I Am Having So Much Fun Without You (15 page)

“I literally can't handle this,” said Anne.

“Yeah, Inès,” I said. “Although we appreciate—”

“Oh, don't you start also,” Inès said. “It's just the three of us, that blockhead isn't here. Listen to me.” She grabbed Anne's hand again. “Your father was discreet about it, but he saw elsewhere, also. And for the first two times, I wouldn't let him touch me, but—”

“He cheated on you
twice
?” said Anne, aghast.

“For certain, yes. There might have been— Listen. The important thing is that I was suffering, too. You don't get anywhere by being withholding.”

“You can't be serious,” said Anne, her eyes blazing. For a second, her gaze met mine. She was outraged, indignant. I wanted to take her side.

“The thing is,” her mom continued. “What I want to say is that it's when you let others disrupt your intimacy that those
other people become important. They take on a dimension that they might not otherwise have if—”

“Please stop it,
maman
,” Anne said. “Just stop.” She got up from her chair and walked over to the window, where she traced her finger slowly along the sill.

I swallowed hard, caught between my urge to go to Anne and the feeling that I should remain there in the doghouse, prisoner to her mother's reactionary talk.

“I'm not saying this to hurt you,” continued Inès. “It's from experience. I want to help.”

“By what, implying that I don't give it enough to my husband? That if I just made him happier in—”

“Anne,” I said weakly.

“That's not what I'm saying,” said Inès, frowning. “What I'm saying is that even though it seems like the hardest bridge to cross, you have to cross it. Otherwise, you're just friends.”

“No shit,” said Anne.

Inès closed her eyes and put her hands on the table.

“You two,” she said. “You two have to make it. You have a daughter. You've always been fine! And just the fact that you shared this with us makes me think that—”

“Well, I regret that,” snapped Anne. “He's not even supposed to be here! He just . . . he just showed up! I don't know,” she said, gazing out the window. “I'm drunk.”

“You're not drunk,” I said quietly. I know Anne-Laure. The little girl in her needed her parents to know.

“I know it's none of my business,” Inès said, putting Anne's half-touched plate on top of her own. “But I think you should stay, Richard. I think the two of you should go away. One day. Two days. I'm imagining this story with the gallery, it's all rubbish?”

I nodded. She continued: “We'll watch Camille, we'll give you all the time you need.” She looked across the table at me kindly. Her eyes seemed to say,
Go to her, comfort her,
get the damn girl back
. But I was frightened. Incompetent. I felt rushed through with despair.

“I'll go up with Camille now,” her mom said softly. “See if I can read to her, get her to nap. And I'll send that fool out golfing. Take all the time you want. Darling, whatever you need, we're here.”

Anne wrapped her arms around herself. She was still staring out the window, but I could see from her profile that her cheeks were wet with new tears.

“Thank you,” I mouthed to Inès. I had a strong urge to put my hand over my heart.

Inès tilted her head and looked at me with both gentleness and pity.

“Please, Richard,” she said, nearly whispering. “Please work it out.”

When Inès left, I got up and went to my wife. I looked at the curve of her small shoulders beneath the flowered fabric of her tunic, her fingers wrapped around her elbows. I put my hand on her shoulder. She started to cry.

“Chérie,”
I said.

“I'm sorry.” She wiped roughly at her face with her shirtsleeve. “It just came out. Not that they fucking
care.
”

“It's out now,” I said. “It's okay.”

She cocked her head to look at me with disbelieving eyes.

“Right,” I countered. “It's not
okay
, but I understand why you told them. It's—” I couldn't summarize the what-next of my in-laws knowing that I'd cheated.

“My fucking father,” she said, swallowing. “He's probably
proud
of you, I swear it.”

“I'm sure he wants me dead.”

“
Non!
He's up there in his stupid club chair like, That guy's a real man! And my mother! Who talks like that? They're robots. They're just . . . my mom treats it like math!”

“Did you know?” I asked. “About your dad?”

She pulled away from me so that my hand fell to my side. “I don't know. Maybe? But to have her come out and just say it like that, like it was nothing, I just . . .” Her eyes welled up again. She turned back toward the window.

“It's okay,” I said, wishing I could hold her. “It's all right.”

“No, it's fucking
not
, and you know it. As if I didn't have enough to—” She fell silent. “I don't know why I did that. Fuck.”

I looked out the window at the turquoise sea, wishing that she hadn't said it, certainly, but nothing was her fault. Regardless of what she'd said or hadn't said, this was all on me.

She turned around again. “You still have to go, Richard. You still have to. Things are even worse now. But I can handle them by myself. With you here, and my father . . .” She shook her head.

It took a certain amount of courage to manage my suggestion. “And what if,” I attempted, “we both went back?”

“Don't shift things,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “Don't. Maybe I'll leave Camille with them and go somewhere myself.”

“I still feel that if we could go somewhere, if we had the time to—”

“What, so like my mom says, we get back on that horse? Some romantic inn somewhere? With a complimentary breakfast?” She walked back to the table.

