During this last night together, made up of pillow talk, lovemaking, and short bouts of sleep, they realized that their relationship had taken a major extra step. They were now a man and a woman helpless in the face of a situation they no longer controlled.
“Am I going to be able to write to you?” Alexis asked, watching for Anne’s reaction.
“Yes. I’m the one opening the mail at the gallery.”
“Are you going to write back?”
“Where?”
“I’ll get a P.O. box.”
As he played with a strand of her hair, Anne imagined the days ahead without him. How was she going to stand being apart from him? That and knowing the he was going to be with someone else? If only they had found each other before both had gotten married!
“Do you think you might come to France this winter?” she asked.
“I’m going to try, but I can’t promise anything.”
She noticed that he didn’t ask her if she planned on coming back to the States. Did he need to think about the feelings he had for her? Or was it because of his wife and son’s presence? Anne knew that she couldn’t underestimate the importance of family.
As though he could read her mind, Alexis whispered, “Let’s give ourselves a bit of time.”
“Time! So many things could happen! An accident, one of us getting sick …”
She didn’t add, “And I’ve waited so long already!”
Alexis offered to drive Anne to the airport the next morning, but she didn’t want him to.
“It’d be too sad,” she said. “No, you have to leave here as though we’re going to see each other again a bit later. I want you to leave sometime tonight, when I least expect it.”
When would she stop surprising him? With her, there was nothing definite, nothing set in stone, nothing planned. And that was one of the things he loved about her. She slipped out of the bed and headed for the bathroom, and he smelled her perfume on the pillow. He could hear the tub filling. Then she began to sing, and he got up to join her. Lying in the tub with bubbles up to her chin, she raised her eyebrows.
“You’re not sleeping?”
Without speaking, he bent over and kissed her. A whiff of honeysuckle reached his nostrils. He took her face between his hands and kissed her eyelids, her nose, her chin. Then he went back into the room.
After enjoying the hot water for a while, Anne washed her hair. Wearing a bathrobe and a towel wrapped around her head, she stepped into the room.
She couldn’t see Alexis.
“Alexis, where are you? Are you hiding?”
She looked inside the closet and behind the drapes, and then spotted the piece of paper next to the phone.
You said you wanted me to leave when you’d least expect it. That’s what I did. Take care of yourself. A.
24
The dark and turbulent sky was unusual for that time of year. Spaced-out, Anne said little as they drove home from the airport. François, on the other hand, told her all about his weekend in Cormery. He had taken Isabelle and Aurélie to an air show.
“Your grandmother came along, too!” he said.
As he pressed the elevator button, Anne truly realized the gap that existed between her and her husband. She wondered how she’d find the strength to pretend that everything was normal. As she walked into their apartment, she was surprised to see that everything was the same. It was as though nothing had happened!
Then she spotted the huge bunch of sunflowers on the living room coffee table. The thoughtful gesture from François made things even more difficult.
Later, after she freshened up and put away some of her clothes, he came over to her in the bedroom. Tanned, smiling, attentive, he exhibited all the qualities that a woman dreamed of finding in a man.
“You’re not going to the office?” she asked.
“I changed my vacation dates so we could be together. You didn’t think I was going to leave you here after you were away for two weeks?”
After they had made love, Anne was surprised by how easily she had been able to put on an act. All she needed to do was let her mind wander.
“What would you like to do?” François asked. “Go out or stay home?”
“Let’s stay here.”
François then asked her about San Francisco.
Anne began telling him about the main landmarks.
“Sounds like a great city,” François said. “I’d love to go one day.”
Anne feared that he was going to ask her about the people she met, but instead he turned to his obsession.
“Tell me how the Californians reacted to the moon landing.”
So she told him what she had seen on television and read in the local papers.
“The streets must’ve been empty when it all happened,” François said.
“Not a soul!”
With every passing hour, she became better and better at lying. For someone who had always valued honesty, she was sinking deeper and deeper into a perfidious mindset. But did she have any other choice?
In Cormery, Anne turned nostalgic. Since her early childhood, the house had contained large chunks of her existence. Inside its walls, she had dreamed of the future, read her first books, learned to play checkers and how to knit. The drawers of some of the desks still contained her drawings and cutouts. As for her grandmother, she knew Anne better than all the other family members combined!
“So, our little American is back!” the old woman said as she saw Anne.
She then looked at her granddaughter in such a way that Anne almost blushed.
Though she couldn’t possibly know that her granddaughter had had an affair, she could very well pick up a change in her disposition, as imperceptible as it might have been.
“California is wonderful,” she said. “But there’s no place like home.”
Isabelle and Aurélie came charging down the steps and jumped into their mother’s arms. Then they both started to talk about what they had done the past few days, at the same time.
“Give your mother a break,” François said.
