Every Year, Hélène’s parents take off three weeks in August, two of which they spend in a small rental apartment at La Grande-Motte. It’s a cramped, stifling one-bedroom flat on the ninth floor of one of those 1960s apartment buildings that proliferate along the coastline with their wavelike concrete architecture, their brown and orange awnings. The location costs a fortune, and Mireille keeps repeating that they should make the most of their vacation, given how much they’re paying for it.
Hélène has her own room. It’s tiny and has a view of the parking lot, but it does have bunk beds, which makes a change. Naturally she sleeps in the upper bunk and from there, if she looks through the square window, she can see the starry sky and hear the shush of the sea, the voices of passersby, the ceaseless rumble of traffic below.
For the Poirot family, vacations are sacred. The reason for this is both political and existential. The time here in summer makes amends for all the rest: the school year, with its repetitive rhythms, up at six-thirty, classes on Saturdays, the interminable winter, annoying bosses, weekends that fly by in a blur, the marathon of weekdays. And they think, too, of their ancestors’ sacrifices; if people had to die to obtain the right to vote, imagine the slaughter required to amass five weeks of paid leave every year.
By the seaside, the annual routine gives way to other habits. Every morning, Jean goes down to the newsstand, Le Grand Pavois, in shorts and sandals, before he even washes and shaves. The eight o’clock sun is warm on his stubbly cheeks. He buys two packs of filtered Gauloises and a copy of Midi Libre, which he reads while drinking his coffee on the terrace of Le Miami, an unpretentious little bar where they play Radio Monte Carlo. He unfolds his newspaper, smokes his cigarette, and sips his coffee, taking his time. The simplest things make him happy. Just before nine, Mireille joins him, her shopping bag filled with apricots, peaches, and a fresh baguette, which she bought at the market on her way here. She orders a coffee too. There’s no rush. They tell each other this as they watch the comings and goings of summer tourists.
Hélène wakes up later and has a Coke and two pains au chocolat for breakfast while she leafs through magazines. Around ten or eleven she meets up with her parents and they go to the beach together. Under parasols, they unroll their pleasant-smelling straw mats and spread out the brightly colored bath towels. They each do whatever they want. They can read, go for a swim, or walk along the beach with their feet in the water, take a nap, dig holes, or buy an insanely expensive pan bagnat from the street vendors who shout out their wares under the sky as clear as a Hollywood swimming pool. They don’t worry about money while they’re on vacation, even if they are still outraged by the liberties taken by local storekeepers, calling them thieves and swindlers.
Mireille and Jean often hold hands as they walk into the sea. As soon as they are chest-deep, they hug and kiss. Hélène leans on her elbows and watches them from a distance, vaguely repulsed. The sun is reflected off her father’s bald head and her mother’s swimmer’s shoulders, the almost too-muscular body revealed by her bikini. She prefers not to know what they’re up to; they’re too old, and for Hélène love is still a sort of mirage untouched by wrinkles or baldness or hairs on its back. And let’s not even talk about sex.
Late in the afternoon, exhausted from the heat, the family goes back to the apartment, which is relatively cool because they took the time to close the shutters and the two big fans are spinning nonstop. This is the time of showers and tan lines. On the balcony, hair wet and skin taut, Hélène flicks through Femme Actuelle. Her father smokes a cigarette at the guardrail, and all her life the smell of dark tobacco will remain associated with those deep sensations of six in the evening, when—relaxed and radiant, her legs stretched out and her skin clean—Hélène savors the slowness of time and the sea breeze.
Sometimes her mother turns on the TV in the next room to keep her company while she makes a quick snack for supper—tomatoes, cured ham, chips, cheese, maybe some pasta. The sound of plates being put on the table, the jingle of silverware, the ssshhh of soda bottles being opened, the murmur of people strolling along the street, watching the boats float and sway. They eat supper while the light fades, turning the sky orange and pink, the sun casting mercury reflections on the Mediterranean as it sets. These hours are the most precious of all, even better than the evenings when they go out to a pizzeria or a seafood restaurant.
So When Hélène announces that Charlotte has invited her to the Île de Ré and that she is planning to spend the summer of her fifteenth year there, the family is immediately plunged into crisis mode.
“Absolutely not!” Mireille yells, in the middle of washing the dishes.
In her apron, she looks like Medea, her eyes flashing angrily and her lips curled back in incredulity. Hélène stands in the kitchen doorway, ready to retreat, while her father, elbows resting on the plastic tablecloth, slowly smokes and waits to see what will happen next. She has chosen the moment carefully : a Saturday after dinner, in May. The sky is overcast and later that day she is supposed to go into town to meet her best friend, to whom she hopes she will be able to announce the good news.
“I’m old enough!” she barks.
“No you’re not,” replies Mireille, abandoning the sink to better confront this new monster, her daughter.
“We never do anything bad. I’ve had perfect grades every quarter since sixth grade. I always do what I’m told. I should be allowed to do what I want with my vacations!”
“I don’t believe this,” her mother laments, putting a hand to her heart.
“Why don’t you want to come with us anymore?” her father asks, knocking ash into his ashtray.
He looks up to hear her response, and the smoke escapes through his narrowed nostrils. As always, he’s wearing a T-shirt that emphasizes his narrow chest, his muscular arms, his tiny waist. Whenever he moves, the muscles in his body are as expressive as those in his face, and to judge from the tension in his neck, Hélène senses that he is not happy about this situation either.
“It’s not that,” Hélène explains. “I just want to be with my friend. I’m allowed to see something else, aren’t I?”
“You won’t see anything at all.”
Hélène doesn’t bat an eyelid. This is just the first skirmish in a long battle. She has to keep control of herself, hold back the anger she can feel stinging her nose, contain her eagerness for victory. She must watch out for surprises too.
“Why don’t you ask your friend to come with us?” suggests her father, before taking one last drag on his Gauloise, which he then crushes meaningfully in the ashtray.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Hélène shouts, suddenly panicked.
