The End of Eddy Read online

  *   *   *

  My older sister had lived through the experience the other way around. It was like a mirror, there was a perfect symmetry reflected between her and my older brother, between the masculine and the feminine. She had started seeing a guy who lived a few streets over—girls in the village often end up with boys from the village or the surrounding area. He would come visit on a moped in the days before he got a car. Tough guys used mopeds to pick up girls, impressing them by doing a wheelie or a fancy skid in front of them, and then inviting them to hop on behind Pretty hot bike I’ve got, right.

  Soon they moved in together, in a small apartment—still in the village, only a few streets away. He wasn’t working. My mother couldn’t stand the relationship, considering it indecent for a woman to support a man She can’t just live with some lazy jerk sponging off of her, taking her money. He’s supposed to be the man of the house.

  *   *   *

  It was my mother who noticed that he was beating my sister. She was on her way home from the bakery where my sister worked the register. My mother thought she had looked strange, out of sorts, pale She was as white as a baby’s backside, and she added I think, I’m not totally sure but I’m not crazy, she’s my daughter so I’m almost sure, I changed her damn diapers, I can tell when something’s not right. I’m not an idiot. I saw that mark beneath her eye, it looked like that jerk had beat her up.

  The next day my sister dropped by to visit my parents. She came over to watch a movie and talk with my mother a bit You know you can’t talk to men about clothes. And indeed she had a violet and yellow mark under her right eye. For a few minutes, when she first arrived, my parents didn’t say anything, but then my father said—or more accurately, he exploded—but in a deceptively calm way, without raising his voice, with a kind of restrained ferocity, or controlled violence What have you got under your eye? Then the panic in my sister’s face, her stammering. Even before she spoke a single word, we all knew she was getting ready to lie. She said it was nothing I tripped on the stairs and ran into something, before adding some kind of a joke to hide her discomfort—since she could already tell we knew she was lying, I mean, you know me, I’m never looking where I’m going, I can be a real moron sometimes. My father kept looking at her, more and more angry, less and less able to conceal the state he was in. Fury contorted his face, like when he punched the walls. He asked her if she thought he was a fool. He said he didn’t ever want to see her again if she was going to stay with that guy, and he didn’t see her again for several months. We knew he was overreacting: it wasn’t my sister’s fault. But once again he hadn’t been able to control his temper. In fact he hardly ever tried to do so, and moreover he bragged about it I’ve got a temper, you know, I don’t take any shit, and when I go off, I go off. That was his way of being a man. He liked best of all the days when it was my mother who took the initiative, when she was the one to say What can you do, that’s the way he is, my Jacky, he’s a man and that’s how men are, doesn’t take much to make him angry, and it’s not easy to calm him down. On days like that he would pretend not to hear, but a proud smile would play over his lips.

  *   *   *

  There was only one time when he found himself unable to live up to his role as a tough guy, during a fight that broke out between him and my brother, because, as I’ve said, it was a point of honor for him never to lift a finger against anyone in his family, so as not to be like his own father.

  We were on our way home from the fair that took place in the village every September (just one or two rides, not the big affair some people might imagine). Above all, the fair was the moment in the year when men could stay out drinking at the café until late at night without having to explain themselves to their wives, who, and this was a common occurrence when the fair wasn’t around, would come and find their husbands at the café counter if they were staying too late The kids are waiting for you to get home so we can eat, and you sit here on your ass drinking away your paycheck.

  On this night of the fair my father had stayed late at the café with my older brother and also with my other brother, the younger one.

  I wasn’t with them because I hated it there, the men sitting around drunk and discussing the news and the village gossip. Their breath stank of wine when they spoke to me, spraying my face with drops of spittle, the way drunk men do, and every time, almost without exception, they ended up talking about their hatred of gay people.

  My father and my older brother were drinking together when suddenly my younger brother disappeared. They started calling his name. At first they weren’t worried, they told themselves he had probably just gone to set off some firecrackers near where the rides were, as they themselves had done years ago. All these experiences that the people living in the village reproduced exactly from generation to generation, and their resistance to any kind of change That’s the only way to really have any kind of fun.

  Slowly everyone went home from the fair and from the café as well. Only a handful of people were left. At that point my father and my big brother began looking around in the dark where the odors given off by the surrounding forest were starting to reemerge: a scent of damp, fresh earth, mushrooms, pine trees. They yelled his name Rudy, Rudy without any answer. They began asking around Have you seen him? immediately setting off a huge search involving everyone who was still around. Off they went, spreading out through the streets of the village over which floated, like an echo, his name Rudy, Rudy. His name popped up, blossomed, from every corner. The entire village began singing the name and each call of Rudy gave rise to others, over and over.

