Château Éboule (English)

dix

August 09th, 2016

It was the last day of Château Aider today.

Just so you're not too chronologically confused, it is evening now where I am, but that's all I'll really tell you about my current settings, because if I told you much more it would spoil this whole entry. But I'm right now writing about my day, and how in the end, it became much better than I thought Nuclear Family days could go.

I'd only gotten a few hours' sleep last night, because of the ordeal at the hospital. I was allowed to sleep in because we had gotten to cottage 6 by around four thirty in the morning, but the truth is I hadn't slept at all. It was eleven o'clock when I walked outside in the very sunny, very clear-sky day - the first of its kind since arriving five weeks ago - and saw our old black minivan sitting in the middle of the cluster of cottages, on the dirt camp carpark facing the driveway, the top of its roof packed with our belongings. My thin, lunatic mum and my idiot, fat dad were both arguing and packing the boot at the same time (they were quite good at multitasking), while my bratty, teenage sister was already sitting inside, pretending to be asleep.

I dragged my small luggage across all the bumps and holes, and my dad grabbed it from me to heave onto the top of the minivan. It looked just about time to leave.

At last I looked across the dirt carpark to see a tall, handsome figure, generously bandaged, walking towards me. My parent's eyes slowly peeled away from the minivan's procession to survey Mathieu with varying amounts of unease and distaste, but I didn't really care, not all that much. I looked at Mathieu, and I think he noticed the little neatly wrapped box in my hands, because his step was a bit forced after his eyes had flicked down.

"Happy birthday," I said, holding the gift out to him. He took it, but he didn't really look at it.

"What eez eet?"

"Poems," I said. "Ones I've written. Just two of my favourites. The one I read to you before. And another one about a book I really like."

His smile was small and furtive as he looked down at the gift-wrapped box. Silence passed between us, and even though I could hear packing and shifting going on behind me, I knew my family's eyes were still on us, watchful and judgemental.

"I understand, Mathieu." I said at last, breaking some sort of spell that fell heavy on my chest. He looked up. "I think I always did. But now I know I do. I understand what it's like to love someone so much you'd do anything to make them happy. I understand that death is just breaching the scale of terrible things to happen to someone. I understand that all."

There were tears in his eyes as he looked at me.

"I don't care that you poisoned your sister, or that you broke your shaver for her or stood her on a chair," I carried on. "Because however sick that sounds, it was probably one of the best decisions you have ever made, for her, not for you. I don't care that your life is shitty and you're a shit person, because I'm sure as hell no better. I understand that you aren't a happy person, but you are a very cynical and very sad person, and I hope you understand that I'll miss you."

It was very silent. Very very silent. It was silent for quite a damn long time, and my parents had long stopped pretending to be preoccupied. I could feel their stares on my back now. At last, Mathieu looked ready to speak.

"I will miss you too, Natan," he said. He kissed me very softly, and I could just feel my face burning red because my whole family was still watching, but it was very short, and then Mathieu turned away, and then he started walking back to cottage 11.

I stood there where I was for a very long time, watching as Mathieu walked away until at last I couldn't see him anymore - his brown curly hair, his tight blue pants, his dark green sweater, and his unyielding reckless charm. And as Mathieu sunk out of my sight, I stayed where I was, completely transfixed, and yet I felt, right then, as if nothing had changed.

It wasn't until we were sulking in the minivan and speeding down the country motorway well away from Château Aider, a vast expanse of hayfields stained with wet tea, that my mother, her knuckles strangely white on the steering wheel, spoke first of all of us, and the silence broke like bread.

"We can't go back," she said, and she said it in a strange way. Her eyes were gazing out at the deserted country road, but not really seeing it. They had this glassy, detached look to them. She was rigid and stone-like, and my father didn't bother to look at her and notice this unnatural behaviour. He was looking at a map, like he had been for the past thirty minutes in frustration, but I hadn't bothered to tell him it was upside-down.

"Of course we bloody well can't," he grumbled in a tone he rarely grumbled in. "That place was hell, bleeding hell. The receptionist was the biggest old blighter you'd ever imagine... the bloody food... straight from the cat's can, if you asked me... five weeks spent on nothing..."

"No," mum said slowly and lightly, with that same look about her. "No, I mean, we can't go back to England. We can't go back home."

Angela had looked up from staring haughtily out the window, father froze as if a blast of Arctic air had suddenly gusted into the minivan. We all wondered whether we had heard mother correctly - I wondered the most.

"What do you bloody mean, we can't go back home?" Father blustered angrily. "Of course we bloody well can - what kind of codswallop are you on about now, woman? First the..." Father went on, and on, listing all the negativities about mum, about how she didn't make his steak rare enough, about how she didn't dust the mouldings properly, about how she was a cocky old bitch, about how she couldn't even try to put on some makeup in the morning and spare us all the upset digestion. And at one point during the filthy tirade against my mother, she yanked back the gearshift and the minivan went swerving across the road. Father shouted and swore, Angela screamed, and once the car was full of the smell of burnt rubber, we were facing the opposite way, the way back to France, the way back to Château Aider.

And as father and Angela in unison began screaming death at mother, her eyes caught mine in the rear view mirror, and I suddenly understood:

My thin, lunatic mother had enough sense in her at least to see that the rest of them are a lost cause. That I was the only one capable of loving, however hateful I appeared to be, and I understood that in a world packed to breaking point with hate, love, carried even in the smallest of hands, is a very valuable thing. I understood what she understood, as she sped back down the country motorway, as we passed a sign that read: Château Aider: 32 km, as her eyes met mine in the rear view mirror:

That I had to be saved. She understood that I had found love in a place where nobody else had. I had broke down a wall the others hadn't. I had showed the others up by not only experimenting with feelings on the opposite spectrum of hatred and frustration, but by practicing it with the same gender. And by the end, I think we both understood that I didn't need Château Aider with all its sound-proofed walls that don't work, I didn't need Youth Circle with the pretty female child molester Penny nodding along, I didn't need Sarah the social worker asking me to put a signature on an intangible wavelength of emotions: what I needed, in the end, was a completely different kind of nuclear, and only Mathieu could give me that.

I've decided this is the last letter I'll write to you, not that it matters either way, because you aren't real. I just don't think it would be very interesting to write anymore, since my life isn't so quiet and sitting anymore, and it isn't so loud and slapping anymore either.

Sincerely,

Nathan