I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This Read online

  “Why didn’t you take the room below for yourself?” Sylvie asked Josée at dinner one night, nearly fifty years later, not for the first time. Now it was Josée who scooped crème fraîche onto her carrots and Sylvie who scolded her for it, but the helpless little girl was still there in her voice. “It would have given you a very private access.”

  “I wasn’t about to go sleep somewhere else in my own home,” Josée replied, indignant.

  “So you thought it was normal to send an eleven-year-old—”

  “Well, who else was going to go down there? I suppose your father could have . . . but otherwise, yes. You sent the kids.”

  “And you thought it was—”

  “Now that you say it, yes. We could have sent Paul.”

  “Because you figured that for a child—”

  “His whole medical office was down there. It would have been convenient,” Josée acknowledged with a beatific smile and a shrug. “And I could have taken his room then! Well, I’ve only thought of that just now. No luck for you.”

  —

  “I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED both my children equally,” my mother said to me when I was an adult, with unwavering conviction. That my mother favored my brother was for me one of the most basic facts of our shared past. She tended carefully to his minor scrapes and bruises. When he bit me on the back and drew blood, she scolded me for provoking him. My brother was a cherubic child with a halo of soft curls and long-lashed brown eyes. But when he was angry and we were alone, he curled his fingers and let loose a long, breathless wail so intense his face went red and his head shook. Then he lunged, clawing and punching and biting. He looked just like her, my mother used to say. When I’d asked who I looked like, she’d said, “your paternal grandfather.”

  One summer, at a city pool with a particularly inattentive babysitter, my brother held me underwater so long the world went black. He held me by my growing breasts. He had learned that this caused me so much pain I could not fight back, and so he used the tactic often. I came up gasping, terrified, convinced I had almost died. When I reported on this later to my mother, certain that this time I would find sympathy, she looked at me stonily. She sent me away and called my brother into her room. When they emerged, she told me that she wouldn’t punish either of us. I must learn to stop trying to drag her into our arguments. “But you should be ashamed of yourself for what you did,” she said to me. “You know exactly. Now, end of discussion.”

  I clung to the moment one of her friends pulled me aside and told me that the imbalance in our treatment wasn’t normal. It was the only proof I had. Neither my mother, my father, nor my brother remembered things the way I did. I tried to remind myself we could each have our own versions. My mother’s was not more real than my own. But I never quite believed this was true.

  —

  WHILE HER FAMILY SLEPT, Sylvie crept up the servants’ stairs to the kitchen to raid the refrigerator. She ate fruit in syrup straight from the can. She stole money from the grocery wallet. She bought herself bags of candy at the boulangerie. She bought roses by the dozen and gave them away to strangers in the street. At the girls’ communion, a fancy affair where they had been instructed to say hello and politely stay out of the way, Sylvie drank so heavily she wound up flat on her back under the table.

  Françoise watched her sister with horrified awe. Sylvie’s year in Ussel had left her unprepared for her return to Paris, and her grades failed. Rather than repeat the year and thereby fall behind her little sister, Sylvie was sent to a series of boarding schools and local private schools, a rarity at that time even for well-to-do Parisians. Sylvie was friends with boys. She went to parties; she drank and smoked. Françoise was never invited along. She spent most of her time alone in her room, with her unchanging body and her perfect grades.

  Sylvie had sanitary napkins. Sylvie had a bra. When Sylvie had cramps, Josée would lie in bed with her “pour lui donner ses fesses,” curling herself into her daughter’s abdomen so that the warmth of her buttocks would ease the pain. Françoise’s stomach clenched with jealousy. She was tired of being a boy. The jealousy was the same in the more difficult moments. Françoise stood outside Josée’s locked bedroom door, listening to the thwacking sounds intercut by Sylvie’s cries of pain. At first Josée used her hand, then a hairbrush. When my turn comes, I won’t give her the satisfaction of crying out, Françoise resolved. Now when she snuck into her mother’s bedroom, she hit herself with the hairbrush. She tried hard to make it hurt and to stay silent. She watched herself in her mother’s mirror, practicing a stoic mask. But her turn never did come, and that hurt most of all.

