“Wait, can I talk with Camille?”
“She’s with Alain,” she answered. “On the beach.”
“Okay,” I said. “Well, if they can call me, after dinner?”
“Of course,” she said. And hung up.
I had no way of knowing what was going on in Saint-Briac, whether Anne had come clean about our situation or if Inès was distracted because she was busy in the kitchen and didn’t really care to talk to me because there wasn’t any question around whether or not I was coming back.
I walked back into the dining room having no more clarification around my new family than the one that I was born into, these parents of mine waiting patiently in front of the same type of supper they’d been sharing for forty years.
At the table, I picked up my fork and slammed it into a potato.
“Darling, let’s say something first,” she said. “It’s nice to have you here.”
I put my fork back down. The more time I spent at my parents’, the more selfish I became.
“Isn’t it a treat for us all to be together?” began my mother, now holding my hand.
I waited for the rest. There wasn’t any.
“That was lovely.” My father smiled. “Shall we?” He winked in my direction, thus giving me permission to go at my potatoes again.
Over dinner, I watched their gentle ministrations in a state of disbelief. I’d always seen their kindness toward each other as proof that they hadn’t traveled far enough or often enough, that they had uncomplicated brains. But now, as I watched my mother trim off a choice piece of fat from a lamb hunk for my father, when he transferred some of his potatoes to her plate when she ran out, when he got up, unasked, to fill up our glasses with more water, all I saw was love.
“How long have you two been married, again?” I asked, my mouth full of lamb curry.
“Richard.” My mother laughed. “Count back!” She patted at her lips with her napkin. “You were born in 1968, and I had you when I was twenty-three, no, twenty-four—”
“Almost forty years,” my dad said, putting his hand on hers. “Isn’t that something!”
My mum turned to him and beamed.
“In this house the whole time,” I said.
“In this house the whole time!”
“Amazing.” I raised my glass in their direction.
“Don’t be mean,” said my dad.
“I’m not being mean,” I said. “I’m astounded. Jealous. Or I’m not. I dunno.”
“You sound a bit drunk, actually,” said my mum. “Are you feeling all right?”
In the living room, the phone rang.
“I’ll get it,” I said, jumping up. “That’ll be the girls.”
I skidded into the living room and got it on the third ring.
“Hello?” I panted.
“Oui,” said Anne. “C’est moi.”
“I’m so glad you called me back,” I said. “Is everything all right?”
“Of course,” she said. “Why not?”
“Anne,” I said, trying to still my heart. “I delivered the painting.”
“I don’t want to hear about it.”
“No, listen. It was totally surreal. They made me take my shoes off and . . . we held hands, honey. They made me drink fermented tea.”
On the other end, silence.
“They’re Continuists. You ever heard of that? They think everything has a cycle. That was the thing behind it, they have to meet the people that make their art.”
Another pause. “I’m just calling to tell you that I’m going to take Camille overnight to Mont Saint-Michel. Pierre and Marie have a house there.”
“Who’s Pierre?”
She sighed. “You’ve met them. They’re in town. Anyway, it might be one day, it might be two.”
“You sure I know them?”
“Richard, I’m just telling you so you don’t call the house.”
I slumped down on the fold-up chair in the kitchen.
“Anne,” I said. “Please. Have you . . . told your parents?”
“Nothing,” she said. “No.”
“We need to talk. We need to talk in person. I want to come back to Brittany.”
“Well, that’s not an option right now.”
“I can stay in a hotel.”
“We’ll talk after we get back from the Mont. Camille?!” she called. “Wait, here’s Cam.”
Before I could protest, the phone went to my daughter.
“Hi, Dad!” I could hear the healthy sleepiness pumped into her voice from a day spent by the ocean.
“Hi, pumpkin. Are you guys having fun?”
“Yes, we flew some kites today. Mine was, like, a turtle?”
“A flying turtle! And what are you all having for dinner?”
I could almost hear her shrug. “Chicken?” I heard someone yell something in the background. “Chicken and soufflé. Oh, and Grandma says she made an apple tart.”
My mouth watered. For my family. For our normal. For my mother-in-law’s food.
“Well, I hear you’re going to Mont Saint-Michel tomorrow, sweetie. You let me know about these Pierre and Marie people, okay? You let me know if they’re nice?”
“When’re you coming home?”
“You have to ask your mom.” I did it. It was cruel. I allowed my little girl to think that the decision was her mother’s. But I wasn’t about to sit there on shame-induced house arrest while my wife went gallivanting around a tidal island with some tosser named Pierre.
• • •
After dinner, my parents and I agreed to watch some telly. I sat on the couch while my mother made chamomile tea and brought out a platter of assorted biscuits on top of a flowered paper towel. My father sat in his recliner. He kept staring at me.
“If you want to take some of these home for Camille, let me know,” said my mum, putting down the platter. “It’s bake-sale time again.”
In short order, she returned with three cups of tea. Handing a saucer to my father, she said, “I put some honey in there for you, love.”
