The List of My Desires (7 page)

Maman taught drawing to primary-school classes, and took a life class at the Museum of Fine Art on Wednesday evenings. She had a wonderful way with a pencil. Our family did not have a photo album but a notebook full of drawings. My childhood was like a work of art. Maman was beautiful, and Papa loved her.

I look at that damn cheque, and I can sense it looking back at me.

Accusing me.

I know that you can never do enough for your parents, and by the time you’re aware of that it’s too late. To Romain, I’m only a phone number stored in his mobile, some memories of holidays in Bray-Dunes and a few Sundays at the Bay of Somme. He doesn’t indulge me, just as I didn’t indulge my parents. We always pass on our faults. With Nadine it’s different. She doesn’t talk, she gives. It’s up to us to decipher her message. To receive it. Since last Christmas she’s been sending me her little films from London over the Internet.

The latest is a minute long.

There’s only one shot, and some rather violent zoom effects. You see an old woman standing on a platform at Victoria Station. She has white hair; it looks like a big snowball. She’s just got out of a train, she takes a few steps and then puts down her case, which is too heavy. She looks around her; the crowd bypasses her like water flowing round a pebble, and suddenly she’s all alone, tiny, forgotten. The woman is not an actress. The crowd is not a crowd of extras. It’s a real image. Real people. A real story. An ordinary defeat. As background music, Nadine has chosen the
adagietto
from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, and she has made that minute the most moving minute I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing; it says everything about the pain of abandonment. Loss. Fear. Death.

I fold up the cheque, suppressing it in my clenched fist.

I
’m beginning to lose weight.

I think it’s stress. I don’t go home in the middle of the day any more, I stay at the shop and I skip lunch. The twins are worried. I tell them I’m behind with my accounts, I have orders to deal with, and then there’s my blog. It gets almost eight thousand hits a day now. I agreed to have advertising on the blog, so I can pay Mado with the money that brings in. Since her grown-up daughter died of pneumonia in intensive care last month, Mado has had time on her hands. She has too many words now. Too much love left over. She’s brimming over with useless information, recipes she’ll never cook again (a leek tart, brown-sugar biscuits), nursery rhymes for the grandchildren she’ll never have. She still cries sometimes in the middle of a sentence, or when she hears a song, or when a girl comes in and asks for some twill or grosgrain ribbon for her mother. She’s working here these days. She replies to the messages left on
tengoldfingers
; she takes orders and sends the stuff out now that we have a mini-sales site. Her grown-up daughter was called Barbara. She was the same age as Romain.

Mado loves the twins; they’re crazy, she says, but they have such
oomph
, such get-up-and-go! She’s trying to bring her vocabulary up to date now that she helps me with the blog.

That’s what I call chutzpah!

Every Wednesday she goes to have lunch with Danièle and Françoise at the Deux Frères in the Rue de la Taillerie. They order a salad, Perrier water, sometimes a glass of wine, but most important of all they fill in their lottery tickets. They search their memory for lucky numbers. An anniversary. The date of an amorous encounter. Their ideal weight. Their social-security numbers. The numbers of the houses they grew up in. The date of a first kiss. The date, never to be forgotten, when inconsolable grief struck. A telephone number that never replies any more.

Every Wednesday afternoon, when Mado comes back, her eyes are shining and as round as lottery balls. And every Wednesday afternoon she says, Oh, Jo, Jo, if I won, if I were to win, you’ve no idea of all the things I’d do!

And today, for the first time, I ask her, What
would
you do, Mado? I don’t quite know, she replies. But it would be extraordinary.

It was today that I began my list.

L
ist of the things I need.

A lamp for the hall table.

A coat-and-hatstand (bistro-style).

A board to hold keys and the post (from Cash Express?).

Two Tefal saucepans.

A new microwave.

A vegetable rack.

A bread knife.

A potato peeler.

Dusters.

A couscous steamer.

Two sets of sheets for our bedroom.

A duvet and duvet cover.

A non-slip mat to go in the bath.

A shower curtain (not flowery!).

A small medicine cupboard (for the bathroom wall).

A magnifying mirror with a built-in light. (Saw it on the Internet, made by Babyliss. 62.56 euros plus delivery.)

A new pair of tweezers.

Slippers for Jo.

Quiès earplugs (because one of us snores!).

A small rug for Nadine’s room.

A new handbag (Chanel? Look at Dior too).

A new coat. (Go back to Caroll’s in the Rue Rouille for another look. Pretty coat there, 30% wool, 70% alpaca. Very comfortable. Has a slimming effect. 330 euros.)

