The Book of Wonders Read online

  Whatever. I said to myself that this ordinary morning on an ordinary weekend was the perfect time. I didn’t want Mum to get too carried away and imagine me already married, so I didn’t intend to make a big deal of it. An informal chat, casual, was all I wanted. So, when I went up to her and Mum brushed me away like a bramble on her path, I must say, I was fuming. Mum says I’m a bit hot-headed. I’m not too sure what that means – probably that I’m a pain. Or touchy. Or both. In my defence, as Granny Odette says, the apple never falls far from the tree, and Mum is especially touchy. I didn’t say she was a pain – you jumped to that conclusion, admit it.

  So I snorted like a bull and shot off. I wanted to mess up her work call. It was Saturday morning; somehow, I had to get her to realize that it wasn’t a work day. I’m very aware that Mum stresses when she sees me vanish around a street corner. Consciously or not, she starts walking faster so as not to lose sight of me. So I shot off, I wanted to pass the corner of Rue des Récollets before her, then hide inside the entrance to Jardin Villemin, give her a bit of a scare and make her end her call.

  I’m not quite sure what happened next. Well, yes, I think I understand; I’m not dumb. I was going too fast, for sure. I lost control. A really stupid mistake. I never lose control like that; I can handle my board. I looked up and saw the lorry coming. I heard the sound of a horn, then everything went black.

  Total blackout.

  Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t see my life flash by in a few tenths of a second, I just saw the headlights of that rotten lorry and I thought, Hey, that’s weird he’s got his headlights on in broad daylight.

  Last thoughts are surprisingly mundane.

  2

  E.E.G.

  At no point did I think he might be dead. Mothers must be programmed that way. To consider the possibility of your child dying is already to bury them. And burying a child is quite simply impossible. Louis wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead.

  I was in shock. I don’t know if that’s the official, medical term, but I think I heard someone say the word. I experienced the rest of that arctic Saturday floating in a haze, as if sounds and sensations were deadened by a cocoon enveloping me from head to toe. I felt anaesthetized – perhaps thanks to the tranquillizers that I was immediately given, perhaps as a result of the bombshells that were being dropped around me, one after the other.

  Emotional bombshells, like when the doctors explained to me that they had pumped my son full of drugs to prevent him from suffering, that the priority was to stop any infections that would cause internal lesions. That his condition was life-threatening, that for the time being it was impossible to assess his real state of consciousness because of the medication, that they would have to wait until the treatment was finished to have a clearer idea. ‘We’re very sorry, madame.’

  Then, tear bombshells when my mother arrived at the hospital, shook me, screaming, blaming my inertia, my irresponsibility, my inattentiveness. The doctors had to drag her away from me – my own mother. ‘Everyone reacts to this kind of situation differently, madame; you must respect your daughter’s response, as we respect yours; and, no, we’re not arrogant little fools.’

  And word bombshells. Legions of new words, acronyms, incomprehensible signals, armies of adjectives, little medical soldiers that only make sense if you want to hear them. From this fug, the only ones I remembered were the key words, those markers that you sense play a crucial part and are more important than the others.

  Multiple trauma.

  Haematomas.

  Intracerebral.

  Pulmonary.

  Coma.

  Deep.

  Respirator.

  E.E.G.

  Electroencephalogram.

  Wait.

  How long?

  No idea.

  Unpredictable.

  Never?

  No idea.

  Too soon.

  Hope.

  Courage.

