That had always felt like the issue, that and the fact that she and Henri knew my husband so much better than I did, making me feel like an interloper. But now the issue was much bigger. When I was with Jean-Luc I bought into an absurd illusion that the people close to me didn’t exist; the rest of the time I was tormented by thoughts of them even when I was alone. I may have avoided coming face to face with Geneviève at the studio but something about the penetrating looks she was giving me convinced me she knew things she shouldn’t.
I’d taken my drink into the kitchen along with the conviction that I was slipping my mental moorings. Was it possible to develop a personality disorder out of nowhere? I did once take a strong blow to the head. I was horrified to find myself thinking that a brain tumour might explain everything. Even benign masses could make people become violent, disinhibited, change beyond recognition. The summery strawberry bouquet of the wine reminded me so much of happier times that I had to gnaw at my knuckles to keep myself from howling. In our five years together there had never been a problem I couldn’t share with Philippe. I imagined pulling him into the hallway and telling him, I’ve gotten myself into a terrible situation. He’d say, What is it, Alexandra? Don’t get so upset, just tell me.
But that was an obsolete version of us. The reality was me, on my own, trying to cut myself in two. Wanting to have it both ways.
Vanessa had chosen some huge glasses we rarely used and in my desperation to make contact with the contents I tilted mine back too far, slicing the top of my nose with the rim. That made me bite my tongue as I yelped in pain. A ribbon of blood unfurled against the pretty pink. I was going to be made to suffer for what I’d done. Somehow I knew that all along.
Chapter Forty
The night before we were due to head to Honfleur, Philippe slumbered away oblivious to my endless sighing and fidgeting. I had moved through 360 degrees in quarter turns so many times that when I lay still the room seemed to be spinning. Finally I sat up, noting the contrast between my body heat and the coolness of the dark air. The numerals of Philippe’s alarm clock cast a greenish glow over our bedroom. Peering over his back I saw it was 02:20.
The hour of nothing, or at best, a good night drawing to a close. I had never embarked on anything at 02:20. Worries are often worse at night but crazy ruses can seem like good decisions at any time of day. No, more than that: they can feel inevitable. It was like something was propelling me to leave the apartment. I was certain Jean-Luc would hear from his parents that Philippe and I were going to Normandy. I had to make him promise to stay away and I had to do it in person.
With another glance to check that I hadn’t disturbed Philippe, I pulled a skirt over the satin slip I was wearing in bed and slid my feet into the nearest pair of ballet pumps lined up with other shoes against the wall, resulting in a mismatched getup of polka dots, florals and zebra print. Grabbing my bag and keys, I paused outside Vanessa’s bedroom door. The weight of my tread on the old floorboards must have made the lock shift in the frame, for it swung open to reveal an empty bed. After the initial fright I continued on my way, vague stirrings of concern over her whereabouts easily dismissed.
At the nearest taxi stand I asked a weary driver if he was familiar with a tiny 24-hour gas station near the Porte de la Villette (if Jean-Luc had told me more than this, the details escaped me now). My pretext of having left something of value there was compromised almost immediately when the man asked me what the place looked like. Was it kind of triangular, next to a Lebanese restaurant? And why didn’t I drive back there myself? I replied that I’d been drinking and didn’t remember – did he want the fare or not? He shut up when I said I would pay him to drive me around until we found it.
As it happened, his original guess was spot on. The smell of gasoline mingled with the spicy tang of food as I crossed the deserted forecourt toward Jean-Luc. His head was propped up on his hand behind the glass of the night-service window, earphones in, eyes tight shut, looking dreamy. If he was listening to The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place he’d be out for a long time. I tapped gently on the glass and he did a double take: of surprise first off, followed by delight. I pushed my hand into the shallow drawer where customers put their payment and his fingertips reached out to mine before he got up to unlock the main door. He couldn’t wait that long to touch me.
‘What are you doing here?’
