But Geneviève was heading somewhere far less predictable. ‘Your maman was kind enough to invite us to visit. San Francisco is beautiful – maybe Henri and I will go back one day.’
She must not know that Del Norte County was a six-hour drive from San Francisco, my home town only ten minutes from the Oregon state line. Hiking in the redwood forests swatting at bugs or walking on foggy beaches were hardly Geneviève’s idea of fun. The closest posh restaurants were a hundred miles away. It was beyond me to picture her in the clapboard house where I’d grown up, so exposed to the elements that it should have been painted every two years. Now my mother left it to peel until the job cost twice as much.
‘You don’t go back very often, do you?’ Geneviève said.
I didn’t, for the same reasons my mother could never bring herself to leave. There were precisely two other people in my life who knew why and Geneviève wasn’t one of them.
None of this mattered because I’d have put money on this visit never happening. She fanned herself with a copy of Figaro Madame and her hair barely moved. ‘This heat is unbearable,’ she said. ‘Shall we have tea?’
It was my job to offer to make it, being half British, not that I could recall my dad ever drinking tea. But since the stuff Geneviève favoured had more in common with the latest Parisian tearoom craze than anything they’d drink in England, I figured I stood as good a chance as anyone. I spooned loose-leaf raspberry-scented Assam from Mariage Frères into a porcelain teapot so delicate I could see my hand through it even after adding the boiling water, orange and indistinct.
‘Mom had a great time,’ I said, bringing the tea into the living room. ‘It was so thoughtful of you to give up your day.’
‘It was nothing,’ Geneviève replied, and in fact it wasn’t far from what she normally did, a gentle circuit of cultural hobnobbing with stylish refreshments. But I was genuinely grateful to her for making this year’s visit so much easier for me. I hoped my astonishment was not too obvious when Geneviève said at dinner that she regarded me as a kind of daughter, nor when my mom appeared to accept this as a compliment to herself – one she had not earned. And since I’m being mean already, I may as well say that even if I’d been looking for another mother I wouldn’t have chosen Geneviève.
I find that the French excel in the art of conversation, of debate. Of course they talk about which is the best dry cleaner’s or complain about the damp in the cellar, but the to and fro of intellectual discussion is seen as normal, not pretentious. In California people would be curious to know how much you earned or what car you drove; here they’d rather get your take on the meaning of life.
But that’s not how it was with Geneviève and me. There was a coolness about her that seemed contagious when we were together, making me shut down instead of opening up. I could never relax and enjoy her company the way I do when I click with someone, and in five years we had never progressed much beyond chit-chat imposed by our husbands’ friendship. Neutral subjects, enjoyable when we got onto art or literature, I’ll give her that.
We knew very little of each others’ real lives and yet she continually sought me out, sought us out as a couple, troubling herself to make the kind of arrangements men rarely bother with. Making an issue of it with Philippe would have hurt him. There was a lot about me that he accepted unconditionally and it couldn’t all be in one direction. I understood when he first introduced us that Geneviève’s opinion mattered to him. He wanted us to be friends and I tried to like her. I really did.
The conversation stalled and I couldn’t be the one to resurrect it. By now the situation with Philippe had sunk in, saturating my heart and body with an unbearable heaviness. I was an idiot for being shocked, though I wasn’t the first to think that talk of widespread affairs in Paris was an exaggeration. Is an exaggeration, but it makes no difference that not everybody’s doing it if your spouse is one of the ones who is.
I’d come to visit Geneviève out of goodwill but my predicament made a giant, pointless pretence of everything: my marriage, my hopes of reviving a dying business, this forced acquaintance masquerading as something we both knew it wasn’t.
Lifting the cup to my lips too soon, the tea scalded the lining of my throat and it served me right. I was being unfair because of what was happening to me. Geneviève and I had been brought together by the friendship between people we loved and we made the best of it. Philippe and I were in a situation of his making and I’d have to make the best of that too, hoping it really was just a fling. That must be what people do when they find out what they’re not supposed to know. Plenty of cheats must be women. Mothers, even. Except that here they aren’t called cheats. They are amants. Lovers. That sounds much more romantic.
The unfamiliar compassion in Geneviève’s expression worried me. I actually wouldn’t put it past my mother to discuss my private life with someone she’d only just met. Geneviève leaned across to lay a tiny cool hand on my forearm. ‘Is everything all right, Alexandra?’
‘Not really.’
As I waited for her to ask what was wrong, every muscle tensed to keep me from heading for the door. This was not the place to turn for comfort. At best Geneviève would trot out the same platitudes as Christine. C’est comme ça. That’s the way it is. It wouldn’t surprise me if she took the old-fashioned view that men are poor creatures driven by uncontrollable urges and really can’t help it. Her loyalty would not be to me.
And then I had the strangest sensation. It was as if I were standing on the opposite side of the room, watching myself go berserk, nerves snapping as I span around, shattering the carefully positioned vases, trampling the perfect lilies; slashing silk cushions to send the down of dead ducks billowing everywhere.
