Soft in the Head (8 page)

M
ARGUERITTE
never had kids. It’s a pity, because I think they would have turned out well, with a mother like her teaching them culture in between juggling test tubes and reading them Camus—and leaving out the boring bits. Problem is, they were never born, so they never got to find out what they missed. For me vice is versa, if you know what I mean. I was born into this world by accident and I stayed out of habit.

People shouldn’t have children if they’ve got no use for them. Because a kid puts more demands on your life than a dog in terms of responsibilities. And you can’t just leave it by the side of the road, unless you want to wind up behind bars, but I’m sure you worked out that that was just a figure of speech.

But the thing is, meeting Margueritte and talking to her about life made me see my mother in a different light. I didn’t suddenly love her, that would be pushing things a bit far! But I felt sorry for her. As a human being, I mean. Because her and me, we spent our whole lives screaming at each other—well, she did most of the screaming—and punching holes in the walls—that bit was mostly me. But she’s still my mother. Julien is right, though it pisses me off to admit it. She didn’t have me deliberately, obviously. She got pregnant with me the same way those Algerians got the plague. I’m an accident, a mistake. That said, she could have
loved me anyway. It’s been known. Take Julien, for example. When he talks about David, his eldest boy, he always says:

“My son was an unintended side-effect of a particularly boozy night out.”

But you should see him with his kid, he loves the bones of him.

If I don’t have a kid, it’s probably for the best. Well, in a manner of speaking. I think I would have liked to have a kid. Sometimes when I look at Annette, I think how beautiful she’d look if she was pregnant. And even more beautiful with a baby in her arms. My baby, I mean. Thing is, what could I give a kid? Not much of a prize, a father like me, with no qualifications. A guy who’d never read a book in his life before the age of forty-five and even then only bits of
The Plague
by Albert Camus. A sad loser who can’t even string three fucking words together without effing and blinding.

Apart from taking him fishing and showing him how to whittle, taking advantage of the knots and the grain of the wood, I’d have nothing to teach him. I wouldn’t be a good role model. I wouldn’t know how to bring him up.

That said, Annette would really like me to get her up the duff, I know that. Sometimes, when we’re in bed, she takes my hand, lays it on her belly and whispers in my ear:

“How about we make one tonight?”

And feeling her next to me, so silky and warm, soft as a pillow, I’d give her ten kids and I know I’d love every one.

A
NNETTE
, she had a kid once. She lost the baby, some stupid illness, I don’t really know the details. She never talks about it. Even though I’m a man, I think I can understand what it’s like for a woman, losing a baby. Ever since, she’s been bursting at the seams with tears, she’s lumbered with all this love and she has no outlet for it. Maybe that’s why she’s so beautiful. Sometimes sadness tans your hide so deeply that afterwards you’re soft and silky. My mother is a perfect example of the reverse: tough as old boots, silky as sixty-grit sandpaper.

It’s true: life didn’t do her any favours. She carried me like a burden, and as soon as she started to show she was thrown out and called a slut. Seems like her mother obviously didn’t have much in the way of maternal fibre either.

Maybe the love between a mother and child is part of heredity—
The set of characteristics and traits inherited from one’s parents
—to use one of Margueritte’s words when she talks about science. Loving just wasn’t one of my mother’s traits.

I remember what she used to tell the neighbours about my birth when I was a kid.

“Ten hours it took. Ten hours of suffering worse than a dumb animal. He refused to come out, he was so big. Five kilos, can you imagine? Five kilos! Just think what that does to you. I’ll tell you: it’s like I took these two litres of milk, a bag of sugar, a kilo of flour and a packet of butter and,
I don’t know, those onions over there. Five kilos! They had to drag him out with a forceps and I had to have stitches. So after that, I said to myself, I said, never again! Especially given all the satisfaction you get, when you realize how much trouble they are…”

When I heard her telling the story, I’d feel guilty. I’d look at all the food on the table, the milk, the sugar, the onions, a whole basketful of groceries, and it would go round and round in my head: five kilos, five kilos, five kilos…

I wished I could shrivel up and disappear.

But it was like it was deliberate; the more I tried to make myself smaller, the more every bit of me seemed determined to grow. My feet, especially. God, how my mother used to rant and rave about having to buy me new shoes every three months.

“Have you any idea how much you cost me? Keep this up and you can go to school in your bare feet. In your bare feet, I’m not joking.”

It’s not that I didn’t want to curl up my toes like olden-day Chinese women—I saw a documentary about them once—but it’s really painful, wearing shoes that are too tight. And besides, sooner or later they would wear out. And one morning, there would be a hole in the sole right under my big toe, or the whole seam would split.

