He wants to drive me to my dad’s, but I tell him to drop me off at the subway. I’ll take the bus alone. In the car, he makes jokes, talks about my dad, says Joël this and Joël that, and I half laugh. In our conversations, Joël is a character in a book, a puppet on a string. One of the first things I ever told him was that I have daddy issues. Talk, talk, talk as he parks. Then he puts his hand on my thigh, draws it up my side, brushes against my breasts, grips my windpipe, but gently. I feel reassured, as though he’s checking that all my organs are where they should be, as he sticks his tongue in my mouth, puts his hand on my throat. Anyway, you don’t need to breathe when you kiss. We’ve been together for almost three years and I haven’t introduced him to my dad. Nothing seems more offensive, strange, inappropriate than the image of those two sitting together at the family dinner table, their love for me juxtaposed.
As usual when I catch the 141 bus at Saint-Michel subway station and see the ugliness of Jean Talon Street all the way to Pie-IX Boulevard, I feel the anxiety building beneath my skin. Little grey insects flutter up my oesophagus, hover in my throat. Everything my boyfriend has just sealed inside me – my heart, my lungs, the veins carrying my blood – suddenly cracks open, comes undone, and my body is crawling with beetles and dragonflies. I feel them burrowing through my dermis, bumping against the top layer of my skin, growing angry, stinging me on the inside. Prick, prick, prick.
When I arrive at his house, my dad, as usual, thanks me ad nauseam for coming. Honey, he calls me. Sweetheart. His bloodshot eyes go teary. He glides his hand up my arm, rubs my shoulder a few seconds in the front hall while I still have my coat on.
It burns wherever he touches me.
My sister turns up a minute later. I don’t see you two enough, my dad says, I miss you. He always says, My children, my darlings, you are my life. On the phone, he’ll usually add, A father’s love for his daughters is unique. He says he loves his sons, but what he feels for my sister and me is special, different. When my brothers are around, he’ll never claim he loves his daughters any differently. He’ll say, I love all four of you, equally. Sometimes, he’ll say, I love all five of you. The fifth child he refers to was in fact never born: my mom miscarried the first time she was pregnant.
Today, he wonders aloud, Did I have any other children? More than four? More than five? He doesn’t mean half-brothers or half-sisters I might have somewhere, illegitimate children he had with other women. What he implies is that he believes my mom had abortions without telling him. My dad divides his offspring into the living and the dead – real and imaginary ghosts. He says, Children are a treasure.
That he wishes he had a dozen.
We kids, his living children, say nothing in response. Buzz, buzz, buzz goes the scarab as it kisses the glow-worm in my mouth.
Unlike my sister and me, who escaped long ago, my two brothers still live at home and seldom go out. Inhabiting this house is their only activity, the only use of their time. They’re not well and never have been: together they’ve amassed an impressive number of psychiatric diagnoses. Today we all sit around the table, nobody talking much.
In my dad’s house, the only shiny new thing is the white kitchen, which looks suburban, bourgeois, flashy. It was recently renovated and not a kitchen I would have chosen because it just emphasizes the awful state the other rooms are in. The rest of the house has stayed as it was when my mom lived here. He calls her ‘that woman’, refusing to call her by her name. Other than the kitchen, nothing has really changed here since I was a kid, though everything looks more beat-up and run-down. Grungier. My dad asks how we’re doing, my sister and I. What’s new, girls? he says. I’m busy, I say, I’m working a lot. My dad is misty-eyed, his fingernails yellow and too long, and when I look at him, the insects wriggle in my throat. He says he’s so happy I’m with someone. You could be with anybody, he tells me, the important thing is not to be alone.
