Chapter 3 #2
“You’re the reason I messed up my notes.”
“What do you mean? I wasn’t the one onstage.”
“No, you were in the front row . . . on some woman’s lap, surprise, surprise. That wasn’t distracting at all.”
“I don’t have much time, so don’t blame me for using some of it to hear my son play.”
“You had something better to do?”
“I could have spent my evening at the Lido,” his father said, speaking of the famous cabaret on the Champs-élysées, “and taken advantage of my abilities to wander the halls unseen.”
“You can’t be here in this mirror. You can’t be talking to me. You can’t be real because you’re dead!”
“You have a choice: Either you continue to deny what’s happening here, and we waste precious time on useless speculation, or you admit that sometimes things happen without any rational explanation.
When I was a kid, which, sadly, was in the middle of the last century, people said it was impossible to transplant a human heart; yet, now it’s done regularly.
And before that, they said humans would never fly, but now San Francisco is just eleven hours away. Do you want more examples?”
“But ghosts don’t exist!”
“Well, then, the Tibetans, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Scottish, and all the other civilizations that have worshiped their ancestors for centuries, are bumbling idiots. Thank goodness you, Thomas, know the truth.”
There was another knock at the door. Thomas asked in an annoyed voice who it was.
“It’s your mother and Colette,” whispered Raymond. “Who else could it be? Don’t say anything about my being here, of course. I’ll go now and come back when they’re gone.”
Thomas stood and opened the door. Colette entered first; Jeanne slipped in behind her.
“You were amazing!” exclaimed his godmother. “We just came to give you a kiss and then we’ll let you rest, unless you want to get a drink with two old ladies. Your mother keeps telling everyone who’ll listen that I’m going senile.”
“You’ll exhaust him, Colette,” Jeanne said with a sigh.
“Ah, well. At least I made it ten minutes without getting scolded.”
Thomas hugged his mother.
“The audience was over the moon,” she said.
“Forget the moon,” Thomas replied. “I played poorly. I’m lucky the orchestra was there to cover for me.”
“See, just like I said!” Colette exclaimed triumphantly. “I noticed you weren’t your usual self, but don’t worry, the audience was none the wiser. Your own mother didn’t even realize it. Who were you staring daggers at in the front row?”
“Someone who disappeared from my life a long time ago,” he said, staring at his reflection in the mirror.
Jeanne and Colette exchanged curious glances. Jeanne took her friend by the arm and pushed her toward the door.
“Let’s leave him be. I can see my boy is tired. I still know him better than you do.”
She waved to Thomas as she dragged Colette away. Colette blew him a kiss as she left.
Thomas heard his godmother grumbling in the hallway, and then there was silence.
The mirror reflected nothing but his own features. His mother wasn’t wrong—his face was ashen. Thomas hung up his stage clothes, grabbed his leather bag, turned out the lights in his dressing room, and left.
He ran into Marcel backstage and nodded good night, then walked out the stage door that led to the street. There, he found his father sitting on the hood of a car, his legs crossed.
“I would have loved to take you to dinner, but . . . well, I can at least keep you company if you want to grab a bite.”
“What I really want is to be alone.”
“Crazy, isn’t it?” replied his father as he placed his arm around Thomas’s shoulder.
“You’re telling me!”
“What am I telling you?” asked a man who, at that very moment, had been passing Thomas on the sidewalk.
“Nothing. I wasn’t talking to you.”
“There’s no one else on the street,” the man pointed out. “And I don’t like your tone.”
“Forget it,” Thomas said, annoyed.
“Why should I forget it? You’re the one who just loudly accused me of telling you something a moment ago.”
Thomas stared at the man. “Maybe there’s some sort of toxic gas or pollution in the air that’s making everyone a little crazy,” he suggested.
“You should watch your manners, young man. You’re the only one who’s crazy. You were just talking to yourself.”
Thomas shrugged and kept walking. When he turned his head to the side, he saw his father, who wasn’t even trying to hide his amusement.
“You think this is funny?”
“Where’s your sense of humor? It was like a Raymond Devos sketch.”
“Who?”