  In his hospital bed, Louis was beautiful. Serene. Calm. Surprisingly intact. If it weren’t for all those tubes, his face and the rest of his body would have looked unbroken, or almost. Two smashed ribs, a fractured leg – and, since the fracture wasn’t open, immobilizing the leg would be sufficient, so I was told. To which I replied that I couldn’t see the point of immobilizing the leg, given that Louis wasn’t exactly going to be prancing around straight away. The nurse shot me one of those judgemental looks that speak volumes, deeming wisecracks from the mouth of a distraught mother inappropriate. I was a bewildered mother. I don’t know about distraught. Everything felt unreal. This is a nightmare, Thelma, that’s all. You’re going to wake up, and Louis will be beside you, his tousled surfer’s locks tumbling over his dark eyes, which will begin to laugh through their thick lashes. What’s up, Mum? Don’t you like my pranks any more? OK, that one was a bit off, but I’m fine, don’t worry. By the way, did you buy me that Pokémon-EX card I found on Amazon? What are we having for supper tonight? Can I watch the concert on MTV? Go on, pleeaase, Mum, be cool. You’re the best. I love you.

  I’m so far from being the best. The best and I are light years apart. She mocks me from her far-off galaxy. Her son is standing beside her, smiling. He’s alive. And mine?

  Alive.

  Hope.

  Wait.

  How long?

  No idea.

  3

  Immediately After

  I was permitted to leave the hospital on the Sunday evening. The staff wouldn’t let me out on the Saturday; they needed to keep me under observation – that was the official line. But I think they were mainly afraid I’d do something stupid. They don’t know me. If there’s one thing I’m not, it’s suicidal. I have a deeply ingrained survival instinct. Even in my darkest moments, I find the strength to pick myself up again. That’s what I’d been telling myself over and over since Louis’s accident. I was going to have to go into battle mode. And that’s something I know how to do. I’m a warrior. A fighter. ‘That’s very good, madame; Louis is going to need your support. The family has an important part to play when a person’s in a coma. There are no guarantees, mind you, but Louis is very young. At his age, he’s more likely to recover. Positive outcomes in such cases are often thanks to a combination of specialist medical care, a young patient who keeps fighting and the support of a loving family.’

  So I left the hospital on the Sunday with hope in my heart, but death in my soul. Outwardly, I wanted to fight with him, and the nurses had boosted my hopes. Especially the adorable fair-haired one who reminded me of the T.V. presenter Sophie Davant, and to whom I could have confided my most private fears in front of the cameras. But, deep down, a sickening voice inside my head – goaded by a night of searching coma online (and the Internet is a risky place to look for information about something like that) – kept whispering, What’s the use? A stage-three coma and it’s hopeless. Remember Michael Schumacher? He’s been in a coma for years. Supposing Louis wakes up with locked-in syndrome? Supposing he never wakes up? I was veering from total despair to the wildest optimism, causing the hospital staff to fear for my mental state. I wanted to tell them not to worry, that I was always like that but today it was more extreme, but I wasn’t sure that would reassure them and I had to get out of there, otherwise I really would go mad.

  On Sunday, I was allowed to spend the whole day with Louis. My slumbering child. I expected to see him wake up, turn over and groan that it was much too early for a Sunday. I would have given everything to hear one of those groans of his that ordinarily so annoyed me. But nothing of the sort happened. Nothing happened. The machine regulated his breathing, but his chest was the only part of his body that appeared to be active. I held his hand for most of the day. I massaged his palms, his fingers. His feet too, for ages, slowly. The feel of his warm body comforted me. On his face, I was allowed only to stroke his cheeks. I closed my eyes and saw the little dimple that always appeared when he smiled. I cried, a lot – over his hands, in mine. I sang him lullabies. I humm
ed his favourite a dozen or so times, the one he still asked for at the age of twelve. The one I’d made up, with my own words. Probably the most tuneless, probably the least pretty lullaby of all. Probably the most beautiful, in his eyes and in mine.

  As the sun went down, I felt scared. Most of all, I feared going back to our place alone. To have to face him, without him. To have to open the door, inhale the pungent teenage fragrance he spritzed himself with every morning, pick up the dirty clothes he’d flung into the passage to the utility room, as was his habit. Eat. Sleep. Not sleep. The night before, I’d been given sleeping tablets, and, exhausted, I’d fallen into a dreamless sleep. But this first night without him would be different. I saw it coming and slammed on the brakes, pretending not to hear the nurses who, for the past few minutes, had been gently signalling to me that I’d have to leave soon, that I couldn’t stay. And that this was likely to go on. That I’d have to be strong, for him. I gave him a long, drawn-out kiss, whispered things that only he and I would understand. I stood up and walked out of his room, leaving behind my baby and my previous existence. I was going to have to face up to life ‘after’.

