“How’s Mommy doing, Cam?”
“She caught some fish, too. Can I talk to Grandma now?”
My heart sank. “Of course, darling. Just a second.”
I opened up my bedroom door and found my mother standing in the hallway, wringing her now oven-mitt-free hands.
“Is that my little Cam-Cam?” she asked, all brightness, reaching for the phone.
I shut myself back inside the bedroom, listening to the cadences of their talk. She was happy, my daughter. Clearly, Anne hadn’t said anything yet about our fight. Fight? It was more than that. It was a deluge.
• • •
After dinner, while my mum did the washing up, I sat in the living room with my father on a couch so old, it merited its own page in the family encyclopedia.
Orange Floral Couch, circa 1953: understuffed and sagging, this vintage lime-and-orange couch is nevertheless a persistent source of delight and comfort for the Haddon family household, especially for George Haddon, who smokes cigars in it after victorious Arsenal games. Evidence of this tradition in the form of burn holes is viewable on the northwest arm of the couch, closest to the side table, where Edna Haddon keeps a dish of salted cashews at all times.
“Sherry?” my father asked, standing by the empty bookshelf he used as a bar.
“Sure,” I said.
“You want cheese or something, Frenchie?”
I laughed. “No, Dad.” He handed me a small glass. “This is great,” I said.
“So!” he said, settling down in the recliner near the TV. “What’s new? Anne told me you had a lot of success with your last show?”
Ever gracious, Anne was faithful with the Sunday check-in calls. When her parents weren’t in Brittany, we followed the French tradition of having long lunches with them each Sunday in the Parisian suburbs, and Anne would use the time between the meal and dessert to call my family, passing the phone from Camille to me. Because it was always Anne who made the phone call, she was usually the one who presented a summary of the past week, and a glimpse of the week ahead. She was astonishingly considerate, my wife.
“Yeah, quite a few of them have sold, actually, for pretty good prices. And then I’ve got that mess,” I said, gesturing to the garage, where my car was now parked.
“I see,” went my father, as if that explained everything. “So how long will you be here?”
I reached for my glass. “Well, it depends, actually. I’m supposed to deliver the painting on Tuesday, but I’m hoping that I can move the appointment earlier, as I’m already here.”
“I thought you came because they needed it earlier?”
“Right,” I said, gulping down the drink. “But then they, eh, moved the appointment back.”
My father frowned. “I see. Well, I can’t keep up with you. And how’s Anne?”
I scratched the back of my neck. “She’s good. Tired, overworked, you know. She’s got a new case. These new mums out in Lille who didn’t know that you’re not supposed to be slogging back wine while you’re pregnant, so they’re lobbying for a massive logo of sorts, right on the bottle.”
“Are they mental?”
I almost spit out my sherry. “What?! No, Dad, they’re not mental, they’re just . . . I don’t know what they are, actually. They’re just not informed.”
We drank our sherry and listened to the clanks and plunks of my mother putting away the dishes.
“So no more kids, then?”
“Jesus,” I said, getting up to pour us more sherry.
“You know, I think we might have had another, is all I’m saying,” said my dad. “But by the time we felt like it, you were seven. Camille’s what now, five?”
“Yeah, five.”
“Well, it’s now or never, I think. My siblings, we all have a two-year difference, which is no difference, really. But then you look at your mother. Five years between her and Abigail—and they hardly talk.”
“So it’s already too late for us, is what you’re saying.”
My dad knitted his brows together. “Possibly.”
I sighed and sat back down. The sherry had warmed me, as had the stew that was still settling in my guts. I wanted at that moment to come clean to my father, to ask him for advice. After all, he’d cheated on my mother all those years ago, and although I never really understood how far it went, it had probably gone far enough for him to have an opinion on what I should do. But then my mum appeared in the doorway, wiping down a plate.
“So if you’re free tomorrow, love, I was thinking we could show you the new things they’ve done around Gadebridge? It’s really the nicest little park.”
