Theory of Remainders (14 page)

He needed Melanie’s face, wanted to see what her body had to say.

“Can I go now,” she said through her teeth. It didn’t sound like a question.

“We still have twenty minutes.”

“What, so you can earn what, like, another thousand bucks? What’s the matter? Are you running short of money on your little French vacation?”

He felt a pinch. “I’m not on vacation, Melanie. You know I wouldn’t have left if I didn’t need to.”

“Oh,
right
. Of course. It must be super-important.”

She’d found a lever, and Philip felt the balance in the conversation tipping. “You know I can’t talk about this with you.”

“Oh, sure. I get it. It’s all, like,
do you trust me, Melanie?
But it doesn’t go in the other direction, does it? When I ask a question, it’s all hush-hush. Everything you do is top secret.”

Philip pressed his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose. A pain was blossoming behind his eyes. She had a point of course, but he couldn’t start telling patients about his private life.

Up above, the moth had slowed in its attack on the light shade, circling more erratically. Maybe it had learned its lesson, was ready to cut its losses. Maybe it was just exhausted.

“Look,” he began. “I wish I didn’t have to be away right now, but I do. That doesn’t make our sessions less important to me.”

“Yeah, right,” she said blandly. “Whatever.”

Her tone irked him. “No, not
whatever
,” he said. “Why do you think I’ve arranged to keep our sessions going like this?”

“I’m so grateful.” Her voice was listless. “Thanks a billion.”

“Stop pretending it doesn’t matter to you.”

“But it
doesn’t
,” she said.

His shoulders tightened. “Melanie.”

“Don’t you get it?” she continued. “
I couldn’t care less
.”

“
Melanie
.”

“So you should just enjoy your vacation. How’s your tan?”

“Stop it.”

“I hear they have all these topless beaches over there. I bet you like that, don’t you?”

“Damn it, Melanie.” He threw his head back and clenched his teeth. Did the girl understand nothing? Why did she behave like this? After everything he’d been through, all he’d done for her, the life he’d given up, the trouble he’d taken,
this
was how she thanked him?

Then a long breath escaped from him. He understood. His shoulders sagged. How could he have been so blind? She had transferred her feelings about her father onto him, and now, pressed into the paternal role, he had taken up his own part in the script. He couldn’t deal with this. Not now. It was too heavy. He didn’t have the strength.

“Are you still there?” she was saying, her voice balanced on a wire, trying to show how little she cared while checking to make sure her audience was still in attendance. “Doctor Adler?”

It was all he could do to squeeze out a few words. “I have to go.”

“But you said we had twenty minutes.” The taunt had vanished from her voice. She knew she’d struck a nerve. She just didn’t know which one.

He kept his voice steady. “Something’s come up. We’ll do another call soon.”

“But I . . .”

“I have to go. Goodbye.”

He hung up. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he lowered his head into his hands and massaged his brow with his fingertips. Now there was this to untangle as well.

A white mass fluttered on the floor to his left, stopped, then fluttered again. The moth rose halfway to the lamp before falling back to the ground. It couldn’t let go, and not letting go was killing it.

Eight

Sleep restored a hint of hopefulness. He would schedule a new call with Melanie. And he had another task now, a larger one, one he had the skills for. From long experience with the monologues of patients, he had learned how to recognize patterns in the shadows of symptoms. He wouldn’t have much time with Édouard Morin, but if there was anything to listen to, he stood a chance of hearing it. He had one day to prepare for the encounter.

Huddled under the too-low showerhead in the hotel bathroom, the water sputtering onto his chest, he was in the midst of contemplating his plans when a bump sounded in the bedroom. A moment later it came twice more, suggesting that it wasn’t a bump after all, but rather a thump—or a knock. Dripping, wrapped in a towel, he emerged, fumbling on the nightstand for his glasses, which fell to the floor just as the knocking resumed. He turned the knob and cracked the door open to reveal the blurry figure of a woman in a yellow blouse and summer-weight skirt. Even without his glasses on she looked uncomfortably familiar.

“So much for goodbyes,” Yvonne said, her voice sharp.

He straightened. “Actually, I don’t remember any goodbyes. The last I saw, you were storming away from me into a crowd of people at your mother’s house.”

“That’s right. Shortly before you assaulted my brother in the driveway.”

Philip paused. “Give me a minute, will you?” He closed the door, pulled on a pair of trousers and plucked a shirt from the open suitcase. Hunting for the glasses that had tumbled from the nightstand, he felt a crunch underfoot, nearly snapping the hinge of the frame. When he put them on, they rested crookedly on his nose. He let Yvonne in as he finished buttoning up his shirt, somehow finding himself with one more hole than he needed.

He gestured around the room. “Welcome to Monsieur Bécot’s finest suite.”

The bed was unmade, and dirty laundry lay strewn about like flotsam on a beach, but not all the disorder was Philip’s: the sagging window curtain came courtesy of La Cauchoise, as did the tipped desk, and the ancient armoire that yawned on its defective latch.

