“What else happened?” he demanded. “Specifically.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is,” he said, “did you fuck him?”
“No,” I said. My response was immediate and confident. I wasn’t lying. We hadn’t been exactly chaste, but we hadn’t rented a room either.
“I don’t believe you,” he said.
“I’m telling the truth.”
“You’re such a good liar that you believe your own lies.”
“I did not have sex with Jack on my book tour,” I said. “Not him or anyone else.”
“What about in the bathroom?” he asked, holding up my phone with the message on the screen. “You refer to locking yourselves in the bathroom.”
I knew then which message he had found. In it I told Jack that I was thinking about the day we’d spent together, how we’d walked through the East Village, gone to a bar, and locked ourselves in a bathroom. I wrote that I was thinking of leaving my husband, and that I loved him (Jack, not my husband), and that I wanted to see him again. It was the kind of romantic bullshit that was my signature at the time: naïve and girlish and filled with visions of escape. I was wrong to have written this letter, not only because I was married to Nikolai, but because it wasn’t true. I wasn’t in love with Jack. I didn’t have the strength to leave Nikolai. I was sad and disappointed and worn out from trying to be happy, and so I reverted to my old standby belief that falling in love could make everything better. I had gone off with Jack in New York because I’d wanted to feel loved, even if it meant doing something childish, like locking myself in a dirty, graffiti-stained bathroom with a guy called Jack. Even if it meant writing an inauthentic love letter to a man I hardly knew.
“That bathroom thing isn’t what you think it is,” I said finally.
“What do two people do when they lock themselves in the bathroom together?”
“Do you really want to know what happened in the bathroom?” I said. I hated being interrogated, even when I deserved it. “Because it is not what you think.”
“I want to know,” he said.
“We snorted coke together.”
He stood, silent and in shock, his mouth agape. “You did drugs with some random guy in a bathroom?”
“Yes,” I said, as if testifying. “That’s correct. We locked ourselves in the bathroom of a bar and did cocaine. Quite a lot of it, actually.”
I’d been right: Nikolai had not expected that I, who could barely tolerate cigarette smoke, who didn’t like pot and got tipsy after a glass of white wine, would do anything of this nature. I watched him trying to reconcile this information—this new version of me—with the image he held of me. He was trying to understand how the woman standing before him was related to the one he’d married. And he was right to be confused. I was not the woman he’d married. The woman he’d married was an idealistic twenty-eight-year-old so in awe of him that she’d followed him blindly into the abyss. The woman standing before him was a disillusioned and unloved woman whose last bit of hope had disappeared.
“It’s so stupid,” he said. “Not even you could make that up.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I felt alone. I was angry and sad. I just wanted to feel something. I don’t know why I did that. I wish I could take it back. We’re so unhappy. We’re like strangers. We don’t even talk to each other anymore.”
“So that was your revenge?” he said. “Going off with some guy?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t plan it,” I said. “It just happened.”
Which was true and not true. While meeting Jack had been a random encounter, I’d been the perpetrator, the active agent who’d made it all happen. I had wanted to feel something intense and sexual and romantic, something that would help me forget my unhappy marriage, and I had targeted Jack. At the time it felt as if I’d just floated into the situation, but I had not simply floated into Jack’s arms. I was lonely and disappointed and looking for someone to make me happy. I was proving to myself—through concrete and unambiguous actions—that I was fearless enough, and beautiful enough, and young enough to have a fling if I chose to do so. If you had asked me at the time if this was my intent, I would have sworn up and down that it wasn’t. I would have said that I loved my husband and adored my marriage and that leaving it was the last thing I wanted. But it wouldn’t have been true. The truth was that I dreaded my life. The truth was that I was running from the dream I’d made. The truth was that I wanted to destroy the dream. But I couldn’t allow that truth to be true.
—
AFTER THE FAILED renewal ceremony and my book-tour tryst, the narrative that we were “starting over” died and a new practicality took its place. I no longer believed that I could re-create what we had lost. I accepted the reality that our relationship was broken and that it was unlikely I could fix it.
