Fragile and tidal are the bonds of those in a détente. Only ten minutes ago, I was hopeful, buoyed by good news. And now, walking toward home again, a home that wasn’t home really, I felt crushed by disappointment and, worse yet, ignorance. I’d been assuming that this separation was as hard for Anne as it was for me. But now I realized that my wife might be experiencing this period in a completely different manner. That instead of feeling confined, she might at last feel free.
20
ALTHOUGH I admire T. S. Eliot, I don’t agree with his socio-meteorological views. April is not the cruelest month; February is. Interminable and joyless, I spent most of the month searching for the materials I needed for WarWash and ruminating about the objects I was going to wash myself. It was a real challenge to find articles that reflected my own personal errors and the national experience at large.
For the British machine, I had to throw in my mother’s recipe for beef tongue and lentils, a calamity she’d forced upon us every fortnight of my young life because she’d read somewhere that growing boys need folate. I had my dad ship me a pea coat I’d pinched from Alistair Parnell in primary school that was still wadded up in the bottom of my closet in a garbage bag. I’d gotten everyone to call him “Pansington Bear” for wearing it, and when I found out that the coat had belonged to his older brother who died from a brain aneurysm the past winter on a ski lift, I combated the horror of my shame by continuing to make fun of him. That coat, that memory, I definitely wanted drowned in gas.
I had a tea towel featuring a portrait of Margaret Thatcher and reproduced the winning Euromillions ticket an Englishwoman had purchased for the £113m lottery, a sum she couldn’t collect on because her elderly husband had thrown the ticket away. And I had to—had to—include a glossy of David Beckham being sent off in the 1998 World Cup match against Argentina, a kiss-of-death red card that gave the Argentines the win. And finally, a visitor pass from the Charing Hempstead Hospital from seven years earlier when my father had a supraventricular tachycardia: a kind of minor stroke. For the American machine, I had a couple of random items from the box of stuff I’d taken from our house on Rue de la Tombe-Issoire that I wanted to include: a copy of The Atkins Diet and a postcard of the World Trade Center that I’d bought during a pre-9/11 trip, addressed to my parents but never sent. A lot of the other stuff I wanted I had to find on treasure sites like eBay and Craigs-list: a George Bush “American Heroes” action figure; a presinkage poster of the Exxon Valdez; a Florida voting ballot. But the other things I needed were still inside our house, under the bed where I kept a shoe box of souvenirs and photographs, artifacts from my first years with Anne. Things that had always made me smile. Things that now, if I were confronted with them, would break my heart.
I arranged my reconnaissance mission for a Saturday so that Camille would be home. By that point, it had been two months since I’d moved out. We should have had a visitation schedule, we should have had a plan, but every time I tried to ask Anne-Laure what she was thinking long term, she said she needed time.
And so my moments with my daughter were stolen and haphazard, spontaneous invitations to the movies, hot-chocolate excursions, sleepovers on school nights, when Anne had to work late. And although a proper schedule would have guaranteed me more time with Cam, it also would have made me feel like I was already divorced.
When I rang the doorbell to our house, my little girl opened the door in fairy wings, a tiara, and a poofy princess dress.
“Enter, enter!” she cried, waving at me with her wand. “Daddy’s here!”
I swept her up, taking care not to knock the plastic tiara from her hair.
“How’s my little princess?”
“I’m a fairy godmother,” she said, absorbing my kisses. “Jeez!”
Anne was in the kitchen, her hair pushed back with the moth-eaten silk scarf she wore on weekends to signify the kickoff of an epic bout of cleaning.
She rose from her crouching position in front of the sink and snapped off her yellow plastic gloves. She leaned in to kiss me once on each cheek, a gesture so unnatural, it stung more than if we hadn’t kissed at all.
“Ugh. My hands smell like plastic,” she said, avoiding my eyes. “Camille wants to help you, if that’s okay? Do you need a bag?”
I nodded toward the giant tote on my shoulder. “I brought one,” I said. “Thanks.”
“And if she . . . if she seems up for it—” Anne flinched. “Do you think you could put her down for a nap?”
“Of course,” I said, feeling every inch the babysitter and not at all the dad.
“Right,” she said, standing straighter. “Do you want . . . a coffee?”
I did, but I couldn’t take the awkwardness between us a single minute more. “I’m good,” I answered. “Thanks.”
“Cam, you want more juice?”
“I drink ambrosia!” she said, twirling her wand around her head. “Daddy, come on!”
I followed Camille up to the second-story landing, taking in the smell of the rug pads on the staircase, the baked-bread odor of my house.
“Where do we start?”
“In the bedroom,” I answered, my stomach clenching as I said the word out loud. I hadn’t been inside our bedroom in a month.
