After dinner, my mother had me go up to her dressing room. It was a room that adjoined her bedroom, which she had decorated tastefully; no one entered it without her authorization. She didn’t beat around the bush. “What did you come here for? I warn you, if it’s just to annoy us, you shouldn’t have bothered.” Once again, I felt as if I were shrinking; before this imperious voice, these cold eyes, I was going to pieces, I was becoming a fearful child, smaller than the twins. I tried to get control of myself, but it was a lost cause. “No,” I managed to articulate, “I wanted to see you, that’s all. I was in France for my work, and I thought of you. And also, I was almost killed, you know, Mother. I might not survive this war. And we have so many things to make up.” She softened a little and touched the back of my hand, with the same gesture as my sister: gently, I removed my hand, but she didn’t seem to notice. “You’re right,” she said. “You could have written, you know; that wouldn’t have cost you anything. I know you disapprove of the choices I’ve made. But for you to disappear like that, when you’re someone’s child, that’s just not right. It’s as if you were dead. Can’t you understand that?” She thought, then went on, speaking quickly, as if she would run out of time. “I know you’re angry at me because of your father’s disappearance. But it’s him you should be angry with, not me. He abandoned me with you, he left me alone; for more than a year I didn’t sleep, your sister woke me up every night, she was crying in her nightmares. You never cried, but it was almost worse. I had to take care of you both alone, feed you, dress you, educate you. You can’t imagine how hard that was. Then, when I met Aristide, why should I have said no? He’s a good man, he helped me. What should I have done, according to you? Where was your father? Even when he was still there he was never there. I was the one who had to do everything, change your diapers, wash you, feed you. Your father came to see you fifteen minutes a day, he played with you a little, then he went back to his books or his work. But it’s me you hate.” Emotion knotted my throat: “No, Mother. I don’t hate you.”—“Yes, you hate me, I know it, I can see it. You came in that uniform to tell me how much you hate me.”—“Why did my father leave?” She took a long breath: “No one knows that except him. Maybe just out of boredom.”—“I don’t believe it! What did you do to him?”—“I didn’t do anything to him, Max. I didn’t chase him away. He left, that’s all. Maybe he was tired of me. Maybe he was tired of you.” Anguish swelled my face: “No! That’s impossible. He loved us!”—“I don’t know if he ever knew what loving means,” she replied very gently. “If he loved us, if he loved you, he would at least have written. If only to say he wouldn’t be coming back. He wouldn’t have left us in doubt, in anguish.”—“You had him declared dead.”—“I did that mostly for you both. To protect your interests. He never gave a sign of life, he never touched his bank account, he left all his affairs in the lurch, I had to settle everything, the accounts were blocked, I had a lot of problems. And I didn’t want you to be dependent on Aristide. The money you left for Germany with, where do you think that came from? It was his money, you know that very well, and you took it and used it. He probably really is dead, somewhere.”—“It’s as if you killed him.” My words were making her suffer, I could see it, but she remained calm. “He killed himself, Max. It was his choice. You have to understand that.”
