The Book of Other People by Zadie Smith Page B

returned home for lunch. Gaspard was a small man, shorter even than my sister in her bare feet. He was handsome, though, with a dark-brown elfin face and a wide grin that he seemed unable to restrain even when he was angry. He was from a family of tailors and dressed very well, lately favoring airy white embroidered shirts and loose cotton pants.
    Lélé and Gaspard were sitting on opposite sides of the living room when I entered, Gaspard on our sixty-year-old fleur-de-lisprint chaise longue and Lélé in a rocking chair by the louvered doors overlooking the now crushed vetiver field.
    Marthe, who had been with us long enough to have delivered both my sister and me, sauntered over with a small shiny tray to collect an empty glass from Gaspard. I had an image in my mind of Gaspard having sat there all morning, sipping a single glass of Marthe’s tasty, vanilla-essence flavored lemonade while staring at Lélé’s expressionless profile. Even though I had hired a younger girl to help her, Marthe still preferred to do most of the light work around the house herself, including receiving our guests. Marthe was in her late sixties, about the age that our mother would have been if she were alive. She also had the same moon-shaped face and stocky frame. Growing up, I thought Marthe and my mother were sisters. I’m still not convinced that they weren’t.
    I waited for Marthe to leave the room, then, rubbing my hands together, said, ‘So, les amoureux , have we reconciled?’
    Gaspard looked up at me, his uncontrollable grin momentarily menacing. For once, while smiling, he almost appeared to be gritting his teeth.
    ‘She hasn’t told you?’ he asked.
    I raised my shoulders and shrugged, looking over at my sister, whose eyes never wandered from the devastated vetiver field.
    ‘We have to clean up that field,’ she finally said. ‘And we should do it sooner rather than later. There might still be something worth saving there.’
    ‘Sometimes, there’s nothing to save,’ Gaspard said.
    He stood up and quickly breezed past me, but, as he reached the doorway, where he was closest to my sister, he walked back and laid a hand on my shoulder.
    ‘Sorry, brother,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t have seen that.’
    I shook my head, not sure what to say. It seemed like all the cards were in Lélé’s hand. It was her move.
    I waited until I heard Gaspard’s car start up. When his tires scratched the driveway gravel, I asked my sister, ‘Are you sure this is the right time for irreconcilable differences?’
    She got up from the rocker, pulled the louver doors shut, considerably dimming the room.
    ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said, plopping herself down on one of the old divans by the closed fireplace.
    ‘Is he cheating on you?’ I asked. ‘If he is, I can find some way to have him thrown in jail.’
    ‘He’s not cheating,’ she said.
    ‘Are you cheating?’
    She popped her eyes real wide in response, then pointed at her belly.
    ‘Is it his baby?’ I said, sitting down on the floor at her feet.
    ‘You fool,’ she said.
    Placing my head on her knee, I felt like I did when I was a boy and would run home, devastated, after going with my father to record a death.
    ‘You can’t do this type of work if you cry at the scene,’ my father had said, slapping the back of my head in front of his witnesses. Once, even after I had seen the severed body of a beheaded man. The man’s own brother had taken a machete to his neck during a dispute over a plot of land. That night, Lélé had let me sleep in her bed, but most importantly she’d let me cry.
    ‘You sure you don’t want to tell me?’ I asked.
    ‘Maybe in good time,’ she said.
    ‘Have we ever used this fireplace?’ I said, pointing to the only concrete part of the house, a square cave that Lélé had recently filled with giant decorative candles.
    ‘Marthe would know better,’ she said, ‘but I only remember us using it once, the night you were born.