  My father was worried because of all the stories of kidnappings he had seen on television. Pedophilia was a myth that tormented the village. Once when a news program on TV described a case of pedophilia in the North, not far from us, my parents refused to let me out of the house for several days. They should cut the balls off of fuckers like that and make them eat them, and then kill them, where’s the death penalty when you need it, why did they do away with it, how fucked up was that, that’s why there’s so many more rapists around these days and then my mother No kidding, beats me why they don’t kill people like that. My mother had joined the search party, weeping and yelling My boy, what’s happened to him, don’t let him be kidnapped, there’s more and more men kidnapping boys now and then they rape them and kill them.

  *   *   *

  Finally someone called out to us.

  My little brother was sitting on the steps in front of our house. He explained that he was tired and had come here to rest and wait for the others to come home. My parents were crying. They took him in their arms and told him never to do that again. My brother, the older one, blew up. He had had far too much to drink. He started yelling questions at my little brother; why had he done that? My little brother didn’t say anything, paralyzed in front of this huge monster of flesh, my big brother, six-foot-three, two hundred and forty pounds, not just a double but a triple chin, that wobbled around when he spoke. He started yelling at my parents, accusing them of being too soft on him You gotta take a belt to him, that’s what he needs, give him a whipping he won’t forget, that’s what he needs, it’s the only way you’ll ever make someone a man. He couldn’t shut up, or get control of himself, he went on insisting that when he was a kid he got slapped whenever he was out of line, that he hadn’t been raised like this. What’s worse, our whole fucking life was nothing like this. We had no fucking money, and all the time we had to humiliate ourselves asking for credit or going to the food bank for food.

  *   *   *

  (We would go there once a month, it was true, to collect the boxes of food they gave out to the poorest families. The volunteers grew to recognize me and, when we arrived, they would slip me a few extra chocolate bars beyond our allotment There’s our little Eddy, how’s he doing? and my parents would then tell me to keep my mouth shut You don’t tell anyone, no one, that we go to the food
bank, that’s a secret that stays in the family. They didn’t realize that I’d already understood, without being told, how shameful this was, and that nothing would have made me tell anyone about it.)

  *   *   *

  To the fucking food bank, or when day after day we ate the fish Dad caught because we couldn’t afford meat, these brats never knew anything like that. That we even had to go out and beg on the street. He was lying, the alcohol was making him lie. He had never had to beg. We got raised the hard way, not like these spoiled brats, and when we did something wrong no way we got away with it, we never got off so easy. And look at what happens. He turned toward me, his eyes bloodshot, spit running down his cheeks, belching, about to vomit each time he opened his mouth. Look at Eddy, how you’ve brought him up, what he’s turned into. He acts like a fucking pussy.

  I pretended to be shocked, as I always did, so that others might think this was the first time I’d ever heard anything like this. A misdiagnosis. My brother must be out of his mind and if my mother or father had ever had the same thought, then his craziness must run in the family.

  He wanted to make sure that my little brother didn’t turn out like me, a pussy. And in fact I had worried about the same thing. My big brother couldn’t have known, but I didn’t want Rudy to get beaten up at school and I was obsessed by the need to make sure that he turned out straight. I had begun working on this when he was extremely young: I told him over and over again that boys liked girls, sometimes I even told him that homosexuality was disgusting, totally sick, and that it could lead to damnation, hell, and disease.

  *   *   *

  All at once he ran toward me, yelling I’m taking you out, I’m gonna kill you. My mother rushed in to protect me. Telling this story, she will say that she doesn’t let people mess with her, just because she’s a woman doesn’t mean she gets scared. Men don’t scare me, still, he’s a big guy, your brother, a big, strapping guy, but I’m not like some people who don’t have any balls and just stand there doing nothing.

  She got between us and held him back before he had time to hit me. She tried to shut him up, shouting even louder than he was to cover up his hollering, so loud that it made her hoarse. No way, you don’t touch your younger brother, you don’t hurt him, as if we don’t have enough problems without you going after your younger brother. Calm down, calm down. And another thing, don’t go telling me how to raise my kids, I raised five of them and it’s not you who’s gonna tell me what I should or shouldn’t do, go have some of your own and then we’ll talk. My brother was staring straight at me with his fists up, trying to push my mother aside, but she fought back. Because my mother was standing in his way, he started shoving her, calmly at first, then more violently, or, at least, with more and more force. Leave your brother alone, leave your brother alone. He raised his hand to hit her. Then it was my father who, in turn, stepped between them. I couldn’t say what he had been doing during the time my mother was holding my brother back. I imagine he was yelling like her, trying to get him to stop. He must have been thinking my mother would be better at calming him down. He thought women were naturally better peacemakers than men, as shown by all the times that women separated their husbands who had gotten into fights outside the café. (That’s enough, now, enough of this foolishness, stop punching each other in the face, and the husbands who went on yelling at each other as their wives held their arms back I’m gonna beat him to a pulp, I’m gonna mess him up until finally they came to their senses and said to their wives Sorry, honey, sorry, I got carried away, but that guy had it coming, he really had it coming, I couldn’t just let him mess with me.)