  —

  “A BRA?” Josée said when Françoise finally mumbled her request. “A bra for what?” She shouted to Paul and Sylvie. “Did you hear that? Françoise wants a bra!” Sylvie laughed loudest.

  Josée had slipped into the 1960s with ease—miniskirts and Brigitte Bardot bangs. Her body was made for the era—the breasts she spent a lifetime complaining were too large, the waist so small two hands could nearly fit around it. Françoise grew fixated on the maxi-coat her mother wore over her shortest skirts. If only she had a coat like that, she thought, she might be seen as a woman. But she was still dressed by her mother, in school uniforms and utilitarian clothing designed not to fade or tear. Occasionally Paul might take Françoise shopping, flashing rolls of cash in Paris’s most expensive stores. But she was only his prop then, trying on a parade of preppy outfits as her father boldly flirted with the saleswomen. He would never buy her a fashionable coat like her mother’s.

  Instead, Françoise gathered her carefully saved pocket money. She bought a cheap department store raincoat. She cut it and sewed it, then put it on and twirled in front of the mirror. It wasn’t the coat she’d envisioned, but, Françoise thought, if she moved like this, swayed like that, one might mistake it for elegant, one might forget its uneven hem and plastic sheen. She swooshed through the house in it, imagining the admiring looks.

  “What is that supposed to be?” Josée said. “You can’t seriously want to leave the house in that!” Françoise looked down and watched the spell transform her Cinderella gown back into plastic. She never wore it again.

  Every Sunday, on her way to the racetrack with Paul, Josée dropped Françoise off at her mother’s house. Often, she pulled over only long enough for Françoise to climb out of the car. Sometimes she stopped in quickly to give Mina her hand-me-downs, designer dresses past their season, in a stiff exchange that was more payment than present. Mina’s house was filled with faded luxuries from a different time. She loved fine things but she sewed her own clothes or repaired Josée’s old ones, preserving her threadbare elegance as best she could. Françoise never thought to wonder why Josée never sat down in her mother’s house. The two women existed in separate worlds. Despite the tinted photograph of a young Josée on Mina’s wall, it never occurred to Françoise that Josée might once have lived there. Josée didn’t exist in Mina’s world, and Mina didn’t exist outside of it. Mina was never invited over to Josée and Paul’s house, not even at Christmas, when Paul’s mother and Josée’s father, the mismatched grandparents who seemed to get along beautifully, sat in the living room, eating the chocolates the patients had left as presents.

  Françoise loved being with Mina. Here she wasn’t a sister or a daughter, a child or a woman. Here she was finally at ease. After she’d had her bath, Mina would perfume her, tickling her all over—une friction d’eau de cologne—while she squirmed with pleasure, delighted to be touched. As she grew older, she and Mina talked for hours, though very rarely about the family. Instead, Mina taught Françoise to sew a button or clean a kitchen, things that at home were done by the help. Mina often brought her secretarial work home over the weekends. Françoise was very impressed by her grandmother’s job. She could not imagine becoming a wife, like her mother, or a plastic surgeon, like her father. She convinced Josée to buy her a practice book
and an old typewriter, and she taught herself how to type like Mina.

  One afternoon Mina said, “What a nice chest you’re developing!”

  Françoise puffed with pride. “Oh really?” she said. “Do you think so?” She arched her back, showing her fuller left profile.

  “Yes,” Mina said, “absolutely.”

  Françoise caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and her face fell.

  “You’re going to need a bra soon,” Mina said, and when she caught the spark her words set off, “in fact, you must have one right away.”

  It was not possible simply to go into a store and try on clothes. Everything had to be asked for and fetched from beautiful shop clerks who looked down their noses at little girls. Françoise was terrified of the ordeal buying a bra would entail. Surely the saleswoman would laugh. Surely she’d throw them out. But Mina strode into the store with her back very straight.

