Authors: Christine Sneed
“I’m not sure,” I said softly, stepping away. “I missed you too.” I paused. “I’m so glad you like my paintings. That means a lot.”
He searched my face. “Jayne, if you move back, you could think about moving in with me.”
I took another step back. “What?” I said. I could sense two women a few feet to my left turning to look at us, but I kept my eyes on Colin.
“If you wanted to,” he said.
“Thank you,” I murmured, unable to think of anything else to say. I wondered if he’d been drinking, but I couldn’t smell any alcohol on him.
“I mean it,” he said. “I wanted to wait until we were alone to ask you, but I was so happy to see you that I couldn’t keep it to myself.”
I looked up at his earnest, clean-shaven face. I could hear people talking and laughing all around us. I was afraid to look for Laurent. By now he must have noticed that I was standing with Colin. “Yes, let’s talk about it when we’re alone,” I said.
“I’m sorry to put you on the spot here,” he said, contrite. “Tonight of all nights.”
“It’s okay. I’m really flattered.” I made myself glance around the room for a second, but I didn’t see Laurent or André. The gallery was crowded now; fifty or sixty people, maybe more, were standing around, talking in noisy, animated groups.
“Let’s talk tomorrow,” he said. “If you can?”
“Yes, I should be able to.”
“Okay,” he said. He was pale, and his face looked thinner, his cheeks less full, than the last time I’d seen him. “You know where I’m staying. Same place as always.” His eyes were on the floor as he spoke, and when he raised them again, instead of looking at me, he focused on the wall where my paintings were mounted.
I had the feeling then—as if I had woken in the night, certain that something I’d long feared had come true—that Laurent knew about us, and had for a while. It wasn’t fear or guilt that I felt, though. It was probably something closer to relief.
“I knew you were good,” said Colin. “I saw the paintings you kept in your apartment in New York, but these are—these look like they should be in a museum.”
I managed not to scoff at him. “It’s so sweet of you to say that, but I still have a lot to learn,” I said. I was pretty sure that I could paint a human body with the suggestion of a real person awake inside it, but I wasn’t in any danger of having a curator from MoMA come looking for me.
“I mean it, Jayne.” He reached for my hand, his palm a little damp. “Your paintings are beautiful. Congratulations.”
We were still standing in front of
Joanie
and
Owls and Starlings
when Laurent came over to introduce himself. He stood looking at us for an uncomfortable moment, neither Colin nor I knowing what to say, before he offered his hand to Colin and said, “I’m Laurent Moller, one of the owners of this gallery. You are Jayne’s friend from New York, yes?”
“Yes,” said Colin, shaking Laurent’s hand. “One of her friends. My name’s Colin Fuller.”
“I thought so,” said Laurent, with a cryptic note of finality—no, of assessment. He was taking the measure of this interloper, just as I had done a moment before with Sofia. “How long have you known Jayne?” he asked.
“About three years,” said Colin.
“Ah, not so very long then,” said Laurent.
Colin glanced at me, his expression hard to read. “Well, no, I guess not. But longer than you’ve known her, I would say.”
Laurent laughed. It was an odd, forced sound, like someone ripping cardboard. “Sometimes I feel as if I have known Jayne for all my life,” he said.
“That would be difficult, wouldn’t it? Considering you’re more than twenty years older than she is,” said Colin.
I could feel my stomach clench with apprehension. They were looking at each other harshly, a faint smile on Laurent’s face, his eyes cold; Colin’s face was burning. “I need a glass of wine,” I said, willing my voice to stay level.
“How do you like Jayne’s paintings?” Laurent asked, his harsh gaze still on Colin.
“They’re terrific,” he said.
“Yes, they are terrific,” Laurent repeated. He glanced at me and blinked deliberately, as if having decided something—to save his displeasure with me for later, I think—before he looked toward the back office. The caterers were using it that evening as their makeshift kitchen, the four of them circulating in and out, shoving open the heavy door with their white-shirted shoulders. “I think it is time for champagne,” said Laurent. He turned toward Colin. “Good to meet you, Mr. Fuller. At last.”
I said nothing, but Laurent wasn’t looking at me anyway.
“And you,” said Colin. Neither he nor Laurent smiled.
