The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles (13 page)

“We’re meeting them inside, you’re sure?” asked Hortense in the car. “This is so cool! I wouldn’t miss it for the world! An afternoon at the Ritz swimming pool, the height of luxury!” She sighed, stretching. “I don’t know why, but the moment we leave Courbevoie and cross the bridge into Paris, I feel I’m coming back to life. I hate the suburbs. Why did we go live there anyway, Mom?”

Joséphine ignored the question. She was looking for a parking spot. It was Saturday, and Iris had invited them to meet at her health club. “It’ll do you good, Jo. You seem so stressed out.” But finding a place to park near the Ritz was no easy task—and not exactly the most relaxing way to spend the afternoon. Everyone was out Christmas shopping. Joséphine kept driving around, craning her neck, as the girls grew more and more impatient.

“There, Mom! Right there!”

“No! That’s a no-parking zone, and I don’t want to get a ticket!”

“Oh, Mom, you’re such a buzzkill.”

That was their latest word for her, buzzkill. And the two of them used it constantly.

Just then, a car pulled out of a space right in front of them. Joséphine braked and put on her turn signal. The girls bounced up and down.

“Go for it, Mom! You can do it!”

Parallel parking wasn’t one of Joséphine’s strengths, but she managed to squeeze into the space. The girls clapped as she mopped her brow.

She sweated even more at the thought of walking into the hotel and dealing with the hotel staff. She was sure they would look down their noses at her, wondering what she was doing there. She found herself following Hortense, who seemed perfectly at ease, nodding distantly at the doormen in their livery.

“Have you been here before?” Joséphine whispered.

“No,” Hortense whispered back, “but I imagine the pool must be downstairs. And if we’re wrong, we’ll just turn around. These people work here. They’re paid to give us directions.”

Joséphine stuck close to her daughter, feeling as much out of her element as Hortense clearly felt in it. Zoé, meanwhile, was gazing in wonder at the glass cases filled with jewels, watches, and handbags.

“Wow, look at that one! I’ll bet it’s really, really expensive! Max Barthillet says that you can steal from the rich if you’re poor, because they don’t notice it, and it’s only fair.”

Joséphine was starting to think that maybe Hortense was right about this Max kid.

“Mom, look! A diamond egg!” exclaimed Zoé. “Do you think a diamond chicken laid it?”

At the club’s front desk, a beautiful young woman asked them their names, checked a big ledger, and confirmed that they were expected by Madame Dupin poolside. A scented candle flickered on the desk, and classical music wafted in from hidden speakers. Glancing at her feet, Joséphine felt ashamed of her cheap shoes. The young woman showed them to the dressing room and wished them a good afternoon. The three of them disappeared into their changing stalls.

Joséphine got undressed. She folded her bra carefully and rubbed at the marks it had left on her skin. She took off her tights and rolled them up, folded her T-shirt, sweater, and pants, and put everything into the locker reserved for her. Taking her bathing suit out of the plastic pouch where she’d stored it in August, she felt a stab of anxiety. She’d gained weight since last summer; would the bathing suit still fit her? She looked around and noticed a white bathrobe on a hanger. Saved!

She put on the robe and went looking for her daughters, who had gone ahead to find Iris and Alexandre.

Iris was lying on a wooden deck chair, looking sumptuous in her white bathrobe. A book was open on her knees. She was deep in conversation with someone Joséphine could see only from behind—a slim girl in a sparkling, skimpy bikini. Her suit bottom was so tiny that Joséphine thought it was almost superfluous. Everything about the girl exuded grace and beauty, a
perfect match for the refined decor of the pool, its blue water reflected in undulations along the walls. All of Jo’s self-consciousness returned, and she drew the bathrobe tighter around herself.
This time, I swear I’m going to stop eating, effective immediately, and I’ll do sit-ups every morning. I was a slender young girl once, too.

