Tom is Dead Read online

  That’s not what it’s about, said those close to us—those close but far away—but about moving on.

  Stella was moving on for four. She would soon be Tom’s age. We needed to be careful with Stella, and with Vince. And with what we said.

  If I’d fallen pregnant by accident—like we die, through an oversight—I would’ve wanted to keep it, I guess, surely I would’ve wanted to have it. But I no longer had any imagination for the future, I still don’t. Images belong to the past. I’m a memory in images, a data bank: Tom, whom I open up gently, watching out for him, watching out for our pain. Tom is suffering too, he’s suffering like me; maybe the dead should be left in peace, but how to be sure? The dying sometimes seem to suffer when we touch them—but how do we know for sure? Anyway, it didn’t happen. I have no regrets about this unborn child, but sometimes it gets mixed up with Tom.

  Fall pregnant again with Tom. I didn’t want a baby, I wanted Tom.

  ‘Still?’ worried my sister-in-law over the phone, with the same tone as the psychologist who was surprised that I still cry.

  It wasn’t on the phone. Stuart corrected me. My sister-in-law visited us, with Stuart’s brother and their children, soon after we moved to the Blue Mountains. I had completely forgotten. Their visit disappeared beneath the word still. A fixed memory, a perpetual present, I still hear it, so unforgiving, still.

  On the report card of my grieving, the word still appeared as an overall mark, it would seem. Can do better. Still.

  My sister-in-law is French; the Winter brothers have a thing for French women, a French fetish. At first I wrote she was French, but no, she is French, has always been French. Grammar forces me to conjugate who is dead and who is living, and I think about the astronomical number of people still standing while Tom is dead. Ten years on, still.

  No, of course, not on the phone. She said it to my face, in our house in the Blue Mountains. The setting’s coming back to me, a pale aquarelle…I see the blurred lines, blues, everything is blue in my memory of the Blue Mountains, even though I still live here, even if out my window the mist is grey, the forest metallic, the underside of the leaves silvery. But I close my eyes and the landscape is blue. Deep blue, a soft shadowy blue. You could breathe this close to the forest. A climate of poplars, of temperate rain, almost Europe. The wooden house, with its old furniture, old for Australia—I felt at home in this sad, secretive house.

  It’s the first time Stuart has settled down anywhere, so he invites his brother and his sister-in-law, just as I invited my mother and maybe my shadow of a father, several times, I don’t remember well. Home Stuart said of this lost place. The Winter family number two turns up with their two little Winters. Not a single memory. I see my study, the blue lines of its familiar edges. I see the window, a splash of pale light, this window that’s before me as I write. And I see, in another space where my eyes drift, the memory of this same window. The pretty silhouette of my sister-in-law outlined in front of me. I’m there. It’s there that she will say the word still.

  We speak French, we talk about bread, cheese, wine, and the incomparable French climate and, of course, the Winter brothers. And Tom appears. I try not to show that Tom is there, I try hard, I try my best to seem interested in vineyards and cheese. I see my study, my spacious study, its objects worn with habit; and I see my sister-in-law—she’s not being nasty, she just has the standard selfishness of those who never step outside themselves. She talks about the children, but I can’t. I can’t not see Tom. So she says, ‘You still think about it?’

  Was it about having another child? I don’t know anymore. My sister-in-law must’ve at least had the insight, made the imaginative leap, to see on my face what she didn’t see before her. So she said her sentence, she said her line. The rest of her visit slips into oblivion. My sister-in-law exits my life. Her planet detaches from mine and rotates, far away, in a zone where I never go. Maybe today, on her planet, my sister-in-law would like to swallow her sentence, take it back into her throat like those psalms which, when recited backwards, take on a satanic meaning. Choke herself with it, maybe. But it’s too late. The sentence has been spoken.