Instead of fixing us, I tried to see marriage in a different way: Our relationship was not about love, it was about family. It was not about creating a better marriage, but digging in and protecting what was left of the one I had. I began to see myself as the mechanism in a family machine, one designed to raise two children and provide an environment for work and health. The family machine needed to function, and discussions of love were inefficient and irrelevant. There could be contentment in this version of marriage, and for a while I found comfort in this weird way of seeing things. My work, my kids, and my home kept me going. And while this caused less frustration and heartache, in giving up on love I abandoned that precious thing that had motivated all my actions: hope.
On weekends I would pack up the kids, and the three of us would leave Aubais, going to Nîmes or Montpellier or Paris, leaving Nikolai at home. That I was replicating a pattern—taking off rather than being strong enough to confront the problem head-on—didn’t occur to me. I just wanted out of there. I wanted to feel good again. I wanted to feel the sun on my face, eat a picnic lunch with the kids, and be happy for a few hours. I didn’t care where we went, just so long as we were away from the toxic zone of our home.
During that period I began imagining various endings to my story with Nikolai. All of them relied upon a magical escape, some fantasy that would change my life. In one fantasy I found the hidden Templar gold under the fortress. It was not hidden in the cuve below the kitchen, not even close. The Templars had been too clever to put it there. It was at the bottom of the old well, tucked into a corner of the old olive press. The well had been abandoned long before we moved in, maybe even before the age of modern plumbing. The first time I looked into it, I dropped a stone, listening for water, but the stone hit chalk. It was dry, but that didn’t mean it was barren: The treasure must be down there, waiting at the bottom. I had read in the Midi Libre a few months before that a couple in the village of Millau had discovered a stash of gold coins in their basement, a pouch secreted away during the French Revolution, when the rich were hiding their savings before losing their heads. The Templars had been the victims of a plot by the king, and many of them were murdered on a single night, Friday, October 13, 1307. Those Knights spared death were tortured until they confessed crimes they hadn’t committed. But the Knights Templar had been made of strong stuff. Not one of them had disclosed the true location of their gold in La Commanderie. Their treasures had stayed hidden. Waiting for me. I would find their gold and buy myself a new life.
And so it went: I dreamed of unrealistic solutions to my unhappiness. I could live in that delusional state of mind for a while, but at the strangest moments, when I was taking the kids to school or buying baguettes at the boulangerie, the truth would hit me: I am alone. Married, with two children, but utterly and completely alone. My father was dead; my mother was far away; my husband and I were cogs in a family machine. In these moments I would stop, take a breath, and close my eyes, feeling the prick of loneliness pinch and disperse through my body. A depth would open in my heart, a funneling darkness so deep, so insatiable, that everything—the kids, the house, the
car, my work, faith, everything—fell inside, leaving just me. I wanted to fill this darkness. I wanted to surround myself with curtain walls and bulwarks, with layer upon layer of armor. I wanted to build a wall so thick that nothing, and no one, could touch me.
—
IN FEBRUARY 2012 MY friend Diana invited me to join her for a ski trip to Austria. Nikolai didn’t ski and didn’t like airplanes, so he stayed home with our new nanny, Sveti, a Bulgarian woman in her fifties. Yana and Ivan had interviewed Sveti in Bulgaria and sent her to help us with the kids, believing that this could ease our growing marital problems. It was an open secret that Nikolai and I were desperately unhappy. Anyone who stepped into our home could feel it. And so Sveti arrived, like a savior from the east. She was kind to Alex and Nico and became a reliable driving companion for Nikolai. With her arrival the dynamics of our marriage shifted. I could ask Sveti to help me with laundry or cleaning, instead of expecting my husband to lend a hand. If I needed help with the shopping or the laundry, Sveti was there. If I couldn’t make dinner, Sveti stepped in. Finally someone had my back.
