No and Me Read online

  She spends the whole day asleep. My father says she’s drinking and taking pills. He’s been in touch with her social worker, but there’s not much she can do if No doesn’t go to see her any more. One night I caught him and my mother in the kitchen in the middle of a confab. As soon as I appeared they stopped talking and waited till I closed the door before they began again. I wish I could have hidden a microphone or two under a dishcloth.

  I can’t go out and enjoy the holiday. I stay in and mope around all day. I watch television, flick through magazines. I listen out for noises from No’s room, the moment when she wakes up. She doesn’t come into my room any more and when I knock on her door at the end of the day she’s lying curled up on the bed. My mother’s tried to get her to talk, to ask her questions. No lowers her head in that way she has of avoiding looking at you. She’s stopped coming into the kitchen and the living room and she slips into the bathroom only when she’s sure she won’t bump into anyone. She eats with us in the evening before she goes off to the hotel. It’s the same scene as a month ago, same lighting, same positions, same actions. Seen from above you would get the images mixed up, you could superimpose them. But from where I’m sitting you can tell how the atmosphere’s changed, got heavy.

  I don’t know why I thought about The Little Prince last night as I was falling asleep. About the fox, to be precise. The fox asks the little prince to tame him. But the little prince doesn’t know what that means. So the fox explains it to him. I know the passage off by heart:

  ‘To me, you are still just a little boy like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. To you, I am just a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes.

  ‘But if you tame me, we shall need one another. To me, you will be unique. And I shall be unique to you.’

  Maybe that’s the only thing that matters. Maybe you just have to find someone to tame.

  .

  Chapter 37

  School starts again this morning. It’s dark outside. There’s a smell of coffee in the air in the kitchen. No’s sitting across from my father. Her face is pale and tired. She’s probably just got in. My father’s fists are resting on the table like two grenades with the pins pulled out. He gets up. He looks like someone who’s back in control. In the present situation, that’s none too reassuring.

  My alarm clock’s only just gone off and I’m still in my nightdress and bare feet. He says that No’s leaving. I think he repeats it several times because I don’t react. No’s going to a centre where they’ll take care of her. She needs help. No is silent. She’s looking down at the table. I pull up a stool and sit down. I’m finding it hard to breathe so I concentrate, slowing the rhythm, opening my mouth like a goldfish to take in air in little gulps. I spread my fingers like palm leaves against the current and keep my feet flat on the kitchen floor.

  ‘You understand, Lou, don’t you?’

  I don’t want to reply. I don’t want to hear this or the rest of it – the stories of social security, aid, detox, all these meaningless, microscopic, revolting words on the surface of the sea. We told No that we’d help her all the way, we said we’d be there for her, we said we wouldn’t give up on her. I want her to stay, I want to fight, I want us to put up some opposition. Under the table I dig my nails into my palms as deep as possible to fend off the pain, so that it concentrates and flows to where it will leave a visible mark, one that will heal.

  I have a shower, get dressed, grab my schoolbag and leave the two of them there. My father still talking, No not answering. If I could, I’d tell her that she just has to do what I did when I was small, clamp her hands over her ears to make a vacuum, stop the noise and the din, make the deafening world silent.

  I run to the bus stop. I’m scared of being late for Marin’s class. I haven’t eaten anything and my head’s spinning. I get on through the back door and squeeze my way between people. There are all these words that are getting mixed up above me, and the noise of the engine, and the street. The blood is throbbing in my temples. I look at the electronic display with the names of the stops going by and the estimated time till the terminus. That’s all I look at, the red letters sliding from left to right, and I count the vowels to stop me crying.

  I get to school just after the bell goes. Lucas is waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. My eyes are burning as I go towards him. When I get to him he wraps his arms around me. I feel the weight of my tiny body all at once against his, his breath in my hair.

  .

