She did not write to him, either. Was it pride, or fear that she would feel even sadder if he didn’t respond?
She decided to give Phil a call. They hadn’t spoken since he and Lizzie had left Paris. Benjamin, because he was in California as well, was the one dealing with the artist.
“I just wanted to know how you guys are doing!” Anne said. “How’s everything?”
“I took a long break, but then I started painting again. I had to settle down after the success we had in Paris, and then that wonderful trip to Italy and Austria! So much great stuff in such little time!”
“I bet Alexis was happy to see the two of you in Vienna!”
“It was the same for us! We told him all about our stay in Paris, the show, the amazing work you did …”
“How was he?”
“Fine. His work is keeping him busy, but he still took us all over town.”
At the end of a pleasant but fairly brief conversation, Anne hung up. She hadn’t learned anything about Alexis. …
At the airport, Aurélie clung to her mother.
“Promise me to let me come home if I don’t like it over there,” she said. “Promise!”
“How could you not like being in a school where you’re going to meet kids from all over the world?” Anne said.
“What if the teachers are too strict?”
“Stop being such a baby,” Isabelle told her.
Anne waited for the girls to pass through the gate before heading for the exit. She was shaken up at the idea of being separated from her daughters for four weeks. Thankfully, it would be her turn to leave Paris in a few days. She needed to so badly!
“Did everything go well at the airport?” François asked when he came home, earlier than usual.
“For a moment, I thought Aurélie was going to start crying, but in the end she was a brave girl. …”
As they talked, Anne watched François grab his suitcase, then begin filling it with clothing.
“Going anywhere?” she asked.
“Friends of mine invited me for the weekend.”
“Friends …”
“Yes. Why?”
“It’d be simpler if you just came out and said that you met someone.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m not naive or stupid. I can tell there’s someone in your life.”
“You watch too many soap operas.”
“That’s must be it …” Anne said.
She didn’t ask any more questions, knowing that her husband wouldn’t admit to anything.
Was he afraid that she would use his affair against him if they ever got a divorce? Or maybe he simply wasn’t ready to cut off all ties yet. Expressionless, he grabbed his keys and walked to the front door.
“See you Sunday evening,” he said without looking Anne’s way.
As soon as she arrived on the Riviera, Anne was glad she had accepted Amanda’s invitation. Amanda had sent her gardener to pick Anne up at the Nice airport, and now they were driving through sun-drenched landscapes. The car’s windows were down, and Anne could hear the song of the cicadas and admire the stone houses up on the hills. They finally arrived in Mougins, located in the outskirts of Cannes. Amanda lived in a house that, halfway up a hill, overlooked the village. Filled with pines, cypresses, and cork oaks, the garden was a cool spot in this hot late morning.
The gardener opened the car door for Anne and said, “Madame Kircher is usually at the pool this time of day.”
Amanda got up from her deck chair when she saw Anne.
“You’ll see,” she said. “You’re going to love it down here.”
The smell of lavender and wax filled the house. The furniture was modern, but there also were Louis XV chests of drawers, tables, and chairs.
“It’s as though you had lived her all your life,” Anne said.
Amanda showed her guest to her room. The immaculate walls were decorated with Marc Chagall and Albert Marquet drawings. Anne walked over to the window and opened the shutters. Down below, the houses of Mougins surrounded the church.
Anne decided to forget all about the rough times she had gone through and try to find herself. At Amanda’s, everything was set up for life to be enjoyable. She knew how to respect her guests’ tranquillity, imposing nothing upon them except mealtimes. This was perfect for Amanda’s godson and his family, who were staying in one of the villa’s wings for the summer. Anne ran into Roland and Caroline when they came back from the beach with their children. But the young couple stayed away from Amanda’s social gatherings. In only a few months, Amanda had managed to befriend a great many admirers—artists, antiquarians, gallery owners, rich people who invited her or came over to the villa for drinks and conversations about art and culture. Anne was welcomed in theses circles right away. Some wanted to show her their gallery or their studios. She was offered car rides, boat excursions … To be polite, Anne accepted a few times, but she liked nothing better than going for a swim, napping under a tree, listening to the sounds of the countryside, and walking alone through the village’s streets.
She was splashing her face with cool water at a public fountain when a door opened.
“Careful,” a man’s voice said behind her. “The water is not fit to drink.”
“Thank you,” she said, not trying to see who was speaking to her.
“If you’re thirsty, I can offer you a cup of tea. … I just made some.”
Intrigued, Anne turned around. A man was standing on the threshold of some kind of shop. With the sun hitting her face, Anne couldn’t really tell what he looked like. Shielding her eyes with her hand, she walked toward him. The man seemed young to her. His face was tanned, his hair messy. He wore a pair of patched and faded jeans, and his cotton shirt was half buttoned. He was very attractive and, from the way he looked at Anne, seemed to find her attractive, too.
