seven

Three days later, I finally received the letter I had been so eagerly awaiting. I’d been patient for eleven days. I felt the slightly lumpy envelope, trying desperately to guess what it contained.

Inside I found a chain that I immediately recognized as a charm necklace. An adorable little white lotus pendant was attached to it.

I quickly unfolded the short letter from Claude:

Hello, Camille,

I’m so pleased you’ve decided to take this first step toward reconquering your life! I have total confidence in you and wish you the best of luck in reaching your goals. To welcome and encourage you, I’m giving you this first charm: a white lotus. Each time you’ve made decisive progress, reached a “level of change,” you will receive a new lotus charm, in a different color. As in martial arts, the color code depends on the level you have reached: white for a beginner, then yellow, green, purple . . . up to the black lotus, which means you have reached the final stage of change. That will signify you have attained all your objectives.

Delighted with the idea, I twisted the pendant between my fingers, then read on:

These past few days, without you realizing it, your initiation has already started and has taught you the first lesson: never simply wait for something to happen. You have spent your time watching out for my instructions, for me to tell you what to do. Yet you could already have begun to act on your own behalf. Just remember, Camille: you’re the one and only person who can change your life. The impetus has to come from you. I’ll be your guide, but I won’t do anything for you. Write this sentence on a Post-it and look at it every day:

“I am the only one responsible for my life and happiness.”

Now here is your first task: you are going to carry out a complete spring-clean, inside and out. By this I mean first an inner cleanup. You must identify everything about you that seems toxic, negative, that hampers your relationships and the way you organize your life. I call it “personal ecology”! At the same time, you need to have an external spring-clean of the things in your home. You are to throw away at least ten useless objects and to tidy up, sort out, and refresh your surroundings in every way possible. Bring me photos of this the next time we meet. You have two weeks to do this. Meanwhile you can of course tell me of any difficulties in an e-mail or text message. I will always make time to answer. Good luck and see you soon!

The letter slipped from my hands. What a list! The idea of turning into Marie Kondo didn’t exactly inspire me. And given the state of my house, I had my work cut out . . . Not to mention having no time to do it. I always came back pretty late from work to compensate for working only part-time, and as for Wednesdays, supposedly my free day, they were a real marathon of extracurricular activities and medical appointments for Adrien. Claude had forgotten one small detail: I wasn’t a housewife. I didn’t have empty days ahead of me.

I immediately shared my concern with him in a text message:

Hello. “Mission Spring-Clean” impossible. Never have time. Suggestions? Yours, Camille.

I anxiously awaited his reply. It arrived in an e-mail later that day:

Dear Camille,

Time as such is not a problem. Only your mind-set makes it one. If you convince yourself that time is a problem, it will be. If on the other hand you are convinced that you will succeed in finding time, you’ll probably be able to. Try . . . You’ll see, your brain believes what you tell it. But don’t worry, we will have a proper discussion about mind-sets and positive thinking soon enough. For now, try to see how you can devote a quarter or half an hour to your task in the evening or on the weekend. And remember: energy creates energy. At first, these efforts will seem very difficult, but then less and less so. The more you do, the more you’ll want to do!

Good luck.

Claude

So he wanted me to become the Rocky of the feather duster? OK, I’d show him what I was made of.

That same evening, as soon as Adrien was in bed, I armed myself for an all-out assault on dust and disorder. On the way back from the office I had bought armloads of garbage bags and all kinds of cleaning products. Let the battle begin.

Sebastien followed these maneuvers with wide eyes in which I detected a mocking gleam that I took for skepticism. I couldn’t care less. Nothing was going to stop my domestic tornado. Well, nothing until I opened the closet in the hallway and saw piles of papers overflowing from battered, split-open boxes; useless bric-a-brac you might have found in the most unlikely flea markets, from a discarded doll to a garden lantern (we don’t have a garden); heaps of clothes tottering like a house of cards—clothes that were too small, too big, worn out, holey jumpers, moth-eaten jumpers, pilled jumpers; badminton racquets stuck in an unused fitness step; souvenir tins with the lighter from a long-forgotten concert; unopened letters, letters opened but from people whose faces I could no longer recall, from people I loved but with whom I’d lost touch; a packet of scented handkerchiefs found in a souvenir shop in the first flush of romance; a photo of my first boyfriend (how could I ever possibly have been in love with him?); a school notebook; a bag of sugarcoated almond favors from my wedding day that were all stuck together after all these years but that I’d kept for some inexplicable reason . . .

