Connemara

1

The anger came as soon as she woke. All it took to put her in a rage was to think about the day ahead: so many things to do, so little time.
And yet Hélène was an organized woman. She drew up lists, planned her weeks. In her mind, even in her body, she knew the exact amount of time it took to run a load of laundry, to give the youngest a bath, to cook noodles or get breakfast ready, to drive the girls to school or wash her hair. She’d had to get her hair cut twenty times to save on the two hours per week it took her to care for it. And she’d saved those hours, twenty times over. Was that the kind of sacrifice she had to make—the loss of her long hair, treasured since childhood?
Hélène was full of all these counted minutes, these little scraps of daily existence that made up the jigsaw puzzle of her life. Occasionally she would remember her adolescence, the lethargy that you’re allowed at fifteen, the idle Sundays, and later the hungover mornings spent lazing around in a daze. That whole vanished period . . . at the time it had seemed to last forever, but as she looked back now it seemed so brief. Her mom used to bawl her out for the hours she wasted lying in bed when she could have been outside enjoying the sunshine.
Nowadays her alarm went off at six every weekday morning, and on weekends, like an automaton, she woke at six anyway. At times she had the feeling that something had been stolen from her, that her life was no longer really her own. Now her sleep patterns were in thrall to some higher power, the rhythm of her days ruled by family and work. Everything she did, and the speed at which she did it, was for the greater good. Her mother could rest content: Hélène, a mother herself now, was useful at last. She’d been dragged into the adult mire, and she saw the sun all day long.
“Are you awake?” she whispered.
Philippe was lying on his front, a solid presence beside her, one arm folded under his pillow. He might have been dead. Hélène checked the time: 6:02. Ugh, not again . . .
“Hey,” she said in a louder voice. “Go wake the girls. Hurry up or we’ll be late again.”
Philippe turned over with a sigh, lifting up the comforter and releasing the warm heavy familiar smell, the dense air accumulated from one night and two close bodies. Hélène was already on her feet, in the biting cold of the bedroom, hands searching the nightstand for her glasses.
“Philippe, come on . . .”
Her partner grumbled, then turned his back on her. Hélène was already mentally running through all the tasks she had to tick off.
She took a shower, her jaw still tensed, then checked the emails on her phone as she went to the kitchen. She’d do her makeup later, in the car. Every morning the kids would get her hot under the collar so there was no point putting on foundation until after she’d dropped them at school.
With her glasses perched at the end of her nose, she warmed up their milk and poured cereal into their bowls. On the radio it was those two journalists again whose names she could never remember. She still had time. The morning show on France Inter provided her with the same easy markers every day. For now, the house was still cocooned in that nocturnal calm, the kitchen like an island of light where Hélène could savor a rare moment of solitude. She drank her coffee, enjoying the respite like a soldier on leave. It was 6:20 and already she needed a cigarette.
She put on her thick cardigan and went out to the balcony. There, leaning on the railing, she smoked while gazing down at the city below, the first red and yellow lights of traffic, the scattered dazzle of streetlamps. On a nearby street a garbage truck was going through its routine drudgery, all sighs and beeps and blinking. A little farther to her left loomed a high-rise, its dark outline studded with rectangles of light and flitting silhouettes. There was a church over that way. To her right, the geometric mass of a hospital. The city center, with its cobbled alleys and fancy stores, was a long way off. She watched as the city of Nancy stretched and came back to life. It wasn’t too cold for a morning in October. The tobacco crackled and glowed and Hélène looked over her shoulder before checking her cell phone. A smile appeared on her face, highlighted by the gleam of the screen.
She’d received a new message.
Some simple words saying I can’t wait, I’ll see you soon. Her heart gave a brief jolt and she took another drag on her cigarette, then shivered. It was 6:25. Time to get dressed again, drop the girls at school again, lie again.

“Is your Bbag packed?”
“Yeah.”
“Mouche, did you remember your swimming stuff?”
“No.”
“You need to remember.”
“I know.”
“I reminded you yesterday, weren’t you listening?”
“I was.”
“So why didn’t you do it?”
“I just didn’t think.”
“That’s the point. You have to think.”
“Nobody can be good at everything,” Mouche replied, like a learned professor with her Nesquik mustache.
She had just turned six and she was changing before her mother’s eyes. Clara too had been through that phase of accelerated growth, but Hélène had forgotten how it felt to see her children suddenly becoming people. So she was rediscovering, as if for the first time, that moment when a child shakes off the torpor of infancy, stops acting like some greedy little creature, and starts thinking, making jokes, coming out with stuff that changes the mood of a meal or leaves the grown-ups agape.
“Well, I should be off. Bye, everyone . . .”
Philippe had just appeared in the kitchen and he was going through the morning routine of tucking his shirt into his pants and running a hand under his belt, from his belly to his back.
“You’re not eating breakfast?”
“I’ll grab something at work.”
He kissed his daughters, then gave Hélène a peck on the lips. “You remember you’re picking up the girls tonight?” she said.
“Tonight?”
Philippe’s hair was thinner than it used to be, but he was still a handsome man: well-built and well-dressed, nicely scented, the gleam in his eye undimmed. He was still the boy who breezed through his exams without trying, the kid in the know. It was annoying.
“We’ve been talking about this for the past week.”
“Yeah, but I might have to bring some work back.”
“Call Claire then.”
“Have you got her number?”
Hélène gave him the babysitter’s phone number and advised him to contact her ASAP to make sure she was available.
“Okay, okay,” Philippe said, typing the number into his phone. “Do you know if you’ll be home late?”
“Shouldn’t be too late,” Hélène replied.
“It’s a pain, though,” said her partner as he scrolled through his emails.
“It’s not like I’m out all the time. You got home at nine last night, remember? And the night before.”
“I was working. What do you expect me to do?”
“Yeah, well, I’m volunteering.”
Philippe looked up from the blue screen and gave her his usual thin-lipped, mocking smile.
Ever since they’d come back from Paris, Philippe seemed to think that nobody had the right to ask him for anything else. After all, he’d given up a brilliant job at AXA for her, not to mention his badminton buddies and, in general, the kind of prospects that simply did not exist in Nancy. And all that because she had not been able to handle Paris. Although it was debatable whether she was handling Nancy any better. That forced departure remained like an unpaid debt between them. Or at least that was how it seemed to Hélène.
“Well, see you tonight,” Philippe said.
“See you.”
Then Hélène rallied her daughters: “Okay, brush teeth, get dressed, let’s go. I still have to put my lenses in. I’m not going to tell you twice.”
“Mommy . . .” said Mouche.
But Hélène had already stalked out of the room on her long legs, hair tied back, checking her WhatsApp messages as she went upstairs. Manuel had sent her a new message, saying see you tonight, and she could feel it again: that delicious sting of fear in her chest that made her feel like a teenager.