And after years of emotional stockpiling, no one said how you would find your way into another woman’s body like an infant finding his thumb, how it would unclog the years of muck and allow you, on your walk home now, to stand in line at the butcher shop with your joy for life intact, appreciative and optimistic and tolerant of the old woman in front of you who can’t decide between veal or chicken because why should she rush? The world is full of choices, each more delightful than the last.
Why is it called “cheating”? Is it all that bad? I married my lover, time turned her into my sister. Truly, badly, I want my lover back. But we’ve twisted each other with our unspoken failures and our building scorn. A near decade later, we’re warped. We are polluted. The well of love is black.
5
BY THE beginning of October, it was looking more and more likely that the British would join the United States in military action against Iraq. I was back at my favorite news kiosk, rifling through headlines inspired, apparently, by the lexicon of cowhands (HE’S GOT ’EM, GO GET ’EM!), trying to brainstorm ways I could develop an Iraq-themed project without coming across as a desperate opportunist, when I got a call from Julien that he needed to see me.
I found Julien in the gallery’s storage closet, standing on his head. The watercooler next to him belched out a bubbly glug.
“Julien,” I said, blinking. “What the fuck.”
He bent one leg back and then the other, tucked his head against his kneecaps for several seconds before getting up.
“It’s good for stress,” he said, dusting off. “Did you meet Bérénice?”
I confirmed my observation of the Toulousian receptionist but did not share the fact that I found her reception skills somewhat lacking, as she had neither greeted me nor offered to take my coat. “How long has she been here?”
“She just started, but already . . . here.” He pushed open the door for me so we could exit the closet. “Let’s go to my desk.”
Julien’s desk was less cluttered than usual. Whether this was for the benefit of his new intern or accomplished by the intern herself, I have no idea, but I do know that Bérénice was one of those girls with a really severe bird look to her. Instead of making herself busy while we talked, she sat there across the room from us, peering over with her freaky eyes.
“Bérénice, dear, do you think you could pop across the street for a bit and bring us back some sandwiches? Ham and cheese? And get one for yourself.”
Julien got up to deposit some euros on her desk, which she stared at for a while before unceremoniously stuffing them into the front pocket of her jacket.
“It’s very strange,” Julien whispered, as she headed for the door. “She doesn’t have a purse.”
Once she was gone, Julien shared with me the shake-up of the morning.
“This British fellow,” he said. “He wants you to bring the bear.”
“Sorry?”
“They want you to hand-deliver it, the painting. It’s Bérénice that talked to them this morning, so of course I called them back and said she was new here and that we don’t do deliveries by the artist and so forth, but . . . they’re incredibly persuasive.”
“Wait, so you talked to this guy. A guy.”
“Yeah. The Dave fellow. They’ll cover your travel expenses, plus a thousand euros.”
I crossed my arms and tried to make sense of it. And couldn’t.
“But, why?”
“Apparently, they practice this New Age form of art collecting. He said it was part of the process that you deliver the work yourself.”
I got up and started pacing. “You have to agree, right, that this is a little too coincidental? Who else would want me to go all the way to London—and how am I going to do that, by the way, the thing’s bloody gigantic—except for her?”
Julien picked something from his teeth. “I admit that it’s unusual. It’s definitely strange.”
“What if it is her? What would that mean?”
“I guess it would mean that she wants to see you again. And that she has an inordinate amount of free time. I don’t know what to say. Do you think you’ll do it? The guy says they might not buy it if you won’t.”
I exhaled hugely and looked up at the ceiling that was yellowed from all the cigarettes that had been smoked beneath it.
“And when do they want me to do this?” I asked.
“I told them you had some time off coming up, over the Toussaint.”
“You suggested my vacation?”
“You’ll be in Brittany,” he replied. “Just a ferry ride away. Bring your family with you. Visit your parents. Turn it into a vacay.”
“Right, fantastic. A reunion between my ex-mistress and my wife.”
“Well, you need to think about it. I told them we’d get back to them in two days.”
“Do you think it’s Lisa?” I asked, sitting.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t. But now . . . I guess it might be.”
We sat in silence for a while; I worked on biting the nail of my thumb off, and Julien stuck his into the rubber tunnel created by his telephone cord.
After a while Bérénice came back with the sandwiches. Faux crab for Julien and some kind of grilled vegetable concoction for me. She claimed—preposterously—that they were out of ham.
As we sat there eating lunch, thoughts about conspiracies trampled through my head. Why would the U.S. government go to such transparent lengths to prove that weapons of mass destruction existed when even their men on the ground said that they didn’t? Why would any self-respecting boulangerie be out of ham baguettes at noon? What would I do if Lisa was the buyer? Could I really deliver a painting to her doorstep and take off without delving back into the horizontal and upright and other corporal positions that had gotten me into so much trouble in the first place?
“I wanted to tell you,” attempted Julien through a mouthful of baguette, “I have a potential buyer for that painting of the bikes. Which leaves me with, what’s next? Do you have anything in mind?”
