Free Out of Sorts by Aurélie Valognes

boys my age, they call me ‘the brain.’ They think I’m haughty because I use words longer than two syllables. I don’t do it on purpose, I’m just like that. What I like to do is garden, play Scrabble or Questions for a Champion , read, people-watch, eat cake . . . Maybe that’s why I prefer being with older people. They say you become an adult when you realize you have to die one day. For me, that was at age six when I lost my paternal grandfather. A stupid bicycle accident. It was a shock for me. I adored my Pappy.”
    “Is that why you come see me?”
    “Don’t get offended, but you’re polar opposites. I started visiting you because you were the only grandpa in the complex, and I wanted to avoid the cafeteria at school. Now I like you. You make me laugh and I need that. The past year hasn’t been fun for me. My mama . . . no one could do anything. She was an extraordinary woman. Very beautiful and very intelligent, too. She was a special correspondent. She wasn’t at home much. One day, she was taken to the hospital. She’d been shot in the arm while covering a story. They kept her under observation. Then her condition deteriorated. They found out afterward that she’d caught an infection. I miss Mama enormously, but I’m trying not to think about her too much. I just want to keep my promise: work hard at school and be nice to Papa and Emma. That’s all.”
    “I’m sorry about your mama. Your story’s very sad.”
    “What about you, Ferdinand? Why are you all alone?”
    “Well, my story is everyone’s story. My wife, she was sick of me, I think. Sick of my absences, our shouting matches. One day, when I came back after a few weeks away, she’d made her decision. I hadn’t seen it coming. She’d found my replacement. The mailman! Can you imagine? She took the first guy to come along. And an Italian, no less! To think that bastard was coming by every day to chitchat with her. One day, I even had the bright idea of inviting him in for coffee. Me, a cuckold! I’ll never accept it. I even wanted her to die. They went off to the south of France and I assume they had a lousy life together.”
    Ferdinand pauses. It costs him to trust anybody—more than he imagines.
    “Well, to make a long story short, a few months ago she did die. She fell getting out of the bathtub. I found out about it from Marion. It hit me pretty hard. Not so much her death, but everything it signified. Deep down, I always thought she’d come back, that she’d say, ‘I’m sorry, I was wrong, I can’t live without you.’ But no. She was never sorry, apparently. You’re going to say I’m naïve. You see, from my entire life there’s nothing but failures, regrets. A failed marriage, a daughter who doesn’t really love me and who fled to the other side of the world, a grandson I’ve seen a total of eight times . . . My only reason for living was Daisy. Without really knowing it, I was living for her. It’s funny, it was my wife who gave her to me for our last Christmas. Sometimes I wonder if she’d already planned to leave me. There. Now you really know everything.”
    “That’s why you wanted to die? You picked the bus so you could go the way Daisy did?”
    “I hadn’t considered that I’d picked the bus to go like Daisy, run over. Maybe, after all . . . Well, how about we talk about something a little happier? Then you go on home before your nanny wakes up. What did you learn in school this week?”
    “I learned something rather interesting, but it’s not necessarily happier. We discussed the emergency actions to take in the event of a gas leak. It’s part of the new lifesaving techniques being tested at my school. I’ve already learned CPR.”
    “I never did learn that. Certainly not at school. Is it easy to do?”
    “With chest compressions there is still a risk of breaking ribs. But it’s better to have a few broken bones and stay alive, in my opinion. I can teach you, if you want.”
    “Pff