Mon amie américaine Read online




  ALSO BY MICHÈLE HALBERSTADT

  The Pianist in the Dark

  La Petite

  Copyright © Éditions Albin Michel, 2014

  First published in French as Mon amie américaine

  by Éditions Albin Michel, Paris, in 2014.

  English translation © Bruce Benderson, 2016

  “Comic Strip” lyrics on this page by Serge Gainsbourg, from the album Bonnie and Clyde, 1968. Translated from the French by Bill Solly.

  Production editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 267 Fifth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Or visit our Web site: www.​other​press.​com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Names: Halberstadt, Michèle. | Benderson, Bruce, translator.

  Title: Mon amie américaine / Michèle Halberstadt; translated from the French by Bruce Benderson.

  Other titles: Mon amie américaine. English

  Description: New York : Other Press, 2016.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015031208| ISBN 9781590517598 (paperback) | ISBN 9781590517604 (e-book)

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-59051-760-4

  Subjects: LCSH: Female friendship—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Psychological.

  Classification: LCC PQ2668.A3637 M6613 2016 | DDC 843/.914—dc23 LC record available at http:​//​lccn.​loc.​gov/​20150​31208

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  v3.1

  For Arthur, my son

  If the sky above you

  Grows dark and full of clouds

  And that old north wind begins to blow

  Keep your head together

  And call my name out loud

  Soon you’ll hear me knocking at your door.

  — CAROLE KING, “YOU’VE GOT A FRIEND”

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  About the Authors

  I HAD GONE DOWN TO BUY SOME HONEY COUGH DROPS. There was a ticklish feeling in my throat and my nose was stuffed, the beginnings of a cold. It was ten p.m. and the drugstore was about to close. In the distance, a dance of cranes signaled the putting up of Christmas decorations on the Champs-Elysées, decking out the plane trees with white tulle, which made them look like gigantic candies.

  I took the six flights back upstairs on foot to get some air into my lungs and clear out the cold. By the time I’d turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door, Vincent was coming toward me with a rueful look I’d never known before. I’d seen him defeated, depressed — but this was different. It was me he was sorry for, like a doctor with bad news he wished he didn’t have to announce.

  Instantly I thought of you, so intensely that I said aloud what was already no longer a question but a fact: “Molly.”

  His head nodded so sadly that it seemed to move in slow motion. “She’s in a coma.”

  I raised a hand to interrupt him.

  I didn’t want an explanation. I didn’t want to hear anything, understand anything, discuss anything. I opened the door to the bedroom and carefully closed it behind me.

  Alone. I needed to be alone to face the din roaring in my head. It was as if a thousand people had connected to my brain to scramble its data and keep me from thinking.

  I sat down in an armchair without turning on the light. A red button was blinking noiselessly on the keys of the telephone. The darkness gave it a scarlet tinge I thought was appropriate, since red was the color of a scream, emergency, fear. The blood in my veins was like an immense wave that had invaded everything and suddenly pulled away. I’d been so warm, and suddenly I felt frozen. My heart was beating to the rhythm of the gleam, which was still blinking imperturbably, giddily, like a flashing ambulance light with the siren cut off.

  Images of you passed before my eyes. Dancing with our eyes shut while singing Tina Turner in your kitchen. Trying on every single pair of sunglasses at a shop in the Gare de Lyon without buying any. Disguised as a blonde for a costume party. Wolfing down a hot dog on a London street last week. At the airport, five days ago, buying a carton of cigarettes. Your willowy figure dragging the too heavy suitcase you hadn’t wanted to check. Your violet-scented perfume when you kissed me goodbye. Your smile when you came back to shout to me, “Bon voyage!” Your voice hoarse, mocking, inimitable.

  I didn’t know I could produce so many tears.

  MOLLY, I HAVE TO TALK TO YOU. Even if you can’t hear me. The words I can’t share with you are choking me. So I’ll write to you. Not to record my actions, but to tell you what’s happening during the undetermined length of your absence. Try to understand how differently we both live. I’m going to try to find the words.

  I’m not going to lay them down on paper, as they say. It’s a lovely expression, but it’s much too gentle. No, I’m banging out my words. My two index fingers dart over the keyboard vehemently. I type the way I am: like an amateur, too fast, too hard, and often hitting the wrong key. Impetuously, imprecisely, like a beginner, everything I hate about myself. The opposite of you, always levelheaded, organized. You type like a girl Friday in the movies, at top speed, a butt hanging from your mouth casually, without ever looking at your hands, nonchalantly tinkling out your ten-finger ballet.

  You’ve never written me. You’d rather call.

  It’s two p.m. where you are, in New York. In your office, you just had a bagel with smoked salmon, and you’re about to tear into your second pack of menthol cigarettes for the day. But first you dialed my number and, after a few minutes of conversation, I hear you remove the cellophane and slip the cigarette between your lips. It distorts your voice long enough for the first puff, which you inhale as if exulting, with delight.