Claiming tiredness from the long journey, I kissed my parents good night and said that rain or shine, a trip out to Gadebridge sounded very nice, indeed. And then I shut myself in my small bedroom and sat down under the Dirty Harry poster, put my head into my hands, and endured the tight throat and nasal-drip condition that heralded a cry.
It was strange—or at least, among the people we knew, it was an anomaly—that I, an only child, had married another only child. It was even odder for Anne to be an only child, and French. Proper bourgeois families, especially if religious, get up to as many as five Barbour-jacket-wearing offspring. But Anne’s mother had suffered secondary infertility when she and Alain tried to conceive after Anne’s birth. It was a taboo topic, apparently a source of profound guilt and shame, as the two of them always wanted a large family. I’d asked Anne whether her parents had ever thought about adopting, and she said her mother was for it, but her father thought it embarrassing—like parading around a banner communicating to the public what did—and couldn’t—happen in your bed.
And it’s true that Anne and I had discussed having another child, about three years ago, but Anne’s career picked up, then mine did, and we lost time basking in the fact that we were busy and successful, with a child who kept us busier still. Despite the exemplary maternity-leave benefits for women in France, I don’t think Anne was ready, or could even envision slowing down. And time passed. And I met Lisa. And even more time was lost. And now, it’s true what my dad said, a five-year difference would be a lot. And plus, impregnation seems improbable. You have to have sex for that.
Much later, unable to sleep, I padded into the living room and—against my better instincts—pulled out Anne and my wedding album from the bookshelf. This second wedding, the one the Bourigeauds insisted on, took place about a year after our first one, at their place in Saint-Briac. Although both weddings were by the seashore, that is where the similarity between the two events ends.
Seeing as how we hadn’t invited any relatives to the Cape Cod edition, our French wedding was the first time that Anne actually met my parents. My father liked her the minute he saw her, but my mother seemed uncomfortable around her, ill at ease. It happens a lot with Anne—the dark hair, her boyish hips that make her endless legs look even longer, the way she carries herself with a dancer’s posture—a lot of people peg her for a cold person before giving her a chance. It’s true that she’s choosy socially: she’s economical with her words. I can see how other people find this haughty, but the truth is that she’s shy. And although she’s good with bourgeois small talk, when it comes to keeping up with someone awkward like my mum, Anne’s at a total loss. I remember after the wedding, when I asked her what she talked about with my mother, she covered her eyes with her hands like a little girl. “Oh my God,” she said. “The weather.”
Anne was disappointed by her first encounter with my mother, and she didn’t know how to carry forth with such an outcome. Being a traditionalist, she’d hoped to get on splendidly with Mum, because that’s what daughters-in-laws did. She’d filled her head with visions of weekend visits to my parents’ and long walks with Edna, the two of them exchanging giddy little intimacies, my mother telling her an indicative story about me when I was younger, and Anne smiling a
nd saying that I hadn’t changed at all. Walking arm in arm back into the house, like queens from different countries, teasing their menfolk who would, of course, be chatting around the fire. Lunch would be prepared. We would all break into song.
Anne’s debut with my father went a great deal better. He and Anne had already spoken on the phone several times while I was still at RISD, and Anne had even sent some postcards from Cape Cod after our first wedding, sprinkled with phrases like I can’t wait to meet you and your almost-daughter, Anne. After the reception in France, my father yanked me aside and whispered, “Good God, Richard, she’s gorgeous.” He let out a faint whistle as he watched my new bride interact with his own wife on the deck. “And you know, she’ll stay that way, too. It’s in their constitution. Not like the English, God help us.” By this time, Anne had come up between the two of us and was standing at my father’s side. He threw his arms out and gave her an embrace in the French tradition, kissing her eagerly on both sides of her face, twice.
“I’m so happy for the two of you,” he exclaimed, ratcheting things up to a bear hug.
“I know!” she said, slightly crumpled. “So am I!”
