The Unbreakables

by Lisa Barr

  “You changed your hair since yesterday,” he says.

  “Yes.” I blush slightly. He noticed. “Something different.”

  “It’s nice,” he says. I’m embarrassed but secretly pleased. He points to the Chagall. “You like?”

  “Brilliant.” I nod. “The colors . . .”

  “I love this painting. It inspires me. You know what Picasso said?” He tilts his head in the direction of the painting. “ ‘When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color is.’ ”

  “Yes . . . I totally agree.”

  He then whispers to the woman, probably telling her that I’m a guest at the hotel.

  “Are you here alone?” he asks, now holding her hand as he moves in closer.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “This is Lea, and this is . . .” His face reddens.

  “Sophie.” I notice a sketch pad sticking out of the girl’s leather bag. “Are you an artist?”

  She laughs. “Yes. We both are.” Up close, she has tiny exquisite features, doe eyes against pale skin, bridge-of-nose freckles, a small but determined mouth. She raises an inquisitive brow. “And so are you, am I right? Your hands. I can tell.”

  My hands. I glance down. Do they still give me away? Hands that betrayed me. I was an artist. I still am, I suppose. There’s a permanence. “Yes.” I try on my renewed persona for size. “I . . . I sculpt. Not in a long time. But yes.”

  There, not so bad.

  They both move in closer. I’m suddenly more interesting, a little hipper, a little less Madame. “We are about to go for coffee,” Jean-Paul says, pointing to the staircase. “There’s a lovely café near the entrance.” He looks at Lea, who nods. “Please join us.”

  “I don’t want to impose,” I say, dying to have coffee with them. Do it. They’re asking you. “You know what—I’d love to.”

  I’M GOING TO MOVE PAST THE COFFEE PART, THE ANIMATED CONVERSATION, THE laughter. I’m going to cruise beyond the American-Franco comparisons of nuance, innuendo, and gestural meanings, the discussion of alternative music and great and not so great art. Here’s what does matter . . . She paints, he’s a photographer—both are twenty-seven. They have lived together for four years. She works at an art gallery in the village of Saint-Paul; he works at the hotel. Both are originally from small towns outside of Paris, both studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. And yes, both know exactly who Olivier Messier is. I’m going to fast-forward, and let’s just say that the coffee turned into wine. And the wine turned into . . . well, it’s all a blur right now.

  The way Jean-Paul’s left hand is on his girlfriend’s, and his right hand casually slides along my thigh under the round table. Only it isn’t just his hand, there are two of them, on both of my thighs. His and hers. I gasp slightly. Two sexy millennials seducing me at the Fondation Maeght café with three families eating ice cream and cake at nearby tables. My mind races with images of what may happen and the fact that I want it to happen, whatever “it” may be. The truth is, I felt the chemistry the second I saw the way Jean-Paul looked at me near the Chagall with fuck-me eyes. It was a look I had not seen in so long—but now I’ve experienced it twice in just over a week. Jean-Paul and Olivier. And Lea. Three times.

  Rules No. 10 and 12: Be open to sexual situations and prepare to be surprised. Do they do this often? Do they know I’m old enough to be their mother (a teen mom). Is it my new hairstyle? It doesn’t matter. This is really happening. My mind is static and my body is on fire.

  Jean-Paul pays the bill, refusing to take my credit card. Lea lightly squeezes my wrists and asks if I would like to see her paintings in their apartment. I say yes, and they trade knowing looks, shared smiles.

  It’s on.

  We leave the café and drive to their apartment, which is a few miles away. They both admire my sporty convertible. I follow them and try to imagine the conversation that they are having in their car. I feel excited, scared, stirred, knowing I am way out of my league here. If only I could call Samantha and Lauren to share and strategize this. Stop! Don’t go there. Don’t think about them or home. Instead, concentrate on the way those lovely artists’ hands sent tremors through your body. Stay present. Exhaling deeply, the doubts begin to fester anyway: They are just eight years older than Ava, which makes you not much better than Olivier if you pursue this. They are a couple. This is taboo. He works at the hotel you’re staying at. You can’t do this. You’re a mother. Think Stranger Danger—what might happen. You’re not gay. This is not okay. Make a U-turn and go back to the hotel now.