“Well, you’re not going to like this,” I said, scratching the back of my head. “But I was thinking—and it’s just thinking—about maybe doing something on Iraq?”
“Politics?” He frowned. “I don’t know, Rich. I don’t really think of you as a political guy.”
“But this is cops-and-robbers bullcrap,” I said. “It’s a farce. Have you seen the headlines?”
“So, what—you want to do some paintings of George Bush on a stick horse?”
I laughed. “That’s good, actually. But no. I was thinking,” I ran my hand down my pant leg, inventing an itch. “I was thinking that I might go back to installations.”
“An installation.” He grimaced. “About Iraq?”
I folded my arms across my chest. “I want to do something timely, you know? Something that has meaning. Something that doesn’t have anything to do with all of this.” I swept my hand out to encompass the key paintings in the room.
“But politics?” Julien protested. “That’s not really your thing.”
“Well, it certainly was my thing before—”
“Or it’s not your clients’ thing. You’ve got a fan base now,” he continued. “Collectors. Or, collectors of a certain sort. People like your work. It’s nostalgic. It looks good next to curtains.”
“Curtains,” I said, darkening. “You’re serious.”
Equally miffed, he went into the storage room and returned with two cups of instant coffee and some sugar packets. I was feeling disrespected. I took two packets instead of my regular one. “Listen,” he continued, setting down the java, “you know I believe in you. But even the Damien Hirsts of the world understand that there is money in being consistent. His preserved sharks, his rotting cow heads, it’s all coming from the same place of provocation and power. But he’s not sentimental.
You are. And you can’t go from being sentimental and apolitical to being politically involved.”
“So you’re saying I can’t do art with an opinion?”
“Art with an agenda, no.” He drank his coffee in one shot. “Or rather, I’m saying you can’t sell art with an agenda here. That’s not what I rep you for. That’s not why I took you. And that’s not why most of the paintings in this show have sold.”
“But this is who I am, Julien; the key paintings were a lark.”
“They’re a gift horse, Rich! You could do endless versions of them: former offices you’ve worked in, places you’ve vacationed, rooms in your childhood home. You’ve stumbled on a brand.”
“I need to do this now,” I said, lowering my voice. “I want to feel like I’m a part of something. I’d like to be respected.”
“Knowing that every painting here is going to sell doesn’t make you feel that?”
I let my gaze drift down the hallway where The Blue Bear was hanging, massive and alone. Anne lied when she said she didn’t care if I tried to sell it, and I knew that, and I included it in the show anyway. And it had sold.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “I just want Anne to like it.”
And there it was. Despite the genre of work that The Blue Bear represents, Anne had been proud of it because it reflected a real sentiment. A vulnerability. A stated fear. Up until the other key paintings, I’d taken on real topics, maybe not a war per se, but I had opinions on world issues that stemmed beyond the domestic questions that plagued my mind of late: Is there anything more dispiriting than boneless chicken under plastic? Was Camille going to turn into the kind of child who uses eye rolls instead of words? Would my wife forgive me? Beneath my posturing around the Iraq conflict and my quest to find a smart idea, part of me just wanted Anne to respect my work again.
• • •
That night, Anne and I had a dinner party at the house of friends who had recently moved from Paris to Versailles. This was happening more and more now, the exodus of creative people in their thirties to suburbs they’d made vicious fun of ten years prior. The last time we’d been to Synneve and Thierry’s, he’d dropped the word wainscoting into the conversation. Thierry might be a faithful husband, but he’s started to think about decorative paneling in his spare time. By our midthirties, we’re all fucked.
We’d gotten a babysitter for Camille, a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence that had us both in noticeably improved moods. The prospect of an entire night to be enjoyed with people who were over four feet tall coupled with the uninterrupted flow of traffic on the normally gridlocked A13 made the atmosphere in the Peugeot register at “cordial” instead of its default “tense.”
Anne had on her “special night” perfume, a heady mix of bergamot and neroli, along with a silk rose blouse and wide-legged, wool pants with heels. Nervous about sharing the news that now, not only had I sold The Blue Bear, but as further penance, I also had to deliver it to London, I opted for a warm-up topic that was safe and flattering. I said I liked her shoes.
“Humph,” she scoffed. “They’re old.” She pushed into fifth gear.
The unexpected lack of traffic wasn’t leaving me much time. I stared at the passing high-rises out the window, television satellites clinging perilously to the grids of narrow balconies.
“So I’ve got news,” I said, my jaw tense. “About the Bear.”
“Oh?” she said, downshifting. I thought I detected a note of hopefulness in her voice.
“I went to see Julien the other day, and it turns out . . . it’s really strange, actually.” I fiddled with my seat belt. “They want me to deliver it. The buyers. They want me to bring it to London myself.”
I watched Anne’s face take on an expression of incredulity I’d seen her use when she was presented with evidence that wouldn’t hold up in court.
“Julien said it has something to do with the way they go about art collecting. I don’t know, it’s spiritual or some such.”