Anne opened a bag and handed her daughters their presents. Laughing loudly, they showed off their gifts.
“Nobody is going to have a better-dressed Barbie than me!” Aurélie said.
Anne spent a lot of time with her grandmother the next few days. The old woman’s health was on the decline. She tried, but keeping active became more difficult every day. Anne mused about her grandmother’s existence. Born in Cormery, Yvonne grew up there, married there, never moved from her village. On only a few occasions had she gone to Paris to visit her daughter and son-in-law when they had lived there. She had loved one and only one man, whom she still cherished, and she had always had her children and grandchildren’s well-being at heart.
As they both prepared supper one afternoon, Anne asked her a few questions.
“Do you regret anything? Are there things you wish you’d done?”
“I don’t think so,” Yvonne said.
She reflected for a few seconds, and then added, “I was loved by your grandfather. To me, that remains what’s most important. Even though he didn’t express his feelings, he was lost when I wasn’t around him.”
“You never told me how you met.”
“At the village fair. He was from another village, not far from here.”
“Were you attracted to him right away?”
“Yes, I think so! He had personality, he was a strapping fellow, and he had a great sense of humor. All my friends wanted to dance with him.”
“But you’re the one he noticed!”
“Not at first. There were cuter girls than me!”
“But you were charming. All the photos show that.”
“He said that what he liked about me was that I was always so cheerful.”
<
br /> Yvonne’s eyes brightened as she walked further down memory lane. When was the last time she had talked about the old days? For the next hour, she told Anne about her life: the first dances, the day she was proposed to, the wedding preparations, the gown made by the local dressmaker, the bridal veil she wore.
“I still have it,” she said. “It was gorgeous.”
After the ceremony, the couple had settled in this very house.
“As soon as he came back from work, your grandfather would fix up something to make the house nicer. He reinforced the beams, redid the floors, replaced the stairs …”
Listening to Yvonne, Anne realized that her grandparents had spent their entire lives sharing the same views and working on the same projects, building a home for themselves. Their only regret was that they had never had the son they wanted so badly.
“Thankfully,” Yvonne said, “your brother played that role. And on top of that, he took over the carpentry shop. Folks from all over the region order things from him.”
At Bernard’s, everything was going fine. His wife, Odile, was finally expecting. Three months along in her pregnancy, she was beginning to show.
“Are you sure it’s three months?” Anne asked Odile.
“My midwife is one hundred percent certain.”
Radiant, her cheeks pink, Odile could have been in a commercial for some maternity product. And being pregnant was all she talked about.
“What about you?” she asked Anne.
“Me? I’m done.”
“Who knows? Maybe one last one?”
“Out of the question.”
“Are you taking the pill?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not concerned it could be bad for your health?”
Anne refrained from saying that giving birth was potentially a much greater risk than using a contraceptive.
“No,” she said simply.
In a nicer tone, she added, “Isabelle and Aurélie are almost teenagers. Besides, my work keeps me very busy.”
After Alexis’s trip to Paris, Anne had decided she didn’t want any more children, and she had kept that decision to herself. Over the past two years, French women had won the right to say no, and Anne wasn’t going to deny herself that privilege.
Up until the end of August, Anne concentrated on her family. Since François left early every morning to go fishing on the Indre River, the girls always joined her in bed as soon as they woke. Surrounded by her daughters, Anne listened to their chatter until midmorning. Together they flipped through magazines: what celebrities were doing, fashion, upcoming movies. Then they went shopping. At the local market, Anne often ran into childhood friends. The difference between her interests and theirs was such that she always turned down their invitations. She preferred driving to the Cher River with Isabelle and Aurélie, and swimming there. François took the entire family to a “Sound and Light” show at the Château de Chenonceau. Enamored with everything that had to do with kings and queens, Aurélie was thrilled with the outing. During the show, Anne thought that the four of them must have looked like the perfect little family. Who could have imagined that the mother was obsessed with another man? For practical reasons, she and Alexis hadn’t been able to contact each other since Anne left San Francisco. Were there letters waiting for her at the gallery? Would he, like he said he would, give her a P.O. box number so she could write him? Or would he stop all communication between them now that his wife and son were back? The very thought pained her horribly. At night, she couldn’t help picturing Alexis and Geneviève together in bed, and that kept her awake. …
25
At the post office, Anne picked up the box of mail that had been sent to the gallery over the summer break. Once in the office, she didn’t even take the time to sit down before going through the envelopes. Most were from the bank: statements. There were a lot of bills, too. Then she spotted an envelope marked air mail and an American stamp. Recognizing Alexis’s handwriting, she opened the letter in a frenzy. It was dated August 6.
