For you, it was the kitchen, I said, smiling at him. A large kitchen with only the best equipment.
Ah, yes, I should have been a chef.
What was my center? Anouk asked.
An empty room with floor-to-ceiling mirrors, I said, not missing a beat.
Are you calling me a narcissist?
You like to look at yourself when you rehearse.
What was your center, Margot? Father asked.
I don’t remember.
What would it be today?
I can’t see my center.
Try to see it.
I looked around the kitchen and then through the living room, which opened onto the balcony where Anouk and I tanned our legs in the warmer months as we waited for Father to come striding down the street. The balcony was a neutral space that allowed me to step away from my mother and father without ever leaving them. It gave me the impression of being at the end of the world, hovering between the street and my life with Anouk.
The balcony, I told him. It’s between the apartment and the street.
A purgatory, Anouk said.
You can see through the glass doors into the apartment, he said. My daughter is a voyeur.
Thieves enter through balconies, Anouk continued, and murderers.
You feel the call of the void, he said, and it’s exhilarating. You want to know what it would be like to fly.
Or what it feels like to die, Anouk replied.
We laughed at her morbid comment. I stacked our bowls and carried them to the counter, filled the sink with hot water, and left the dishes to soak. Particles of food floated to the surface. Father tied a white apron around his waist and rolled up his sleeves. Whenever he was here, he did the dishes. Anouk stayed in the kitchen with him. I excused myself and went to my room, taking the book Father had given me for my birthday. I put it on the shelf with the other books, lay down on my narrow bed, and spread my legs and arms until they fell over the sides. I hadn’t intended on applying to Sciences Po; it was simply the first idea that came to mind when Father asked, knowing it would impress him.
When I emerged for a glass of water a few hours later, I passed by Anouk and Father in the living room. They sat on the couch, watching a travel show. The windows were wide open, and the television screen was bleached by the late-morning light, but they didn’t seem to notice or mind. He held her feet on his lap and massaged her toes. She loved to have her feet touched.
The kitchen was spotless. Father had even dried and put away all our dishes. I stuck my head out the window. It was humid and the air smelled damp and bitter, like animals left outside in the rain. It would storm later. In the distance, the sky was dark with massive clouds.
I returned to my room and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. The rain started falling a half hour later. I turned on my computer and watched a show about young students who set themselves on fire as a form of protest. It troubled me most that the students didn’t always die. Sometimes their hearts continued to beat despite the flames melting their skin. What kind of anger and despair did it take to set yourself ablaze? I wasn’t able to imagine such an intense feeling of pain. Was it like being skinned, the way one peels an apple by pulling away its protection? How quickly those defenses could be stripped away, the skin removed, blood streaming along the muscles. This is how Anouk appeared to me sometimes, a tangle of organs, bright red and glaring at me.
Father left in the early afternoon. As he tied his shoelaces, I asked when we would see him again. I don’t know yet, my darling, he said. I stared at the thin black hairs on his ankles. I knew he was a busy man. My anger bloomed and disappeared as quickly as snow melting on skin. I couldn’t stay angry at him for too long. I waited in the entryway as he put on his jacket. He kissed me on the cheeks, his hand resting on my shoulder for a moment, and then picked up his briefcase and walked out.
That night, we went to dinner at Théo and Mathilde’s place. They lived in the nineteenth, close to the Parc de Belleville. Anouk and I walked up the hill from the métro station and followed a street along the park. We were silent, both lost in our own thoughts, and it seemed to me that Anouk was preoccupied; it was unlike her to go for minutes without addressing me when we were out together. The streets were steep, and the dark foliage surrounding this section of the park gave it a shielded, hidden quality, so different from the grandeur of the Luxembourg, where the pointy iron gates could be seen from afar.
When we arrived at their building, Anouk had regained her energy. She typed in the code and pushed the door open with a forceful shove, barely holding it long enough for me to slip through behind her.
The front door was unlocked, and we let ourselves in without knocking. Anouk walked ahead of me, into the kitchen where Mathilde was preparing a vinaigrette. I watched my mother pick at the crust of a quiche still cooling in its pan. In other peoples’ kitchens, she couldn’t keep her fingers away from food when it was hot, fragrant, untouched. She was the first to break off the crisp edge of a cake. There was one window in the kitchen close to the stove. I stood by it, looking down at the tops of the recycling bins in the courtyard.
Mathilde asked me to taste the vinaigrette and see if it needed more salt or oil, but of course it was perfect; I could’ve sipped it from the cup. The secret ingredient was a teaspoon of mayonnaise. Théo was in the other room, setting the table.
We often came here for dinner on Sundays, even more frequently in the summer when our schedules were looser and I didn’t have to study for exams, daylight brightening the sky until late into the night. I remembered being younger and watching the adults drink wine at the table over empty plates while I fell asleep on the couch, covered in Mathilde’s hand-stitched blankets. I’d listen to Anouk talk about Father, seeking their advice, asking if they thought this or that was justified. I sensed that our family weighed on Mathilde and Théo, who loved us greatly and wanted to provide support, but were the only ones in our circle aware of his identity.
I felt that Mathilde enabled Anouk’s choices. She was too fluid in how she handled my mother, perhaps afraid of offending her if she unleashed her true opinions. Although she didn’t outwardly disapprove of Father, she was so reserved on the subject that I assumed she saw him as a poor choice. It’s because she doesn’t know him, I reasoned with myself. Théo was more of a listener than a prescriber, and he preferred to sit back and watch. Maybe it wasn’t their place to judge, or maybe they had tried to change Anouk in the past and had failed. You have more agency than you like to believe, Mathilde once told Anouk, who answered that she enjoyed how different our family unit was from more traditional configurations. I did not for one minute believe her.
On any given day, ours could feel like an ordinary life. Like most families, we sometimes ate our meals in silence. We had been sick and torn up in each other’s presence. I was often in a bad mood around Father, wanting more of him, but then I would disappear after we had finished eating, preferring to read or be alone. I had wanted to slap Anouk for chewing too loudly. The sound of her blowing dead skin from her feet as she pumiced over a bathtub drove me into a frenzy. When I say we, I meant the two of us.