“Why not?” her mother asks, sensing a weakness in her daughter’s defenses. “Explain it to us.”
“No reason. They’ve got a house down there. They spend all their vacations there. That’s all. I’m not going to ask her that, it’s stupid.”
“So? You’ve always spent your vacations at La Grande-Motte. Just invite your friend.”
“She’s perfectly welcome,” Jean adds, arms crossed and biceps bulging.
“Yeah, why not?”
Hélène doesn’t know what to say. She feels like she’s on shifting sands. Obviously she doesn’t want her friend to see them, the way they behave in private, her father, who farts at the table or makes little noises while he sips his coffee, her mother, who is always in a state of anxiety. She wants to hide their small-mindedness, all those modest joys and obsessions that now make her feel so ashamed.
Because her friendship with Charlotte has become a way of measuring her own existence. Not only that, but her new best friend never hesitates to correct her and is pitiless when it comes to any departure from the rules of good taste. When they are strolling around town, Charlotte takes aim at those around: blonde women with dark roots, men in sports socks, people in shorts, too much makeup, bodies bulging from too-tight clothes, girls from difficult neighborhoods with that gray, unclean look, old men at bus shelters, hunchbacks, people with limps, fake thugs in sweat suits, inbred yokels, guys in badly made synthetic suits…anyone deviating from her golden rules is fair game.
Charlotte’s family has clear ideas about table manners and bouquets of flowers. They know how to set the table properly and to get dressed for an evening at the theater. How to be at ease and act the right way. In their home, it feels as if happiness itself is the product of a certain knowledge about life. Hélène absorbs it all. She mimics it, then goes home with a laser eye. Two years before this, her parents struck her as unquestionable, as almost transparent. Now she sees only their faults. Her mother talks too much, her father drags his feet, they get mad for the wrong reasons, laugh too loudly, and when they “relax” they let themselves go to a degree that makes her want to hide in a cupboard. And all those awful expressions that drive her crazy: “Each to his own,” “It takes all sorts,” all those crude pseudo-philosophical platitudes that she hates, praising tolerance through weakness, aggression through submissiveness, those sayings that sound like demands but only ever take up a subordinate position, fists clenched, taking pride in their lowliness. And, in hunting out these faux pas, Hélène ends up becoming this contemptuous, anxious little prosecutor who no longer knows what to do with her parents. But even if she does not yet dare put words to these feelings, her mother has no qualms.
“You’re ashamed of us, aren’t you?”
Hélène protests, vehemently, on the verge of tears. Oh, they never understand anything.
In the weeks that follow, she returns to the fray on several occasions. She promises to be good, to work even harder in school, but these arguments do not have much weight given that she is already a straight-A student. So she goes on smiling strike. At the kitchen table, she stares at her plate and responds only in grunts. The mood at home quickly sinks. In the small, one-story house, the atmosphere grows as cold and gloomy as a morgue. Mireille polishes every surface as if her life depends on it, even cleaning the locks with Q-tips. Jean finds work with a friend who is renovating an old farm near Cheniménil. He goes there with his tools whenever he can and comes back, tanned and happy, before being discouraged by the miserable faces of his wife and child. It gets so bad that Mireille tells him “Not now” when he kisses her neck.
One evening, Jean Poirot makes a decision. He goes to find Hélène in her bedroom. It’s still a little girl’s room, with posters of New Kids on the Block on the wall, a few stuffed animals on the duvet, the flowered wallpaper, a pitch pine table and the swiveling office chair from Conforama. And a standing mirror in which Hélène likes to watch herself giving imaginary interviews or making herself cry. But that night, she is simply stretched out on the bed, reading La Mare au diable. When her father sits beside her, she doesn’t even bother looking up from her book.
“Well, I talked to your mother.”
Hélène keeps her mouth shut, but the words on the page are now nothing more than a procession of unreadable insects. She raises her face a little, listens. And, above all, hopes.
“It can’t go on like this.”
She sees his big hand lying flat on the blue sheet, the thick veins like slow worms under his skin, climbing like ivy up his forearm. Her father’s working hands, which carry and protect and frighten, and which she used to watch whenever they set off on vacation, gripping the steering wheel lightly so that they could hold a cigarette while shifting gears.
In his low, nicotine-coated voice, Jean reminds her briefly of Mireille’s past, her five brothers and sisters, the father taken by cancer when she was six, her own mother placed in a nursing home and never the same after that, the madness that menaced her home, the sadness of that little girl now become a woman’s insomnia.
“It’s not easy for her.”
Hélène sees it coming. Her father is playing on her emotions—it’s textbook. But it’s also too late. She has already reached that cruel age when only one thing matters and the suffering of others becomes purely fictitious. Her mother’s depression is not going to win out over her own fantasy. She wants the bikini, the white beach, the blue sea. She wants bicycle rides, the big life she senses waiting for her on that island at the other end of the country.
“So we’re going to find a compromise.”
Her father explains the situation to her. She will spend a week with them at La Grande-Motte and then she will go to stay with her friend. They’ll figure something out for the train journey. Hélène grabs her father around the neck and kisses him. Thank you! Thank you, Dad. Before he ruins everything.
“But we want to talk to those people first. There’s no way we’re sending you over there without knowing who’ll be looking after you.”
“But you know them.”
“We’ve met them three times. We want to talk to them. It’s only normal.”
Oh shit, thinks Hélène. She can imagine the scene, the intersecting circles, the false notes, her mother’s suspicions and complexes: Who do these people think they are? And that one with her two-thousand-euro watch, did you see it?
All the same, she tells Charlotte the next day and her friend is thrilled—she doesn’t see the problem. Unsurprisingly. The bitch. Her parents are super cool, her mother looks like a model, and her father has two horses and a Mercedes.
