Chapter 2
This was much more than a simple high. This was a feeling of vertigo, terrifying for a man who hated losing control of himself.
The precision of Thomas’s movements determined his future on a daily basis.
This was the case for any pianist, just as it was for surgeons—surgeons like his father, whom he’d just heard speak from beyond the grave.
Thomas clung to the glass, fixing his eyes on the balcony of the apartment across the road, trying to keep his body from swaying.
“You can let go of the handle. No one has ever fallen through a closed door,” the voice joked.
“You warned me about this,” Thomas sputtered. “What have I done? What was in that joint? I’ve damaged my neurons permanently!”
“Calm down please, Thomas,” scolded the voice.
“You smoked a joint—not your first and surely not your last. I’ll confess, my warnings were a bit over the top when you were a teenager.
But I was afraid you’d try hard drugs. Anyway, the fact that you’re hearing me tonight has nothing to do with that. ”
“‘Nothing to do with that’?” repeated Thomas, his face still pressed against the glass. “I’m hearing the ghost of my father! Oh God, everything’s spinning. I’m done for.”
“Leave God out of it. And the ‘ghost’ talk, too, if you don’t mind.
You’re having a panic attack, which isn’t surprising given the circumstances.
Do you remember the little trick I taught you to cope with your stress before going onstage?
Place your hands over your mouth, then take deep breaths through the nose.
The CO2 will do the trick, you’ll feel better in no time.
If I could hold you up, I happily would, but I don’t have energy enough for that.
It already takes a lot of work to be able to talk to you. ”
Thomas felt his legs give out as he slid down the glass of the door. Once he reached the wood floor, he curled into a ball and tucked his head between his knees.
“Come on, Thomas, stop acting like a child. It was just a joint.”
“The first time I smoked, I saw flying cows, and now I’m hearing my father’s ghost. Why can’t I just be like everyone else? Get drunk without bloating up like a whale afterward, or get high without feeling like I’m going to die?”
“That’s ridiculous. Everyone suffers when they overindulge. There are those who own up to it, and those who prefer to brag, that’s all.”
“Please make the voice stop!” begged Thomas, covering his ears.
“I was just trying to reassure you. No need to be snippy.”
But Thomas didn’t find it reassuring in the least to hear a dead man speak as if he were in the same room.
“If you would just look over here, you’d see for yourself that your senses aren’t playing tricks on you,” continued the voice.
Thomas took a deep breath and looked up. In a dark corner, he could make out his father’s familiar silhouette gazing warmly at him from the big black leather armchair where he used to like to sit and read. The only word that came to mind was trapped in Thomas’s throat: Dad?
The anniversary of his father’s death, stress about tomorrow’s concert, his general state of exhaustion, and a joint he shouldn’t have smoked. Maybe all those factors in combination were enough to make him believe something that was unbelievable?
“I’ll sleep it off and everything will go back to normal tomorrow,” he whispered.
“One day, you’ll have to explain to me what you think is ‘normal.’ Take, for example, the fact that a handsome young man your age—the spitting image of his father, really—who earns his living as a virtuoso pianist, spends the night before a major concert alone, and in his mother’s apartment at that.
If that’s your normal, then you can keep it.
Come over here so I can get a good look at you. ”
But Thomas remained paralyzed by this vision, which was as upsetting to him as it was terrifying.
“Have it your way. I’ll try to come over to you, but my movements are still pretty erratic. They should improve over the next few hours. That said, my notion of time isn’t what it used to be.”
Thomas’s eyes widened as he watched his father’s form float from the armchair to the mantel, then to the wall across from him, and finally to the corner of the desk.
“Not bad!” his father exclaimed, delighted by his own performance. “I know this must all seem strange, but I promise you’re not hallucinating. I really am here, believe you me.”
“I feel like I’m talking to Marcel.”
“Who’s Marcel?” asked Raymond.
“The head lighting engineer at Pleyel. Whenever he critiques my performances, he punctuates his sentence with a ‘believe you me, Mr. Thomas.’”
“Do you believe him, this lighting engineer?”
“Yes, he’s a great music lover.”
“But you don’t trust your father?”
“Marcel is alive. That may seem like a minor detail to you, but it’s a major one to me!” Thomas felt his heart begin to race. “Why am I even answering you? What did I smoke?”
“Look, I figured it would take a while to get through to you, and I’m prepared to be patient, even if we’re running out of time.
Now, think back to your childhood. When I sat on your bed and told you bedtime stories full of fairies, demons, and creatures with incredible powers from faraway lands, you listened to my voice in the dark, right?
And you let yourself believe in my imaginary worlds, didn’t you? ”
Thomas nodded.
“So, why not believe me now?”
“You’re going to stay in this room. I’m going to get up, go into the bathroom, and wash my face, and when I come back, you’ll be gone, okay?”
