French Leave Read Online Free Page B

everything.
    I often think I ought to take her to my place as an intern for a day or two to give her a few lessons in life.
    So that she could let her guard down for once, let herself go, roll up her sleeves, and forget about other people’s miasma.
    It makes me sad to see her like that, straitjacketed by all her prejudices and incapable of tenderness. And then I remember that she was raised by the dashing Jacques and Francine Molinoux at the far end of a dead-end street in the residential outskirts of Le Mans and I figure that, all things considered, she isn’t doing so badly after all . . .
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    The cease-fire didn’t last, and Simon was used for target practice.
    â€œYou’re driving too fast. Lock the doors, we’re getting near the tollbooth. What on earth is that on the radio? I didn’t mean twenty miles an hour though, did I? Why’d you turn the A/C off? Watch out for those bikers. Are you sure you’ve got the right map? Can’t you read the road signs, please? It’s so stupid, I’m sure the gas cost less back there . . . Be careful in the curves, can’t you see I’m painting my nails? Hey . . . are you doing it on purpose, or what?”
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    I can just make out the back of my brother’s neck in the hollow space of his headrest. That fine, straight neck, his hair cut short.
    I wonder how he can stand it, I wonder if he ever dreams of tying her to a tree and running off as fast as his legs can carry him.
    Why does she speak to him like that? Does she even know who she’s talking to? Does she even know that the man sitting next to her was the god of scale models? The ace of Meccano sets? A Lego System genius?
    A patient little boy who could spend several months building an awesome planet, with dried lichen for the ground and hideous creatures made of bread rolled in spiders’ webs?
    A stubborn little tyke who entered every contest and won nearly all of them: Nesquik, Ovomaltine, Babybel, Caran d’Ache, Kellogg’s, and the Mickey Mouse Club?
    One year, his sand castle was so beautiful that the members of the jury disqualified him: they claimed he’d had help. He cried all afternoon and our granddad had to take him to the crêperie to console him. He drank three whole mugs of hard cider, one after the other.
    First time he ever got roaring drunk.
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    Does she even know that for months her good little lapdog of a hubby wore a satin Superman cape day and night that he folded up conscientiously in his schoolbag whenever it was time to go through the gate into the schoolyard? He was the only boy who knew how to repair the photocopy machine in the town hall. And he was the only one who’d ever seen Mylène Carois’s underpants—she was the butcher’s daughter, Carois & Fils. (He hadn’t dared to tell her that he was not all that interested.)
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    Simon Lariot, a discreet man, who’d always made his own sweet way, gracefully, without bothering a soul.
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    Who never threw tantrums, or whined, or asked for a thing. Who went through prep school and got into engineering school without ever grinding his teeth or resorting to Tenormin. Who didn’t want to make a big deal when he did well, and blushed to the tips of his ears when the headmistress of the Lycée Stendhal kissed him in the street to congratulate him.
    The same big boy who can laugh like an idiot for exactly twenty minutes when he’s smoking a joint and who knows every single trajectory of every single spaceship in Star Wars.
    I’m not saying he’s a saint, I’m saying he’s better than one.
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    Why, then? Why does he let people walk all over him? It’s a mystery to me. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve wanted to shake him, to open his eyes and get him to pound his fist on the table. Countless times.
    One day Lola tried. He sent her packing and barked that it was his life, after all.
    Which is true.