“True,” he continued, clapping his hands together. “The glory is somewhat faded, but—”

Yvonne interrupted him. “When you left the house the other night, I didn’t expect to see you again. For a long time.”

He couldn’t hold her gaze. “I was going to call you today. I swear I was.”

Her blank look invited him to try again.

“How did you find out?” he said. “Was it Roger?”

Her eyebrows rose. She’d file away this fraternal infidelity for future reference. “It’s a small town,” she answered.

All right. Now he at least had some idea of the speed of Yvetot’s rumor mill.

Yvonne walked to the window, trailing her fingers across the writing desk, just inches from the black pen. “Would you kindly tell me what you plan to do?”

“
Plan
is too ambitious a word.”

“By which you mean that you don’t know?” She turned. “That doesn’t sound like you, Philip.”

There was no easy way to buffer the information. “I’m going to see Édouard Morin.” Yvonne’s eyes flared and her lips parted. He hurried to continue. “A single meeting,” he assured her. “No one has been able to speak to him, and now that his father has died—”

“Don’t you
dare
.”

Philip closed his eyes. “Look,” he began.

She clenched her hands into fists. “Just what do you think this will accomplish?”

“What can it hurt?”

“Answer my question.”

“You answer mine,” he shot back.

Yvonne put her hands on her hips. “All right. What can it hurt? How about
me and my family?
I don’t want to put them through this. I don’t want to deal with it. I don’t want my daughter to have to—”

“Tell me, which daughter are we talking about?” he said. “Just to be clear.”

He regretted these words right away.

When she spoke again, her voice was measured but tense. “Listen to me, Philip,” she said. “What you and I lived through was a ghastly thing. Something no parent should have to face. But it was fifteen years ago. Going back to it will solve nothing. Will
change
nothing. Why on earth do you want to dredge it all up again?”

Philip found this question incredible. He and Yvonne were like two separate universes obeying entirely different physical laws. In hers actions were balanced by reactions, matter was conserved, and time marched forward in a single, irreversible direction. His own was filled with dark matter and supernovas, riddled with wormholes that tied space and time together in a Gordian knot. That these two universes had once been joined seemed unthinkable to him now.

His first impulse was to argue. But what headway could he make? Even he had to admit that Yvonne’s view of the world was more practical. Part of him even wished he could be like her. However, it wasn’t a thing you could choose.

Muffled voices sounded in the hallway—the chambermaids checking for rooms to clean. He waited for their voices to recede.

“Answer one question for me,” he said to Yvonne, keeping his voice low. “Every time you look at Margaux, isn’t it Sophie you see?”

“For God’s sake, Philip,” Yvonne replied in a hushed cry, “don’t talk like that. Can you imagine? It’s difficult enough for Margaux to have this story lurking in her background. The last thing she needs is for it to all come to the surface.”

“Maybe that’s exactly what she needs. To have this ghost exorcised, once and for all.”

“Don’t you dare presume. This is my daughter you’re talking about.”

He sank onto the bed and stared into the ragged carpeting between his feet.

“How did you do it, Yvonne?” he said. “How did you move forward? I need to know. Because even after fifteen years, I’ve not been able to close that door.”

Yvonne turned to the window. For a long moment she stared out over the square. “I could do it because I’m not you,” she replied. “It’s what funerals are for, Philip. They provide closure. They help you to forget a little bit, enough so that you can move on.”

“The funeral was a sham. There was nothing to bury. It was like a dress rehearsal.”

She turned. “Then all funerals are shams. What you bury is never what you lost. You know that as well as I do.”

He ran his hand over his beard. “I know how pointless this is. The body is just a shell. A mortal suit of clothes.” He pulled at his misbuttoned shirt. “Though I must say, mine pinches at the shoulders these days and needs to be let out a bit at the waist.”

She allowed herself a hint of smile.

“So you’re right,” he continued. “It shouldn’t matter. What’s the difference between Sophie’s bones and some old rocks and twigs? Nothing much. I fully appreciate that it makes no rational sense. And yet I can’t
not
do this.” He looked up at her now. “Do you see that?”

The anger in her eyes had waned. “You shouldn’t have come back, Philip.”

“Give me two days. Let me go through the motions. Then I’ll leave. Three days at the most. We both want the same thing, don’t we? To put an end to all this?” He paused. “I’ll be discreet.”

A laugh escaped from Yvonne. “You have many qualities, Philip, but I don’t count discretion among them.”

He cracked a wry grin. “That’s fair. I don’t have a good track record on that score. But I’ll make a special effort.”

They stood in silence until it was time for her to go. Halfway out, she stopped and turned. They were face to face, inches apart.

“If you’re going to remain in Yvetot,” she said, her voice low but imperious, “I want you to be
invisible
. Do you understand? I want to see nothing, hear nothing. Do what you have to do, then leave. Don’t interfere with us. Can you manage that?”