The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles (3 page)

But after going through his savings, he felt his self-confidence wavering. Especially at night. He would wake at three in the morning, quietly get up, pour himself a whiskey in the living room, and turn on the TV. In the past, he had always felt very strong and insightful. When he first heard about the buyout and possible layoffs, he told himself that his ten years at Gunman & Co. would certainly count for something. He was the first person to be laid off.

Antoine sat on the bed and stared at the tips of his shoes. Looking for work was so depressing. He was just another number on a form. He sometimes thought about this while he was in Mylène’s arms. He told her what he would do the day he became his own boss. “With my experience, you know what I’d do?” he would ask her, and Mylène listened. She believed in him. She had some money that her parents had left her, but he hadn’t accepted any yet. He hoped to find a more impressive partner to join him on his next adventure.

Antoine first met Mylène Corbier when he took Hortense to the hairdresser on her twelfth birthday. Mylène was so impressed with the girl’s composure that she gave her a free manicure. Hortense held out her hands as if she were granting a special privilege. Ever since that day, whenever she had time, Mylène polished Hortense’s nails, and the girl would leave the salon admiring her reflection in her shiny nails.

Mylène made Antoine feel good. She was petite, blond, vivacious, and had deliciously creamy skin. Her slight reserve and shyness made him feel at ease and confident.

The red suitcase was soon packed. Yet Antoine dawdled, pretending to look for a pair of cufflinks and cursing loudly in the hope that Joséphine would hear him and come into the bedroom and beg him to stay.

He went into the hallway and stopped at the kitchen door. He waited, still hoping that she would take that step toward him, would try to piece together a reconciliation. But she didn’t budge.

“Well, that’s it,” he said. “I’m leaving.”

“Fine. You can keep your keys. You’ll probably have forgotten things and you’ll need to come back for them. Warn me so I can plan to be out. It’s better that way.”

“Good idea. I’ll keep them. What will you tell the girls?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”

“I’d rather be here when you speak with them.”

She turned off the faucet and leaned against the sink.

“I’ll tell them the truth, if you don’t mind. I don’t feel like lying.”

“But what will you tell them?”

“The truth. That Daddy doesn’t have a job anymore. That Daddy isn’t feeling well and needs some time to himself, so he left.”

“Time to himself?” Antoine repeated the phrase, comforted by it. “That’s good, it’s not too final. It’s good.”

Leaning against the door frame was a mistake. He was suddenly overcome by a wave of nostalgia.

“Just go, Antoine. There’s nothing left to say. Please go!”

Joséphine was staring at the floor. He followed her gaze to the suitcase at his feet. He’d completely forgotten about it.

“Okay then. Good-bye. If you need to reach me . . .”

“You can call. Or I’ll leave a message for you at Mylène’s salon. She’ll always know where to find you, won’t she?”

“What about the plants?”

“The plants? Who gives a damn about them? Fuck the plants!”

“Jo, please! Don’t get so worked up. I can stay if you want.”

She gave him a withering look. He shrugged, picked up his bag, and headed for the door. And then he was gone.

Gripping the edge of the sink, Joséphine began to sob so hard that her body shook. First she cried about the void Antoine would be leaving in her life after sixteen years of living together, the first man she ever slept with, the father of her two children. Then she cried thinking about the girls. Never again would they feel completely secure, knowing that they had a mother and a father who loved each other. And finally, there was the fear of being alone. Antoine had always been in charge of the finances, the taxes, and the mortgage. He chose their cars, and he un-clogged the sink. She could always count on him. She just looked after the house and the girls’ schooling.

The phone rang, jolting her out of her despair.

“Jo, is that you, darling?”

It was Iris, her older sister, whose upbeat, seductive voice got to Joséphine every time.

Iris Dupin was a tall, slim forty-four-year-old with long black hair that flowed over her shoulders like a wedding veil. She was named for her intense blue eyes.

In her twenties, Iris had been the kind of woman who set trends while seducing every man she met. Iris didn’t live or breathe like other mortals: she reigned.

After college, she left for New York and enrolled in the film program at Columbia University. At the end of each year, the two best graduating students were given the funding to make a thirty-minute short feature. Iris had been one of the two. The other student was her boyfriend, Gabor Minar, a tall, shaggy Hungarian. They kissed backstage at the awards ceremony. Iris’s future in movies was as plain to see as the Hollywood sign.

