Fresh Water for Flowers

tried to plant melons in his vegetable garden, they had never grown. He had tried two years in a row, nothing doing, the melons refused to grow. The following year, he had thrown the rest of the melon seeds to the birds. Further away, at the back of the vegetable garden, where there were piles of pots, rakes, watering cans, and planters. One of those birds, carelessly or mischievously, must have carried one of the seeds in its beak and dropped it in the middle of a path in the garden. A few months later, a fine plant had grown, and Sasha hadn’t pulled it up, just walked around it. It had produced two beautiful melons. Nice and plump, nice and sweet. And every year, it had again produced one, two, three, four, five. Sasha had said to me, “You see, they’re melons from heaven, that’s what nature is all about, it’s she who decides.”

I fell asleep on those words.

I dreamt of a memory. I was taking Léonine to school. It was the first day of term at primary school. We were walking along the corridors. Her hand in mine. Then she had let mine go because she was “a big girl now.”

I woke up screaming:

“I know her! I’ve seen her before!”

Philippe Toussaint switched the bedside lamp on.

“What? What’s up?”

He rubbed his eyes, looked at me as if I were possessed.

“I know her! She worked at the school. Not in Léonine’s class, in the one next door.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I saw her. After the cemetery, I stopped by at Geneviève Magnan’s.”

Philippe Toussaint looked horrified.

“What?”

I looked down.

“I need to understand. To meet the people who were at the château of Notre-Dame-des-Prés that night.”

He got up, walked around the bed, grabbed me by the collar, and, choking me, yanked me right up and started screaming:

“You’re beginning to seriously piss me off! Carry on, and I’ll get you locked up. Do you hear me? And I warn you, you’re not going back there! Do you hear me? NEVER set foot over there, ever again!”

Over the years, he had let me sink into a bottomless solitude, a black pit. I could just as well have been someone else, got myself replaced, employed a temp to lower and raise the barrier, do the shopping, make lunch and supper, wash his clothes, and sleep on the left side of the bed, he wouldn’t have cared, wouldn’t have noticed.

Never had he knocked me about or threatened me. By doing that, he brought me to my senses. I became myself again.

* * *

The following morning, I went to Stephanie’s to return the keys to the Panda. On Mondays, the Casino was closed. She lived alone on Grand-Rue, on the first floor of a house. She made me come in and poured me some coffee in a ceramic goblet. She was wearing a long T-shirt with Claudia Schiffer on it, and said, “Monday, at home, it’s cleaning day.” It seemed odd to me, seeing her head above that supermodel’s, but it’s her head that moved me to tears, her friendly round face, her lovely rosy cheeks, her tow-colored hair.

“I filled her up for you.”

“Oh, well, thanks a lot.”

“Looks like it’s going to be nice today.”

“Oh, well, yes.”

“It’s good, your coffee . . . My husband doesn’t want me to go to Brancion cemetery anymore.”

“Oh, right, well, hold on, hey. It’s for going to see your kid, after all, isn’t it.”

“Yes, I know. In any case, thanks for everything.”

“Oh, well, it’s nothing, hey.”

“Yes, Stéphanie, it’s everything.”

I clasped her in my arms. She didn’t dare move. As if no one had ever shown her the slightest sign of affection. Her eyes and mouth became even rounder than normal. Three flying saucers. Stéphanie would remain forever an enigma, the Martian of the Casino. I abandoned her there, arms dangling, in the middle of her sitting room.

Next, I went back along Grand-Rue, heading for the primary school. Like in Dave’s song, “Swann’s Way,” I took the same route backwards. The one I took every morning with Léo. In her satchel, the Tupperware box took up more space than her textbooks and exercise books. I was obsessive about making her lavish packed snacks, so she never went without. Because I still had that emptiness the foster families had left me with. When we’d go on a school trip, and the others would have chips, bars of chocolate, sandwiches made with farmhouse bread, sweets, and fizzy drinks in their knapsacks. Me, it’s not that I went without, but there were no treats in my plastic bag. “Girls in care are happy with very little.” It wasn’t the fact of having less that upset me, it was not being able to share my frugal lunch. Having just enough. I wanted to give Léonine the chance to share with the others.

It wasn’t the children that disturbed me as I entered the covered playground, but the smells, from the canteen, a building adjoining the school, and the bustling corridors. It was lunchtime. I used to collect Léonine at lunchtime. And she often said to me, “You see, Mommy, the canteen doesn’t smell very nice, I’m glad I go home.”

On the pain scale, if such a shit scale exists, going into Léonine’s school was harder than going into the cemetery. In Brancion, my daughter was dead among the dead. Inside her school, she was dead among the living.

The children who had been Léonine’s friends were no longer there. They had just started middle school. I would have found seeing them unbearable, recognizing them without really recognizing them. The same figures, with “life” as an added option. Gangly, less baby-faced, mouths full of metal, feet in giants’ trainers.

With pockets empty, I made my way along the corridors. I thought how Léonine wouldn’t have wanted me to hold her hand anymore on the way to her classroom. A mom had told me that once they went to middle school, you lost a little bit more of them every year. Yes, and when they went to