Theory of Remainders (41 page)

“I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. But what did you mean?”

She hesitated. “Oh, you know. It’s just a thing.”

“What kind of thing?”

“Well, it’s like . . . Do you play music, Doctor Adler?”

“You mean an instrument? No, I never learned.”

“Boy, are
you
ever lucky. I did like a million years of piano. What a drag. But my teacher, well, she was pretty nice. I mean, it wasn’t her fault I was hopeless. I hit all the notes and stuff, but she was never happy. She kept telling me not to rush.
Slow down
, she’d always say. And then one day she told me this thing I’ll never forget. Remember, she said, the rests are just as important as the notes. Isn’t that nuts? I mean, I always thought of the rests as marks to skip over, things to ignore. And then she came up with this zinger. I’d never thought about them that way. Some people, well, I figure they have a lot of rests. I dunno. Maybe that sounds stupid.”

“Not at all.”

The conversation lulled.

“Like that,” she said. “Just now. That was a rest.”

As they approached the end of the conversation, she slowed and veered. He could tell she was working up to something.

“Doctor Adler?”

“Yes?”

“I guess it’s pretty hard to—” she began, then stopped. She tried again, more bluntly. “You know what my problem is, don’t you?”

Her problem, he told himself, was down in the hospital cafeteria with her mother. “Yes. Yes, I think I do.”

“And you know why it’s . . . hard to talk about, don’t you?”

“Yes. I know about that, too.”

She paused. “I kinda figured you did.”

Twenty-Three

The next morning, when he announced his departure to Monsieur Bécot in the breakfast room, the old man’s smile faded.

“I’ll be sorry to see you go, Monsieur Adler.”

“Two weeks ago you were sorry to see me arrive.”

Bécot wagged his head. “I know, I know. But since then, well, I’ve gotten used to you.” He brightened. “And then you brought us back Raymond Desplanches! That was a sleeping cat, and you were right to wake it.”

“So at least I’ve done a little good.”

“Yes, but . . . there was more to do.”

“True,” Philip nodded. “I had wanted everything finished, but instead I am finished with my wanting.”

Bécot sighed as he topped off Philip’s coffee.

After breakfast he closed himself in his room. From his window he watched Yvetot come to life. The weekly open-air market was set up on the Place des Belges, a long alley of covered stands with vendors hawking everything from fruits and vegetables to frying pans and shoes. A knife-grinder had set up his wheel under one of the chestnut trees. Nearby a caner was at his stand, repairing a chair.

Standing at the window, Philip picked up his phone and called Roger. It was time for the ritual leave-taking.

“I was afraid that would be you,” Roger said when he answered. “Tell you what, let’s have dinner tonight. A farewell.”

“I need to pack.”

“Pack? What do you have? Three shirts and a pair of shoes? And frankly, you’d be better off tossing it all and starting fresh. We really should talk about your wardrobe at some point.”

From his window Philip watched a gaunt cat approach the back of the butcher’s stand down at the market. It poked its nose under the flap of the tarp, then slipped inside.

“Roger, please. Let me slink away.”

The fact was, he’d already made the psychological break. His body was stuck in France until the next day, but his mind had crossed the border. All that remained was the cleanup crew, charged with erasing the trace of his passage.

“Fine,” Roger said with defeat. “Be that way.” His tone turned somber. “I worry about you, my friend.”

“The feeling’s mutual.”

Down in the market the cat bolted through a seam in the tarp and vanished under a car. A woman in a bloodied apron pushed open the flap and scanned the surroundings, scowling.

Philip spoke. “Can I give you a little unsolicited advice?”

Roger sighed. “I supposed I’m not allowed to say no, am I?”

“I don’t know if you’ll work things out with Élisabeth or not. But whatever happens, don’t end up alone. Don’t let that happen.”

“Hah. That’s a bit like the straw and the beam.”

“What?”

“Or whatever the idiom is in English—the tea kettle calling the pot black, or some such thing.”

“We’re not comparable, Roger. I’m in a whole different league. But you? You can still alter the course of your life.”

The cat was trying again, this time at the fishmonger’s. It crept toward a heap of trash, nuzzled between the crates, and soon trotted away, its tail erect, a red and stringy mass dangling from its mouth.

Roger was talking. “I seem to recall someone telling me that
anyone
can chart a new direction,” he said. “What was the idea? You start with something very small—one thing that you can change. And you move on from there.”

He didn’t enjoy having his own words thrown back at him, but Roger was right. He’d spent too much time poking through the past the way old men rake leaves, compulsively, out of a sense of duty, continuing even when there’s nothing left to do but scratch at the scalp of the lawn.

“So when do we see you again?” Roger said.

“I think it’s going to be a while.”

“I figured you’d say something vague like that.”