  I glance into the rearview mirror. No one is driving on the road but us. It’s a sign. Who says it’s not okay? I don’t see anyone. You wanted something to transport you from your present state of hell, right? Isn’t that why you’re here in Saint-Paul—to reclaim life’s beauty, to heal, to be surprised? Life doesn’t stop because you’re a mother. There is no downside. You’ve been with one man—a man who betrayed you. You are not hurting anyone (Rule No. 10). They clearly have an open relationship. They want to share you together. They are not cheating on each other. This—whatever this is—is their thing. Embrace their free spirit. You’re wearing good underwear.

  Done.

  LEA AND JEAN-PAUL’S SMALL APARTMENT REMINDS ME OF AVA’S DORM ROOM freshman year. It’s cluttered but funky and colorful with a large mosaic tapestry and string lights tacked to the wall above the bed. The other walls are filled floor-to-ceiling with her paintings. Abstracts—some good, some mediocre—but who cares. I’m not here to judge the art.

  “Lea, do you mind if I use your bathroom?” I ask, trying to hide my nerves and wanting to douse my face with water and do a quick full-body touch-up before . . .

  “Of course.” She points to the obvious door and smiles as she grabs wineglasses and a joint. Pot too? Who am I right now? I have not smoked weed since college. The Juul on the beach with Samantha and Lauren doesn’t count. That was an e-cigarette. Lea’s joint is tightly rolled by hand, old school. I’ve officially entered a time warp, a reboot of sorts.

  Once inside the bathroom, I peer closely into the small mirror doubling as a medicine cabinet over her sink. I can’t help it. I see myself in the reflection and think of Gabe. He must have felt just like this. The anticipation, the excitement, the adrenaline rush, the newness. This is what he clearly craved and exactly what I could no longer give him.

  I stand in front of the mirror, immobile. I forgot about my new haircut and for a second I don’t recognize myself. I brace my hands on the sink, my stomach turning from the number of internal butterflies swarming. This is so happening.

  I quickly wash my face, then borrow Lea’s deodorant and her Fragonard body lotion, which smells of jasmine. Do not overanalyze this, I warn myself. You’re hanging with the go-with-the-flow crowd now. I hear music being turned on—something French and seductively jazzy. I use her mouthwash too, and then take a quick peek down there. I showered before I left for the museum. So, all good. You got this. I open the door and it’s just Jean-Paul alone in the room. Lea is mysteriously elsewhere.

  “If you call me ‘madame,’ I will have to kill you.” I laugh, trying to camouflage my obvious nervousness and lack of kinky experience, shortage of lovers (the understatement of the century).

  Jean-Paul, with a sly confident grin, slowly removes his T-shirt and poses like a Calvin Klein model in his low-rise jeans with the white underwear band peeking out. His torso is a perfect V and he is a painting, not a man. Every part of his chest is a road map of colorful brocadelike tattoos. I’m fascinated and turned on. He stands where he is, waits for me to approach him. I take a long, deep breath, then move toward him. I don’t want to fuck him right now, it’s even more hard-core: I want to sculpt him. I want to feel his Greek-god body covered with graffiti against my hands, like clay waiting for me to transform it. Suddenly, I’m not overthinking and I’m no longer powerless and vastly inexperienced. I may not have the lovers to chalk up, but I do have the touch. I have
created so many bodies with my own hands. I can do this.

  The music, the waft of weed, the woozy lighting—Sophie Bloom has gone fishing, and this other being, this Sasha Fierce begins to emerge. Jean-Paul with all his swag is no match for me right now. I approach him with confidence and without hesitation. I kiss him hard on the lips, full and demanding. He leans back slightly, blatantly surprised by my aggressiveness. He mumbles something I don’t understand and then grabs my ass and roughly pulls me toward him. I feel his hardness press against me, jeans to jeans—and I smile. I did that.

  “Take my clothes off now,” I order. Who am I right now? I’ve never ordered sex before. I’ve never even asked. Gabe just knew what to do, what I liked. But now I want to do more than what I know. I want to do everything I don’t know.

  “You’re hungry,” he says under his breath in English.

  “You have no idea,” I respond seductively in French.

