Tita (11 page)

We all came to Narbonne this morning, then Father and Marcel drove on to the lagoon to sail with Bertrand. I wanted to go with them — I love the lazy smells of the lagoon, the turbulent winds — but they didn’t ask me. Instead, as Mother has been planning some new outfits, we visit Monsieur Picq in the rue Droite.

He is from Lyon, like Mother, and as he takes out the rolls of fabric and unfolds them with his dainty fingers, he addresses her in the subdued voice of a co-conspirator. Many shades of flowered cotton sateen (for Mother’s dress) pile up on the counter, then corduroys for Justine’s jacket. The three of them discuss textures and colors for ever and ever. I’d normally stay on the bench outside and watch the busy street, but this time I’m on the lookout. What Father said about blue made me want to try something.

The ladies are done. Now for our dresses. Mother decides on a blue chequered fabric for Coralie plus the same in pink (maybe a concession to Father’s wish). I call Coralie, in case she wants to express an opinion, but she’s too busy pursuing Monsieur Picq’s orange cat into the back of the store. Monsieur Picq has taken out only four rolls, so the other two must be for me: bright red, and white with red dots. “Can I look at something else?” I ask. I’ve never done this before.

“Certainly,” Monsieur Picq says, and turns to take down another roll. Mother immediately looks very tired of standing in this store. She starts her blustery breathing, as if she’d been running up stairs.

“I like these stripes,” I say. They are light green and light brown, unlike anything I’ve ever worn.

“Very good choice,” Monsieur Picq says, stroking the fabric with one hand as he lightly pulls up my chin with the other. “This green is exactly the color of your eyes.” I hadn’t thought of that. My eyes. Greenish, like Father’s, and Justine’s. Monsieur Picq smiles at Mother. “Your daughter has excellent taste.”

Mother, ignoring him (and me), looks down at the fabric for quite a while. She adjusts her glasses. “How much is it?” she finally asks.

“Three hundred and thirty francs a meter.”

It’s ten francs more than the first ones. And we only need 1.8 meters. 

“I’ll take the first ones,” Mother says. “The red and the dotted.”

“Could I have only one dress?” I ask. “With the stripes?”

“Nonsense,” Mother says. “You need two dresses.”

“Maybe we could get something cheaper for the other one then? Do you have any fabric at three hundred and ten francs or less?” I ask Monsieur Picq.

“Certainly,” he nods, and turns back toward his shelves. “Here. Light muslin, two hundred and ninety francs. In white, blue, or yellow.”

“I’d love a yellow dress!” I say. “This fabric is so soft! And all in all, the total would be 36 francs less than with the others.”

Monsieur Picq widens his eyes. “Exactly. Good calculation!” But when he looks up from the fabric to share his appreciation with Mother, his smile freezes.

“I’ll take the red and the dotted,” Mother says.

Monsieur Picq bows. “Certainly. Anything else?”

“No, that’ll be all.” Mother has never spoken so coldly to her compatriot.

“Why?” I ask. Asking why has never got me anywhere with Mother. I go on all the same. “Why can’t I have the stripes and the yellow? It would even save some money.”

“Don’t be tiresome,” Mother says.

Justine, outside the store, is studying the window display. She slid away as soon as the situation became tense. She can’t take my side, not with Mother, not openly. She needs Mother on
her
side. And it doesn’t matter, because it wouldn’t have helped. Nobody can change Mother’s mind, not even her darling stepdaughter.

Now we’re going to have lunch at Les Glycines, a restaurant with a terrace above the canal and a view of the promenade. The wisteria above us is in full bloom, its heady scent seeps through my skin. The wind from the sea is humid, invigorating.

“It will rain tomorrow,” Mother says. She studies the menu and decides on cassoulet. “They make it very well here,” she says, “with big lean pieces of goose. Justine, will you have the cutlets with cauliflower? That way, you can give me some of your cauliflower. I’m sure they’ll bring plenty.” Justine nods meekly. As usual, Coralie and I will share a bouillabaisse. I like to share with Coralie: if I don’t eat much, it doesn’t show. But I seldom have trouble eating in restaurants.

