I Am Having So Much Fun Without You (27 page)

“Would you put that thing down?” My mother again.

And then my voice came out strangled, almost choked.

“What do I do?” A pause in which my mother's eyes well up. “What have I done?”

More images of the television. An attractive woman was holding up a roll of toilet paper, demonstrating how thick and sturdy each individual ply was. And then the film salt-and-­peppered into nonexistence.

I sat there staring at the computer, stunned that Anne had seen this. Seen me falter, seen me blabber, seen me with my parents, my voice broken in half. And I ached to realize how much I missed them all at that moment, how alone I felt without my parents, daughter, wife. How safe it had made me feel when my mother had come over to me, had sat by me on the couch. I was remembering the feel of her hand moving in circles on my back when I heard footsteps on the stairs outside my door. My heart sped up when I recognized two pairs of feet.

There was a kerfuffle in the hallway, and then a knock again. I opened the door and found Anne standing in the hallway, holding Camille's hand.

“Sorry,” she said, “Can I come in?”

“Did you forget—” I stopped myself. “Sure.”

“Camille, love,” she said, turning. “Mommy's just going to be a second, all right? Here.” She punched the switch that started the timer for the hallway light. “Just one sec.”

I opened up the door wider and whispered, “You're just going to leave her there?”

“Leave the door open a crack,” she said. Then she pulled me behind the door, near
The Blue Bear
, where our daughter couldn't see us. “Just a second, sweetie!” she called again.

“Richard, listen,” she said, her face turning grim. “It's about . . . the dates.”

I closed my eyes. “Don't do this,” I said. “Not again. I can't.”

“No, listen, it's—” Her voice was trembling. “I
did
go out a couple times. I got a babysitter, the whole thing. I got—” She turned around nervously. “You all right, little rabbit?” she called out.

Camille yelled back, “No!”

Anne started to whisper. “And it just felt like—I tried. I really tried to. But you have to tell all these
stories
, you know? You have to explain everything and everybody, you can't just drop names, and it was just so—it was just so easy to make this buffoon fall for me, but it was also so depressing.”

“I am telling you that I can't take this,” I said, my legs going numb. “Not now. Not here.”

She took my stupid face into her hands.

“I want you to come back. Richard. I think you should come back.”

“Mommy!” Camille cried. “The lights went off! I'm scared!”

Anne turned and yanked open the door, slammed her hand against the light switch again.

“Put your arm through the door, Camille,” she said. “I'll hold your hand. But stick your finger into your other ear, though. Mom and Daddy need to talk.”

“Jesus,” I whispered. But Camille did it. Anne stayed firmly planted behind the partly opened door holding on to our daughter's tiny hand. Outside in the hall, Camille started humming.

“It's not going to be easy,” she said. “I know it. But I want you to come back.”

“You're serious,” I said, feeling my chin start to tremble. “Please tell me that you're serious.”

“I am serious,” she said. “I'm serious. But I won't be your second choice.”

I couldn't help it. I started crying. “You're not my second choice,” I choked. “You're not.”

“I don't know what will happen,” she said, looking down at the small white arm poking through the door. “But I miss you. And I miss our fucking life.”

“Mom!”
cried Camille. “The lights went off again!”

“
Goddammit
,” Anne hissed, squeezing Camille's hand. “Just a second!” With her free hand, she smoothed her hair back. “I think that this should happen tonight. Like, now.”

“Now?!” I balked. “What will we tell her?”

“I don't know. I just don't—”

“Mo-om!”

“Jesus, Cam, all right!” Anne yanked the door open. “Camille, I swear to God, I just need one more minute. Hit that switch there. I promise. Then we'll all go home.”

“I don't want to hit the light.”

“Je te jure,
Camille,
si tu ne—”

I dashed out into the hallway and hit the light for her, promising her that we needed just one more minute inside.

Then Anne closed the door behind us and pulled me toward her and kissed me, kissed me deep and right.

“There's no going back on this,” she said, her breath hot against my skin. “Forward is forward.”

“Cam's gonna need therapy for this hallway shit,” I said, kissing her above her eyebrow, on the corner of her lips. Deep inside my pants, I felt my seigneur start to rise.

“I've already got her seeing someone,” she said, prohibiting my retort with another kiss. “We'll talk about it. We've got time.”

23

THE WIDOWER
who owned my small apartment was delighted to hear that I was moving out. Instead of letting it out to the friend he had first mentioned, he was thinking of using it himself when he came back from his cruise.

“You use so much less space when you're alone,” he said over the phone. “And the bathroom! I can't believe it. A bar of soap, a tube of toothpaste. I'm like a bachelor again.”

After deciding whether or not we should pursue some kind of couples therapy (we decided not to), Anne and I tackled the question of how to announce to our families that we were staying together. Finally, we decided that if we started showing up places together, they'd figure it out. It wasn't their business, really, as long as we knew what we were doing. We were back together again. Living in the same house. Quarreling over the fact that I'd brought back unsalted butter from the store instead of salted. What other ending could they want?