  “My granddaughter needs a bra,” Mina announced. The woman glanced at Françoise, her eyes flicking down to her chest.

  “Something with a lot of support,” Mina said in a tone that left no room for questions. The woman pressed her lips together and nodded. She pulled several padded bras off the wall.

  “Yes,” Mina said. “Precisely what we were looking for.”

  Françoise wore the bra home. She held her back straight, her chest pushed out. Josée never noticed.

  —

  IN 1966, JOSÉE AND PAUL purchased a slope-side triplex apartment in Avoriaz, a ski resort in the French Alps. Both Françoise and Sylvie loved to ski, and the girls were enrolled in regional races. Françoise passed the gold-level tests before Sylvie had even passed the bronze. Sylvie soon lost her taste for skiing. Françoise went on to train with the junior Olympic team.

  One afternoon, Françoise announced that, as a treat for the family, she was going to make a lemon pie. The announcement was met with skepticism. It was a known fact that Sylvie could cook and Françoise could not, though Françoise had never tried.

  It took some effort—the new home was high up the mountain, and the lemons had to be brought up by ski lift from the town below. Françoise worked in the kitchen all afternoon. She had no cookbook, so she invented a recipe. She mixed flour with water until it formed a dough, rolled it out, covered it in sliced lemons and sugar. “What is this ungodly thing?” Josée teased as she passed by. “I’ve never heard of a pie that takes all afternoon to prepare.”

  The family gathered for dinner. Françoise leapt up several times to check on her pie. When it was time for dessert, the family sat waiting.

  “Françoise has decided to poison us all and yet we’re going to die of hunger before it even arrives,” Josée said.

  Françoise emerged from the kitchen and placed the pie in the center of the table. Paul took a knife and tried to cut it.

  “It’s too hard,” he declared. He exaggerated his difficulty, grimacing, pantomiming, until Josée, Sylvie, even baby Andrée collapsed in giggles.

  “We need a hammer,” Paul declared.

  “We need a saw!” Josée chimed. Sylvie laughed hardest of all.

  Paul rose to fetch a saw. Everyone collapsed in merriment—everyone except Françoise. No one ate the lemon pie, though to this day they still talk about how awful it tasted.

  My mother’s mouth became very small as she told me this story. She cast her eyes downward, her voice hollow with hurt. I could see on her face the same expression she must have had that evening, the little girl appearing under the thick eyeliner.

  Although we knew how much my mother hated to be teased, my father, brother, and I regarded as entertainment our periodic missions to empty the fridge of bright green cheese and sour cream long past its expiration date. “Filet of celery, anyone?” my father would say, holding a stalk so limp it flopped toward the floor. My mother tried to laugh with us, but as soon as our laughter exceeded hers, her mood darkened. She would grab a knife and stomp to the counter, roughly chopping the mold off the cheese in order to make us sandwiches.

  “It’s perfectly edible,” she’d say. “It’s you kids that are spoiled.”

  And so we learned to clear the fridge in secret. We rarely teased my mother and she never teased us.

  Some weekends, my brother and I baked cake. It was a game I thought I had invented. Under my direction, we concocted recipes with whatever we found—unsweetened cocoa powder, oatmeal, dried apricots, entire jars of ground cinnamon. I knew we needed flour and eggs, but I guessed wildly at the quantities. We baked our creation at any temperature we pleased, until it became solid. The cake would emerge as a dense brick, somehow having shrunk in volume rather than rising. I would turn it out on one of my mother’s fancy cake plates and adorn the wet lump with strawberries. It almost always tasted like pencil erasers and sawdust, barely sweet. We would call my mother from her room and proudly serve her a slice.

  My brother and I ate happily. We were starved for sugar and eager to eat it in any vehicle possible. My mother would slather her piece in fat-free vanilla yogurt and eat with us at the dining table. “Mmm,” she would say every time. “Truly delicious. The best one yet.”

