Madeleine arrived late. She’d taken the last train from Rheims, and had had to change at Charleville. In Sedan, she’d walked before finding a taxi. Her hair was a mess, and she wasn’t wearing foundation this time, just her real face. She went and kissed Léonard and pulled up his blanket, then went into our mother’s room. I left them both to get on with it. She must have things to say to her, too. By the time I returned, Catherine had put on her coat.
“Are you leaving?”
“I have to go to my office.”
“At this hour?”
“I dropped everything to come here. I have to sort things out for tomorrow.”
She came toward me. I thought she was going to kiss me, but she adjusted my shirt collar.
“And besides, if we become too close, you won’t like it. I prefer to be the one to walk away. I have my pride, you know.
I went back to the yard to finish clearing up. The temperature had fallen noticeably and the oilcloth glistened with damp and cold. I put the cakes in the fridge. I suddenly thought of the leak. I opened the closet under the sink. The bucket was almost full. I grabbed it to empty it. Just then, my sister came out of the bedroom.
“What are you doing with that bucket?”
“I have a leak and I can’t turn off the water at the meter. It starts vibrating and making an incredible racket.”
“Where’s your boiler?”
“In the basement.”
“How do you get there?”
“The door next to the front door.”
“You take my place with Ma, I’ll have a look.”
She was already on the stairs. I went back to my mother. I realized that her wig had slipped slightly to the side of her head. I tried to adjust it, but my hand slipped, and I felt it come away completely. I found myself with that clump of synthetic hair in my hands, and my mother’s head, bare, on the pillow. Going with a friend to maternity, a few years earlier, I’d been struck by how much like old people newborn babies look in the first hours after delivery. This was exactly the opposite: an old person with the head of a baby. I adjusted the wig as best I could. I didn’t touch anything else. From the depths of the house, strange noises reached me, which turned into a disturbing whistle, then all at once silence returned. Soon afterwards, my sister signaled to me to join her in the kitchen. Her hands were black and she was rubbing them vigorously with a brush. I saw that the bucket was next to her. I made to put it back in its place.
“You don’t need it anymore.”
“Did you cut off the water?”
“Better still, I repaired the leak. These miracle glues are a scam. It’s better to simply change the part. Didn’t you see you had a whole stock of them in the basement, elbows, straight pipes, clamps?”
“No. I never go down there.”
“And as for the vibrations, I fixed that too. Basically, the faucet that should have been closed was open, and the one that should have been open was closed.”
She talked about plumbing with amazing naturalness, rather the way Léonard talked about chess.
“Oh, and by the way, your basement door is terrible. It needs planing.”
“I hate DIY.”
“Because of Dad?”
“It’s nothing to do with Dad.”
“Oh, yes? I love it. Don’t you remember I used to repair your toy trucks? You’d bring them to me and I had to fix them come what may. You used to call me Reparator.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“When I was fourteen, I wanted to get a qualification as a car mechanic. I made inquiries, they took girls, I loved bodywork.”
“So why secretarial school?
“To please Ma. She wanted me to become a private secretary and marry my boss. She was convinced that was my future.”
“It didn’t quite work out that way.”
“No. Not quite.”
She wiped her hands. She was bathed in sweat, but she was twice as strong as when she’d arrived.
“Why don’t you stay?”
“What?”
“Nothing works in this house. You could fix it up. You’d be Reparator. It’d give you time to turn yourself around. To think about what you really want to do.”
“I don’t want to leach off you.”
“Who said anything about that? You’ll be doing a job and I’ll pay you. You know, a coach earns quite a bit, and I never spend it on anything.”
“Certainly not on clothes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. It’s kind of you but I have to get back to Rheims, I have to see this thing through.”
“See what through? Getting screwed over, like Ma?”
Tears suddenly rose to her eyes. Something in her wanted to believe in another possible life, but she couldn’t.
“Don’t go thinking it’s for you. It’s an offer that suits me. If I don’t have Léonard in my team, we’ll be wiped out in the championship, but without his mother, it won’t work for long. He’s a genius, but he’s still a kid.”
“Is he as good as that?”
“You have no idea.”
“So you actually have an ulterior motive.”
“Of course.”
“You still have a heart of stone.”
“Yes.”
“I was afraid you’d changed.”
It was at that moment that Léonard appeared. We hadn’t heard him coming. He was like a little ghost. His face was impassive, his voice calm. He’d gone to see his grandmother when he woke up.
“I think she’s stopped breathing,” he said.