Mon amie américaine (9 page)

We spend the afternoon in your room, whose curtains I've closed to keep it cool. I think both of us fell asleep in front of the television, lulled by the music of a channel showing music videos. Around five o'clock your mother brings up two
bowls of ice cream for us. We watch a US Open tennis match. I suggest we put on TCM, the channel devoted to the old films you used to love, but you explain that you don't succeed in concentrating long enough to follow a story any more. There's the hint of a smile on your face as you nudge me with your elbow. “You'll like this: I can't even finish an article in
People
magazine.” I burst out laughing. That dig is the old Molly coming to the surface. You lower the sound of the TV. “You know what? Nothing interests me. For weeks I've been sleeping. I don't think of anything, and I especially don't want to mull over things.”

You turn your face toward mine, and for the first time since I arrived, I sense you're about to break down. “You used to say I was a softie and a chicken? Well, you were right. I don't even have the nerve to end it all. I could, you know. The drawer is full of drugs. But nope. I'd rather spend the rest of my life channel surfing in bed. That'll be some rest, right?” Tears are forming at the corners of your eyes. “Somebody up there must have played heads or tails, and it ended up falling on me.”

I take you in my arms, rock you gently. “Go ahead and cry, my Molly, let it out, it will do you
good. Don't forget that they're stuffing you with tranquilizers, sedatives. You've got to let some time pass.” I'm murmuring those hollow remarks you resort to when you've run out of arguments. You don't let yourself be consoled for very long. You sit up to blow your nose, then fall back on the pillows that I've just straightened. You go back to your TV zapping and watch the channels go by.

“You don't understand. It's too hard. I'm about to turn forty-one. Who am I supposed to be fighting for? For the guy I don't have? For the children I'll never have? I'm tired. Could you tell my mother I'd like to have dinner?”

As I'm getting up, the door opens on the nurse, a young perky blond woman in her thirties with a sparkling smile, who sticks a needle in the vein on your right arm without ever stopping her talking. “And how are we today? We've got a visitor from France? Oh, but we must be a
very important person
for somebody to come see us from as far away as that! Ah, Paris! Chanel! I've always dreamed about it …” Normally, that kind of creature would have aggravated you and we would have made fun of her together; but in this situation she seems to
be a distraction. She's even soothing, unless it's the immediate effect of the intravenous injection.

Your mother serves you dinner at six thirty: a bowl of consommé and a plate of pasta that you eat in your bed while we watch the top twenty music videos of the week. “You see, they last around two and a half minutes, the ideal length for my brain. I think it shrank during my coma. It certainly is the only part of my body that lost weight, right? Are you sure you don't want to stay and sleep over?” I should have said yes. It was easy to tell that it would have given you pleasure. I explain to you that your father has already dropped off my bag at the motel, a lousy excuse since it's five minutes away and I could easily go back and get it. But I absolutely need to get out of that room with its pink wallpaper and immaculate carpeting — out of this house in mourning, away from this inconsolable suffering.

It's Sunday, and the weather is even more beautiful than yesterday. Dora has called me early to tell me that you're going to come and get me by car, that you feel like getting some air. I went to get
you a bouquet of flowers at the supermarket on the corner, and I'm waiting for you at the side of the road, my face in the sun. You're sitting in the back of the Volvo in a gray, shapeless sweatshirt, and it enrages me to see you forgo your usual interest in your appearance. You look like you're in a good mood, and you smell the peonies as if you were going to bite into them. I'm thrilled that my being here has made you want to go out.

When the car enters a giant parking lot, I understand my mistake. I'd forgotten that the expression
go out for a walk
means ambling through a shopping mall where you can do everything: eat Italian or Japanese, buy candy or a TV set, go to the cosmetician or a hairdressing salon, or fill a shopping cart while your ears are drowned in the voices of the latest hit singers. What could be more depressing than moving through aisles turned freezing by air-conditioning while pushing your wheelchair?

