Sleeping Awake (18 page)

Even though I had
offered to drive my sisters and myself to Philippe’s house, Philippe insisted
that we all drive over in his car. He was going to send someone named Luc for my
car the next day.

“Probably an
indentured servant, given his penchant for cruelty,” Cienna muttered under her
breath.

Philippe was
already in the car when she made the utterance. Camelea paused and gave her a
deploring look, before opening the front passenger door. Of course she’d want
to sit beside him.

 As we drove
away from the house that I had never quite managed to call home, I turned to
get a final look. For possibly the first time ever, I wanted to run back inside
and lock the door behind me.

For the few
minutes of the ride, all was silent. It wasn’t until we were out of Old
Westbury that Philippe cleared his throat.

“Girls,” Philippe
said turning down the radio. “Does your mother know about your...friends?”

I knew exactly
which friends he was talking about. Once he came into my room after Cienna and
saw me sitting on top of Nicolaas, he paled so much that he was lighter than
the cream-colored ceiling.

“Of course she
knows about our friends,” Cienna answered.

I looked out the
window at all the familiar sights as we drove towards Garden City and away from
everything that I had known.

“So your mother,
she, she allows you to have males in your rooms like that?”

I answered. “They
aren't in our rooms like anything. We're not bringing boys into our rooms while
Maman
is at work to have sex with them.”

Camelea looked at
me through the rear view mirror. I raised an eyebrow at her.

“I-I never said
that.” Philippe choked. He was as red as his tie.

"Then what
are you trying to say?" I asked.

“
Oui. Quel est
le point?
”
 
Cienna
asked.

“Well... I know
that given the circumstances, I'm new to this, but nevertheless, I am still
your father.”

“Philippe, what
are you on about?” Cienna demanded.

 “Cienna,
just give him a chance to speak!” Camelea commanded. I’m sure that she would
have gagged us if she could.

Cienna gave her
the middle finger.

“Go on, Philippe,”
Camelea said. She patted his shoulder as she spoke.

Philippe stumbled
on. “Has your mother ever discussed males with you girls?”

“The only male
she's discussed with us was you,” I replied.

“Well then... Men...
Not all men, since there
are
the obvious exceptions, gay ones primarily,
want one thing from a woman...”

“Love?” Cienna
asked.

Cienna and I
grinned at each other. It was decided then, in our mutual understanding, that
we were going to have fun with Philippe. We should have been the twins, I
swore.

“No, not love...”
Philippe’s hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly that the whites of his
knuckles were replaced by the pink of his pounding blood.

“No love?” I
asked.

“Well of course
love, but not at first... No, not love...”

“What then?” Cienna piped up.

“Well to be quite
honest, sex.” Philippe sounded pained as each word was practically pulled up
his throat. He took off his tie at the stoplight.

“So let me get
this straight,” Cienna said. “You're a male and you're not gay, right?”

“Yes.”

“You're gay?”

“No!”

“But you just
said...”

“Well I didn't
mean it in that way.” Philippe sighed once again. His hands were shaking as he
reached to turn up the AC.

Camelea spun
around again and shot us a murderous glare. I stuck out my tongue, very much
the image of a mature and wiser older sister.

 “Okay,
you're not gay,” Cienna continued. “So since all heterosexual men want sex from
women, and you
are
heterosexual, does that mean that when you were
younger, all you wanted was sex?”

I had to cover my
mouth to prevent myself from laughing out loud.

"Exactly!"
Philippe slammed his hand against the steering wheel. The horn blared into the
night.

“Cienna!” Camelea
screamed.

Cienna and I glanced at each
other and burst out into uncontrollable laughter.

Philippe
recommenced his stuttering as he shook his head in a rather violent manner. I
worried for a minute that he was seizing.

“No... I mean,
yes. I
was
curious when I was younger... All boys are curious about
sex... You know what I mean, right? It wasn't something that I
had
to
have.”

“It wasn't?”
Cienna asked with wide eyes. Really, baby lambs couldn’t have appeared more
innocent.

“Well no, not for
me...”

As much as I was
enjoying the proceedings, I decided to save him before Cienna took things even
further. “Yes, we know what you mean, Philippe. Respectfully, however, we're
young adults and we know what men want. Are you finished now or is there more?”

“I just don't
think that you girls should be alone in your mother’s house with boys.”

“Is that all?”
Cienna asked.

“Yes Cienna.”
Philippe sighed. “That is all.”

“Well we won't do
it anymore.” Camelea said, giving him a reassuring pat.

           
“Thank you, Camelea,” Philippe whispered. The side of his face was a
contortion of veins.

           
“At least not in your presence,” Cienna feigned a whisper, but we all heard it.

       Mercifully
for Philippe, I’m sure, we entered
Garden City a few seconds later. Soon, his house loomed
over us, like an old hag.

He gave us a grand
tour and introduced us to his staff, although why he had a small staff and a
large house when he lived alone was beyond me. As expected, the interior looked
as if no one lived in it, with its antique furniture that were more for show
than for actual use. I recognised one of the women in the family portrait above
his office chair.

She might be my
grandmother, but my feelings towards the woman who ruined my life were anything
but loving.

May her path be so
very slippery and dark to the point of blindness.