“Okay!” She trotted down the hallway, full of pony energy.
I was relieved to see that Anne had left the bedroom in hotel-like shape. The bed was made impeccably and the air smelled freshly scented, tinged with the slightly burned fragrance of a room recently vacuumed.
I avoided looking around too much. I didn’t want Camille to sense my discomfort at being home again. This was just a regular, totally normal day, with Daddy looking through his time capsule while his daughter jumped on the bed.
I pulled the white Stan Smith shoe box from its hiding place. Camille tucked the layers of tulle underneath her and sat down on the mattress, swinging her stockinged feet within inches of my face.
“Are you making a painting?” she asked, folding her arms.
“No, honey,” I answered, taking the lid off the box. “More like a huge collage.”
The first thing that greeted me was a copy of the contract for The Blue Bear. This I’d have to photocopy, but then it was definitely going in the wash. Underneath that, proofs of purchase for paint supplies that should have been in our downstairs file cabinet in a file marked “Tax.”
“Mom said you were going to put things in the wash,” said Camille, catapulting herself off the bed and toward the closet. “So do you want a T-shirt?”
“Well,” I said, leaning back on my elbows, “it depends. See, the thing is, you know when you started out with the origami animals? And sometimes you made mistakes? Like, maybe sometimes a rhinoceros ended up looking more like a unicorn, and so you started again until you got it right?”
She tilted her head at me, unsure where I was going.
“Well, see, I’m looking for the equivalent of that first rhinoceros. The one I didn’t get right.”
She scrunched her face up in a frown.
“Okay,” I said, relenting. “Find me a T-shirt. A really dirty one.”
Cam disappeared for the laundry room, and I continued my hunt. The fact that I remembered the box being in better order made me realize how long it had been since I’d put something meaningful inside. Three years ago, I’d been adding something regularly: one of Anne’s emblematic grocery lists (To buy: yogurt [Whole fat, please?], [Do you want??]), a business card from a memorably bad restaurant, the hokey champion dog stamps my mother used each time she sent a card.
But underneath a wretched photo of my twenty-two-year old self at a Phish concert in New Hampshire (a very American error that was absolutely being washed), I finally found one of the items on my agenda: the proof copy of the Providence Phoenix ad I’d taken out with my wedding proposal. I didn’t want to wash it, I just wanted to see it. To h
old it in my hands. Anne-Laure: Will you marry me? Richard H.
Camille returned with something from the laundry, an exercise shirt of Anne’s, one of those double-layer waffle-mesh numbers in watch-out shades of neon that probably had three figures on the price tag.
Thanking her, but knowing I’d never wash it, I put it aside and kept pawing through the box. Underneath a Popsicle stick from the first frozen ice cream bar Camille had ever eaten in Brittany, I found item three on my need list: my entrance ticket to the Nan Goldin exhibit at the Pompidou on Saturday, January 12, 2002, the day that I met Lisa.
Surreptitiously, I slid the cursed bit of paper into my bag. Camille, meanwhile, having tired of my archaeological dig, was scooching her way back up the bed and underneath the covers.
“Here, Daddy,” she said. “Do you want?”
I looked up and saw her holding out the chartreuse glass bowl that Anne used to house bookmarks, Camille’s latest origami animals, and other sweet-dream knickknacks by the bed.
“Look!”
And in her small fingers was my paper blue bear. Slowly, I got to my feet and joined her on the bed, casting a cautious glance down the empty hallway.
“Let’s see there,” I said, accepting the bowl and the bear. I turned the creature in my hands.
“Did Mommy tell you I made this?”
Camille shrugged. “No.”
This was an even better sign than her having kept it in the first place. When something was extra important or difficult, Anne kept it to herself.
With an imitation growl, I set the blue bear on the comforter and poked through the other things in the bowl. There was a frequent buyer card for a new coffee place in the neighborhood (customer appreciation and take-out cups both new concepts in Paris), a weathered bookmark from the Shakespeare & Company bookstore, a drawing of a heart with a smiley face in it (signé Camille), and a miniature card with a gold-leaf Thank You written on the front.
I picked up the card. It was the tiny kind with a hole through it, the type that florists put into hand-delivered bouquets. I looked through the bedroom door toward the hallway, but it was still just Cam and me.
“So, what’s this?” I asked aloud, somehow feeling that my snooping would be condoned if I made Camille a part of it.
Dear Anne-Laure,
I can’t thank you enough for going out of your way to show me the ropes. You’re an inspiration and a real example for me, and I wish you only the best.
Yours,
Thomas
“Well,” I humphed, sliding the card into my pocket. Since when were subordinates at Savda & Dern using informal object pronouns with their bosses? Yours? He wasn’t hers. Anne was mine. That was our bed she was sleeping in, our life, our house. This life was still mine.
