I Love You Too Much Page 3

  It took an hour and fifty minutes to drive to the riad. My parents didn’t talk in the limo, not once. This old guy in a white fez came out to greet us when we drove up; he took our bags and a lady came out carrying a tray of mint tea for my parents and lemonade for me. She poured the tea from a silver teapot, holding it up high so that the tea cascaded gold into the tiny glass below and the smell of mint was everywhere. It was beautiful, but only I was watching.

  I liked the riad. It was cool inside after the heat outside and the staff crept around on marble floors as if they didn’t dare make a sound. There was a stone basin in the courtyard with big orange fish in it and a little fountain that sprinkled water all the time. But then Maman found out Estelle had taken the lush white bedroom overlooking the swimming pool. It was the bedroom that was in all the photos Maman had shown me when she booked the riad. It had billowing white curtains, a four-poster bed, and a huge white marble bath in the middle of the bathroom that you stepped down into. I remember in the photos there were red rose petals all over the bathroom floor and a sultry-looking babe lying on the middle of the bed wearing a white djellaba.

  “I knew she’d do that,” Maman said as she slammed the door to the smaller blue-and-white bedroom Estelle had left my parents. “It’s me that finds the riad and organizes the vacation and Estelle just swans in and takes the best bedroom, all because of your bike. Your bike, your ego, Philippe!” She shouted the last words, punching them out as she threw her handbag down onto the bed.

  “Your friend, your problem,” my father said. He was on his phone and he didn’t bother looking up.

  Estelle was standing at the bottom of the stairs when Maman and I went back down.

  “Listen, darling, you don’t mind about the bedroom, do you?” Estelle said. She was barefoot and smelled of coconut oil; her red bikini was wet and heavy against her skin. Her eyes were like green marbles watching Maman. She’d had her breasts done after her divorce, which meant she now had enormous tits that she showed off whenever she could. There were water droplets caught between them, skating down her oily cleavage.

  “Only I need to be by Max’s bedroom,” she said, rolling her eyes, “to keep an eye on him.” Max is her gaming freak of a son who spends his life on Grand Theft Auto and then goes to see a psychiatrist twice a week to talk about it. He’d failed all his written assessments and he was being made to stay back a year.

  “Of course not, ma belle,” Maman said. “You absolutely need to watch out for him. Staying back a year, what a nightmare.” Maman sucked in her breath. “How do you think that happened?”

  Estelle flinched when Maman said that.

  Other than hanging out by the pool, there was nothing to do at the riad. It was too hot to do anything. Max spent the week gaming in the dark in the cinema room. Estelle spent the week draping her tits off the side of her sun lounger and getting her boyfriend to take photos of her on her phone. Maman lay out by the pool texting her friends who were staying in Marrakech.

  “We should have stayed in town, Philippe,” she said on the second day. “I’m bored. Estelle is doing my head in, panting all over that photocopier salesman. I told you we should have stayed in Marrakech, but you wanted to play golf.”

  My dad got up at five every morning to go biking before the heat of the day. He kept telling me to play tennis.

  “You should be out there on the court,” he said on the fourth day.

  “I’m too tired,” I said.

  “From what?” he said. “You don’t do anything.”

  Every afternoon a lady brought Moroccan cakes to us where we lay by the pool. That was the best bit of the vacation. There were loads of pastries: round and sweet, foreign-tasting, made of coconut and pistachios and almonds. There was one that looked like folded hair dripping in honey. That was my favorite. Maman lounged by the water reading her magazines and complaining about the air-conditioning or how much my dad was training. My dad was on conference calls or swimming laps, biking, or playing golf with a client. I hardly saw him. That was our last vacation together.

  My dad’s living room looks out onto a park, the small one right by Le Bon Marché. I like staring out over the rooftops at the sky; I like the red sign of the Hôtel Lutetia lit up on the roof of the hotel. The Nazis took over the hotel during the occupation; they tortured people in there. Our teacher told us that.