It was not until the next morning that Laurent said, his gaze flat, almost incensed, that before he had come over to introduce himself, he had noticed Colin and me talking at the gallery about something that had looked serious to him, and he wondered what it was. Had Colin had a death in the family? Had he lost his job? Was he ill?
“No, nothing like that,” I said, wondering if he was mocking me. If he was, I would surprise him by telling the truth. “He was trying to get me to come back to New York.”
“Why would he do that?” asked Laurent, watching me closely. “Because he wants to take you from me?”
“Yes, I guess he does,” I said.
“Do you want that too?” he asked.
“No.”
He said nothing for several seconds. When he finally spoke, his expression was meditative. “Are you sure that you want to stay here, Jayne?”
“Yes,” I said. “I am.” I didn’t ask if he wanted me to stay.
In Vie Bohème on that cold March night, my favorite teacher, my boyfriend, my lover, my boyfriend’s lover, his resentful business partner, his daughter, his daughter’s husband, and her own lover were all in attendance. It is a wonder we all remained somewhat civil to each other, that there were no histrionics. I wondered about Anne-Claire, why she hadn’t come to stir the pot too. As it turned out, she was in New York, visiting a man she had started seeing a few months earlier—another psychologist, an American she had been introduced to by Martin’s father.
The vernissage of
Intérieurs intimes
might have been a fraught event, but the show was a commercial success. All but one of the paintings I had shown sold within the week, along with most of Susan’s and Chantal’s paintings. (Who
were
these buyers, I wondered—men with inherited money, or ones who had made their fortunes on the stock market? Old dowagers with young lovers who had convinced them to buy our emotional paintings of haunted-looking rooms and people in the grip of melancholy or the torpor that sometimes follows sex?)
The afterglow from the opening remained for several days, but then normal life, with its questions and lack of satisfying answers, returned. Laurent got up at eight each morning and later went to the gallery. He ran his errands, visited artists’ studios and who knew who else—women friends mostly, I felt sure—on the afternoons when he took long breaks. When he later returned home or to the gallery, he was often humming under his breath, something I began to think of as a tell. I could never detect any lingering scent of another woman’s perfume, but I suspect he would have taken a shower after he’d finished rolling around with whoever she was. He was a seasoned philanderer, a belief that I had become increasingly more susceptible to as my months living in his apartment and sleeping in his bed passed. But when I weighed the costs of challenging him, of constantly fighting and accusing him of bad behavior, they seemed too heavy. I was painting the best work of my life so far. I was living in Paris rent-free—and I had my own secrets to hide. There was also the fact that I cared a lot about Laurent, that although I didn’t know if I really did love him, I often loved being with him. It was my conviction too that he was turning me into a less fearful, less insecure person—because what did it matter, in the barest analysis, what he did when he wasn’t with me, if he acted no differently from one day to the next when he was?
My jealousy did rear up out of its dark, hot cave and make my life unpleasant sometimes, especially in the early evening when I was alone and often wondering where he was. Is it a mark of sophistication or maturity if you have learned to stifle the impulsive, explosive feelings that come with being betrayed? Because that is what I believe I was learning to do. And I had to think Laurent had also learned to do it, long ago, when he and Anne-Claire were both, from what I gather, seeing other people and their marriage was falling apart. The wish to be all things to our intimates into perpetuity—friend, confidant, lover, therapist—is there something fanciful and unrealistic about this? Perhaps we should have more than one friend, more than one person, to fill all those roles.
Learning to be more sophisticated, if that’s what it is, learning to channel your energies into pursuits more productive than jealous speculation, takes time. On some days I sensed something in Jeanne-Lucie’s manner toward me, a hint of pity, a habit of looking too long and intently at my face, her mind, I was convinced, cycling through a litany of reasons to tell me or not tell me what she knew of her father’s secrets. I remember a day not long after Colin’s October visit, the first time since the previous year that I had been in his bed, when she asked me if her father ever failed to come home at night. I was unbalanced by the question and said no with too much vehemence, and then laughed to try to cover up my distress. “Why wouldn’t he?” I asked. “Does he have another apartment in Paris with some other girl he takes care of? Does he think he’s François Mitterand?”
She smiled and laughed softly. “You know about Mitterand, with his two families?”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “What a lot of hassle and work, frankly.”
