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it still look good on me? It looks perfect, says Jean Ehrenfried, saluting her with a whirl of his beret. We watch him walk away and disappear behind the door to the radiotherapy room. My mother thrusts her bruised hands into her purse. She pulls out a compact and a lipstick and says, he’s got a bad limp, the poor man, I wonder if he hasn’t fallen in love with me.

Pascaline Hutner
    We didn’t see this coming. We never imagined things could fall apart this way. Never. Not Lionel, not me. We’re alone and confused. Who can we talk to about it? We ought to talk about it, but a secret like this – who could we tell it to? We ought to be able to discuss it with people we trust, with very compassionate people who wouldn’t so much as suggest that they found anything humorous in it. We don’t tolerate the smallest hint of humor on the subject, although we’re well aware, Lionel and I, that we might laugh about it if it didn’t involve our son. Actually, given the slightest inducement, we’d probably laugh about it in company. We haven’t even told Odile and Robert. The Toscanos have been our friends forever, despite the fact that it’s not so easy to maintain a friendship between couples. An in-depth friendship, I mean. In the end, the only truly intimate relationships are those between two people. We should have seen one another in twos, separately, just the women or just the men, or maybe even one of each (assuming that Robert and I would have managed to find anything to talk about in private). The Toscanos make fun of our mutual devotion. They’ve developed a certain attitude toward us, a kind of permanent irony that makes me tired. We can’t say a word without them reacting like we’re the very image of a congealed couple, suffocated by well-being. The other day, I made the mistake of saying that I’d prepared a turbot
encroûte
for dinner (I’ve been taking cooking classes, such fun). A turbot
en croûte
? Odile asked, as though I’d spoken in a foreign language. —Yes, a turbot cooked in a fish-shaped crust. —For how many people? Just for the two of us, I said, for Lionel and me, just for us two. Just for the two of you, that’s scary! Odile said. Why? asked my cousin Josiane, who was with us. I could cook a turbot
en croûte
just for myself, she said. Just for yourself, all right, that takes on another dimension, Robert said, upping the ante. Cooking a turbot
en croûte
, a fish with a fish-shaped crust, just for yourself alone, that rises to the level of tragedy. As a rule, I play dumb to keep things from going downhill. Lionel doesn’t give a damn. When I talk to him about it, he tells me the Toscanos are simply jealous, other people’s happiness often seems somehow aggressive. If we were to describe what’s happening to our family, I don’t see how anyone could be jealous of us. But confessing the disaster that’s befallen us is so hard precisely because we’re such paragons of domestic felicity. I can just imagine the snide remarks people like the Toscanos would make if they knew. Let me back up a little and explain. Our son Jacob, who recently turned nineteen, has always loved the singer Céline Dion. I say always because this passion dates from when he was still a little boy. While riding in a car one day, the child heard Céline Dion’s voice on the radio. Love at first sound. We bought that album for him and then the next one, the walls of his room got covered with posters, and – like a million other parents, I suppose – we found ourselves living with a little fan. Before long we were invited to concerts in his room. Jacob would dress like Céline in one of my slips and lip-synch her songs. I remember him unspooling some of the cassette tapes everybodyhad back then and using them to make himself a hairdo. I’m not sure Lionel thoroughly appreciated the show, but it was very amusing. At the time, we already had to put up with Robert’s teasing – he’d congratulate us on our