Theory of Remainders (10 page)

He gave a small snort of indignation. Did she actually believe that? “No we didn’t,” he objected, too tired to play the game of politeness. “We gave up. We quit.” He put his hand to his eyes. A headache was starting to bloom. It was bad enough being in this house, in this town. Did he also have to put up with Yvonne’s self-serving revision of history?

“I don’t know how you take it all in stride,” he continued, unable to stop the ugliness in his own voice. “Or rather, maybe I do. Maybe that’s the advantage of teaching literature: you learn how to lose yourself in fictions. You make believe.”

“Philip.”

“Don’t
Philip
me.” He was standing up now.

Heads were turning.

“Stop it,” she said firmly. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

He raised his voice another notch. “You crack open the books and let the metaphors buoy you up. I guess some people just read Dante, while the rest of us have to live it.”

Yvonne started to respond but caught herself, resting her eyes for a moment before speaking again. “Thank you for coming this evening. And for making the trip. It meant a great deal to me.”

“I’m not done,” he snapped.

“It was nice to see you, again, Philip. Have a good flight back.”

“Don’t you dare walk away,” he barked.

But she did dare.

“That’s right,” he called to her back in English as she crossed the room. A voice in his head hissed at him to shut up. “Run along! Whenever it gets uncomfortable, just turn away.”

She disappeared around the corner into the living room. Guests gawked at Philip, and he felt himself shrink from their eyes. Why had it been so important to antagonize her, to feel the old passion, that ancient anger? He’d blown on the dark coals and made them glow again.

Through the doorway he spotted Hervé heading in his direction, on a mission. Philip escaped down the back hall.

In the kitchen he surprised a group chatting around the coffee maker, leading him to zag to the right, toward the service staircase. He clomped up to the second floor, but even there voices echoed from rooms, so he climbed yet another flight up to the cramped third floor. Aside from storage areas, there was nothing but a single tiny bedroom up here, the old servant’s quarters, a room he knew all too well. If nothing else, it would be a decent place to hide out for a bit. He made for the door at the end of the landing, twisting the knob and pushing it open.

There was a thump, followed by a yowl, a gasp, and the sound of tumbling furniture. An orange cat caught by the swinging door bounded over a night table and up onto the single bed. At the little writing desk an adolescent girl with dark hair had leapt to her feet so suddenly that her chair had tipped over, her mouth forming an O of astonishment. Philip gaped at the shape of her forehead, the curve of her nose, the roundness in the eyes. His focus sharpened. She looked to be eleven or twelve, startled, but not frightened.

“Excuse me,” he stammered in French, staggering back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone was here.”

“This is my room,” she replied with a hint of indignation.

He stared. “Your room?”

“When we visit
Mamie
,” she replied.

Mamie?
Grandma? Did she mean Anne-Madeleine? So this was Margaux, Yvonne’s daughter. He paused and glanced about the walls. The room had changed. There were new posters, new furniture, new colors. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I . . . I took a wrong turn.” He backed out. “I shouldn’t have barged in on you.”

Now her face wrinkled in a look of concern. “Were you looking for something,
Monsieur?
” She studied him and her eyes widened with a kind of recognition.

Philip took another step back, and as he saw Margaux moving toward him, he turned and bolted, dashing down the hall to the stairway, taking the steps two by two, desperate to escape. It was crazy, really, this whole visit. What on earth had he been thinking? He charged through the kitchen, leaving astonished guests in his wake.

Outside the front door he collided in the dark with a couple coming up the walk, the man stinking of whiskey. Philip pushed past.

“Where do you think you’re going?” called a voice in French.

He wheeled around. The man was Roger. A woman stood at his side. Not Élisabeth. Younger. Much younger.

“You can’t leave now,” Roger slurred, grinning. “I just got here. The party’s about to begin.”

Philip wasn’t prepared to face any more drunken Auberts. He turned and strode to the jungle of cars, some parked at the base of the drive, others nosed onto the lawn. Under the trees where it was nearly black, he searched for his Renault. In the distance Roger exchanged whispers with his date. Footsteps crunched on the gravel, then a hand lit upon Philip’s shoulder. He shook it off.

“What’s going on?” Roger said.

“I’m going home.”

“You must have met Évelyne’s brats, is that it? Flora has a litter of them, too. It’s enough to put anyone off. But you can’t go now.”

“Don’t tell me what I can’t do.”

“Listen, Philip, you’re just wound up. You need a drink.”

“And don’t tell me what I need.”

Roger staggered after him through the tangle of cars. “Oh come on,” he said, his tongue thickened with alcohol. “You’re not being . . . reasonable . . .” He paused. “Look, I know, it’s not easy coming back.”

“Mind your own business, Roger.” He’d located the car and was digging in his pockets for the keys.

“What happened? Was it Hervé? It’s always painful to meet the man who’s fucking your wife. Trust me, I know all about that.”

“Leave me alone, will you? You don’t know the half of it.”

Roger scrunched his face in concentration, then brightened. “I get it. I know what has you all riled up. You met Margaux, didn’t you?”

Philip jammed his key into the lock.

