Mai at the Predators' Ball (20 page)

ROCK STAR
written in sequined letters, hey I told you take off your skates, her pointed breasts moved under her swimsuit, Mum’s just waxed the floors, if I ate something I wouldn’t be able to keep it down anyway, and tomorrow I’m going for special counselling with Mum, they’ll force me to eat, they don’t see that I’m fat, that I shouldn’t eat another thing, boy you should see those girls in special counselling, real skeletons, they hardly weigh anything, Mum says it’s a tragedy, now Tammy she says, you don’t want to end up like them do you, no I hate her voice when it sounds like that, and on the way home in the car I wind up crying, then I know she’ll stop, see here on the wall and recorded in the videos are my idols, friends, look at that one, he never stops playing and dancing, he looks so cool, black jeans, and look at him dancing with that black hat over those big, soft dark eyes, see what I wrote on this poster,
LOVE YOU FOREVER MIKE
, now Tammy seemed ethereal, almost non-existent, shadow dancing on the walls of her music-filled room, a bubble, just a bubble thought Mai, meanwhile outside the window lush and vibrant vegetation climbed the walls of the house amid the suffocating humidity, and inside the cellphones went unheard surrounded by the cacophony, just two flashing red lights as Mai repeated that she really should go, she still had a few blocks to skate along Atlantic Boulevard and she might even make it in time to give her grandmother a goodnight kiss, the finger of light from her flashlight would point the way through the fog, it was close enough and her father wasn’t one to lock the door at midnight, see he never stops dancing, isn’t it great said Tammy, and look at these idols on the wall, they’re my heroes from Columbine, guns and all, and on the twentieth day of April they will kill schoolkids like you and me, then kill themselves too, they’re my heroes because no one else feels sorry for them, see the circle of blood round their faces, I put it there, no, no one’s sorry they’re going to kill themselves, my mother says it’s not healthy, those faces, the pictures, the guns, the red circles like blood for April 20, I shouldn’t be fascinated with Eric and Dylan’s faces ’cause it’s sick, awful, gone off on their own all alone, like gods on the day before the massacre, judging that the world they lived in was a hole, just one big absurd hole, really gods until they got too depressed, they wanted power and control, so depressed and their parents never even knew it, then they made their own power and control, picked up their guns and there it was, so easy, they could gun down girls like you and me, boys, I told Mum that kind of fury and rage could get into anyone, just like Eric and Dylan, say, who’s sorry for them anyway, and she said I don’t want my daughter worshipping criminals, I’m going to tear down those pictures of yours, but I said they were kids before they turned into criminals, just like my brother and me, so take a good long look at them, beg pity and pardon for them, pity that they turned into this and had to die so soon, a gun straight to the heart, the ultimate vengeance, no danger of their ever setting foot on another campus again, if their depression isn’t absolved they could come back tonight, and that’s what I told my mum, they’re my icons to remember them by Tammy explained to Mai while the cellphones kept on blinking with messages, before they thought of themselves as gods they were just like you and me, nobody knew what Eric and Dylan were thinking, too bad they were friends, too bad they ever met, and the first day they met was the first day of their apocalypse, Mai saw she had other pictures on her wall too but much less obsessive and sinister than these, almost sweet in comparison, one was an Amur leopard, another was a giant panda licking its baby, but under her pictures Tammy had written
THERE ARE ONLY A FEW OF US LEFT ON THE PLANET
and
WHO WILL ADOPT US
, nearby her Prince Rock sang and danced on the screen with eternal grace, and though his moves were so disturbing she always fell asleep to them, awoke to them, listened all day with her earphones, and she told Mai it sometimes felt as though he were dancing all over her body and soul and it would always be that way, yet when her parents came home during the night her room had to be silent, like her brother’s, no quieter than hers otherwise, no matter, she always had her earphones, an eternal dance thought Mai, there were pictures nearby of a boy in short white overalls and a black and blue striped sweater in his father’s arms, beatifically smiling at one another, then another photo taken only a few months later of the boy, one of the same boy, now immortal as Tammy put it, next to his father’s hearse, assailed by a sadness he could not express and obliged to stand up straight, hand saluting, face tilted and struggling to cry but prevented, a prince whose courage all had admired for this, her room was a shrine to her icons and princes, sheltered and immortalized, freed of all restraint and weeping in peace, a son whose father had been assassinated, a little king whose uncle would be too, how many times would he have to be here, unable to cry, always the same salute, Tammy’s room had become the receptacle for all these tears Mai thought, tears Tammy couldn’t allow herself, not any more than the royal boy in the photograph. Mère recalled the dream, something like Christmastime at Charles and Frédéric’s, just seconds ago, the green garden gate was open and there they were to greet everyone: Caroline, Jean-Mathieu, Mère, Justin, Jacques with his friend Tanjou, Adrien and Suzanne, what a mix she thought, a young version of Frédéric, who always had a discreetly seductive draw for Mère that she couldn’t resist, he must have been the one playing the piano