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Which was good because Remy wasn’t done with his story.
Not even close.
“He was up from school, we were sitting by the pool, and we got to talking. I don’t remember how it came up, but he told me his first memory was sitting in the sand with me, and the only other thing he remembered was his mother’s red swimsuit. But I remembered all of that. I was showing him how to make sandcastles on Paloma Beach. He was four.”
“I remember this too, when you were with us in France. He was so little,” his father said softly. “You and both of your boys, once so little to get so big.”
Remy didn’t get stuck in his father’s gentle reminiscing.
That wasn’t even close to what this was about.
“This made me think,” Remy continued like Guillaume didn’t speak. “So when I went down to Tucson for a dad and daughter date with Manon, I asked about her first memory. She said Christmas. Me taking a picture of her and her mom was helping her open a big present. She, too, was four.”
Now having a hint where this was going, it was hesitant when his father tried, “Son—”
“I haven’t asked Yves. I should. I’ve no idea, but I hope I could imagine. Sandcastles and family vacations, and Christmases and Mom and Dad together. I’d hope it was something like that. And I have a first memory too, Dad, as we all do. Mine is Mom throwing a shoe at me and hitting me in the face.”
“Remy,” Guillaume said quickly, to cut him off, divert him, move this somewhere where he didn’t have to deal.
“It was a pump. The spiked heel cut my cheek. I don’t remember why she was furious that time. In my memory, I was scared, but I wasn’t shocked. I’d seen it before. Her tantrums. I’d see it after. Her tantrums. But that was my first memory. And I was four years old.”
Guillaume said nothing.
Remy did.
“That cut didn’t scar. But she’d leave scars, not many you could see, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t many.”
“Your mother is highly strung,” Guillaume, as usual, defended.
“She beat me with a brush when I was six.”
“Mon Dieu—”
“She broke my arm, twisting it, when I was eight.”
“This really is not the time to—”
“Also when I was eight, I was her date to some event, a fundraiser, black tie. I wore a tux because I’d had a custom-made tux since I was six. And she’d drilled me on how to behave at dinner since I could sit up straight. But still, I did something wrong, that something being I was not you, and she had to take her eight-year-old to an event as her date. When we were in the car coming home, she shouted at me about all the things I’d done wrong, embarrassing her, and she slapped me so hard, repeatedly, I had a black eye the next day. But I didn’t embarrass her, you did by not being there.”
“I should have been home much more, for her, for you, for both of you. This was my failing, son.”
“Yes, you should have. Absolutely. Though you didn’t break my arm or shove me into an armoire so hard, I cracked my head against it and got a mild concussion. She did.”
“This was all a long time ago, and look what you built, who you’ve become, the woman you made your wife, the family you created—”
“Yes, let’s talk about that. We already got into her calling Wyn trash. But do you know that the last time Mom phoned Manon, before I took my daughter’s phone, blocked her grandmother’s number and deleted her contact, was maybe two days after I left Wyn. And Mom told Manon it was now time she stepped in and ‘took her in hand.’ And therefore, if she had any hope of landing an appropriate husband, she immediately had to start dieting and take off twenty pounds.”
“Women of your mother’s generation have an unhealthy idea of—”
“My daughter is not overweight, Dad. But if she dropped twenty pounds, she sure as fuck would be underweight. But even in that dysfunction, Mom called her and said this shit to my fucking daughter two days after I walked out on my family.”
“Remy, we should discuss all of this, I agree. It’s long since time. But I will say that none of it trumps the fact your mother is dying,” Guillaume snapped. “And she misses you. She misses her grandchildren. But mostly, she misses her son. Non, je déteste sérieusement the manner in which I forced her to behave those years she had sole charge of you due to my shortcomings. But this is all water under the bridge now.”
Water under the bridge?
“Dad, I lived my whole…fucking…life scared out of my goddamned mind I’d put a foot out of place, and she’d lose it with me. And at the same time I was doing everything I could to be her perfect boy, I was doing it to be yours so you wouldn’t leave us. Leave her. Leave me with her.”