“That’s it,” Roger continued. “You met Margaux. And she reminded you of Sophie. Isn’t that right? You felt like you were looking at your own daughter. Well, who can blame you? That’s what I see, too.”

Philip growled with frustration. Why the hell couldn’t he get his key in the lock?

“Come on,” Roger said, laying his hand on Philip’s shoulder.

“Don’t touch me, Roger.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” He hooked his arm around Philip’s shoulder, trying to draw him away from the car. “Come on back. We have things to talk about . . . important things.”

Philip spun on his heels, facing that cocky grin. Then he shoved as hard as he could, sending Roger back with a cry as he fell to the ground.

“Roger?” called out a woman’s voice in French. It was the girl he had arrived with, up by the front door. “Roger? Is everything all right?”

Roger plucked gravel from his palms. “Fine, my dear,” he called into the darkness. “I’ll be with you in a moment.” He struggled to his feet. “We need to talk.”

“What we need,” Philip said, “is for you to leave me alone.”

“You have things to get off your chest. And I’m such a good soul that I’m willing to make a sacrifice to help you. You know what I’ll give up?” He continued in a confidential whisper, nodding in the direction of the front door. “Joëlle. I’ve been working on her for three weeks, and tonight was to be the night. But for old times’ sake, I’ll go out with you, instead.”

“Go back to your party, Roger. Go back to your carousing. Don’t let me stop you.” Finally the key glided into the lock and he climbed into the car. He fired up the engine and shifted into reverse.

“We need to talk,” Roger called out.

He began backing the car through the maze of vehicles.

“Philip,” Roger shouted as the Renault pulled away. Then, when it was almost too late, he bellowed out a name: “Olivier Morin!”

Philip skidded to a stop. Roger had not said Édouard Morin, a name he thought of in one way or another every day of his life. No, not Édouard, the boy, but Olivier, the father, the one who’d fought to protect his son from the press. And from Philip himself.

Roger smiled as he swaggered toward the stopped car. “That got your attention, didn’t it? Olivier Morin.”

“What about him, Roger?”

“He’s dead, Philip. A year-and-a-half ago.”

“What’s that to me?”

“Don’t be stupid. You know he was the one keeping Édouard from talking. The one shielding him. But you could get to Morin now,” he said. “I’m almost sure of it.” Roger was delighted with himself.

Philip tightened his fingers on the steering wheel. It was the last thing he needed to hear. “I’m not interested in Édouard Morin,” he said finally. “It’s over. It’s too long ago.”

“Oh come on. Who do you think you’re kidding?”

Philip revved the engine and backed the car onto the street as Roger lumbered forward in the shadows.

“What’s going on?” Roger cried out. “Am I the only one who cares about that girl any more?”

Philip shifted gears and the tires screeched as the vehicle lurched forward into the night.

Back at the hotel Philip slipped in and grabbed the room key from its pigeonhole behind the reception desk, heading upstairs before Monsieur Bécot could come out. He closed himself in his room with the lights off and sank down on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. A glint of reflected moonlight caught his eye. The handle of the minibar. He turned away.

What a colossal miscalculation. He should never have returned. It was too much to bear. Sophie, Roger, Yvonne, Hervé, Margaux. In a word: Yvetot.

The next morning he rose late, his mind thick, a throbbing behind his eyes. As his thoughts cleared, the memory of the previous evening came back, and right along with it a deep feeling of shame. Had he really said those things to Yvonne? Had he actually knocked Roger to the ground? He rubbed his head. He was done making a fool of himself.

Skipping breakfast, he checked out of the hotel and threw his bag in the car, driving all the way to Charles-de-Gaulle without stopping. After turning in the keys at the Hertz drop-off, he began the reverse process of his travels, receiving his boarding pass and checking in, confirming his identity at passport control, and stripping himself of metal objects at security. Two hours before departure he had already sunk into a plastic chair in the waiting lounge, still off-schedule from the first half of his trip, hungry, unshaven, sullen.

More than anything, he wanted to sleep, to turn off his brain. He tried to find a position that might allow him to slip into unconsciousness, twisting in his seat, hunkering down, jamming his fists into his jacket pockets—where his right hand encountered a tubular object. He pulled it out and found himself staring at Yvonne’s ballpoint pen. He rolled this black wand between his fingers, examining the university logo, slowly closing his fingers around it.

That girl in the room.
Were you looking for something, Monsieur?
Of course he was looking—had been for over a decade. But what about Margaux? What would it be like for a twelve-year-old girl to always know that her half-sister lay buried somewhere in the countryside nearby?

He’d been fretting about Hervé and Yvonne, sparring with Roger. All that was pointless. He might not put it so bluntly with his patients, but Philip knew how it worked. By the time a person is twenty, the die is cast, the capacity for change nearly exhausted. Adults don’t count. It’s the children who matter. The only ones who really do.

He shoved the pen back in his pocket, stood, and walked to the wall of glass looking out upon the runways. In the distance, planes took off and landed against a background of cobalt blue. A little later his own flight began boarding. The crowd thinned. Stragglers trotted down the gangway. There was a final boarding call. He heard his name paged. Eventually the doors closed. At 1:45 p.m., Air France flight 332 pulled away from the gate and taxied out to the tarmac, where it waited in a queue.