Friday, August 24, 2007

Blue cheek


G's parents have a summer cottage where they spend all their holidays. It's not actually a cottage, but a small studio. G. and I barely fit in there.

The studio is part of a lot that lines up about 20 little homes. They're all attached so you basically see your right hand neighbour, as well as your left one, every hour of the day through the holes in the fences that are situated on both sides of the houses. Three studios share one small yard. This doesn't bother me at all. It provides me with insights that not everyone spends their vacation in Hawaii.

The neighbours to the right are called Mr and Mrs Lopez. They're not old but they're not young either. They have three grown-up children who come to visit regularly with their own children. Mr and Mrs Lopez are quiet and friendly and not at all invasive. They say 'hello' in the morning and 'goodnight' before they close the curtains. They smile when you walk by.

As a couple, they represent something special to me. Because deep down under that cynical facade of preparing for divorce before getting married, I do want to spend the rest of my life with G. This couple embodies in many ways how I picture us when we're old.

They play cards in the afternoons and always have a drink before dinner. At night, they sit and talk quietly next to each other. The only thing that interupts the humming sound is Mrs Lopez' laughter. On other nights I see them walking by us in town, holding hands. Sometimes they see us and say 'hi' but most of the times they're in their own world where everyone else is excluded.

This summer, there was no Mrs Lopez.

G's mother told us that she died in June.

Arriving at the studio, we said hello to Mr Lopez. He seemed frail and I didn't know what to say. The compulsary 'ca va?' wasn't appropriate anymore. So I said nothing. Feeling bad because I don't know him well enough to give him a hug, and not little enough to pretend I don't know. Later that night I saw him standing at the gate and went to express my condoleances.

He cried in front of me.

I cried in the shower afterwards.

Then, I thought to myself that Mr Lopez is lucky to have his daughter and her two children, a boy and a girl, staying with him at a time like this. They're gorgeous. Quiet, with luminous eyes, the children stare at us through the fence. The boy never speaks. G. and I wondered if he was autistic.

The next day, I heard the first slap.

A little later in the evening the second one.

When we left a couple of days later, the little boy waved bye to us by the gate. Smiling, his cheek was blue.

I wondered, in the car home, if we should have done something. In France, it's accepted to slap your child. Not to beat, but to slap. It's a fine line. Between what's accepted and what's not. Between how much you can observe and when you have to intervene. Between to what extent grief can be the scapegoat and when you use grief as a reason to.

I wonder if the grown-up boy will think about us sometimes and blame us for our passiveness?

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