The Paris Wife

FORTY-TWO

In the morning, when the sun pried its way through the slats of the plantation shutters and fell on my face, I knew the day had come whether I wanted it or not, and I opened my eyes. A breeze pushed the cream linen curtains so they swayed. Light fell in oblong swatches along the dark wood floor, and I yawned and stretched and pushed the sheets back. Across from the bed was a long mirror and I saw myself in it, brown as can be and solid and firm from all the swimming and bicycling. My hair had lightened in the sun until the only red left was just a hint of ginger, and my eyes were clear and bright and I looked very well. I’d already stopped being surprised by this-how I could look strong and healthy when I was dying, really.

At our hotel, there were three of everything-three breakfast trays, three terry-cloth robes, three wet bathing suits on the line. On the crushed rock path along the windward side of the hotel, three bicycles stood on their stands. If you looked at the bicycles one way, they looked very solid, like sculpture, with afternoon light glinting cleanly off the chrome handlebars-one, two, three, all in a row. If you looked at them another way, you could see just how thin each kickstand was under the weight of the heavy frame, and how they were poised to fall like dominoes or the skeletons of elephants or like love itself. But when I noticed this, I kept it to myself because that, too, was part of the unwritten contract. Everything could be snarled all to hell under the surface as long as you didn’t let it crack through and didn’t speak its name, particularly not at cocktail hour, when everyone was very jolly and working hard to be that way and to show how perfectly good life could be if you were lucky, as we were. Just have your drink, then, and another and don’t spoil it.

After I dressed and bathed, I went downstairs to the little garden terrace and there was our breakfast on the table in the sun. Three oeufs au jambon with lots of butter and pepper, three steaming brioches, three glasses of juice. Ernest came out from where he had been working, in the little room off the terrace.

“Good morning, Tatie. You’re looking very well.”

“Yes,” I said. “And so are you.”

He wore tan canvas shorts and a black-and-white-striped fisherman’s sweater from Grau-du-Roi and his feet were bare. I was dressed similarly, and when Pauline came out onto the terrace, she was freshly washed with her dark hair combed back straight from her face and she, too, wore the striped fisherman’s sweater. We all looked just the same as we said good morning to one another and ate our breakfasts hungrily, as if we’d never eaten before.

The sun was already very bright on the beach, and it struck everything evenly. The sand was almost white with it. The water flashed it back blindingly.

“Our swim will be good today,” Pauline said.

“Yes,” Ernest said, breaking his brioche in half so that the steam rose prettily. “And then we’ll have Madame bring the Bollinger, very chilled, and some of the sardines with capers. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he said, turning to me.

“It sounds perfect.”

After breakfast, I went to tell Madame what we’d planned for lunch and then packed a small bag for the beach. I found my shoes and walked down the lane to the bungalow, where Bumby was playing in the yard.

“Hello, little boy-bear,” I said, scooping him up to nibble his ears. “I think you’re taller today. You seem very large to Mama.”

He was pleased to hear this, pushing his shoulders back and jutting out his round chin.

Marie said, “No coughing at all last night, madame.”

“Aren’t you very good?” And when he nodded proudly, I said, “Come then, boy-bear, we’ll go for our swim.”

At the small moon of beach at the other end of the road, Ernest and Pauline had already set up the blankets and umbrellas and were lying in the sand like tortoises with their eyes closed. We sunned on the beach all in a row while Bumby and Marie played in the surf and made little patterns with shells in the sand. When the sun grew too hot, I went into the water, which always hit you cold and was wonderful that way. I ducked my head and then surfaced, and swam out several hundred yards, where things were still. I treaded water and let the swells buoy me. At the top of one, I could look back at the beach and see them small and perfect, my husband and child and the woman who was now more to us than we could manage. From that distance, they all looked equal and serene and I couldn’t hear them or feel them. At the bottom, in the trough of the wave, I could see only the sky, that high white place that seemed not to change much for all of our suffering.

As a kind of experiment, I stopped swimming and let my arms and legs fall, my whole weight fall as deep as it would. I kept my eyes open as I sank down and looked up at the surface. My lungs began to sting, first, and then burn, as if I’d swallowed some small piece of volcano.

I knew if I stayed there and let the water come into me, come through every door of me, some things would be easier. I wouldn’t have to watch my life disappear, bead by bead, away from me and toward Pauline.

The little volcano in me burned, and then something popped, and I knew that even if I didn’t want to live this way anymore, I also didn’t want to die. I closed my eyes and kicked hard for the surface.

Back on the beach, Pauline rose and greeted me. “Let’s try and dive, shall we?”

“I don’t think I’d be very good at it.”

“I’ll teach you. I’ll be the diving instructor today and Hem will watch and give you your marks.”

“Please, not that,” I said, trying to laugh.

“Some practicing first, then.” She turned and led the way up the little path along the beach where the brown stones were piled higher and higher. They were very dark and riddled with crevices and looked as if they’d been made by some god with clay and then baked in the sun over the millennia. The rocks were hot under our bare feet and we climbed them quickly until we stood nearly at the top.