The negotiations go on for two weeks. First, the Brassards invite the Poirots to dinner at their house, an invitation that Hélène does not pass on. Ambitions lowered, they suggest drinks and snacks. Hélène, who cannot imagine her parents in her friend’s enormous pad, dodges this too. Consequently, it is now up to the Poirots to invite the Brassards. Hélène vetoes this plan too.
In the end, the two families meet on the terrace of Le Narval in Cornécourt. And curiously, the Poirots and the Brassards don’t look that dissimilar when you put them side by side. Both women wear little dresses; the men are in polo shirts and jeans. They smile and stand in the same way. The two men order a beer, Mireille a tomato juice, and Madame Brassard a Badoit. To get a sense of what separates them, you have to examine the small details, the watches, the shoes, the skin, the teeth, the jewelry, the calluses on their hands, and then more intangible things—a gesture, an intonation, a roundness here, a firmness or a softness there, the movement of their bodies, what might more generally be labeled attitude, a thousand nuances that implicitly signal their different diets, their disparate activities, schedules that do not overlap, contrasting lifestyles and destinies.
Even so, the gulf between them is not unbridgeable. Charlotte’s father is called Jean, after all, just like Hélène’s. They were both born in the provinces, they speak the same language, they have the same vaguely affectionate feelings toward France, and a vision of the State so exalted that it gives them excessive expectations and causes them to criticize it bitterly when those expectations are not met. They are not racist, but. They believe in the value of work, celebrate Christmas without attending Mass but go to church for baptisms, weddings, and funerals. Both couples judge people according to the car they drive, love pot-au-feu and local pâtés, and drink Bordeaux, which they consider the best wine in the world. Mireille Poirot and Nicole Brassard are equally adept at making fruit tarts, even if the former prefers plums and the latter cherries. In front of the television, Jean Brassard and Jean Poirot both watch the news, World Cup soccer games, and documentaries about nature and extreme sports. Mireille and Nicole could talk about the TV news anchor Christine Ockrent, whom they both admire, or about the upmarket entertainment show Le Grand Échiquier because they are fascinated by Karajan and they adore Pavarotti. They are all agreed that it’s better not to talk politics.
And so the two couples get along famously from the start, obviously helped by the fact that drinking aperitifs at seven in the evening is not the most stressful of activities. Instinctively, the two women sit next to each other, and the men start talking about Formula 1. Hélène and Charlotte drink diabolos through a straw and try not to show how happy they are. All this is very promising. For now, there is no fear of the vacations becoming contentious. After the first round of drinks, Monsieur Brassard suggests they are having too much fun to stop now, so they all agree to share a bottle of rosé. The glasses arrive, they make a toast, and since the Poirots of course do not wish to be outdone, at nine o’clock, as it’s starting to get dark, they order a second bottle. Laughter comes easily now, and Nicole Brassard puts her hand on Mireille’s wrist to whisper something into her ear. Charlotte’s father suggests organizing a visit to the pulp mill where he works.
“It’s pretty impressive, you’ll see.”
They would like to believe it. Anyway, all factories still in existence are clearly worth visiting, as a matter of principle. Here, everyone is still haunted by the crimes committed against the textile and steel industries. One day, the people who sold off those family jewels will have to explain themselves. Or at least, that is what Jean Poirot believes. Charlotte’s father does not argue the point. He has the fatalistic view of well-informed men, ready to admit anything since they have understood everything. Soon, it is time to say goodbye. As cheeks are kissed, they all promise to arrange something—a dinner, maybe at a restaurant, sounds good, we’ll work out the details later. The question of their summer vacations never arises. But it is there all the time, between the lines.
On the drive home, Hélène’s parents are in a wonderful mood. Not only are the Brassards very nice, but they are simple people: they don’t think their shit doesn’t stink.
“Although…did you see her watch?” Mireille says.
“I didn’t notice,” Jean admits.
“They’re obviously not short of money.”
As they talk, the word “executive” keeps cropping up. Charlotte’s father is an “executive” and Hélène would like to understand what that means. Apparently, it’s not about money or what he does or his precise job title, like lawyer or minister. But the term haloes Jean Brassard with a curious prestige, conferring upon him a position that is both enviable and vaguely reprehensible.
“What’s an executive?” Hélène asks finally.
“It’s complicated,” her mother replies.
Hélène Will Find out the answer two months later, on the road from Gillieux to the supermarket in Ars-en-Ré. That morning, Charlotte’s father said Come on, we’re going to buy groceries, and she did not feel this was an invitation she could refuse. Charlotte and her mother had gone to the market, and perhaps he had a particular reason for not wanting Hélène to stay in their vacation home on her own.
Hélène has been here a week, and from the start she has felt slightly uncomfortable. She thought she knew these people, having eaten dinner with them and slept over at their house dozens of times, but after only twenty-four hours she no longer recognizes the relaxed yet classy atmosphere she had gotten used to. Every family has its hidden sewers, and—with mother, father, and daughter all in close company—the Brassards’ begin to emit some unexpected odors. For example, when Charlotte’s parents talk to each other, their conversation is laced with malicious innuendos that she has never noticed before. And Nicole Brassard is incapable of addressing her daughter without criticizing her for her behavior, the food she eats, the clothes she wears, the way she stands, even if she delivers all these reproaches in a jokey tone. Hélène had already observed this tendency to disparage Charlotte, but it takes on completely different proportions when they are living under the same roof for an extended period. She begins to understand why the twins prefer to spend their vacations somewhere else.
But, worst of all, the Brassards are constantly badmouthing other people. After passing a bare-chested man in the street, they bitch about him for twenty minutes straight.
In such circumstances, it is difficult to feel at ease. Particularly since her friend’s parents do not follow a fixed schedule when they’re on vacation. The time they eat their meals varies from day to day; sometimes they go to the beach in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, and sometimes they don’t go at all because they decide they would rather hang out on the terrace, reading magazines and sleeping in the shade. Quite often, Hélène has the feeling that she is spending all her time waiting. She is lost in an alien landscape. At dinnertime she haunts the kitchen like a ghost, in search of clues to when and where they will eat. Her own family eats dinner at seven every evening, and she finds herself craving that kind of certainty.