It was a lovely dinner, carried out mostly in English, which Alain and Inès spoke with accents made even more attractive by the copious amounts of wine served. My parents, of course, were completely smitten by the house, and also by Anne’s family, whom they found just as warm and hospitable as could be. I remember that meal well, much better than the reception, which was a whirl of handshakes and embraces and too much white wine. I remember how happy Anne seemed to have us all together. I remember thinking, At some point, this will be us. We’ll have a child and the child will marry, maybe in this very house. And I remember feeling real love for my parents, real love for my mother in her ridiculous turquoise tunic and my father in his favorite silk bow tie, which, I knew from watching him tie it as a child, had a small hole in the back of it, near the tag.
The guests started filtering out around four in the morning, but rather incredibly, my father was still up, gesticulating over a final glass of port with Alain de Bourigeaud. I went up to the two of them, raised my glass to Alain, thanked him for the perfect night. My father suggested a stroll, just a wee walk to get the bad stuff moving through him before he called it a night.
“You two go,” said Alain, smiling. “I’m going to do a tour of the border there, make sure no one’s fallen off.”
My father tossed his arm around me, and we headed for the back of the house, toward the country road. He was heavy-footed, his arm leaden on my shoulder. It had been some time, a decade, maybe, since I’d seen him that lashed. But it was a good drunk, a joyful one, and I was glad to be there with him, glad he liked my wife. Glad that I was entering the type of family that he could be proud of.
“Ah, Richard!” he cried. “What a night. What a party! I’ll tell you something, I think she’s just great.” He chucked me under the chin with his free hand. “A little frosty in the beginning, but that’s the French in her! And God, but she is clever! But listen, son,” he said, pulling me closer as we stumbled onto the road. “She’s most terribly in love with you. You can feel it when you talk to her, it’s lovely. But listen, I want to tell you something.” He clutched my shoulder. “Listen. Don’t forget her.”
Somewhere beyond the torchlights that were still burning and the buzz of the alcohol and the music and the gorgeous guests, something inside of me wakened to this comment, wakened in the way you do from a dream that is unsettling, not right.
“What do you mean, forget her?” I asked. Behind us, I could hear cars crunching their way out of the gravel driveway and Anne’s parents crying merci and à bientôt into the dark.
“I don’t know, Rich. I’ve made some mistakes with your mum, you know. And there were times when I wanted to go off and leave, to find something better. But you know what? It doesn’t get better. If you really love her, if you really, really love her, it won’t get any better than this. But just try to remember that you do love her, you know, because it gets so easy to forget. I’d like to tell you that it’s all a romp in the hay and that you’ll never want another girl, but I know you, and of course you will, but just, just try to remember . . . okay?”
“Remember what, Dad? Why are you telling me this?”
He stumbled over a sprinkler head and grabbed on to my arm. “Richy, just remember that what you have is good. And even though you don’t think that matters, it does. Everything else comes after. And like I said, she’s French.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said, not knowing whether to thank him or fetch him aspirin. I rewired my brain to send his comments to the starboard of my cerebral cortex, where they could be harbored, and forgotten, and not ruin my night.
We made it about halfway up the road before my dad got sick. I rubbed his back as he heaved against the neighbor’s bushes.
“Good Lord,” he said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket. “I haven’t done that in years!” He turned around with a big smile. “Do we need to do something with it?”
I flinched at the celebratory pile in the dark. Then I started kicking clumps of pine needles onto it with my dress shoes until the noxious mound was out of sight.
9
I REMEMBER the moment I decided I wanted to ask Anne-Laure to be my wife. For some people, the realization probably builds gradually, but for me, I was as sure in a single moment as I was ever going to be in my life.
It was because of a toy-filled chocolate egg. It was a weekend, a warm weekend in Providence, and we were on our fourth date—except the use of the term date is anachronistic because with Anne studying in Boston, she had to come down for entire weekends at a time. In the beginning she stayed with her cousin Esther, but once I learned to be a bit handier with the mop and the broom, she started staying at my place.