  Just before we left Sydney—Stuart’s job was nearly finished, his team had been working day and night—one morning, one of the very last mornings, I come back from taking the children to school, and when I open the door, the Victoria Road apartment is full of people. It’s very strange. Stuart has picked up bread and croissants, soggy croissants from Bon Pain, the bakery at the bottom of the street, and all his workers are there. There’s a party atmosphere. They’re all grey with cement. They apologise for messing up the place, shuffling forward to the edge of their seats. I bring in chairs for those who don’t have one, every chair in the apartment, and I make coffee. Dust and air entered with them, the yellow dust of a Sydney spring, heavy with pollen, and through the open windows, in the embarrassed silence, we can hear the sea. The Bondi sea, that I’d scarcely seen, that Tom’s death stole from me, ruined, and was connected with him right inside my chest—my hands make coffee, I’m in the Victoria Road kitchen, this weak, pale coffee that Australians like and that all immigrants learn to drink, I ask, I shout: ‘You like it strong?’ I ask twelve men at once—Stuart shouts to me to make it the same as usual, I hear laughter, I pour in two litres of water, up to the brim of the coffee machine; I think it’s a lot, I add more coffee; and I ask myself, diabolical as it is, if Tom would’ve liked his coffee strong, à la française, or weak, à l’anglosaxonne.

  I go back into the living room, it goes silent again, ‘sugar’ Stuart says to me, I go back into the kitchen, ‘spoons’ Stuart says to me, I go back again, the voices ripple through my trips back and forth, a shy masculine backwash. I’m pathetic, but Stuart is happy, he laughs, everything’s fine, he doesn’t care, it’s the end of the job, he loves me, he finds me beautiful, I know it, it’s always been like this, the highs and the lows, but everything’s fine. I pull my hair back and I stick a chopstick into it that was lying around on the table from last night, I smile, I serve the coffee. Hanif asks me if I was born in Paris. The crane operator asks me about Vince and I think it’s nice of him to remember his name but, try as I might, I can’t remember this man’s. Not long ago, he took Vince up in his crane and Vince was overjoyed (no, Vince had gone all serious, serious with joy like they do at ten). I was so afraid I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to go—I waited with Stella for Stuart to bring Vince back, shaking the whole time. I think the foreman is the only one who knows about what happened to Tom. And even then, I’m not sure.

  I look around at the faces as I serve the coffee; they have difficult names from difficult countries, difficult faces. I look at their hands, their grey nails, their wrinkles caulked with cement. Their eyes avoid me, thankful, return to Stuart, and to their coffee. They look at how the place is furnished— strangely for a site manager—and at the mess. Maybe. Stuart looks at me. It’s dark at our place, even in spring; we could’ve gone into the sunroom, but it’s probably too small for the ten or twelve of us. I’d like to tidy everything up with a twitch of my nose like in Bewitched. Just like with everyone else, I feel like throwing Tom in their faces, but I wouldn’t want to embarrass Stuart’s workers any further. Winter’s wife. The boss’s wife, completely mad. It’s as embarrassing for them as it is for me: they’re alienated, exploited, and moronic with fatigue. Stuart, standing behind the table, squeezes my shoulder affectionately, just as he does to Hanif, the same gesture for all of us. I scour the faces again as discreetly as possible. I look at them. My fellow creatures.

  Allambe, the foreman, a massive Aborigine, lights a cigarette asking my permission. I also have a fag in my mouth, I laugh and he nods, laughing. Everybody laughs, lots more fags appear. I try to hear what kind of laughter it is. Stuart looks at me. A laughter for my benefit, or a natural laughter. I listen out for this. The universal respect due grieving mothers. Made of terror and ignorance. I try to make out in their eyes the ring of ashe
s which, in every culture, encircles those who have death marked on their forehead. The mask that I put on Allambe prevents me from seeing Allambe—I see Tom, I put Tom on their faces. Their distance, their deference— is it to do with class? They think I’m crazy, I guess. And even if they know about Tom, it doesn’t change anything: the boss’s wife is crazy. It’s been too long, in everyone’s opinion. When suffering goes on for too long. When you go too far. Psychologists have a name for it: pathological grieving. They’re all there, with their huge paws, judging my sorrow, its duration.

  Anyway, Stuart knows, he took the risk—he knows I won’t be able to stand much more of this, so he gets up, and he smiles at me, everything’s fine, he kisses me, thank you, and they all leave really quickly, in one go, empty chairs, cups and the sun.