But you seem happy to see some people, to feel yourself in a familiar world, designed so that a wheelchair can roll absolutely everywhere, from the parking lot elevator to the restrooms of the restaurant. You do seem livelier this morning. You make caustic remarks about ill-mannered
children who yell without their parents objecting. You're interested in the shop windows. You buy a new eau de toilette, let me get you a silk scarf in a blend of blues that soften your coloring. Impulsively you let yourself be made up at a stand and leave with a kit containing an array of products. We stop to admire an exhibition of black-and-white photos. You smell nachos very near, and you want some. We head for the Mexican restaurant nearby, where you enjoy a bowl of guacamole and a chocolate ice cream.

We're waiting for the check when a pretty, very pregnant brunette breaks away from the group passing in front of our table and stops there as she lets out a shout. “Molly, is it you? I don't believe it. It's me, Lisa! Do you recognize me? We studied ballet together in grade school!” Suddenly she stops and turns red. She's just noticed the wheelchair. Molly gives her a faint smile. “I remember very well. But I'm not sure that a tutu's still right for me.” The arrival of the waitress gives poor Lisa a chance to slip away.

Dora decides that we shouldn't linger because of traffic holdups, and you allow yourself to be pushed to the car without saying a word. The way
back passes in a silence that the country music station isn't enough to make up for. When your father helps you back into your bed, it's already four p.m. I can't stay any longer or I'll miss my flight. I bend over the flowered comforter and hold you against me with all my strength. I don't want to stay, but I'm in despair at the prospect of leaving you. I feel as if I'm abandoning you, letting you down. From your gray sweatshirt you take out a yellow sheet of paper folded in fourths, with my name on it. “Here, this is my new motto. Promise me you'll think of me every day.” I promise, choking back tears, kiss you as if I'll never see you again. I've never left anyone with such a feeling of defeat, futility.

I wait for the taxi to turn the corner of the street before I unfold your message. It's scathing, appalling.

Enjoy while it lasts. It doesn't
.

YOU SPENT THE SUMMER AT YOUR PARENTS'
. Then, in the fall, things had to be organized; in other words, what your life was going to become had to be put into place. That beautiful apartment with its terrace and its southern exposure near Columbus Avenue, where you were planning on spending, as you would put it, “a life with a view,” was reimagined with the functioning of the wheelchair in mind. You can no longer live alone. At night, in the day, during the week and weekend, nurses, massage therapists, and home health aides take their shifts assisting you.

You don't describe your day-to-day life in the rare emails you send me. Your messages are typed text-style, something you detested. To me they seem terse, loving, sad.

You ask me to tell you about my life, but that's exactly what I now have trouble doing. At every
moment, as I run down the street, climb stairs, go to the gym, or simply when I'm taking a walk, having a coffee at a counter, going downstairs to buy a magazine, or when I'm cooking, putting the children to bed, I tell myself that I'm doing all these daily, banal things without a thought, whereas you will never be able to do them again; and I want to scream with helplessness and shame. Shame at having a normal life while yours has ceased to be one. Shame at having had luck. Shame at feeling alive. I'm afraid that the slightest anecdote I could share with you would only end up wounding you more, that in reading me you sense the extent to which I'm taking advantage of each second of my life, whereas you no longer have the freedom to lead yours. Suddenly I'm confining myself to banalities that say nothing about me but that at least can't cause you pain. I search for a breezy, enthusiastic tone, but it's easy for me to see that my emails are getting further apart and shorter, more impersonal, summary.

You must think that I'm forgetting you, but I think of you nonstop.

You must be imagining that I have nothing to tell you, but I need to talk to you so much …

You must think that my life is sweet, full of joy, and that my marriage is fulfilling, but three words on a cell phone have turned me into this tense, nervous, unhappy woman I scarcely recognize.

I still haven't spoken to Vincent. I can't do it.

As long as the words aren't spoken, the things they conceal have no reality. I can't say the words
lover, mistress, affair
out loud. They would dirty us. I'd be too afraid that they'd become irrevocable.

And then there's the question of pride, too.

Not us. Not that. We're worth more than that, after all.

Molly, you would have been proud of me.