  Chapter 38

  In books there are chapters to separate out the moments, to show that time is going by and things are changing, and sometimes the parts even have titles that are full of promise – ‘The Meeting’, ‘Hope’, ‘Downfall’ – like paintings do. But in life there’s nothing like that, no titles or signs or warnings, nothing to say ‘Beware, danger!’ or ‘Frequent landslides’ or ‘Disillusion ahead’. In life you stand all alone in your costume, and too bad if it’s in tatters.

  I would have done anything so that No could stay with us. I wanted her to be part of our family, to have her bowl and her chair and her bed, of just the right size. I wanted Sundays in wintry colours, the smell of soup drifting from the kitchen. I wanted our lives to be like other people’s. I wanted everyone to have their place at the table, their time for the bathroom, their part in the domestic routine, for there to be nothing to do but let time drift by.

  I thought you could halt the course of things, break the programme. I thought that life could be different. I thought that helping someone meant sharing everything, even the things you can’t understand, even the darkest stuff. The truth is that I’m just a Little Miss Know-it-All (that’s what my father says when he gets angry), a cheap plastic computer for children that plays games and riddles with a stupid voice that gives the right answer. The truth is that I can’t even do up my shoelaces properly and that I’m fitted with crap functions that are useless. The truth is that things are what they are. Reality always gets the upper hand and the illusion disappears without you realising it. Mr Marin is right. Dreaming is pointless. And there’s no point hoping to change the world, because the world is so much stronger than us.

  My father’s gone to work and my mother is out shopping. I don’t imagine No hung around for long. What did they expect? That she’d patiently wait for a place to come up in some help or reintegration centre? That all they had to do was explain the problem to her nice and slowly? ‘No, you can’t stay with us, we’re no longer able to look after you. We’re going to resume the course of our lives. Thank you for coming and see you soon . . .’

  When I got back she had gone. I looked at her empty room – she’d made the bed, hoovered. Everything was in place, as if she’d noted and recorded everything, as if she knew that one day everything would have to be put back. I looked at the Moroccan rug that she liked lying on, the lamp that she left on all night. I thought of her suitcase on wheels, full to bursting, bumping along the pavement. I thought about it getting dark and the deserted streets and I closed my eyes.

  She’d left the clothes my mother had lent her neatly folded on the table. She’d emptied the medicine cabinet. That’s what my father told me. She took everything in it – all the sleeping pills and tranquilisers.

  On my desk she left the photo of her when she was little, slipped into a grubby envelope. I looked around to see if she’d left a note, but there was nothing. Nothing but her eyes looking at the lens, looking at me.

  .

  Chapter 39

  No rang the doorbell. Lucas was alone, watching TV. She was holding her case in one hand and two bags in the other. Her jacket was open and she wasn’t wearing anything under her pullover. You could see how white her skin was, the veins in her neck. He grabbed her things and asked her in. She lent on the hall table to move forward, she could hardly stand up. He took her to his mother’s room and took off her jeans
and her socks. He turned down the quilt and put her to bed. He phoned me in his gangster’s voice and I understood at once.

  His mother had been round a few days before. She’d filled the fridge, picked up some clothes, left another cheque and gone off. That gave us some time.

  I went round the next day. No got up when she heard my voice. She came over and hugged me. We didn’t say anything. Not a word. We stayed like that and I don’t know which of us was holding the other, which of us was the more fragile. No had emptied her case in the bedroom, spreading out her things on the floor – old clothes she’d got from charity shops or from Geneviève, a make-up bag, a children’s book her grandmother gave her, her red miniskirt. On the bedside table she’d put the big ashtray from the living room. She’d turned over the photographs, closed the bedroom curtains and didn’t open them again.

  Several times my parents asked me if I’d heard from her and I put on a sad face and said no.

  We’re going to take care of her. We won’t say anything to anyone. We’ll keep it a secret just for ourselves, because we’re strong enough.

  .

