Hotelles (43 page)

Some examples: A mouth welded to my sex; a torso glued to my ass; a tongue licking my vagina from top to bottom, as though washing it . . .

 

Handwritten note by me, 6/18/2009

 

WITH A FEW SNIPS OF
my scissors and some simple stitching, I made a field of wildflowers, purposely rough and haphazardly placed. I attached them to the dress with a topstitching that I tried to make as visible as possible.

Sophia didn't know what to say or do to stop me from committing such carnage.

“Aren't you scared of how David will react?”

“Scared? No . . . I'm not scared anymore,” I replied without one second's hesitation.

As I thrust my needle into the fabric with rage, I told her about Armand's complicity—this time there was proof—in the Barlet brothers' detective-novel plots. Knowing that, I felt at liberty to plant a few seeds of fantasy and rebellion in their perfect little story line. They were so relentless I very well could follow in Aurora's footsteps.

“Now I understand how Louie knew so much about me before we even met. Easy: he had two spies!”

“Know what, exactly?” Sophia asked.

“You wouldn't believe it. Things that only come up in pillow talk.”

Sophia has a high tolerance for twisted plans. But even she has her limits, her morals. And respect for privacy is one of them.

“Do you mean David told him about how you fucked?”

“Based on some of the messages . . .”

I paused a second to take inventory of all the little secrets I had told David—if he wasn't the source, then I didn't even want to know where Louie was getting his information—which had later appeared in the notebook: the first time I had touched myself; how I liked doing it doggy-style; my abnormal sensitivity to intimate smells; my orgasms, how I screamed
no
instead of
yes
 . . .

“ . . . There's no other possible explanation.”

“Gross!” Sophia sneered like a teenager.

We giggled, covering our mouths with massive tufts of silk.

My alterations were soon finished. Sophia didn't say much, since she knew I really didn't give a damn if she cried murder. Then, like that time when David took me on the dining room table, the one time when he actually made me come, I stepped into that amazing dress.

“Wow! Just: wow!” she exclaimed, wide-eyed. “I don't know if mine says ‘fuck me' . . . but yours definitely screams ‘marry me.' ”

I was laughing my head off when my phone started vibrating. I had set it on the bed while sewing. I didn't recognize the number.

Under Sophia's concerned gaze, I entered into a conversation with an impressive number of monosyllabic affirmations.

“Was that the hospital?”

“Yes . . . ,” I whispered.

“It's . . .”

The end. The limit. The conclusion. The very last breath. Everyone's terminus, and for one woman in particular. Sophia had all manner of euphemisms to choose from, but in the end, she was speechless.

I put my phone on the bed, as though the thick comforter might swallow it up, together with all the bad news.

“No, it's not over yet . . . but she's asking for me. Apparently, she's really insisting. I have to go.”

“Do you want me to come?”

“No . . . No, stay here with Armand. He's going to need you if we have to delay things.”

“Okay. What time do the guests arrive?”

“Noon, for cocktails.”

I threw on the first pair of ballet flats I could find and headed for the stairs without saying another word. Sophia called behind me:

“Hey! Aren't you going to tell David?”

“You do it,” I yelled over my shoulder.

“But he doesn't even know me!”

Her powerless cry did not slow me down. I was already outside, running west down Rue de la Tour-des-Dames, my feet hitting the hot asphalt like a tam-tam drum. With every step, a muffled but skull-splitting vibration throbbed through my temples.

I made my way to the nearest taxi station, in front of the Église de la Trinité. A white Peugeot was waiting when I arrived, the black chauffeur spilling out the window, along with the sputtering sounds of the Formula One. He sped as fast as one of those race cars, making it to Max Fourestier Hospital in no time.

 

ONE COULD SEE DEATH'S DIFFERENT
faces in the oncology wing: bald and emaciated, the pajamaed infirm dragging their drips like they were a thousand years old, exhausted nurses who didn't look much better than their patients . . . Everyone was so out of it that no one noticed my eccentric outfit, nor even my entry into Mom's room outside of visiting hours.

