I Love You Too Much Read online

  “I don’t want her waking up,” Maman called out.

  There was a crib in the glass room, I could see that now, a transparent Plexiglas crib that sat high up on a metal stand with wheels. They have the same cribs at the children’s clothing boutique on the rue de Tournon, down from the Jardin du Luxembourg. They put plastic dolls in those cribs at the shop. They dress the dolls in little blouses with buttons that shine like pearls and then they wrap them in cashmere blankets that smell of clementines.

  Maman went shopping there all the time when she was pregnant. We used to go after I’d been to the orthodontist. It’s where all the mothers in the 6ème go. The manageress would come over as soon as Maman walked through the door. She was like a snake, watching Maman from behind her big brown glasses.

  “I’m so glad you came by,” she’d say, looking Maman up and down, pausing, checking out her stomach, making her wait before she said, “My God, Séverine, you still haven’t put on any weight,” and Maman purred to be told she was intact.

  I would sit and watch the women shopping. They wore dark skinny trousers and high heels; they talked on their phones; they flicked their screens; they’d lean over the dolls and reach into the cribs and rub the baby cardigans between a thumb and finger. They had tanned ankles like Maman.

  “How was your day?” Maman said now; she was head down and texting. She can run her business and her son from her mobile—that’s what she tells people. “What did you get in math?”

  “She didn’t give it back,” I said.

  “She always gives it back on a Monday.”

  “Paul,” Gabriel called out, “you’ve got to see her fingers. Man, they’re so cute.”

  I didn’t want Maman finding out about my math, so I went over to the glass room. There wasn’t much in there. There was a washbasin and a yellow plastic changing mat; there was a medical chart hanging up. There was a pile of very small nappies to the left of the basin. There was Lou.

  She was purple with an orange tinge and there were tiny white bubbles all over her nose. She was lying in the crib. Her eyes were closed. She didn’t look like me. She didn’t even look like Maman. She was small, smaller than the plastic dolls in the boutique. She had black hair that didn’t look like real hair; it looked like lots of feathers stuck onto a small purple and orange head.

  Gabriel reached into the crib and picked her up.

  “My little princess,” he said. He held her in his arms across his body. He held her like she was a rabbit. I turned away and came back out to where Maman lay.

  “She’s purple,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s just the way newborn babies look. Actually, she looks better than you did when you were born, because she didn’t get damaged on the way out. They lifted her out. You came out with a squashed head.”

  “She’s gonna break hearts,” Gabriel said as he came out of the glass room, still carrying the baby. “Yes, you are, my little Lou. You are going to be the most beautiful girl in Paris.”

  Maman laughed out loud when he said that, like she thought it was funny. She reached up with her hand and tossed her hair so that it fell over one shoulder and she smiled at me and said: “Hey, Paul, go stand by Gabriel and I’ll take a photo.” When I didn’t move she said, “Don’t sulk, be nice. Come on, do it for me, will you?”

  I went to stand by Gabriel and Lou. Maman lay on the bed, watching us from over the top of her mobile, checking her screen to see how I looked, to see if I was the way she wanted me to be.

  “Keep your chin up, Paul,” she said. “Yeah, that’s better.”

  “When are you coming home?”

  “I should be out Saturday. Hold her head, Gabriel, her head is flopping.”

  “But that’s five days.”

  She flicked across the photos on her screen. The baby started making noises, animal squeaks, and then she opened her eyes. How come she had dark blue eyes when Maman’s eyes were brown? And one of her eyes was staring at the other. She probably wasn’t even Maman’s child.

  “She’s cross-eyed,” I said.

  “It’s normal, all babies are like that at first. Oh God, I knew she’d wake up, now she’ll want a feed.” Maman was sending out the photos. “You’re gonna have to listen to me, Gabriel, I’ve done this before. Do you want to hold her, Paul?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Are you jealous?”

  “No.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “You’re always hungry.”

  The baby was whimpering now.

  “Gabriel didn’t bring me anything to eat.”

  “Have some fruit.” She pointed to a bowl of waxy green apples and then she went back to sending her photos.