Pauline looked over the edge to gauge the tide pushing and falling back fifteen feet below. “When you hear the rushing sound, that’s when you jump,” she said. Then she straightened and pointed her arms very gracefully over her head and long neck. She waited, and then, with the scalloped whoosh of the tide, she pushed from her lean legs and was out, hanging in space, and then rocketing down very straight and tall. The water closed over the place where she’d been and there was nothing, just water like the flat skin of a drum. Then she surfaced, pushing her hair back and squinting. “Good, then,” she shouted up. “Now you.”

“It looks too easy to be easy,” I called back, and she laughed.

Ernest had gone into the water and swum over, around the little cornice of rocks to where Pauline bobbed and waited for me.

“Let’s see you go, then,” he said, sweeping his arms back and forth as he treaded water.

“No marks and no corrections or I won’t do it at all,” I said.

“Don’t you want to get it right?” Ernest asked, squinting.

“No, actually. If I get it at all without smashing myself to hell on the rocks, it’ll be good enough.”

“Suit yourself, then.”

I stood at the edge and felt the hotness under my toes. I closed my eyes.

“Your arms should be straight up, touching your ears,” Pauline said.

“No corrections,” I said. I stood up tall and then arced my arms over my head. I listened for the shushing sound, but when I heard it, I found I couldn’t move. I was fixed there.

“C’mon, then, you’ve missed it,” Ernest said.

I didn’t answer him and didn’t open my eyes, and there was a moment of perfect vertigo, when I heard the whooshing of the surf again and felt I was part of it, swirling with it and also standing still, swept up and sewn into the sea and into the universe, but also very, very alone. When I finally looked down, here were these two wet heads in the slow-moving waves. They looked playful and natural as seals there, and suddenly I knew I wouldn’t jump and it had nothing to do with fear or embarrassment.

I wouldn’t jump because I didn’t want to join them. I felt the stones under my feet, smooth and hot, as I turned and climbed down slowly, undramatically.

“Hadley,” Ernest shouted after me, but I kept walking away from the beach, then down the road and toward the hotel. When I got to our room, I showered away all the sand and climbed into bed still wet and very clean and tired. The sheet was white and stiff and smelled like salt against my face. And as I closed my eyes, I made a wish that I would wake up feeling as strong and clear about things as I did just then.

When I woke up much later, I realized that Ernest hadn’t come to the room at all for siesta and that he must have gone to Pauline’s room instead. This was the first time he had gone to her in the daylight. Madame and Monsieur, the proprietors of the hotel, would know and everyone would know. With everything out in the open, it couldn’t ever go back to the way it was before. All right, then, I thought to myself. Maybe it’s better this way.

Just then the door to the room opened and Ernest came in. Pauline was behind him and they walked in together.

“We’ve been very worried about you,” Pauline said.

“You didn’t have any lunch. Are you feverish?” Ernest said. He came over and sat beside me on the bed and then Pauline sat on the other side, and they looked at me as if they were my parents. It was all so very strange and even absurd that I laughed.

“What’s funny?” Pauline said.

“Nothing at all,” I said, still smiling.

“She can be very mysterious, can’t she?” Pauline said to Ernest.

“Not usually, no,” Ernest said. “But she is now. What are you thinking, Cat? Are you well?”

“Maybe not,” I said. “I think I should rest through the evening. Do you mind?”

Pauline looked stricken and I realized she was truly worried about me, and that for whatever reason, maybe because her good Catholic upbringing urged kindness on her in the oddest moments, she needed me to be well and be her friend and approve of all of this. Approve of her taking my husband.

“Please go away,” I said to both of them.

Their eyes met over me.

“Really. Please.”

“Let me have Madame bring you something to eat,” Ernest said. “You’ll be sick if you don’t eat.”

“Fine. I don’t care.”

“Let me get it. I’d like to,” Pauline said, and she left to make arrangements about the meal the way a wife would.

“Everything’s handed over, then,” I said, once the door had closed behind her.

“What?”

“She can do everything now. She’ll take care of you just fine.”

“You’re not well. Just get some rest.”

“I’m not well, you’re right. You’re killing me, both of you.”

His eyes dropped to the sheet. “This isn’t easy for me either.”

“I know. We’re a sorry, sordid lot, the three of us. If we’re not careful, we’ll none of us get through it without terrible big chunks missing.”

“I’ve thought the same. What do you want? What will help?”

“I think it’s too late, don’t you?” I looked to the window where the light was fading rapidly. “You’d better leave soon or you’ll miss cocktails with the Murphys.”

“I don’t give a damn.”

“You do, though, and so does she. Just go. She’ll be the wife for tonight.”

“I hate to hear you talk this way. It makes me think we’ve ruined everything.”

“We have, Tatie,” I said sadly, and closed my eyes.