As for me, I only saw her. She was buried under even more tubes than on my last visit. Though it was weak, the blinking of her eyes told me she was still there, alert. I drew my chair up to her bed and leaned over her dying body.

“Mom . . . Mom, it's me, it's Elle.”

She blinked to show she understood. I didn't need a doctor to give me the prognosis: she was out of her coma, but this was her last encore before the end. This time it was definitive.

We would never see America together. We would never have the chance to try for a miracle across the ocean. The adventure stopped here.

“I can see that you hear me, but are you able to speak?”

Her yes was so weak that it almost could have been confused with a timid gurgle from her drip.

“Come closer,” she mouthed, too breathless to say the words out loud. “It's Louie . . .”

She was about to die, and her last words were of the man who had been torturing and exciting me. A man whose name she had never before spoken in my presence, and with whom she had been exchanging secrets.

“What is it? What did he do to you, Mom?”

“ . . . He gave me all this.”

All I noticed were two giant flower bouquets and a box of chocolate as large as her bedside table. But I knew she was referring to more than these trifles, and that she also saw him as an anonymous benefactor who had showered her with presents.

“I know . . . But how did you . . .”

She placed a trembling, bony finger on my lips, silencing me. As if to say that my questions were superfluous, that she had more answers for me than I questions.

“He came to deliver them . . .”

“Today, you mean?”

“No. Every time.”

“Louie? He came to see you in Nanterre?”

I never would have guessed that. Already the fact that they spoke over the phone was a surprise. But Louie visiting Maude at her little house on Rue Rigault . . . it was beyond comprehension.

She nodded.

“Did he come often?”

Then something strange happened. A smile slowly spread across her face, transforming its fading features into a beaming icon.

Nevertheless, the effort to speak still seemed colossal.

“Almost every day. And when he couldn't come, he called.”

The famous phone calls Fred had discovered. Their memory seemed to tear her from the relentless pain that held her in its jaws like a bad dog.

There was no denying that, no matter Louie Barlet's motivations, he had brought my mother comfort—joy, even—that I had been incapable of offering. It was absurd, unjust. I had to bite the inside of my cheeks to keep myself from exploding.

“Mom . . . I have something important to ask you: When did Louie start visiting you? Do you remember?”

“Yes, yes . . . I'm dying, not crazy!” she protested in a barely audible voice, a final surge before death. “It must be three months. Maybe more.”

In other words, probably before I first met David, during the period I now thought of as the “approach.” Once they had gotten a sense of the specimen that I was, the two Barlet brothers had patiently started acquainting themselves with the people—Maude, Sophia, Fred, etc.—who made up my circle of intimates. That way none of the people I loved would be against my entry into their family, and the infernal duo would only have to call on them to get to me.

But that didn't exactly explain why Louie had gone to see my mother so often. The fact that she had been flattered to receive such attention was understandable. But what pleasure did that dandy take in seeing her? My mother was old, poor, unsophisticated—everything that ought to have sent that erotomaniacal aesthete running. Why play his role any more than was necessary?

“Why didn't you ever tell me?”

“He didn't want me to. It was our little secret. Like the
Stets
.”

“You mean the States?” I corrected without thinking.

“Yes. He was supposed to come with me,” she said as proudly as her thready voice would allow.

I thought she was delirious, and that it was the morphine talking. The translucent liquid dripped through tubes into her veins in what were no doubt considerable doses.

“Are you sure?”

“Look in my bag . . .”

Her exhausted, clouded, and bloodshot eyes pointed to the coffee table on the other side of the bed.

Her tired leather bag did not contain much, and I had no trouble digging out a red, white, and blue envelope on which was embossed a lined planisphere. Inside, I found not one but two round-trip tickets for Los Angeles, dated June 20, in business class.

