Paris Mon Amour

by Isabel Costello

  Finally I’d said something she agreed with. ‘There’s a weird vibe in this apartment. It feels kind of empty, like no one really lives here. You and Dad are never together, or even if you are, you don’t talk to each other any more.’

  Vanessa reminds me of my mother sometimes. It might be the lacerating frankness. And as for those scary powers of observation: how bad must it be for her to have noticed the deterioration between Philippe and me in a few short weeks? She’d never even seen us together when things were good. ‘Well, you might have something to do with that, Vanessa. You’re absolutely right, there has been an atmosphere since you arrived.’ She didn’t come back at me as I expected, looking down like a dog that’s used to being hit. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean that. I’m new to this, remember.’

  Vanessa peered up at me in surprise through the gaps in her hair before shaking it off her face. I waited to see how she would exploit my admission of weakness, not that she’d needed me to point it out.

  ‘I can guarantee that my mom doesn’t want me back. I’ve “embarrassed her professionally”. Anyway, she’s about to go to Sicily with her new boyfriend and there’s no way she’d let me stay in the house on my own. I guess there are squats, if I ask around…’

  I smiled at the mischief in her voice; even Vanessa got bored of arguing. ‘Now you’re just being silly,’ I said. ‘But what about when September comes around? You can’t live here and go to school in Neuilly.’ I could say the words but even the near future was such an abstraction that it was like discussing life on another planet.

  Vanessa pushed her lower lip almost inside out. There was something unnervingly feral about this girl who’d been catapulted into our lives. She had quite a repertoire of unflattering facial expressions and her approach to personal hygiene was lax. This room needed airing out. How that preppy little shit could have stood to spend the night in here was a mystery. He set more store in personal grooming than Vanessa did.

  She sat up on the bed and looked right at me. ‘Who says I’m going back to school? You can’t beat the system from within.’

  I sighed with exhaustion and sat down gingerly on the edge of a chair strewn with clothing. It wasn’t my place to tell her what to do. ‘Don’t you have to go back to school?’ I asked. It was a genuine question. I knew very little about the French education system. I’d have to ask Jean-Luc. Vanessa sniffed loudly and shoved me off the chair, before pulling on a selection of the clothes I’d been sitting on, including a pair of shiny patterned leggings I’d hoped would ‘go missing’ in the laundry.

  ‘I’ll be out late tonight,’ she said, squeezing a length of cheap orangey foundation onto her finger and proceeding to plaster it on without washing her face. ‘Just so you know.’

  As I left the room I hesitated, as if it were an afterthought. ‘So where are you going?’

  It was an eloquent look she gave me. It said: don’t push it.

  Chapter Thirty One

  It was only seeing the poster marked LAST DAYS on my way home that reminded me I had tickets for the exhibition at the Marmottan. I meant to ask Suzanne but like so much else, it had slipped my mind.

  Philippe groaned when I mentioned it – the Impressionists were not to his taste, too popular and bourgeois. Like Henri, he preferred the kind of art that most people don’t even think is art. We were alone in the apartment now Vanessa had taken off. ‘I’m not in the mood,’ he said. I wasn’t either. I wanted to see the paintings, which were from private collections all over the world and rarely on display. But not with Philippe. Not now. As things stood, spending time with him was asking for trouble, the chances of us enjoying each other’s company remote. After his row with Vanessa, I felt an unsettling mixture of revulsion and pity for him. Adding my own variations on guilt and euphoria after going back to Jean-Luc, the balance came out in Philippe’s favour. But only just.

  I sat down on the end of the sofa and pinched his cheek lightly, registering the platonic nature of my gesture. It was a show of affection you would more likely give a chubby-cheeked baby than a weary man, his skin a bit slack to the touch, less so to the eye.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, hoping to enthuse myself as much as him. ‘Ça te changera les idées. It’ll do you good. There are bound to be seascapes.’ My gaze travelled to the painting over the mantel as I thought again of the night my mother told me what I already knew in the depths of my heart. How different things might have been if she hadn’t forced it out into the open.