A BlackBerry (because of the blog).

A train ticket to London. (With Jo. Two days there at least.)

A small radio for the kitchen.

A new ironing board.

An iron (saw a very nice Calor steam turbo in Auchan, 30 0.99 euros).

Intensive treatment and repair mask for my hair. (Marionnaud, 2.90 euros and 10.20 euros respectively.)

Belle du Seigneur.
(To reread. Saw Folio edition in Brunet.)

Copy of Les finances personnelles pour les Nuls.

Underpants and socks for Jo.

A flat-screen TV. (???)

All the James Bond films on DVD. (???)

T
he journalist is back.

Bringing croissants and a little tape recorder. I can’t wriggle out of it.

No, I don’t know how it all began. Yes, I wanted to share my passion. No, I never really thought so many women would be interested. No,
tengoldfingers
is not for sale. I don’t do it for the money. No, I don’t think money can buy that sort of thing. Yes, it’s true that I make some money from the advertising. It means I can pay a salary to Mado, who helps me.

Yes, I enjoy it and yes, I’m proud of it. No, it hasn’t gone to my head, and no again, you can’t really call it a success. Yes, success is dangerous when you stop doubting yourself. Oh yes, I doubt myself every day. No, my husband doesn’t help with the blog. He does help me think about what we stock for the site, yes, because sales are going well; we even sent a cross-stitch kit to Moscou yesterday. What, Moscow in Russia? I laugh. No, the Moscou that’s a district in Toulouse near the Canal du Midi. Oh, that one. No, there’s no message in what I’m doing. Only pleasure, and patience. Yes, I do think that not everything from the past is outmoded. Giving yourself a chance to possess something very good, taking your time, that’s important. Yes, I think everything does go too fast these days. We talk too fast. We think too fast – if we think at all, that is! We send emails and texts without reading them through, we lose the elegance of proper spelling, politeness, the sense of things. I’ve seen children publish pictures of themselves vomiting on Facebook. No, no, I’m not against progress; I’m just afraid it will isolate people even more. Last month there was a news item about a young girl who wanted to die, she told her 237 Facebook friends in advance and no one reacted. What did you say? Yes, she’s dead. She hanged herself. No one told her that it would mean twenty minutes of atrocious pain. That suicides always want to be saved, but only silence answers their suffocated pleas. Well, since you want a formula so badly I’ll say that
tengoldfingers
is like the fingers of a hand. Women are the fingers and the hand is their passion. Can she quote me on that? No, no, it sounds ridiculous. On the contrary, she thinks it’s touching. A pretty comparison.

Then she turns off her tape recorder.

I think I’ve got lots of wonderful stuff for my article, thank you, Jo. Oh, one last question. You must have heard about the woman from Arras who won eighteen million in the lottery? Suddenly I am wary. Yes. If it was you, Jo, what would you do with it? I don’t know what to say. Would you expand
tengoldfingers
? she goes on. Help women living alone? Set up a foundation?

I start stammering. I . . . I don’t know. Anyway . . . anyway, that’s purely theoretical. And I’m not a saint, you know. I live a simple life, and I like it that way.

Thank you very much, Jo.

‘
P
apa, I’ve won eighteen million euros.’

Papa looks at me. He can’t believe his ears. His mouth opens in a smile, which turns to laughter. Nervous laughter at first, turning to joy. He wipes away the little tears that spring to his eyes. That’s wonderful, my little girl, you must be pleased. Have you told Maman? Yes, I’ve told her. And what are you going to do with all that money, Jocelyne, do you have any idea? That’s just it, Papa, I don’t know. What do you mean, you don’t know? Anyone would know what to do with a sum like that. You could have a new life. But I like my life as it is, Papa. Do you think Jo would still love me as I am if he knew? Are you married? he asks. I lower my eyes. I don’t want him to see my sadness. Do you have children, darling? Because if you do, spoil them; we never spoil our children enough. Do I spoil you, Jo?

Yes, Papa, every day. Oh, that’s good. You make Maman and me laugh; even when you cheat at Monopoly and swear it isn’t you cheating, that 500 note was there all the time among your pile of fives.

Maman is happy with you. Every evening when you come home, as soon as she hears your key in the lock, she has a charming way of tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear and looking at herself furtively in the mirror. She wants to be pretty for you. She wants to be your present, your Belle du Seigneur. Do you think your mother will be here soon? Because she was going to bring me my newspaper and some shaving foam. I’ve run out. She’ll be here soon, Papa. Good, good. What did you say your name was?