We met Diana and her two boys near Innsbruck, at an alpine lodge tucked between two steep mountains. Great bristling pines splotched the white slopes green. The views from the ravine were stunning, majestic, with snowcapped peaks and wooden chalets. We took the gondola up the Stubai Glacier to the heights of the Alps, where the air was so cold and clear it seemed as if I’d never really breathed before. While the kids learned technique with instructors, Diana and I took long runs, stopping to warm ourselves at ski stations, picking the kids up late in the afternoon and going back to the hotel for dinner.
Diana and I spent a lot of time talking on the chairlifts. She lived in London and was in the middle of a bitter divorce. She had been separated from her husband, Joseph, for over a year, and she’d just learned that he’d become involved with one of their nannies. Diana’s husband was fifty; the nanny was twenty-five. Diana had been keeping me up to date about the proceedings with weekly calls, and the situation was not improving—they were spending tens of thousands of pounds in legal expenses and were locked in a stalemate over custody, alimony, the liquidation of their Kensington apartment, the boys’ school fees, retirement accounts, life insurance, division of stocks, and maintenance.
Thank God Nikolai and I are not going through that, I thought whenever I heard the gruesome details of Diana’s divorce. The “thank God I’m not them” sentiment was something I felt every time I heard about a nasty breakup. They were everywhere, these couples who fought like savages over property or summer visitation. A friend had just told me the story of a woman who had pounded up her own face with a brick and gone to the police to report that her husband had beaten her. I heard another story of a man who not only took his wife’s engagement ring back but stole all her jewelry, every piece, and dumped it into the river. Such people made my parents’ divorce, which I had always considered the nastiest separation in the history of all separations, look pleasant.
These stories put my marriage in perspective. Nikolai and I might have been struggling, we might have been unhappy, he might have had a fling with one of his students, and I might have gone overboard on my book tour, but we were educated, civilized adults. Even if we ended up separating, we would never resort to such mean and vengeful fighting. We would talk things through. We would be compassionate and understanding, logical and calm. He’d been a Buddhist monk, after all, and I was determined not to repeat the mistakes my parents had made. We would be different. Of that I was sure.
Late one night the kids and I came back to our hotel room to find a red light blinking on the phone. There were three or four messages waiting from Nikolai. It wasn’t that unusual. There were always messages waiting from Nikolai, as well as dozens of text messages and missed calls on my cell phone. Since my book tour, he’d begun interrogating me whenever I left the house, asking me who I’d met and what we did. He wanted a confession from me, a remorseful admission of guilt. But I had nothing to confess. Other than the fact that I no longer loved him.
When I called back, Nikolai answered on the first ring. His voice was anxious.
“Where were you?” he said. His breathing was loud and irregular, as if he’d been running.
“At dinner,” I said. “There’s a buffet between seven and nine. Just like last night.”
“I called ten times, and you didn’t answer.”
“We were skiing all day,” I said.
“What about the kids?”
“They were skiing, too,” I said. “We came here to ski. They’re in ski school every day, learning.”
“I don’t understand why you guys left,” he said.
“Yes you do,” I said, exasperated. “We’re skiing in Austria with Diana.”
“What’s so special about Austria? Why can’t you ski here?”
“Because there’s no snow in the south of France,” I said.
“Then why didn’t you let me come with you?” He sounded like a child who hadn’t been invited on a playdate. “Why did I have to stay behind? I wanted to come.”
I was trying to keep my temper. “You were welcome to come with us. You said you didn’t want to come. You don’t ski. You hate flying.”
“You tricked me into staying here,” he said. “You’re always finding a way to take the kids and leave me behind. Who’s with you? A man?”
“You know I’m here with Diana,” I said. It was getting exhausting, having to defend myself at every turn, but some part of me must have felt I deserved it, because I didn’t hang up. I listened. I tried to reason with him. This was the price I must pay to keep my life from falling apart. I felt I owed it to Alex and Nico to hold on as long as humanly possible, to endure, as if marriage were a marathon. One thing I’d learned from my childhood was that sometimes, when things are bad and it didn’t seem like I could endure another day, holding on would get me through. My life had become an endurance test: How much could I bear before I broke?