*~*

Everything about Philippe’s
house was wrong. The yellow walls in my bedroom were obnoxiously cheerful. The
curtains over my windows were sheer and let the light in as soon as the sun
rose. The sheets did not cool to my touch. The enthusiastic staff waiting to
cater to our every need was annoying. The cook, Madame Laurent, was trying to
get us fat.

I wanted to tell Maman...but I
couldn’t.
We’d
found out two nights before that Maman had developed anaemia as a side effect
of her cancer. Her doctors hadn’t found out until she had fallen unconscious,
because blood couldn’t circulate air to her lungs fast enough. She’d had to get
an emergency red blood cell transfusion.
When she called the next day, I
wanted to use my ten minutes with her complaining so that she would realise how
truly miserable I was there. I wanted to beg her to come home so that we could
leave the sunshine prison where Philippe, who seemed to have forgotten that we
were not the children that he had left behind, closely monitored our moves.

I wanted to confess to her
that I didn’t think that I could survive much longer before having yet another
breakdown. I wanted to tell her that I was scared and that I missed her so much
that I had become a waterworks display at night. Above all else, I wanted to
tell her that I was sorry for all that I had ever done to make her cry and that
I wished that it was me dying of cancer and instead of her. Maman shouldn’t
have been made to fight for her life; it should have been me, the one who
clearly had no regard for life.

But I didn’t tell Maman
anything that was on my mind. I told her that my room was nice and that I
enjoyed the view of the pool below. I told her that Madame Laurent was an
excellent cook. I told her that I was trying to give Philippe a chance and that
I had made an effort to curve Cienna’s nasty comments during dinner. I told her
that I was working on a new painting to pass the time.

I could not and would not tell
her the truth. Happy patients had a better chance at responding to treatments.
Mothers who were fretting over their depressed children would not fare well. I
refused to be the one to kill my mother.

I was all alone except for my
pack of cigarettes and my friend, Grey Goose.

*~*

 “Where the fuck is
Philippe?”

My room door banged against the
wall, and Cienna stormed in.

“I am going to set fire to his
fucking Mercedes!” She stepped onto the balcony and grabbed the glass that was
on the table. I said nothing as she chugged my vodka cranberry; I simply
refilled my glass before disappearing.

On my way down to the cellar,
I passed Camelea in Philippe’s study. Just like the last time that I had caught
her in his study in Paris, she was reading the Bible. It had been the Sunday of
Grandpa’s arrival.

After lunch, Cienna and I were
walking to the pool when we passed Philippe’s office. The door was open, so we
went in. Camelea was curled up on the chaise with the Bible spread out in her
lap.

“What are you doing?” I
demanded.

“Reading the Bible.” Camelea
held up the book.

“Why?” Cienna’s eyes narrowed.

“Father Tautou says that Jesus
will see me through this difficult time,” Camelea replied, looking down at the
pages.

I snorted. “Father Tautou is
paid to say that.”

“That’s blasphemous!” Camelea
cried. She gripped the edges of the Bible.

“You’re a fool,” I said.

“
Blessed is the man that walketh not in
the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in
the seat of the scornful,” Camelea chanted.

“Freak!” Cienna hissed.

“Sinner!” she countered.

I looked her up and down and took Cienna’s hand.
Camelea watched, clinging to her Bible, as we walked away from her. Eleven
years later, neither of us had bothered to bridge the gap, and Camelea was
still alone with her faith.

I returned to my room with
another glass full of ice and a new bottle of cranberry juice.

“Dare I offer you a
cigarette?” I asked.

“Do you want me to set your
car on fire as well?” Cienna snapped. She stretched out her glass for a top up.

“You’re not burning down
anything, Cienna,” I replied. After topping her up, I took a seat in the second
lounge chair. “And you need to slow down.”

“Where is he though?” Cienna
demanded. “He’s been gone for three days.”

“Working on a case in
Florida.” I recited the explanation that he’d given us.

Cienna snorted. “Typical. He’s
never here when we need him.”

“You need him?” I asked,
raising an eyebrow.

“Shut the fuck up, Noira.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’ll soon
have the nerve to start complaining when I take you literally and do not
speak.”

“Would you like to know what happened
to me this morning?” she asked.

“What?”

“I cried!” She slammed her
fist down onto the cushion. “I realised that he came back for Maman and not for
us. He didn’t even fucking come back for us!”

“Cienna, she is the love of
his life. What did you expect?” I reached over and squeezed her hand.

Cienna jumped up, eyes wild as
she marched around the tiny parameters of the balcony. “Yes, but what about
me?”

“What about you?” Noira asked.

She stopped her mad march. Her
hand clung to her chest. “What about how much I loved him? I mean, let’s be
honest, Noira. He broke my fucking heart. And then he expects me to forgive and
forget after he turns up for Maman and not because he wanted to see us?” The
tears ran their river of black down her face, but she didn’t seem to care.

“Everything hurts,” she
gasped. “I feel like someone is sitting on my chest!”

“Calm down before you give
yourself a panic attack,” I demanded. It was too late. Cienna’s mouth opened
and closed, but only hoarse wheezes came out.

“My… throat… feels… as if
someone… p-p-put a stopper down it!” Cienna grabbed her throat.

I put down my glass and went
over to her. She didn’t protest as I sat her down and pushed her head between
her legs. I sat beside her and held her. A few minutes passed before she was
able to sit up and lay back on the lounge chair.