AIMÉ
Aimé’s apartment was empty of everything but the landline, sitting on the floor beside the wall. The floors were swept clean, all the kitchen cupboards slightly ajar to show there was nothing inside them, the shelves empty. The place felt of lemon polish and bleach.
When the phone started ringing, Aimé knew who it was, and he leaned and picked the phone up off the cradle.
He listened to the sniffling, quiet sobs on the other end of the line for a few moments before he broke the quiet with, “Mam?”
“Aimé,” she said wetly. What fell next out of her mouth was messy and drunk – it was a Sunday, just before one, and he was guessing she’d been to breakfast with some of her friends. Evidently the time for juice cleanses had passed, and now it was time to go back to bottomless brunch.
She started to talk, and it washed over him without his taking in the specifics of it – she was crying about his father, talking about her friend Muireann who was in marketing and something about her new position or maybe one of her kids, talking about something that had gone wrong with her car or maybe her car’s insurance, and in between every topic she was talking about Aimé, about him not answering her calls, about whether he was moving, going somewhere, dating an angel, painting, drinking, if he was well, if he was ill, if he was boxing again.
There were a lot of questions mingled into her drunken, sobbing tirade, but there weren’t any spaces intended for him to break in and answer her, so he didn’t. He just sat there on the floor, his shoulders up against the wall, the phone rested in the cradle of his shoulder, and listened to her talk until she tired herself out and started taking in wet, sad breaths.
After a while of this silence, she said again, “Aimé?”
“You know that place on Dawson Street, Mam? The one we went to before?”
“Mm.”
“You want to meet me there in a few hours, say, five?”
She started talking, but as soon as he heard the “okay”, he just hung up the phone and then unplugged the landline.
He left the keys on the kitchen counter and didn’t bother to lock the door behind him.
* * *
Aimé’s mother had sobered up a good bit when she met him at the restaurant, and she looked small and somehow dampened as she sat across from him on one of the shitty wooden benches. She wasn’t a particularly tall woman, Aimé’s mother – her build was like his, naturally stocky, and in photos of her as a young woman, that stockiness had been well-matched by plumpness at her cheeks, her upper arms, around her middle.
Always dieting, now, going between different trend diets, there were obvious hollows in her cheeks, and her square build seemed strangely unfinished in places, the meat on her frame seeming like it had been packed on with accidental gaps - gaps around her throat, where she’d had skin taken away from what seemed to be a weirdly skinny neck, her thighs and knees seeming oddly angular under the flowing suit trousers she wore. She had bruises visible on her arms, under the edge of her sleeve and just under the collar of her shirt under her expensive jumper – not from his dad or from something like that, but just from bumps and taps here and there. Mémé always used to comment on it, that as a girl she never bruised easily – she always put it down to how much less sun his mother got in Ireland, but Aimé guessed it was to do with her diet.
It felt in the moment like Aimé was seeing his mother for the first time, seeing the similarities between his face and hers, the squareness of her features, the deep set of her eyes – both the same hazel as one of his was, although neither she nor his dad had the same shitty green of his other one. Her hair was the same colour as his, too, black, although she straightened out the curls and had to dye her roots to hide the oncoming grey. The bob wasn’t as neat as it often was, wasn’t quite as severe – there were a few strands out of place, and now and then she reached up with perfectly lacquered nails and her hands twitched like she wanted to tug at it, or comb it back with her hands, or just scratch at the back of her neck, and she didn’t do any of that.
Margaret Deverell seemed like a very small woman indeed this afternoon, wholly different from the woman in the photographs he’d used to see on his Mémé’s walls, her in the suits and dresses she’d used to wear, her making presentations or accepting awards, her in her graduation gown.
In those pictures she’d seemed quite strong and square, and severe in an impressive way – Aimé didn’t think he’d ever met that woman at home, and although it wasn’t as if she’d stopped working decades before having him, as if there was really that big of a gap between when her life as that woman and her life as his mother began, the distance between the two iterations of her seemed almost as insurmountable as the one between her and Marguerite Bebhin.
She was crying, her shoulders hunched forward, her head tipped forward too – he looked at her face, at the tears shining on her cheeks, and looked for the lines and edges where she’d had one plastic surgery or another, over the years, where she’d had different lifts and tucks, where the scars were hidden behind her ears or up in her hairline.
Aimé did something in the moment he’d never done before – he reached across the table, ignoring his own coffee and the floral, calming tea he’d bought for her, and held her hand.
His mother flinched, her shoulders jumping up in line with her jaw, and then she started crying harder, dropping her head forwards so that her chin was touching against her sternum, her whole body racked with sobs. Her cheeks were red and sticky-slick with tears, the same wetness clinging to her lips and her chin.
She’d used to have a mole buried in the dimple on one side of her mouth, a perfect black beauty spot that Mémé had told him once boys she’d gone to school with had written poetry about, had lusted over, had complimented.
She’d had it surgically removed years ago, and the gap in the flesh looked like blankness on a canvas.
