The good thing about talking to yourself is that you can tell yourself jokes. I know some good ones that my brother used to tell me when we were children. They had us rolling on the floor with laughter.
The other day I was having fun talking in an English accent to myself. It was amusing. I must say I can do it rather well. It’s crazy how much that enables you to take the drama out of a situation. It’s a bit like Jane Birkin taking it upon herself to comfort me. But it’s me and me alone who was talking to me, of course. And yes, out loud in my living room. I reviewed pretty much every topic.
I told Dr. Felsenberg about that. He wanted to know from whom or from what the English accent estranged me.
My father died a long time ago and Thierry eventually left home. Since then, my mother has lived in a little ground-floor apartment on staircase G in the building we grew up in. The council gave her a two-bedroom instead of the four-bedroom we used to live in, which means she can pay the rent and live decently. She’s not the complaining sort.
I called her the other day. I didn’t stop to think, I just picked up the phone and dialed her number. She was surprised; I don’t call often. I told her I wanted to hear her voice, to get her news. There was a short silence and then she asked if everything was OK. I said yes, and then there was silence again. My mother never asks me specific, direct questions. I live in a world that seems too distant from hers. I know that Sonia goes to see her from time to time. My mother serves tea and cookies that she arranges in a circle on a little plate. Then she puts them in a box so that my daughter can take them away with her. I said I’d go and see her with Mathis one day soon. After another pause, my mother said, “OK, I’ll be expecting you,” as though there were nothing else to hope for from life between the moment a promise is made and its fulfillment.
Ms. Destrée hasn’t responded to my request for a meeting. I think that’s a bit much. She’s supposed to be the contact for the seventh grade but doesn’t reply when it comes to seeing parents outside those interminable parents’ meetings twice a year. I logged on to the school website several times and re-sent my message. In the end I called them. They told me she was ill but not how long she’d be away. I hope I can see her as soon as she’s back.
On the surface, nothing has changed. William has never referred to the dinner party with his friends. In his eyes it’s probably just a minor incident. A mood swing. He must have gotten himself out of it with some fancy footwork, then refilled his glass. I’m not sure whether William has noticed that my body has distanced itself from his. We haven’t made love for several weeks, but this isn’t the first time. He must be telling himself that I’m going through one of those dark phases that punctuate women’s lives. Something hormonal probably, since that’s the prism through which he observes the female sex, going by Wilmor’s writing.
To be honest, I’ve stopped looking. I no longer turn the computer on since discovering that my husband has also started a Twitter account, which allows him to comment in a more incisive format and even slyer way on everything and nothing without ever assuming responsibility for the content of his remarks. It’s a funny world that lets us pour out anonymous opinions all over the place, ambiguous or extreme, without ever identifying ourselves.
The very next evening after that dinner, William sat down close to me on the sofa. He put his arm around my shoulders. I felt my body stiffen; the contact of his palm burned my skin through the fabric. He told me he still had some work to do, he was sorry—it was a complicated report he had to send the head of his department the next day.
I looked at him for a few seconds, silently at first, and then asked, “Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?”
He laughed, that nasal laugh that sometimes hides his embarrassment. He sensed that the question was not inconsequential. That it exceeded the framework of daily domestic interactions to which our conversations have been reduced. William isn’t stupid. He stared at me inquiringly. He was waiting to see what was coming next. I asked him again.
“Are you sure you have nothing to tell me… about you, about what you’re doing?”
I couldn’t say more. I didn’t have the strength. But I’m certain that at that moment he understood.
He hesitated.
A tenth of a second.
I saw it because, though I don’t know Wilmor, I do know William very well: a tiny twitch of his eyelids, the way he clasps his hands, the little embarrassed cough that lets him put an end to a conversation.
Then he stroked my cheek, furtively, a gesture from before, from a very long time ago: before the children, before computers, cell phones, before the spider on the web.
He stood up. He was already turning away when he answered, “You’re imagining things.”
William shut himself in his office. I watched a TV documentary about mass-produced pizzas. It was about the flavoring agents and condiments added to mask the poor quality of the toppings, a trick revealed at the end of a big investigation carried out against a backdrop of mafia codes of silence and dramatic music. A real thriller. I really couldn’t have cared less, but I watched it to the end. The Sunday before I’d watched one about coconuts. Since when have prime-time documentaries been about things like kittens and ground beef?
I talked to myself for a few minutes. I needed to debate. My voice no longer limits itself to reassuring me. Now it also expresses opinions.
Through the door I told William I was going to bed. I put away a couple of things that were lying around the kitchen and drew the curtains in the living room.
Then I went through the bedtime routine (makeup remover, orange-blossom water, night cream, hand cream) in a sort of ritual that I imagine all women of a certain age have.
I lay down. I turned out the light and this phrase came to my mind as clearly as if I’d said it aloud: I want out.