  “I told Papa,” I said.

  “Told him what?”

  “About the baby.”

  She looked up then. “Why the hell did you do that?”

  “I didn’t know it was a secret.”

  “I didn’t say it was a secret. I didn’t want you to tell him, that’s all.”

  It was as if Lou sensed the tension because she stopped snuffling and squeaking and started crying, real crying.

  “What did you tell him?” Maman asked.

  I shrugged. “I dunno. I just said, you know, the baby was born.”

  “And?”

  Lou screwed up her face and cried louder. It was a strange kind of wail, metallic and jerky.

  “She’s hungry,” Gabriel said, hoisting her onto his shoulder. “Poor baby, look at the way she’s pecking my shoulder.”

  “It’s not time for a feed,” Maman snapped. She turned back to me. “What did he say?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “He didn’t reply.”

  Her mouth tightened.

  “Typical,” she said, and then: “You should go.”

  “But I only just got here.”

  “Yeah, but Gabriel’s parents are coming and I need him to take you home now so that he can get back so I’m not sitting here entertaining them on my own. Gabriel, you need to take Paul.”

  Gabriel was jogging around the room with his aviators on top of his head, and Lou was snatching up her legs beneath her, wailing like she’d just been hit.

  “I know, I know, honey, Daddy’s got to go, but he’ll be back soon with Mamie and Papi.” He handed Lou to Maman, but that only made the crying worse. Her skin was turning blackish purple; she took huge rasping breaths at the end of each cry, sucking in the air to fuel the next scream, making the room turn panicky.

  “I need a nurse,” Maman said. “Where the hell is the nurse?” She pressed the red button by her bed.

  “Let’s go, Paul,” Gabriel called out; he was already by the door.

  “When will I see you again?” I said to Maman.

  “Not tomorrow, you’ve got your tutor. Come Wednesday, come with Cindy, I’ll get a taxi to pick you up after school,” she said, sticking a pacifier in Lou’s mouth. Lou pushed it out a couple of times, then grabbed at it with her lips and sucked hard, opening her eyes wide.

  “Who’s gonna stay with me?”

  “Cindy, of course, and Gabriel.”

  “Gabriel?” He’d never stayed at our apartment without Maman before.

  “Yeah, Paul, that’s me. Remember?” He made a face like I was stupid.

  There was a loud knock and the door swung open before Maman had a chance to say anything. It was Estelle. She stood in the doorway and threw back her head. “Oh my God, Séverine. I could hear her screaming from the elevator,” she said. “Poor baby must be starving.”

  She advanced on Maman, her leopard-print blouse undone, her décolleté exposed for us all to see her tanned flesh, her turquoise medallion. Her mass of hair was curly and brown, spun gold by a hairdresser. She was weighed down by shopping bags and earrings that dangled and musk perfume that took up the whole room.

  “She’s adorable,” Estelle said. “Look at her! She’s too much.”

  “Isn’t she?” Maman said.
“She’s the dream baby. You can’t imagine. She’s too beautiful, trop belle.” She let the o of trop slide in her mouth so that it lasted for ages.

  Everything is trop when Maman speaks to Estelle: too cute, too sexy, too cool, trop belle, trop beau. Estelle is her best friend. They compete to see who can have the most trop in their lives, who has the best lover, the best vacation, the best bikini, the best diet, the best divorce. Maman is more beautiful than Estelle and thinner, but Estelle is a man-eater. She’s had sex with a fireman.

  “I can’t believe you gave birth this morning. Look at you! Don’t tell me that gorgeous-looking doctor of yours gave you a little help with your stomach. I wish I’d done that. My God, you look like a young girl, doesn’t she, Gabriel?”

  She turned to Gabriel, who was still standing by the door.

  “And, Daddy, you don’t look so bad either,” she said. “You’re as handsome as a god. Now, let me see her. I want to know which one of you the love child looks like.”

  “Her daddy, of course.” Gabriel winked at Estelle.

  Estelle noticed me then, standing by the door.

  “Why, Paul, darling, what are you doing hiding over there?”