At least she can depend on the breakfast routine, though. Jean Brassard loves going to the neighboring village very early to buy fresh bread and a newspaper. When the girls come downstairs from their bedroom, still sleepy and surly, the table is already set. From the stairs, they can smell the delicious odors of coffee and toast. Hélène also recognizes the smell of her friend’s father waiting for them on the terrace in shirtsleeves, his hair still wet: that clean, male, bourgeois scent of aftershave that she likes so much. Sleeves rolled up, a pair of battered boat shoes on his feet, Jean Brassard pours coffee into bowls and asks the girls if they’ve slept well. Then Nicole appears, usually in a striped sweater. For the vacation, she has tied to her wrist a little red cotton bracelet that absorbs the salt and sunlight—and the smell of their sheets, Hélène thinks to herself.
They chat distractedly while they eat. The adults flick lazily through newspapers, glancing only at the headlines and photo captions. Nicole enjoys crosswords. The house is littered with books and women’s magazines, yet Hélène senses that the Brassards don’t really read much. For them, books are just objects. Like the linen couch covers, the paintings on the walls, they are nothing more than knickknacks intended to give the room a touch of soul.
“What are your plans for the day, girls?” the mother asks.
“La Conche,” Charlotte announces, making the decision for them both.
Or maybe Trousse-Chemise, or La Couarde. One of the local beaches, anyway.
“Okay,” says Nicole. “What about us?”
Jean shrugs. He’ll do whatever she wants, he doesn’t care. He is difficult only when it comes to eating.
There is one thing here that Hélène adores, however: the advantages of island life. There are very few criminals in the area and abductions are extremely rare. And even the influx of summer visitors does not alter the atmosphere of mutual surveillance and luxurious confinement that characterizes the Île de Ré. So the girls are free to wander unchaperoned, even after dark. They ride bikes, go swimming, and meet up with friends whom Charlotte has known since childhood. Among these friends is Boris, a boy in a white Lacoste polo shirt who is, thinks Hélène, quite good-looking, even if he’s on the short side and talks about himself all the time.
They go home around seven, riding along the little paths that crisscross the salt marshes with their strong smell of sulfur. They’re tired and dirty, their bodies full of sun, hair full of sand, the down on their spines and the backs of their necks dyed bright blonde. Inside the house, they take forever to get showered. Sometimes they go out for an ice cream or dinner at a restaurant. Hélène always chooses the cheapest thing on the menu. She tastes the wine that Jean Brassard pours into her glass. It’s lovely to be drunk after three mouthfuls when she is caramel-colored and far from home, pinching her nose to stop herself bursting into laughter because her best friend’s father is imitating the bellowing of a stag in the woods. It’s so good to have enjoyed the whole day and to know that tomorrow will be the same.
The two teenagers are allowed to stay out until midnight, so they go to the carnival. They lock up their bikes and, sunburned shoulders highlighted by their pale clothes, they walk in espadrilles among the rides and the stalls that smell of hot sugar, waffles, and candy apples. Charlotte always has money to buy something sweet or hire an electric scooter. They stare at boys, meet up with their friends, ride home just before curfew, laughing, imagining that they’re drunk because they’ve had two beers, then stampede upstairs to their room and leap onto the beds, hair flying, giggling into their pillows and not even brushing their teeth.
But despite these pleasures and these parent-free hours, she is still bothered by a corseted feeling, a weird tension that Hélène can’t quite put her finger on and that disturbs her all the more because the limits of the constraint are spectral, the thresholds invisible, all the rules unwritten.
In short, she feels pressured to behave correctly.
But in what way? Certainly not when it comes to choosing her words. Charlotte’s father often says “shit” and points out assholes at every intersection. Nor is it about clothing. Nicole goes topless at the beach, and all Jean’s clothes are frayed, stained, sometimes full of holes, and he seems completely indifferent to the fact. It’s not a question of politeness either, or the sort of conventional respect that children are expected to show adults. It’s something else, something more subliminal.
Once, for example, Hélène collapsed a bit too heavily onto the living-room couch and she felt disapproval stir the air like a breeze. Since then, she has been living in a state of anxiety, trying to copy everything Charlotte does. She imitates her movements, the way she sets the table, lies in the sun, laughs. She apes her intonations. She has even adopted the little tongue-click that her friend makes whenever she’s annoyed. And yet the Brassards are so kind to her. They give her oysters to eat in the middle of summer, and melons so sweet that they taste like candy. Hélène tries to make herself worthy of such generosity.
Thankfully, after a few days, she settles into a comforting little role-playing game with her friend’s father. Jean likes to tease her and pretend he’s her humble servant, going to comic lengths to be considerate, asking her if everything’s okay, if she wants to call her parents, if she feels fine, not too hot, not too cold, treating her like a capricious princess whose moods are feared by all below her.
Hélène giggles, thrilled and embarrassed to be the center of attention.
When Nicole announces that they should go to the dining room, for instance, Jean says: “I don’t know if Hélène will agree.” She blushes. He kids her like this, always kindly, never pushing it too far, until there is a sort of hazy complicity between them. At least now she has a role she can play. The best friend, the little protégée. The girl they want to make laugh.
That summer, Hélène also discovers a new power. Before this, she has always gone unnoticed. Now, suddenly, seeing her reflection in the windows they pass on their bicycles, she notices a change in stature. At fifteen, she is five foot six tall and her legs, which a year before had been nothing more than a graceless means of locomotion, have now become an attraction. When she pedals, runs, or walks, when she crosses them on café terraces, when she stretches them out after eating too much, when she sits cross-legged on the sand and counts the folds in her belly, when she strolls along the beach, men in their twenties and middle-aged fathers with potbellies ogle her shamelessly. For now, she doesn’t really know what to do with this new interest she has aroused. It makes her head spin, hollows out her stomach with fear. She wants to disappear and, at the same time, wants the spotlight all to herself.