She saw Alexandre and Zoé in the water and waved at them. Alex started to get out to say hello, but Joséphine waved him off. He dove back underwater, grabbing Zoé’s legs and making her shriek.

The girl in the red bikini turned around. It was Hortense.

“Hortense! What in the world are you wearing?”

In her astonishment, Joséphine said this louder than she’d intended.

“Come on, Mom, it’s a bathing suit. And don’t shout like that. This isn’t the public pool in Courbevoie.”

“Hello, Jo,” Iris said, sitting up to put herself between mother and daughter.

“Hello,” said Joséphine, immediately turning back to her daughter. “Hortense, will you tell me where that bathing suit came from?”

“I bought it for her last summer, Jo. There’s no reason for you to get all worked up about it. Hortense looks amazing.”

“Hortense, go change. Immediately.”

“No way! Just because you wear a burlap bag doesn’t mean I have to.”

Hortense met her mother’s furious glare without blinking. Strands of hair had escaped from her barrette and her face was
flushed, partly spoiling her femme fatale look. Joséphine spluttered with rage at her daughter’s insult.

“Okay, girls, let’s calm down,” Iris said, smiling to ease the tension. “Your daughter’s growing up, Jo. She’s not a baby anymore. I know it’s a shock to you, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Unless you plan to stick her on a shelf between two dictionaries.”

Feeling faint, Joséphine sat down on the deck chair nearest Iris. Confronting her sister and her daughter at the same time was more than she could handle. She slumped there for a moment, feeling shaky and defeated. She stared at the watery reflections, the plants, the white marble columns, and the blue mosaics without really seeing them. Then she got up and took a deep breath to hold back her tears.
The last thing I need is to make a fool of myself.
She turned around, ready to confront her daughter. But Hortense was over on the pool steps, testing the water with her toe.

“You shouldn’t get so worked up in front of her, you know,” muttered Iris, rolling over onto her stomach. “You lose all your credibility.”

“Easy for you to say. She’s awful to me.”

“It’s called adolescence, and she’s in the thick of it.”

“It’s still awful. She treats me like dirt.”

“Maybe that’s because you let people walk all over you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You let people treat you any way they please. You have no self-respect, so how do you expect others to respect you?”

Joséphine gaped at her sister.

“I mean it,” Iris continued. “Remember when we were little, and I used to make you kneel in front of me and balance your most prized possession on top of your head. You had to bow and offer it to me without letting it fall. Otherwise, you’d be punished! Remember?”

“That was just a game!”

“Oh, it was more than a game. I was testing you. I wanted to see how far I could go, what I could get you to do. You should have put up a fight, but you never did. So don’t be surprised your daughter treats you that way.”

“Stop it! Next you’re going to tell me it’s my fault.”

“Of course it’s your fault!”

That was too much for Jo. Big tears rolled down her cheeks. She wept in silence as Iris regaled her with stories of their childhood, of the humiliating games she had invented to keep her sister enslaved.

Here I am back in my beloved Middle Ages
, thought Joséphine.
I have and always will be a humble serf to my sister and to other people. Today, it’s Hortense; tomorrow it’ll be someone else.

Having made her point, Iris rolled onto her back again, and their conversation continued as if nothing had happened.

“What are you doing for Christmas?”

Joséphine gulped, swallowing her tears. “I don’t know. I haven’t had time to think about it. Shirley asked if I wanted to go to Scotland with her.”

“To stay with her parents?”

“No. She doesn’t want to go back there, for some reason. We
would stay with friends of hers. But Hortense thinks Scotland is a total drag.”

“We could spend Christmas together at the chalet.”

“I’ll have to think about it. It’ll be the first Christmas without their father.” Joséphine sighed. Then she had a terrible thought. “What about Mother Courage? Will she be there?”

“No, or I wouldn’t have suggested it. I figure we’d better not let you two near one another without calling the bomb squad.”

“Very funny. Did you mention it to Hortense?”

