When I was little, I lived in Lyon, in a building with a garbage chute. That’s all I can remember. I’d open its black mouth and fling the bags into it. I’d hear them banging the sides as they fell. This gaping hole’s breath stank like a latrine and terrified me, because I was convinced that, one day or another, the beast we fed with garbage would suck me up and take me away.
And it did. One morning when I woke up at my grandparents’ house. In Gramps’s garden, there was a bonfire. I went down in my pajamas to join him. Gramps’s eyes were red and I thought it must be the smoke. I said: “But Gramps, why are you burning your garden?” He replied: “In Octoberr, we burrn the weeds. Beforre the clocks go back. It’s winterr soon, have to help the earrth, this firre’s like putting a coat on it, yesterrday your parrents had an accident, you and Jules will be staying with us.”
He said it in a single breath. I looked at him and I remember so clearly, so clearly thinking, Good, like that I won’t be going back to school.
Later, I learned that it wasn’t weeds burning in front of me, but the two fruit trees he’d planted on the day his sons were born. Gramps had cut them down, doused them in gasoline, and burnt them in his garden.
Later, Thierry Jacquet, a boy in my class, asked me what it was like having dead parents, and I told him, It’s like seeing the October bonfire.
“Gran?”
I wake her. She dozed off while I was putting in her curlers.
“Yes.”
“If Jules gets his baccalauréat, we must start looking for an apartment in Paris for him, from July. If not before.”
“Absolutely.”
“After that, he can take care of his money himself. I’m going to make a transfer into your account, and you’ll give him a check, telling him it’s his inheritance from Uncle Alain.”
“Fine.”
“And he’ll never know it comes from me.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“You bet. I’d rather die than have my brother being eternally grateful to me. He’s got better fucking things to do.”
“Justine! Your language!”
“What about my language?! What kind of language do you use to lie to me?”
I shouted so loudly that she lifted her head full of curlers to check it really was me who’d just spoken, right there, behind her. Me who’s never so much as raised my voice in this house. Even on the day I cracked open my head falling off my bike and got blood all over the kitchen.
“What’s got into you?”
“What’s got into me is . . . Did you know that the police had opened an inquiry after your sons’ accident?”
She pauses a moment. She looks flabbergasted. Normally, Gran can’t be crossed because of her suicide illness. I don’t know if she’s pulling that face because of my question, or because I’m daring to cross her. In a flat voice, she manages to say:
“What?”
“Absolutely! An inquiry!”
Gramps turns up, clutching his Paris Match.
“What’s all this scrreaming?” he asks, already not caring a jot about the answer.
With a single hand gesture, Gran orders me to shut up. That’s how it’s always been: talking about the accident is strictly forbidden under this roof—it causes Gramps too much pain, and Gran to die on prescription.
And right then, I hear Gran lying:
“It’s nothing. It’s Justine pulling my hair, it hurts.”
“That’s not true, Gramps. I’m not pulling her hair, I was just asking her if she knew that the police had opened an inquiry after the death of your sons, because the circumstances of the accident weren’t clear.”
Gramps looks daggers at me: I’ve just desecrated the tomb of his memories. My legs are about to give way with the guilt. But I don’t look down, I keep looking him straight in the eye.
“Who told you that?” Gramps asks me.
“Starsky.”
He stares at me as if I’ve taken leave of my senses.
“He summoned me because of the anonymous calls at The Hydrangeas. And when I said the name ‘Neige,’ he remembered clearly that there was something not quite right about the accident.”
Gran snatches her stick and stands up abruptly, though I’ve not yet finished setting her hair. I grab her shoulders and push her back into her chair. I think I’ve hurt her. It’s the first time in my life I’ve dared to do any such thing. So she doesn’t move anymore. Her head is sunk between her shoulders. I think she’s scared of my violence. And as for me, I’m ashamed. I start thinking about all my forgotten ones, about how easily adults mistreat the elderly. About those stories you read in the papers, of care staff slapping and swearing at the old folk in geriatric facilities. I can feel myself welling up.
“Sorry. I would have liked . . . I would have liked you to answer one of my questions. For once.”
I’ve lost the fight. They won’t answer me. And I’ll never raise my voice again. I spray lacquer onto Gran’s head. The smell fills the kitchen. And then I stretch a net over her gray hair, which she’ll take off only tomorrow morning.
Gramps has abandoned his Paris Match on the table to go out and pick up the latest butts Jules has flicked out of the window.
As I slide on the helmet that blows hot air over Gran’s fake curls, I tell myself that I must go back to see Starsky.
Even if it means sucking him off, I have to know the truth.