My mother would start yelling about how she told me so! How she couldn’t believe it, a new pair of shoes she’d only just bought me. How I was doing it on purpose. How all I was good for was making her life a misery. Nothing else.

Then she would sigh and examine the shoes from every angle and when she was completely convinced that I couldn’t go on wearing them, she would drag me to the Shoe Palace. She would barge into the shop, shouting at the top of her voice to drown out the door chime: “Monsieur Bourdelle!”

And the short-arse at the back of the shop behind his bead curtain would yell back:

“Coming, Commming! Just a second!”

He would burst out of the back room and bear down on me hungrily. He looked like a fat spider about to gobble a fly. I couldn’t stand the guy.

He would take off my shoes instead of letting me do it myself. He sweated like a pig, his hands were clammy and he’d grope my feet and say:

“Oh, he’s got big feet! Very big feet! Let’s see, let’s see… 39, 40? Yessss, 40 it is. He’s a big lad for his age. If he keeps growing like this, he’ll have to have shoes made to measure!”

I would have punched him if I’d been big enough. But at ten years old, it wasn’t a possibility. And later, when I could have decked him, it wasn’t really relevant. With men, growing older sometimes cools down the thirst for revenge, not like elephants.

My mother always picked the cheapest, ugliest shoes.

“Give him something solid, Monsieur Bourdelle, something he might get a bit of wear out of this time.”

And Bourdelle would wipe the sweat from his forehead and say: “Funny you should say that, Madame Chazes, I’ve
just had something in I think you’ll like! A new model that offers excellent ankle support. Snug fitting, crepe soles, and if that’s not enough, they’re Italian!”

“Oh, well,” my mother would say, “If they’re Italian, I’ll take them. But you know with
this one
, nothing ever lasts.”

This one
was me.

Bourdelle would rummage through his unsold stock and then come back all fake smile and tell me I was in luck, that they had only one pair left in my size.

“You’ll see, they’ll last. See how stylish they are? Young people love them, they’re very sporty.”

From a grey or brown shoebox, he would take out a pair of shit-kickers, the sort of clodhoppers a country priest might wear. He would try to force them on, saying:

“Don’t tense your foot, push down with your heel. Thaaat’s it, lad. You see? I told you he was a size forty.”

My mother would say:

“Let me have a look.”

She would frown and give him a tight-lipped stare, then nod to let him know she wasn’t born yesterday. In the end, she would always say:

“Tell you what, give him one size bigger, that should give me a bit of leeway.”

And so I would leave with shoes too big for me that I had to wear until they fell apart.

It’s funny the things you remember about your childhood. The shoes that were so huge they rubbed my feet raw only
to crush my toes later and leave me with blisters. That, and the trousers so short you could see my ankles and my friends would take the piss:

“Hey, Chazes, you’re at half mast! Did somebody die?”

Then there was the monthly trip to Chez Mireille, the salon where my mother had her hair dyed and old ladies went to get perms. I felt mortified just stepping through the door. The other boys all went to Monsieur Mesnard, the barber who cut their fathers’ hair. But since I didn’t have a father, I had to make do with a cut and blow job from a hairstylist—and unfortunately, that’s a figure of speech.

I was always given the chair next to the window. I used to feel like the whole village traipsed past whenever I was there. That everyone would see me with my feet dangling in the air, my wet hair plastered to my skull and neatly parted in the middle. The assistant would put a pink towel around my shoulders. She would press her huge breasts against my back, so that was one good thing about it.

Then she would cut my hair with scissors instead of clippers like the other boys in my class. The haircut was probably fine, but every time I left the salon there was someone calling me names. People say names will never hurt you. But they’re wrong, names hurt just as much as sticks and stones. They just break your bones more slowly.

Obviously, I wasn’t the only badly dressed kid in my class. But, in case you hadn’t noticed, other people’s troubles are no consolation when you’ve got your own. It’s not even as
though it makes you feel you’re not so alone. Sometimes, it’s the opposite.

Landremont, who’s got a thing for proverbs, always says: That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

So that’s life, then, you’re either strong or dead?

Talk about a shitty choice.

M
Y MOTHER AND ME
, we don’t talk much. We give each other a wide berth. From time to time, I have a look to see if the back door is open, if she’s got washing on the line. Otherwise, I don’t need to see her to know what she’s up to. I can imagine. At eight o’clock every morning she comes downstairs in her dressing gown and slippers. She makes herself coffee—no sugar—and eats the last of yesterday’s bread slathered with butter while she watches some soap opera on TV. She washes the breakfast dishes and then goes upstairs to put on her face. When she comes down again, she’s wearing mascara, lipstick and perfume. My mother likes perfume. She always wears it, but not too much. It’s still possible to breathe. It would embarrass me if she was tarty. She is my mother, after all. In front of the mirror in the hall she fixes her hair and says, Well, well, old girl, or, Would you look at the state of me this morning! and she sighs. Then she goes out to do her shopping.