  He’s lucky, my dad, that there are no apartments opposite him. He doesn’t have to look into other people’s lives. I guess he sees people down below in the park, but not close up, not zoomed in, not in his face; he’s not watching them in their underpants after a bath, he’s not listening to their arguments echoing in the courtyard, hearing the cork pop when they open a bottle of wine. He’s not living their lives.

  He can see the sky from his apartment, the whole sky, all around him, not just a lid of sky that seals the courtyard tight.

  Maman hates that my dad lives here. She tells everyone she loves the Jardin du Luxembourg and the neighborhood where we live now, but I know she and my dad moved there only to be near the school I didn’t get into. She would love to be here, by the shops and cafés of Saint-Germain; she would love to be closer to the Flore. She hates that my dad can do his grocery shopping at La Grande Épicerie, which is the swanky food department of Le Bon Marché, where they sell little blocks of sugar shaped like the Eiffel Tower. Only it isn’t him that does the grocery shopping, it’s Essie.

  “You wan’ a banana?”

  I jumped at the sound of Essie’s voice. She was standing right behind me. She always does that. “I get you something to eat,” she said. I followed her into the kitchen. There’s never anything worth eating in my dad’s fridge, just energy drinks and cold quinoa.

  “What time will he get back?” I asked.

  Essie shrugged. “Always working,” she said as she peeled the banana. “He works too hard.”

  I went into his bedroom. I opened his wardrobe: navy-blue suits and shirts for work. I opened his drawers: gray underpants, black socks, gray socks, a black Hermès belt Maman had given him. There were a couple of books by his bedside, one about taxes and the other about nutrition for triathletes. I went through all the cupboards in his bathroom, all the shelves. I found a bottle of shampoo from London that said MANAGING HAIR LOSS on the front.

  I went out and along the corridor. I opened the door to the laundry room. There were seven dress shirts hanging from a metal frame on the ceiling, and a pair of black running trousers were dangling there too, waiting for legs. Nothing else, just Essie’s cleaning products stacked up on the side and the white floor tiles pristine and polished underfoot.

  I went into the living room. I sat back down on the sofa. I was looking around for the remote when I noticed my dad’s iPad jutting out from underneath the coffee table. Usually he keeps it in a really expensive ostrich-skin cover that Maman gave him for Christmas one year. But it was lying there naked without a cover.

  I slipped off the sofa and onto my knees and then I crawled until the iPad was beneath me. There were fingerprints all over the glass. My finger found the indented button; I pushed it and the screen came alive. It was a photo of my dad on his bike. A photo of him with his helmet and his black sunglasses and his white Lycra, his head low over the handlebars, his jaw thrust out, racing to win.

  I didn’t know his code to get in. I tried some numbers; I was breathing hard, I don’t know why. Think of four numbers he would choose, it can’t be that difficult. I tried again. I wanted to know what he kept behind that glass.

  Then the front door opened and I heard his voice. I found the top right-hand switch; I pushed it so there was only black glass and then I slid the iPad back under the coffee table. I got to my feet.

  “You’re doing great, Philippe,” a man said in English. “Your finishing speed is picking up.”

  I walked out into the corridor.

  “Paul,” my father said; he looked surprised to see me. We hadn’t spoken since I’d texted him about the baby. �
��I forgot you were coming.” There was sweat running down his body, from his face to his chest, from his calves to the floor. The veins jutted out around his throat and legs.

  “This is Todd,” he said, speaking English and pointing to the blond man by his side. “Todd, this is my son, Paul.”

  Todd had shoulders that were too wide for a corridor. He had a body that he must have to exercise all the time to stop it from running wild. He was more animal than man. He made my dad look slight in comparison; he made my dad look French and narrow-framed, like he sat at a desk all day, like he came from a long line of men who wore suits, which he did.

  “Hey, Paul,” Todd said. “Nice to meet you.” He looked me in the eye as he shook my hand. His hand was large and damp, powerful around mine. He spoke with an Australian accent. “Your dad has told me all about you.”

