Geneviève was telling my mother about the theft of keys from the concièrge. ‘We haven’t seen Jean-Luc since Christmas,’ she said, her eyes gleaming. ‘He wasn’t due back until later tonight.’ It was the third time she’d mentioned this.
‘He got an earlier connection from Heathrow,’ Henri explained. As the chatter resumed, I found my attention straying. One glamorous couple nearby had spent the whole meal on their iPhones, barely speaking – the woman gave her boyfriend a porn star pout for the camera, unaware of what I could see over his shoulder: the Facebook upload was of himself.
When I looked back to see another young man approaching us, if it weren’t for his parents’ reaction I would never have guessed he was Jean-Luc Malavoine. We had only met once before, when he was about to leave for college in Marseille shortly after Philippe and I married. There had been heated whispers from the hallway of their apartment as Geneviève insisted he come to say hello, a rare instance of her losing her cool. When he finally appeared it was over in seconds.
He’d looked nothing like this back then. It was dark by now, the restaurant animated by soft light, shadows and reflections. I registered stubble, messy hair falling into searing eyes it could not obscure: enough for me to feel a physical bolt, effervescence in my blood. No sooner had he reached us than he was being passed round the table like some kind of trophy, from his parents to Philippe. Every time Jean-Luc went to embrace one of them his gaze headed so resolutely in my direction that I looked over my shoulder, thinking he must be checking out a cute waitress. There was no one there.
‘You remember Philippe’s wife, Alexandra?’ his mother said, when it was my turn. Clearly he didn’t, but there was no reason he should; I had barely paid him any attention either that day. As he moved toward me, I noticed a pulse at his temple and had to fight an urge to reach for it. And we ended up touching anyway, although to my relief not in an exchange of kisses. Like anything that’s over in an instant it was hard to say quite how it happened, but there was something unsteady about him that made me grab his upper arm.
‘Are you okay? I think you need to sit down.’
He did, and someone poured a glass of water, which I handed over, adjusting my position so his knee wasn’t touching my leg. He was in no state to notice. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said faintly, just to me. ‘Je suis mort de fatigue.’ And anyone could see he was dead tired: drawn, crumpled, touchingly wrecked.
Philippe offered to get the check so the Malavoines could get him home. As Jean-Luc’s mother fussed to his visible annoyance, I could relate to that primeval impulse to take care of him. It was the least troubling of my instincts.
Chapter Five
Philippe groaned and reached for his alarm clock as I got out of bed much earlier than usual to take my mother to the airport. Quarter to six and the bright orange light announcing another hot day was filtering through the gaps in the shutters. There was already a sheen on his brow; he preferred summer by the Med to Paris with its pollution and sinister iridescent air. July and August were still a way off.
I could feel his eyes on me as I dressed, pretending not to notice he was awake. All the tiny signs I’d been trying to block out kept making a picture I didn’t want to see. Like the seascape on the wall, it had been there for quite some time.
When Philippe looked at my body he must compare me to the other woman. Someone younger, I assumed. Which was to say, even younger than me. There was no doubt that he was still capable of attracting women who went for the older man – he was physically imposing and his looks were holding up, more rugged than ravaged, like Vincent Cassel in a good suit. And that charm, of course. They all have that.
Two days had passed and still I couldn’t stop Jean-Luc intruding on my consciousness. The truth is that I didn’t try very hard. The intensity in the way he’d looked at me had triggered a pressing physical need that was proving difficult to ignore. I knew that in my distress I was reading too much into what had passed between us but I was getting off on the feeling of excitement and unease.
My guess was that Philippe had gone for someone petite and svelte again. Over the last decade here I’d had fun unravelling some of the clichés about Paris – though each of them had a molecule of truth as all clichés do – but Parisiennes who push lettuce leaves around a plate to work off calories did exist. Philippe claimed to find such women tiresome but the requirements for a fling must be different from those of marriage. If not, what would be the point?
