Five Women (32 page)

“France is full of French people,” Gara said mildly. “Why Lucie?”

“What is this about Lucie?” Carl said. “She's just a girl who works for me. People always take their staff with them when they relocate.”

“But what about your son?”

“What about him?”

“I thought he was going to help you.”

“He is. He does.”

“Then when did you decide to take her?” Gara asked, carefully keeping her tone very neutral.

“I don't know. What difference does it make?”

“I just think it's odd you didn't mention it.”

“Honey, there are many things about business I don't tell you,” Carl said, sounding very irritated. The way he said “honey” was more like name-calling than an endearment. “I have a lot of financial problems and things on my mind.”

“I wish you would share them with me.”

“I do,” he said.

“Don't get upset,” Gara said. “I'm on your side.”

“Then act like it.”

“I am.” There was a silence. “I'm sorry,” Gara said, feeling foolish and guilty for being so annoyingly jealous. She wished for an instant that she could be Lucie: young, admiring, following the older man to make her future career, her whole life ahead of her. Lucie going out with young Frenchmen, smoking cigarettes, drinking in cafes, getting laid, not worrying about cellulite. And underpaid, insecure, worrying about AIDS, all the bad things about being young . . .

“It's just that I miss you so much,” Gara said.

“I miss you, too.”

“And I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too. I'll see you soon.”

As it turned out, it was Carl who came to New York for Thanksgiving, but only for three days. He didn't tell her he was leaving so soon until he had already arrived, and by then it was too late for her to try to rush back with him for a mere two days. He spent a lot of time on the phone, and they made love only once, and perfunctorily. They had Thanksgiving dinner at Jane's apartment with Jane and her husband and Jane's two children from her first marriage and their dates, and Jane's sisters and their husbands and children. Looking at all these contented people, Gara found it difficult to be joyful about her own life or to find thanks in her heart for anything but friends and food. She supposed that should be more than enough when other people didn't have even that, but she also felt Carl had ruined their eagerly anticipated holiday by cutting it so short and acting so distant.

There were so few holidays. Christmas would be here soon. Christmas would be four months since he had left, and so far they had seen each other only twice. At this rate they would be seeing each other six times a year. They should be taking turns visiting one another, but she hadn't even been to see him yet.

“For Christmas and New Year's let's all go to the Swiss Alps!” Jane said. “Eliot, don't you think you could manage that? Gara, you and Carl come with us. The advantage of living in Paris is it's so close to all those great things in Europe. We'll rent a house. A cheap one, and we'll all share.”

“What about it?” Jane's husband, Eliot, said to them, looking interested.

“We'll see,” Carl said.

Gara was sure that meant no.

What was she to think about a marriage in which they saw so little of each other? Was this just the way it was in the beginning when Carl was trying to get on his feet, or would things get worse? That night when they got home she and Carl had a fight, instigated by her, which ended with her in tears and him angry. The next morning she apologized and they made up, because they had so little time together. And then he was gone, with nothing decided, nothing promised, everything still on hold.

The next day Gara went out and bought a Supersaver plane ticket to Paris for Christmas week. When Carl called her she told him.

“But what if I come to New York that week?” Carl protested.

“Everything will be closed in New York,” Gara told him firmly. “You can't do any business. I want to be with you in Paris for Christmas and New Year's. It will be romantic and fun.”

“But . . .”

“My plane tickets were a bargain and they're nonrefundable. What you have to do is make hotel reservations at some little place for us, you pick it. Unless Cary is gone, and then we can stay at his apartment.”

“Oh, you don't want to stay there,” Carl said. “It's not civilized enough for you.”

“Then get us a
pension.”

“They'll be full.”

“Not in the winter they won't. Don't you want me to come?”

“Of course I do,” Carl said.

“Then I'm coming,” Gara said cheerily, trying to make it sound like the adventure they had pretended it would be . . . or she had pretended to herself it would be. “We'll buy each other Christmas presents when we're there, and we'll have a wonderful time.”

After they hung up she cried again. There was only one reason she could think of why her husband didn't want her to be with him, and that was because he would rather be with someone else.

That night Gara couldn't sleep, and finally gave up and watched the clock. She had often told her patients when they were trying to figure out whether or not their spouse was cheating on them that if you have an instinct about someone you know that well, then you're probably right. Now she had to give that advice to herself, but she prayed that this time she was wrong and that there was a good excuse for Carl's behavior. She felt it was a fruitless prayer. When it was three a.m. in Paris she called Cary's apartment.

Cary answered, sounding as if she had awakened him, which was what she had intended to do. She was sorry about that, but it was the only way she could also wake up Carl—if in fact he was even there—and set her mind at rest. “I need to talk to your father,” she said.

“Gara?”

“Yes.”

“I'll see if he's here.” He came back. “I guess he went out.”

“Where is he?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, is he coming back?”

“Yes, I'll tell him you called. Is everything all right?”

“It's fine. I'm sorry I woke you up. I forgot how late it is there.”

“That's all right,” he said. “Goodnight.”

After she hung up Gara sat there for a long time thinking. There is still something not right here, she thought. What is Carl doing sharing a tiny one-bedroom apartment with his thirty-year-old son who supposedly has a girlfriend and is never there but was certainly there tonight? He and Cary were never even that close. And could Carl possibly be out this late with clients? He never did that at home. As far as she knew he never even did it on business trips. So now the new Carl is a night owl, unless he's peacefully asleep somewhere else, with someone else.

Merry Christmas, she thought bitterly. Happy New Year. I just hope it isn't Lucie, because that would mean it's been going on longer than I ever would have believed.

