and grief, increasingly found himself losing his composure in the face of his wife’s distress.
Riddled with guilt, he had been struggling with his own demons every day for eight long years, tormented by memories and recurring nightmares.
The arrival of this little boy in the house next door, or at least the turmoil it triggered in Tiphaine’s mind, suddenly felt like the last straw, the hurdle that they would not be able to overcome.
“Tiphaine, I beg you . . .”
Instead of an answer, she hunched over and began heaving with sobs.
The appearance of a child in the house next door reopened wounds whose scars, despite all the years that had passed, still oozed with grief and pain.
When they had taken Milo in after the “events,” she had been convinced she would drown her heartache in her love for him and the love that she was confident he would have for her.
Nothing, however, had turned out as she’d hoped.
Milo had gradually shut himself off, as if he wanted to remove himself from the world.
He rejected their expressions of affection and turned his back on any attempt at a loving gesture.
He displayed no more than a vague fondness for them, a cruel contrast to his former devotion.
Tiphaine and Sylvain had known Milo since he was born.
They’d watched him growing up and blossoming alongside their own son; they’d babysat him, comforted him when he was sad, consoled and encouraged him when things didn’t go well, congratulated him on his achievements.
They loved him almost as much as they loved Maxime, and he had always returned their love.
But since the “events,” Milo’s attitude to them had gradually changed; he grew distant, almost distrustful.
Whenever Tiphaine tried to give him a hug he would cringe from the embrace.
When she was faster than he was and managed to draw him to her, he’d tense up, stiff as a board, and wait for it to be over.
“We have to give him time,” said Sylvain, when Tiphaine, in tears, told him this. “He’s traumatized. It’s his way of telling us he doesn’t want to forget his mom.”
Tiphaine waited patiently, devastated by a rejection that felt like a betrayal, a punishment even.
Twice a week, the three of them went to see Justine Philippot, the therapist David and Laetitia, Milo’s parents, had taken their son to see in the wake of Maxime’s death, to try to help him cope with the dreadful loss.
Tiphaine hoped that through these sessions she would manage to get closer to the boy, that he would gradually lower his defenses and allow himself to receive—and give—a little love.
For a time she thought it looked like it was working: Milo seemed more relaxed, less defensive, and though he was still grudging when it came to physical affection, at least he was less evasive and more open.
But her hopes were soon dashed: one day the child simply refused to go to the appointment.
She and Sylvain had no idea why. He sat on a chair in the kitchen, straight as an “I,” refusing to stand up to put on his coat and get in the car.
Tiphaine tried to talk him around, but to no avail: he simply repeated that he didn’t want to go, but seemed unable—or unwilling—to give any explanation.
Even under duress, the child didn’t concede.
She tried promises, with no more success.
Eventually Sylvain, who’d been waiting in the entryway, lost patience: he came into the kitchen with a heavy, determined step, grabbed the boy by the waist, forced him into the cloakroom, and wrangled him into his coat. Half an hour later, the three of them were sitting in the therapist’s office.
As soon as they sat down Tiphaine and Sylvain told Dr. Philippot what had just occurred.
She turned to Milo and gently asked him the reason for his refusal.
The child sat there, mute. After a long moment of silence, she repeated her question.
Another failure: Milo again refused to answer.
She asked him if he was angry; still nothing.
The entire hour passed in the boy’s obstinate silence, interspersed only by the therapist’s questions and his guardians’ attempts at encouragement.
Dr. Philippot did not want to overdramatize the situation; she reassured Tiphaine and Sylvain, explaining that Milo’s silence was his way of expressing anger, and gave them another appointment in three days’ time.
The same scene was repeated. Milo went to see Justine Philippot only under duress and did not utter a single word for the entire hour.
It was the same at the following appointments.
At the end of the fifth unsuccessful session, the therapist suggested a break, advocating a return to a more “normal” way of life.
She told them to relax the pressure. Stop worrying.
Maybe Milo just needed to get back to ordinary life—if that was possible—or at least a daily routine where he wouldn’t be reminded twice a week that he had lost more than half the people he loved and cared about and who mattered the most to him; a life where he would no longer be seen as a strange beast on the verge of falling apart.
This was a slap in the face for Tiphaine, and she left the therapist’s consulting room feeling forsaken. It was as if the last rope she was holding on to in order not to tumble into the pit of despair had been severed.
That evening she lay in bed staring at the ceiling as if trying to penetrate its mystery, and whispered to Sylvain, who she knew was awake beside her:
“He knows.”
“Stop it,” he said after a moment.
“I’m sure of it. He knows.”
After a few more seconds of silence, Sylvain leaned up on his elbow and tried to look Tiphaine in the eye. She was still staring at the ceiling.
“It’s absolutely impossible,” he said. “Stop playing games.”
“He might not know it consciously, but he senses it.”
“Tiphaine, please. Milo’s just . . .” He paused, unsure how to express his thoughts, then said, “He’s lost both his parents. He’s suffering. He’s handling it in his own way. I know it’s hard for you, but it’s harder for him. You mustn’t take it personally.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, and Sylvain wasn’t even sure she’d heard him. Then all of a sudden she stopped staring at the ceiling and turned to look at him.
What he saw in her expression didn’t reassure him at all.
Since that day, Tiphaine hadn’t been able to shake her slight wariness of Milo, even if, over time, the tension between them had eased.
But Sylvain had the sense that his wife’s sadness and frustration were eating away at her more and more each day.
And now that another little boy had moved into the house next door, was going to live and grow older before their eyes, he knew that the casket of memories had opened up again and was going to take over her mind.
And now Tiphaine was realizing with horror that she simply was not going to be able to bear the presence of this child.
In the house next door, on the other side of the wall, Nora tapped out a number on her cell phone; she waited for someone to answer then placed an order for three pizzas, gave her name and address, and asked how long they would take to be delivered.
Just as the call ended, Inès and Nassim burst into the kitchen.
“I’ve ordered pizza,” announced Nora, with a big smile on her face.
The two children showed their delight by flinging their arms around their mother’s neck.
“Did Nassim tell you?” she asked her daughter. “We just met the lady who lives next door.”
“What pizza did you order for me?” Nassim asked.
“Four cheeses, your favorite.”
“Tell me about the neighbor. What’s she like?” asked Inès, stuffing two pieces of gum into her mouth.
“She was pretty nice. We had a laugh, actually. She seems like she could be fun,” Nora said, smiling. “I think we’re going to like it here.”