for his friends, and Charles was accompanied by Cyril in the days when they were still in love and fresh back from India, Cyril still as jealous as ever of Frédéric though, even when he was their host, a good season for love and passion and for smoothing over quarrels thought Mère, a time for reconciliation and the joy of simply living, such light in Charles and Frédéric’s house, and this is what convinced Mère to come, all that light and the green gate wide open, the voices of friends rising from the street as they made their way, all of them calling evening Esther, good evening, so nice to see you, Caroline the first to take her by the arm, I’ve missed you so she always said, you know Jean-Mathieu talks about you every single day, you know we went to England for our book on the British poets so I could photograph them don’t you, you remember one of them, oh dear I’m so sorry, I can still see him with the pencil dangling between his fingers, and Mère listened to Caroline’s high-pitched voice, oh yes that was
certainly Caroline wearing such lovely clothes and a old-fashioned hat,
all of them were there of course, Justin with his wife Laura and the children, and Mère finally blurted out what she’d been holding on to for so long, you know, about your book on Hiroshima you were right, it’s not that Caroline doesn’t understand your beliefs, she was never a pacifist like you and never will be, of course she is, or used to be, a woman of power, at least she’d have liked to be, and that’s why she’d never agree with you, I just wanted to explain, just then Caroline came in through the wooden doorway, painted the same muted green, and kissed Jean-Mathieu, lifting up his red scarf, how I like this scarf you bought in Italy, yes Mère could still hear that high voice next to the low voice of Jean-Mathieu, who was saying it rained so hard my shoes are soaking wet, the streets are overflowing and the presents are all wet too, as Mère thought it is raining so hard outside and it is so luminous inside, this was when she was outside on the path wondering if she should go all the way up to the house, she felt moved by the sight of a rusted green bicycle Charles only ever used on Sundays still leaning against a fence of the same rusted green, Frédéric said Charles wrote his best poems on that Sunday bike, head in the clouds, forever having near misses in the street, that was how he wrote
Ash-Corroded World
Frederic said, he’d recite the poem right there on the bike, same as he would Dante or Blake for Adrien and Suzanne, that acrobat-poet’s going to fall and break his neck one of these days, adding that Charles was the greatest misunderstood poet of his generation, oh come on now he’s not
all that misunderstood cut in Adrien, even if he hasn’t been a poet laureate yet like me, sure it’s an honour, a title but nothing to be vain about, I mean he’s been publishing since he was fifteen and won the highest honours, he’s got absolutely nothing to complain about, oh but he never does complain said Frédéric, he’s rather ascetic after all and lack of interest in those things is his virtue, was this really true thought Mère as she ran these conversations through her mind, half-forgotten words from the past exchanged beneath the shining chandeliers before they gathered round the table laden with acacias and mimosas outside under the bower, the perfumes of flowers bending trees with their weight, can it really be that she is back there now breathing them all over again in such serene exaltation and all of them saying but why on earth are you standing there in the middle of the path
Esther, come, come inside where the lights are on, come and join us won’t you, and just as Jean-Mathieu took off his shoes right there on the parquet floor, Caroline screamed a scorpion and he’s headed straight for you, well that little thing is parched from the dry season said Jean-Mathieu, and I’m a lot bigger than he is, just set him down outside with a broom, so Eduardo brought a broom in from the garden but too late, Caroline had already squashed it with the sole of her sandal and Jean-Mathieu regretted that, now why did you do it Caroline, he seemed to be facing off against an utterly different woman, not the goddess Caroline he knew but a creature of unwarranted cruelty, how could you he said again, a huge creature like me has the right to kill a little thing like that, tiny and thirsty too, he was probably attracted to the water in my shoes, Mère heard all this of course, oh that was them all right, nothing ever changes with them, same voices, same attitudes as they approached her saying welcome Esther, nice to see you, a dazzling brilliance surrounded them as they came closer, urging her to come closer too and join them under the sparkling chandeliers in Charles and Fédéric’s house with everyone she knew and loved, such a fine mix of people from whom she could never be separated ever again, so much like old times with the rusted green bike up against the rusted green fence waiting to be used on Sunday for Charles to compose his poems out loud without writing them down, in the perfumed air, head lifted toward the sky as though Mère were there with him, listening as he cycled through the deserted streets early on a Sunday morning. Do you see the way Yinn’s looking at my back and shoulders like he’s designing something for me, see said Petites Cendres to Robbie, still tugging on the bridle of the white papier-mâché horse, see Robbie, boy this horse is heavy came the answer, look at the way he’s staring at my back and shoulders Petites Cendres cut in again, but Robbie set him straight, it’s not you he’s looking at, somewhere in the line of girls a faint cough was heard and that had Yinn worried, her gaze hardened, where was this ghost of a cough coming from like a shudder of fright rippling through them all, her gaze