She’s sixty-three but she doesn’t look it. She looks older. It’s loneliness that does that. And maybe the two packs of smokes she gets through every day. I wouldn’t mind, but she knows perfectly well that Smoking Kills, like they say in the warnings on the packets she chucks away.

Coming back from the shop is a 500-metre climb. When she gets back, she’s out of breath.

When I was a kid, I’d sometimes say:

“You shouldn’t smoke, Maman.”

And she’d say:

“You suck the life out of me faster than the ciggies, so don’t go lecturing me. And don’t call me Maman, you know it annoys me.”

And I’d say:

“Yes, Maman.”

She always thought I was doing it to wind her up. But I was never able to call her Jacqueline or Jackie. I tried my best, but I just couldn’t. It was Maman or nothing.

And nothing wasn’t an option.

T
HERE WERE BIG
changes at Francine’s. With Francine, not the restaurant.

I showed up one night at about seven. She was on her own, cleaning glasses behind the bar. I put both hands on the zinc counter and leaned over to kiss her cheek. I said:

“Hi! All right?”

I could tell it was the wrong question, because up close it was obvious that Francine was anything but all right. She had a red nose and eyes to match.

I rephrased and started over:

“Hi! Not good?”

“Not great…” she said in a tiny voice.

“You’re not sick?”

She shook her head, No, no.

“So what’s the matter? You look like someone died…”

She burst into tears and rushed into the back room.

I was completely discombobulated—
see also: disconcerted
—you could have knocked me down with a feather.

Jojo came out of the kitchen waving at me to shut up.

I whispered:

“What’s going on?”

“Youssef is gone.”

“Gone where?”

“What do I know? He’s gone, that’s all there is to it. There was a row yesterday when they were closing up. Turns out
he’s seeing someone else. Francine isn’t taking it too well, so best not to rub salt in the wound, you understand?”

I understood perfectly, especially since we’ve spent the past three years taking bets on how long they would last. Francine still looks good, for her age. Problem is, that means she could have been his mother if she’d started young. She’s got sixteen years on him, imagine! And she’s jealous with it. She couldn’t stand another girl so much as looking at her man sideways.

Now, Youssef’s not the kind to bang anything that moves, but it’s only human for a man to have close encounters of a sexual kind. As long as it’s hygienic, I’m not about to cast the first stone.

Jojo added:

“This is just between us, so you have to keep it to yourself, OK? The girl he’s banging is Stéphanie.”

I said, Oh, shit!

He said: Yeah, but shh!

Stéphanie’s just a kid—she’s eighteen, maybe not even that. Francine has her help out behind the bar sometimes when the place is rammed. I’m not saying it’s her own fault.

When Francine came back, snuffling, I comforted her as best I could.

“Give it time, he’ll get tired of Stéphanie, you’ll see. Youss’ is the stay-at-home type, he’s a creature of habit. Besides, he knows the best wine comes in old bottles.”

Francine looked at me like she couldn’t believe what I’d just said, then wailed and ran out sobbing.

Jojo threw his arms wide and said:

“Jesus, you’re really amazing, you know that.”

I said:

“Don’t mention it, just trying to help.”

Later, I reassured Francine. I explained that even if the bodywork had seen better days, it was her inner beauty that mattered. As an example I told her about Monsieur Massillon and his black 1956 Simca Versailles, and how, even though it looked like a Sherman tank and some people laughed at him, he’d had an offer of €7,000 for the old wreck, so there!

Francine sobbed some more.

Women are like that, they need to pour their hearts out. In the end I left her with Jojo because the situation was getting to be awkward: every time I said something to cheer her up, it started her off again. Some people just can’t help it, they don’t know how to accept sympathy.

Jojo said, Don’t come back for a bit, yeah, give her a chance to calm down…

I told him not to worry, because I had shopping to do.

“Good, fine, you go do your shopping. And take your time about it.”

I left him to deal with Francine. The whole story had left me brooding and thinking and stuff.

In a way, other people’s troubles are useful. You realize how lucky you are not to have the same problems as them and you freak out when you think that it could have been you.

In this case, I was thinking that even though this had nothing to do with me, one day Annette and me would end up in the same situation. She’s thirty-six, I’m forty-five. Sooner or later we’ll be out of sync.

I headed off to Super U with this thought stuck in my throat.