Coda
Catherine awoke for no particular reason. The place next to her in bed was empty, but, since, until very recently, this had been the normal state, it was clearly not Mathias' absence that had awakened her. She could still hear echoes of their conversation earlier that evening, when he had, at her insistence, told her the whole story of his assignation with Annick and Camille's birth. She shook the echoes out of her head and noticed a light from the far end of the apartment.
Slipping into her robe, she made her way to the small alcove that had served as Mathias' occasional office. He was seated at the small desk, staring intently at something in his hand. When he heard her approach he quickly tried to hide whatever it was under some papers but then seemed to change his mind and put it on top again.
"Couldn't sleep?" she asked, drawing closer to him and laying her hand on his shoulder.
He gave a non committal shrug, but then said, "I was thinking about something you said; that Camille doesn't really look like me."
"Oh, that," Catherine said quickly, "I really didn't mean anything by that."
"You right, though. She doesn't look like me. But she also doesn't look much like Annick either."
"I guess not," Catherine agreed.
"The thing that kept nagging at me was that I knew who she looked like...knew it since the time she turned 11 or 12...even younger, really."
He gave Catherine what he hand been holding in his hand. She leaned over him to get what turned out to be small photograph into the pool of the desk light. Squinting into the dim light she only had to look for a moment before she gave a gasp. "But that's Camille...no...wait it can't be..is that you!?"
The photo that Catherine was looking seemed to have been taken some time ago. But it's Kodak moment color was unfaded. It was of a petite women and a small boy, the boy standing in front of the women, she with her arms folded across his chest. A stranger could have identified the boy as Mathias...from the lock of hair tumbling across his forehead to the pouting lower lip to the watchful expression in the eyes...a smaller Mathias stared back out across the decades.
But it was the women who totally engaged Catherine's attention. The shape of her face, her nose, the tilt of her head and, still visible in the old photo, the faint dusting of freckles across her nose and cheekbones, and yes, that small secret smile, shared by Mathias, Hippolyte and Camille; this was Camille even if it couldn't be Camille.
"Your mother?" Catherine gave another small gasp of astonishment as Mathias nodded.
"But you never showed me this before...you never showed me ANY pictures if your mother." She paused a minute to gather her thoughts. "Didn't you tell me that all your family photos were lost in a fire?" She dredged up the memory. "Something about a fire in a shed or garage."
"They were lost in a fire alright." he took a deep breath. "After my mother died, my father took all the photos outside and burned them in a barrel. He didn't get this one, though," he added with a kind of bitter satisfaction. "Even if I didn't look at it often," he added softly.
He stood and walked over to gaze out of one of the apartment windows, where the leaves danced in the shadows cast by the street light across the way. "It is amazing what you can make yourself forget, convince yourself of what isn't true...what you don't want to be true because it is too painful. Put things in a box so you just don't have to see."
Catherine came over to stand near him. "But you must have seen," she said gently and with no accusation in her voice.
He nodded. "The first time was when she was just 6 or 7. We were having an ice cream at a place near the beach and she turned and looked at me, laughing to show me the ice cream on the tip of her nose, and she was so like my mother...her grandmother... I had to look away. It was like being blinded in a way. I was so happy to see that in her. Something beyond an old photo to have of my mother...here in some way. But it was hard too...very hard. It hurt."
He turned to face her.
"Then, you know, kids change so much so quickly, the next year, the resemblance wasn't there...or at least not as strongly. Like a soft hum in the background...something you can tune out. But, as she grew older...almost a teen...it re- emerged… stronger than ever." He took an uncomfortable breath. "So, when Annick got angry with me and told me to stop coming...well, it was a relief. And not just because I could put what I had done to you in box and pretend it wasn't there. But because I could also put losing my mother in that same box and not think about that either."
He started to turn back to the window, but Catherine put her hand on his arm and stopped him. "But why?" she asked softly. "I understand why you didn't want to think of loosing her...but why didn't you want to remember...think about your mother? All you ever told me was that she died when you were 9 – in an accident. I could never get much about it out of you...maybe I didn't try hard enough."
"Oh...it was nothing dramatic or especially terrible..."
Catherine interrupted. "A child loosing a mother is always "especially terrible."
He nodded. "But it is not like she died in some especially tragic way...she didn't linger and die from some dreadful disease or get killed in a horrible car crash...or kill herself."
He paused so long Catherine had to nudge his arm.
"It was just so stupid," he said wearily. "She was a teacher...English...in a high school. And she was coming down the stairs one day and a kid rushed past her and bumped her and she lost her balance...her heel got caught in a small crack in the stair...and she fell...10 steps….and broke her neck and died."
"Oh, Mathias..."
"It wasn't anyone's fault. The kid didn't even bump her that hard. She could have fallen in a dozen different ways and have survived. People fall down the stairs every day, somewhere, and live. But not the way she fell on that day. It was all just so random...so meaningless. I think that is part of why it was so difficult even to think of her. It seemed so..so..not worthy of her. Demeaning. And stupid." He repeated.
Catherine started to say something, but Mathias continued, almost fiercely. "I made myself forget the day...the date..it happened. So that I would't have to see it come around the calendar every year."
He looked at Catherine directly. "I'm good at that...forgetting what I want, putting thing in boxes and keeping them shut. Misdirection. Lying..." he faltered. Beside the hesitation, there was almost a warning in his voice.
"I know." she said softly. She slipped her arms around him and rubbed his back. "It's late...let's go back to bed."
She turned, holding his hand.
"Catherine."
She turned back to face him.
"You were right about something else you said. My father was an asshole. But before my mother died he was less of an asshole."
She nodded and tugged him after her.