The fantasy version of me was losing control. It felt so amazing I wanted it to be real.
But when Geneviève spoke it was in her usual measured tones. ‘I know how you feel,’ she said. ‘Having houseguests really takes its toll.’
I seized the excuse, and with apologies for my sudden departure, just about made it to the elevator before I was convulsed with sobs. Philippe was the only person I could bear to see me cry, but that wasn’t much good to me now.
Chapter Seven
Avoiding the person you’re married to isn’t easy but for three days I saw as little of Philippe as possible. I was sleeping so badly it was a relief to get up at six and run in the Luxembourg many times the usual distance. Pushing myself so hard that I could barely breathe caused a horrible burning in my chest and throat but since it also cut off my ability to think, it was worth it. The more athletic runners I’d been seeing for years began to give me a nod of respect as we lapped each other for the third or fourth time. If they’d ever noticed me before they probably thought I’d started training for a marathon with a lot of work to do. One of them went further. He was probably a little younger than Philippe, with sandy hair – attractive in the same kind of way. Too similar all round.
I thought he was being friendly striking up a conversation as we happened to exit the park gates onto rue de Vaugirard at the same time. Then out of nowhere, he invited me for coffee, though I don’t know why he even bothered to call it that. Not even in a café and there were two within sight.
‘My place is just five minutes away – less if we keep running,’ he said, like that would seal the deal. This truly is another world to me. I suppose logistics must play a big part. Living one life is complicated enough, how on earth did anyone cope with a second, hidden one?
My admirer seemed amused when I shook my head at his nerve. ‘Can’t blame me for trying,’ he called over his shoulder as he sprinted off, not caring who heard. It got me thinking about how these ‘just sex’ liaisons begin. Was it as arbitrary and banal as propositioning a sweaty stranger in a park? We’d been acquainted for less than five minutes and this guy thought he was in with a chance! Maybe the sight of a woman exercising suggested strong physical appetites, in a similar way to Philippe finding my love of food sexy. C
learly some men cast the net wide to improve their hit rate, not being too choosy. You only have to watch a few movies and TV shows to know that for some it’s as primitive as whether they would. Like they were grading goods. It was different for women: what we wanted, whether we would. Now I was thinking about Jean-Luc, again.
I crossed the Place de l’Odéon and as I turned into our street I looked up out of habit at the fourth floor to see Philippe standing on our tiny balcony, still in his robe, smoking and frowning. It was too late to pretend I hadn’t seen him and anyway, I needed to get to the office.
‘I have to talk to you,’ he said as soon as I let myself into the apartment.
‘Wait a second,’ I said, heading him off. I made straight for the bathroom and peeled off my running kit. I wanted to lock the door but if Philippe realised he would have found that odd. He often came in when I was showering to brush his teeth after finishing his coffee, or to tell me something or other. It was vital for things to appear normal.
I’d never minded him sitting on the lid of the toilet shouting at me about some outlandish artefact over the sound of the water. Some of his habits had jarred at first but I had even gotten used to him peeing in front of me, though I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing the same. A French maxim I adopted without question was that a woman needs to preserve a sense of mystery. But it’s a short hop from mystery to secrets and an even shorter one from there to betrayal.
I didn’t want my husband looking at me now, naked or clothed. I didn’t want to talk because of what one or both of us might say. I wasn’t completely naïve – you can’t help but pick up a few things about adultery living in this city for ten years, but it was hard to square what I knew with us. Men are said to do it to ward off boredom and fear of mortality, to feel like a man. I think the theory was that it didn’t impact on the love and respect they felt for their wife, the mother of their children in this country where an overwhelming majority of women do marry and reproduce. That straying is a midlife phenomenon is the same the world over but here’s the part I didn’t get: Philippe had divorced ten years ago and been a free agent for half that time before meeting me. He could have stayed single and fucked whomsoever he pleased without being accountable to anyone. But he didn’t. He married me, so in the circumstances I really didn’t think I was signing up for this.
None of which makes it right, but I did sort of get why men had affairs. When it came to women, I really had no idea. Not then.
Chapter Eight
My noble resolution not to snoop on Philippe was short-lived. The facts could not be worse than the torment of my imaginings and I needed to know where I stood. After my shower I slipped back into the bedroom and dressed as quickly as possible, as if it were me about to be caught in an illicit act. And so it was, of a kind. I heard Philippe’s electric razor start up, which told me I had several minutes. There was no sign of his phone in our bedroom. I went through to the kitchen: not there either. And then, as if it knew I was looking, it buzzed from under his creased cloth napkin on the table, next to the auction catalogue.
It could have been anyone: Henri, Suzanne from the gallery, France Telecom with a monthly minutes update. I snatched the napkin away just in time to see the message ID flash up and fade away – NICO. Usually a man’s name. The only Nico I knew was the muscular Italian behind the counter at our local butcher’s. It was a step too far to think that Philippe was secretly into men.