This Friday, the children were with my parents for the weekend. We were going out to the movies. Vincent and I. We were at the door, putting on our coats. Suddenly I noticed that he was feeling his pockets, looking around. I knew what he was searching for. A little earlier, I'd seen him put his newspaper on top of his cell phone.

I couldn't keep from saying something.

Why couldn't I?

I pushed aside the newspaper, grabbed the phone, and held it out to him, saying, “I know what's in your cell phone.”

He put it in his pocket without saying anything, as if he hadn't heard or understood, as if he could afford to ignore something that didn't make any sense.

I insisted, didn't move. “The messages. The girl who misses you.”

In a few seconds, his expression changed from surprise to incomprehension, and then ended with a touch of disdainfulness. I could see on his face that he was thinking very quickly, looking for the best way to respond, the best option possible.

Molly, this is terrible to say, but I swear to you: for the first time in twenty years of life together, Vincent looked like a moron. Like an imbecile.

With a smile that was hoping to put an end to it but that only looked inane, he said, “Messages are private.”

“It rang while you were taking a nap.”

Nothing. Three seconds of silence. An eternity.

I went back on the attack: “So?”

He stuck his hands in his pockets, took out his keys. “So … It's my private business.”

“That private business is now out.”

He spread apart his arms, his expression contrite. A kid caught with his fingers in the cookie jar. “Listen … She's young, from the sticks, she's a little lost … I was giving her some advice. She's easy to impress.” He took my arm, brought his face close to mine, and finally looked me in the eye. “It's nothing at all, OK? Would you trust me? Now, can we go?”

He spent the movie holding my hand like a schoolboy trying to kiss a girl in the dark for the first time. I don't remember a thing about the film. I felt frozen. I wanted to throw up, scream, bite. I wanted to go back to the house. But was our home still mine?

IT WILL BE A YEAR SINCE YOU COLLAPSED ALONG YOUR PLATE GLASS WINDOW
, and the profession, which adores anniversaries, has chosen to honor you. Nothing glitzy, no formal wear, nothing for the paparazzi to go crazy about. But nonetheless: I've been invited to an evening in your honor, which, as the embossed invitation in gold letters says, will “celebrate her invaluable contribution to the domain of cinema.”

Immediately I had my doubts. It was too soon after your accident. I hardly dared imagine your reaction.

I was wrong, which I learned while speaking to you over the phone. You are delighted, as thrilled as a little girl who was dreaming of having a Barbie doll and has suddenly learned that she has won the entire toy store. Since that time, every three days you've sent me the updated list of
the growing number of people who've agreed to speak. You seem sincerely proud and touched by this sign of consideration.

At first I warned you that it would be impossible for me to attend the festivities because months earlier I'd already accepted being part of a jury at a festival in the provinces. Finally, I took advantage of the festival having changed its dates by withdrawing from the jury. I didn't tell you that. I can't wait to see your expression that night when you see me in the room.

I let Tom in on it, wrote the most beautiful congratulatory speech I could think of and learned it by heart, put a pair of black trousers and some heels in my suitcase. I'm thrilled to be in the Hamptons, that stretch of sea two hours from Manhattan where fashionable New Yorkers love to vacation, on an island that has been immortalized by Fitzgerald in his novel. Tom has explained to me that you have to know the difference between Southampton, which borders on old money, private incomes, writers, from East Hampton, which has become the preserve of the trendy and the nouveaux riches, such as traders, actors, and producers. Those are the people who
created that weekend minifestival each year when a figure from the world of film is celebrated with an “industry toast.” It's the kind of evening where respected professionals come to give speeches in honor of one of their own, during which they must appear humble, mischievous, scathing, moving, generous, and a good buddy — all within ten minutes.

The Maidstone Hotel is one of those delightfully refined places where you need to make reservations for a weekend a year in advance. My room is hung with striped beige wallpaper of very much the latest fashion. It smells like rosewood, and I hope, Molly, that your bed is covered with the same gigantic soft eiderdown on which I definitely cannot lie as I'm afraid I'll fall right to sleep. I alternate Coca-Colas with espressos shut up in my room, for fear of running into someone close to you.