I couldn’t think.
He rushed me through to a small back room, answering my puzzled looks with a nod at the CCTV camera pointing at the cashier’s desk.
‘But won’t you get in trouble if they don’t see you?’
He laughed at me. ‘It’s weird enough that you turned up. It would be a coincidence if there was a robbery the same night. Besides, look. It’s dead out there.’
We were kissing hard before we fully made it into the dark and narrow space. I pushed the door to because he didn’t seem to care.
‘The next few days are going to be tricky—’ I began.
He shook his head. ‘When are you going to realise there is no other day, Alexandra? Stop worrying about yesterdays and tomorrows. When we’re together, there is only now.’
Living in the moment wouldn’t be a problem if there were more moments like these.
There was something so romantic about his brand of naïveté, if that’s what it was. Maybe he was the one who was right, with his total lack of concern for anything but the present. He stroked my face and even in the dingy surroundings those eyes scintillated with eagerness when he looked at me. His philosophy had such strong appeal: ignore the complications. Disregard the consequences. Forget everyone else and give yourself over unconditionally to doing whatever the fuck you want.
I was more of a convert than he knew. If anyone had told me I’d find myself taking a taxi across Paris to an unknown gas station to visit my lover in the dead of night, I would have thought them deranged. Doing it was more exhilarating than I could have imagined.
I shrugged off my cardigan and Jean-Luc’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I like this look,’ he said, his hands roving over my chest, searching for the edge of the shiny fabric so they could slide up underneath. He reached around me to unzip my skirt, which pooled at my feet. ‘What if you get a customer?’ I asked feebly, but he wasn’t listening.
My body arched involuntarily against some coats hanging on the wall as his hand gravitated to the wetness below. His words about being comfortable in my skin returned to me, both of us relishing my arousal. It’s a secretion so secret it doesn’t even have its own word. Women aren’t supposed to want sex like men do, but I’m no longer convinced men and women are so very different in the force of our desires.
And the epitome of that desire is wanting the other badly enough to do it in the back of a car, in a closet (which this effectively was) or against a wall, another popular fantasy I had never had. Based on our current fumblings it wasn’t surprising; everything about our bodies that was normally a perfect fit was suddenly in the wrong place. There was a lot of panting and giggling going on – we were like two clueless teenagers who’d finally made it to third base.
‘Is anyone there?’ thundered a man’s voice, accompanied by banging on the window. ‘If not, you can’t blame me for not paying!’
I groaned. I was so, so close. Jean-Luc fastened his jeans the best he could and tugged his shirt down as low as it would reach. ‘Deux secondes,’ he said. ‘Don’t go anywhere.’
For all that I was in a state of acute frustration, in a corridor that smelled of dirty mop, there was no place I’d rather be. When he returned, it worked. We needed it – this had to see us through the whole weekend until Philippe left on Monday. That reminded me why I’d come here in the middle of the night, half dressed and unkempt.
‘There’s something I have to say to you,’ I whispered, when we were decent and back out in the shop, me purchasing overpriced Coke and cookies for the sake of the CCTV film no one would ever watch unless there were to be a hold-up tonight, which there wouldn�
��t, of course. Dramatic events are rarely anticipated.
‘There’s no sound recording – you can say it,’ he said. And I did, though I had a strong feeling I was wasting my breath. I was asking more of him than I could manage myself: to stay away from what I most desired. When we were together it no longer seemed possible that what we were doing was bad. I pitied anyone who would think so, or wouldn’t have done the same if they felt this way. I was very late to it but would not now die without having experienced a hidden seam of emotion I cannot put a name to even now. The world is full of violence, injustice and tragedy; it was hard to see what could be so wrong about two people loving each other.
The truth hit me like a collision with an invisible obstacle. We weren’t just fucking for the heaven of it. I’d fallen in love with Jean-Luc. The thrill turned to panic as I sped home in another taxi, tearing across the city down boulevards slick with rain most Parisians wouldn’t know had fallen, empty and silent but for the occasional police car. The sound of sirens. I hated it even then.