“He was a stand-up comedian who . . . Oh, never mind. You’re too young to know him.”
“Why are you here? Why can I hear and see you?”
“I’m guessing just answering ‘because’ won’t cut it. But I’d rather explain when we get to your place. That way you can sit down and listen closely. We need to talk.”
“And then you’ll leave me alone?”
“Is seeing me again really so terrible?”
“That’s not what I meant. Losing you wasn’t exactly easy. You’d taken up so much space in my life. Mom said it would take time, that I’d go through different stages of grief, but I didn’t realize how intense that process would be.”
“Did your mother talk to you about me much after my death?”
“You’re aware that your question is ridiculous, right?”
“Actually, awareness is about all I’ve got going for me in my current state. What do you mean, I took up ‘so much space’? Did you feel that I overshadowed you somehow?”
He called the last line as Thomas was walking away.
Thomas pushed open the door to his building. When he looked up the stairwell, he saw his father leaning over the railing on the top floor.
“I thought ghosts were supposed to drag along a ball and chain!” he said with a sigh, seeing him up there.
He left his bag in the entryway of his apartment and went straight to the fridge for a beer before collapsing onto his couch.
His father sat down in the armchair across from him.
“You have no idea how much your need to constantly cross and uncross your legs bothers me.”
“It’s not my fault, my legs are too long,” his father said. “I’ve never known what to do with them. Did I have any other habits that annoyed you?”
“Why don’t we get back to the purpose of your little visit? Is there perhaps some aspect of your life that lacks closure?”
“Don’t be rude, Thomas. I’m still your father.”
“And given the way you’re haunting me, I’m not likely to forget it.”
“I came back because I have a big favor to ask of you. If you accept, I promise I’ll leave you alone. But before we talk about that, there are some things I have to tell you about my life. Unless, of course, you’re worried that it will cast too big of a shadow.”
When Thomas didn’t answer, Raymond looked upset. “Why won’t you say anything? Why are you so cold and distant? Are you mad at me about something? Do you think I didn’t love you enough?”
“You set such impossibly high standards,” Thomas told him. “I could never live up to them. You were this famous surgeon who saved lives, and I just play music.”
“What are you talking about? You make people’s lives better.
You should have seen the faces in the audience tonight.
I was overwhelmed with pride. Sure, I saved a few lives in my day, but in my profession, there’s no applause when you leave the operating room.
No one hands you flowers when the symphony of scalpels is over. ”
“Look who’s become a poet.”
“One of the benefits of death,” his father replied, his old confidence back.
“All right, I’ll hear you out. But then you have to let me sleep. I’m exhausted. Okay? You promise?”
“I promise.” Raymond pretended to spit on the ground to seal the deal. “Now, let’s see. Where should I begin?”
“By explaining how exactly you’re here?”
“Sorry, I’m not allowed to talk about that. It was the one condition for obtaining this short leave.”
“‘Leave,’ like in the army?”
“No, but sure, you can think of it like that.”
“So, you took a leave from the afterlife to come see me?” Thomas broke into a fit of laughter.
“Are you done making fun of me?”
“This is unbelievable! I’m talking to my father’s ghost in the middle of the night . . . Go on, please. Continue. I have a feeling this is just the beginning.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
“I need your help to do something that will determine my fate for all eternity.”
“Of course! It all makes sense now. You were sent back to earth to save humanity, just like you used to save your patients. And like any good Don Quixote, you need a Sancho—and you thought of me.”
“Stop messing around. This is urgent.”
“What can possibly be urgent when you’re dead?”
“You’ll find out one day. A long time from now, I hope. Now, are you going to let me finish or keep interrupting me?”
Thomas agreed to stay quiet. He was convinced he was trapped in a strange dream from which he would eventually awake. This idea comforted him as he listened to his father.
“I’ll begin with saying that your mother and I hadn’t been close in some time . . .”
“That’s not exactly breaking news. You left home ten years before you died.”
“I’m talking about another time. Not long after you were born. By that time in our relationship, our life together had become more like an arrangement between friends.”
“Great. If I had a therapist, a disclosure like that would guarantee them a very comfortable retirement.”
