Read On the top of the world Page 7

Oh my god ! Cute, everything is in it. The first kiss, the first condom. Should I send it to him ? Not sure Armelle would appreciate it. He was fifteen, I remember of her. She was blond with long hair, like every girl of her age, skinny and beautiful face. He was so much in love. I don't think it was a happy end, but Théodor's doesn't say much.

  It's difficult for me to remember them as children. I remember their smell. Emilie smelt as an apple, perhaps it was because of her shampoo. Oscar's was taking care of himself and even in Corsica, I remember of him smelling fresh fragrance when coming for breakfast, with water on his hair to make them look less curly, his obsession while a teenager (he even had a swimming pool bonnet to make sure it helped). Théodor's smelt as the guy coming out of his bed, he didn't like to wake up early, that was a nightmare for him for preparing his engineer school, and he decided to go to an English University just to avoid the six thirty wake up call even on Saturday. He hated mornings, and never talk to us before nine.

  The battle for the bathroom. Emilie took so much time to make her hair look straight.

  Let's finish Théodore's room. Ha, his collection of knives. I remember going to the Puces Saint Ouen, and Flee market in New York. Nice ones, I should keep them but where. I can send that to him in New York, the cost will be more than all knives but I will feel bad to make them disappear.

  What do we have in that drawer ? A sport bag, what does it do here. A jogging and a dirty white tee-shirt. My god, I don't know why I paid Vilma twice a week to come to clean our house.

  Papers and papers. What is it ? Small writting, sharp and thin. I don't know how is teachers could read him. Yellow paper with lines.

  "I want to die, I hate my school and what I do. I feel so lonely. Nobody understands me, and Chloé left me and never answers to my call, texto and ignores me when we meet by chance in parties. I can 't bear with that. I'm so tired of everything I want to sleep. Sometimes I think to jump by the window in the garden. It's green, and there are stones. I'm just scared not to die and to be an amount of broken bones and blood, people looking at me and saying poor guy, he will die but he must suffer very much. I write not to sleep, I'm attending a mathematics lesson, it's so boring. Why being here ? I don't care. I want to fuck, it's weeks and weeks I didn't have sex, I'm ready to make sex with any girl, just for feeling I'm back. I feel so bad, I need to stay awake, stay awake. Stay awake. Nietzche is right. God is dead. I don't know where human kind is going. I've heard a pilot crashed a plane to commit suicide, it's ridiculous. Poor guy, not enought courageous to die alone. We all die alone, for sure. Everything is so boring and expected."

  My heart hurts. I didn't know. Why did he keep this text. By lasyness perhaps. He was a procrastinator at that age. Always postponing what he could do now.

  Weird to think he spends now days and nights to work on his start up, even forgeting his sweet and determined girlfriend. He weighs now twenty kilos more, and drinks to much Diplomatico's rhum, or Japanese Whisky I guess.

  He seems happy, at least in the few minutes on Skype, scratching his eyes by lack of sleep or allergy to acarians as not changing the bed sheets in his room.

  Bizarre world, being connected anytime anywhere and at the same time, so far.

  Oscar's told me one day, he didn't believe in far away relationships.

  " It doesn't mean you have lost people, you'll find them back a day or another. But you can't enter in their life. You have pretty nothing to say, or you say it all in ten minutes, but who can describe six months of his life, and his whole new environnement in ten minutes and still make sens ? "

  Perhaps I should have sold the house instead of renting it. Just to make everything disappear, the last point on earth where we were happy as a family.

  Hong Kong will be a whole new life. Plenty of new people, time to reinvent myself.

  I should continue yoga. I should continue cereals, but I'm allergic to Soja milk, I'm sure it's to drink it that makes me feel like overweight.

  I should continue to wear make up and have long heels. I should take care of myself.

  Marc said one day he would work untill he dies, as fed up with old people looking at themselves.

  He forgot to tell me it was without me, and with a new wife for new children, like a fresh new start, a never ending story of educating little guys and girls, and make them become beautiful persons, full of life, raising their own children.

  I should burn that paper. Théodor's must have forgotten who he was at that time, and I should plan the next vacations or week end all together.

