Allow
me to introduce myself. My name is Marie Blanchemain. You may call me whatever
you like. I expect you will. I expect you will call me many things.
That
I have had some education, you can tell by the way I speak, and that I did not
come from some wretched home by the the way I hold my head. I am a woman, as
they say, of a certain age, which gives me a certain credibility.
I was
married once, Pierre and I lived here, in this little house. We had a son, Adrien.
A beautiful child. We were very happy for a time.
One
day I walked into the living room to tell Pierre his lunch was ready. He stood
with his ear pressed to the wall. Palms flat, as if he were straining to hear.
He turned
his head to look at me. Murmurs, was all
he said, and I did not know then it was only gathering its forces. Come, I said, have your lunch before it gets cold.
The brain swells, a searing pain, there were times when it made him scream. The disease marched on and he was, by turns, violent, and like a child.
He died
when Adrien turned fifteen. It had been years since he knew either one of us. I
had loved Pierre, deeply. I missed my husband, and Adrien missed his father. But
Pierre had not been either, for some time. We were sad and we were weary. Adrien
and I spent our evenings quietly, at home.
My
son was tall, fair-haired, as handsome as his father. He wrote poetry and Adrien
was gifted, he had a poet’s ear for words. On cold nights I made cocoa, he brought in wood and we made a fire. As the flames behind him danced, Adrien read his poems out loud.
I
worked needlepoint while he read. I studied the holes in the cloth. The last
poem Adrien read to me was about an orchard in the snow. He stumbled over the
words. When I looked up, he was trembling, his face was red. He bit his lip and
cried. He stared at the page in his hand as though it betrayed him.
He never
read to me after that and never left his room. When he spoke, it was to the walls. The disease marched on as it had before; he was violent. And he was my
child.
Blanchemain.
My given name. It means, “white hands”, or “clean”. Empty, perhaps. Hands that
give too many things.
I
gave Pierre my heart, to Adrien, I gave my soul.
I gave
them both to the fire. To the orchard, and to the snow.