“So stubborn! Aren’t you happy to see me?”
Thomas didn’t answer. Instead, he gathered his strength to stand up and did what he’d said he would do, carefully closing the office door behind him.
After he’d splashed his face with water, he lay down on the couch in the living room, his head still spinning.
Then he closed his eyes and fell asleep.
The jingling of keys woke him up. Thomas sat up and saw his mother looking at him tenderly.
“You know you still have a room here, right?” she asked.
“I hadn’t planned to stay,” he answered as he stretched.
Once he’d shaken his drowsiness, he suddenly turned his head, scanning the room like a hunted animal.
“What’s going on?” Jeanne sounded worried.
“Nothing,” he answered, rubbing his head. “Did you know that the ‘cigarettes’ your best friend hides here are actually joints? No wonder she smokes them in secret!”
Jeanne inhaled deeply. “Ah!” she said regretfully. “You may have gotten them from the wrong drawer. Colette’s cigarettes were probably in the right-hand drawer after all.”
“And in the other?”
“Don’t give me that disapproving look. At my age, I can do what I please!”
“Please tell me it’s medicinal?”
“There you go jumping to conclusions again. How on earth did I give birth to such a serious son? Where did I go wrong?”
“Normal parents usually have the opposite concern, don’t they?”
“Normal parents are boring, admit it. Before I became your mother, I was a sixties girl! We rode in cars without seatbelts, our hair blowing in the wind. We drank, we smoked, and we laughed about everything—especially ourselves—without worrying about offending anyone. We protested for more freedom, not less, and we knew that private lives were best kept private. Some of us died much younger, but in the meantime, we truly lived!”
“What exactly do you put in your joints?” Thomas made an effort to keep his voice calm.
“What do you think? Weed. Very good weed. It’s like with wine—you should only get drunk off excellent vintages.
It’s true, they’re a little strong for someone who doesn’t often smoke.
Your head might be a little fuzzy when you wake up in the morning, but don’t worry, it’s nothing that would jeopardize your concert.
I’m sure my joint isn’t what put you in this state you’re in, though. What’s wrong?”
Thomas told his mother about the strange hallucination he’d had in the next room. She listened thoughtfully, then admitted that maybe she really had rolled too strong a joint.
“So, what did he say?” she asked, sitting beside Thomas as casually as if he had told her he’d run into one of the neighbors on the landing.
“That I wouldn’t fall through the window.”
“Bizarre . . . What else?”
“Nothing special, except that he’d been a little overprotective when I was a kid.”
“A little? Your father hovered over you so much, it’s a miracle his feet ever touched the ground. But what can you do? He was a doctor and he saw epidemics around every corner. He didn’t say anything about me?”
“Mom, it was a hallucination, not a real conversation.”
“You never know. I saw him in my dreams once or twice, not long after—”
“Did he talk to you? Could you really see him?” Thomas interrupted, feeling a burst of energy.
“Yes, I saw him, like I said, and yes, he talked to me.”
“What did he say to you?”
“That he was sorry, but his excuses meant nothing to me. The nights I saw him, I was a little tipsy, to be honest. Did he seem all right?”
“Same as always, but your question is absurd.”
“Did it help you to see him?”
“Not really, no.”
“Too bad. Not everyone gets that chance.”
“I’d have preferred to skip it, frankly. Although . . . if I hadn’t been under the influence, maybe I could have made more of the moment.”
“I have a great idea! Come over after your concert and we’ll try it again. I have a few things I’d like you to tell him. You can be my messenger.” She gave him a conspiratorial glance.
Thomas let out a long sigh. “My mother has just invited me over to smoke weed with her so I can deliver messages to my father’s ghost. And you really wonder where you went wrong with my upbringing?”
“Would you prefer I suggest a game of bridge or a macramé class? Go to bed. You have a concert tomorrow. We’ll talk about all of this another night. Are Colette and I allowed to come congratulate you in your dressing room after the show, or would that be embarrassing too?”
Thomas kissed his mother on the forehead and left.
He still felt strange as he exited the building, so he decided to take a taxi home.
As he walked to the taxi stand, he thought about calling Sophie.
He’d never needed her more. He needed to talk to someone who would find the night’s events as bizarre as he did, someone who could offer him a little sympathy. He quickly gave up on the idea, though.
He was afraid she’d think he was crazy.
Climbing the five flights of stairs to his small apartment made him feel normal again. His head was clear, and his legs were stable. The drug seemed to have worked its way out of his system, which he found reassuring.
Before heading to bed, Thomas looked around. He walked over to the dormer window and looked up at the sky with a smile.
“If you knew what happened to me tonight, Dad, you would laugh so hard. You scared the shit out of me, but it was nice to see you, even in a weird dream.”
Raymond’s ghost waited for Thomas to fall asleep, then sat at the foot of his bed.
And as he watched over his son, he smiled.