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D E C E M B E R

She just sits there on a chair in the living room. Staring straight ahead, her features frozen, sagging. Her mouth not quite open but gaping slightly, from a distance.

She says, “I can’t put my hands on it” (her toiletry bag, her cardigan, whatever). Things seem to slip away from her.

She has to watch television now. She can’t wait until I have cleared the table. At this moment all she understands is her longing.

Every evening David and I take her upstairs to bed. At the point where the floorboards become carpeted, she lifts her leg up high, as though she were wading into water. We laugh, she laughs too. Later on, after she had snuggled down into bed, gay as a lark, and knocked over all the things on her bedside table by trying to apply some face cream, she says to me: “Now I’ll go to sleep; thank you MADAME.”

The doctor came round to see her. She wasn’t able to say how old she was. She clearly recalled having had two children. “Two girls,” she added. She had slipped on two bras, one on top of the other. I remembered the day when she found out that I had been wearing one without her knowing. The shouts. I was fourteen, it was one morning in June. I was wearing a slip, washing my face.

My stomach pains have started again. I no longer feel anger at her and her loss of memory. A wave of indifference.

We went to the shopping mall. She wanted to get the most expensive handbag in La Bagagerie—black, made of leather. She kept saying: “I want the best one, it’s my last handbag.”

After that I drove her to the department store La Samaritaine. This time, it was a dress and a cardigan. She walks slowly, I need to help her along. She chuckles to herself. The salesgirls give us strange looks, they seem embarrassed. Not me; I stare at them defiantly.

She asked Philippe anxiously: “Who are you to my daughter?” He snorts: “I’m her husband!” She laughs.