Enough About Love

THOMAS AND PIETTE

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IN THE ONLY PHOTOGRAPH of Piette that Thomas still has, her lovely legs will be long and tanned forever. Thomas has burned all the other pictures he took of her, including the nudes she had such fun posing for. Before throwing each image on the fire, he described it quietly: “Piette sitting on a stone bench, naked, her feet on tiptoes, thighs spread, doing nothing to hide her pussy, elbows on knees, her head resting in her hands, staring at the lens and laughing,” … or “Piette in the bathtub, with her chin on the white enamel rim, her buttocks emerging from the bubbles, as well as one foot.”

The flames left nothing. This photograph that Thomas did not want to burn tries to comprise all the different Piettes. Lying on a bed in a white cotton dress, with her legs in the air, she is reading through the speech that a friend wrote for their engagement party. It was an engagement just for the fun of it, but Piette had thought big and invited fifty friends to her parents’ old farmhouse.

Summer has started early, there is a warm breeze blowing and the sky is fittingly sky blue. They have put baskets of fruit out on the large table, apricots, cherries, the first peaches.

“Come with me,” Piette says in Thomas’s ear when coffee is being served.

In just a few days in Provence, her skin has caught the sun, her hair is lighter, and her nose and shoulders have a smattering of freckles. She is pregnant: beneath her dress her small breasts have grown heavier, become firmer, the nipples larger, and, as soon as they are alone, Thomas touches them gently, filled with emotion. Angels have pussies and breasts.

“Come,” Piette says again.

She takes his hand, leads him down a path between the cypress trees. It takes them to a stream which has almost run dry, trickling over great slabs of limestone. They walk on and on through bottlebrush shrubs, stocks, and Jupiter’s beard. Piette is the one who knows every plant by name. At a turn in the path, the brook flows into a Roman-style tiled basin.

“I always used to come here when I was little,” says Piette. “I did watercolors. The only things I drew were caterpillars, centipedes, and scarab beetles, can you believe it?”

Yes, Thomas doesn’t doubt it for a moment. There isn’t a girl in the world more unusual than Piette. Later, he will take a picture of a stag beetle that she drew when she was thirteen, and have it framed.

“Do you think we’ll be happy, Thomas? Tell me about our life, tell me.”

Thomas tells her. The birth of Daniel (or Claire), the sleepless nights spent talking in the half-light, spent making love, the quarrels about whose turn it is to do the feeding, the first steps, the first words, and getting old too, together, with no fears. He describes the buildings of steel and glass that the great architect Piette will design in London, Berlin, and Tokyo. “And Métro stations, Thomas,” Piette says, “I want to build Métro stations.” Fine, let’s have some Métro stations.

Piette has lain down on the dried grass, she closes her eyes so she can concentrate on listening to Thomas, to his warm gentle voice rolling out the years to come. He says: “We’ll travel, we’ll take the children to the Greek islands.” “Will you read them the Odyssey? Will you show them dolphins and flying fish? Will I teach Claire to swim in the Aegean?” Yes, that’s right, Thomas answers every time.

Then Piette stands up, they walk around the pool and she puts her arms around him. The basin overflows through a small notch in the rim, they follow the stream through scrubland to a stone aqueduct like a miniature Pont du Gard.

The aqueduct spans a storm drain and carries the water to the large tank at Anselme de Montaîgu. The bridge is far too narrow to walk along, with a sheer drop of about twenty feet to the white rocks below.

Piette has stepped along the first few feet of the parapet. Thomas stays behind, he reaches out to her but she is too far away.

“Stop, Piette. It’s dangerous.”

She turns, standing on the stone bridge, her feet so close to the void. She speaks softly and that very softness frightens Thomas.

“Do you think I’ll be able to bring up our child, our children? I am ill, you know.”

“I know, Piette.”

Yes, Thomas knows. Manic-depressive psychosis, bipolar disorder, hypomania, cyclothymia, he has learned all the words along with Piette. He also knows every label on the boxes in that little case that goes everywhere with her: lithium nitrate, lamotrigine, benzodiazepine, and plenty more.

“Come back, Piette, please.”

“What I’ve got is a piece of shit, Thomas, it’s a piece of shit. Somewhere in this jumble of me, there’s a normal part, a part that doesn’t envy other people’s ordered lives, but then it’s my bad luck that I also have the other part that does envy them. Do you think I could ever be happier than I am today?”

“I promise you you can, my Piette. Come back.”

“You’re so soothing, Thomas, and I love you and my parents love you too, they want you to save me because they’ve never managed it. Why do I sometimes so want to be alive but also already dead? Why?”

“I love you, Piette, you’re scaring me.”

“I don’t want to die, I swear to you.”

Piette grabs Thomas’s hand, he draws her to him and holds her tight in his arms, the precipice now far away. Tears stream over their cheeks. She is still shaking.

“If this illness takes me away, Thomas, will you look after the children?”

“Stop it, Piette. We’ll come to see this aqueduct in fifty years’ time, with the children, and our grandchildren.”

“And our great-grandchildren too?”

Piette shivers, then falls silent. They walk toward the farmhouse, toward the party where people are already dancing. Thomas looks back at the stone aqueduct, the valley, and the olive trees in the sunlight, almost a Cézanne. It is the last time he sees it.

All his love will be unable to save his Piette or to triumph over her melancholia. In twenty-five years, Thomas’s entire trajectory, all his knowledge and skill will strive to do only that, to save the life of a young dead girl. With analysis he has found his feet again, but accepted? Never.

Thomas puts the photo down on the desk. If Piette looked at him now, she would see a gentle smile on Thomas’s lips. Something has changed, because he can now remember her and feel happy.