For too long I stood with his phone glued to my palm until I heard the whine of the razor finish. I breathed again on hearing the sound of running water. He still had to brush his teeth. Two minutes should be enough. Unless he’d changed it, I knew Philippe’s unlock code from when he’d been driving and asked me to find an address. 6274. For his year of birth and mine.
It worked! There it was, the text from Nico: After auction but quick. There was a string of older messages in bubbles I barely glanced at, most of them rather businesslike in tone. But one stood out, from the night Philippe hadn’t shown up for dinner with my mom: Studio plus tard. Envie de toi. Studio, later. (What studio?) I want you.
I had just put the phone down and was sweeping crumbs off of the table into my hand when Philippe appeared in the doorway, freshly cologned. I grasped the back of the dining chair next to me, my nails digging into the soft antique wood. Does everyone have a kind of emotional homepage they revert to in a crisis? I do, and I was back there like I’d never left. Mine is feeling abandoned.
* * *
Compartmentalising is supposed to be a male habit but against the odds I managed to lose myself in everything I had to do that day. With rising production costs and sales that had been falling steadily for years, time was running out for Editions Gallici and it certainly wasn’t the moment to be looking for a new job in fine art publishing. My boss Alain had founded the business but he was almost sixty and lately he had visibly tired of it, effectively leaving me to run the place. He would take the opportunity to duck out and play more golf if it went under; the others were younger than me and would migrate to other things. None of them cared about it the way I did.
So I didn’t spend the whole day thinking about the auction (it helped that I hadn’t noticed what time it was taking place) and what Philippe was doing afterwards and with whom. As long as I was at work I could contain my anxiety but that changed when I stepped into the courtyard and through the huge wooden doors separating the calm of the office from the crowded narrow streets of the Marais. On a rational level I knew it was nothing to do with the man from the butcher’s but that didn’t stop me calling in for two steaks on the way home. I waited in line behind a statuesque blonde in black linen, admiring first her impeccably highlighted up-do and then, as she pointed to some paupiettes de veau, the butcher’s skill in making raw flesh look so appealing with carefully knotted string and sprigs of rosemary. As she turned to leave, I was forced to confront the possibility that Philippe’s lover might not be younger at all. This woman – natural, graceful, trying hard but not too hard – was at least fifty and still canon. Knockout. Une bombe. All these terms linking beauty with destruction. I needed to think this through. Making a scene about the affair could backfire, bringing everything crashing down.
When it was my turn, the butcher named Nico persuaded me to take a little tub of his homemade béarnaise sauce to accompany the steaks. Like many French men, he wore a thick wedding band. Philippe wore one too, the perfect circle, a symbol of eternity. Or a zero, something that counted for nothing. I just didn’t know any more.
Though my feet were throbbing after all that extra running and the long, hot walk dodging tourists on the Ile de la Cité, I plodded up the four flights of steps to our apartment, not bothering with the tiny claustrophobic elevator.
It’s not that I thought cheating was confined to the legendary cinq à sept timeslot – a kind of sexual happy hour – but nonetheless I wasn’t expecting Philippe to be home already. He was sitting in the upright chair where I could still picture my mother on the evening she lit a fuse under the dry powder of our marriage.
The discovery of the text from Nico had come as a perverse relief after the agony of not knowing: my mother wasn’t wrong and I wasn’t paranoid or allowing her to mess with my peace of mind for no reason. Philippe was definitely having an affair. But in the forty minutes it had taken me to get home the tension had wound up tighter than ever. I was desperate to have it out with him, find out who this woman was and what she could give him that I couldn’t, or didn’t. Where the studio was, how long it had been going on. Whether there had been others.
When Philippe heard me come in he looked up from his iPad with a cloudy and preoccupied expression and I recalled with a jolt that whatever it was he wanted to say to me that morning, he hadn’t said it. Convinced he was about to confess, my instinct was to tell him to shut up when he hadn’t said a word. I’d changed my mind yet again. The less I knew, the better. I couldn’t decide what I thought or felt from one second to the next, lurching from one p
osition to its opposite pole: I wanted the truth/I didn’t. I was justified/I was overreacting. It would have helped to make a list of pros and cons, but that called for distance and objectivity I couldn’t possibly muster by myself. Confrontation and resignation were equally unappealing; since meeting Philippe I’d never been happier, until all this.
There had to be some way to come to terms with what was happening to us. If infidelity really was so common maybe I could find other women in the same boat and get some tips on how to live with it. Or maybe it was just a short-term thing and would soon fizzle out – I could only hope. The issue of fidelity had never come up, although from what he knew of me, it wouldn’t have been hard for Philippe to guess at my take on it. I could try to engineer a conversation, rent a movie about an affair, somehow make my feelings known without confronting him… so he’d be overcome with guilt? Because that was really going to work. This was the stuff of desperation.
Even when Philippe was hurting me, I was still bending to accommodate, just as I always did with my mother. The difference was that I hadn’t hurt him first. I had reason to believe he’d bedded some other woman that afternoon and still I was going to serve him steak and ask about his day.
Chapter Nine
‘How’d it go at the auction?’
Paris Mon Amour Page 4