Anne,
Your departure devastated me. For the past two weeks, I’ve been trying to make sense of things, but I just can’t. I guess I’m going to need more time to fully understand what happened between us. For now, I’m in a fog. So to respect your wish, I left you while you were in the tub. In the car, I thought that I wasn’t going to see you the same day or the next or the next, and that’s when I realized how incredibly empty I’d feel without you. I toyed with the idea of going to the airport in the morning to see you there, but not only did you say you didn’t want that, it would’ve made things even more difficult. As promised, I opened a P.O. box. You can write me as often as you like. On the other hand, I might remain silent for a while. I need time to think. Neither you nor I are free. You and I weren’t able to talk about that topic calmly the other night. However, it’s something we have to deal with. We live thousands of miles apart, we’re both married, and we both have kids. As extraordinary as the time we shared was, I wonder if we have the right to jeopardize our lives. I’m not into destroying things, Anne. Forgive me for being so direct. It would be easier to write what you would like to read, but I have too much respect for you, I value our relationship too much to do that. You reawakened in me so much I thought I’d lost forever. Sometimes I ask myself if I didn’t just dream these few amazing days we had together, and if you really exist. Forgive me for being so confused. … And, I beg you, don’t think that I’m trying to cut off ties between us. Please trust me. …
As soon as she finished reading the letter, Anne ruffled inside the box to see if there was another one. Not finding any, she let herself drop into an armchair. She sat motionless until a car horn kept blaring and a man stormed inside the gallery.
“Is that your car double-parked out there?” he barked.
“No it’s not, and stop your racket! You’re making me crazy!”
Anne remained seated until it was time to close the gallery. In just a few sentences, Alexis had taken the air out of her. He had blindsided her. Shriveled up in the armchair, she didn’t know what her life was going to be like, now that Alexis was trying to exit it. He wrote that he needed time to think, but Anne wasn’t going to kid herself. This pause wouldn’t produce anything good. Slowly, the distance between them, guilt, his sense of duty, they would all erase the memories of the “extraordinary” time they had together. She could feel it in her bones. …
That evening, she tried very hard to behave normally. What was happening had nothing to do with her daughters or Edith, and it would have been unfair for Anne to be moody. The timing of François’s business trip to French Guiana was perfect.
The first night, she was unable to fall asleep. Worse, she kept reading and rereading Alexis’s letter, until she knew its contents by heart. The more she read her lover’s words, the more her anguish grew. In the morning, getting out of bed and getting dressed took all she had.
Her family and professional obligations saved her. She sported a serene smile when Amanda came in to work at the end of her vacation. After a short stay in Switzerland, the gallery owner had spent some time with some friends in Mougins, just outside Cannes.
“Heaven on earth!” she said. “What about you? How were things at your grandmother’s?”
All day long, they went over administrative issues. Since the gallery’s insurance had gone up, Amanda said, “We have to be extra careful that our expenses don’t exceed our revenues. I hope that the Sakalov show is going to be a success. …”
Anne had her doubts about that. The artist’s lack of soul disturbed her even more than his loud paintings.
“Your silence isn’t too encouraging,” Amanda said.
“I think his personality bothers me too much for me to be impartial about his work.”
“What don’t you like about him?”
“His rudeness.”
> A bit later, Amanda said, “You still haven’t told me anything about your trip …”
“I was waiting for the right moment.”
Anne talked about Phil Kasav’s paintings, how she felt about them.
“In that case,” Amanda said, “let’s do what I suggested.”
“I’m not sure that a collective display is the best approach. His universe is so personal that his paintings can’t really be shown with the work of others. It would obscure them. Lessen them.”
“I hear what you’re saying, but …”
“We better not rush into this.”
“He might be disappointed. And what about your friend Alexis? He won’t be happy about the decision.”
“Don’t worry. They’ll understand.”
Since reading Alexis’s only letter, Anne still hadn’t written back. Torn between anger, bitterness, and resentment, she still hadn’t found the right words. If he needed a break, she was going to give herself some time before contacting him. …
Since Agnès and Thomas were coming back to Paris, she had to fix up the laundry room for the boy, as she had promised. With the help of Edith, she cleaned the walls and the window, waxed the floor, and bought a single bed.
“This is your place,” she told Thomas.
Though the room was tiny, the boy looked pleased.
Then, along with Isabelle and Aurélie, he put up posters of his favorite rock bands on the walls. As a welcome present, Anne gave him a transistor radio.
“That’s awesome!” he replied when he opened the gift.
As he lined his comic books up on the shelves, Anne realized that the young boy was turning into a teenager. Too preoccupied with herself, Agnès had taken little notice of the change. With high schools and universities about to reopen, the stationery shop on Rue Soufflot was mobbed. But that didn’t prevent her from finding the energy to hang out in the neighborhood bars in the evening.
“There was nothing to do at my parents’ in the countryside,” she told Anne. “The boonies! Not one single man around. What a rotten summer!”
I Looked for the One My Heart Loves Page 16