  She came toward me, grabbed me by the upper arms, and hugged me to her so that her hair was in my mouth and my face was in her breasts, my cheek thrust up against the metal edge of her medallion. She smelled of smoke and men and Paris.

  “Not too jealous?” she said, looking me in the eye before letting me go and handing me one of the shopping bags she was carrying. “I bought you a present. Headphones—you’re gonna need them. I’ve got to warn you, Paul, babies are a pain in the ass. Max made me promise I’d never have another. But now I see her, I’ve got to tell you I’m feeling tempted. How’s about it, Daddy?” She winked at Gabriel.

  “You guys should go,” Maman said. She leaned over and pushed the red button again. “Gabriel’s parents are coming later to see the baby.”

  “The grandparents?” Estelle smiled slyly. “Doesn’t that make you feel a little old, Gabriel?”

  “Yeah, it feels kind of weird. Finding myself a dad, you know, I feel really different, it’s like—”

  “You need to go,” Maman said, cutting him off. She swung her eyes toward the door.

  “Okay, babe,” he said.

  “You too, Paul,” she said.

  I thought perhaps Maman would let me stay now that Estelle was here.

  “But I only just got here,” I said again.

  “Oh là là, big brother is not a happy boy.” Estelle pursed her lips and came back toward me, swinging her hips as she walked.

  “Listen, Paul.” Her voice was gushy, like she had something nice to say. “You’ve had your mother all to yourself all these years. You’re a big boy now. You’re gonna have to share her with the baby. You’re gonna have to grow up.”

  I looked over Estelle’s shoulder to where Maman lay; she was holding Lou while she checked her texts. I wanted Maman to tell Estelle that it wasn’t true, that I didn’t have to share her with anyone.

  “I’ll see you Wednesday, my love,” Maman said. She waved at me with the phone still in her hand.

  Estelle stood there, hand on hip, green eyes hard, between me and Maman.

  “Allez, Paul.” Gabriel pulled at my sleeve.

  I gave a last look to see if Maman was watching.

  “God, I could kill for a cigarette,” I heard Estelle say as I shut the door behind me.

  Chapter Two

  The next day Cindy was waiting for me outside school, waiting in her shiny black bomber jacket with her bouncy ponytail and a packet of Prince Lu in her hand. It was the Prince Lu I love: creamy white icing sandwiched between two cookies.

  I tore open the packet and ate them one after the other, pulling the cookies apart and scraping the icing off with my front teeth. It stuck to my braces and I could taste it in the metal, vanilla and sweet. I pushed at it with my tongue for ages after.

  We walked together along the rue d’Assas. It goes on forever, that road, but I like it because it’s the only road around here where I can almost see the horizon behind the spires in the distance, the other side of the river, beyond my reach. I ran my hand along the walls. I traced the horizontal furrows between the concrete slabs. I stared into the ground-floor windows, where the concierges live. I didn’t see much. They put up net curtains or they close the white shutters to keep people like me from looking in. There were red geraniums in window boxes that smelled of hot earth.

  The pharmacy on the corner had posters of gigantic nits in the windows. They do it every year in September when you go back to school, the nit-treatment promotion; it’s to frighten all the mothers. It’s mostly families that live around here, families with kids. The streets don’t look rich, but they are. Everyone wants to live here to be near the jardin and the schools. People make out like the Jardin du Luxembourg is this kind of fairy-tale place where kids run around pushing sailboats with sticks. That’s what real estate agents say about this neighborhood, that it’s the setting for a dream childhood.

  Cindy and I don’t talk much, but it feels good when she is with me. She has kids, a girl and a boy, ages seven and nine. She left them behind in the Philippines when she came to France, and their dad looks after them. She works to send money home. She says that is the only way she can pay for them to go to school.

  “So expensive, Paul, everything in the Philippines costs too much.”