One day, when she is about to put on her bikini in the little upstairs bathroom, she catches sight of her reflection in the large mirror fixed to the door. She turns to the side, admiring her left profile and then her right, poses with her chin on her shoulder, then contemplates her tan lines, the contrast of brown and white so pronounced that even naked it looks like she is wearing underwear. At the base of her spine, she is almost surprised to find that new behind which stretched her skin during the spring and left welts on her hips that she still hasn’t gotten over. She checks her breasts too, but they have not grown much. So she goes back to eyeing her ass with base indulgence, trying out a few hip thrusts. She seduces her reflection, which is beautiful and carries no risk. She wishes she could take a photo. Soon she will have to go home and all this will disappear, the freckles and metamorphoses of July; she will return to Cornécourt and her daily life in its various shades of gray.
One day, she tells herself, she will have to earn loads of money too. Then she’ll be beautiful all year round and she’ll be able to live like these people who don’t have to count their pennies and who know how the world works. But the fluorescent light above the mirror denounces a cluster of zits on her right temple. She leans over the sink, on tiptoe, to squeeze them. Then moves back. Red marks, a pinprick of blood, she’s ruined everything. There are a few toiletries on the glass shelf, among them the father’s shaving soap. Recognizing its familiar aroma, she opens the pot and breathes in. A strange sensation. Then she brings the bottle of Habit Rouge to her nostrils and inhales the smell of morning; all that’s missing is a man’s rough skin, the veiny hands, the hairy arms. She is overcome by a peculiar feeling, a mix of desire and disgust. She sprays some of the perfume onto her wrist to understand it better. Suddenly she freezes. Someone has knocked at the door.
“Hey…Charlotte and her mother have gone to the market. I’m going to the Super U to pick up groceries. Do you need anything?”
She quickly turns the tap on and rubs at her wrist with soap. The blood has rushed to her face and in her panic she can feel her forehead pouring with sweat, her hair becoming electric.
“Hélène?” says the big voice behind the door.
She tells him she doesn’t need anything. She’ll be out in a minute.
“So you won’t be long?”
“No, no.”
“Well, you can come with me then.”
Yes, okay, she’d like that.
And so she finds herself in the Mercedes with the AC on full blast and goose bumps all over her skin. And that’s when she asks the question that has been bothering her for so long: “What’s an executive?”
Jean laughs. “Just someone whose job is to supervise other employees, his subordinates if you like. It’s about having responsibilities, going to a lot of meetings, and being up to the task. What about you…what do you want to do when you’re older?”
“Like the baccalaureate, you mean?”
“No, after. At college.”
Hélène has not really thought about this. The AC is making the air so cold now that she crosses her arms tight across her chest, presses her thighs together. Charlotte’s father keeps his eyes on the road.
“I don’t really know. Maybe law.”
“Law can lead anywhere, but it’s pretty useless. Everybody does law.”
She is not entirely sure what he means by this. Where she comes from, the strategies are simple. If you work hard, you’ll be successful. If you get good grades, you may be lucky enough to go to college. As far as her mother is concerned, notaries, court bailiffs, lawyers…these are the best careers imaginable, because not only are they highly paid but they inspire a sort of awe in ordinary people.
Jean Brassard sweeps all these assumptions away with a few words. Even now, at high school, she needs to choose the right stream. The Bac L, with its literary slant? Forget it. Unless you want to be a teacher, of course. Afterward, you should avoid state universities at all costs. Unless you want to waste three years of your life doing nothing among a bunch of nobodies.
“My sister is an English teacher,” he explains. “She’s highly qualified, so she does okay financially, especially if you consider how few hours she works. But even so. She’s been on anti-anxiety meds for the past two years. Earlier this year, one of the students called her a whore.”
Hélène listens demurely as her friend’s father tells her how things are. The first thing she needs to do is find an exclusive career path: competitive exams, preparatory classes, prestigious schools.
“You should take Greek and Russian. You’d be in a class of smart, hard workers. Emulation is important.”
Later, in the aisles of the Super U, he continues to explain what she should and shouldn’t do with her life, while she pushes the cart and he fills it. The conversation drifts naturally toward his own youth. From time to time, Hélène feels his arm touch hers and she hopes the contact is accidental, even if it is not exactly unpleasant. He grew up in Neufchâteau. His father was a civil engineer, and his grandfather a grammarian and high school teacher. There was no joking around for young Jean when it came to schoolwork. In fact there was no joking around in general. He took a preparatory class at the Poinca in Nancy, then went up to Paris. Like in that Barrès novel that no one reads anymore. He took law, of course, but luckily he was accepted at Sciences Po afterward—only it was Sciences Po Grenoble.
Hélène is completely lost. Poinca, civil engineering, grammarian, Barrès, Grenoble’s inferiority to Paris…she has no idea what he’s talking about. What she discovers in that supermarket full of tourists in flip-flops is a new language with a curious syntax that ranks and orders everything, its grammar carefully weighing every word.
Once the groceries are in the trunk of the car, Jean asks her if she’d like a drink. They still have a little time. He checks his watch to confirm this. The brown leather wristband makes his hand look more adventurous, like something from an advertisement. Hélène knows that their new closeness is not altogether welcome, but she can’t help enjoying this little bubble in which she is elevated to a queenlike status. They head toward a little café on the other side of the road, behind which is a stretch of sun-browned grass where some exotic animals are grazing, freshly released from the cages of a circus that has just set up camp there. Charlotte’s father orders Perriers with slices of lemon and the two of them sit staring at the traffic, no longer saying much.