  But not as different as they look now. Saying all this out loud is making me see everything in a new light. My only hope of finding a way to live with it is to face up to what happened in every detail. Even if I could wipe my memory, I wouldn’t. And there’ll always be someone to remind me.

  As I hunted in my bag for the exhibition tickets, the reality of the crisis we were facing hit me so hard I could have vomited into it. Rushing to the bathroom, I sat on the toilet longer than I needed to. When I blotted the tissue between my legs, in a moment of sheer despair I even considered touching myself, not because I felt like it, only as a respite from the turmoil in my head. Every unwanted thought unleashed a dozen more.

  Once again I did not do it. I wanted no lesser pleasure than the kind Jean-Luc gave me. I was still reeling after the second time. I may not have felt the connection he talked about that first afternoon, too caught up in the physical, but when I did it was a tenfold magnifier.

  Sometimes I tormented myself with an alternative version of that scene, the kind of pointless anxiety I’m prone to, as if actual events weren’t enough to worry about. What if I’d rebuffed Jean-Luc, gently, saying I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. What if I’d slapped his hand or even his face with How dare you? What the hell do you think you’re doing?

  To think that I could have missed all this. The question wasn’t how he had dared.

  Philippe was marching up and down the hallway, jangling keys in his hand, the keyring wrapped round his middle finger.

  ‘You sure you want to drive? Won’t it take for ever?’

  It had started to rain and despite the fact that I grew up on the west coast with its hundred permutations of cloud, rain and fog, there was something uniquely depressing about Paris in wet weather. The prospect of being holed up with Philippe in our car, with its low roof, the windows closed and the wipers whipping, induced such claustrophobia that I would gladly have wasted thirty euros to forget the whole thing.

  But when Philippe remembered where he’d left the car – he didn’t use it much and often it was only the letters announcing traffic or parking fines that reminded us we owned a vehicle – it was boxed in, a gap of approximately two inches at either end. ‘Putain!’ He kicked the outer rear tyre half-heartedly, attracting jeers from a pair of passing teenage boys.

  ‘Dégagez!’ I roared at them. We both seemed to have lost the ability to speak at normal volume. The kids looked afraid of me, an unlikely lunatic in my loafers and belted tan trench, and they wasted no time following my advice.

  Philippe managed a glimmer of a smile as we headed for the Metro after all. ‘You know, I think you’re becoming more French, Alexandra,’ he said. To get to the museum in the 16th arrondissement we could either change twice, at Montparnasse and Trocadéro, which would be heaving on a Saturday afternoon, or take a longer ride to the western limits of the city and change just once. Philippe regarded himself as either Parisian or not as it suited him, but where transportation was concerned, his decision took precedence over mine. Or at least it usually did. Today he touched his card on the reader and followed me meekly onto the Line 10 platform, direction Boulogne – Pont de Saint-Cloud.

  This line was never crowded. We sat down and Philippe moved the edge of my coat from his seat. Every minute act which would normally happen on autopilot acquired a kind of inverse frisson, sharpened by the contrast with my liaison dangereuse. But whereas every touch or glance between me and Jean-Luc was charged with excitement, with Philippe it was like
padding around knowing there are landmines underfoot.

  Opposite us sat a young couple with a boy of about three years old wearing the same Senegal football shirt as his dad. As the parents talked, the child kept up an animated dialogue between two My Little Pony figures with tinselled manes, either in another language or more likely in fluent gobbledygook. He gave each of the animals a distinct voice.

  ‘Isn’t he adorable?’ I nudged Philippe, thinking the child’s innocent joy would lift his spirits as it did mine.

  Philippe, who hadn’t noticed, looked at him affectionately then turned to me with a sad smile. ‘You would have made a good mother.’