Today is Father’s Day, and as we’ve done every year since my parents divorced, my sister and I have bought our dad flowers. We give him four red roses, one from her, one from me, and two from our brothers, who never buy gifts, which is no big deal since we’re used to it. We know they’ll do nothing to mark the day, that it’s up to us to find time to pick up gifts. That it’s up to us to pay. There’s still no vase in the house, and my dad apologizes. I forgot to buy one again, he says. He also apologizes for the mess – the yellow foam sticking out of the threadbare chairs, the cracks in the ceiling, the mouldy dishrags lying across the counters, the peeling wallpaper, the grimy windows – as I’m throwing out a jar of pink hair dye left on a shelf of the cabinet in the dining room. I used that dye ages ago, so I don’t understand what this long-forgotten jar is doing there, and my dad doesn’t either. I remember that back when I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, I’d dye my hair different colours – blonde, red, pink, green – hoping I’d undergo some profound change, but my head remained where it always was atop my neck and shoulders and I was still my parents’ daughter. My father’s daughter. It’s when I spot the jar of hair dye that the insects move up to my eyes. They lay their lacy, veined wings like a lens over my pupils, and the room divides into segments. The insects dissect the layers of my father’s life, our lives and my mother’s life that have collected in this sad house. Layers like these usually speak volumes, reveal secrets when you dig through the different eras, but here, they have no depth; they lie parallel to each other. Cheap, shoddy artefacts.
As usual, we can’t decide what to put the flowers in. The empty yogurt containers aren’t deep enough, the drinking glasses not wide enough. We settle on an old champagne bucket sitting dirty in the middle of the living room. The last time champagne was uncorked in this house was probably twenty years ago when my dad defended his PhD. My dad rinses the bucket, places the flowers in it, wipes away a tear. I love you, he tells us again, I’m happy we’re all here. Then he goes out for a smoke on the back patio. Beer bottles are hidden all over the yard, so maybe he’ll have a drink too. If he’s feeling especially brazen today, he’ll pour himself some wine later. Will we say anything? It depends: sometimes we get tired of telling him he can’t mix his meds and alcohol. If he drinks too much, he’ll have a seizure or two, my brothers will pick him up off the floor, but my sister and I will already be gone. If they’re minor attacks, Ariane and I will find out two or three weeks later, or maybe never. If they’re serious, the hospital has our phone numbers. My sister and I are at the top of his call list.
While my dad is outside, my older brother says, For a vase, we should have gone to Dad’s room, unlocked his door, and collected the empty beer bottles lying around. He says, We could have used one bottle for each rose, one bottle per kid. He laughs to himself and my sister and I look away. When my dad comes back in, my brother stops laughing, his face as stiff as a marionette’s. The patio door isn’t very thick. Can my dad hear us when he’s outside? We wolf down our sushi, my sister barely speaking, me not saying a thing. My dad serves himself some wine, one glass, two glasses, three glasses, and after that I stop counting. My brothers chat about the weather and politics. Then my dad takes out four envelopes, solemnly. The envelopes look new, and he hands one to each of us. I unseal mine. His will is inside. My health’s not so good any more, he tells us, I need to take precautions. He says, I don’t want that woman to steal everything after I’m gone. He’s left us each an equal share of his house.
I say, I don’t want your house.
And for once, the insects keep quiet.
My sister laughs nervously. Anyway, happy Father’s Day, she mutters. Then no one says a word. I stand up and so does my sister. As we’re getting ready to go, my dad takes us in his arms, first me and then my sister. He gets weepy again. I love you, he tells us, I love you so much. He asks me, Will I meet your boyfriend soon? I realize my dad doesn’t know his name, that I’ve never told him.
I catch the 141 in the opposite direction. My boyfriend is waiting for me at Saint-Michel station. How did it go at your father’s? he asks. Same old, same old, I say. He kisses me, but the anxiety I felt on the way to my dad’s place has lingered and created layers in my blood, depthless layers lined up side by side. His will is still in my handbag, and I don’t know what I’ll do with it. Its after-image seems to radiate through my bag, extending my dad’s reach, burning my side. My boyfriend kisses me again, brushes against my hips. This time, he doesn’t touch my throat, and I wonder if the insects living in my mouth have built nests in my mucous membrane, if their offspring are now hatching, if they’ll soon be crawling along the walls of my windpipe. I wonder if while we’re kissing, they’re crossing from my pharynx to his.
I wonder if I’m infecting him.
Photograph by William Henry Fox Talbot, Insect wings, c. 1840 © National Science & Media Museum / Science & Society Picture Library
To read this text in French, please visit granta.com/de-roses-et-dinsectes/