  I decided to walk home, persuaded that the fresh air would do me good after breathing the stale, recycled hospital air. After a few hundred metres in the heavy traffic of a Parisian Sunday evening, I began to think about the lorry driver who had turned my life upside down. Police officers had come to talk to me, but I was in such a state that the doctors had told them to leave me in peace. But they’d replied that I was going to have to give a statement. They came back later, and I talked to them for around ten minutes. I had to describe what I’d seen of the collision, which was not a lot. But I wanted justice to be done and I began to focus my thirst for revenge on the lorry driver. The officers were understanding and tempered my outbursts demanding life imprisonment, assuring me that the investigation was under way, that a number of witnesses had been able to describe the scene precisely, that it had been recorded by the C.C.T.V. cameras and they had the film, and that of course justice would be done. All the same, one of them had quietly said that it had been an accident, that I should know that the driver was a woman, a mother of two young children, and that she too was devastated, in shock, and that I might not like the findings of the investigation. All the witness statements concurred: it seemed fairly clear that Louis had lost control of his skateboard, and that, despite the driver’s best efforts, she had not been able to avoid him. The driver’s liability would probably prove negligible. Then I began to rant against the incompetence of the police, screaming that it couldn’t have happened as they said, that my son hadn’t in any way been at fault in all this, that the driver was a manipulative bitch if she’d got them to believe that she wasn’t to blame, that they themselves, those two policemen, were complete idiots, and other expletives that it’s difficult for me to transcribe in hindsight. When I leapt up, brandishing an angry fist at them, Sophie Davant and a nursing assistant had come into the room and restrained me, then I crumpled into the arms of the TV-presenter lookalike and on to the cold, green lino floor, racked with frantic sobs. The officers had said that they’d forget my behaviour and what I’d said, wished me strength, and left. I had not only lost my son’s future, I’d also lost my dignity. I’d learned that the lorry driver was a woman, a mother too, and I’d wished the worst on her, even though I knew nothing of her life.

  I shook my head as I carried on walking towards the Saint-Martin canal. Another fifteen minutes and I’d be home. Our home. Alone.

  Soon, my old reflexes kicked in. I glanced at my watch. Face still broken – 10:32. No joy to be expected there. I thrust my right hand into my bag in search of my phone, which I hadn’t thought about since the previous day, something that hadn’t happened since . . . After rummaging around in my crammed handbag, I realized that my smartphone wasn’t in there, and I remembered dropping it at the time of the accident.

  I stopped walking. JP. I’d been in the middle of a call from JP. I hadn’t got back to him, hadn’t spared a single thought for him, for our sodding presentation to Mr Head Honcho, taking place tomorrow. I was supposed to work on the slides on Sunday, and Sunday was today. JP must be in a panic not to have heard a peep from me. A panic over the presentation, naturally. Didn’t give a shit about me. I wondered what he might have heard of the accident. Had he been an audio witness, or had the telephone smashed beforehand? I recalled my sensations of the moment and felt certain that the phone had been smashed immediately. JP hadn’t heard anything. That reassured me, in a way, because I had no wish to face the contrived sympathetic looks of my colleagues at Hégémonie. My career was going to be my lifeline. If I lost my job, then I would no longer be anyone. I had to cling to that vestige of normality at all costs. Cling on to Thelma the marketing director of the specialty-shampoos division, and not allow her to be buried under Thelma the mother of a child in a coma.

  No matter how hard I tried to think about JP and my work, images of the accident continued to haunt me. I heard my own screams echo, felt a rising wave of nausea and couldn’t stop myself from vomiting right there, in the middle of the street. I coughed and gagged several times. An old lady, taking her dog for a walk, crossed the road to avoid me. The legendary Parisian concern for others.