“Perfect.” He kissed the air in front of him.
“Don’t you two ever get annoyed with one another?”
My mum sat beside me on the couch.
“You’re certainly in a mood!”
“Well,” I said, “don’t you?”
My mother shrugged, picked up her cup of tea. “Well, I used to hate the way he ate eggs. Remember, love, you had this really specific way of dragging the knife across the plate? And he’s not much of a teeth brusher.”
Everyone went silent.
“Is that it?”
“Richard,” went my father. “Don’t.”
“Well,” said my mum, “you stop noticing it, don’t you? You’d go batty if you didn’t.”
“Let’s get on with the television, shall we?” my father said, reaching for the remote.
“Dad, come on. Consider it research. There must be something that drives you mad.”
He sighed. Looked at his wife. “Well, sometimes Edna wears too many scarves.”
My mother burst out laughing.
“Like, she’ll wear a scarf over a scarf. She looks a little . . . homeless.”
“He doesn’t know the difference between a shawl and a scarf!” said my mum, still giggling. “I like to think I’m like those Indian women who—”
“Mum,” I went.
“What? It’s true. They always look like they’re about to go dancing around the room with a baton or something. I think it’s very romantic.”
“I should be filming this,” I said, taking another biscuit. “This is very good.”
“Would you grant us some peace now?” said my dad. “The news is coming on.”
We settled into our respective seats and stare
d at the glowing screen. So my parents were able to supersede the things that annoyed them about each other by turning them into quirky characteristics that they found endearing. Anne and I had done this in the beginning, too. Exasperated that I never knew where anything was, she bought a giant golden piggy bank at a Chinese supermarket and made me put a ten-centime piece in it every time I asked her where my phone was, had she seen a certain pair of socks. And when Anne’s long-standing interest in the actor Vincent Cassel grew into an obsession that saw us attending all his overbearing, around-the-world-in-ninety-minutes action films, I comforted myself by realizing that I, too, could age into sallow skin and neglected gums and she’d still love me, as long as I could drive a speedboat and do Brazilian martial arts.
What had happened to our ability to take each other lightly? Time. But look at my parents—forty years. Maybe there was a high somewhere in marriage, like in running. If you kept going long enough, the endorphins must kick in. Anne and I were at eight years, almost; our marital runner’s high was still at least a decade off. How did married people do it without cheating? Sweating and grunting and drooling on their pillows nightly side by side, expected at some point to reach over and caress the person who had become as familiar and uninteresting as an extension of their own arm, and fuck?
Lisa used to tell me that I’d hate her if we married. That all the reasons I adored her—her spontaneity, her flightiness, her love of dancing in public to any kind of music, or no music at all—were things that I would criticize her for if we actually moved in together and attempted a real life.
“If you’re so down on marriage,” I’d said, “why are you marrying Dave?”
“He can go the distance,” she said. “He doesn’t overanalyze things like you. He just wants to build something, you know? Start to finish. For us to have a nice life.”
I said I wanted that, too.
“But you don’t, though,” she said. “You get nervous when you’re happy. For you, the good things are finite. You wait for them to end.”
“But they do end,” I said. We were on a bench somewhere, eating a sandwich. I remember there was a pigeon that was giving me a hard time. “They do. Look at you. You’re leaving.”
“But what we have isn’t good. It’s enjoyable. It’s hedonistic. You’re cheating on your wife.”
“You knew I was married before this even started.”
“It’s true,” she said, tossing a mealy tomato to the pigeon. “I did. I won’t do this again, you know. The highs are too high. It’s not—it’s stressful.”
“So you’d rather be bored.”
“Not bored,” she said. “Comfortable. Safe. Yeah, a little bored. I don’t want to be exhausted. I want to be sure about things. I want to have a kid.”
“You want what I have,” I said. “You want what I had.”
“You still have it,” she said, putting her arm through mine.
“I don’t, though. You fucked everything up.”
• • •
I grabbed an orange pillow off the couch and clutched it to my chest. Nothing would be helped by my thinking back on Lisa.
“It must be tough for Samira to do these reports,” interrupted my mother, nodding at the screen.
I turned my attention to the television where the More4 News newscaster, Samira Ahmed, was summarizing the current situation in Iraq.
“I’m going to tell you something,” my dad said, leaning forward in his chair. “I heard that they cracked into one of these nuke shops, and you know what it was? You know what it was, really?”
I shook my head.
“It was a place that sold hot air. They just filled up balloons! So you had all these soldiers and inspectors with warrants and what have you, with nothing but balloons. I tell you.”
“Hot air,” I said. “That’s good.”
“Isn’t it?” he said, leaning back.
“Maybe I can steal it. I’ve, um, been thinking about going back to some more political stuff, actually. No more paintings for a while.”
“An intellectual challenge would be good for you,” said my father, giving me a loaded glance. “Especially right now.”
I shrank beneath his gaze. “Yeah, well, I don’t even have a real idea yet. I’ve got to get it sorted.”
