“Ah, well,” she said, looking at me shrewdly. “Some things happen in St. Roch that are not shared with the rest of the world.”
JULY 14, 2015
Blog Entry
There’s a weird feature to this house that I’m both creeped out by and obsessing over: out in the hallway is a locked door that once led to the dilapidated building adjoining this place, and I’m not allowed to open it.
The Old Schoolhouse—so called because it was built in the nineteenth century or whatever—was the St. Roch school until it shut down a couple years ago. Momma Blavette was the headmistress there (convenient since she lived next door). There’s an old photo downstairs from when it opened in 1882: the pupils are lined up in front of the newly built school in a stiff row, unsmiling in their clean white smocks and shiny boots and suspenders, an austere schoolmarm keeping the boys and girls separate.
Not much has changed about the building since those stern and sepia-tinted days, from the outside at least. But on the inside? I’m guessing p-r-e-t-t-y-d-a-r-n-c-r-e-e-p-y, especially since there’ve been quite a few break-ins there in the meantime. Not to mention the reason it shut down: some incident with the death of a student. Émilie was suspiciously vague on the exact circumstances, but on one subject she was very firm: I am never to open the door and go in there.
Naturally this makes me want to see inside there even more. Who knows? I thought when she told me. Maybe one day when they’re all out, I’ll go take some pics for the blog.
Today I woke to an empty house. I saw that hussy of a day through half-open shutters, stretching out coyly in front of me, purring its delicious summertime possibility. I thought today could just be the day for urb-exing like I do back home in search of the Rockport Devil, the Fall River Witch. But my plan was derailed by a weird little episode, involving … you guessed it: the hot older brother.
The silence of the house tells me nobody’s home, so I pad downstairs in my underwear. On the kitchen table I find a piece of baguette with butter and jam in it, a mug of cold coffee, and a Post-it saying Émilie and Noémie have gone to the weekday market in the village. Being an ex-headmistress, Émilie is the kind of mom who makes your food three days ahead, plastic-wraps it, and then writes you instructions on how to eat it, plus some career advice and a mini guilt trip. Kinda nice, though, being mommed like that again.
I mooch onto the patio, where Mme B’s violets are slowly wilting. The paving stones burn the soles of my feet so much they freeze. I jump, treading cartoon water in the thick air before racing onto the sharp bed of nails that’s the fried-out grass and doing a little Sound of Music spin, taking in the blue, blue cloudless sky, the woods stretching out for miles, cloaking the house in mysterious silence. There’s a David Lynch vibe to the creaking swing set the children used to play on, the sand pit, the empty football field. But the house, with its robin’s egg shutters and white trellis wound with dog roses, is so perfect it looks like something out of an insurance ad.
A noise behind me makes me jump. Turning around, I see Raphael on the shady side of the patio. I do a little double take, a triple take actually, since I’m now acutely aware that I’m wearing nothing more than a T-shirt and underwear. No bra even. Meanwhile, Raphael’s lying on a yoga mat in nothing but a kind of Indian yogi loincloth folded around his groin like a man-diaper. He’s doing stomach crunches, his stomach glistening with sweat. Now he’s rising from his yoga mat like a gleaming god and he’s beckoning to me and smiling, not that blinding Colgate grin of his, but a subtle half smile, inviting me over.
And so I go, crossing hot patio stones to get to him and feeling a little freaked to be walking towards a near-naked man I barely know, in the brazen light of day. As soon as I reach him, he lies back down on his mat, beckoning me to some weird exercise headspace he’s in where our near nudity is in no way embarrassing.
“Come,” he pants.
I stand over him shyly. “Where?”
“Here.” He gestures to his exquisitely muscled thighs and grins the Colgate grin.
“Um, you’re kidding, right?” A blush creeps over my throat, along my breastbone, making my skin glow—I imagine—the red of irradiated apples.
He shakes his head, grinning away. “I’ve been working so hard, my abdos are nothing. I look female almost. No muscles de l’estomac at all. It’s disgusting, no?”
“Oh yeah, totally gross.” I avoid looking down at his perfect six-pack in case I get vertigo. “Um, so how am I, um …”
“I need a little weight on my quads to stop me tipping up when I crunch, tu sais? It would be a big help for me.” He leans up on his elbows. I find myself thinking he is too cute, too obviously gorgeous, and he knows it. I don’t even like guys like this. I’m from the East Coast. I like dark and wounded. And clothed.
But I don’t want to be rude, so I sit down obediently on his thighs, trying not to let my whole weight fall on him, holding myself taut as he pulls his torso up easily and silently, an oiled piston pumping away in the heat. Sweat drips from his neck, runs down his smooth chest. It pools under my butt, forming a salty film that joins us together. Is this a way of flirting?
Stop it. Stop it, I tell myself. Don’t think. Don’t try to work out what’s going on. Just imagine it’s some surreal carnival ride. I do, just letting him rock me, watching the clouds. Even still, I keep thinking the ride will stop, that Raphael will tire, or at least take a break. But he doesn’t even get out of breath. A butterfly goes past, a huge blue one with tattered wings, seeking out a blown golden poppy inches from Raphael’s face. I smile at the weirdness of my life.
The weirdness makes me think of yesterday, of Freddie, the text. “Hey, you know that Freddie guy. Is he kind of a weirdo?”
Raphael doesn’t break from his sit-ups. He just says, “Oh no, he’s a great guy, not very cool with the girls. But you know, I’ve known him since I was two.”
“It’s just that yesterday he nearly drowned me.”
He laughs. “No, it was not serious. He only meant fun … to play.”
“It didn’t feel like playing,” I say.
He says nothing, keeps going, and I suddenly have this weird sensation that we’re being watched. Seconds more and something catches at the corner of my vision. I look up to see a dark shape flit behind an upstairs window, then turn, pale face to the glass. Noémie. She scowls down as if she wishes we would die. I almost tumble off my precarious flesh-perch. I mean, she’s been bitchy before, but I’ve never seen that look on her face. That kind of homicidal look … who knew she was even here?
I stumble up, sweat slick, mumbling an apology to Raphael, who stops all of a sudden and grunts some reply. Later, as I shower, I hear voices raised in anger and can’t tell whose, though I’m sure one is a man. They echo through the rickety pipes, gurgle up from the green-stained plughole as if some dark well hidden under the house has just begun to erupt.
JULY 31, 2015
After the announcement about the Blavettes, the hacks camped outside the Hôpital Sainte-Thérèse seemed to breed. I arrived in the parking lot to see new little ones had popped through the tarmac like mushrooms, including a glamorous Italian foreign correspondent with long, red hair like something out of an infomercial, and a bored-looking British tabloid news crew. I parked my broken car and locked it—though this seemed a bit