They sit there in the shade of an Orangina parasol, caught in eddies of heat, under the unrelenting hammer of noon, in the dust raised by passing cars. Nothing else is possible. Hélène doesn’t dare look at him anymore. She feels like she’s waiting for something. The moment lengthens. Finally a cloud moves in front of the huge sun, long enough for her to take a breath. The teenager feels her body relax a little and notices that her back is drenched with sweat.
“They should be back from the market by now,” says Charlotte’s father.
“Yeah.”
“Ready to go?”
He’s already on his feet, car key in hand. Hélène finishes her drink, then stands up, and, as they cross the road, Jean takes her hand. It lasts only a few seconds, and he does have the excuse of the busy road. As soon as they reach the other side, he lets go. But in Hélène’s head, everything is muddled, unrecognizable.
“You okay?” he asks.
She nods. Abruptly she wishes it were December and she were wearing a thick sweater and boots, but the sun is at its zenith, on the most perfect day of the hottest month of the year. She gives a weak smile and gets into the large black sedan.
On the way back, they listen to the news. Michel Rocard, the penalty points system, and those names that she hears constantly and mixes up: Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, all these things that neither of them could give a shit about. Charlotte’s father changes the station and they end up listening to religious music on France Musique. Hands joined in her lap, Hélène stares at her feet while sepulchral voices fill the car’s refrigerated interior.
The Rest of the vacation is passed pleasurably in the waves, each day the same, amid the growing melancholy of something coming toward its end.
Hélène begins avoiding Jean, who is clearly put out by her change in behavior. She can’t stop thinking that she must have done something wrong. She fears he will trap her somewhere and give her a piece of his mind. One ugly word keeps bothering her: “cocktease.” And yet she didn’t do anything. Or let anything happen. Since there is nobody she can talk to about this, all these thoughts churn endlessly in her mind, producing waves of anger and traces of guilt.
Thankfully, she and Charlotte escape whenever possible, meeting up with the little gang on the beach every day. They spend their days playing paddle tennis, swimming in the sea, and laughing a lot about nothing very much, in a sort of intoxication. Occasionally, Angélique—a tall Parisian girl from the sixteenth arrondissement with ultra-short hair—turns up with her tarot cards and reads their futures. Often they don’t even bother to eat. Cigarettes have replaced food, and Boris—the short guy who wears white polo shirts—continues to flirt lightly with Hélène, which she finds flattering and relaxing.
She and Charlotte spend hours lying on their towels, tanning their backs and then their fronts, and chatting away. Charlotte has just finished Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F., and is still in a state of shock. Hélène, meanwhile, is obsessed with Belle du Seigneur. She hasn’t actually read it, but she loves the idea. Their French teacher had talked about it during the school year, making it clear that they were too young to read it, that the book was too difficult, too long and dense, too experimental for them. That was all it took to make her borrow it from the library. She has gotten stuck halfway through: some of the passages are completely incomprehensible. But it is so beautiful, all that passion, all that cruelty. In her mind, love is now partly associated with death. Which does not exactly encourage her to take the plunge.
On the last Friday of Hélène’s stay, the two girls come back from the beach later than usual to find Charlotte’s parents slumped in the living room. An empty bottle of white wine stands on the coffee table.
“So where did you go?” Nicole asks, her gaze slightly unfocused and a big smile plastered across her face.
There are snacks on the table too: anchovies and red mullet, cherry tomatoes, some bread and salted butter. Charlotte sits cross-legged on the carpet and butters a slice of bread.
“We lost track of time,” she says before biting into her snack.
“Want a drink?” her father asks, grabbing the bottle of Viognier.
The two girls swap a look, both smiling. Nicole makes a show of protesting, but she doesn’t really care.
At home in Épinal, among her books and plants, Charlotte’s mother looks like one of those women in ads for anti-wrinkle creams, chic and healthy, a fifty-year-old woman shot in soft focus, gold bangles on her wrists, an eternal schoolgirl. But during this vacation, Hélène has noticed cracks in the veneer. On several occasions after dinner, Nicole has downed so many glasses of white that she’s had to be helped up to her bedroom. Each day, the morning after, she’s looked like a freshly dug-up corpse, her skin a spiderweb of lines. But more strikingly, Hélène has caught the look on her face when she listens to her husband bragging, elaborating the theories he has about everything, making the same jokes he’s been making for twenty-five years. It’s as if an invisible rain clears away her usual expression, leaving behind an arid, bitter landscape. For the past two days, she hasn’t even bothered going to the beach. She has stayed inside with her white and yellow books and her Marlboros, lying on the couch to read and listen to music.
“What’s up with your mother?”
“Nothing, she just likes peace and quiet.”
Both her daughter and her husband leave her to it. Hélène has looked at some of the books that Nicole spends her days reading: they are all novels, most of them French, many about unhappy women, motherhood, melancholy. It can’t be that bad, she thinks, to be sad and rich, to lie on your couch and read stories about someone just like you.
“Anyway, we’re not going to bother making dinner tonight,” the father says.
“Maybe we’ll take a shower first.”
“Yeah, you go get freshened up and I’ll open another bottle.”
The two friends rush upstairs, Charlotte going first and stripping off in the hallway so she can beat Hélène to the bathroom.
Hélène is excited. She is eager to drink wine, to get drunk, even if she is a little fearful of the father’s presence.
“Hey, don’t take too long!” she shouts through the door at her friend.
Then she goes to their room and collapses onto the bed. There, she looks up at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the shower on the other side of the hallway, before turning onto her stomach, knees bent, and breathing in the smell of the sheets, which have not been changed since the start of the vacation. Under Charlotte’s bed, she spots an open bag and some books. She gets up to take a look at the books her friend has brought with her. And comes across a large, soft-cover journal. The lower corner of each used page has been torn off along a dotted line. Hélène flicks through it, hardly believing her eyes. Then her heart stops.