“I think it would be lovely to have an exhibit of hot air,” said my mum.
“Exactly,” I huffed. “It’s obvious. Ugh. I’m going to bed.”
“But it’s not even nine!”
My dad put his hand out. “Let him be.”
I kissed them both and made my way through the dining room to my bedroom. In what she must have thought passed for a whisper, I heard my mother ask my father if he thought I was all right.
• • •
That night, I dreamed that Lisa was on the television, on More4 News.
“So, do you own The Blue Bear now?” Samira asked her.
“Ugh,” Lisa responded, “I tried to. But he’s doing different things now. He’s moved on to Iraq.”
“I see,” said Samira, shuffling her cue cards into a tight square. “Does that make you feel lonely?”
“Lonely?” Lisa scoffed. “Hell no! He’s trying to impress his wife.”
Samira swept her hair behind her shoulders with her hand.
I woke up in a fog of 3 a.m. befuddlement, my anger at Lisa and Samira’s indifference to my work chastened by the sight of the wet drool spot on my pillow. They were wrong about me, the phantom newsreader and my mistress. I wasn’t considering doing something political just to impress my wife; I wanted to be someone worth taking back. I wanted Anne to be proud of me again, wanted to do art worth discussing. I wanted an epitaph if the worst came to pass: Here lies Richard Haddon, much more than hot air. And if it was too opportunist or too flashy, frankly, my dreamed-up Lisa, I don’t give a damn.
• • •
The next morning, I was awakened by a knock on my door.
“Darling,” my mum called gently, “you’ve got a phone call.”
I tossed the comforter off and stumbled to the door, hiding my sleepy, boxer-wearing self from my mum.
“Who is it?” I asked, squinting.
“It’s a Harold Gadfrey?” she said. “From the boat?”
I rubbed a fist across my face. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Eight?”
I threw on a cardigan and hopped into my trousers. Mum was waiting for me in the hallway to escort me to the phone, gesticulating excitedly that she’d already put the kettle on for tea.
I cleared my throat before grabbing the receiver. “Hello?”
“Richard? Hullo there! It’s Harold! Harold Gadfrey. From the boat? I was wondering if you’d like to take up that invitation for a meal? I was thinking breakfast?”
“Breakfast?” I repeated.
“Have you already eaten, then? I had a meeting that was canceled. And now I have this time! And I just thought, well, you know!”
“Breakfast.”
“Yep! Can’t work without it. My treat!”
I glanced around the kitchen. “Where would you want to go?”
“Maybe one of the outdoor places on the Marlowes, since it’s nice? Could you do nine?”
My head ached for caffeination. Was this my life now? Breakfast dates with men?
“Sure,” I said, weakly. “Why not.”
• • •
I found Harold standing outside of an atrocity called the Muffin Break, notorious for its self-serve icing bar. I blinked in the decidedly un-English sunlight glinting off the store windows. Neither of us knew how to greet the other. We went with shaking hands.
I chose an ancient-looking apple cinnamon muffin, and Harold got a tuna-and-cheese toastie. As validation that I was truly on a man-date, he paid for us both.
“So yo
u’ll be going to London, yeah?” he asked, chewing, once we were outside. “When’s that?”
I was surprised by his memory. All I could remember about Harold was the Xerox connection, and that he loved his wife and kids.
“It got moved up, actually,” I said. “I’ve already been.”
I gave him the short version of my visit to the Continuists, how they wanted to keep in touch with me. How they were telepathic spies.
“Well, that certainly sounds like something for a new art project. Telepathy and such?”
“I’m afraid there’s not much to spy on, right now, actually,” I answered. “I’m still at my parents’.”
“I thought you were off to Brittany? Family reunion and all that?”
Again, I was astonished. Did other people pay this much attention to other people’s lives?
“Not exactly,” I said, picking at a suspect piece of dried apple in my muffin. “I’m a little out of sorts.”
Harold had the tact to remain silent.
“I’m . . . you know . . .” I kept picking at my pastry. “Having problems with my wife? Sorry. That makes it sound like she slipped outside a warranty of some sort.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I met his eyes, amazed to find them wide open and sincere. “Yeah, I don’t know, actually. You wouldn’t approve. I mean, this would definitely be our last toastie.”
“And what a toastie it is!” He knocked his pastry against my muffin in a mock “cheers.” “You’ll of course correct me if I’m out of line, but I’ll take it that you dallied?”
“Dallied? Uh, yeah.”
“And this other woman,” he continued, adjusting his jacket. “Are you still seeing her on the side?”
I pictured salad dressing in a little plastic cup. “I’m not. It’s done.”
“Well, that’s something,” he said approvingly. “That’s good. And do you think your wife wants getting back? She’s open to wooing and all that?”
“Wooing?” I repeated, trying not to laugh. “Like, what kind, exactly?”
“Well, I can get you a really good rate on aerial banners, for example.”
I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You Page 13