46- Pasional blood

I felt like having a cigarette. It was absurd, I hadn't smoked in years. Yes, but so what? That's life... You boast about having tremendous willpower, and one day, on a winter morning, you decide to walk four kilometers in freezing weather to buy a pack, or you love a man, have two children with him, and one winter morning you find out he's leaving you because he loves someone else. He adds that he's confused, that he made a mistake.

Like on the phone: "Sorry, I made a mistake." It's okay, don't worry...

A soap bubble.

It's windy. I go outside to protect the lard.

I watch TV with the girls. I feel overwhelmed. The characters in their cartoons seem silly and capricious to me. Lucie gets annoyed, shakes her head, and asks me please to shut up. I feel like telling her about Candy.

When I was a little girl, I was crazy about Candy.

Candy never talked about money. Only about love. But I kept quiet. It hasn't served me well to behave like Candy's gossip...

The wind blows stronger and stronger. I give up on going to the village.

We spend the afternoon in the attic. The girls dress up. Lucie waves a fan in front of her sister's face:

"Do you feel too hot, lady countess?"

The lady countess can't even move. She has too many hats on her head.

We bring down an old crib. Lucie says we need to paint it.

"In pink?" I ask.

"How did you guess?"

"I'm very smart."

The phone rings. Lucie answers. In the end, I hear her ask:

"Do you want to talk to mom now?"

She hangs up a moment later. She doesn't come back to us. I continue fixing the crib with Marion.

I run into her when I go downstairs to the kitchen. She has her chin resting on the table.

I sit next to her.

We look at each other.

"Someday, will you and dad fall in love again?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Anyway, I already knew..."

She stands up and adds:

"Do you know what else I wanted to tell you?"

"No. What?"

"Well, the birds have eaten everything..."

"Really? Are you sure?"

"Yes, come see..."

She walks around the table and takes my hand.

We were standing in front of the window. I had that blond girl by my side. She was wearing an old tuxedo tie and a petticoat eaten by moths. Her "You're a Barbie girl!" could fit inside her great-grandmother's boots. My big mom hand completely enveloped hers. We were looking at the trees in the garden, bending under the force of the wind, and we were probably thinking the same thing...

The bathroom is so cold that I can't get my shoulders out of the water. Lucie washed our hair, creating all kinds of dizzying hairstyles. "Look at yourself, mom! You have horns on your head!"

I already knew.

It wasn't very fun, but it made me laugh.

"Why are you laughing?"

"Because I'm silly."

"Why are you silly?"

We dry ourselves while dancing.

Nightgowns, socks, shoes, sweaters, robes, and more sweaters. My Michelin dolls came down to have dinner.

The light goes out just when Babar is playing with the elevator in a department store under the angry gaze of the elevator operator. Marion starts crying.

"Wait for me, I'm going to turn the light back on."

"Uh! Uhuhuhuhu..."

"Stop, Barbie girl, you're scaring your sister."

"Don't call me Barbie girl!"

"Well then stop."

It wasn't the circuit breaker, nor the fuses. The blinds were banging, the doors were creaking, and the whole house was plunged into darkness.

Brontë sisters, pray for us. I wonder when Pierre will come back.

I brought the girls' mattress down to the kitchen. Without an electric heater, it was impossible to let them sleep upstairs. They were very nervous. We pushed the table aside and placed the makeshift bed near the fireplace.

I lay between the two of them.

"And Babar? You didn't finish the story..."

"Shh, Marion, shh! Look in front of you. Look at the fire. He's going to tell you a story..."

"Yes, but..."

"Shh..."

They fell asleep right away.

I listened to the noises in the house. My nose itched and I rubbed my eyes to keep from crying.

"My life is like this bed," I thought. "Fragile. Uncertain. Suspended." I waited for the moment when the house would take flight.

I thought about how I had been released like ballast.

It's funny how expressions are not just expressions. One must have been very scared to understand "cold sweat," or have felt so much anguish for "a knot in the stomach" to give everything it has, right?

"Let go like ballast" is the same. It's a great expression. Who could have come up with it?

To release the ballast so the balloon can ascend. To release the ballast of one's partner.

To cast off, spread one's albatross wings, and fuck in other lands. No, really, the expression couldn't be more accurate...

I'm becoming mean, it's a good sign. A few more weeks and I'll be a horror.

Because the trap is precisely to think that we are tied down. We make decisions, get into debt, commitments, and take some risks. We buy houses, put babies in pink rooms, and sleep embraced every night. We marvel at that... what did we call it? That complicity. Yes, that's what we called it when we were happy. Or when we weren't as happy...

The trap is to think that we have the right to be happy.

Look how foolish we are. So naive as to believe for even a moment that we control the course of our lives.

The course of our lives slips away from us, but what does it matter. It's not very interesting...

Ideally, we would know it beforehand.

"Before," when? Before.

Before painting the rooms pink, for example...

In the end, Pierre is right, why show one's vulnerability?

To get beaten?

My grandmother used to say that good husbands were kept at home by cooking them delicious things. I'm not good at that, grandmother, I'm not good at it... First of all, I can't cook, and besides, I've never liked keeping anyone tied down.

Ah, really? We're in a mess, my daughter! I pour myself a little brandy to celebrate.

One tear and off to bed.

The next day felt very long to me.

We went for a walk. We went to bring bread to the horses at the riding club and spent a good while with them. Marion rode the pony. Lucie didn't want to.

I felt like I was carrying a very heavy backpack.

There was a show in the evening. I'm lucky, there's a show at my house every night. This time, the program was: The Girl Who Was Going to Fly Like the Wind. They made a big effort to distract me.

I didn't sleep well.