Chapter 17
On Tuesday, Tiphaine left work early. She stopped by the minimart to stock up on cookies, cereal, and fruit juice, then drove to Nassim’s elementary school, the same one Maxime and Milo had gone to—not surprising, since there were only two elementary schools in the town, one of which was Catholic.
Tiphaine, an avowed atheist, had never even briefly contemplated sending her son there, but Laetitia, Milo’s mother, had considered it.
Eventually she’d reached the same decision as Tiphaine, partly so as not to separate the two boys, who had been like brothers since their birth, and partly for the sake of convenience: back then, the Brunelles and the Geniots always helped each other out, particularly when it came to the children.
When she arrived at the school gate, Tiphaine felt herself gripped by a feeling that was simultaneously heartwarming and gut-wrenching.
It had been three years since she’d last set foot in the building where Milo had once been a pupil.
Coming back to this familiar place filled her with a mixture of pleasure and apprehension.
The noises, the lights, the smells, the particular atmosphere that had once been part of her daily life took her back for a moment to a confused time when pure joy had rubbed shoulders with utter horror.
Tiphaine followed the corridors that led to the playground, passing a few familiar faces on her way, who either didn’t notice her, or—
“Madame Geniot! How lovely of you to come and see us! How are you?”
Coming out of her classroom, Madame Dufrêne, Milo’s teacher in his last year of elementary school, gave her an open but curious smile. Her expression betrayed the question that was clearly on the tip of her tongue: What are you doing here?
“Hello, Madame Dufrêne. I’m well. How about you?”
“I’m very well indeed, thank you. To what do we owe the honor?”
“I’m picking up my neighbor’s little boy. His mom’s working late tonight.”
“Oh! That’s so kind of you . . . How’s Milo doing?”
“He’s fine.”
“What grade is he in now? Twelfth?”
“No, eleventh.”
Madame Dufrêne looked surprised.
“He had to repeat eleventh grade,” Tiphaine was forced to admit.
The question mark in the teacher’s eyes turned into an exclamation mark.
“Oh, what a shame. Such a smart little boy!”
Tiphaine was tempted to respond that it had nothing to do with how smart he was, but managed to check herself. Instead, before the teacher had time to fire off another question, she asked where she might find Nassim Depardieu.
“At this time of day, they’ll be in the cafeteria having a snack.”
“Thank you.” She hurriedly said goodbye to the teacher and went off in the direction the woman had pointed.
“Say hi to Milo from me!” Madame Dufrêne just had time to call after her.
Tiphaine turned and waved in assent before turning left down the next corridor.
She found Nassim exactly where Madame Dufrêne had said he would be, eating a snack with some friends.
When he saw her, he obediently rose to his feet.
He was obviously well brought up, but his slightly peeved expression nevertheless betrayed a certain irritation with the woman who had come to fetch him instead of his mother.
Tiphaine told herself she had a few hours to win him over.
Wasting no time, even before they’d left the building, she began to list all the things she’d bought him to eat, and various TV programs they could watch, depending on the young man’s preferences. At last Nassim hazarded a smile.
In the car, Tiphaine bombarded the child with questions, to which Nassim responded in polite monosyllables.
She asked what he was learning, what his friends were called, what he liked doing best, if he had any hobbies, what his favorite cartoons were.
But instead of answering, the child had a real gift for unearthing the most vague and neutral words in the French language.
And when she tried to ask him something indirectly, as a way of teasing out some more detail, he just shrugged and came out with the ultimate platitude, “I don’t know. ”
As they drove up the street to their respective houses, Tiphaine asked Nassim where he’d rather wait for his mother.
“Your mother gave me the key to your house in case you need anything. If you like, we can go there instead of my house.” This time, Nassim pondered the question.
The idea tempted him, except that it wasn’t what his mother had planned, and he didn’t know what the consequences of a change of program might be.
After a few moments of reflection, having decided he couldn’t really see what difference it would make, he assented with a vigorous nod of his head.
“So you’d rather we waited in your house?” Tiphaine asked, to be sure.
“Yeah.”
Tiphaine gave a gratified smile and ruffled the child’s hair.
“As you wish. You’re the boss.”
As they got out of the car, Nassim saw an old lady sitting on a folding chair outside one of the houses opposite.
She wore a beige overcoat and a pair of ugly but presumably comfortable walking shoes.
On the sidewalk alongside her stood an old-fashioned suitcase whose clasp was half eaten away by rust. Nassim had seen her before.
In fact, he saw her every time he left the house.
Noticing the boy’s interest, Tiphaine told him, “That’s Madame Appleblossom. She sits there every day, from morning to night.”
“What’s she doing?” asked the little boy.
“Waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“No one knows. Least of all her, I imagine.”
Nassim looked at the elderly lady with an expression that was both curious and pitying.
Tiphaine told him that Madame Appleblossom had come to live there five years before, and ever since, weather permitting, she would sit outside the front door with her suitcase, as if she were about to leave on vacation.
In the beginning various neighborhood acquaintances came by to ask what she was doing, if she was waiting for someone.
She never answered, merely assuring all those who were concerned about her well-being that she was in great shape and in need of nothing.
She didn’t seem to have any children, and the few visitors she received were always other elderly people.
When the neighbors tried to find out more about the old lady and what she was waiting for, they ended up lifting their arms in a gesture of defeat.
Some tried to make her see reason, but one day Madame Appleblossom flew into an astonishing rage, yelling that if even at her age she was being pestered by a bunch of idiots, the world really had hit a new low.
“Is that really her name? Madame Appleblossom?”
“No. Her name is Adèle Malenbreux. We call her Madame Appleblossom because she stays inside all winter long, and no one sees her except when she goes out to do her shopping. Then, as soon as the weather warms up at the beginning of spring, out she comes, like an apple blossom.”
Nassim took one last look at the strange woman, wondering how she could spend all day, every day sitting outside her house on a folding chair.
Then he turned and followed Tiphaine up the path to his front door.
She rang the doorbell, not knowing if Inès was already home, and when no one answered she put the key Nora had given her into the lock and went inside.
The first hour went by quickly. She poured Nassim a glass of orange juice and offered him some cookies, then helped him with his homework.
When that was done, the boy asked if he was allowed to use the PlayStation.
Tiphaine said he could, and while he played she browsed the shelves in the living room.
She looked at the titles on the spines of the books, amusing herself by searching for some meaning related to her life, maybe even her future, like a coded prediction that only she was able to decipher.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera.
Life Is Elsewhere by the same author. Dangerous Liaisons, by Choderlos de Laclos.
The Flowers of Evil, by Charles Baudelaire.
After the Funeral, by Agatha Christie. A lot of classic French novels.
Some North African writers, and quite a few British and American ones too.
Nora was clearly a very sophisticated woman.
Tiphaine walked from the living room into the dining room.
It was simply furnished, with a table, chairs, and a dresser, but otherwise the room was empty, evidence of the fact that the tenants had only recently moved in.
Now that she was alone in the house, or at least Nora wasn’t there, Tiphaine let her mind fill with bittersweet memories.
She went slowly over to the corner where she used to sit and read or engage in endless bouts of tickling with Maxime in the old rocking chair that had once belonged to her grandmother.
The corner was empty now, and all that remained of that blissful happiness was a gaping wound in the dark abyss of her memory.
She stood there for several long seconds, fighting the impulse to give in completely to the siren song of the past.
“Can I have another cookie?”
In the room next door Nassim was fighting a ruthless battle against strange creatures from outer space, and this relentless combat had made him hungry. Tiphaine shook herself, landed back in the present with a thud, and hurried to comply with the boy’s request.
Mission accomplished, she resumed her tour of the house. She opened the back door and went out onto the deck.
She stood there motionless for a moment, her eyes sweeping across her old yard.
Over the years she’d watched from the other side of the hedge as all the things she’d planted, sown, and grown from cuttings withered and died.
A few flowers had somehow managed to withstand the lack of care.
The vegetable garden hadn’t survived, and the lilac was completely blanketed by the Virginia creeper.
From the living room came the repetitive sounds of Nassim’s video game, bringing back once more a volley of memories.
Tiphaine shut her eyes, almost reconciled to giving in to the delicious vertigo brought on by this assault from the past: standing on the deck, sensing the presence of a little boy playing a video game, going back in time, allowing herself to be lulled by the spell of irrational longing.
Then, slowly, as if propelled by an outside force, with her eyes still closed, she raised her head to the upstairs windows and let herself be overwhelmed by the poison of her obsessive delusion.
“Hi, Tiphaine!”
Tiphaine flinched and let out a startled little cry, as if caught in the act of committing a shameful crime. She opened her eyes and saw Inès standing in the doorway, still wearing her jacket, gripping her backpack in one hand. She looked very annoyed.
“I didn’t know you were babysitting Nassim here,” she said. “I stopped by your place, I thought—”
“Nassim said he’d prefer it.” Tiphaine justified herself, like a child accusing her best friend of being responsible for the thing she’d just been accused of.
Surprised by the gratuitous vehemence of her response, Inès simply slowly nodded her head up and down.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m going up to my room.
” With that, she turned on her heel and disappeared.
The spell was broken.
Tiphaine shivered, despite the mildness of the summer’s day, and went back inside.