  I feel his taut chest with my hands. His beautiful body—the bulging biceps, the perfect contour of his pecs, the curve of his shoulders, the rock-hard abs, the pronounced crease of his pelvic muscles. My hands are all over him and then my mouth. His body is so young and dangerously sexy, I yearn to devour him. From somewhere above me, I hear him moan. I unbutton his jeans and release him. He pushes me backward onto the bed and I let him. My shirt is off now and so are my jeans, the new red sandals are flung across the room. Where is Lea? crosses my mind and then disappears, knowing I’m in a triangle, that the young artist with an affinity for abstract body parts will soon make her entrance. This is their game, I’ve just collected $200 and passed Go. They have their own rhythm, and she clearly knows her cue. Right now, Jean-Paul is mine. But soon, I can feel it in the air, we will share him.

  His breath tastes like cigarettes, espresso, and cabernet, and his tongue is rammed down my throat. Normally, I’m not big on ramming tongues—but now I can’t get enough. That tongue moves expertly from my mouth to my breasts to my stomach and continues heading south. He’s saying dirty things to me in French—who knows, who cares—I just don’t want this to stop. Closing my eyes, I experience every tingling sensation at once. This spectacular young man is exploring me in places where only Gabe has traveled before. His touch is markedly different, demanding, experienced, rousing, and wildly erotic. And then, as I predicted, the real game begins . . . I feel a second tongue on me. Light, flickering, softer. She’s here now, the waiflike temptress, the one who calls the shots.

  Jean-Paul roughly pins me down. Our eyes lock and I don’t dare look away. I feel her below, spreading my legs and that expert sharp tongue darting in and out. I feel out of control, propelled to a higher place than I’ve ever been, until it is unbearable. The orgasm comes hard, too quickly, unexpectedly. I ball up the sheets in my hands. I don’t want this to end.

  As I lay panting and satiated, the artistic duo gives me time to process, and by the anticipatory looks on their faces, a return favor is clearly expected—him and her. My turn. Catching my breath, I sit up and examine them fully. Like a beautiful Rodin nude, her skin is as smooth as ivory and a glaring contrast to his, which is vibrant and decorative like Christmas wrapping paper. They are entwined, eagerly awaiting me to join the party. I reach over and stroke him first, then touch her softly, hesitantly.

  “You’ve never been with a woman, have you?” she whispers.

  “No,” I say honestly. She releases him, angles toward me and kisses me tenderly, clearly relishing being the first. Her tongue tastes like peppermint and wine, her cherubic lips are supple and inviting. She stops momentarily, reaches over me toward the nightstand, grabs the waiting joint, lights it up, and hands it to me.

  “Now let me show you what I like,” she says with the confidence I only wish I possessed at any age. These millennials—say what you will about them, but they know what they want and are not afraid to take it. She removes the joint from my hand, tokes hard, and then hands it to Jean-Paul. Gently, she guides me over her body—the perky breasts, the taut nipples, her bare mound—as Jean-Paul sits back against the headboard, smoking and watching us with lazy half-mast eyes.

  I begin to explore her, taking my time, learning her body, and it’s lovely—feminine, soft, and sensual. Like the principal dancer in a ballet that they choreographed, I leap from her to him, back to her. And they, too, begin to rev up the sensual dance—he touches her, then touches me. She’s on my breasts, I latch onto hers. She and I then take care of him together. It is all so communal, tangled, and knotted, an erotic game of Twister. Gabe never enters my mind. Not even once.

  They orgasm within seconds of each other, and I do too, yet again. They hold each other tightly as I lay next to them, her free arm draped over me—all of us satiated and blissfully depleted. Soon after, they separate, lie on their backs, and we listen to another album. Miles Davis. We laugh about nothing in particular, share a bottle of wine and an extralong crispy baguette in bed. It’s all so natural.

  Suddenly I do think about Gabe. About standing at the Maginot Line of temptation—the divide between Faithful and Unfaithful. About losing all control. This is what my husband must have felt as he inhaled a strange woman’s scent; a not-mine scent. Just like this: slightly breathless, heart beating rapidly, a smoldering, taboo, full-body sensation. No wonder once Gabe started down that forbidden path he could not stop himself. He tasted the apple and wanted the whole damn tree. Once you choose more, you want more of more.