“You are so funny. The French do not think that way so much. It is pleasure he was after, comfort too. I doubt he thought of it as work. He was in love with both women, I’m sure.”
“Very nice for him,” I said. “Not so nice for the women.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “But I suppose they got used to it. He was a great man, and they were happy that he wanted to be with them.”
“I’d rather have a less great man all to myself.”
What did I truly think of Mitterand’s domestic arrangement? I wondered later—if I could have two homes, both welcoming and designed to meet my whims, would I want this?
No, I didn’t really think that I would. Seeing Colin, even infrequently, left me feeling emotionally fractured and guilty too, because even given Laurent’s leniency and his own probable affairs, I realized that I didn’t have the temperament to live parallel amorous lives. You have to be a natural risk taker, I think, to thrive in such unpredictable conditions, to ignore the probability that someone you are close to is getting hurt, and you are the cause of these hurtful feelings.
Whatever she might think of Jeanne-Lucie’s affair with Martin, Liesel, for one, showed herself to be a risk taker. When she and Melissa flew over to see me last August, Liesel met André for a drink one night and ended up going home with him. She didn’t get back to Laurent’s and my apartment until four in the morning. I was awake, lying next to Laurent, who as usual was sleeping soundly, oblivious to the night’s provocative events. The next night Liesel was supposed to see André again, but for a while it looked as if he intended to stand her up. At ten thirty, he finally texted to suggest that she take a cab over to his place, where he was now ready to receive her. Like Jeanne-Lucie and Daniel, he lived across the city in the eleventh arrondissement, near the Théâtre de la Bastille.
I was jealous, even though I knew that André was a rat. This was several weeks before I leaped again into Colin’s arms. I could imagine that André was a capable, maybe even a ferocious lover. Without much trouble, I could also picture him naked, and I knew that Liesel had had the time of her liberated-woman’s life. All day after that first night with him, she spoke of little else when she spoke at all. Melissa and I teased her, waving our hands in front of her dazed, glowing face when we could see that her thoughts had again drifted away. “How was he?” Melissa asked, giggling. This was one of her many questions. I hadn’t asked any; Melissa’s curiosity was irrepressible, more than enough for us both. “He was pretty kinky. We had fun,” Liesel said, solemn. Then she too giggled. “I’ll never be the same again. I think I’m going to have to move to Paris,” she said.
“Are French guys really that great?” Melissa asked.
“I don’t know, but this one’s damn good,” said Liesel.
It was after the next night, however, when Don Juan André made her wait until ten thirty, after having promised that he’d be free by seven, that she realized what kind of punishment she’d probably be subjecting herself to if she did move to Paris intent on bringing him to heel. “I can get booty calls in New York,” she said. “I’ll save myself the moving expenses and the job search over here. He was fun, but he doesn’t want a relationship. When he comes to New York again, he said he’d call me, but I’m not sure I’ll answer.”
Melissa looked at her and laughed. “You’ll answer.”
Liesel hesitated, wrinkling her brow. “Yeah, because if I don’t, you will.”
“Ha-ha,” said Melissa.
“Ha-ha,” retorted Liesel. “I know I’m right!”
When my sister came to visit, she had trouble with blisters on her heels, the bolster-like pillow in the guest bedroom, the meat that figured prominently on so many restaurant menus (she had been a vegetarian since freshman year in college), the exchange rate, jet lag. On the first four of the six mornings of her visit, she was nearly impossible to pry out of bed, because in spite of feeling exhausted by nine thirty every night, when she did go to bed a little later, she would lie there staring at the ceiling until two or three a.m.
“I’ve never had anything like this happen before,” she’d croak each morning when I’d finally get her up at ten or ten thirty. “It’s midnight in L.A. I’d just be getting to sleep now if I were home.” Her brown eyes were bloodshot and sleep-crusted, as if she were recovering from a bender; her hair stood up in little wings all over her foggy head. Once or twice I crawled into bed with her and put my arms around her and rested my head on her skinny shoulder, as I’d done when we were little girls. She was so thin, thinner than she should have been. For the first few days, her skin looked chalky too, despite all the Southern Californian sun. Further proof that her life at the record company, her long commute, her high rent, and her sudden intense fear of skin cancer (she wore a hat whenever we went out to walk in the Parisian sun, as she now did in L.A.) were wearing on her.