Mother’s cassoulet appears in its earthenware pot, with its golden crust of beans, tomatoes, pieces of mutton, sausage, goose confit. Into our plates, over slices of grilled bread spread with
rouille
, the waitress ladles the bouillon, fragrant with garlic, basil, fennel and saffron. Between us, on a platter, boiled potatoes, bits of fish. And sea urchins, one of the few foods Coralie ignores and I like.

Mother has ordered a bottle of côtes-du-rhône, a wine from near Lyon that we never drink at home. She and Justine clink their glasses, “To the sun!” Is it because they have lived further north? They are both obsessed with the sun. They try to get as tanned as they can, which in my opinion does nothing for their looks. We locals hide from the hot sun. We like the sea wind and its fickle showers.

Mother is eating cauliflower directly from Justine’s plate. If someone did that to me, I wouldn’t touch what was left on my plate. It wouldn’t be my plate any longer, it would be theirs. But Justine encourages Mother: “There’s a lot, and I don’t like cauliflower particularly.”

Mother also seems to enjoy her cassoulet. The waitress brought a plate, but she hasn’t used it. She eats directly from the pot: “It keeps hot that way.” But the pot is deep. All of a sudden Mother stops eating and drops her fork on the table, as if she couldn’t imagine why she ever agreed to hold such a nasty object in her hand. She looks down at the cassoulet. “I am so satisfied,” she sighs, wrinkling her nose. “I couldn’t eat one more bite.” As if anybody wanted to make her. “Justine, will you have this? It’s really good.”

Justine has just finished her lamb, and there’s still some cauliflower on her plate. “Here,” Mother says, “have a taste,” and she dishes out the rest of her pot into Justine’s plate.

“I’m no longer very...” Justine says.

Even if she were starving, getting the remnants of someone else’s dish, from the pot they’ve eaten it in, couldn’t be too inviting. Justine cautiously brings a forkful of beans to her mouth. I know for a fact that she doesn’t like beans. At all. She’s not like me, she can manage most foods, at least when she’s hungry, but beans are always a hardship.

“Isn’t it lovely?” Mother asks. “The goose, especially. Here!” And with her fork, she points at a large piece of meat.

Justine chews, and tries to smile. Laboriously, she eats up everything Mother has put on her plate, only leaving a few pieces of fat she carefully cuts from the meat. Mother pours the rest of the wine into their glasses, and sighs, “This wine is really great. These côtes-du-rhône, they’re the best. I don’t like the wines from around here so much, do you? They’re more… ordinary. Flat, I’d call them flat.”

Justine has been silent for a while. She seems to have a hard time keeping her eyes open. There are traces of sweat along her forehead. She’s probably eaten much more than she wanted to. And there’s the wine. Two glasses. Not quite full, but Father wouldn’t let her drink that much.

Mother orders coffee, lights a cigarette and, through her sunglasses, gazes far into the horizon. “And this whole region is so flat,” she says. “Nothing stands out. Maybe that’s why people here are so unenterprising. With the Alps in front of you, of course you have to aim for the stars.”

Flat is good, I decide. I think I’ll dedicate myself to celebrating what is flat. Like Charles Péguy in the poem Pélican made us learn about his
“
plate Beauce
”
and his
“
Beauce plate
”.
Meanwhile, I need to stand up for the truth.

“It is flat because you’re looking west,” I say. “On your left, behind that house, are the Pyrenees. And if you turned around, you’d see all the hills between here and the sea.”

Mother snorts. “Hills! With nothing on them but dried-up scrub. And the Pyrenees hardly compare with the Alps.”

I think of what Henry Brulard says about himself and his father: “Never had chance brought together two persons more essentially antipathetic to each other.” The difference is that Henry never felt any affection, any attraction for his father. Simpler, I guess.

The waitress brings Mother a cup of coffee. “I only need one sugar,” she says. “Justine, will you have the other one?”

Justine tries to sit up. Her cheeks are red. “Thank you, no,” she says. “I don’t... feel too well.”

“I’ll have it!” Coralie cries.