  I sat on the steps of an apartment building to get my breath back, calm down, distance myself from all the sound and the fury. How long did I sit there like that? Long enough to let my hands, my ears and my cheeks forget the biting cold.

  Then, a few thoughts began to take shape. I slowly outlined my new short-term goals. I can’t move forward if I don’t have goals. I’ve never lived any other way. Since the accident, all my goals had become irrelevant. So I drew up a new brief but hard-hitting list that would be the focus of all my efforts, all my energy, in the coming days. Afterwards, we’d see.

  Goal number one: get Louis out of the coma.

  Goal number two: carry on with my job, as before.

  That night, which I’d been so dreading, I managed to drop off for an hour or so. The rest of the time, I worked on the presentation. When I’m on my computer, I go into a kind of trance and am oblivious to everything around me.

  That was exactly what I needed. Numb my mind by working flat out so as to avoid thinking about Louis.

  4

  O Captain! My Captain!

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Thelma, what the hell were you up to? I called you fifty times it’s totally unprofessional you could at least have called me back, fuck it, the stress you cause me I hope you’ve made all the changes to the presentation otherwise we’re in for a bollocking and don’t you think I’m going to back you up, baby.’

  A breath. The first.

  ‘Love you too, JP. Hello, by the way.’

  ‘Go on, take the piss. Don’t you feel bad. For fuck’s sake. Lucky I worship you and would do anything for you.’

  The guy always says everything and its opposite in the same breath. It drives me insane. All the kids at the office come out of meetings with him completely freaked out, not knowing how to respond to his aggressive injunctions. Having read up on the subject, I’m convinced that JP is a narcissistic pervert. The sort to confuse his victims with his convoluted demands and congratulate them for completing a task while pointing out to them what total losers they are.

  ‘Here, this is the final version of the presentation,’ I said, handing him a USB stick.

  ‘I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night because of you. You’re paid enough not to go AWOL at the weekend when we’re seeing the big boss on the Monday. Is that clear?’

  ‘Crystal clear, JP. I won’t do it again. Promise.’

  Simpering, sidelong glances, the ploys of a little girl, both apologetic and proud – nothing more effective than beating a pervert at his own game and confounding him with attitudes that are in total contradiction to the tone of the words.

  JP whizzed through the presentation and gave me a huge smile. I’d done a good job, I knew it. He had no
criticisms.

  ‘Well done, miss. You’re a pain, but you’re good. When I say “good”, I mean your skills, of course. Between you and me, you’re past your sell-by date, as far as I’m concerned, ha ha. I’m joking, you know I fancy you, you’re the prettiest MILF I know. Right, enough messing around, the boss is waiting. Get your knickers off, we’re going to have some fun, ha ha.’

  Don’t worry, JP, I’m not angry with you, it’s just that, for the past two years, I’ve recorded on my iPhone all the charming little utterances that you and your fellow managers have made about me and other women. I wasn’t born yesterday.

  JP and I took the lift up to the eighth floor. Everyone we passed gratified us with a perfunctory ‘Good luck’. Mr Head Honcho was feared by everyone within the company and was a legend outside it. ‘An iron fist in an iron glove,’ said his fellow C.E.O.s of blue-chip companies. ‘A stupid arsehole,’ said Hégémonie’s Polish workers, whose factories had been shut down recently. A big boss, completely unknown to the general public, but a demigod in the financial world, who must be venerated and, most importantly, never contradicted, at the risk of incurring the wrath of this modern-day dictator.

  I have never been afraid of him, doubtless thanks to my upbringing. My mother always used to tell me that, if someone intimidated me, I should imagine them with their trousers down, to humanize them. Whoever they are, however arrogant or powerful, imagining them on the toilet should reduce them to their rightful place in your mind, my girl: he’s a man like any other, who has the same vital needs, but also the same rights and the same obligations as everyone else. Don’t ever forget that.