As we lay there I stroked his hair, enjoying the dense velvety softness of it between my fingers. He lit a cigarette that we passed back and forth like teenage lovers, hot ash scattering, sizzling into the silk of the rug. I didn’t care. All that mattered was that with him here the apartment suddenly seemed warm, full of life and sound and passion.
“My mum used to stroke my hair.”
I pulled my hand away, sharply.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, quickly. “I just meant I hadn’t realized how much I missed it.” And when he turned to look across at me I saw in his expression something undefended and frail, something that had hidden beneath all the charm. I thought I saw my own loneliness reflected there. But in the next moment he smiled and it had vanished.
A minute or so later he sat up, taking in the empty apartment around us. “Jacques is away a lot in the evenings, isn’t he?”
I nodded. Was he already planning our next encounter? “He’s very busy.”
His gaze seemed to sweep over the paintings on the walls, the furnishings, the richness of the place. “I suppose that must mean business is flourishing.”
I froze. He’d said it lightly. Too lightly? It brought me back to myself: the madness of what we were doing, all that was at stake. “You should go,” I told him, suddenly angry at him . . . at myself. “I can’t do this.” This time I really believed I meant it. “I have too much to lose.”
I close my eyes. Open them again and focus on my daughter’s face. She does not meet my eye. All the same, it has brought me back to myself. To what is important. I take a steadying sip of my wine. Force down the memories. “So,” I say to them all. “Let us begin.”
Nick
My stepmother has called us all to order. We’re sitting upstairs in the penthouse apartment. A dysfunctional little family conference. Like the one we’d been going to have last night before Jess turned up unannounced and set the cat among the pigeons. I was always a keen student of English idioms. We have a French one like it, actually: jeter un pavé dans la mare—throw a paving stone in the pond. And maybe that’s a more accurate description of what happened when she arrived here. She has displaced everything.
I look at the others. Antoine knocking back the wine—he might as well have picked up the whole bottle. Mimi white-faced and looking ready to bolt from the room. Sophie sitting rigid and expressionless. She’s not looking quite herself, my stepmother. I can’t work out what’s different about her at first. Her shining black bob doesn’t have a strand out of place, her silk scarf is knotted expertly at her throat. But there’s something off. Then it hits me: she’s not wearing lipstick. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her without it. She looks diminished, somehow. Older, frailer, more human.
Antoine speaks first. “That stupid little cunt is at the club.” He turns to me. “Still suggest we do nothing, little bro?”
“I . . . I think the important thing is we all pull together,” I say. “A united front. As a family. That’s the most important thing. We can’t fall apart now.”
But I realize, looking at their faces, that they’re all unknown quantities to me. I don’t feel like I know these people. Not really. I was away for so long. And we’re all so estranged from one another that we don’t look and feel like the real thing. Even to one another.
“Yes, because you’ve been such a key player in this family up until now,” Antoine says, making me feel even more of an imposter, a fraud. He gestures toward Sophie. “And you’re not going to catch me playing the adoring stepson to that salope.”
“Hey,” I say. “Let’s just—”
“Watch your mouth,” Sophie says caustically, turning to Antoine. “You’re sitting in my apartment.”
“Oh it’s your apartment, is it?” He gives a mock bow. “I’m so sorry, I hadn’t realized. I thought you were just a parasite living off Papa’s money—I didn’t know you’d earned any of it yourself.”
I was only eight or nine when Papa married the mysterious new woman who had materialized in our lives but Antoine was older, a teenager. Maman had been an invalid for so long, languishing in her rooms on the third floor. This newcomer seemed so young, so glamorous. I was a little besotted. Antoine took it rather differently. He’s always had it in for her.
“Just stop it,” Mimi says suddenly, her hands over her ears. “All of you. I can’t take any more—”
Antoine turns to Mimi with a horrible smile on his face. “Ah,” he slurs at her now, “and as for you, well you’re not really part of this family, are you, ma petite soeur—”
“Stop that,” Sophie says to Antoine, her voice ice-cold: the lioness protecting her cub.
At her feet the whippet startles and gives a sharp bark.
“Oh, I think she can give as good as she gets,” Antoine says. “What about all that stuff at her school, with the teacher? Papa had to make a pretty hefty donation and agree to remove her to keep that one quiet. But perhaps it’s no surprise, huh?” He turns to Mimi. “When you consider where she comes from.”
“Don’t you dare speak to her like that,” Sophie says. Her tone is dangerous.
I glance over at Mimi. She’s just sitting there, staring at Antoine, her face even paler than usual.
“OK,” I say. “Come on, let’s all just—”
“And can I just say,” Antoine says, “that it’s just typical that our darling père has decided to fuck off for all of this. Isn’t it?”
All of us glance instinctively at the portrait of my father on the wall. I know it must be my imagination or a trick of the light, but it looks as though his painted frown has deepened slightly. I shiver. Even when he’s miles away you can still feel his presence in this apartment, somehow, his authority. The all-seeing, all-powerful Jacques Meunier.
“Your father,” Sophie says to Antoine now, sharply, “has his own business to be taking care of. As you well know. It would only complicate things further if he returns. We must all hold the fort for him in his absence.”
“What a surprise, he’s not here when the shit hits the fan.” Antoine gives a laugh, but there’s no humor in it.
“He trusts you to be able to handle the situation on your own,” Sophie says. “But perhaps that is simply too much to ask. Look at you. You’re a forty-year-old man still living under his roof, leeching off his money. He has given you everything. You’ve never had to grow up. You’ve had everything handed to you by your father on a silver platter. You’re both useless hothouse flowers, too weak for the outside world. Unable to fly the nest.” That stings. “For God’s sake,” she says. “Show your father some respect.”
“Oh yeah?” Antoine gives her a nasty smile. “Are you really going to talk to me about respect, putain?” The last word hissed under his breath.
“How dare you speak to me like that?” She rounds on him, a surge of real anger breaching the icy façade.
“Oh, how dare I?” Antoine gives her a sly-looking grin. “Vraiment? Really?” He turns to me. “You know what she is? You know what our very elegant stepmother really is? You know where she comes from?”
I’ve had my suspicions. As I grew older, they grew too. But I’ve barely even allowed myself to think them, let alone voice them aloud, for fear of my father’s wrath.
Antoine stands up and walks out of the room. A few moments later he comes back carrying something in a large frame. He turns it around so that all of us can see it. It’s a black and white photograph, a large nude: the one from my father’s study.