“That's not what I'm saying. To talk through things. To . . . talk.”

“I don't want to talk to anyone right now,” she said, starting to stack plates. “I want to disappear.”

“We're not going to get through this if we're not together.”

She looked at me, incredulous. “Together,” she replied.
“Right. You were in London, I haven't even dealt with that yet. London. It's too much.”

“If we could just get out of this house together. Even for a walk?”

“A walk? And what, a decaf? Will that make everything all better? Excuse
me
if I actually have feelings, if I can't just chinny-chin up. Excuse me for being fucking heartbroken. I'm sure that makes things tough.”

“I don't want to leave you,” I said, moving close to her again.

Her pupils darkened before my eyes. I knew her answer before she said it.

“You already did.”

14

AND SO
I left. Left with a four-foot piece of subpar folk art as my only companion, no declaration of love professed, no chance to explain what I'd intended to communicate by trying to get
The Blue Bear
back. Left. Right. Left.

It seemed impossible to find a happy ending. With her parents knowing about my affair now, all of the worst-case scenarios I played in my head ended in divorce. Regardless of what Anne wanted to do in her heart, the knowledge that her beloved parents' opinion of me had shifted would compel her to bring things to an end.

Would things have been different if I'd managed to get back the painting? Anne was a sentimentalist at heart—if she'd come down that gravel path and found me with
The Blue Bear
strapped to the Peugeot, would she have run to me, called me a scoundrel, and kissed my aching lips? Would I have picked her up and twirled her around in the midafternoon sunshine and maybe one of her high heels would have fallen off and we would have laughed about it and everything would have been all tickety-boo, like in the films?

Probably not. But at the same time,
yes
. During the four-hour drive back to Paris, I needed a punching bag, and Dave and Dan were it. If they'd let me have my stupid painting back, maybe instead of being on the A13 back to Paris, I'd be at my in-laws', still.

I had another problem, and it resided in my phone. Between the time that I'd texted Julien that I was setting out to retrieve
The Blue Bear
and the current hour, I had eight missed phone calls from him and a cascade of text messages that started off concerned and quickly escalated into capitalized tirades:
U BETTER FUCKING CALL ME!

When I finally made it back to Paris, our house loomed dark before me like another person I had wronged. Once inside, I turned some lights on and checked under the sink. Even though I remembered taking out the rubbish and recycling before we left for Brittany, the house was filled with the sickening odor of old trash.

Right when I was moving Ngendo from one corner of the living room to another, trying to figure out where she looked “best,” my cell phone started ringing. It was most likely Julien, but it could also be Anne. Anne reconsidering. Saying she, too, was coming back.

Instead, it was my father. Having worried enough people that day, I picked up the phone.

“Richard,” he said. “It's Dad.”

He wasn't hip to the soothsaying abilities of modern telecommunications. “Dad,” I said. “I know.”

“We were just wondering . . . where are you?”

“I'm home,” I said, sinking to the couch. “In Paris.”

“Oh,” said my father, his voice descending into disappointment. “I see.”

“Yeah, no, it didn't go as I had planned. We had lunch,
and then she told her parents. Right at the table. You know, about . . .”

“Oh. My.”

“Right, so. I'm in Paris, and she's there.” I pulled open my duffel bag and turned the camcorder over in my hands.

“There's nothing I can do, probably?”

“Thanks. But, yeah. No.”

“Well, the important thing, if you'll permit me . . . is making sure she realizes that the other person, whoever she was, was a mistake. Was just a . . . Or maybe that won't work. I guess it's different with everyone.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I'm fucked.”

“Well, I guess you just call us, if there's anything we can do, Rich. Your mum's upset.”

“You told her?”

Silence. “Yes?”

I leaned back and stared at the ceiling. This was giving a whole new meaning to the term
family affair
.

“Thanks, Dad. I think I'm just going to knock off. It's been a long day.”

“You call us, whenever. We're thinking of you both.”

A siren cut through the line somewhere in the background near my father's house. I hung up and stared at the ceiling again, where there was a crack developing to the right of the light fixture, so small it was nearly imperceptible. I'd never noticed it before. But it was there.

After snacking on some mushy crackers from the pantry, I started watching the interview I'd done with my parents, but it made me too sad. I was gut-punched by their ease with each other. That was what struck me, watching the footage now that I was back in Paris. Their sense of humor. That was the downturn,
I think. The dark place on the time line. The point at which Anne and I stopped making each other laugh.

I drifted off to sleep that night with memories of Anne-Laure and me that summer on the Cape when she was pregnant, when we didn't know where we were going, and we didn't care. When it was a luxury to simply wake up together and burn toast in the toaster, to cram our toes into the sand. To talk about the maybes. All those million, jillion flecks of sand. And now? Beneath those possibilities, eyeless, hairless creatures with throbbing pink insides. Everything rotting and rising up beneath us. To drown, to drown seemed best.