  —

  FOR A SHORT TIME, there had been happy summers in Deauville, on the Normandy coast. It was only two hours north of Paris, and Josée and Paul’s social circle flowed easily between the two cities. They entertained in lavish rental homes and danced in the ballroom of the grand casino. Haute couture designers gave Josée samples of their dresses to wear. Paul drove up to join his family most weekends. The best restaurants produced their best tables at the mention of le grand docteur Mouly. Josée bought an abandoned pressoir, where apples were crushed for cider, just outside the city limits, with the intention of renovating it into their summer home. Françoise pored over the architectural plans, marveling at Josée’s ability to create glamour from ruins. It seemed to her an incredible magic trick. But then something happened. The plans for the pressoir were abandoned midstream. The building was resold. The family was no longer to summer there. Françoise suspected her father’s increasingly out-of-control gambling, but the reasons were not explained to the children, nor would it have occurred to the girls to demand answers.

  Now, Paul decided, the family would summer near Ussel. His parents had left him a farm four miles from his hometown, where his mother still lived, and Josée would renovate it. It was an appealing image—his beautiful wife and fancy cars, the luxurious vacation home they would create. What better measure of his own success than the envy of his former schoolmates?

  Les Bezièges, the home was called, and Josée, with far less enthusiasm, drew up a new set of plans. In Ussel the sun didn’t shine with the gold heat of the Mediterranean or the cool blue light of the north. It was gray, always gray, over the small and unbeautiful homes in the town. Josée drove in at the start of each summer, daylong drives of listening to the girls squabbling in the back of the hot car, while Paul stayed behind to work. The longest stretches of time Josée spent alone with all three children were likely those car trips that bookended each vacation, and years later she would complain about them often.

  The arrival of the Parisians raised the local eyebrows. Ussel was a tight-knit community, and the disdain was immediate and mutual. The renovations on the farmhouse proceeded. It had a double-height ceiling, a mezzanine, a grand formal living room. Josée had a patch of land by the barn flattened for a tennis court, the only true tennis court in the region. Jacques Chirac, not yet president but already on the National Assembly, came over to play doubles. But often the house echoed emptily unless friends from Paris made the long drive. Josée would walk straight to the front of the line at the butcher’s shop and order thirty of the finest lamb chops for her visiting guests. When she had a stand of trees razed for their new driveway, the town gossiped that she was building a helipad.

  In mid-August, Paul drove down from Paris in his Porsche. He stay
ed only a few days, soaking in the praise that the butcher and baker bestowed on his lovely wife and his three healthy girls. Then he was off again. His patients awaited him in Paris, he told his family lightly, though there seemed little doubt that he was headed for yet another casino, yet another woman’s arms.

  Josée had created two bedrooms for her three daughters—a young lady’s room for Sylvie and a children’s room for Françoise and Andrée to share. Françoise did not mind sharing a room with Andrée. Her love had settled easily on her inexplicably cheerful little sister, who sang to herself each night even after Paul, unable to sleep, stormed into her room and broke her bed. When Andrée had walked her first stumbling steps into Françoise’s outstretched arms, Françoise nearly cried out with pride. It was only decades later, when she had children of her own, that she realized children learn to walk without ever being taught.

  Andrée, Josée had declared, was anorexic. It was true: she often refused to eat. Josée had insisted that someone (rarely herself) sit and coax Andrée bite by bite, late into the night, until a reasonable amount of food had been consumed. The popular parenting advice of the time held that to be potty trained, children must understand the relationship of food to their bowels. Baby Andrée was seated on a plastic potty at the dinner table and encouraged to eat and eliminate in tandem. Françoise suspected that this arrangement was the major cause of her refusal to eat, but still, she was happy to take on the task. The two of them stayed at the table long after the end of each meal, Françoise pressing forkfuls of food against her sister’s smiling, firmly closed lips. Andrée delighted in the attention. She became Françoise’s toy. They spent hours playing school, and Françoise tried, with great patience, to teach her too-young sister to read.