  My father pulled my brother aside just in time to stop him from hitting my mother. It wasn’t so much anger as it was this unthinkable chain of events that made him ask my brother what was the matter with him, why he wanted to kill me and attack his own mother. Then he started begging him to back off; I was watching this transpire in a state of shock and incomprehension: I wasn’t used to seeing my father begging anyone for anything, least of all his own children, whom he was always reminding of his authority Under this roof I’m the boss. He begged him to relax and tried to reassure him: he’d been brought up just like the younger kids, they’d all been raised the same way. He swore we had been given no special privileges Never treated any of you any different even if he wasn’t the biological father of my older brother and my older sister. He told him he had loved them just as much as us And when we had Eddy, other folks, people in my family would say to me you must be proud Jacky, your first kid and what’s more it’s a boy, but I said back, No, no. Eddy’s not my first kid, ’cause I have two others that are older, and they aren’t stepchildren. You either have kids all the way or you don’t, there’s no such thing as half a kid. It doesn’t exist.

  My big brother, Vincent, wasn’t listening. He wouldn’t be diverted, he kept yelling, stammering, hurling all kinds of insults at me during my father’s little speech. He had had enough. He wanted to have his way, he was out to get me. My mother sensed this change in him, this sudden desire to accelerate the action (telling this story: Right then I saw things were taking a turn for the worse, who knows Vincent better than me, I brought him into the world), she told me to go hide in the bathroom and lock the door Eddy quick run hide in the shitter and lock the door. Vincent’s impatience won out. He hit my father. My father didn’t want to fight back, he refused, not wanting to hit his own son. He had slapped him now and then, the way he slapped me, as a punishment, when my brother had talked back, as a rebellious teenager … but wouldn’t hit him in this context, he wouldn’t get into an actual fight with his son. For a while he just took what was coming, only trying to hold him back a bit, to deflect the blows as best he could. I was hiding in the bathroom, trembling, so I didn’t see any of this. My mother told me about it the next day.

  *   *   *

  Then came the fight. My father was forced to defend himself. I heard voices all mixed together, my mother pleading with my brother not to hit his father, to cut it out, and then my father, at his wits’ end, in tears, who could do no more than ask his opponent between two cries of pain (his back problems) What do you think you’re doing? What’s going on? Finally Vincent You aren’t my fucking parents, you can go to hell for all I care, just go to fucking hell.

  Then I didn’t hear Vincent anymore. He had run away once he understood the seriousness of the situation. When I came out of the bathroom my father was down on the ground sobbing. He couldn’t stand up; he couldn’t even move. I saw the tightness in his immobilized body, especially in his eyes, which is where the tightness appears in a body that has suddenly been paralyzed, I saw him struggling to get up Shit, I’m never gonna walk again in my life, I can tell, I’m screwed, I can tell. My mother was panting, panicked, horrified, it was as if I could still see Vincent’s shadow in her face, as she asked me to help her pick up my father. I had plenty of experience carrying my paralyzed uncle when he fell out of his hospital bed. Pick up his legs while someone else picks up his arms. We tried to pick him up but we couldn’t. He’s heavy as an ox, my mother was saying. He let out cries of pain whenever we moved his body even a little bit.

  My mother told me that we needed to call the doctor, we had no choice, my father’s back had gone out and she knew it, the only thing that could help were his shots.

  It was barely an hour later when the doctor showed up. He gave him some shots, just as my mother had predicted. My father stayed lying down in the same position for more than ten days, and the doctor would come back every day to give him a shot and reassure him, It’ll get better, Mr. Bellegueule. His reply, I doubt it, Doc, I pretty much doubt it, either I’ll be here the rest of my life like a vegetable or else this is it.

  *   *   *

  One afternoon while my father was waiting for the doctor, my mother let me know he wanted to tell me something. I was taken aback, accustomed as I was to the silence that existed between us. She sounded sur
prised too, and looked up to the sky. I went into the bedroom.

  I walked up to the bed. My father held out something to me, a ring, his wedding ring. He asked me to put it on, to take care of it Because I can tell, I have to tell you, your dad is gonna die, I can tell I won’t be able to hold on much longer. Something else I need to say, it’s that I love you, that you’re my son, no matter what, you’re my first kid. I did not find this, as one might have expected, beautiful and moving. His I love you had repulsed me, the words had an incestuous feel to them.

  Portrait of My Mother in the Morning

  Now my mother. She couldn’t see what was happening to me at school. Sometimes in a detached and distant way she asked me how my day had gone. She didn’t do that often, it wasn’t her style. She was a mother almost in spite of herself, one of those mothers who had become a mother too soon. She was seventeen when she got pregnant. Her parents told her that her behavior wasn’t very grown-up and that she’d been careless Should’ve paid more attention. She was obliged to break off the courses she was taking to get a vocational certificate in cooking and leave high school without a diploma I had to drop out, but I wasn’t useless, I was really smart, and I could’ve gone far, finished my certificate and done other stuff after that.