In reply, she sighed. “This doesn’t sound right to me. In fact, it sounds absurd. Has he ever had a request like this before?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, staring at my hands. “I didn’t ask.”
“Well, what did you tell him?”
“Well, I told him—I told him . . . they’re going to pay me, so I told him yes.”
She turned to look at me. “How much?”
I stalled. “A thousand.”
She laughed out loud. “That’s ludicrous.”
“Plus expenses.”
“You can’t be serious, Richard. Put things in perspective. You don’t know these people, Julien doesn’t either, you’re going to have to trek across the Channel—”
“They’ve put a deposit down, I’m sure of it,” I said, not actually sure of that at all. “I just feel like . . . I mean, it’s pretty fascinating, right? The request itself? Maybe I could document the trip or something.”
She rolled her eyes. “And when is this supposed to happen?”
“That’s the thing, actually,” I said, with a little cough. “Over the Toussaint?”
“Oh, perfect!” she cried. “Do these people even exist? Or is this some kind of elaborate plan to get out of seeing my family?”
“Julien’s thinking was that I’d be just a ferry ride away.”
“Julien thought this,” she said. “Right.”
“I don’t know,” I said, slumping deeper into the car seat. “I kind of feel like I don’t have a choice. I wouldn’t go for long—take the ferry over, stay with my parents, drop the painting off, come back. I mean, you could always come with?”
“Oh, God, no,” she replied. “I want a real vacation. I don’t want to spend sixteen hours on a boat.” She shook her head. “This is what happens when . . .”
She didn’t need to finish her sentence. I knew that what she meant to say was that I never should have sold it.
“Do what you have to,” she said, switching lanes.
As we drove, I pictured what would happen if the buyer was Lisa. What it would mean if she had actually bought the painting—the position it would put me in, a pawn wedged in the bosom of flattery and despair. But as much as a large part of me wanted to see her again, to test whether or not I was still susceptible to her pull, I knew that if I went over there and Lisa really was the buyer, it would be an irreparable betrayal of my wife. Again.
When we reached the commune of Saint-Cloud, the traffic slowed to the point where we couldn’t distract ourselves with the outside scenery any longer. Our silence was too loud. I asked how things were going with her case, and she explained that she was going to pretrial in a month.
“It’s looking like they’re going all the way with this,” Anne said, frowning. “They’re getting the signature of every mother of a child born with a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder in the north of France.”
“Don’t pregnant women know not to drink?”
“It’s different with wine,” she said. “We grow up with it. My own doctor told me I could have two glasses a day. I mean, most women don’t even want it. You just don’t have that craving, or it isn’t to your taste, but here’s their argument—and that’s what’s so frustrating about it—these women are saying they didn’t know. They didn’t know that drinking alcohol was bad for their babies.”
“So why aren’t they blaming the doctors?”
“Exactly,” she said, casting me a glance. “That will be a main part of our defense, that the fault lies in preventive education. They’ve always made a bigger deal about the side effects of drinking pregnant in America than they have in France. But then, the Americans make a bigger deal of everything. It’s a bad sign, this trial. It shows very poor taste. It shows that French people are eager to place the blame elsewhere for their own choices. Between that and the arrival of Starbucks, you’ll see.”
“A
près moi, le déluge.”
She smiled. “Exactly.”
“But Starbucks isn’t here yet.”
She shook her head. “It’ll come. And supersized cereal packs. And strollers.”
“The French have strollers.”
“We don’t have strollers,” she said, her eyes flashing. “We have poussettes.”
In between the commune of Saint-Cloud and the town of Versailles lies a fifteen-hundred-acre stretch of formal royal forest known as La forêt de Fausses-Reposes. This rather grim name (“The Forest of False Rests”) refers to the refuge the hapless deer would take behind rocks and under trees in order to escape the droves of hunting royalty with their horses, and their bugles, and their yapping dogs.
“Can I ask you a question?” I said, watching the woods outside the window, thinking about how the poor, outnumbered deer were always found. “Do you think my work’s . . . predictable?”
She looked over at me. “Where’s this coming from?”
“Do you?”
“I need context.”
“You’re afraid to answer.”
She ran her hand through her hair. “Well, what are you referring to? The key paintings? The entire body of your work? Your work isn’t predictable. The show . . . I mean, it was almost a commission, wasn’t it? It wasn’t really coming from your heart.”
“Thank you,” I said, trying a hand on her thigh. I felt her leg stiffen. I hadn’t touched her in so long.
“But in terms of the key paintings, yeah, I’d say that they’re predictable.”
I took my hand away.
“Why are you asking?” she persisted. “Is it because stuff sold?”
“No . . . I mean, you obviously want stuff to sell, right? But it’s true that when it does . . .” I faltered, not sure how to continue. “Anyway, no. It’s because of a talk I had with Julien. I was thinking, maybe, about doing something kind of political? Something about Iraq? An installation. Mixed media. Something like I used to do . . . before.”
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