Enough About Love

ANNA AND YVES

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SOME NIGHTS when Stan is on duty at the Quinze-Vingts, Yves drops in to see Anna on the rue Érasme, after she has put the children to bed. She cooks dinner for two and spends the evening in his arms, always worried Karl might wake and catch them together.

One evening, Anna takes Yves to her bedroom. She opens a closet, eases out three dusty shoe boxes, and carries them to the kitchen. In them are hundreds of photographs. She lays out her life before Yves, perhaps for him. It is a long time since she has looked inside these boxes.

He recognizes her in the dark-haired little girl in overalls using every inch of her body to thrust a swing into the blue of the sky; in the girl on the brink of adolescence dancing with her father, almost like a woman in love. In another she is wearing a white dress, sitting in a boat on a pond in a landscaped garden. The picture could have been taken in the 1920s. Yves recognizes the man holding the oars. He is a writer. “Isn’t that Hugues Léger with you, in that boat?”

“It is. Do you know him?”

“Not very well. I really like his books, we used to have the same publisher.”

“He and I were together, for a year. We’re still friends. I could get you together for dinner if you like.”

She continues rummaging through the boxes, takes out photographs of her wedding, pointing things out, making comments. Yves thinks that, in front of him, with him, Anna is drawing up the inventory of everything she is preparing to lose. Right now, she is asking him to find the words that will help her draw on her own strength to give up what each photo says. Look at this happiness, my happiness, my husband, my house, my children, my parents, look. It’s all there, spread out on this kitchen table, years of life in fading colors, I give them to you, I’ll abandon them for you, my love. But what about you, what are you offering? Tell me that.

Anna is afraid she will never “be able to do it.” Sometimes, in order to convince herself, she cites Jane Birkin, Romy Schneider, other women — often actresses — who had several significant men in their lives; what Anna actually says is “several lives,” as if each man counted as a life. She looks for role models, examples, who say, Yes, she has a right to this too. Because it is something she is owed.

But she has her doubts.

“You know,” she says one evening when they are in the car, “I worry so much about not being able to do it. I often just tell myself: Anna, don’t. Do it.”

Yves bursts out laughing. “Did you hear what you just said? You said, ‘Don’t do it.’ ”

Anna did hear herself. All her ambivalence is in those words. “Don’t. Do it” or “Don’t do it.” All down to a period and the subconscious.