She was clutching tightly at his hand with both of hers – her grip wasn’t painful at all, wasn’t truly that hard, but it was the tightest she’d ever held him.
Aimé wondered faintly if he got his predilection for drinking from his mother, from her mother – alcoholism for Mémé and the rest of the family in Montauban had seemed as simple as breathing, as being part of life. His mother, he didn’t know that she was much of a drinker when she was alone, if she was habitual about it – she drank with her friends or at parties, and then went home and kept drinking.
Maybe. He’d never paid much fucking attention before now.
“Are you worried about Dad?” he asked. “That he’s going to hurt you?”
His mother’s eyes flickered up to his, her plucked-thin brows furrowing, her lips parting, jaw dropping. “What?” she asked, seeming completely bewildered by the question, taken aback.
“No bullshit, Mam. Do you think he will?”
“Of course not – he wouldn’t.”
“He might kill me,” Aimé said.
“No.”
“What other legacy is he going to have?” he asked, and she closed her eyes and turned her head, pulling her hands away from his and laying them down in her lap.
“He’ll remarry if he has to,” she muttered. “You don’t need to be so— so dramatic, Aimé. He’d never hurt you.”
“Remarrying doesn’t get rid of me,” Aimé pointed out. “That just means him starting over.”
“Well, he’ll have to anyway.”
“You’re leaving him?” he asked.
“Why would I be leaving him? Just because you’ve decided to go mad and obsess over that terrorist—”
“He’s an angel, Mam,” Aimé said. “And I’m not obsessed with him – he’s not after money, doesn’t want to make me into the right sort of husband, make me into something I’m not.”
“And what are you?” she demanded, sniffling – she didn’t raise her voice that high, didn’t speak that loudly, but it was rough, husky. “What, you want to be an artist now? That’s not something you’re doing just to waste time, but you want that to somehow be your career, be your name? You’ve given up on being a professional?”
“What kind of profession did you think I was going to take up?” he asked, hearing the tiredness in his own voice, feeling resigned as he leaned back on the bench, against the back of it, slumped. This conversation, this one he’d had plenty of fucking times. “I’m not going to be a lawyer, I’m not going to be a businessman, I’m not going to take some fucking job for a firm or a government office or doing some tourism shite.”
“And what are you going to be?”
“Didn’t you just say it? An artist?”
“Are you going to be an artist, or join your new boyfriend?” she asked. “Is that what your grandmother taught you, to pick up a gun and kill people?”
“I’ve never killed anybody,” Aimé said, thinking about how sick the idea made him up to now, holding a gun or a rifle in his hand.
“Do you have any idea how many lives that creature has ended?” she asked, staring at him. The colour in her eyes seemed to swim with how full they were with tears. “What do you think, Aimé, that he’s some sort of noble revolutionary? Is that what we’ve taught you, that someone can just—"
“How many lives has Dad ended?” Aimé asked, and he watched her face contort, watched the slight snarl on her lips, the indignation, the disgust that he’d asked. “Don’t fucking make that face – it doesn’t matter if he’s never held a gun, never stabbed somebody. How many security wards has he made that’ve killed some fucking homeless bloke trying to squat, or killed a few thieves? How many—”
“Killing criminals isn’t exactly the same thing,” she snapped at him, angry and wet and full of complete disdain. “He’s never gone out and shot somebody with a gun – everyone who’s died as a result of one of your father’s wards has been assuming the risk, trying to trespass, to steal, to hurt somebody else. What, people don’t have a right to defend their own homes, the things they’ve bought with their own hard-earned money, things they’ve paid for?”
“S’that why you hate Jean-Pierre so much?” Aimé asked, tilting his head to one side and looking at her blandly. “Because he’s taking away what your hard-earned money has paid for – or what Dad’s has, anyway? Given that you’ve not worked for donkeys’ years. He stealing your fucking asset because I’m not interested in being on your leash anymore?”
“As if you’ve ever been on my leash or his,” she says scathingly. “You never wanted to listen to a word we said – your grandmother, yes, the boys you boxed with, but us—”
“Come on, Mam – what about whoever you paid to look after me, babysit me, check on me when you couldn’t be arsed?”
“It’s my fault you’re like this, is it?” she asked, and her voice was so dead and so utterly emotionless for a second that he couldn’t help but laugh.
“I mean, yeah,” he said. “You and him.”
“You’re not going to get any more money from us after this,” she said, and it didn’t sound like a threat, didn’t even sound that angry. It sounded almost as resigned as he did, sounded deadened and low and full of a funny sort of grief he couldn’t help but think she didn’t have much of a right to. He wondered how much of this was her feeling it, and how much of this was performance – he wondered what Colm would think, feeling her feelings, what he’d say.
He wondered what Jean would.
“I don’t need any money from you,” Aimé said. “I’ve got money of my own, got somewhere to live. No one can hide my passport anymore, or go over my head to people at the university.”