They wished each other the best and made the usual promises about keeping in touch.
Au revoir
was what they said at the end, but Philip had to ask himself if an
adieu
wouldn’t have been more appropriate. Realistically speaking, would he ever be back? It didn’t seem likely. He shook his head as he pondered Roger’s solitude, his broken relationships. Still, who was he to judge? One way or another, he figured, we’re all broken vessels.

The call he couldn’t make was the one to Yvonne. At first he’d planned to phone her after breakfast, then after speaking with Roger, then after packing. Finally he decided they could both do without a long goodbye. This trip had been filled with foolish ideas from start to finish, and it was time for him to disappear.

He ran final errands in town and stopped for lunch at the brasserie. People snuck glances at him, and there were hushed exchanges. They seemed to know he was on the way out. E-mail, telephones and newspapers were all superfluous in Yvetot.

At two-thirty he called the office back in Boston. No, he told Linda, he wouldn’t need a day to recover. She should go ahead and fill his schedule. To the brim.

He thought about seeing Edith again. And there was the chess game with Faruk89 to get back to.

Last of all came the purge of documents. The clippings and copies and maps and photos he had accumulated made for quite a collection, and he leafed through them idly. After Édouard Morin’s long seclusion in psychiatric facilities, he must have relished being the center of attention for a few days. Probably he had considered the visits a form of recreation. In the end, perhaps Philip had been nothing more than an unwitting actor in a drama he didn’t understand.

The transcriptions and photocopies were all records that had been preserved in other locations. He let his copies tumble into the wastebasket. So much for the court files. Goodbye to Monsieur Guérin’s handiwork. It was hard to let these papers drop from his fingers, but it also came as a relief.

The original photographs he tucked into his wallet. These he would return to the album behind the books on the bottom shelf of his living room. The little voice recorder he decided to keep. It could be used again.

Last of all came the cornflower-blue diary, with its clumsily sewn binding and cheap dragonfly imprint on the cover. Identical diaries could be found in any stationery shop or supermarket in France, and there was no reason to burden himself with this one. Still, it provided a record of his efforts. The pages told the emerging tale of Édouard Morin, with all his tics and oddities. And there were the tidbits he’d copied from the police reports, the judgment, the newspaper clippings, the affidavits. Interspersed throughout were his own interpretations: the discovery of S M A, the reflections on even and odd, the description of symptoms. Finally there were the extraneous entries—meeting times with Roger, short shopping lists, Yvonne’s phone number, notes from his sessions with Melanie.

He couldn’t let it go. Not yet.

His plan had been to hole up in his room until the next morning, at which point he’d pay his bill, drive the three hours to the airport, and lounge in the waiting area until his evening flight. But shortly after eight p.m., just after he’d succumbed once again to the temptations of the bottle, there came a knock at his door. When he opened up, it was Yvonne standing before him in a sleeveless blouse and dark skirt, a strand of silver around her neck.

So he’d have to face her after all. “
Madame le professeur
,” he said. “What a surprise.”

She put her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows. “So you thought you could sneak away, like a common criminal?” The question could have been barbed, but her tone was light.

“Caught red-handed,” he replied.

Then she looked past his shoulder, and her expression soured. The bottle of whiskey stood on his desk.

“What can I say?” he asked, forcing a grin. “Nobody’s perfect, you know.”

The words produced a reluctant smile on her lips. She took a deep breath. “Well, let’s get going. We’re already late for our reservation.” She intercepted his protest. “Don’t start, Philip. You didn’t even call to say goodbye, so I took matters into my own hands. We’re going to have dinner together.”

He didn’t need Yvonne’s pity. And he’d already complicated things enough.

She rolled her eyes and tapped her watch. “Come along.”

He cast about for an excuse. “What will
Hair-vay
say?”

“I couldn’t care less what Hervé will say.” Her chin was set, the line of her jaw clear. “Hurry up now. They’re not going to hold the table forever.”

Soon she’d forced him into his sport coat. He managed a knot in the tie he’d brought for Anne-Madeleine’s funeral. She straightened his collar and flicked a bit of lint from his sleeve. “Well,” she sighed. “I suppose this will have to do.” They headed out, and she led him around the square to Chez Pierrot, Yvetot’s sole gastronomic outpost, replete with heavy linens, and waiters as formal as fallen aristocrats.

Of all the manifestations of the French language nothing held greater terror for Philip than the menu of an upscale restaurant. They were more intricate than the babble of bureaucracy, more impenetrable than adolescent slang. The regional names and obscure ingredients made every meal a riddle, and more often than not he felt like Champollion in Egypt puzzling over the hieroglyphs. As in the old days he let Yvonne order for the both of them.

He picked up the wine list. What the hell, he thought. It was his last night. But Yvonne plucked it from his hands and returned it to the waiter. “We won’t be needing this,” she proclaimed.

Then he understood. She was here to set him right. In the span of two short weeks he had managed to capsize the vessel of his life, fracturing its hull. She aimed to sling him into dry dock and undertake the repairs he’d need before heading back across the Atlantic. It was the old dynamic: he was a project for her. She could fix him up.