Mother hands it to her. “Maybe you ate too much,” she says to Justine. Her voice is solemn. “You should be careful. You look very good now, but around your age a lot of girls eat just a little too much and before they’ve even noticed what’s happening, they’re fat. Once you’re fat, it’s almost impossible to get your figure back again. I’ve seen so many cases. Friends who could have been quite good-looking and just because they didn’t pay enough attention… Yes, when you’re fat, there isn’t much you can do about it. It’s very sad.”

When Mother came to kiss us good night yesterday before going to a dinner party at the Viés’, she found me coughing, so this morning she took my temperature and decided that I had to stay put and wait for the doctor. She said I could get up if I felt like it but shouldn’t go out of the house, not even into the garden. And she made me wear socks even though it’s warm.

I’m still coughing, my throat hurts, and there’s something going on deep in my left ear, but I don’t feel too bad. The beautiful side of being ill is that I’m practically released from eating meals. For breakfast, I had just a cup of rosemary tea with honey, not in the kitchen but in our parents’ room. Then a long cuddle in Mother’s lap. Since Mother came back from Paris, I’ve noticed that while I still enjoy her kisses and caresses, I no longer need them. I feel the same about our Holy Mother Church. As if I were outgrowing all my mothers.

Now I’m sitting in Father’s office typing addresses on envelopes for Simone, Father’s secretary. So much more fun than school. Simone is talking on the phone. “Maybe he didn’t really need a new fishing rod, but come on, we’ll get the fish, won’t we? Think of all the husbands who spend their money on aperitifs.” She listens for a while, then bursts out laughing. “Okay,
apéritif
then. The Conti at seven-thirty. No, just the two of us, Alain will be playing pétanque. Yes, you’re right, pétanque is a good deal, the metal balls are quite durable. But it doesn’t get you any fish!”

The office has bay windows that open onto the garden, above Mother’s hydrangeas, now adorned with quite a few big blue and pink flowers that don’t look quite real, they’re so trim. Two double desks sit in the middle of the room, facing each other, and two smaller tables near the windows. Simone does more of the typing and Berthe more of the calculations, but they share the rest of the work as it comes.

Berthe is the chiropodist’s daughter, she can look shy or haughty to people who don’t know her well but, when it’s just the three of us in the office, she relaxes and her conversation becomes extremely interesting. She’s unhappy about her skin (pimples), her hair (not enough) her weight (too much), and her mother. She keeps discussing possible solutions. Simone is pretty, skinny, and quick. People call her “a live wire”. She talks to everybody, so she knows all the gossip in town. She got married last year, to Alain, a car mechanic who looks like Gérard Philipe. I was her only bridesmaid.

“You’re having
apéritif
with your mother?” Berthe asks Simone. “That’s nice.”

“Yes, she seems to be a little lonely. She should go out more. She complains about my father spending too much money on fishing tackle, but what she really resents is his going away to the lagoon without her. She’d like to do things with him. But he needs some quiet after driving his truck all week.”

“Couldn’t she go with him to the lagoon?” Berthe asks.

“She’s tried it, but she finds it so boring. Actually, I think she should get a job. In a store or something. She’s like me, she needs to be active.”

“It’s no longer so easy to find a job around here,” Berthe says. “The wine crisis is dragging everything down and...” She glances at me, and stops. I think she’s worrying not only about the wine crisis in general, but about Father’s business, and about her own job.

Berthe busies herself with the account book. Simone comes and watches over my address typing. “Incredible! You don’t look at the keyboard at all now!”

“For the numbers, I do. Maybe I could manage not to, but I don’t want to make a mistake and ruin an envelope. I need to practice.”  

Simone goes back to her own typing. “This girl!” she says to Berthe. “If the little pigs don’t eat her up…” I have no idea where those little pigs would come from, but I think I know what Simone means: if I escape the little pigs, I’ll make my mark, somehow. I just need to watch out for the little pigs.

A knock on the door: Ginette. “Tita, the doctor is here for you.”

