Enough About Love

ANNA AND STAN

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IT HAD BEEN SUCH A HOT SUMMER. Anna and Stan spent it near Grignan, in the house they rented every year. The heat wave sent statistics through the roof. Twice as many forest fires, homicides, multiple pileups, and old people dying in hospices. The drought affected sixty regional départements. There was a ban on filling swimming pools, and those that were filled had to act as reservoirs for the fire department. On the radio and in bistros, all the talk was of global warming. When Karl and Lea sat down in the car, they squealed because the seats were so hot. Anna ran a damp sponge over the plastic surfaces to cool them, and the children begged to have the air conditioning on but kept the windows open.

They were bored. They devoted the morning to making a list of things they needed to buy, went into town to buy them, and had a coffee on the town square, then the temperature started to rise and they went back to the house. They ate lunch, cleared the table, and did the dishes before the ants invaded. It was too hot to have a siesta. Karl and Lea squabbled constantly to fill the time.

There were wasps. Stan made a trap by cutting open an Evian bottle and putting very sugary wine into it. They soon came to die in there, dozens of them. Anna could not bear to see her children entertained by their endless paddling, the hours they took to die. Particularly Karl, who called her in a state of great excitement every time a new victim ventured into the fatal opening. She did not recognize her own son in this cruel delight. He was the one who, with morbid fascination, emptied out the insect juice at the bottom of the garden every morning.

There was also the pool. It was unfit for use before five o’clock in the afternoon, when the sun dived behind the old farmhouse. The children watched the line of shadow advance very slowly across the blazing hot paving stones, as if watching the progress of a column of ants.

“Mommy, mommy,” they cried every minute, “another stone in the shade!”

“Great!” Anna replied, from the sofa in the living room.

In the evening, when the children were in bed, Stan and Anna stayed out on the terrace to make the most of a coolness that never materialized. Stan rubbed the back of his wife’s neck, she ducked away from his touch. It was so hot, or she was reading, or she didn’t feel like it. One night, Stan took her. She consented despite how clammy their bodies were, and even reached orgasm; she fell asleep right away.

At the end of August they packed their bags and went home to Paris. On the trip back, because the children were hungry, Stan wanted to stop off, and they went to one of those highway restaurants that straddle all six lanes. It was awful, awful and expensive. Anna grew tetchy, exasperated. She almost screamed that it was “disgusting, completely disgusting,” and Lea, like something from a film by Godard, asked, “What does disgusting mean?” Anna walked out of the restaurant, leaving the children with Stan, and went to the car. She opened the back door, sat down among the toys, hid her head in her hands, and, quietly, started to sob.