April 14: “Christophe came here yesterday. We did it again in my bed. Mmm. I think about him all the time. We watched Dead Poets Society while Mom was out. I think he liked it. The video is getting worn out. I told him I’d wear the same panties to his game and he laughed. I love him so much. I didn’t do my math homework until really late. Exhausted and happy now.”
Hélène keeps leafing through. The pages are filled with Charlotte’s large, round handwriting. There are lots of exclamation points. She notes a sentence here and there. She’s looking for her own name, but she’s barely even mentioned.
March 19: “Today, I can say I feel comfortable in my own skin. I don’t want to be someone else anymore. I don’t care as much about being the best and I’m not constantly wondering what other people think of me. Christophe is always paying me compliments. I am filled with joy. It’s just having to keep it secret that annoys me. That and his whore.”
Below this, in red marker, is a couplet from the Salt-N-Pepa song “Let’s Talk About Sex” and a big blue heart.
She can no longer hear water running in the bathroom. Hélène tries to tear herself away but the urge to keep reading is too strong. Her friend’s journal is like a pack of candy that you eat in one go while swearing to yourself that each mouthful will be the last. She keeps turning to the next page, and then just one more…A world has opened up before her, so luxuriant in its jungle-like horror, its malarial beauty, that it makes her head spin. She feels everything at once: wet, excited, lost. Suddenly she laughs. One page contains only the words: “Christophe is a bastard!” Written in three different colors of marker, at least it has the virtue of being clear.
Farther on, a day in May: “I’ve made my mind up: I’m not going to see him anymore. I’ll express how I feel, think about myself. Have a HAPPY sex and love life. Say what I think, even if it hurts.” And below this: “Thinking about Hélène’s birthday. Ideas: the little bracelet from L’Oiseau Bleu (expensive), or chocolates (basic), or take her the VHS of Rain Man (Tom Cruise—heart).”
On the other side of the hallway, the bathroom door opens. Hélène rushes to put the journal back under the bed. Kneeling on the floor, she slips it into the bag where she found it.
“Your turn.”
Charlotte has just come into their bedroom, accompanied by the pleasant smell of shower gel and clean hair. She finishes drying herself in the doorway, her torso wrapped inside a long pink bath towel, her feet bare, no longer innocent. Hélène looks at her with a curious mix of admiration and bitterness.
“Get a move on,” says her friend, who has already sat on the bed to put her panties on.
“I’m going,” says Hélène.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Hélène is a really bad liar. She becomes instantly embarrassed, shifty-eyed. She rushes out of the bedroom before another question puts her on the spot. In the shower stall, the hot water pours hard on her salt-encrusted hair. Ideas whirl around her head. She is furious with herself for not having guessed, for having been so naive. She is furious with Charlotte too. But what she feels above all is an all-consuming curiosity. She needs to find a way to keep reading that journal.
“Come on, girls! If you don’t get downstairs soon, the bottle will be empty.”
They Open Three more bottles that evening. Soon, the light-filled living room grows blurred and cocoon-like, and Charlotte’s parents become different people, charming and unfiltered, full of anecdotes and opinions. Above the bottle-strewn table they exchange Do you remember whens and Oh that reminds mes. The wine makes them more loquacious, but it also provides them with a very easy audience. Hélène laughs too much and stuffs herself with bread and anchovy paste, popping cherry tomatoes and cubes of Comté into her mouth one after another. Not to be outdone, Charlotte continually provokes her father, fills their glasses, raises her eyebrows knowingly at Hélène. Much later, Nicole decides to put some music on. She even dances a little bit, before suddenly going quiet and glassy-eyed. Around one in the morning, she says it’s time to get some sleep and, after a few protests, the girls go upstairs to brush their teeth and get ready for bed. Charlotte, even more hammered than her friend, wants to keep chatting awhile longer. She laughs into her pillow a few times before falling fast asleep.
Inside the summer home with its white walls and blue shutters, everything is calm once again. Under the bedroom door, Hélène sees the hallway light come on, then go off. She recognizes the mother’s footsteps, then Jean’s heavier breathing, his weight making the floorboards creak. At last there is silence. Sleep descends upon her ten minutes later with the suddenness of a general anesthetic.
But around three in the morning, she wakes with a dry mouth. She feels as though she’s barely slept at all. For a moment she just lies there, torn between inertia and the need to pee, then she gets out of bed. Standing up is even worse. The blood pulses under her scalp, her brain hurts, and her mouth tastes like something has died in there. Close by, Charlotte is practically snoring, like some hibernating animal. Hélène takes a step toward her and whispers: “Hey! Are you asleep?”
Leaning closer, she recognizes the scent of her friend’s hair mingled with her stale, boozy breath. And the furnace heat rising toward her face.
“Hey,” she says again.
When Charlotte does not respond, Hélène kneels down and touches her thigh through the sheet. Nothing. So she lies flat on the floor and reaches under the bed for the journal. She can feel her heart drumming against the floorboards. Her bladder is a knot of pain as her fingers grope around, finding nothing but fabric, dust, an indeterminate mass of stuff. And then she has it. She grabs the journal, clambers to her feet, and slips the book into the elastic band of her boxer briefs before draping the edge of her T-shirt over it and leaving the room on tiptoe. Then she goes silently downstairs, simultaneously meticulous and hurried, and shuts herself in the first-floor bathroom, taking care to bolt the door behind her. She turns on the light and, finally secure, sits down to read her best friend’s journal and take a really long pee.
“Strep throat. I watched The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Beautiful but depressing.”
(in red ink): “Don’t cry! Look at me. People only die of a broken heart in movies.”
“Thinking about Christophe. His body drives me crazy.”
“Mom told me to pick up my room even though I’ve got a fever and I ache all over. She was in one of those horrible moods that make me so sad. But I’m seeing Christophe tomorrow. At times I want him so much it makes me shake.”