It was one of those early weekends when simply being in each other’s presence could occupy us for hours, when her every gesture seemed contagious and new. Her smile contained multitudes. Her hair held constellations. The mere act of her pointing out something that she found funny struck me as a gesture of extreme import and grace.
I’d pick her up from the train station and she’d be in these outfits. Silk camisoles, silk blouses, wide-legged pants. I don’t think I saw her with her shirt untucked for months, except, of course, when we made love. And bloody hell, when that happened did the good-girl walls come down.
On that particular Sunday, she’d suggested a bike ride out to Barrington beach and promised me a picnic. We met at India Point Park and biked twelve miles until we reached our destination, an elegant, narrow stretch of rocky beach along the coast. In common Anne fashion, she had everything prepared: a blanket, towels, a small umbrella just in case, and a cooler full of treats.
In tiny jars and Tupperwares, an array of perfect things: peppered herrings, deviled eggs with paprika-spiked mayonnaise, wasabi peas, curried chicken salad, chilled grapes—all things that she had managed, in the time- and space-defying way that Anne has, to prepare in the three hours between our rendezvous at the park and the moment she’d left my bed.
And then she took out a final container of something gelatinous and yellow, grinning as she set it down.
“Pineapple Jell-O?” she said, slightly embarrassed.
I started to laugh.
“It has real pineapples in it!” she protested, pointing to the jiggling chunks. “Or, okay, canned. But still. You wait and see how well it goes with the chicken salad.”
We sat on that lovely beach as the seagulls shit around us, getting progressively sunburned, stuffed, and happy. We got sleepy on the two bottles of rosé I’d brought and fed each other grapes and hypothesized about what would have happened if Manet’s famous painting Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe had featured a naked man instead of a woman. And then she told me it was time for the real dessert.
From inside the cooler, she p
ulled out something wrapped in a cotton napkin and twine.
“Here,” she said, handing it over. “Surprise.”
I unfolded the napkin to reveal two chocolate eggs in the white-and-orange foil that had been both a reward and a catalyst for many actions in my youth.
Anne started laughing and plucked out the one she wanted. “They’re my absolute favorite,” she said. “If you get a better toy than me, though, you have to trade.”
“How in the world did you get these?” I asked, turning the famed concoction over in my hands. Kinder Surprises were famous across Europe, but in America, they’d been overtaken by the Cadbury egg, which, cream-filled though it was, did not contain the secret assembly-required toy that the Kinder version did.
She squealed when she saw what was inside hers, a tiny raccoon bandit. As for me, I got a knight with an old-time prospector’s mustache.
“What the hell,” I said. “I’ve got the down-on-his-luck version of Yosemite Sam, and you’ve got a raccoon Zorro.”
She clutched the raccoon against her chest. “Mine’s perfect,” she said with a smile so wide I felt drunker just for watching her. Dizzy with joy, I pulled her to the sand.
“I love you,” I said. It was the first time that I’d said it. She still had the raccoon bandit clutched between her fingers. “You’re ridiculous. You’re perfect.” I brushed her hair out of her face and stared into her eyes. She got me with her delight over this simple plastic toy. Got me with the care she put into the picnic, the things she’d done to transform a Sunday afternoon into a moment that would make me look at my life and realize that I wanted her with me, in it. Always.
How had I gone from those feelings—all-encompassing and complete—to growing distant from her, even taking her for granted? You love this one person, you love things about her that make her stand out from the rest. And then time passes, and she morphs into other people: warden, marshal, mother, financial partner, friend. And you lose sight of the reasons that you loved each other initially, loved each other as lovers, not as friends. Eventually, you lose sight of the extraordinary happenstances that brought you together, and it’s the bad things you start collecting like an army of plastic soldiers, ready to defend yourself against whatever’s coming next. But the good things? The finest things? The goddamn magic moments? These things start to flicker. These things, you forget.
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