  The Blue Mountains: it could be Canada, or anywhere else with forests, streams and wooden houses, if it weren’t for the koalas and the kangaroos, and this grey mist, which looks blue to me, unique in the world. The exotic has a slightly consoling power; the ability to distract that food or the cinema have lost. The loss of habit, the absence of certain objects, of certain bearings, keeps you busy. The loss of landscapes. Exile. This seems the only possible home for me since Tom’s death, since Tom’s death threw me out of my home. The coherence of this strange landscape, these trees that I know with these animals that I don’t know, these valleys that I feel that I have already travelled, but at the bottom of which there are red dragons.

  The forest does me good. Living, dense, confused. From the house, you can see it descending, blurred, or golden green beneath the sun. A huge fresh healing smell. The eucalypts are tall and cramped, but the undergrowth isn’t oppressive at all, the sun breaks through, the bark peels off in long bright strands. The only fear is of fire, but the forest is guarded, closely, because of the koalas, national treasure. You feel taken care of, in good hands, a civilised forest.

  The thing is, people here know nothing about Tom. It’s a small town in the southeast of the Blue Mountains, five or six thousand residents, though not that small for Australia; it makes a living from bushwalking and koalas, and from Canberra not being far away. You introduce yourself, at school, in shops, you say your name, you’re white, you mow your lawn, you have two cars and two kids. We really messed things up in Victoria Road, I realised this quite late in the piece. The shame, as well as the grief. Instinctively, I’d always avoided my neighbours, but they avoided us as well. I learned that our neighbour on the same floor had been astounded that I hadn’t thanked her, that I hadn’t paid her a courtesy call: she was the one who’d looked after Stella and Vince while we were at the hospital with Tom. Yes, we’d made an insufferable mess of things. A family whose child dies, just like that, in front of everybody’s eyes. The neighbouring buildings, the street, to all appearances so anonymous, swept relentlessly by cars, this street had seen Tom die; its windows had seen the blood, its inhabitants had seen the ambulance, and the blood, afterwards, being cleaned up, and the mother, me, they’d kept an eye on her. Leaving Victoria Road meant leaving all that behind as well, the witnesses. In the Blue Mountains, where within fifteen days we knew everybody, nobody knew us.

  A big wooden house, all on one level, surrounded by an ornamental verandah. It was rented out furnished, with old furniture—rocking chairs, bench seats, a pantry, a long country-style table. It was expensive and run-down, but there was maybe the possibility of a future here.

  We carried the memory with us. We carted it around, we dragged it behind us. It wasn’t a very practical memory. And Tom suffered in transit; from the crematorium to Victoria Road, from Sydney to Canberra, from doorstep to supermarket. Tom suffered like someone seriously injured that you cart around in an ambulance. By settling down in this house in the Blue Mountains, where Vince and Stella each had their own bedroom, where the measuring door was hung on the wall like a painting, we could maybe sleep, cook, live with the memory of Tom. Yes, Stuart called this lost place home. A house that Tom didn’t know, where we didn’t know Tom; where the walls had never heard his voice, the floor had never felt his feet.

  One night, I remember, I’d drunk too much. Champagne —it must have been with my brother and sister-in-law, brought over from France. Who else would have thought of giving us champagne? I see the floorboards shiny beneath my feet—it’s in the Blue Mountains, we’re celebrating moving in. Our new beginning. We light a fire in the fireplace; there’s a fireplace here. Nights can get cool. Is it before or after the still? Stuart’s face glows like wood, glows like his name: Stuart. His mild, charming name. A great confidence swells my chest; with each glass of champagne I dive into Stuart, into Stuart’s universe, he’s mine, thankfully, he who had the goodness to prove me innocent, my companion, Stuart Winter. My brother and sister-in-law become tiny, their voices come to me in I don’t know what language, the champagne is delicious. All of a sudden, I start crying. I cry without sobbing, calmly, completely, giving over to my tears. The drunkenness strips off the thin varnish of my pain. A new pain, still. It’s like a chemical reaction—the alcohol calls up the tears, I crack like a salt marsh, and beneath is a lake of pure pain.