  I hadn’t thought the Philippines would be expensive; I’d thought the Philippines would be poor and cheap, but Cindy says it costs loads to see a doctor there. Now she’s got an aunt with a kidney problem so she sends her money too. Cindy’s got no papers, so she can’t go home, because if she goes home she can’t come back. So she can’t go see her kids. She talks to them on Skype every day. She spends hours on Skype. All the mothers around here think their Filipinos are peasants or something; they think if these women weren’t cleaning their kitchens with Mr. Clean, they’d be working in a rice paddy. They don’t know the Filipinos are all out there Skyping on their smartphones. Cindy has this big white Samsung that all the Filipinos have, and as soon as we get home she whips it out and hits the dial to chat to her kids. She’s different when she speaks her own language. When she speaks English she is quiet and shy and she smiles more than she talks, but when she speaks Filipino, she laughs out loud and she talks nonstop and she says, “Mmm-mmn, wah, wah,” and her voice rises and falls.

  Cindy left me at the bottom of my dad’s building where rue de Babylone meets rue Chomel. He lives in a big gray apartment building with huge windows. Some of the windows still had their summer blinds up, yellow-and-white-striped awnings that make you think of the beach. Essie buzzed me up. She’s my dad’s Filipino. She’s old, about fifty or so, and her face is kind of puffy. She opened the door wearing one of her fake Disney sweatshirts that said SWEET POSY across her breasts.

  My dad wasn’t in. I guessed he was still at his office in La Défense. He’s got a big apartment for someone who lives all alone. He hasn’t got much furniture, but it’s supposed to look like that. In the living room there are two beige silk sofas and on either side of them are dark brown floor lamps with big papery beige lampshades. There is a mirror above the fireplace and a white ceiling with leaves that go all the way around and a man’s face poking out in each of the four corners. They give me the creeps.

  There was a pile of fitness magazines stacked up neatly on the coffee table. Some were in French, some in English, but they were all pretty much the same, talking about diet and abs and how to build up open-water swim training, that kind of thing. I flipped through them while I waited. There were pages and pages of biking shoes and Lycra shorts, bike gears, wet suits, sunglasses, and helmets. All the men were hard with steel thighs, tense calves, and six-packs. “We Are All Winners”—I remember that was one of the headlines.

  Before he got into triathlons, my dad used to be crazy about tennis. He played three times a week; he
would obsess about his serve and volley and whether he could beat his brother—that was all he cared about. Then the year before he and Maman split up, he began running 10K races; he got a trainer, ran a half-marathon, then did the New York Marathon. He took up biking. He bought an aquamarine Bianchi bike that cost seven thousand euros and he started biking on the weekends with the guys from the bank. It was one of the things that drove Maman crazy; he would take off at six a.m. and not get back until midday. He’d walk in and get Cindy to cook him a massive plate of pasta with three chicken breasts lying on top, then he’d eat it, fall asleep for two hours, get up, take a shower, and go into the office.

  He bought a rowing machine that he put in the garage down in the courtyard; he said it was good for stamina. He downloaded all these apps to track his fitness, his calorie intake, his protein intake, his timing, his distances run, his distances cycled. He was constantly buying Lycra stuff and gadgets and gear, like the kind in the magazines, and there were packages arriving two or three times a week, things he’d bought on the Internet.

  Then he said he wanted to bring his bike on vacation. We were going to Morocco with Estelle and her son and her new boyfriend. My dad bought a special hard case for the bike and he took it to the airport in a taxi; Maman and I followed behind in another taxi with all the luggage. We had to get to the airport really early to get the bike specially checked in, and then when we landed they couldn’t find it.

  The lady from Air France kept calling people all over the place and speaking in Arabic and my dad kept slamming his fist down on the counter and shouting: “This is not possible!” I thought the lady was going to cry.

  Maman was going crazy because Estelle had gotten an earlier flight and she was already at the riad texting Maman and sending her photos of the pool. And then these Arab guys kept coming by every ten minutes and asking us did we need a taxi.

  Finally the bike case came round on the luggage belt, bumping along all alone and covered in red stickers marked SECURITY CHECKED. Everyone else from our flight had long gone.

  “Your goddamn bike,” Maman shouted as my father pulled it off the luggage belt. “You care more about your bike than me.”