I dragged all of it out of the closet. Faced with this mountain full of dust, I admit I almost threw in the towel. But as I gradually reduced it, I found I was regaining my own space in my head. This “spring-cleaning therapy” was doing me a world of good.

Night after night I gained ground over the disorder. I hunted down the nasty surprises hidden behind pieces of furniture and in the forgotten corners, the objects you did not dare throw away because you had become so used to seeing them. Farewell to rebellious dust, disgusting hairs in the sink, stubborn lime scale, and unsightly rings. I refused to flag or give in and ended up richly rewarded. By the end of the week, the apartment looked almost like a show home. I was over the moon.

“Wow, there’s no stopping you, is there?” said Sebastien with feigned irony, in which by now there was a hint of admiration.

“It looks good, doesn’t it?” I said.

“Yes, yes, it does. It’s just a bit surprising that it’s come over you all of a sudden, that’s all!”

What? Was I supposed to send him an advance warning? Were there procedural bottlenecks in the art of household happiness, then? His tepid response really pissed me off. I wanted him to share my enthusiasm, to help me. Why did he always behave like a spectator in our married life? I felt like shaking him, telling him how urgent it was for us to change things, that his passivity was not only stifling me but eating away at my feelings for him just as surely as waves eat at a cliff’s edge.

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THE FOLLOWING WEEKEND, THOUGH, I persuaded my boys to help brighten up our world.

We headed for Home Depot. I was delighted at this final stage, the cherry on the cake of my Mission Spring-Clean. I quickly realized, however, that this was not going to be the jolly outing I had hoped for. We wanted completely different things. Whereas I was dreaming of taking my time in front of every display in search of good ideas, Sebastien wanted to speed through the store at a brisk trot so that he could be out again as quickly as possible. He seemed to think the first can of paint we came across would do the trick. I dragged him round, trying desperately to cast an eye over what was for sale while he sighed and twitched impatiently; my coat hung on my right arm, and Adrien hung on my left. To my horror, my son thought it was hilarious to touch everything we passed. I was almost foaming at the mouth by the time I found the paint department. It was now or never if I wanted to motivate my troops! I was hoping that the evocatively named cans of colors would stir their imagination so that they would finally show a bit of enthusiasm in choosing the one for their bedrooms.

With Adrien, it worked like a charm: he chose the Young Shoots shade, a lawn green that coincided exactly with his passion for soccer. Sebastien was much more hesitant but for the sake of peace and quiet finally accepted an Iced Coffee and a Satin Nougat. I was half satisfied, which was something.

But what happened at the checkout set my nerves so much on edge that I almost dumped everything and left empty-handed. Someone was holding up the line because he wanted to buy some screws and no one knew the price. A hardware assistant was asked to come to the register. I took great pleasure imagining this man having to swallow his screws slowly, one by one. But worse than the delay were all those diabolical last-minute temptations stuck under the noses of children out of their skulls with boredom. What Machiavellian marketing genius dreamed that up? Candy, batteries, flashlights. Naturally, Adrien wanted something simply for the fun of having it, all the while offering me a brilliant explanation for why he absolutely needed it. I was torn between my increasing irritation and a sense of pride at his convincing spiel.

For the sake of domestic harmony, I gave in and allowed him to buy a packet of apple-flavored Tic Tacs.

“Yes!” he exclaimed, punching the air.

Finally it was our turn. Our bags were filled, then the exit, fresh air, the parking lot, the slamming trunk, Adrien asking us to turn up the volume and singing at the top of his voice. Our silence.

The rest of the weekend was spent in a jumble of drop cloths, rollers, miles of paper towels, old T-shirts covered in paint stains, a pizza party, and improvised camping in the middle of the living room. And afterward, the reward: a brand-new home, and we ourselves, our nostrils saturated with the smell of fresh paint, our arms and legs stiff from having to apply so many coats, happy. Quite simply: happy.