was fixed now, and for her eyes to turn this chilly and pale she had to be either furious or unnerved that My Captain was not present, his renegade scattering of some of Fatalité’s ashes still rankled, Robbie saying that he must be about to cast anchor at this moment of sunset, maybe he’d had a last minute’s hesitation with the light package in his lap before he went down in his wetsuit to the depths violated by the debris of dead birds with wings sliced by boats racing over the surface, the graveyard of marine mammals tangled in ropes, the thought of their agony as the green eyes closed forever, clandestine and captive, the damage done to the coral reefs, the multitude of fish laid waste beneath this piracy, he did hesitate all at once, it is our fault that all this has to die, coral, animals, and all on this pink clay bottom, he’d rather have found a less funereal place than this charnel house of plastic and glass, animals buried in ropes stained with oil and lead, so many traps they couldn’t escape in this pink fog of water, he’d have preferred to release Fatalité someplace deeper amid the sparkle of silvery fish where the currents are clear and crystalline, that would’ve been the place to say goodbye old friend, sure Robbie said, and he did hesitate, Jamie said he had some long coats for the girls who were cold and there was the white limo for them to warm up in too as they drove around town, though they’d rather stand up in it with Jamie driving, but Yinn had to catch the sound of that cough, faint but unmistakeable, and the night was barely begun, there was that look on Yinn’s face Robbie said, though Petites Cendres was still convinced it was meant for him, standing off to the side Petites Cendres had just the merest cough, and Robbie insisted it wasn’t him but one of the girls in the line in front of the bar, so muffled you’d wonder how Yinn could possibly hear it, really you would. Lou did hear her father’s voice above-deck saying the girls were asleep on the folding bed below, like two little angels was how he put it, telling Noémie in the triumphant, seductive voice he used with her, thus thought Lou, never for her mother, just for Noémie, he knew Ingrid would have caught the false note straight off and disliked it the same as her daughter when it was used on someone else, so that’s what he thought, that the girls Lou and Rosie were asleep while the boat bobbed in the foggy marina, not true, only Rosie was sleeping thought Lou, putting her hand on Rosie’s inert shoulder, right she would be asleep after being used to turning in every evening at eight, the same time as her brother, just a baby really after all, hair netted over her face like feathers, just a little baby chick, like in the Christmas parade with the whole class of blue and red chicks in the truck, Lou never let them dress her up that way, the cocks were in a separate truck with the lambs, Rosie and the chicks being the smallest, even in the annual school ballet recital Rosie would wind up as a chick with other chicks following behind, course she was in kindergarten then and they all slept like babies, Lou thought about what her father had said, sometimes going to sleep for an hour then waking up to spy on him, listening in on what Ari said to Noémie on his cellphone, every word of it, well some she caught and some she didn’t when he murmured or whispered, the slightest breeze carried his words away, words that it would pain her to hear in any case, in fact Ari was saying into the phone that he didn’t know what to do with Lou if she insisted on carrying on this way, rude and still hating her father’s loving someone beside her mother, really he told Noémie, I don’t know what to do, honestly I don’t, what do you think, does she need some serious discipline, sure I know, reining in, but I still don’t know what to do, of course he’d never ever punished her, and Lou, tugging at her eyelids to stay awake, wondered about this, Ari was a man for suggestions, proposals, but he never disciplined her, not for her manners or her pulling faces, he always praised her grades in Italian and Spanish, piling even more courses onto an already heavy load with swimming, riding at her grandmother’s, violin and piano, no wonder she didn’t sleep at night with days like that, they were just too short, Ingrid was right, he had too many things to suggest or propose till her mother said it was too much, the little girl was not a machine or a computer and her father was some sort of unfeeling programmer, yes Mama’s right Lou thought, now here he was insinuating to her Lou, my little Marie-Louise, how about a week at Mama’s and a week in New York with Noémie and me, I have a piece of sculpture to finish in the park and that way you can spend more time with me, what do you say Lou? This was no time to mess things up, she had to sift through what he proposed and try not to hurt her mother’s feelings, Ari’s ideas were always comfortable and limitless but at her mother’s there were three of them crammed into a small apartment, Ari’s house was spacious and airy just the way he’d designed it, he was expansive like that about everything, his computer monitor was the biggest, Lou’s room too, living comfortably was no sin he said but it didn’t seem fair to Mama, whose place was the exact opposite and she shared a room with her brother Julien, Ingrid herself seemed to do without for the sake of her kids, hmmm better think carefully about what he’s saying, and now he wanted to live in New York to top it all off, with Noémie as well, who knows, maybe he was even thinking about having a baby with her, that’s what her mother said, who knows what these two jerks are thinking and what was in store for her under shifting roofs like those, no her mother said, you’re better off with me, you should be with your mother, so Lou tugged at her eyelids and