Spectacle(49)

“We are not talking about this.”

“Yes, we are!” Nathalie crossed her arms. “Why shouldn’t we?”

Maman tightened her folded hands, thumbs pressing into her flesh. “Where did this come from? This interrogation? This behavior? I won’t be spoken to that way. I am your mother, not Simone.”

A twinge traveled through her heart. Maman didn’t know about the quarrel with Simone, which made it even worse.

“Then maybe I’m the one who needs to be at Saint-Mathurin.”

Maman threw up her hands. “Now that’s a fanciful conclusion. What are you talking about?”

“Insight. Aunt Brigitte wrote it on those papers. It’s here in the article, the idea of ‘gaining insight.’” Nathalie tapped the newspaper. “Tante claims to have insight. She dreamed about future crimes and tried to prevent them. Then I guess she went mad somewhere along the way like the people mentioned in this article. Am I wrong?”

In one swift motion, Maman pushed her chair back and stood. She walked behind the chair and gripped it firmly, as if to steady herself. She stared at her scars and exhaled through her nose. “No. You’re right. Everything you said is true.”

“It is?” Nathalie asked, her voice laden with bittersweet awe.

“And now what?” Maman asked in a tranquil, even tone that Nathalie found unnerving. “You know the truth, and you know the shame that was brought on our family. That your aunt is insane because she sought magical powers. She’s considered a fool for taking part in those experiments. What else is there? That’s everything.”

“What about—”

Maman held up her hand and closed her eyes. She paused a moment before opening them again. “I said that’s everything. You can do all the sleuthing you want, you can ask all the questions you want. I won’t answer them.”

“Why? Does it bring shame to the family to tell the truth?”

“How dare you?” said Maman, her face a mixture of indignation and hurt. “The decision is mine, not yours. You’re sixteen. What do you know about truth?”

“Until today, I didn’t know much at all,” Nathalie said, hands on hips.

“Enough. I will never discuss this again.”

That last sentence set a flame to everything else Nathalie wanted to know. Needed to know. Am I one of Dr. Henard’s patients? Did something happen to me in childhood that I don’t remember?

That might have come up in the hypnosis, had she gone under. Wouldn’t it?

I see things, too, Maman. Like Aunt Brigitte.

Now she had to wait. For a better time, when she could try again to talk to Maman. She had to believe that they could talk, that she could tell her everything, some other day.

Maman went to her bedroom and returned several seconds later holding her shopping bag.

Then she locked her bedroom door.

Nathalie’s heart descended into a basin of sadness. Maman hadn’t locked that door in years.

Silence settled between them, a chasm full of more questions than answers and one that neither wanted to cross. Maman let out a sigh, composed of both frustration and weariness, and announced that she was going to run errands. Nathalie asked her to mail the letter to Agnès. Maman’s eyes lingered on the envelope too long, Nathalie thought, perhaps wondering what Nathalie had written, what family secrets she’d spilled.

After Maman left, Nathalie approached the window. She watched her mother walk down the street and out of sight. Stanley nuzzled her shin and weaved in and out of her legs.

She retreated from the window and felt a lump form in her throat. Tears followed. So many that she went to her bedroom and cried into her pillow, weeping until her nose stuffed up and her face swelled.

When she had cried all she could cry, and maybe even more, she fell asleep. She awoke with a stabbing headache and lay there, petting Stanley. Maman still wasn’t home. Good; Maman would assume that in her absence Nathalie had gone to the morgue and newspaper.

She wondered what Simone was doing. Whether she was at the club. Or sleeping, because she was keeping her “vampire hours.” Or Simone might, at this very moment, be eating grapes. Maybe with Louis, who almost certainly would tell her about Nathalie’s trip to the hypnotist. Or maybe Simone was with some other girl she’d befriended at the club, a replacement friend. After a while, when Nathalie was done imagining all the ways Simone might be spending her day, she drifted off again.

And so went the rest of the day, this hazy vacillation between sleep and wakefulness. One of the few moments she remembered afterward was Maman coming in to kiss her on the forehead just after nightfall.



* * *



The headache subsided by the next morning, which was good, given that it was Nathalie’s first day back as morgue reporter in almost a week.

After a few bites of fruit for breakfast, she dressed in her boy clothes and left. She forgot to tie one of her shoes, though, and tripped down the last few stairs of the apartment building. The spill resulted in a tender ankle and a maddening splinter (thanks to the railing) in the palm of her hand. Maddening because she couldn’t get it out, despite going back to get one of Maman’s sewing needles and picking at it on the tram. She tried again while standing in line at the morgue.

She hated splinters, unlike blood blisters, which she almost enjoyed. They intrigued her, because sticking a needle through your skin and having blood come out painlessly was rather thrilling. But splinters were just aggravating.