Farther on:
“I think I’m getting depressed. Christophe is cold and distant. He spends all his time at the rink or with his skank. I cried last night, and this morning too, when I woke. I feel so TIRED, I’m sick of it. Hélène has borrowed my red Lacoste sweater. She’s always taking stuff from me and I’m too scared to say no.”
Hélène flips backward, searching for the moment when it all started. On December 7, she finds this:
“At lunchtime I was alone in the lobby and Christophe Marchal looked me in the eye. I didn’t know what the hell to do with myself. We bumped into each other three more times today. Hélène says I’m imagining it all. She’s probably right. Anyway, I’m going to bed to think about it.”
A few days later: “I kept nagging Mom and finally convinced her about the Docs. After three weeks! But she doesn’t want Hélène to stay here next weekend because she came for St. Nicholas. That pisses me off.”
The minutes pass and Hélène reconstructs the whole story, piece by piece. Christophe was prowling around her friend and she never even realized. Then one day, he went to her house. Charlotte knew he was dating that horrible punk girl, Charlie, but she let it happen anyway. No doubt she was flattered. And consumed by desire. Hélène herself feels something as she reads those pages that reveal what happened in plain language. The journal is full of short sentences with the power of detonators. “He tried to get in but it hurt and I said no,” “His body is so beautiful.” The words “hand job” repeated ten times around the edges of a page, like a garland, with hearts and miniature dicks in yellow highlighter. Conjugations of certain English words (“I lick, you lick, he/she licks, they lick, we lick…”), a photograph of Jim Morrison, Paris sous les bombes, “Chic lingerie, it’s the snap of a suspender.” From late December, the same phrase keeps coming back: “I want to fuck.” No frills.
Sometimes there are dramas, arguments, the end of the world summarized in four or five words. He’s such a dickhead. He doesn’t understand anything. He’s going to dump her. His whore is manipulating him. And then the victorious hockey games, newspaper cuttings of results or black-and-white photos, Cosmo advice columns on how to achieve orgasm during sex, passages about Hélène, the best friend, adored or badmouthed by Charlotte depending on how she feels, Hélène, with whom she wishes she could talk about all this, but she’s promised Christophe she’ll keep it a secret. So she keeps her mouth shut, and the secret is the great wonder of her life, the pulsating heart of her sixteen-year-old existence. On every page there’s desire, longing, schoolwork getting in the way, her unbearable parents, hearts, I love yous, I’m cryings, sick of its, and his whores, and pride at games won, in capital letters with rows of exclamation points. Most of all, though, there are detailed descriptions of his dick, his abs, his thighs, making out, sex that doesn’t last long enough because he never has time, he always has to go to practice or see his whore. Or because he comes too quickly.
Forearms leaning on her thighs, her head buzzing, Hélène devours this multicolored chronicle. She creases the pages, goes back and forth in time. Her friend is there, recognizable in every line and, at the same time, horribly unfamiliar. Hélène hates her and envies her. As she reads, it seems to her that they are her hands, her mouth, on Christophe, that this love affair should have been hers.
But the spell is broken by a banal sound. Someone knocking at the door. Brought back to reality, Hélène presses the journal to her chest and holds her breath as she waits to see what will happen next.
“You okay?” murmurs a sleepy voice behind the door.
Hélène pulls up her boxer briefs and slips the journal into the back of them.
“It’s me,” breathes the voice that she doesn’t recognize.
“It’s occupied,” she replies.
“Hélène?” says the voice.
A man’s voice, very quiet.
The handle turns and, from the sound the door makes in the doorframe, Hélène guesses he’s pushing it with his shoulder. It’s all so quiet, but he is there, with his strength, his weight, his owner’s rights.
Hélène turns to look at the small window. But she can hardly start running through the streets in the middle of the night…
The handle turns again. The floorboards creak, then she hears the heavy presence move away. After a moment, she takes two steps toward the sink and turns off the light switches. The hallway is plunged into darkness. Not a sound. A few more seconds pass, stretched out and speculative, and Hélène feels something brush past her back. She presses her hands to her mouth to stifle a scream and turns on her heels, her body shuddering, but finds nothing behind her but the darkness and the silence. She thinks about her parents then. She thinks about her parents, but they are so far away and she feels so small all of a sudden. Perhaps this is what growing up is—discovering that you are just a kid and that the world is a frightening, dangerous place. A minute passes. It feels like an hour. Motionless, Hélène gradually reassures herself. She even dares drink some water from the tap, in the dark, and it’s crazy how much better the coldness of the water makes her feel.
In this house that has grown so strange, she listens out for the slightest sound, seeks the smallest sign of a presence. But there’s nothing, nothing but her fear, which is starting to fade now. So she slides the bolt across, steps timidly into the hallway, and begins to chide herself for being such a fool. What was she so afraid of? Like a mouse, she quickly, quietly climbs the stairs, hunched up small in the darkness. She opens the bedroom door, which emits its treacherous diagonal creak, then rushes to her bed and buries herself under the sheet. There, in that bubble of safety, in that cotton tent, she can finally catch her breath. There’s a creaking noise in the dividing wall, rising up to the roof, as if the room around her has a cramp and is stretching its muscles. She jumps, then snorts at her own cowardice.
It is then that the bedroom door is quietly opened.
Once again, fear pins her down, as heavy as cement. Barely two meters from where she lies she can make out the shape of that adult body, its strength, its gaze. Her heart is pounding so hard she can almost hear it. The girl hugs the journal to her chest, reflexively praying to it, begging its forgiveness, making every promise she can think of. Then, at last, the door closes and she is left with nothing but a dizzy nausea, a breathlessness, a buzzing between her temples. She weeps into her pillow then, with relief, the journal still clutched to her chest.
The next day, none of this is mentioned. Hélène slips the journal into Charlotte’s bag, then eats breakfast with the whole family, feeling oddly numb. There are croissants and baguettes, and the coffee tastes the same as it did on all the other days. The only difference is that she sits at the other side of the table, as far away as she can get from her friend’s father.