“It wasn’t like that before you were born,” his father said, ignoring this comment. “We truly loved each other then, but we grew apart. It was partly my fault.”
“‘Partly’ how?”
“I met another woman.”
“You had an affair, that’s your big revelation? You were able to seduce anyone who crossed your path, so that’s hardly a surprise.”
“You’ve got me all wrong. I was a flirt, yes, but hardly a womanizer. And besides, I never got to live out my great love, which may be why I’m unable to let it go.”
“It’s that anesthesiologist at the hospital who always followed you around making eyes at you, isn’t it? I always suspected there was something going on between the two of you.”
“You remember Violette?”
“Every time I visited you at work, she stroked my forehead as if I was a poodle and swooned, telling me I was the spitting image of you.”
“Well, it’s not her. We did have a brief dalliance, but nothing of consequence.”
“Are you speaking for yourself or for Mom?”
“Judge me all you want with your therapist once you get one. In the meantime, let me continue.”
“The green-eyed pediatrician, then?”
“Stop it! I didn’t meet Camille at the hospital.”
“‘Camille.’ Got it. So, where did you meet?”
“Do you remember the seaside town where we spent all our summers?”
“You mean where I spent my days hunting for clams in the sludgy sand, riding the merry-go-round, going on pony rides, always losing at mini-golf? The picnics Mom packed for the beach, walks by the lighthouse, the crepe stand by the port, and the games of Monopoly when it rained? I’d have to have a pretty bad case of amnesia to forget that kind of monotony. ”
“That’s not fair. You had the time of your life on those vacations.”
“Did you ever ask me, even once, if I was really having fun?”
Raymond studied his son for a moment, then continued his story.
“That’s where we met.”
“Thrilled to hear it. What’s that got to do with me?”
“Well, let’s just say that the clam hunts, the merry-go-round, the riding club, and the crepe stand all provided opportunities for us to be together. You were the pretext for all our dates.”
“You used me as a cover? That’s disgusting.”
“Oh, get your mind out of the gutter! We didn’t do anything wrong, Thomas.
We loved each other from afar, for your sake.
Every now and then, we would hold hands discreetly, making our hearts race.
Other times, we would brush up against each other, just barely.
But mostly, we exchanged glances and stories, nothing more. ”
“Spare me the details!” Thomas protested.
“You’re not five years old anymore. Won’t you at least try to listen to me without making this all about you?”
“This is turning my entire world upside down. Do you want to know what I actually did enjoy about our summers under those depressing gray skies? Unlike the rest of the year, when your patients and your operating room took up every moment of your time, I had you to myself. We spent time together, just the two of us. So, I’m not exactly thrilled to learn that those hours you carved out for me were, in fact, just a pretext to see your mistress. ”
“Camille wasn’t my mistress. She was much more than that. And did you ever ask yourself if I was having fun, if I was happy, or even just okay?”
“I was a kid!” Thomas cried.
“And then you grew up—and I nearly died of loneliness!”
“What about Mom?”
“It wasn’t your mother’s fault. It wasn’t mine, either. It was love at first sight, Thomas. Some things can’t be explained,” Raymond said quietly.
“And one of those things is talking to a ghost!” Thomas shouted. “I’m going to bed. Feel free to haunt whoever you like, wherever you like. All I ask is that you stay away from the foot of my bed.”
“If that’s what you want. We’ll continue this conversation tomorrow. The concert must have worn you out. It wasn’t the right time to tell you all that.”
Thomas stood up and walked to his bedroom. Before he went in, he turned back toward his father and gave him an angry look.
“We won’t talk about this tomorrow, because we’re not talking about this now.
I’m simply having a nightmare that’s populated by all my anxieties: Sophie, you, making mistakes onstage at the Salle Pleyel, dirty looks from my conductor, Marcel’s disappointment.
In reality, I’m still at Mom’s house, sleeping on the couch in the living room, and when I wake up, none of this will have happened.
It will still be the anniversary of your death, I won’t have seen Sophie, and my concert won’t have happened yet.
“And I’ll still have only good memories of summer vacations with my father.”