I was engaged to a man named Jonathan for three years before he decided I wasn’t marriage material after all. When I failed to meet his criteria he thought better of it. Endometriosis had dogged me since my late teens, proving to be severe and accompanied by salpingitis – inflamed and damaged Fallopian tubes. I had to admit there was a brutal kind of logic to Jonathan’s decision: why stick with me and my terrible odds of giving him children when there were so many lovely fertile women out there? Time to move on, which he certainly did, getting a new girlfriend pregnant in a matter of months.
I left London for Paris and it took me five whole years to move on. I had a job I enjoyed in a city I had always loved but was looking at through a veil, its beauty somehow dimmed. And as is so often the case, it was only when I’d abandoned all hope of finding love that I found Philippe, whose situation mirrored mine to an uncanny degree, or rather, he found me. I stopped thinking I’d never find happiness. It isn’t allocated by who deserves it most. Same with luck or success.
And I made him happy too.
Five years after his divorce, Philippe wanted someone to look after him, someone to come home to. We were both sick of having no one care about our day, nobody to tell those silly little stories you wouldn’t call a friend for, like the funny incident in the boulangerie or someone being a pain at work. I suppose I’m talking about the small intimacies of the everyday, so easily taken for granted when you have someone to share your life and so painfully missing when you don’t. Not everyone wants that, but we did.
Sexually there was definitely a spark between us but it was never just about that. We loved each other’s company and we both loved art and books. With him there was no deal breaker: Philippe’s experience of parenting had been anything but joyful and at forty-seven he wasn’t looking to start over. I was enough for him, whereas Jonathan hadn’t loved me enough to sacrifice becoming a father. Strangely, that was the one thing I didn’t hold against him – I’d wanted kids just as badly. You can’t help how you feel.
Philippe proposed before we really knew each other but if I’d turned him down saying it was too soon that would have been the end of us. In a city full of stunning women, I still wasn’t entirely sure why he’d picked me.
But so much of who we are is an infinite mystery. I was unusual for a woman in that there was nothing on the outside I was desperate to change. Not because my body was perfect or my proportions corresponded to any ideal, far from it. Maybe when some parts of your anatomy rebel and inflict physical torture, it makes you more accepting of the rest. According to my mom, I had my Irish grandmother to thank for my dark wavy hair, which I wore long. I had real hips, a round bottom, breasts large and shapely enough to make for an impressive décolleté and still roughly on the same latitude.
Small wonder that everyone had sex on the brain when even the language sounds so erotic. Décolleter, to bare the neck, to be uncollared; unbridled, like passion, another concept so deeply engrained in the national psyche it could get you off murder. At this point I couldn’t see Philippe or myself committing a crime passionnel.
Clearly I still had some effect on him. He threw back the sheet to let me see he was hard and patted the mattress either side by way of an invitation. He liked me on top, my knees indenting the bed as he lay there waiting for it to happen – for him, primarily. Since I’d fully recovered from my surgery and gotten my libido back he’d turned into a lazy lover, not surprisingly if he was saving his best for someone else. Who’d be interested in an affair if the sex wasn’
t good?
‘Are you insane?’ I said. ‘My mother’s here!’
I was glad of the excuse, for all that it was about to expire. We could hear her moving around in the spare room next door.
‘You think your mother would be shocked to hear us making love? She is a grown woman, not a nun.’
His smile disgusted me. Philippe was precisely halfway between my mother’s age and mine, twelve years either side. Making love! If what he and I had was love, he’d have no desire to do it with anyone else. Sex wasn’t the most important thing to me but it was what distinguished a relationship from every other bond. Obviously that only held true if it was exclusive, so the idea of him screwing me and someone else interchangeably was revolting. Things are pretty messed up when you hope your husband uses a condom when he’s having sex with another woman. She’d chosen that, assuming she knew he was married. I had not, and I wasn’t sure I could live with it.