  It upset me that he would bring this up in a public place; he did know how I felt about that but because of where we both were when we met, it was not something we’d gone into. I didn’t know if he was trying to hurt or console me, another doubt I would never have had in the past. Over the years I’d arrived at a place of acceptance where I could see parents with their children and not be skewered with anguish over what was denied me by nature, fate; whatever you wanted to call it, it was nothing personal. I’d always felt there was a certain justice to not getting everything I wanted and that it would be wrong to fight it, asking for too much. I’d trained myself not to care about those who think the life of a childless woman has no meaning – what did they know? At least the fact that I’d wanted children and not been able to have them exempted me from judgement, if not pity; doubly so in France where women who didn’t have children were thin on the ground.

  Jean-Luc had put his finger on it before he really knew me: I kept my emotions at a distance out of fear. I’ve come to see control – not just self-control, all kinds – as an illusion. There are threats from outside, from random occurrences, other people’s unpredictability. And occasionally, without warning or provocation, distress would crash through the barricades I’d put up, sparing only the last fibres holding me together. But trying to be stoic and philosophical only gets you so far. Of course I felt sorry for myself, but I had a pep talk for the relapses, to remind myself how much worse things could be, as if loss – or happiness, for that matter – can be calibrated. As if downward comparisons are ever any consolation. My mother once held up her fingers in air quotes when speaking of the “grief” of infertility. You might think I’d have moved on from that now but it hasn’t lost its sting.

  I should have done this years ago. I was always afraid talking would make it worse and the irony is that it took everything getting worse to bring me here. But pain is its own entity – it exists regardless – the talking a release. Like a confession.

  Something hinted at my sorrow that day on the Metro because Philippe went on to explain: ‘You’re so much better at handling Vanessa than I am. I wasn’t expecting it to be easy, but she has no respect for me and after today, well…’ He pulled a face that frayed me at the edges and as I looked at him I thought I feel too much for you to be doing what I’m doing to you.

  ‘It’ll get easier in time, don’t beat yourself up. It’s a good sign that she feels safe enough to act out with you. Vanessa loves a good rant,’ I said. ‘And you know she can be just as vile with me.’

  Opposite, the young couple were arguing now, the man pointing to the child, then snatching the glittery pony toys out of his hands. ‘This is my son,’ he said to his wife. The child shared her beauty and right now, the same bereft look in his eyes. ‘You say you’ll put a stop to this when he goes to school? It’ll be too late by then!’ Now the woman and the little boy were crying shiny silent tears.

  ‘Crétin!’ Philippe muttered loudly, as the train pulled into our station. I pulled at his jacket sleeve as the doors opened, before he could get into yet another argument. But I had misjudged him, as it seems I often did. He turned to me as we walked up the steps toward the exit. ‘There are so many ways you can screw a child up,’ he said. ‘How does anyone ever end up normal?’ He’d picked the wrong person to ask.

  When we got to the exhibition, Philippe was more his old self. It was hard to equate him lost in contemplation with the man on the edge I’d been seeing lately. As I’d hoped, the seascapes made him impatient to be back on the Côte d’Azur. There was one of a bay which he remembered exploring with his brothers and Henri when he was a boy.

  Some of my happiest childhood memories are of playing on the beach, before I became an only child.

  Chapter Thirty Two

  An affair in its early stages is disruptive. As well as all consuming, it is time consuming. The hours accelerated when Jean-Luc and I were together and stretched out endlessly when we were apart, even though we were finding ways to meet almost every day. Philippe and I were seeing less and less of each other without too much need for subterfuge. Having grown up outdoors, neither of us liked lingering in the apartment in the summer. He was working his way through the complete works of Modiano and Lemaître, whiling away hours in one of those metal chairs with the punishing backrests in the Jardin du Luxembourg, cooling off with a swim at the Piscine Saint-Germain. We used to talk about what we were reading all the time; now we barely talked at all.

  In truth, everyone in my life was fading out but Jean-Luc. Alain and his wife were taking a long summer break in Bordeaux after the birth of their first grandchild, the rest of my colleagues content to wind down and work shorter hours in anticipation of le grand départ and well-deserved vacations. It had been a testing time for all of us.