“Who else did you meet there?” he asked, his voice lowering to a whisper. “Austrian businessmen? Friends of Diana’s?”
“You’re not serious,” I said.
“London stockbrokers? Hedge-fund guys? I know the kind of men Diana likes. Tell me. Is she setting you up with someone? Who’s there with you?”
“You are being totally ridiculous,” I said. “You know I’m here with the kids. Diana is here with her boys. It’s a family vacation. That’s all.”
“I don’t trust you,” he said. “Not after New York.”
“New York has nothing to do with it. You’ve been paranoid and jealous since the minute we met. What happened in New York just gives you an excuse to act like a psycho,” I said, glancing over my shoulder to see if the kids were in earshot. They were. “I don’t want to talk about this now.”
“Put Nico on the phone,” he said.
I gave the phone to Nico. She sat on the bed and answered a series of yes-or-no questions. I could only imagine what he was asking: Is your mom alone? Does she leave you in the room alone? Is there a man there? Does Diana have a boyfriend?
I began bracing myself for the fight that we would inevitably have when I got home. It would go something like this: It might have been out of line to call me so many times, and his calls might have been accusatory and paranoid, but it was my fault. I had left him to go to Austria, and so I was to blame for making him feel abandoned. I should apologize for putting him through hell.
As Nico answered her father’s questions, Alex shot me a sad, knowing look, one that said, Of course Daddy wants to talk to Nico and not me, and my heart sank. Neither of us fully understood then that Alex was lucky to be spared that kind of attention. In some ways Alex’s invisibility was a shield.
—
NIKOLAI MET US at the airport in Montpellier. I stacked the suitcases onto a cart and shepherded the kids through the terminal and out to the Citroën station wagon. Nikolai peered at us from the driver’s seat, his eyes shaded by h
is black porkpie hat. He said something in Bulgarian, and Sveti jumped out of the car to load the bags into the back. Of course, I thought, shaking my head in exasperation. Let the nanny carry the luggage. I had come to resent him for his unapologetic dependence on women, his reliance on me and his mother and Sveti. In my resentful state of mind, I translated this as a lack of masculinity. I would focus on every little thing that bugged me, mentally picking apart his flaws. Sometimes in the heat of a fight, I ridiculed him openly, calling him a pussy or a loser. I was mean and petty, trying to humiliate him, to make him feel how much I resented him. Such hazing rituals had become more regular chez nous, and although he did his share of name-calling, I was the Queen of Ridicule. I ripped into him and then ridiculed him for being wounded. There was no warmth or tenderness possible in this kind of contest. When I hurt him, I never actually felt that I’d won. In fact, I felt, at those moments, like the biggest loser on the planet: I might have scored the point, but I was losing the match. Real love could never live in such fierce conditions.
The kids and I helped Sveti with the bags, and when we’d shoved everything in, Sveti returned to the front seat of the car. I slid in with the kids, the three of us pressed together in the back. As we pulled away from the airport and drove onto an access road near the highway, Sveti glanced back at me with concern. She said something in Bulgarian, and Nikolai pulled the car over.
“Sveti says you should sit in the front seat. That’s your place.”
“No, that’s fine,” I said, realizing that it was in fact rather strange for the babysitter to sit up front with my husband while I sat in back with the kids, but then again everything about our family’s situation had become unnatural in the past years. “I’ll stay back here,” I said. And in truth I would rather have stayed in the back with Alex and Nico anyway. I loved spending time with them. It was the least stressful and happiest part of my life.
But Nikolai, perhaps feeling Sveti’s disapproval, insisted that I get in the front seat. I untangled myself from my children and took my place by Nikolai. Now that we were all in our proper seats, Nikolai began his first round of questioning.
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