A blond, brawny young man in a light-green polo shirt is talking to Mother as I enter the sitting room, “Yes, I’m Dr Pauli, Dr Barral’s substitute during his vacation.” Can this be the doctor? He shakes hands with me. “Good morning, Tita.” He looks as different as possible from our Dr Barral, who is tall, very thin, bald with a grey moustache, and always wears a dark three-piece suit.

Mother helps me undress as she explains my condition to the doctor with quite a bit of head-shaking and eye-rolling. I sit on a chair in front of Dr Pauli, and he examines me with his various cold tools. He listens to me coughing naturally as well as on purpose, looks into my ears with his light through a funnel-shaped instrument, then puts everything back into his bag and takes out his prescription pad. “The left ear is slightly infected,” he says. “And there’s tracheitis. But she should be better in a few days.”

“It never stops,” Mother says. “How many times has she been ill this school year? Ten, at least! No other child catches so many infections. Is it because she doesn’t eat enough?”

Dr Pauli is still writing sedately. He finishes with a large, dashing signature, then looks up. “The important part, if you want to avoid or to fight infection, is fruit. Fresh fruit, vitamins. Does Tita eat enough fruit?”

“Well, persuading her to eat her main dish is so much work,” Mother says. “And her white cheese! She doesn’t eat any other cheese, you know. So when it’s time for fruit...” She sighs. “We’re all exhausted.”

“What fruit do you like?” Dr Pauli asks me.
Me!

“Figs, pomegranates, apricots, peaches,” I say. “Actually, there’s no fruit I don’t like.”

“Excellent! Then you should eat fruit as an hors d’oeuvre,” the doctor says. “As many different kinds as possible. Start each meal with it. Breakfast too.”

Mother’s mouth falls open and her face, for a few seconds, is like wood. “But,” she breathes, choppily, twice, “won’t that spoil her appetite?”

“Even if it did,” the doctor says, “vitamins are essential, so fruit comes first. And don’t worry about her appetite. Fruit might even work as an
apéritif
. You’ll see.”

Apéritif?
Apéritif
is the time when you get together before lunch or dinner to drink orgeat or
menthe à l’eau
(or Cinzano, if you’re a grown-up), with olives, anchovies, bits of carrots and cucumbers. What has it got to do with fruit? But now I remember a prayer we sometimes say before mass,
Aperi, Domine, os meum,
“Lord, open my mouth”.
Apéritif
, then, could also be something that
opens
the appetite. I’ll have to look it up.

Mother’s frown is getting deeper as she stares at Dr Pauli’s white boat shoes. When she finally notices that I put on my dress backwards, she turns it around mechanically. After a while, she sees my red cardigan on the armchair, picks it up, takes me in her lap and starts pulling one of the sleeves over my arm.

Dr Pauli looks at me. “Are you cold?”

“No,” I say. “I’m really hot.”

“Then you don’t need a jacket.”

Mother stops with the sleeve up to my elbow, my hand inside. “But she catches cold so easily!”

“Don’t worry,” Dr Pauli says as he picks up his big black bag. “If she’s cold, she’ll know to put it on.”

Mother shakes hands with Dr Pauli and walks him to the front door. I can hear her, as soon as the door bangs shut, talking to herself. “As if children knew anything!”

I’m going back to the office, but Father calls out from the tasting room, “What did the doctor say?”

“Ear infection, tracheitis, the usual.”

A short grinning man is taking out sample bottles from a case and setting them on the pink-and-white marble counter. “This is Tita, my number four,” Father says. “And Tita, this is monsieur Espardelier from Peyriac-Minervois.”

Instead of lunch, I’m allowed to have a nap. As soon as I’m alone in my room, I retrieve
Henry Brulard
from under the Virgin. After his mother dies, Henry likes to be with his uncle Romain, his mother’s brother, a young lawyer who sometimes takes him to the theater, to the opera. “He laughed with me and allowed me to watch him as he took off his beautiful clothes and put on his robe, every evening at nine before supper. These were delicious moments for me. Then I walked downstairs in front of him, holding a silver candlestick.” Romain has many beautiful outfits he couldn’t have paid for, and this creates problems with his father. “When I saw my father coming into the Xes’ salon,” Romain tells Henry, “I had to run away and change into an ordinary outfit. Meanwhile, madame Y was waiting to see me in the splendid suit she’d bought for me!”