  Now I know that you’ll be able to concentrate on what I’m telling you. Or else you’re the one who spoke first, then paused, after saying what was on your mind, before you flicked your lighter.

  You used to say you’d stop smoking when you found a man to give you children, since a pregnancy was, you’d maintain, the only way to make yourself give up your three packs a day.

  You didn’t know that illness was another way to achieve abstinence.

  There are no smoking sections in intensive care. In German, Komma is pronounced almost the same way coma is in French, but it’s spelled differently and means something else. A Komma is a comma in German. A pause between two words. In your case, between two territories: sleeping and waking. Rest, Molly, as long as you want. Provided y
ou wake up.

  If you knew how much I resent you! How many times in the last ten years have I repeated you ought to see a specialist, instead of “doing the ostrich.” I had a hard time explaining to you what that expression — faire l’autruche — means in French: it means the same as bury your head in the sand in English. And you really got a kick out of that. A few months later, you brought me back some sand from a beach in Bahia and had written with a blue marker on the plastic bottle you’d filled: OPEN. MY HEAD’S INSIDE.

  On your planet “Comma,” there’s neither sand nor pebbles. Only your consciousness, which it’s your job to bring back intact.

  Strange how you can tell yourself stories to avoid facing reality. A long weekend without being able to reach you. It didn’t feel normal. I said to myself, We just came back from London, tired and jetlagged, and she must be up to her ears in work. As if that had ever kept you from sending some news, leaving a message, answering mine. There was a holiday that Monday in the United States. During those few days I figured that you’d had to leave. As if you’d take a vacation out of the blue — you, who always plan them because you hate improvising.

  I tried to reach your partners. Couldn’t. Only reached their secretary’s voice mail. Nobody called me back. As for Tom, he’s only been your assistant for a few months, and I don’t know him. I didn’t have the nerve to leave him a message.

  The morning of the day you lost consciousness, I was in the bathroom and I heard your horoscope on the radio: “Taurus, today you’ll need the love of the people close to you.” Stupidly I took that for a good omen.

  IT’S SATURDAY AFTERNOON, AND THE WEATHER’S HORRIBLE. So much the better. It matches the way I feel. I burst into tears in the kitchen a little while ago. The radio was playing a French oldie, “C’est la fête,” and its exuberant cheerfulness grabbed me as only a song can do. A feeling coming from far away, from the deepest reaches of my memory, and going directly to my heart. I was standing in front of the window making tea. That snatch of music pulled the ground out from under me.

  In a flash I was sitting down, and the children, who were having their after-school snack, got scared and tumbled into my arms. They’d never seen me cry. What can I say to them?

  Clara runs to get the giant kangaroo you gave her. It’s her favorite stuffed animal. The thing is so tall that she’s been curling up in it for a long time. Benoît gets miffed because he doesn’t know who we’re talking about, so I show him a photo of you. In it you’re trying to keep on a straw hat that might have flown away an instant later. You’re in a garden, it’s sunny, and you’re talking to someone who can’t be seen, the photographer perhaps. He’s managed to immortalize that pout of yours that always comes before a smile. Benoît studies you intensely. He says you’re good-looking and adds, “She looks nice, why is she making you cry?” I explain to him that you’re lying in a hospital bed, that I don’t understand very well why and that you’re sleeping so deeply that you don’t hear anyone who speaks to you. Clara looks hard at me, as if she has guessed everything that I’m not saying, while Benoît smiles, because the reason seems so obvious to him. “She’s waiting for Prince Charming to come and give her a kiss!” I answer that in real life it’s sometimes complicated to awaken a princess. He shrugs. “Then you need to lend her your alarm clock.”

  If only he were right! I’d set off all the sirens in Manhattan if they could bring you back to life. Not to mention the firemen’s here in Paris, which go off at noon on the dot the first Wednesday of every month. When I was little, I was convinced that there was a hidden message in that signal. So much noise couldn’t be used only to indicate the day and the hour. It was a message in code, and I was willing to stake my life on it. Maybe it was signaling the beginning of the end of the world? Why wasn’t anyone paying attention to it? I’d get so frightened that I’d bite the inside of my lips to the point of drawing blood. Then, as if by miracle, the ringing would stop; but I’d keep scanning the sky to spot the moment when it would become night in broad daylight. Then everyone would understand that it was a signal, but it would be too late already …

  In New York, the police car sirens are continuously vying with those of the ambulances. One of those must have taken you to the hospital. But you didn’t hear it. You were already cut off from the world. Lost on planet Comma. That unknown land each of us dreads visiting one day and that you’ve gone off to discover alone.

  I’d rather think you’re away on some assignment, out covering a story; and that you can’t wait to tell me about what you’ve found out as soon as you get back. Are there sounds, colors? Breathtaking scenery? Is it a parched desert? Vertigo, a black hole? Stark night? A long nightmare? Apparently you’re knitting your brow. You couldn’t be suffering. The doctors promised that. But who can be sure? How can anyone know what you’re feeling?

