Sometimes, I felt as if I were making him smell nice and dressing him for others, so that he continued to appeal elsewhere. And especially so that he continued to appeal to himself. Because as long as he liked what he saw, as long as he admired himself in mirrors or in the eyes of other women, he paid no attention to me. And I wanted him to pay no attention to me. You don’t leave a woman that you no longer see, who doesn’t make scenes, who doesn’t make a noise, who doesn’t slam doors—it’s far too convenient.
For Philippe Toussaint, I was an ideal woman, one who is no trouble. He wouldn’t have left me for passion. He wasn’t in love with his conquests, I could smell it. He had their odor on his fingertips, but not their love.
I think I have always had this reflex, of being no trouble. As a child, in my foster families, I said to myself: Don’t make any noise, that way, this time, you’ll stay, they’ll keep you. I knew very well that love had visited us a long time ago and had gone elsewhere, between other walls that would never again be ours. The chalet had been an interlude for our two salty bodies. I looked after Philippe Toussaint like you look after a housemate you have to play up to, for fear that one day he would disappear, taking Léo with him.
For Christmas, Léo received everything she’d written on her list. Books that were exclusively hers, including Blue Dog by Nadja. A princess dress, videos, a doll with red hair, and a new magician’s kit. Even better than the one she got last Christmas. With two new wands, magical playing cards, and mystical cards. Léo has always adored doing magic tricks. Even when tiny, she wanted to be a magician. She wanted to make everything vanish inside hats.
The following day, since it was a public holiday, there were fewer trains. Just one in four. I could rest, play with her. She made her hands disappear behind multicolored scarves.
In the evening, I packed her suitcase. On the morning of December 26th, as in previous years, Philippe Toussaint’s parents came to collect my daughter to take her for a week in the Alps. They didn’t stay long, but the mother and son had time to shut themselves in the kitchen to talk to each other in muted voices. She must have given him a check for Christmas, and me, like every year, I was entitled to dark chocolates filled with a cherry in liqueur. Not the Mon Chéri ones, but a lesser brand in pink packaging called Mon Trésor.
This time I was the one who went out onto the doorstep to wave at Léo when Mother and Father Toussaint’s car drove off. She had a smile on her lips and her magician’s kit in her lap. She lowered the window and we said to each other, “Until in a week.” She blew me kisses. I kept them.
Every time I saw their very big car taking away my very little girl, I was scared that they wouldn’t bring her back to me. I tried not to think about it, but my body thought about it for me—I fell ill, I was feverish.
Like every time Léo went away, I spent the week tidying up her room. Being in the middle of her dolls and her pink walls soothed me.
On December 31st, Philippe Toussaint and I rang in the New Year in front of the television. We ate all his favorite things. Like every year, Stéphanie had given us unsold hampers of food. “Violette, you must eat them before tomorrow because after that it’ll be too late, O.K.”
Léonine called us on January 1st, in the morning.
“Happy New Year, Mommy. Happy New Year, Daddy. Happy New Year, Daddy, Mommy. I’m going to try for my first star!”
She returned on January 3rd, glowing with health. My fever subsided. The Toussaint parents stayed for an hour. Léo had pinned her first star onto her sweater.
“Mummy, I got my first star!”
“Well done, darling.”
“I know how to slalom.”
“Well done, sweetheart.”
“Mummy, can I go on holiday with Anaïs?”
“Who’s Anaïs?”
39.
The essential is invisible to the eyes.
No one’s dying right now.”
Father Cédric, Nono, Elvis, Gaston, Pierre, Paul, and Jacques are deep in conversation in my kitchen. The Lucchini brothers have been going round in circles. It has been more than a month since anyone set foot in their funeral parlor. All the men are having a coffee around my table. I made them a chocolate marbled cake, which they are all sharing while chattering like little girls around a birthday cake.
I’m finishing planting my chrysanthemum seedlings in my garden. The doors are open. Their voices carry to where I am.
“It’s because the weather’s good. People die less when the weather’s good.”
“Got the parent-teacher meeting this evening. Can’t stand it. Any case, they’re all going to tell me my kid does bugger all there. Thinks of nothing but clowning around.”
“Our business is all about the human. We encounter living people who are lost, who attach enormous importance to the ceremony going well because it will allow them to mourn, so it’s a true service occupation, there’s no room for error.”
“I baptized two children last Sunday, twins, it was very moving.”
“What makes our work different from all the rest is that we deal with the emotional, not the rational.”
“Oh, we had a jolly good laugh!”
“Meaning?”
“That there’s no room for error. For each family, there will be something that really matters. What suits one family won’t necessarily suit another. It’s all in the details. For example, for my last deceased person, there was just one thing that mattered: the watch being on