  I told Jean-Luc not to send me incriminating texts, although to be getting any from him was incriminating. It wasn’t that I feared anyone seeing them – Philippe had never shown any interest in my phone and I’d changed the settings so that new messages didn’t beep or flash up on the screen. It was simply more erotic, the anticipation heightened, when we kept to time and place.

  The moment our next assignation was arranged it flipped the catch on my imagination, anticipating the how, where and when. I had trouble sitting still, the best kind of tension ramping up inside of me until I could hardly bear it. My ability to concentrate had deserted me – I was supposed to be editing our next book but I could find no fault with anything. On examining sumptuous colour plates of works by Delacroix and others, I could picture nothing clearly. Everything around me was bright, saturated but slightly out of focus. I was in a state of permanent intoxication.

  I heard Jean-Luc’s footsteps on the stairs. It was his first (and only) return visit to the office and he tapped softly on the door despite knowing I was alone; it was another very hot day and I’d sent everyone home early. We headed straight past the Danish sofa to my office. My visceral craving for him still took me aback. It reached the most insensate parts of me: fingernails, tooth enamel, the ends of my hair. He touched me everywhere.

  We fell back onto the rug, our breathing raw with release, fractionally out of sync. The stillness of the afternoon insinuated itself into my bones as I lay beside him, the sun warming our skin through the window panes. He turned to kiss me, which I wasn’t used to once it was over. ‘You look happy,’ he told me. ‘And so beautiful.’ He pronounced it beauty-full.

  I propped myself up on one elbow, my bare breast skimming his upper arm. ‘So do you,’ I said. Beautiful really was the word, and he was no less masculine for it. ‘Being home agrees with you.’

  A shadow crossed his face. I thought I’d said something wrong until I realised it was a swallow circling the courtyard. It flew past once more before soaring to rejoin the sky. Since I was a child fascinated by eagles, I’d envied birds the power of flight, without dreaming I’d ever have the faintest notion how that felt.

  ‘What time is it?’ I asked.

  ‘What does it matter? We’re not in a rush.’ He paused, and with a shyness I hadn’t seen before, said, ‘You could, you know, talk to me sometimes.’

  It embarrassed me that my instinct to pounce and rub myself all over him was so transparent. Of course we talked sometimes but now my mind was blank. We exchanged looks and burst out laughing, as if conversati
on was more inappropriate than our usual pastime. ‘So, what do you want to talk about?’

  The flare of panic as he lost his nerve was visible, the hand nearest to me shaking until he steadied it against his leg. ‘I don’t know, anything. Parle-moi en français,’ he said.

  ‘Non!’ I said, doing it anyway. ‘My French is horrible. Correct, but horrible.’ I couldn’t think how to say I can’t get my tongue around it. Even if you know them, colloquialisms sound ridiculous in a foreign language unless you speak it like a native.

  ‘I like it,’ he insisted. ‘Your French sounds more British than American.’

  ‘That’s because I learned it in England.’

  ‘Say my name!’

  That was narcissistic but I went along with it, articulating the words which turned hoops in my head. Besides, there was only one way to say his name – even my mother could manage it. ‘Okay, Jean-Luc!’ I put on a gravelly voice. ‘Comme tu veux, Jean-Luc. But only because it doesn’t have an R.’

  He grinned. The fact is that I would have done anything he asked. Overcome with self-consciousness, I switched back to English because I’d thought of something that had been troubling me from the very start. ‘Have you been with an older woman before?’

  Now Jean-Luc frowned as if he didn’t quite get my meaning. ‘No,’ he said, in the end. ‘Why are you asking me that?’

  ‘But is it something you’d thought about, before us? I mean, you wouldn’t be the first young guy to be curious…’

  My jaw tensed in an effort to silence myself. So far age had sketched only faint lines on me, but now whenever I saw young women in the street I was assailed by their fresh skin, their perfect boobs and cute little asses. I imagined the smiles they gave their boyfriends being for Jean-Luc, their laughter aimed at me, amused but without malice, for I was no threat to them. What could he possibly want with me, when he could have that?