I didn’t have many close friendships at that point in my life, partially because I’d moved around so much and partially because I spent my free time with my husband and children. But when I made a friend, I cherished that friendship, and truly cared about that person. Jett was one such friend, and I had liked her despite her flaws. I had liked her when she gave me the wrong advice and when she was judgmental about my life. There’d been many reasons to be critical of Jett, but I hadn’t been. I had trusted her. Jett was my closest friend in Aubais, and her betrayal cut deep.
Eventually Alex and Nico came downstairs, their backpacks on, ready to go to school, but I told them to go back upstairs and play, that they were staying home. “Today,” I said magnanimously, “is a free day.” Alex and Nico looked at me in astonishment. Never in the history of their school experience had I said such words. But the day a woman finds her husband—estranged husband—in bed with her friend is an instant holiday for everyone. “Go play!” I said, and when they stared at me as if I’d gone mad, they were not far from the mark.
When I finally left the lawn chair, I found my phone and composed the following text message: AS YOU PROBABLY KNOW, NIKOLAI AND I ARE GETTING DIVORCED. IT IS NOW CLEAR TO ME WHY: I JUST FOUND HIM IN BED WITH MY FRIEND JETT. I then sent this message to all our friends in the village and beyond, friends I hadn’t spoken to in months, friends who might or might not have known that Nikolai and I were having trouble at all, let alone getting divorced.
I sent it out and waited for responses to roll in, the waves of support and sympathy, the indignation. Never mind that my message was total nonsense: Nikolai and Jett could have been sleeping together for months, but that wouldn’t have been the cause of our divorce, just as Hadrien wasn’t the cause. We were the cause of our divorce. Our pride and stupidity. Our selfishness and egotism. It was our fault. We’d been building walls to keep the world out, but we were our own worst enemies.
I checked my phone, looking for responses to my text. Surely this information would bring everyone back to my side. Soon they would stop by the house to see if I was okay, and my friends would hug me, and we would laugh and cry together at the horrors I’d been through these past weeks. They would understand that I’d been wronged. I would be vindicated.
The first message to come back was from Lulu. It was short and to the point: JETT? I DON’T BELIEVE IT FOR ONE SECOND.
I read the message again. She didn’t believe it? What, did she need pictures of his naked ass? Well, I didn’t really believe it either, and I had actually witnessed it, so I couldn’t blame her for doubting. I wrote back, BELIEVE IT. I JUST WALKED IN ON THEM.
I would have written a more extensive response to Lulu, but another text came in from a female friend, an artist who had been through a difficult breakup some years before. She wrote the comforting: .
I sent a quick text to Hadrien, who had heard about Jett during our phone conversations, saying, JUST FOUND NIKOLAI IN BED WITH JETT. He responded, LOL. AT LEAST IT WASN’T THE BABYSITTER.
The babysitter. That was someone I had not included on the group text message. I took out my phone and was retyping the message, customizing it for Sveti, when it struck me how ridiculous this whole thing had become. I had just sent an electronic newsblast about Nikolai’s sexual activities to all our friends, people who could not have cared less about what Nikolai or I do in the bedroom. I was doing exactly the same thing that Nikolai had been doing to me for weeks—using our friends as ammunition for our battle. It was a mistake, a big mistake. I’d written the text in a rage, and I regretted it. I’d written the text in weakness and fury. I’d tried to embarrass Jett and attack Nikolai, and in so doing I’d made myself into exactly the kind of person I didn’t want to become.
In the beginning, when we’d discussed the separation over our bottle of Bollinger 2002, I’d wanted an honorable separation, one in which we admitted that we’d failed but acknowledged the fact that we’d tried to build something beautiful and meaningful. I’d wanted to keep the idea of our efforts—our noble and outsize and romantic and ridiculous attempt at love—safe. I’d wanted to separate as friends and go on with our lives in dignity. And while Nikolai’s behavior over the past weeks had hurt me, I had been determined to stay above it: I was not going to stoop to his level. I had intended to walk with my head held high. But now there I was, in the mud with him, thrashing and sinking in the filth.