And then out of the blue, she gave it all up. She was thirty years old, had just come back from the Sundance Festival, where she’d won some prize. She was planning a full-length feature that was already getting buzz. She even had a verbal commitment from a producer. And without any explanation—Iris never explained anything—she flew back to France and got married.

It was incredibly traditional: the white veil, the church, and the priest. The place was packed, and everyone was holding their breath, half expecting Iris to whip off her dress and, stark naked, shout, “Just kidding!” Like in a movie.

Nothing of the sort happened.

The groom was a certain Philippe Dupin, who looked quite handsome in his morning suit. Iris said they had met on a flight to Paris, and that it had been love at first sight.

Philippe was an uptight corporate lawyer full of his own convictions. He’d started an international business practice and formed alliances with big law firms in Paris, Milan, New York, and London. He was successful and couldn’t understand why everyone else wasn’t as well. “Where there’s a will there’s a way,” he liked to say.

At the wedding, he looked at his wife’s assembled friends with nonchalance mixed with disdain. His mother and father wore a slightly superior look that suggested they thought their son was marrying beneath him.

The wedding guests left in disgust. Iris was no fun anymore. She was no longer the stuff of dreams. She had become horribly normal, and in Iris, this was in very poor taste. Some of her friends disappeared forever. She was off her pedestal, her crown rolling away.

In time, Iris wound up embracing the same verities Philippe held so dear: a child behaved and did well in school; a husband made money and provided for his family; a wife took care of the household and made her husband proud. Iris didn’t work. “There are women who suffer an embarrassment of leisure and those who master it,” she said. “Doing nothing is an art.”

I must live on another planet
, Joséphine thought, listening as her sister’s semiautomatic chatter was now coming around to the topic of Antoine’s unemployment.

“Tell me, has your husband found anything yet?” was Iris’s favorite line, to which Joséphine would always say no.

“Really? So he still hasn’t worked that out? How can he afford to be picky, with such modest talent?”

Everything about my sister is phony
, Joséphine thought, wedging the phone against her shoulder.

“Is anything wrong?” asked Iris. “You sound odd.”

“I have a cold.”

“Poor thing. Don’t forget, we’re having dinner with Mother tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow night?” She had completely forgotten.

Every other Tuesday, Iris had Henriette over for dinner. Antoine tried, with some success, to avoid those dinners. He couldn’t stand Philippe, who seemed to need to give Antoine footnotes when he spoke to him. He didn’t like Iris either. When she talked to him, she made him feel like a wad of chewing gum stuck to the sole of her stilettos.

“Yes, darling,” Iris said. “Are you bringing Antoine, or is he vanishing into thin air again?”

Joséphine smiled sadly. That was one way of putting it. “He’s not coming.”

“We’ll have to make up another excuse for him. You know Mother doesn’t like his not being there.”

“To be honest, I really don’t care.”

“You let Antoine get away with way too much. I would have thrown him out ages ago. Anyway, you’re never going to change, poor darling.”

For as long as she could remember, Joséphine had been the brainy one, the one who spent hours in the library doing research papers along with the other losers and misfits.

She aced exams but couldn’t be trusted with eyeliner. She
twisted her ankle going down the stairs because her nose was in a book by Montesquieu. She even plugged in the toaster under running water because she was listening to France Culture on the radio. Jo stayed up till all hours studying while her seductive older sister went out and conquered the world.

When Joséphine passed a prestigious teaching exam, Henriette asked about her plans. “Where is that going to get you, dear? To be target practice for high school kids out in the slums?”

When she finished her dissertation—“France’s Economic and Social Development in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries”—and got her doctorate, her mother had again reacted with cynicism. “Poor darling, you’d do far better writing about Richard the Lionheart’s sex life. That at least would interest people. A film could be made out of it, or a TV series. You could pay me back for all those years I slaved to pay for your studies.”

Henriette had been hard on Joséphine from the very beginning. Joséphine’s father used to say, affably and even lovingly, “The stork must have picked the wrong house.” This feeble joke earned him so many cold looks from his wife that he eventually stopped saying it.

One evening, the night before Bastille Day, he put his hand to his chest, said, “It’s a little too soon to set off the fireworks,” and died. Joséphine and Iris were ten and fourteen. The funeral was magnificent. Looking tragic and majestic, Henriette orchestrated the whole thing, down to the smallest detail: the big sprays of white flowers strewn on the coffin, the funeral march. She copied Jackie Kennedy’s black veil and had the girls kiss the casket before it was lowered into the ground.