  Lying here with them, I realize that, like Gabe, I too want more of more. Rule No. 10: Guilt-free passion—whatever that means and in whatever form. But unlike Gabe, in my beginner’s playbook of exploring uncharted territory—no one gets hurt.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I WAKE UP FEELING STRANGELY ELATED THIS MORNING. YESTERDAY I SPENT THE entire day at the hotel, rejuvenating from my night spent with Lea and Jean-Paul. I slept late, lounged at the pool, worked out, had a massage, then dinner at the hotel restaurant. Indulgent, but I don’t feel guilty.

  It’s as though the sexual encounter was an awakening, igniting an internal lava lamp, a seductive bubbly levitation. It was a different kind of high than anything I have ever experienced; a kaleidoscope of sizzling colors, sounds, scents, sensations that seems to absorb itself, break apart, and come together in different forms in my mind. It’s as though I have suddenly rediscovered my appetite for life—not realizing that I was even hungry. All day yesterday, I chose not to speak to a single person except for the waitstaff. Selfishly, I wanted to remain in my own head and replay the sexy soundtrack—him/her/me—and then reshuffle the sensual images repeatedly without interruption.

  As the hotel staff passed by me at the pool, I couldn’t help but wonder if any of them were personal friends of Jean-Paul’s, if he bragged about sleeping with the hotel guests, or if they exchanged tales about horny vacationers over drinks. But none of it really matters, I told myself. Don’t make it matter.

  I stretch out in bed, glance over at the nightstand clock, and sit bolt upright. Christ, it’s nearly 11 a.m. When have I ever slept past 8 a.m.? My usual wake-up time back home is 6 a.m. I liked to get things done around the house before my family woke up and before I had to leave for work. Shit. My office. I’ve got to call Rachel today.

  I get out of bed, fling open the curtains and the double doors leading out to the balcony, instantly feeling the warm rays of the sun on my face. In the distance, I see an older woman with what looks like her daughter strolling arm in arm through the spice garden. I watch them for a while, taking pictures of each other and laughing. Suddenly, my elated feeling begins to dissipate, and an old wound fills the void.

  I only wish my own mother were someone I could call, cry to through all this, but she’s cold and reserved—the last person in the world who could console me. Sadly, she is still the part of me that remains unresolved, the piece that always hurts. She never remarried and barely dated after my father left her for another woman when I was five. I sigh deeply, wrap my arms tightly around myself. T
he irony of that. We never received any child support or alimony from my father, and it was tough making ends meet. My mother claimed she wanted nothing to do with his “dirty money” anyway. We could have used that dirty money plenty of times over the years, I used to think, but I never dared to express that aloud.

  Now retired, my mother was a high school English teacher, more absorbed by her books and grading papers than she was by being a mom. I always felt that she cared more about Holden Caulfield than me. She did what she had to do—doctors’ appointments, clothing, school supplies, food in the fridge, attended my art exhibits at school, but no extras. She was incredibly organized, but never loving or affectionate or emotional. Any animation she could muster was given to her freshman and junior English classes, where everyone said she was the “best” teacher ever (that always killed me). Although it was just the two of us, there was this impenetrable wall between us, a permanent separation, no matter how hard I tried to break through.

  After dinner, she would plan her lessons, grade her papers at the kitchen table, and in order to be near her, I would sculpt at the table quietly. Clay at first and then anything else I could find. Rocks, hangers, coins, pieces of metal. Television was not allowed in our small house (apparently, it ruined the mind), but with art and classical music, I had free rein. Just no paints—the smell irritated her. My mother would make us a big bowl of microwave popcorn, place it at the center of the table, she on one side and me on the other. She’d turn on the classical music station. We didn’t talk, we created. That was my childhood. Me, my mother, and the “three Bs”—Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.

  My father, with whom I maintained a distant relationship, having reconnected with him in my late teens, never took a real interest in me or my artistic pursuits. I was determined that I would never be like either of my parents, and when I met Gabe—captain of the football team, smart, funny, with a big, boisterous personality, he became more to me than just a boyfriend: he put noise into my life. His mother was crazy with a mean streak, but his father and two younger sisters were lively and warmhearted. I couldn’t get enough of the Blooms and their highly energetic dysfunction. The yelling—especially at the kitchen table—the loud TV going on in the background at all times. Game shows. Everybody played, everybody talked over one another, shouting out answers and swearing, and I loved it. There was no silence in the Bloom household, ever.