—
THE REST OF the day slipped by me in a haze. I lay in bed, thinking and staring at the ceiling, going into a spiral of anger and self-recrimination. I wanted to get out of bed but couldn’t move. A weight pressed on my chest, pinning me to the mattress. My limbs were heavy, filled with lead. The thought of facing the outside world was too overwhelming to imagine. The weight on my chest became heavier and heavier. It was a stone, fixing me in place as the dirt rained down, cold and hard, covering my legs and arms, my face. Soon I would be hidden. Soon I would be buried alive.
Looking out the window, I saw that the sky was already growing dark. I’d spent the entire day stewing in my own acid, dissolving in the wash of anger and shame and guilt. The worst part was that kids had surely heard us fighting. They had probably witnessed me screaming at Nikolai and Jett and the two of them leaving together. No doubt they’d heard me crying in my room after sending the text message and heard the crash when I’d thrown my phone at the wall. I wanted to justify my childish actions, to blame Nikolai or Jett for them, to find some excuse for what I was doing to Alex and Nico. But I knew, even then, that I was hurting them. My actions had consequences. They were not subject to revision. And this knowledge made me feel more worthless than I’d ever felt before.
If only it had been possible for the ghost of my future self to appear in that darkening room and kneel at the side of the bed to comfort me. She would have stroked my hair and whispered in my ear that everything would be okay. She would tell me that it was not too late to salvage my life, that Alex and Nico would be fine, and I would be fine, too. But maybe I did hear some hint of my future self, just a whisper through the layers of time, because even at that weak, dark moment I was grasping for her, longing for what she would teach me. I would fight to find her, this woman of the future who had burned away the layers of self-pity and delusion until just the blackened, roasted marrow remained. One day I would meet that woman, and we would embrace as sisters who had descended to hell and emerged new.
—
BY THE TIME Nikolai came upstairs later that day, I had worked myself into a state of despair. He knocked on the Paris-Lyon door, calling my name. I pulled myself out of bed and unlatched the chain lock, so we stood together at the doorframe, he on one side, me on the other. He wore the same clothes he’d had on that morning, the wrinkled T-shirt and the black jeans and sandals. He looked every bit as hungover as he’d been when he left, only now he wasn’t screaming and cursing me. Now he was calm. He smiled weakly. “I’d like to talk to you.”
“Talk?” I said, looking up at him, not quiet able to trust the gentle tone of his voice. It was the exact opposite of the cacophony of emotions banging in my brain, the atonal noise of self-recrimination and anger. “Talk about what?”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “This standoff needs to end.”
It needs to end. The phrase swirled in my mind. My thoughts were growing circular and frenetic, until they seemed less my thoughts than an echo in the house. It needs to end.
“We need to end this,” he said.
Yes, we need to end this. His voice was hypnotic, soft as a whisper. Had he actually spoken? Or had I imagined his voice telling me that this needs to end? It’s karma. It isn’t even our choice. We’ve been waiting many lifetimes for this chance.
“Danielle,” he said. “Do you hear me? We need to end this. We need to sign an agreement.”
Something in my brain snapped. I said, “How is this ever going to end?”
“We need to make an agreement,” he said. “Now. Here.”
&n
bsp; “Tell me—does it look like we’re ever going to agree about anything?”
He gave me a tender look, one that reminded me of the Nikolai I’d known ten years before, the pleading, vulnerable Nikolai. The Nikolai who had begged me never to leave him. “I don’t know what you’re holding out for,” he said. “I mean, even if you get what you want—and you stay here in the house with Nico and Alex and I leave—how are you going to manage by yourself? This is a medieval village. It isn’t easy to be alone here. You’ve lost all your friends. You can’t even open the gate without help, let alone manage this house.”
I began to laugh, a sick and twisted laugh, as if I’d been inhabited by a demonic spirit. “Do you actually think you’re such an enormous help to me? You’re even less helpful than Sveti. If Sveti works twenty-five hours a week, that will be way more assistance than I’m getting from you. I’m going to be just fine.”
“But Sveti won’t work for you,” he said, and it seemed to me that his eyes filled with a joyful glimmer, as if he’d been waiting for just the right moment to tell me.