“A cup of tea …” she said. “Why not?”
Anna walked into a room that smelled of leather and glue. On an oak table, she spotted a stack of books whose covers had been removed, pieces of wood and leather, as well as some tools. Anne was in a bookbinder’s shop.
“Sugar?” he asked.
“No, thank you.”
“You’re spending your vacation in Mougins?”
She nodded and asked, “What about you? Do you live here year round?”
“Not really.”
As they chatted, Anne learned that the bookbinder was a globetrotter and that his name was Sébastien. Surfing the hippie wave, he had discovered Nepal and then lived in India for a while. Sébastien’s father was also a bookbinder, and he had taught him everything he knew about the work. Sébastien traveled the world, and when he ran out of money, he came back to France, reopened his shop, and worked until he earned enough to take off again. Burma was his next destination.
Anne was intrigued by his unusual lifestyle, as well as his work. With pride, he showed her the binding he’d just finished for a copy of Paul Éluard’s Médieuses.
He opened the book and read a few lines out loud.
“What about you?” he then asked Anne. “What do you do in life?”
“What do you think?”
“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it had something or other to do with the arts.”
“You might be right,” Anne said. She didn’t feel like talking about her professional activities.
After drinking a second cup of tea, she looked at her watch.
“Well, I really should go …”
“Come back whenever you like.”
She did go back two days later, and every day after that. At that moment in her life, nothing better could have happened than the affair she was having with this kind and considerate man. Everything was simple between them, the lovemaking carefree. By tacit agreement, neither talked about what at
tracted one to the other or what they were doing outside this room where they met up. Concerned only with both their sexual needs and desires, the time they spent together was sensual and gleeful. And they never went out together.
When she came back to Amanda’s villa after her lovemaking with Sébastien, Anne acted as though nothing had happened. And who could have even imagined her clandestine rendezvous? Her host only saw that Anne seemed more relaxed, less tired than when she first arrived, and that she was in good spirits again. She suggested that Anne stay a bit longer, especially since she still hadn’t gone to Antibes. Anne gladly accepted.
“Normally, I would’ve gone to that artist you recommended right away, but I’m really enjoying my vacation.”
Her initial contact with Martial Rigaud did not make her feel like seeing him again.
The first thing he said was, “Madame Kircher bugged me so much about meeting you that I finally had to say yes.”
“I can leave right now if you’d like,” Anne replied.
“No, no … Come on in.”
Anne followed Rigaud down a hallway strewn with empty boxes, pieces of paper, garbage, and gas cans, which led to a garden apartment. Compared to the hallway, his studio was somewhat tidy.
“Have a seat.”
Anne looked around and spotted a stool. A cigarette butt wedged between his lips, Rigaud opened the double doors to a large closet where he had stored his latest paintings.
“I’ve been working on the theme of Noah’s ark,” he mumbled.
Short, stocky, he seemed to care nothing about what he looked like: hair that hadn’t seen a comb in ages, an old T-shirt, shapeless pants, weather-beaten sandals on his feet … Slowly he took a pastel out of the closet. Though she wanted to dislike this horrible man’s work, Anne simply couldn’t. With flawless technique, Rigaud had created fabulous, fantastical, otherworldly animals. Without uttering a single word, she let the artist show her some of his larger canvases. Knowing that Rigaud was expecting her to comment on his work, to praise it, Anne stood up.
“Thank you for having given me a few moments of your precious time.”
“Wow, that’s what you said to him?” Amanda responded when Anne told her how the visit had gone. “No one has ever spoken to Rigaud that way!”
“You didn’t warn me that he was so awful.”
“You wouldn’t have gone to see him if I had.”
“You’re right. …”
“I often had to ignore my artists’ idiosyncrasies during my career.”
“You’re more patient than I am,” Anne said. “I’m willing to put up with anxious, egocentric, half-insane artists, but …”
“You just described Rigaud to a tee!” Amanda said, bursting with laughter.
41
Isabelle and Aurélie came back from their school in England looking sad and gloomy.
“We loved it over there!” Aurélie said. “I had all kinds of friends! And Isabelle … She has a boyfriend!”
The news surprised Anne. Her daughter had only ever had eyes for Thomas.
“Is he French?”
“No, Italian. They won’t be able to see each other. That makes them sad.”
When they settled at Agnès and Gilles’s home in Saint-Claude for the rest of the summer, Anne told her friend about what happened in England.
“I’m afraid your son is no longer Isabelle’s favorite,” she said with a smile.
“Same for him!” said Agnès. “I found out he has a sweetheart!”