Chapter Forty One
With morning came the payback for being up half the night. I ached all over, plus I had a lump on my head from bashing it repeatedly on the coat hooks, not that I had cared at the time. I had slept in and unusually it was Philippe bringing me coffee in bed.
‘No run today?’ he said. ‘You’ve been working too hard.’
He slid under the covers and buried his face in the gap between my shoulder blades as I lifted the cup to my mouth, sending scalding rivulets down my chin. I grabbed a wad of tissues from my nightstand and pressed them to my mouth to keep from snapping at him.
‘I’m going to miss you in Nice,’ he said. ‘I remember going there on my own just after Brigitte and I separated. It was a bad time.’
Poor man. Thank God he didn’t know what was happening to his second marriage. My mind cast around for a soothing response that wasn’t falsely reassuring, but ‘We’re together now’ was the best I could do, a statement of fact.
I turned in time to see Philippe’s expression transform from doleful to glad and felt the nauseating wrench I first came to know as a ten-year-old watching my mother mourn. I wasn’t sure how much of this I could blame on him anymore and there was a masochistic comfort in heaping it at my door. Guilt was never something I wanted to share. I used to cut myself no slack, even when it wasn’t all my fault.
When I’d checked Philippe’s phone again before returning to bed I saw what a lousy spy I made. There were no new texts between Nico and him but in my previous haste, I’d got his speech bubbles and hers mixed up. She didn’t call a halt to their affair – he did. And perhaps it was just a detail but it felt significant that it wasn’t my husband who’d sent a text saying I want you. His was a wrong which he’d addressed (righted would be too strong – he’d still cheated) whereas mine was ongoing, gathering pace, leading me further and further out of control.
I willed Philippe to plead that I change my mind and go to Nice with him. He didn’t. But he was after something that was part of the deal between couples. ‘You’re my wife,’ he said, before I’d even attempted to wriggle out of it. There was something odd about the emphasis but I couldn’t play it back accurately and I could hardly ask him to repeat it.
Did he say:
You’re my wife.
You’re my wife.
You’re my wife?
I guess it all comes down to the same. He liked the idea that I belonged to him, when I’d been busy discovering the kick of being my own person, the distinction between existing and living. There are days I wish I’d never found out that passion is lived in sparks, billed in gouges.
‘How long is it since we made love?’ Philippe nuzzled up against me, all needy. ‘It feels like a long time. Like I’m losing you.’
It was a long time. And I realised with a pang that he had been missing it.
‘We should make the most of this morning,’ he went on in his best seductive tones. ‘You know you won’t be in the mood at the coast and you can’t seem to say when you’re coming to Nice.’
People often say, looking back, that was the turning point, but I knew it even then. It had that decisive feel. There’d been others, but this was the very last moment we could have turned the whole thing around. Jean-Luc didn’t know I loved him – or at least I hadn’t told him – I’d been extremely slow to admit it to myself. This was the time to confess everything to my husband, unselectively, to face his hurt and anger and disgust. It would be the second of my secrets he’d have to keep from his best friend, far worse this time, since my brother’s death had no bearing on the Malavoines. Philippe’s instinct would be to avoid the shame of revealing what I had done and the pain it would cause them. Nothing would be said between them but it would be corrosive all the same. Their friendship and our marriage were at stake and this time it would be me playing rough with others’ hearts.
I couldn’t do it.
I hadn’t bathed or changed my underwear when I came home but I had washed my face and cleaned my teeth. I lowered my head and scooted down the bed, letting saliva collect in my mouth. If I couldn’t give my husband what he really wanted, he’d have to be content with second best. For him, that is, not for me.
A taste of bitter medicine was what I deserved.
Chapter Forty Two
‘But Véro won’t expect a gift,’ Philippe told me, as we approached Honfleur in the car. ‘They’re not going to be there.’