“What do you mean?” I said, leaning against the Paris-Lyon door, in need, suddenly, of its support. “Sveti’s going to stay on and help me.”
“She didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?” I said, my stomach sinking.
“I’m sorry,” he said with fake contrition. “But she told me last weekend that she wasn’t going to be working here anymore. She doesn’t want to be in France after the divorce. She said it was too sad to see kids suffer through this kind of thing.”
I stared at Nikolai, speechless. For some illogical reason, Sveti had become the linchpin of my plan to stay in France. In my mind I could lose my husband and still manage my life there if I had help from a strong, competent woman like Sveti. For some reason the possibility of finding someone else to help me was unthinkable. In my unbalanced state of mind, I had fixated on Sveti. In truth my feelings had nothing to do with the nanny, but at that moment, in that state of agitation, Sveti’s abandonment was all I could see. I needed her, and only her, or everything would fall apart.
“Are you telling me Sveti quit?” I was losing control, and words came out as one astonished proclamation.
Nikolai nodded.
“How could she quit now? This is when I need her the most. She knows that I can’t stay here alone without her!”
“She’s decided to go back to Bulgaria with me,” he said, a smug look crossing his face. Or was it a compassionate look? I was so twisted up, so trapped in my head, that I couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
“What is she going to do in Bulgaria with you?” I asked.
“I’ll need her help with Nico.”
“But you’re not going to have Nico,” I said. “Nico is going to be here!”
“My parents hired Sveti,” he said, looking at me with contempt (or was it concern?). “She’s Bulgarian. You can’t even speak to her. Did you really think she would stay here with you?”
Something about the way Nikolai said this, in combination with the noxious emotional fumes of my day, ignited in me. “You stole her!” I shrieked. “You fucking stole Sveti! You know I can’t make it without her, and you convinced her to leave!” I was incensed, illogical, all the emotions I had battled to hold back spilling forth. For the first time in all the weeks we’d been fighting, I burst into tears in front of Nikolai, big gulping sobs. “How could you do this to me? How could you fucking steal the babysitter?”
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Hold on, I didn’t steal—”
“This is all part of your master plan, isn’t it?”
“Master plan?”
“To take everything piece by piece. To rip away my entire life until I have nothing, nothing left!”
“Danielle, I—”
“What else do you want from me?” I shrieked. “You’ve brainwashed my daughter, you’ve stolen all my friends, you’ve taken over the house. You’ve spent our savings. You drank my wine. You’re waging a smear campaign against me. What else do you want, Nikolai? Do you want my limbs, too? My arms? Maybe a few fingers?” I thrust my hand into his face, as if offering the fingers to him. “Take them! I don’t need them anymore.” I was working myself into a frenzy, going up and up and up, raising the tone of my voice until I was the mezzosoprano of an Italian opera, screeching with pain and betrayal. “Tell me: What else do you want now that you’ve stolen Sveti?”
Nikolai started to back down the staircase, slowly, gingerly, regarding me with the frightened look of an animal at the end of a rifle.
“Congratulations! You set out to destroy my life, and now you’ve done it.”
“Hold on,” he said. “Just hold on a minute.”
“You really want to win this game of chess?” I walked to the edge of the staircase and flung one leg over the slippery wooden banister railing, feeling the pull of gravity under me. The drop was deep, onto stone, a long, hard fall. “Why don’t we get this whole thing over with right now!”
“Danielle,” Nikolai said, taking another step backward on the stairs. “Calm down.”
“And one day when our kids ask what happened to their mother, you can tell them that you drove me to this, you drove me to kill myself. Is that what you really want? To kill me?”
“No,” he said, still backing down the staircase. “I don’t want that. Just calm down.”
I threw my other leg over the slippery balustrade and felt, suddenly, a weightlessness, the vertiginous sensation of being a bird perched on the ledge of a skyscraper. I could just let go. I could do it. I didn’t even have to think about it. It would be as easy as relaxing, letting my muscles retract. Easy. Easier than crawling back over the railing. Easier than facing Nikolai. Easy.