  MOLLY, SWEET MOLLY, YOU WHO ARE ENCOUNTERING THE WORST, you have to admit that you weren’t really prepared for this. You, the city rat who’ll startle at the slightest noise, get hysterical when an insect comes near; you, climbing onto a chair the moment you see a mouse. You, scared of the dark, heights, flying, bridges, and elevators. Shunning exercise, jogging, sports, the slightest physical exertion. You, the American who gobbles vitamins, never eating right, the confirmed frozen-food user, eating yogurt a month after the expiration date, worshipping the sun to an outrageous extent, forgetting whether you’ve had a tetanus shot, sucking down aspirin like it’s mint candy, abusing cheesecake and chocolate milkshakes. You, doping yourself with one cappuccino or Diet Coke after another. Swearing like a sailor and whistling like a boy with two fingers in your mouth. The most sappily romantic girl I’ve ever met, my incorrigible opposite, whom I’ve always found so wonderfully unreasonable. Acknowledge that, of the two of us, you were the less equipped to experiment with what has befallen you: this loss of consciousness, this diabolical heads or tails suspended in time, during which you spin indefinitely around like a coin that fate has tossed into the air without anyone knowing on which side it will fall, or even if it will ever fall back to earth.

  I imagine you hanging on to that coin as if it’s a saddle, like a cartoon pinup astride the atomic bomb, hair blowing in the wind and a wily smile, totally indifferent to that countdown that tolls the knell of her mount. Tick-tock, tick-tock …

  Come with me, let’s get together in my comic strip.

  Let’s talk in bubbles, let’s go BANG! and ZIP!

  Forget your troubles and go

  SHEBAM! POW! BLOP! WIZZ …

  I know it’s ridiculous, but I still prefer imagining you with Bardot’s voice in the Gainsbourg song, her breasts thrust forward, lips parted, vampish and rebellious, rather than knowing you’re flat on your back and mute, your arms pierced by IVs.

  Do you know what I was doing while you were falling alongside your window on the eighteenth floor of your office on Madison Avenue? I was buying shoes. You, with your fifty-eight pairs. At least that was the official figure we came up with together four months ago. Since that time, there must have been a few sales and other promotions you certainly could not resist. And also, you hadn’t let me include the sandals, flip-flops, espadrilles, and other beach shoes that a person usually keeps for the seashore. “Actually, those are vacation shoes, they don’t count.” But if I added them, we’d be getting close to the hundreds, don’t you think?

  A hundred pairs of shoes. You would say I didn’t know how to appreciate the beauty of them because I was a “shoe killer.” It’s true that no matter what pair I buy, it’s transformed, deformed, stretched out of shape; and in less than a week it looks worn out, kaput. But what’s going to happen to yours? Did someone think of airing out the drawers in which you keep them arranged by height and category? Do shoes go downhill when their owners abandon them? Maybe that’s the reason why Benoît’s Prince Charming went throughout the realm with his squirrel-trimmed slipper. Because he sensed that it felt forsaken, unhappy, utterly depressed, without its faithful other half.
>
  If I were in New York, I’d go and slip my hand into each of them. I wouldn’t try that with my feet because I’m two sizes larger than you are. Then I’d lay them on their sides on tissue paper, as you do in hotel rooms to which you always carried one more suitcase than I did because of your many pairs of shoes.

  You’re the champion of baggage. You always have the latest when it comes to the wheels, outer coverings, always searching for something better in terms of size and ease of handling. But whatever luggage you travel with, you also have your very own gift for botching their aesthetic by rigging them out with your dreadful fuchsia-pink labels shaped like a heart, the height of bad taste. I never knew where you bought those eyesores. Never tried to find out, either. In fact, Molly, if I loved making fun of your fuchsia labels, it was especially for the pleasure of hearing you pronounce your favorite French complaint about being pestered, with an accent so thick you could cut it with a knife: “Tu me casses les pieds.”

  Maybe it was your coming move that wore you out. You were so happy about your new neighborhood, going to a better-looking building with a terrace and a doorman in a uniform. The last shopping trip we took was to choose an extendable table for your future balcony, with its view over the Hudson. You were so looking forward to the dinners you were going to have there. I’d been planning to get you an umbrella with a gas heater made to look like a streetlamp, for dining outside. You were planning on having a house-warming party in the spring.

  For three months, that’s all you talked about, even though you dreaded having to get it all organized. Pack away your life in boxes. Itemize everything. Sift through memories. It can make you ill. Moving means having to listen to everything you own remind you of its story. There are the things you’ve inherited, those you bought on a whim, those given to you by people you were intimate with — friends, or sometimes former heartthrobs. Coming back to you all at once. Smells you remember from childhood. Certain landscapes. Places where you used to live. Intense emotions, cries, laughter. The sound track that goes with an entire section of your former life. Memories that make you reappraise the present, and that throw a light on a future that isn’t always positive. What have we gained, lost, since these objects, outfits, paintings, books, music became part of our lives? How many chances to be happy, to have been, or to have failed to be? All of it reevaluated in terms of the time passed and the years acquired. Enough to make you sink into a pit of melancholy.