  Venice. Argentina. Island. Where could we go to find each others.

  I should take a glass of wine. If I leave all Marc's bottles, at least I should drink that Côtes Rôtie.

  Mmm… It tastes good. I should make it breath. It's like a person, with its own pesonality, evolving with time.

  Hahaha, when they jumped in the water, all in white clothes for new year's eve party. All in the swimming pool, laughing so much, the guy in charge of the hôtel was upset, but it was so nice. A great moment, really.

  The day we lost the keys of the car, alone in the park near Yosemite, Marc had forgotten to book the motel. And we slept in the car, I was scared about meeting a bear.

  And the Christmas vacation in Rio, when we let roses go in the sea with thousand of people dresssed in white on the beach. That was pretty.

  I could drink another glass. Nobody cares if I'm drunken at ten in the morning. I'm free. I exist, I feel the taste of the wine, full of fruits and sun, my new friend for the day. Enjoying being alive. Yes, I'm at the begining of something different, that's exciting. Théodor is right. Life is dull when you know there won't be any suprise. We deserve more. I'm pretty sure I'll meet somone. Perhaps someone the age of my children. I don't mind. I don't mind either if it doesn't last.

  Emilie's room. I like that old and big mirror. Hey, there is my pink cashmere pull over. He was in Emilie's drawers. I looked for it during week-ends, and she swore to me she didn't see it. Too bad, there are holes in it because of mites now.

  Doesn't matter. Nice to find it.

  I will never manage to empty all of that alone. I should call someone to help me. Let's finish this bottle, it will clarify what I should do next.

  La Cluzaz. Mars 2015

  The balloon

  When my father was living his latest weeks, the ballon was there, up and down, up and down, seen by the window of the hospital. We had not to talk much about at the end.

  It was poetic, and calm, like the beauty of the sky with the round shape, pure, in front of the blue line.

  We had three weeks to reconnect at that time, three little weeks said the doctors and specialists, at the most.

  So we talked about my brother. We said things we never said before, after his being dead twenty five years ago. Why didn't they say to us that we were not guilty. We, it's my other brother and I. Why we never discussed about the terrible facts, the gun, the police calling one week after having discovered the body in the forest. Why did they knew something was happening and didn't mention it to us during that period. The poetry book while he was studying maths with dark thoughts, the gun he had recently purchased.

  He never answered to my questions but the arrogant and autocratic man I knew when I was young had disappeared, and it was a wise man, bold and so skiny, answering to me by other questions with a soft voice. Why did I disappear of their life after that.

  I realize that to be a family is a good thing, it gives you roots and values. At the same time, whatever you do to reject it, your parents gives you the weight of their secrets.

  I never talked to my father in one to one, peacefully, before he was nearly to die. Only interruptions were the nice nurses caring of him, always joyful whatever the moment of the day.

  I've talked to my mother since then. I know she thinks that I'm a tough girl. I was devastated by my boyfriend leaving me.

  I met him at work while I was morning my father. I always wear black clothes and I'm a thin wom
an, speaking fast and never too much. I appealed to him at the time as a supplyer for his client, he had been working in an audit company for my bank.

  I talked to him about the ceremony, the speeches of the family, the emotion and pain. In the evening, I sent to him a texto saying I was taking pills to sleep. Two hours later as one pill was not enough, I took three of them, and I wrote as a joke, I took all pills. I forgot to put a smile as an emoticon. He called his friend working for him, he talked to his daughter, and they decided to send the firemen to save me.

  I was in my dreams when the gardian called me on my mobile cell. I didn't hear anything, begining to deeply sleep. Suddenly when I woke up, I heared noises at the window, the firemen tried to enter with their flexible stairs and to open my door by all means. They shouted at me : " Did you take pills ?"

  That's how I met my boyfriend. At that time I was quite happy, sad about loosing my father, happy to have talked to him before his death.

  My mother, when she saw me crying during hours, revealed another secret to me.

  Enough with secrets, I wanted to say, but I shut up. Death. Suicide. Her father hang himself at the end of his life. And before, she and her sisters had to keep a secret, her mother requested them to do so, else the father would go in prison, and he was the one to earn for a living. He was obsessed