Her face twisted again, and he could see that she wanted to cry. How real was it, those tears? He’d used to think she was always faking it, that they were just crocodile tears, her crying because she wasn’t in control, because he wasn’t doing as she wanted. She always used to cry when he was in hospital, especially when he was getting ready to go.
He looked down at her hands, at her manicure, at the expensive, delicate watch she was wearing on one wrist, and he looked to her clothes – comfortable and cosy enough for being winter, but expensive designer pieces. They were aggressively appropriate for her age – she had a big thing about women dressing bolder than they should do for their ages.
“Do you regret it?” Aimé asked.
“Regret what, Aimé?” she retorted, as if the question itself exhausted her, frustrated her – she knew what he was asking, he thought.
It had never occurred to him until recently how fucking tragic her life was, in the scheme of things. There were a lot of things he was a bit more canny to, now, more details he noticed – he’d never leaned back and thought about his mother’s life, in the scheme of things.
He’d known she was angry, sad, that her life was a bit pathetic in the scheme of things – not more than a lot of women in her position. He’d known it growing up, knew it was shitty, the position she was in. France wasn’t exactly a fucking feminist haven, especially around Montauban – but Ireland? She’d been a powerhouse, and then she’d married his father, and then she’d gotten pregnant, and then bit by bit…
She didn’t work now – it wasn’t right, wasn’t proper, not for a mother, and now she’d been out of the game for too long.
“You should go back to work,” Aimé said. “It’s not like you like any of your friends – you fucking hate Kathleen, and Caitriona, she’s a stone-cold cunt. It’s not like you need them for anything, like you’d miss them.”
“What? Aimé—”
“I don’t need a mother,” Aimé said. “I may as well have never had one, except for the fact that I got to spend time with your mother.”
That hit her like a slap in the face, the way she recoiled, leaned back in her seat, her eyes widening. “How can you say that to me?” she demanded. “Everything I’ve done for you, everything—”
“God, what have you done for me? Quit your job? Go to brunch with women you hate? Mam, it’s not like you spent any time with me – I was basically raised by people you fucking hired.”
“That’s not true,” she said sharply. “I spent time with you, I played with you, I…” She trailed off, and Aimé exhaled, running a hand through his hair.
“Played with me,” he repeated. “Played what with me? Name one game. Name one sport – name anything.”
“We’d watch television together.”
“You’d watch television. Sometimes I was allowed to be in the room, if I was quiet, and I was drawing.”
“I bought you pens and pencils, bought you drawing things.”
“Yeah, thanks for that,” Aimé said. “You remember me giving you paintings on your birthday? Remember sobbing and screaming when I was, what, fifteen, sixteen, and I gave you a painting instead of something I bought for you? How I was just giving you homemade rubbish instead of actually putting any thought into it?”
He watched her fidget in her seat. “You’re a better painter now than you were then,” she mutters.
“Sure,” he said. “I’m not… What do you think, that I’m here to yell at you?”
“You’re not here to come back.”
“No,” Aimé said. “I’m here to tell you to leave Dad and get your own fucking life back, or at the very least, don’t stay and tell yourself it’s for me. You’ve never wanted to be my mother, never much felt like it – I mean, come on. Tell me a part of you isn’t jealous of how Mémé lived, not the vineyard, not growing grapes, but the fact that she got to live alone and be in charge.”
“Are you truly this narcissistic, this selfish?” she demanded, shaking her head disbelievingly. “Do you really think that just because you’re setting your own life on fire, burning your bridges behind you, that I should do the same thing?”
“Yeah, do the same thing,” Aimé said. “You should leave him, Mam. It’s not like you fucking love each other, and it’s not like you go to church, either, so don’t pretend it’s about that.”
She didn’t say anything as he got to his feet, but as he shouldered his back, she said, “You’ve always been such a— You’re such a disappointment. I don’t want you to be, never wanted you to be, but you’ve always insisted on being one – and now this? Does it make you feel like you’re important, Aimé? Do you think you’re special because some man’s chosen you?”
“L’ange isn’t a man,” Aimé said. “But yeah, yeah, it does. I’m grateful, actually.”
“Grateful for—”
“Give me a call when you feel like being my mother,” Aimé interrupted her. “But until then, I’m not your problem – don’t worry about me. Let the angels fucking have me, if that’s what you want.”
She stared down at the tabletop as he walked away, walking toward the door with his hand gripping at his satchel strap, and he felt a kind of gnawing hole in the base of his fucking stomach. He didn’t know, exactly, how it was going to go, what was going to happen in the aftermath, what—
But he’d wanted something better than that. He’d wanted, he didn’t know, solace, or a nice fucking answer, a happy ending, some sort of connection, something.
He thought about Heidemarie going from the happy, strong woman in all those photographs of Colm’s to being a sad old lady not able to go anywhere without her kids’ permission, without them wanting to care about her, and then he thought about his mother in the photos Mémé had kept of her, her as a young woman.
Climbing onto his bike, he took off.
The rain was freezing on his face and hair, but he was actually grateful it was so fucking bracing.
