The Stone Boy by Sophie Loubière Read Free Book Online

on the opposite side. As you might imagine, the residents respect this rule, which is not the case for the drivers who park on our street without paying the slightest bit of attention to any of the signs before leaving to take their trains. The result is that they disrupt the traffic very severely, even going so far as to block any cars from passing at all.
     
You understand, Mr. Mayor, that this situation is trying for the residents. I know better than to suggest to you that parking on alternate sides of the road on Rue des Lilas be revoked, as it is already challenge enough with the noise pollution and the damage to property walls and the gates to our houses caused by RER train users on Saturday nights and the nights before Bank Holidays. Our mailboxes were “repainted” at the beginning of August, and the path laid with broken glass from beer bottles.
     
Personally, I have twice found empty cans and other detritus (an empty cigarette packet, a chocolate bar wrapper) in my garden, which had been thrown over the fence.
     
It would be wise to consider increasing surveillance on some of those streets more prone to passing vandalism than others. It would be a shame for our lovely properties—which are the heart and soul of this town—to have to be decked out in barbed wire and watchtowers to guarantee its occupants a bit of peace.
     
I am sure that you will handle this matter with the due diligence that it deserves.
     
Respectfully yours,
Madame Elsa Préau
born, raised, and living locally for more than fifty years

15
     
    An apple waited for breakfast time in a ramekin on the little table. With a gilet over her shoulders, Madame Préau was putting drawings from the oldest children in her junior school classes—1975–1981—in alphabetical order. The attic was stuffed with boxes full of the archives from her old school. Madame Préau took great satisfaction in looking back over the drawings in which the parents are often depicted as grotesque, covered in hair, or as matchstick men. The princesses who drew little girls born in the 1960s were adorned with multicolored beads and princess tent dresses with balloon sleeves. As for the knights who appeared under the boys’ paintbrushes, they were bent under the weight of their fabulous swords, fighting at the gates of fortified castles or felling their jagged walls. Poky cars threatened to fall into ravines, and they never forgot the aerial on the roof of the house or the smoke coming out of the chimney. Then the children began drawing satellite dishes on balconies and square fish on plates.
    Madame Préau glanced at the neighbors’ garden, where under a gray sky the little brother and sister were ripping each other to shreds to see who would get the Frisbee. Static as ever, the stone boy remained under the weeping birch, playing by bouncing gravel in his hands. Several times he scratched a scab on his right elbow, and made the wound bleed, before throwing his stones again. Madame Préau abandoned her sorting for a moment to write down in her notebook:
Child’s self-destructive behavior. Signs of scarring.
Then the phone rang in the living room and she had to leave her lookout post to go down and answer it.
    “Mum, it’s Martin.”
    “Ah. Right. How are you, son? Are your holidays going well? It’s already autumn here.”
    The conversation lasted for twenty minutes: Martin reluctantly explained why his mother would have to make do with monthly dinners with him once he returned from Corsica.
    “You’ve had enough of me then, is that it? You’d rather bed your patients than eat a plate of chips with your mother?”
    “Mum, you’re spiteful. I’m hanging up.”
    “I’m not an idiot, you know.”
    “You don’t know anything. You know nothing about my life, Mum. You never did.”
    “Oh, but I do!”
    Finally, he decided to let the cat out of the bag.
    “I’m back with Audrette. We’ve gotten back together.”
    Madame Préau pulled up a chair to the side