  Chapter 40

  My mother’s wearing mascara and lipstick, she’s bought new clothes, cut back on her medication and asked for an appointment with the HR director at her old company. She may go back to work part-time. My father has started working in Chloe’s bedroom, he’s washed down the walls, pulled up the carpet and is thinking of putting down a wooden floor. He’s going to choose high-tech furniture to make a nice office. In the evenings they flick through Ikea and DIY catalogues, doing sums, making plans, talking about holidays and making changes. They agree about everything. The two of them sit on the sofa with their legs crossed as if everything were perfectly normal, as if it had always been like this.

  They think I’m spending a bit too much time at Lucas’s, so I have to invent ruses and pretexts for getting back late. I’m working with François Gaillard on a new presentation, I’m doing research in the library, I’m taking part in a workshop to prepare for the open day, I’m helping Axelle Vernoux, who’s having trouble with her maths. I’ve never mentioned the fact that Lucas lives alone and I talk about his mother as if she lived there so that they don’t get suspicious. My father has rung No’s social worker several times. He’s worried. She’s still got no news. She said it’s often like that – ‘You know, you can’t trust street people. They come and they go.’

  At home I keep myself occupied as best I can. I’ve finished my study of frozen food. There are certain ingredients you find in most dishes: wheat gluten, rice starch, corn starch or modified wheat starch, sodium phosphate or baking soda. I made the most of the chance to do additional research on food additives, which themselves are an inexhaustible field of further study. Emulsifiers, thickeners, stabilisers, conservation agents, antioxidants and flavour enhancers fill my free time, my time without No.

  If you toss a coin ten times, chances are heads or tails will come out on top. But apparently if you toss it a million times heads and tails will come out equal. It’s the law of large numbers. And as I like experimenting myself with laws and theorems, I’m tossing a coin and keeping a tally on a piece of paper.

  I’ve made a huge garland for No, a garland made specially for her with all sorts of stuff: an empty yoghurt pot, a single sock, a plastic wallet for a metro card, the remnants of a corkscrew, an ad for a karate club, an Ariel net intended for washing powder tablets, a Betty Boop hair clip I found in the street, a 10 yuan note that my father brought back from China, a Schweppes can (empty), crumpled tinfoil, a money-off coupon from Marché U worth fifty cents. I’ll give it to her when she has somewhere she can hang it up. Meanwhile I’ve put it up in my room and told my mother that it’s conceptual art. She didn’t look too convinced.

  Lucas gives me the news when I get to school each morning – when she got back, whether she could stand, whether she spoke to him. We take ourselves off and talk in hushed voices, we come up with theories and construct strategies. Lucas emptied two bottles of vodka down the sink. No went crazy. He told her that she couldn’t drink at his place, his mother might drop by unexpectedly one day, or the cleaning lady. It was risky enough as it is. He hasn’t given her a key and he’s insisted that she comes home before he leaves.

  Since she started working nights No hasn’t been the same. There’s something within her like a huge feeling of exhaustion or disgust, something we can’t grasp. Every day after school we hurry to the metro and go up the stairs to Lucas’s in silence. Lucas opens the door and I hurry into the room. I’m scared of finding her dead or the room empty, with no trace of her things. No will be lying on the bed, sleeping or dozing. I look at her bare arms and the rings round her eyes. I would like to take her face in my hands and stroke her hair and for everything to be erased.

  When we get back she gets up and has two or three slices of bread washed down with a litre of coffee. Then she has a shower and puts her clothes on and joins us in the living room. She asks for news, worries about whether it’s cold outside, compliments me on my skirt or my hair, tries to put on a brave face, rolls a cigarette, sits down beside us. Her gestures are abrupt and clumsy. I’m sure she’s thinking about the evenings the three of us spent together watching films or listening to music not so long ago, that she thinks of them like a time that’s gone and can’t be recovered because there’s a veil over everything now and it can’t be reached.