 • • •

The next morning, I was woken up by the ringing landline. I rolled over and fumbled for the telephone, my eyes still shut.

“Hello?”

“Richard! Jesus, finally! Where are you?”

“What?” I said, my mind working in small movements. Julien. Calling me. Here.

“I mean, what the hell took you so long? I've been calling you nonstop.”

I rubbed my face. “Yeah?”

“
‘Yeah'?
You fucker! You can't just go barging into people's houses because you've had a change of heart! I could get
sued
, Richard. What were you thinking?”

“First of all,” I said, sitting up, “you have to understand that these two guys aren't like us. I thought they'd understand.”

Julien made an exasperated sound into the phone. “Can you just tell me—what happened?”

“They wouldn't give it back.”

“Please tell me you didn't do anything stupid. You didn't, I don't know, fight, or break anything?”

“Jesus. No.”

“So everything was all right?”

“Lovely. They gave me an African fertility sculpture instead. Oh, and my marriage is fucked.”

“A what? Wait, what?”

“Her name is Ngendo. She's got blue breasts.”

“I don't understand. Did you buy it? And I'm sorry about your—”

“No, it was a gift, actually.”

“So, no money exchanged hands.”

“No. Unfortunately.”

“And you didn't threaten them.”

“No, I'd say it was the opposite, actually. I was given some kind of a tea with a small baby inside.”

“What? No, you know, don't answer. You need to come by so we can sort this all out. I'm going to have to send out some kind of notarized letter of apology. I just can't—I just don't understand what you were thinking.”

“I needed it back. I needed it for Anne. I thought that it might help us.”

He let out a trough's worth of disbelieving clucks. “For a man that's had little to no experience with women, I sure understand a lot more about them than you.”

“I
am
sorry,” I said, pulling the comforter up. “Really.”

“Just don't
do
anything else, Richard. Without running it by me.”

“I thought I'd have a morning poo now, J, is that all right?”

In lieu of a reply, he hung up.

I got out of bed and stretched my arms. My back was in pretzel knots from the previous day's drives. I went into the bathroom and splashed water on my face and had a mouth full of Winterfresh when the phone rang again.

“I'm brushing my teeth now, do you need to know that also?”

On the other end, silence.

“Julien?”

“No. It's Anne.”

My stomach clenched. “Oh, hey! Hi there! I literally just hung up with Julien, that's why . . . he was very . . . I'm in hot water with him about trying to get the painting, because I hadn't told him.”

“Richard,” she said. “I have a problem. I'm coming back.”

Winterfresh, how you carry me on your minted arms of grace! She was coming back to me, my little donkey. Love lift me up on high!

“That's great!”

“I said I had a
problem
,” she huffed into the phone. “It's my case. Things have exploded.”

I willed myself to take some time before I spoke. I needed to be the one she turned to. A confidant, again.

“What happened? What's going on?”

She remained quiet for a while. “Well, to start with, the president of the Auchan supermarket chain was caught with all this correspondence saying that the Lille women were a bunch of dimwits. He called them sluts.”

“Oh, shit.”

“In writing. I mean, in a
fax
! In a company correspondence to the wine departments of all the different chains. It's . . .” She composed herself. “And then, over the weekend it appears like Guigou has taken their side.”

“Wait, what? The Minister of Health?”

“Apparently, she's got some communiqué ready saying that lack of information is a disservice to consumers and that she
will do everything necessary to secure the future of women's health because our future relies on women,
et patati et patata.
”

“Shit,” I repeated.

“Right. Deep, deep shit. So I've been called back to Paris. We have to beef up the defense.”

Don't be excited about this, Richard, I coached myself. She's distressed.

“I'm sorry to hear that,” I said. “I know how much you need this vacation.”

“No,” she said. “You're delighted. I can hear it.”

I swallowed. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Yes,” she said. “Actually. My parents are going to look after Camille and drive her back at the end of vacation so that she can stay and have a nice time. But our offices are being painted. They planned to do it over the vacation break. So I'll have to work from the house.”

“I'll stay out of your way. Whatever you need.”

“No, listen, there will be people with me. We need to—this is going to be like a round-the-clock thing. So I need . . .” She faltered. “We have—we have a lot to fucking
talk
about, Richard. But this week, this needs to be my focus. I need you to give me peace.”

I grabbed a fistful of comforter and twisted it in my hand. “Are you saying . . . do you want me to go to a hotel?”

“I don't know,” she said. “I mean, yes, obviously, but the thing is, I don't want my colleagues thinking anything is . . . wrong, you know? I just want—” She fell silent. “Listen, I'm going to leave right after breakfast. So we'll see when I get home.”

I released my grip on the comforter. “Okay,” I said. “Can I make us lunch?”

Silence. Again.

“I don't know,” she said finally. “No. I'll grab a sandwich. Just . . . I'm going to need to pretend like you're not there, Richard. Otherwise I won't get through this.”

I told her to drive safely, and she said she'd see me soon. “Soon” I could work with. “Soon” got me out of bed.