My face stiffened as he failed to slow down for the Centre Ville exit and we carried right past it, heading for the house on the coast. ‘What do you mean?’
‘They’re away. In the States, actually, Geneviève will tell you where. She has the use of the place while it’s empty.’
Geneviève’s younger sister Véronique was the only person who’d made the prospect of this weekend bearable. I’d met her several times and never failed to be amazed at how different they were; Véro had a great sense of humour and not a trace of snobbery. She and her husband had three teenage kids. And none of them was going to be around to dilute the tension. My confusion was pierced with intermittent moments of clarity which revealed my behaviour as anyone else would see it, stripped of all emotion. A mature woman with a much younger man was unusual but it wasn’t unheard of; nobody would bat an eyelash the other way around. The fact that I was married tipped the balance against me, without doubt, especially where I come from. That I was having sex with the son of my husband’s dearest friend, a good man I respected and who loved Philippe like a brother, was a fact I was unwilling to reveal to a living soul. A fairly reliable sign of knowing you’re in the wrong.
‘Take the next exit and double back to the town,’ I said, more sharply than intended. ‘If Geneviève is hosting us, we need a gift for her.’
Philippe’s knuckles flexed on the steering wheel. ‘Jesus, Alexandra! Couldn’t you have thought of this before we left? You Americans and your obsession with things,’ he muttered. He’d been pleased with his nice surprise in bed that morning and I was spoiling the atmosphere. He only resorted to Anglo-Saxon type gibes when he was extremely irritated. ‘Okay, if you insist,’ he said, braking so hard my seatbelt engaged. ‘It’ll be worth it if you lighten up.’ On the roundabout just off the highway we passed the road marked PARIS. That’s what would have made me lighten up.
We drove around the town for at least twenty minutes looking for a parking space. I would happily have spent the rest of the day wandering the narrow streets of Honfleur or sitting by the picturesque port so familiar from Impressionist paintings, with its tall historic buildings and boats reflected in the water. Some of the movement’s most celebrated artists were born in the area or enticed here by the landscape, light and camaraderie, and the souvenir vendors were not about to let anyone forget it. Philippe was less enamoured of the north coast and could never resist making unfair comparisons with the Côte d’Azur. ‘It’s chilly,’ he said, rubbing his arms when he could easily have put on a sweater, and t
hen, apparently without irony, ‘and it’s heaving with bloody Parisians!’ When I looked around the harbour bathed in weak sunshine, if anything there was a higher ratio of people wearing immaculate linen, Prada sunglasses and long faces than you’d get in the capital.
I bought some beautifully wrapped soap for Geneviève that was sold in an expensive boutique two streets from our apartment – a fact I chose not to mention – and Philippe got a bottle of brandy for Henri. They would sit up talking half the night, as they did whenever they were staying under the same roof. As Philippe’s mood brightened at the prospect of spending time with his friend, mine took a downward trajectory. He put his arm around me and suggested we get ice-cream before going back to the car, with a smile that undid me when I didn’t think there was much left to be undone. Maybe he felt bad for snapping at me or felt some sympathy with my lack of enthusiasm. He had to know I was doing this for him. Do all couples veer between feeling intensely bonded and questioning what the hell they are doing together?
We were both making compromises: I didn’t get to live in my own country and speak my own language but that was my choice, made before we met. Philippe’s compromise was being married to a foreigner who didn’t quite get France. Plus the fact it happened to be me – I could be insupportable – un-put-uppable-with – but he was fine with that.
‘It’s my brother’s anniversary today,’ I announced flatly. ‘Thirty years. It doesn’t seem possible.’ It touched me to see Philippe swallow hard as he turned to look at me, pulling me closer then releasing me as we joined the long line.
‘I wish you’d said earlier. You know what I’m like with dates.’
Paris Mon Amour Page 18