  “He has? What did he say?”

  “What did he say?” Todd laughed, a laugh so big that I could see inside his mouth. “Well, for a start, he told me you speak great English.”

  I looked at my dad. His cheeks were flushed. He looked down at his phone. Last month he’d sent Maman an e-mail complaining about my English, telling her I needed a tutor.

  “Todd’s my new trainer,” my father said without looking up. “He’s getting me ready for the Ironman.”

  “Yeah,” Todd said. “I’m taking your dad up a notch, working on his performance. Hey, Philippe, we should look at those stats before I get going.”

  Dad started tapping on his screen.

  “I’m faster than I was Friday, I’m faster on the first half. I still lost time on those last four Ks.”

  They stood in the corridor with their heads bent over the screen, the hair on their forearms—the blond hair of the animal man and the black hair of the banker man—close but not touching. They stood in silence as their sweat dripped onto the floor and I stood apart from them, watching.

  “Yeah, next time we’ll do it long and slow, then maybe forty-eight hours later take the pace right up, fast and furious. We need to build speed and stamina. That’s the way you’ll take Didier.”

  He said Didier in his Australian accent so I wondered at first what he was talking about, then I realized he meant the guy at the bank who works with my dad. My dad was always plugging in Didier’s times and trying to work out how to get past him.

  “I betta shoot,” Todd said. “Nice meeting you, Paul.” He gave my hand another crunch and then he put his hand on my dad’s shoulder.

  “You text me, okay, Philippe? Keep it steady, we’ll run Thursday. Have a great one.”

  My dad opened the door for him. “You too,” my dad said, smiling.

  He closed the door and turned back to me, still smiling.

  The corridor was empty without Todd.

  “They want me back at the office for a meeting. Did you eat already?” my dad said.

  Essie came out of the kitchen and into the corridor; she dropped to her knees and started wiping up the sweat with a damp cloth.

  “There’s nothing to eat,” I said.

  “There’s quinoa. Essie can heat you up some quinoa.”

  “I hate that stuff.”

  “It would do you good,” he said, heading to the kitchen.

  “I hate stuff that does me good.”

  “You need to get over that.” He stirred dark green powder into a glass of water. “How’s your math?” He made a face as he took his first gulp.

  “Okay.”

  “Any results?” He was checking his phone.

  “Three in the last homework. But it wasn’t my fault because one of the questions didn’t make sense.”

  “Three? Three out of twenty? How is that even possible?”

  “Everyone said it was way too hard and that the questions were really confusing.”

  “I thought you were getting tutored. I thought that guy was coming twice a week. Hughes.”

  “Hugo. He is,” I said. I felt the panic rise and catch in my throat, like an elevator getting stuck between floors.

  “Shit, and you’re still getting three with a tutor?” He was angry again, the way he used to get when he thought I still stood a chance.

  “You don’t try hard enough, Paul. That’s your problem—not enough effort. Life takes application to succeed. You have to work at it.”

  He looked out the window. His chest rose and fell. All it takes is the word math to set him off. He turned back to me.

  “So,” he said, “is she happy?” His jaw was still wired tight.

  I shrugged. “She said she’s the perfect baby,” I said.

  “I bet.”

  “She told Estelle that she felt different this time, she felt ready.”

  He made a sound like he had swallowed something bitter.

  “That’s rich coming from the woman who swore she’d never have another baby,” he said.

  I wondered if it was the baby that made him angry or the man she’d had it with, a man who was younger than him, who played in a band, who had hair that didn’t fall out in the shower.

  “She says having a girl is different,” I said.

  “Yeah, right. You mean more clothes to buy, more shopping.”

  “Less complicated.”

  “Than what?”

  “Than me, I guess.”

  He stared at me for a couple of seconds, but it was an empty stare, like he’d already forgotten what we were talking about, and then we heard an e-mail come in on his phone and he looked down to read it.