  ‘Water,’ says Stuart, he hands me a glass, and I see the boredom, the exhaustion on his face, the consternation in the others’. We can’t invite anyone then. I will always be half-mad, unbalanced, impossible.

  Altogether, there were twenty in that support group, twenty of us in the Canberra area who had lost a child, and there was another association, a rival group. People talk about vaccinations, antibiotics—but road accidents, defenestrations, drownings in swimming pools, and domestic poisonings… death makes inroads. Everywhere, as soon as it can. The world is dangerous. Outside is dangerous. Inside is dangerous. The house is dangerous. We did the right thing leaving that house.

  Death was among us, seated; the twenty of us drew its silhouette in negative, each become whole again through our own story, talking about ourselves and our little dead ones, mostly about ourselves, and never about it, death; though I could’ve drawn it, in the geometrical space between us, like that optical illusion that shows, between two faces, an urn.

  A female wild cat. A sphinx. At the back of the room, there was a door, and I saw it slowly open, after having listened for hours, after having taken in the layered stories of the others, or their linear stories, or no story at all, a word, the distortion of a face, a hiccup, silence. Head heavy, cheeks burning, legs limp, hands clenched.

  She entered, she had come in with us, she kept coming in, our clothes were impregnated with her, our hair, our nails, our wrinkles. She was cast by our shadows. Our faces, front on and in profile, were her. The shape of our bodies, our limbs, our gauntness or our morbid plumpness, our tics, our tremblings, our tears—you could see her, dense and palpable, she circulated among us, played the hostess, the au pair of the house. For me, she was feminine, always. She clouded my reflection in the mirror. I heard the rustle of her skirts, she sat among us, drank her tea in silence, and listened to us, so worn-out, built out of pain, that all trace of judgement had gone from her; she simply listened, looking at Canberra through the window. Death, forever in mourning. She had over us the superiority of time, her great calmness, her patience. She’d known forever that children died. She was no longer guilty of anything, neither thief nor assassin—she was amongst us, our sister, our eldest sister.

  Tea, orange juice and cake were passed around. For once, smoking was permitted. They put me near the window that they opened despite the air-conditioning, I heard everything through the hum of the city. Canberra, its treed avenues, its museums, its lake, its administrative buildings. The capital of a country lost at the end of the oceans. This city where I gave myself up.

  Canberra is where I was posted when I was finally persuaded to be dead. They assign you a place. You hang onto it, because you don’t know what to do with yourself anymore. The lawns, the automatic sprinklers, the government buildings like huge Lego. Air-conditioning in summer, heating in wi
nter. The mimosa. Three hundred thousand inhabitants. All dead, spread over hectares along with giant supermarkets and museums devoid of visitors. In Canberra, everything is a little too big, there’s lots of space. People rarely touch each other, they smile, they are gentle and polite, the politeness of the dead. Whenever I drove back up to the mountains, I was exhausted. I missed the sea, but away from it I was calmer. There was no longer a way out. There was no more euphoria.

  In the support group, there was a kind of sub-group, an added aristocracy: those who had lost their child to illness. They’d been to hospital like you go to war, and us, the others, we’d lost our children so stupidly. A very skinny woman, burned by living through her daughter’s cancer, explained to me at length that it was worse for me, because it had all been so sudden. She took my hand despite my reticence: I had experienced in one second what she had experienced over a year; and I couldn’t make any sense of what she was saying, apart from this extraordinary civility between us, this strange commonality, this dignity. I often thought of the woman with the hat—had she had other children? I can’t remember anymore. I remember that hat, ten years on, and the little dead child hidden beneath it, thinking for her, breathing for her—she the mummy, mummified, she was the dead one.

  You soon become a veteran. You find the words, the gestures. You greet, you answer the phone, you man the desk, you offer a biscuit. You transform yourself into a voluntary worker for the death of children. You listen, you nod, you issue warnings, you exist. And by the time you finally believe that you’re not alone anymore, you’re alone again. The journey from one solitude to another must have taken four years for me. The time to leave Sydney, the time to settle myself in the Blue Mountains, the time to fix up the house, the time to tell pieces of my story, until, one day, I stopped driving to Canberra. From one day to the next, I stopped going to the support group.