“Not yet. I only asked her what she wanted for Christmas. Same for Zoé.”

“And she told you what she wanted?”

“A computer. But she said that you’d already offered to buy her one, and didn’t want to hurt your feelings. See how thoughtful she can be?”

“That’s one way of putting it. She practically bullied me into promising. And if I give her such an expensive gift, what can I give Zoé? I hate being unfair.”

“That’s where I can help, Jo. You know it’s not that big a deal for me. If you like, I won’t even tell the girls. I’ll just give them a little present on the side and let you have all the glory.”

“That’s generous of you, but it wouldn’t feel right.”

“Come on, Jo. Lighten up.”

“No, I mean it.”

“Fine, I won’t insist,” Iris said with a smile. “But remember, Christmas is in three weeks and you don’t have much time left to earn your millions. Unless you win the lottery.”

Don’t I know it!
thought Joséphine to herself.
Don’t I damned well know it! I was supposed to hand in the translation a week ago. I don’t have time to do the research for my postdoc scholarship, and I’m lying to my sister about working for her husband. My life was once as neat as a musical score, and now it’s just a big, noisy mess.

While Joséphine continued her inner monologue, Alexandre was waiting patiently for Zoé to quit splashing about so he could ask her the questions buzzing in his head. Zoé was the only one who would know the answers. He couldn’t confide in Carmen, or in his mother, or in Hortense, who always treated him like a baby. So when Zoé finally came to rest her elbows on the edge of the pool, Alex swam over and said:

“Zoé, listen to me. This is important.”

“What’s up?”

“Do you think that when grown-ups stop making love, it means they don’t love each other anymore?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Because Mom and Dad don’t sleep together anymore. It’s been two weeks. Dad sleeps in his study. In a little cot.”

“Oh boy! Your parents are getting a divorce, for sure! And just wait, they’ll start sending you to a shrinker. A kid in my school says that’s a person who opens up your head to see what’s going on inside.”

“I already know what’s going on in my head. I’m scared all the time. Before Dad started sleeping in his study I used to get up at night and listen at their bedroom door. And it was so quiet in there, it scared me! Before, they used to make love sometimes. It was noisy, but it made me feel better.”

“So they don’t make love at all anymore?”

Alexandre shook his head.

“And they aren’t sleeping together?”

“Nope. Not for the last two weeks.”

“Then you’re going to end up just like me: divorced!”

Hortense, who had been practicing swimming underwater the length of the pool, popped up next to them just as Alexandre said, “Mom and Dad, divorced!” She floated on her back and pretended not to be listening, but Alexandre and Zoé stopped talking right away.

If they stop talking, it has to be something big
, Hortense thought.
Aunt Iris and Uncle Philippe, divorced? If he left her, she’ll have a lot less money, and she won’t be able to spoil me the way she does.
Hortense thought about the computer. She’d been a fool to turn down Iris’s offer. It would probably have been ten times better than the one her mother would choose.
Mom always talks about saving money. She’s such a buzzkill with all her talk about saving. Life sucks big-time.

Hortense observed the people around her. The women were elegant, and their husbands were . . . somewhere else. Too busy working, earning money so their gorgeous wives could lounge around the pool in the latest Eres bathing suits and Hermès pareo wraps. Earlier, Hortense had dashed out of the changing room to go hang out with her aunt, so those beautiful women would think Iris was her mother. She was ashamed of her own mom. At least her father was elegant and chic, and hung out with important people. He knew all the brands of Scotch, spoke English, played tennis and bridge, knew how to dress. Hortense’s
eyes came back to rest on Iris.
She doesn’t look all that sad. Maybe Alexandre’s wrong; he’s such a dummy. Just like Mom, sitting there, wrapped in her bathrobe. I bet she never gets in the water now. I’ve made her ashamed.

“Aren’t you going in?” Iris asked Joséphine.

“No, when I was in the changing room I noticed that I had . . . that it’s not a good time of the month for me.”