Nikolai rushed forward, grabbed me by the shoulders, and pulled me backward, onto the floor. We lay there locked in a tense embrace, his arms around me, and for a moment I thought he would lean over and kiss me. The monster would die. The princess would awake. Instead he pulled away, gently, and walked down the stairs. I heard the door slam as he left. I lay there broken, almost wishing that I had in fact jumped.
The White Queen
After what happened on the stairs, I called Hadrien. For the first time in the two months that we had known each other, I couldn’t get through to him. I left a message and then sent him a text: CALL ME. Fifteen minutes later he called back. There was noise in the background, and I realized he was at a bar in Paris, one of those exotic places that free people frequented. He was probably with friends, doing all the things that normal people do when they’re not going insane in a thirteenth-century fortress.
I explained what had happened in the stairwell, how I was scared to stay at the house any longer, how desperate I felt to stop the fighting, how sick and alone I felt. It had all gone too far. And, worst of all, I didn’t trust myself anymore.
“I wish Andy were still here,” I said.
“Wait,” Hadrien said. “When Andy was there, Nikolai didn’t harass you?”
“He’s smart enough to behave himself when someone else is around.”
“I think I have an idea,” Hadrien said. “What kind of idea?”
“A plan,” he said. “I know that you think you need to stay and hold your ground, but it’s clear that this approach is not going to work. You need to do the opposite. You need to leave.”
“But what about Alex and Nico?” I said. “I can’t leave them here.”
“Bring them with you,” he said. “Take them out of there.”
The idea was so simple when he said it, but when I tried to work out the logistics, it seemed impossible. “But how? He won’t let me leave with them.”
“I’m coming down there to break you out.”
I started laughing, and it felt so good, so normal. This is who I was, not that crazy person in the stairwell. “You’re planning a jailbreak?”
“Listen, it sounds crazy, but I think I know a way to get you and the kids out of there.”
<
br /> “Out?” I said. It was what I most wanted, to leave the fortress with the kids, to go somewhere safe and calm. I could hardly imagine such an idea. “Where are we going to go?”
“With me,” he said. “I’m going to get you out of there. I promise.”
—
I MET HADRIEN at the train station the next morning after the kids had gone to school. For the past weeks, Hadrien’s voice had become a lifeline to me, and I knew its every nuance and register, how high or low it pitched, how he sounded when he whispered or laughed. But his body was another story. It had been many weeks since I’d been alone with the flesh-and-blood Hadrien. He was taller than I remembered, healthy, strong, and well rested, while I was pale, thin, and skittish. He took me in his arms and kissed me, as if he didn’t notice that I was a shadow of the woman he had met in Paris.
Seeing Hadrien made it clear how damaged I was, and not only because of the anemia. After two failed marriages, I wasn’t sure how to go forward in a new relationship, especially with a man who was so unscathed. Yes, he’d had a bad breakup of his own, and he was in some ways more mature than me, but I was a mess. I couldn’t imagine being good for him. He offered noble, selfless love, and I wasn’t sure I had any right to accept it. Didn’t he deserve someone without my history of failure, a healthy woman with a clean, unsullied past? I wasn’t sure I could venture another close relationship, and I was absolutely certain I couldn’t be with a man who depended upon me for his happiness.
In the years after we met, Hadrien and I would stay together, but I would need a lot of time before I was ready to give myself fully to a relationship. He didn’t rush me. There would be long stretches of time when we were apart, months when he was in France and I in the United States. In these periods without him, I learned what it meant to be alone. I grew to be a person who cherished freedom, who looked forward to a solitary weekend or a vacation with Alex and Nico, no man in sight. When Hadrien and I were together, I honored my need to be a singular person in relation to another singular person. Gone was the fusion-bound love of my marriage. Gone the suffocating dependence. We kept our finances separate; our friends were often different. I realized I couldn’t be happy in a relationship unless I was happy alone first. It seemed like such a simple idea, but it had taken me a long time to learn it. Yet once I did, I became stronger, more realistic about my needs. There was no room for artifice. I wanted only what was essential: honesty, trust, and respect. I could no longer tolerate anything that was not love. And because of this new way of understanding love, I could build a future on solid ground.
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