  Before she goes out she puts on her make-up and pins up her hair, slips her high heels into a plastic bag and closes the door. If it’s not too late I go part of the way with her before heading home. We talk about this and that in the way we used to. We kiss goodbye, she attempts a smile. In the cold I watch her frail shape go off go round the corner. I don’t know what lies in wait for her, where she’s going without turning back.

  .

  Chapter 41

  At school we talk in hushed voices, we’ve got codes to describe what’s going on, complicit smiles and knowing looks. If we took it any further it’d be like in the war, when the Righteous Among the Nations hid Jewish children. We’re the Resistance. I love how Lucas looks in the morning when he arrives and gives me a little nod from a distance to let me know that it’s OK. He takes care of everything in his tough guy way, he goes to the supermarket, cleans the kitchen, tidies up after her, and turns out the light when she’s fallen asleep. The cleaning lady comes once a week. He has to shove No’s things in a cupboard, make the bed, air the room and get rid of all traces of her presence. We’re perfectly organised. We’ve prepared what we need to say if his mother rings, we’ve imagined emergencies and adapted explanations, in case she turns up unannounced, in case my parents take it into their heads to come and get me, in case Mrs Garrige, the cleaner, twigs what’s going on. We’ve got explanations and arguments at the ready.

  Some days No gets up before we get back and watches TV while she’s waiting for us. She smiles when she sees us. Some days she’ll dance on the sofa, and everything seems so simple because she’s there. Other days you can hardly say a word to her, days when she only opens her mouth to say shit and crap and fuck, when she kicks the chairs and armchairs, when you’d like to tell her that if she’s not happy then she can go home. The problem is that she has no home. The problem is that she’s unique because I’ve tamed her. I’m sure that Lucas loves her too. Even if some days he says he’s had enough or says ‘What’s the point?’ Even if sometimes he says, ‘We’re not strong enough, Lou, we’re not going to make it.’

  One evening I walk with No as far as the hotel. It’s dark. She decides she wants to buy me a drink in return for all the ones I’ve bought her. We go into a café. I watch as she downs three vodkas one after the other. It makes me feel sick, but I don’t dare say anything. I don’t really know what I’d say.

  Another day I’m walking with her not far from the Bastille. A man calls to us, ‘You couldn’t spare me some
change, could you?’ He’s sitting on the ground with his back against the front of a vacant shop. No glances at him and walks on without stopping. I nudge her. ‘That’s Momo, your friend from Austerlitz.’ She stops, hesitates for a few seconds, then turns back and goes over to him. She says, ‘Hi, Momo,’ and holds out a twenty-euro note. Momo gets up, stands in front of her, straight as a die, and looks her up and down. He doesn’t take the money. He spits and sits down again. I don’t know what she’s thinking as we walk off. She’s not part of his world any more, but she’s not part of ours either. She’s neither inside or outside, she’s between the two in no-man’s-land.

  Another time, when she’s just got up and Lucas has gone out to do the shopping, we’re both in his big living room. Her neck is covered in red marks. She claims that her scarf got stuck in an escalator. I can’t say to her ‘yeah, right’, never mind get angry with her. I can’t fire off a barrage of questions any more like I used to and keep on at her until she replies. I can tell that she’s happy to see me. She gets up when I arrive as soon as she hears me. I know she needs me. The rare times I didn’t see her because it was too risky, she’s panicked. That’s what Lucas says.

  She’s saving money, adding notes one at a time to a brown envelope. One day when she’s got enough she’s going to be with Laurent in Ireland, that’s what she’s told me. She doesn’t want me to tell Lucas about it. Not the envelope, not Laurent, not Ireland – nothing. I promised with my hand held up like when I was little and swore on the life of my mother. I’ve never dared look in the envelope. She only ever talks to me about Laurent when Lucas isn’t there. She tells me what they got up to when she was in the boarding school, the tricks to get seconds in the canteen, the card games, the night-time adventures.