Henry explains that, at the time, there was nothing wrong with taking money from ladies, provided you spent it
hic et nunc
— didn’t hoard it. But when questioned by his father, Romain says that he won the money gambling. So it looks like, for his father, gambling was better than ladies. Henry thinks that Romain shared his winnings: “He took money from his rich mistresses and gave it to the poor ones.” He must have had lots of mistresses. Which I know is a word for a woman lover, but why isn’t a man lover called a master?

I also wonder why Romain, a grown-up man, is still afraid of his father. Maybe because his father gives him money, and an apartment in the family house. When I grow up, I won’t let anybody give me money, or tell me what to do. I love this house, leaving it will hurt. But I want to be free and on my own.

Henry’s family members are: his grandfather, his great-aunt, his uncle Romain, his aunt Séraphie (“a female devil”), his father Chérubin (“an extremely disagreeable man”) and his two younger sisters. “These are the characters in the sad drama of my youth, of which I remember mostly pain and deep moral vexations.” This, just after he told us about all the fun he had with his uncle Romain. But I understand. If you’re alive, you’re bound to enjoy yourself at times, even if mostly drenched in spite and gloom.

Again Henry thinks of us before he starts in on the details of his calamities: “The reader here could skip a few pages, and I beg him to do so, for I’m writing haphazardly and this might well be extremely dull.” I skip pages and paragraphs all the time, especially about politics, which I can’t follow at all, but I want to know about Henry’s troubles. Everything he says feels both illuminating and enchanting, as if I had, for the first time, a friend who is my kind.

But he also makes me grateful for all the friends who are
not
my kind — for school, for neighbors, for my bicycle, for the vineyards and the pine forests. Henry has to study at home with a stern priest he detests. He sleeps in an alcove in the priest’s sunless room, next to the noise and stench of a cage holding the priest’s thirty canaries. He’s never allowed to play with other children because his father feels superior and doesn’t want him to mix with
des
enfants du commun
.

After a while, I feel drowsy. I sleep, then Grandmother comes in with a cup of linden tea. Later, Father brings me a large flat package with a gold ribbon. When I open it, I see a paper doll set. “And here are your scissors,” Father says.

The doll’s name is Pepita, and she smells of cinnamon. “You got this in Spain!” I say.

“Yes, I found it last month in Gerona and kept it for an occasion like this, when you shouldn’t read too much or it will hurt your head.”

I love this chubby little figure with her old-fashioned outfits.

“Have fun,” Father says, “and try to rest too, that’s how you’ll get better.”

I cut out Pepita and her frilly one-piece bathing suit. I leave the other clothes for later, and I sleep some more. When I wake, the clock says it’s four-thirty, and I feel almost well, so I go and see what’s going on downstairs.

In the kitchen, Justine is deep in a
roman-photo
in
Nous Deux
, “the magazine that brings you luck”. She couldn’t do this anywhere else in the house, because only maids are supposed to read
Nous Deux
. But Berthe told me she likes it, too. “If you don’t have a boyfriend, you can always dream,” she said. Meanwhile, Loli is arranging petits fours on two plates. “Hey,” she says, “you look better already, would you like your
goûter?
”

“No, thanks. Just some water.”

Loli takes the tea into the sitting room, and I carry the cakes for her. Mother is there with Estelle Vié and Denise Pujol. I’m glad to see Estelle. Whenever she’s around, the conversation takes a brighter turn. Denise is more predictable. Their contrasting voices greet me: “Here’s the sick girl, how do you feel?”

“Pretty good, thank you,” I say, and go to sit on my low stool. As soon as they’ve poured the tea they’ve also forgotten about me, and I can listen. 

“Have you seen this Dr Pauli?” Mother says. “Rather handsome, but I don’t trust him. He wanted Tita to eat fruit
before
her main dish! Imagine! Why not candy?”

“Bertrand likes him,” Estelle says. “Finds him brilliant. He’s young, of course. From Perpignan. Fruit first might not be a bad idea, you know. Why not try it?”