All the Way by Marie Darrieussecq Read Free Book Online Page A

around with the body and that you can wash in the sea, and undress in the sun.
    The two mothers have lowered their voices in an alarming way. She swears they’re talking about it, and Rose’s mother gives her a sweet, anxious smile.
    Actually there’s a car problem: Rose and her mother and the three cousins, and her as well. Whoops, it’s too many for the Renault 16.
    â€˜I’m going to ask the Bihotz lad, he’s so obliging, the Bihotz lad solves all our problems.’ Her mother’s sentences skate over the world. Right there in the narrow house, she seems to engage in a short ballet sequence followed by a few acrobatic moves.
    â€˜What fun it will be in Monsieur Bihotz’s van!’ chants Rose’s mother, revealing herself to be another champion skater, international standard, in her red boots.
    Even though they were ready at eleven o’clock (ten o’clock at the latest, Monsieur Bihotz had said), the beach already looks like the quilt on mother Bihotz’s bed: little squares of colour butting up against each other. ‘How long did it take us, Monsieur Bihotz?’
    Monsieur Bihotz would rather stay on the promenade. ‘Come with us,’ Rose’s mother insists, ‘the more the merrier.’ She points to the tiny spot where she thinks they’ll all fit.
    â€˜How great that Maman could bring us to the beach,’ says Rose (and she and her mother do that annoying thing of kissing each other on the mouth, a little peck).
    â€˜We,’ says one of the cousins, the oldest, it must be Sixtine ‘don’t have the sea, but we have the Seine.’
    When my father flies his plane to Paris, he has dinner on the Champs-Elysées.
    â€˜You’re so cute,’ says Rose’s mother, in a funny voice, like she’s apologising for her.
    â€˜My father is a radiologist,’ says Meredith. ‘Do you have a swimming pool?’
    The three Parisiennes have spread out sarongs, Rose and her mother have mats, and she has her Snoopy bath towel. Monsieur Bihotz has brought out a ghastly floral towel, the one from the downstairs washbasin. Even though she sits as far away from him as possible—perhaps it’s because of the fabric, the terry towelling—it still seems to her as if she smells like him.
    He is wearing his blue shorts and has kept his T-shirt on, which is a mercy. He’s sweating profusely, and his little towel barely extends beyond his buttocks, like blotting paper. She avoids looking in his direction.
    The triangles over Rose’s bust are more filled out than she would have imagined. As for Sixtine, who has kept on her pedal-pushers and is wearing a very pretty bikini top, her breasts are almost as big as Rose’s mother’s, but she’s in Year Eight. Rose lifts up the elastic band on her buttock to compare tans. Sixtine coats her sisters in the new Ambre Solaire Totale. She says that monoi oil doesn’t do anything except make you smell of coconut. ‘Coconut, coconut!’ yells Alma, roaring with laughter, but she’s in Grade Two. ‘You’ve got to peel,’ contradicts Rose’s mother, ‘that way your skin gets used to it.’ She undoes her bikini top so she’s topless.
    Monsieur Bihotz heaves his big body as upright as possible, so he doesn’t tip onto anyone, and says something inaudible. So she repeats it for him, as if she was translating: He’s going to buy an ice-cream . Monsieur Bihotz goes red and repeats his sentence louder, too loud, like he’s speaking to the whole beach—so loud that the people next to them turn round to listen.
    â€˜I’m going to buy some ice-creams.’
    â€˜Not for me,’ says Sixtine. ‘Méré, Alma, do you want one?’
    â€˜That’s so kind of you, Monsieur Bihotz,’ gushes Rose’s mother. ‘Wait, I’ll get my purse.’
    But Monsieur Bihotz has got his stupid Roman-emperor look,