Explaining things to Camille was another matter altogether. We admitted to her that we'd been having some problems, but that we'd worked them out together, that that's what grown-
ups did. I still worry that my departure and reappearance will lead her to think that marriage is expandable—that it ebbs and flows over time, with the principal characters coming and going as they please. But how can you tell the truth, the real truth, to a five-year-old? Expandable is exactly what a marriage is. If you refuse the possibility that bad things might happen, a marriage cannot survive.

It isn't easy. Neither of us is joyful every day, but there is an equilibrium and a rightness that has returned to our lives—the sense that we are doing exactly what we are supposed to be doing, and together. And though it would be a lie to say that we've had an about-face in the bedroom, there is an openness between us now that makes our coming togethers feel like the truest version of love—love in all its tenderness, its frustration, and the realization that despite its shortcomings, this place, with this person, is the place we're meant to be.

I never found out if Anne actually slept with the person she'd been seeing, nor if it had been Thomas, and it's possible that I never will. Sometime after I moved back into the house, she admitted that he'd been transferred back to Luxembourg, but that's all that she will say about it, and over time, I've realized that that has to be enough.

Composed and faultless from the outside, Anne-Laure has a reserve of lust and strength and anger that I rarely see, but it is there, and it makes her capable of hiding things from me. When we've made love lately, I've noticed a lack of self-consciousness in her that I haven't seen in a long while, and it makes me think that something
did
happen with that person, whoever he may be. Little things—the way she'll touch her breasts when she's on top of me, the veil of sweat she no longer wipes from her brow. She acts noticed and beautiful, and it makes me think they fucked. It makes me think that she spent time—or maybe
just a moment—with someone who took time to appreciate her body, who truly found her beautiful, who made her feel powerful and feminine and mysterious again.

And I can't let it matter. Because in the end, it doesn't. If I let it matter, we'll fall back into a cycle of resentment and claustrophobia again. I love her. I love her deeply. We are in this for the long haul. It isn't always going to be pretty, and we will fall again—somewhere down the road, one of us is going to mess up. It might not be with another person—it might not be an affair—but there will be a hurdle. A reckoning. And a making up.

Because in the end, that's why some of us stupid humans get married. Because we know that we can lose each other, and find each other again. Because we're capable of forgiveness. Or at least, we
think
we are. I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself if I had been in Anne's position. And the fact that she had the courage to bring us back together makes me love her, and our small family, and our future even more.

 • • •

At the end of May,
WarWash
sold to a German publishing magnate who spent a lot of time in Paris. Anne went to retrial with her winemakers, and they lost. In two years' time, all our favorite bottles would have swollen lady bellies on them.

We'd resumed our Sunday lunches with the Bourigeauds, but only once a month. Although it appeared to be true that Alain's opinion of me hadn't shifted much either way, I'd lost face with Inès. I was in a sentimental meritocracy. I had to prove myself worthy before she was ready to have me back.

As for
The Blue Bear
, it spent most of the early summer propped up against our dining room wall. It was both a comfort and a hindrance, but every time we started to talk about where we could put it, no place seemed right. It carried history with
it now, and not all of it was good. It was much too loaded an object to put in our bedroom, and Camille had long ago abandoned any desire to have it back in her room, which was currently covered with glow-in-the-dark posters of constellations, her latest obsession. The living room didn't feel like the right place for it, and we agreed that if it were in the dining room, every time we had people over, it would invite their questions.
The Blue Bear
had reverted to what it originally had been, a private link between Anne and me, difficult to explain but completely comprehensible to us both.

But it couldn't very well sit against the wall forever, and it seemed like a step in the wrong direction to store it in the basement once again. On our eighth wedding anniversary, Anne told me she had a solution. She also told me that it would require quite a bit of trust.

“It's ours now, right?” she asked. “To do with as we please? You have papers to prove that?”

I said yes, excited. She was on the fringe of lawyer-speak, which meant that she was planning something potentially unlawful. She'd hired a babysitter for Camille and told me that we were going out to lunch, but that first she needed—we needed—to drop something off. And that I should wear sneakers, be prepared for a long walk.

By 11 a.m., we were on the sidewalk with
The Blue Bear
strapped haphazardly to a luggage dolly. Somewhat bluntly, Anne announced that we had to push it toward the Seine.

“This is our anniversary present? You're throwing it in the river?”

She shook her head. “Come on.”

We pushed our way up the Rue de la Tombe-Issoire, which was harder than I thought, what with the dolly wheels spinning out every which way on the bumpy sidewalk. We went by
the grim medical buildings around the Port Royal RER station where the scenery eventually gave way to smaller buildings and shops with roasted chickens in the windows and wicker baskets of fruit.