I breathed deeply, waiting for a monstrous desire to smash something to subside. This anger that kept surging through me was unfamiliar, more proactive and risky than the sadness that makes a person settle for little, expect nothing, not feel worth very much. It shocked me, but it permitted me some self-respect, making me realise I was worth more than this. Seeing that he wasn’t getting anywhere, Philippe reached inside his shorts, which was the best idea he’d had so far. The way I felt right then he really could go fuck himself.
* * *
When Mom gave me a big hug at the airport security barrier it felt weird. We didn’t do hugs. She was as fragile in my arms as I was in hers. ‘I hope you had a good visit.’ She hadn’t stopped talking about the dinner and the day she’d spent with Geneviève, who took her to an exhibition at the Petit Palais followed by lunch at the Hotel Vendôme and a stroll around the Seventh with her bichon puppy, Gigi. All très agréable.
‘You know what? I really had fun this time.’ Mom made no secret of how amazing this was. ‘I’m starting to appreciate the appeal of Paris. And you seem to be in a better place somehow.’
I looked at her and blinked – did she actually just say that? I guess everything’s relative; I’ve been in some bad places. As she fussed over her documents and her travel-size toiletries I watched her in an attempt to capture this unprecedented entente cordiale for posterity. She looked back to wave one last time before disappearing round the corner to line up for the X-ray machines.
As I crossed the crowded terminal toward the RER station I witnessed all kinds of interactions: a college athletics team in high spirits and red hoodies; couples clinging to each other weeping; a woman crouching down, her face transformed as a small child barrelled into her arms, a feeling unknown to me.
My mom and I have more in common than I like to admit. It’s hard to be good at the here and now when you can only think about what’s lost, or what you want and can’t have.
Chapter Six
I could no longer trust myself to be alone in the apartment which looked so bare without my mother’s belongings strewn all over the place, the surplus bags, books and purchases now at 30,000 feet along with their owner. I was certain the evidence would be there if I stooped to going through Philippe’s pockets or sniffing his clothes for perfume I didn’t wear. In any case, actions speak the loudest, like the winter’s afternoon he came home in the full flow of a phone call in Italian, drying up the second he found me in bed doubled up in pain. Sometimes you don’t need to understand the words.
But no amount of corroboration would help me know what to do. My absolute ignorance of the rules of infidelity felt like a failure to get beneath the surface of this country where the prevailing morals of mine – America and England – were often mocked as puritanical. The moment I confided my troubles to someone in the know I’d be officially falling apart instead of doing it quietly on my own time. I had always been private by nature – to an unhealthy degree back then – and shrank at the thought of having to provide ongoing marital status updates. The humiliation was mine but to discuss it with anyone who knew Philippe would still feel like a violation, almost a betrayal. Whatever their view, they would never see either of us the same way again.
The friend who’d be least fazed was the last person I could ask: Suzanne was an expert in sleeping around and loved to regale me with her exploits, some of which she’d had to explain to me (I was lost once there were more than two people). She was also Philippe’s gallery assistant. In the end my only attempt to reach out was a bigger mistake than I realised at the time. I called my former neighbour Christine purely because she didn’t know my husband or anyone else who knew us. We met briefly in a café near my office. Her shrug and her attitude had a similar effect to the bitter espresso, leaving a worse taste than I’d started out with. According to Christine, there was no reason to get so worked up unless falling in love was involved. Wonderful. By local standards, there simply was no case to answer. Seeing my expression as I got up to leave, Christine added that nothing was stopping me from indulging in an aventure of my own. She had the cheek to say it might do me good.
There seemed little option but to turn a blind eye and hope for the best. I can’t believe I ever thought there was a knack to this, some way to gain immunity. Everybody hurts, just like the song says. The heart has no nationality.
Unable to settle at home, I set off down the rue de Babylone without changing out of my work clothes or checking my make-up. My route to the Malavoines’ apartment took me past the Invalides with the resplendent gold dome that usually gave me a boost whenever I saw it. Being able to walk most places I needed to go was one of the greatest pleasures of Paris but in my current frame of mind a mission was better than an aimless wander. Once I’d crossed this particular job off my list I could concentrate on the launch of Icons.