Gara packed her nicest clothes for Paris, although her heart wasn't in it. She felt as if she was going to a funeral. Carl called to tell her he had reserved a room for them at the little Hôtel Lenox on the Left Bank, not far from his new gallery. He also told her Paris was cold and damp, and to bring warm things to wear. At a previous time in their lives that would have seemed romantic, but now it was only inconvenient.

He met her at the Orly airport on a chilly morning under a lowering white sky that seemed as unfriendly as he was. He had a little French car now, another thing he had neglected to mention. They drove to the hotel and he told her he would wait in the bar and have coffee while she unpacked because their room was too small, that she should take her time. What might have been considerate seemed distant instead. Gara was acutely conscious that although they hadn't seen each other for a month Carl hadn't even kissed her hello. He had every sign of a husband who is having an affair and is guilty and resentful. When she was putting away her clothes she noticed that he had brought only one change of clothing with him, and thought it was odd. Of course, Cary's apartment, where Carl was supposedly living, was not far away, so he could always get more, but it made her feel even more temporary than ever.

She unpacked and went downstairs to join him at the bar where they were still serving breakfast. The large comfortable chairs were far apart and the place was nearly empty anyway, which was almost as good as being alone. They drank cafe au lait neither of them wanted and looked at each other with inscrutable faces.

“Is it Lucie?” Gara said.

He reddened. “Is what Lucie?”

“The woman you're having an affair with. You can't fool me, I know you too well.”

“None of this has anything to do with her,” Carl said.

“Where are you really living?”

“Paris, I guess.”

“I mean, where in Paris are you living, Carl?”

He looked at his hands, front and back, as if he had not seen them lately and was surprised to see them still attached to him. Then he looked at her. “I want a divorce,” he said.

Her heart banged in her chest. Her throat felt as if she had swallowed ice. She had been expecting a confession, but not this. She realized she had been ready to let him have his fling and get over it. But now all she could do was stare at him, devastated, and ask, “Why?”

“I wish I still loved you the way I did in the beginning,” he said, “but I don't.”

Why did he have to say that? All she could do was fight for him in the best way she knew how. “You're not supposed to,” Gara said. “You don't have to. Things change. We love each other in a different way. You always say you love me. You must love me in some way.”

“I do,” Carl said. “Like a friend.”

He was twisting her soul and destroying everything she had believed in—that they were special, that they were above all this, blessed and charmed. “Couples go through these crises,” Gara said.

“Don't use your professional voice on me, Gara.”

“You've never heard my professional voice.”

“I don't want to be married anymore,” he said.

“Not married, or not married to me?”

He hesitated for an instant. “Both.”

She wondered if bursting into tears would help, but she was still too stunned to cry. Some survival instinct held her calm, but she was aware that her nails had been digging into her chair. A divorce? Just like that? Twenty happy years gone, forgotten? Maybe those years weren't as happy as she had always thought, but she couldn't believe that. At most only the past year had been bad.

“We need to have a separation,” she said, in that same neutral voice she had found herself using more and more with him lately. “Not just this, where you sneak off and lie to me, but a separation with ground rules and an understanding that you're going through a period where you're trying to find yourself, and that I'm giving you enough time to get over this thing with Lucie or whoever you're living with. I'm willing to let it run its course. It will, you know. The other woman is the key that opened the door to your married life and let you out to freedom. But we weren't unhappy enough or bored enough for you to want to be married to her instead of to me.”

“Don't blame it on Lucie,” Carl said. “She's just a little girl.”

So it was her, after all. “She's twenty-eight,” Gara said. “That's not a little girl.”

“But she's like one. She needs me.”

“Of course she does. For a while. I see older men with much younger women in my practice all the time. They get married and then soon she's cheating on him with a man her own age. Then he comes to me to find out what happened.”

“It's not your fault either,” Carl said.

“Thank you. Just tell me, did I nag you or complain too much? The other things, like getting older, I couldn't help.”

“You never nagged or complained.”

“But I did get older.” She heard her voice crack.

“So did I,” Carl said. “You're still a beautiful woman, a wonderful person. But as you said, things change. I changed.”

“I can change too,” Gara said. “What do you want me to be?” As soon as she said it she regretted it, because she knew she wasn't what he wanted, changed or not.

“Don't change anything,” Carl said. “You always think you have to be perfect. You're fine the way you are. I just can't be with you anymore.”

How civilized they were being, when each of them knew they had the power to hurt, maim, and kill the other. But then she thought: He already has killed me.

They sat there in the bar, afraid to go up to the room, talking quietly, neatly clearing up the shards of their shattered marriage, making plans while the waiters cleared away the breakfast things and set the tables up for drinks. Carl agreed to separate informally for a year and see what happened, but only, he added, because they could get a no-fault divorce in New York after a year. He said he didn't want to be unreasonable about any of the things that belonged to them. He already had his art, and since Gara would probably want to stay in their rent-stabilized New York apartment he wouldn't try to take any of the furniture. He wanted only the rest of the art that was in both of his galleries and in storage, and he would give her the beach house in return. He said she could have the paintings that he had left behind in their apartment if she wanted them, and she said that she did. She knew he was taking too much, but she was too confused and numb to be vindictive.

There was no question of her going to see his new gallery now. Lucie would be there, and Gara never wanted to set eyes on Lucie again. Carl said he had to go back to work, that she should try to rest since she was jet lagged, and they could have dinner together with Cary that night. He had made reservations, he told her, at a nice brasserie he thought she would like.