We passed parks where tiny children pushed plastic objects through playgrounds, watched by grandparents shooing pigeons from their charges. Young people on bicycles rolled merrily through puddles and a public bus pulled up to a corner and yawned, its passengers descending in a small parade of tweed. We walked on through the fourteenth into the sixth, pushing for a while, pausing to talk, with me more amused than nervous as to where our walk would take us. I was glad to just be near my wife, to be taking in various sights and happenings that we could discuss over lunch. As for the painting, I trusted her. Whatever destination she had picked for it, whatever kind of celebration, would be right.

After nearly an hour, we reached the Seine. Without speaking, Anne indicated that we should cross in front of the Institut de France, where they decided which words would enter the French lexicon each year, and push across the Quai de Conti to the Pont des Arts. The metal footbridge that led directly to the Louvre had chain-link guardrails that were covered—garroted, really—by thousands of padlocks. Lovers, tourists mainly, came to this spot to commemorate their devotion by writing their names on a padlock and locking it to the bridge. This tradition, which had gained popularity in recent years, had offered much-needed diversification to the illegal immigrants selling miniature Eiffel Towers along the river. Now the entrance to the bridge was lined with men selling various-size padlocks, some as small as the lock on a child's diary, others as big as one's hand.

“Okay,” said Anne, wiping a little bit of sweat from her forehead. “We're here.”

I looked at the tourists taking photos, at the young people bent down in front of the cavalcade of locks to inspect the messages written on them.

“I'm okay if you want to be rid of it, but I don't think I can handle throwing it into the river,” I said.

She gestured for me to help her get it over the steps. “We're not.”

Once we got the thing to the middle of the bridge, Anne pushed it to the side and leaned against the railing, taking time to admire the domino view of bridges beyond bridges, white arcs across the Seine.

A man in a brightly patterned tunic approached and asked if we wanted to buy a lock.

“No thanks,” Anne said, grinning. “We've got one.”

I waited until he approached the couple next to us to speak. “You crazy little donkey,” I said. “You just want to leave it?”

She nodded, grinning wide.

“That's the plan?” I asked. “This is our lock?”

She smirked. “Too sentimental?”

“No,” I said, basking in our closeness. “It's right.”

I looked around at all the people on the Pont des Arts. There had to be at least fifty, maybe more.

“Won't someone chase after us or something?”

“I've put some thought into that,” she said, pulling a sheet of paper from her bag. She held it up for me. In typed letters, it read
GRATUIT, VRAIMENT
.

“Free. Really,” I repeated.

She reached for my hand. “Are you okay with this?”

“I absolutely am.”

We stood there in silence for a while, watching the couples holding out their cameras with one hand to take a photo of themselves on the bridge, the tourists running their fingers along
the different locks. Blue ones, gold ones, plastic-coated, plated, initials scrawled in permanent marker, in white correction fluid, some bearing no names at all. In the pink light reflecting off the sprawling Louvre, with the play of the river and the sun, the locks looked like a massive school of fish, happy to be exactly where they were, planning to swim nowhere. All their traveling done.

“Do you know what people do with the keys after they've locked their locks?” Anne asked, trailing her fingers along the painting's edge.

“They keep them,” I said, turning my face into the sun.

“Nope,” she said. “They throw them in the Seine.”

I had a sudden vision of hundreds of keys, covered with algae and plankton, anchored there by whatever wish had been whispered before they had been tossed. “So, artist,” Anne said, her head tilted. “Should we see the dear boy off?”

Together, we undid the security cord and lifted the painting off the dolly.

“Jesus,” I said. “I'm nervous.”

“I know.” She giggled. “I am, too.”

“Do we run away after, or what? Will someone call the cops?”

“I don't think so,” she said. “We'll just go. Although I want to keep the dolly. I use it all the time when—”

“Hey, Esquire,” I said “Let's keep it romantic.”

She laughed and agreed that I was right, and then I admitted that it
had
been
kind of useful for moving large things in the past, and so yes, why not, we'd extricate the dolly.

This bit of business settled, we reached for each other's hand and stared at our big painting.

“Okay,” she said solemnly. “Good-bye.”

Just behind us, near the steps where the lock sellers gathered, we saw a gendarme giving the illegal vendors a hard time.

“Uh-oh,” Anne whispered. “Let's make a break for it. You'll push?”

I nodded, too happy to speak.

“Okay,” she said. “On the count of three. One.”

I took my position right behind the empty cart.

“Two!”

I put my hands onto the push pads, and watched her bend her knees.

“Three!
Go!
”

Deliriously, ridiculously, we pushed our way forward, past the tourists, past the teenage lovers, past the vendors hurriedly gathering up their forbidden wares. We scurried down the steps on the right bank and dashed across the street with our unruly dolly, causing cars to honk and drivers to curse. At the perimeter of the Louvre, we crossed the street again, moving quickly toward a square just outside a church.

“Down there,” said Anne, pointing toward a small street that ran perpendicular to the park. “Come on!”

Before I turned to run again, I checked to see if there was anyone chasing after us to say that we didn't have the right to do what we had done. There wasn't anyone behind us. There wasn't anyone. On that blue day, that perfect day, our new day in Paris, we were free to carry on.