Her reluctance for me to join her now took on new meaning. It hadn't been about selflessness, or the sacrifice of a mother for her child. My torturer and my mother were apparently so close that she had fallen into his traps all by herself. Thanks to him, she had been able to revisit what it was like to be twenty-one and taste the lightness and folly of youth. And for that I thanked him.

She breathed deeply, in a way I found concerning. Exhausted from our exchange, however brief, she added:

“I think he loves you a lot, too . . .”

I didn't know what to say to that, so I asked:

“Did he say that?”

She was out of breath and couldn't utter another word. Instead, she nodded almost imperceptibly.

“When?”

Again, she used her eyes to point: the fresh flowers, the box of untouched chocolates . . . both things that had not been there the night before. The message was clear: today. This morning. Maybe even just before I got there.

Then her tired gaze noticed my dress, and she gathered what little energy she had left to take it all in and say:

“You are so beautiful. Louie must be so proud.”

I did not correct her on my fiancé's first name. But maybe it hadn't been an error. Perhaps it was her way of sanctifying a choice she'd noticed slowly growing in me. Of giving me her blessing.

I held her head in my hands and buried my nose in her neck, which was now a bony hollow, a swath of desiccated gray flesh. Despite the overwhelming scent of detergent and medicine, I still caught a whiff of her rose perfume. Or maybe I imagined it, I couldn't say. I stayed like that for a while, taking solace in her touch. I couldn't get enough of her—I, her daughter, who had already received so much and given so little. Even these past few weeks, busy as I had been with my false illusions.

During that time, Louie had been by her side. He had given her comfort and attenuated the painful side effects of her sickness. Her mouth must have felt less dry to her, her dizziness less affecting, her moments of weakness more surmountable.

He would forever be the angel of her final days.

Mom blinked several times, trying to catch my attention. Or was it simply a reflex, a muscular tremor announcing the end?

Her catheter clicked, releasing what seemed to me like a rather large dose of analgesic. The screen monitoring her heart remained unchanged. Still, I felt her go into a state of consciousness that I could not access. It was impossible to say whether or not she would be back again, maybe once more or even several times, before it was all over. My face was practically touching hers, but her irises avoided me. Her eyelids shuttered, and she kept looking left. What had she wanted to tell me?

I looked around the room as though I were seeing it for the first time. Everything was empty and jaundiced. Outside of Louie's gifts, the only noticeable object was a little pink sweater that the good Dr. Poulain must have grabbed for Mom on their way out of the house to the ambulance.

The one and only closet was divided into hanging and shelf space and was half open. I almost fell from my chair when I noticed the package occupying one of its shelves.

A silver package. It appeared that Louie had left it there himself, for me.

My head was spinning, but I still managed to stand and collect the package from the dusty particle board. Impatiently, I tore the paper. At the bottom, I found just one card on which was written, as usual, a commandment:

9—Thou shalt marry his fantasies.

What fantasies? And more importantly, whose?

I placed the card on the yellow sheet, a pure little rectangle that contrasted sharply with its environs. I removed the tissue paper from the box. I was so surprised by what I found underneath that I did not move for several seconds. Then, with bated breath, I grabbed the little stack of photos and started looking at them, one by one. I struggled not to rush through them. I didn't want to miss any details.

Meanwhile, starting with the very first snapshot—a picture taken on the steps of some town hall (in Dinard?) on David and Aurora's wedding day—I had the feeling I was at last coming out of months of blindness. I was seeing things clearly for the first time. The evidence was before me, on that yellowed paper. It bored into my eyes. Would I have preferred not to have seen? Not to have known?

Picture after picture. I would have thought the effect would dissipate, become less striking, less flagrant. But the opposite occurred. The more I saw Aurora such as she had been, such as she had lived—here arm in arm with Hortensia by the sea, there lying on the beach in a polka-dot bikini—the more I could not deny the horrible truth, the implacable fact that was as cutting as the rocks that had killed her: I was her doppelganger. And she was mine. Twin sisters born two decades apart, both fallen victim to a common fate.