Due to the relentless heat I delayed buying the flowers until I got to the 7th arrondissement. When she heard my accent, I could practically see the florist planning to overcharge me. We English-speaking expats get lumped together under the Anglo-Saxon banner, regardless of our actual origins. In my case it’s not wildly off with a father from Kent and a Californian mother of Irish and German descent, but the assumptions that go with it make me want to say (quietly, because not all Americans shout): I live here! I do speak the language! although to my great regret, I did not speak it beautifully. I had the professional competence demanded by a job in publishing but I would never pass for a native, unable to roll my Rs no matter how I tried.
But I knew what passed for Parisian good taste: a single variety of flower, all one colour. I watched the florist clip the stems of the white lilies, stripping off most of the leaves and substituting a different type of foliage. A good-looking man being served next to me had his phone between his ear and shoulder, accepting a huge bouquet of red roses in one hand as he held out fifty euros in the other. ‘I know, chérie, but this is a crisis – I’m going to be here for hours.’
I gaped at him as he gave me a you know how it is grin. I grabbed the lilies and left without waiting for my change.
Yes, I thought. I know exactly how it is.
If I hadn’t texted to tell Geneviève I was coming I would have turned around and gone home. My skirt was deeply creased over the hips and my underwear was chafing at my skin. In the confined space of the elevator the mirror confirmed I looked a total mess and I could detect a trace of my body odour in the air. A long strand of hair had escaped from my ponytail and was clinging damply to my neck, but short of putting the flowers down, I couldn’t do anything about it.
When I reached the sixth floor, I had a vision of Geneviève which proved accurate in every respect when the door opened: light brown bob so meticulously maintained that the roots were never visible for more than a day or two, discreet but perfect sweep of make-up. Her white linen shirt would have to be fresh on to look the way it did.
Although Geneviève exclaimed dutifully on seeing my offering, we were both just going through the motions. Being of another class and country I was unclear what c
ould give pleasure to someone this privileged. I’d barely stepped into the entry hall before the cloying scent of a near-identical vase of lilies reached me from the living room.
‘Don’t worry!’ she said. ‘Those are yesterday’s. They will make the perfect duo.’
She ferried various receptacles to and fro, placing the matching bouquets at either end of a polished console table between the huge windows. The Malavoines lived in a grand neoclassical corner building closely overlooking the Eiffel Tower. To the left was the Champ de Mars with its quaintly named ‘streets’ frequented by lovers walking hand in hand and citizens of the entire world in search of a photo opp. The view from our apartment was something, but this was something else. After the spirit-flattening fifth-floor walk-up near République where I lived before meeting Philippe, the Malavoine residence would always bring out my inner American tourist.
Geneviève had been left this apartment de grand standing (it amuses me that a stilted form of English is used to express snobbery the way English speakers use French) by an unmarried aunt. She was from that kind of family, I was not.
‘These are to thank you for being so lovely with my mother,’ I said.
Geneviève waved my gratitude away. ‘It was my pleasure, I assure you. Carolyn is delightful. Quite different to how I expected her to be.’
Like so much of what Geneviève said, this was open to various unnerving interpretations. It was a faux pas to have predisposed her to think badly of my mother. Speaking ill of a parent sounds awful in any language or country although I’d never done so in so many words. But apparently it didn’t take words – I guess sometimes it’s what you don’t say that makes an impression.
‘It’s a shame we didn’t get to know her when Jean-Luc was still in California,’ Geneviève continued. I didn’t follow – wasn’t he just home for a visit? Despite my wish to discuss absolutely anything but him, I prepared myself for another gush about the only subject which raised any real emotion in Geneviève and, since the dinner, the cause of increasingly troubling thoughts of my own. Jean-Luc may never have been far from the conversation with his brilliant academic record and myriad achievements but it seemed to me that he’d given his parents a wide berth since going to college, staying put and leaving them to visit him.
Paris Mon Amour Page 3