  “I should take a shower,” he said. He started toward the door and then he laughed. “Hey, I almost forgot. I’ve got my own new arrival”—he smiled as his thumb smoothed the screen of his phone—“my own pretty baby.” He handed me the phone so I could see the picture.

  A dark gray Porsche 911 lit up the screen.

  “Too beautiful,” I said.

  “Don’t believe them, Paul, when they tell you money can’t buy you happiness.”

  I stroked the screen. There were lots of pictures, close-ups of gray leather seats, the curve of the hood, a shot with the driver’s door open, then a picture of the steering wheel and a close-up of the red, black, and gold crest of the Porsche with a rearing horse at its center.

  “Turbo cabriolet, maximum speed three hundred and fifteen kilometers per hour,” he said. “I couldn’t resist.”

  “Can we go for a drive?”

  “Not right now, I’ve got a deal on, they’re waiting for me at the office. But sure, yeah, this weekend, why not?”

  “I’m with Maman this weekend,” I said.

  “Well, some other time, then.”

  I stroked the screen again and there was a woman staring up at me. She was Asian-looking, not like Cindy, another kind of Asian. She was young. I can’t tell ages but she was younger than my dad. Twenty-something, I think. She had silvery eyelids and glittery lips and her black hair was slicked back. She was smiling at me like she had something that she knew I wanted.

  “Who’s that?” I said with the phone still in my hand.

  “Who?” My dad looked at his upside-down phone.

  “Her,” I said. “Who is she?”

  He leaned across and took back the phone. His face was shut.

  “She’s just some girl,” he said.

  Chapter Three

  The rain looked light from inside the station, but there were a million more raindrops than in Paris. We were wet by the time we got to the minivan. Our taxi driver stood waiting in a polo shirt, making out it was just a passing shower. I got in the back of the van. Maman got in next to me.

  “God, I hate Brittany,” she said, looking out at all the other Parisians queuing for taxis and wishing they had gone abroad. “It’s the end of the world.”

  Everywhere we went now, we needed a truck to fit Lou and all her kit. She had a massive pram that you had to snap apart to get into the trunk, a baby seat for the car, a sterilizer, nappies, cream for her bottom, cream for her face, baby bottles, and tins of milk powder. She
had to have special bottles because she had colic and a special liquid to squirt down her throat to stop the colic. She had a ton of clothes because she was always being sick down herself.

  It took the driver ages to pack it all in. It was hot inside the car; the windows were steamed up and Lou was screaming and turning red and the driver had on Radio Nostalgie playing some old person’s love song. All Lou did was scream, drink milk, and sleep. She didn’t actually do anything else. Cindy spent all her time looking after her now, taking her to the pediatrician, taking her for walks, bathing her, changing her, feeding her bottles. Maman was obsessed with the amount of milk Lou drank. She made Cindy keep all the bottles Lou drank from throughout the day, and when Maman got back from work she went into the kitchen and picked up every bottle to inspect how much milk was left.

  “She needs to finish the bottle, Cindy. I’ve told you. You’ve got to insist.” She said the same thing every night.

  “You’re from Paris?” the taxi driver asked now. He had one hand on the wheel, both eyes on Maman.

  “Yes,” Maman said. She didn’t look up from her phone.

  It was the October school vacation, which meant all the shops had those flowers outside their windows, the flowers that I hate: purple or orange buttons that open into spiky petals with green leaves that smell of darkened forests. On All Saints’ Day—Toussaint, it’s called—people put pots of them on relatives’ graves.

  Maman was staring out at the tall dripping pine trees and the blank faces of the shuttered villas along the avenues. It looked like it had been raining forever. The autumn sky was dull and overcast. It was two in the afternoon, but it felt like six o’clock.

  “So what will you do here?” the driver asked.

  “Thalassotherapy,” she said.

  The taxi driver sighed. “Madame will go home even more beautiful than before.”

  Maman looked up then and smiled. You could see the pink of her tongue between her teeth. She ran her hand through her hair.

  “You’re too kind,” she said.