Vacationing in Saint-Claude without François was odd to Anne. She had to get used to being a single woman again. With her daughters around, she wasn’t going to try to meet men. Her affair with Sébastien had ended smoothly when she left Mougins. They would probably never see each other again, which was just as well. … When she looked at Agnès and Gilles, she couldn’t decide whether she envied or pitied them. Everything about their life together seemed planned, like they had voluntarily decided not to experience intense emotions anymore.
Tanned, looking fit, François didn’t hide his joy at seeing his daughters when he came back from his trip. Toward Anne, he was more courteous than during the weeks before he had left. She decided to take on the same attitude.
At the end of September, she was going to exhibit the work of an artist whom Benjamin had signed, something she wouldn’t have necessarily done herself. But she still valued their partnership, as it forced her to open her mind to artists she knew little about. Benjamin would come to Paris for the occasion. While there, he planned on looking for a pied-à-terre.
He wasn’t the only one in need of a place to stay.
“All those flights of stairs are killing me,” Simonetta told Anne. “I have to move.”
“I’ve been telling you that forever!” Anne said.
Still, she didn’t believe that her friend would really leave her home.
“My lease is up,” said Simonetta.
“Don’t renew it.”
“That’s exactly what I did.”
“Wow! You really made up your mind!”
Though she still gave away a lot of money to various causes, Simonetta had earned enough during her exhibition to rent a comfortable two-room apartment until the end of her life. But she did have to find a place! Anne was the one who found it for her, with the help of her landlady’s network of colleagues. Completely refurbished, it had a small bathroom and a small kitchen. Not only was the price right, the place was located near Anne’s apartment building.
Isabelle and Aurélie helped Simonetta to settle in. Since the teens and the old woman had become close, Simonetta had spent some money on clothes so that she would look more elegant. On top of that, she decided to get a phone for her new place. However, she absolutely refused to buy a TV set!
“You’re not coming to my place to watch television,” she told the girls.
In spite of this deprivation, the apartment became a second home for the two sisters. They did their homework there and enjoyed the Italian dishes that Simonetta cooked for them. Aurélie continued her drawing and painting lessons. Her technique was getting better and better.
“One day,” the girl said, “my paintings are going to be exhibited in Mama’s gallery!”
“Well,” Simonetta said, “we’re not there yet. You have to keep working.”
“I don’t know why you and Mama keep telling me that. It’s not just work. It’s also about talent.”
“I’ve known a lot of talented people who were also lazy. No one remembers them!”
Anne was grateful that Simonetta would tell her daughters things that they wouldn’t necessarily listen to if they had come from their mother. Especially since the family dynamic at home was far from perfect.
After the New Year’s celebrations, François decided to come clean.
On a Sunday afternoon when the girls were at the movies, he walked into the kitchen while Anne was making some coffee.
“We have to talk,” he said.
Without a word, Anne sat on a chair and waited for her husband to speak his mind.
“You were right this summer when you talked about me having met another woman. For the past few months, I’ve been with someone else.”
“You’ve been with someone else …”
“I met her at the office.”
Anne prevented herself from saying how banal the situation was.
“At first … it was just an affair …”
“One of many, I bet.”
Irritated by the remark, François shrugged.
“And then … things became more and more serious between us.”
“This means that you want a divorce?”
François’s silence answered the question.
“Is she free? Does she have any kids?”
“No kids. She’s only twenty
-eight.”
The news didn’t surprise Anne. All around her, men were remarried to younger women. She was mostly worried about her daughters. In all likelihood, François would have children with his new wife. How would Isabelle and Aurélie react to that?
“I’m not one to hold people against their will,” Anne said.
“Right,” François replied. “And you never did much to make me want to stay, either!”
The words were filled with bitterness.
“Please,” Anne said, “let’s try not to say things that will make this harder than it already is.”
“So you’d agree to a divorce?”
“It depends on the conditions.”
“You keep the apartment and I’ll continue to take care of the rent, and I’ll pay child support for Isabelle and Aurélie. Does that sound acceptable to you?”
“It does.”
As they discussed financial terms, Anne was surprised how little she cared about having been replaced by another woman, even though she hadn’t felt anything for her husband in a long time. Actually, he was doing what she hadn’t had the courage to do, taking responsibility for the divorce.
François took advantage of the Easter break and the girls’ absence to pack up his things and leave. Since Isabelle and Aurélie had learned about their parents’ separation, they wanted more independence. Going to Saint-Claude for Easter with their mother no longer appealed to them. One was invited by a friend to the countryside, the other to the seashore, and so they went.
When Anne found herself alone in the apartment, she felt distraught. This freedom, which she would have loved when she was with Alexis, meant nothing to her now. Worse, it put her face to face with her solitude and made her wonder yet again if she had done the right thing by pushing Alexis out of her life. It had been two and a half years, and Anne still ached just as much. How many letters had she written him and torn up instead of mailing them to Vienna?
I Looked for the One My Heart Loves Page 26