“Okay!” I said, rubbing Camille on her back. “I think that’ll do it!”
“But you don’t have a lot, Daddy,” she said, pulling up the covers.
I kissed her on her forehead and told her it was fine. I took off her tiara and placed it in the bowl, careful to put everything right back where it had been next to the lamp.
“When you wake up, you have Mommy call me if you want to pop out and see a movie? It’s no problem. I’ll come back.”
Her eyes rolled back with sleepiness.
“Okay?”
“Okay,” she said. “I lurv you.”
I pried the wand out of her hand and placed it on the side table.
“I lurv you back.”
• • •
I left the house somewhat unceremoniously, beelining through the kitchen with a “Camille’s napping!” and a “thanks for everything!” to Anne, none too eager to let on how jealous I was of the note I’d found. Focus on the good stuff, Richard, I told myself. Your bear was in there, too.
I headed for the gallery, in pursuit of one last article for the American machine, along with some figurative distribution of an olive branch or two. The last time I’d been by the gallery, Julien hadn’t been able to hide his consternation that Sabounjian was actually doing my show, and I hadn’t been able to hide the fact that his envy made me pleased. It had been an awkward interaction, and we hadn’t spent real time together since. He was long overdue for a visit, and a request.
I found Julien sitting alone at his desk, staring at the wall in front of him. The desk across from him where Bérénice used to sit had been removed. I tapped on the glass and he waved me in.
“Hey!” To my astonishment, he got up and hugged me. “Look,” he said, pointing to the empty table. “She’s gone.”
“I noticed,” I said, hands in my pockets. “Good thing or bad?”
“She eloped. I wouldn’t have pegged her for the type, you know? But she took up with a motocrosser. Turned out she had a really wild streak running through her. Anyway, what’s the pleasure? On the way to see Azar?”
“No-o.” I pulled a seat up. “I just came from my house. My real one.”
Julien cocked an eyebrow. “And?”
I pulled the note card out of my pocket. “This dude’s been sending flowers to my wife.”
Julien made a show of putting on his eyeglasses. “Hmm,” he said, flipping it over. “Well, well. It’s pretty PG, honestly.”
“I found it by her bed.”
Julien took his glasses off. “So you one-up the bastard. I’ve got a friend who makes the most incredible terrariums, if you wanted to send flowers—”
I grabbed the note back. “It’s a tough case they’ve been working on,” I said, shoving it back in my pocket. “He’s just a colleague. Friend.”
“Sure he is. Of course.” He put back on his glasses. “Oh. Hey—you got more mail.”
“Can you be more explicit?”
“Gah, sorry. Right. From your mother. And the nutters. They wrote us back. It’s a postcard, look.” He started flapping it in front of me. “Stonehenge. I mean, really.”
And he began to read.
Dear Mr. Lagrange,
Thank you for getting in touch with us by mail. Although Mr. Haddon’s visit was certainly surprising, we ourselves are staunch supporters of the creative impetus, even when these instincts might be judged (by judgmental types) as “inappropriate.” This being said, we have had some issues with the painting, the energy is off. But we’ve recently acquired a very powerful piece of ironwork from Canada, so this might have something to do with it. Please ask after Ngendo the next time you see Mr. Haddon. We trust she is doing well in the next chapter of her life!
What Ngendo was doing was sitting under an old towel in our basement, leading our mismatched Tupperware and rusting tennis rackets and storage bags of old clothing toward a higher plane of life.
Julien tossed the card over. “It doesn’t sound like they’re going to sue us, so that’s something. And here’s whatever from your mom.”
“Speaking of letters,” I said, taking my mum’s envelope from him, “I know I asked you to toss it, but I was wondering if, by any chance, you might’ve not listened and—”
“You think that I don’t know you?” Julien asked, rising. “Know you by now?”
He singsonged his way into the back room and emerged with a manila envelope marked Miscellaneous.
“Lisa’s last letter?” he asked, proudly pulling out a yellow envelope.
“I’m getting rid of it. It’s going in the wash.”
He nodded, unconvinced.
“I’m serious. That’s why.”
“Good,” he said, handing it to me and folding his arms. “Tar it.”
“And, Julien?” I said, putting the letter in my bag. “Thank you for Azar. I mean, you recommended me, and—”
He cluck-clucked his way through the end of my sentence as the French are wont to do when a conversation gets too cuddly.
“Just do some more oil paintings for me somew
here down the road? Before you become famous?
“Okay,” I said, smiling. “I’ll have my people get in touch with yours.”
We embraced, and I left feeling caffeinated with pleasure that our friendship seemed intact. My life didn’t feel right without him.
With it going on eleven o’clock, the filth had cleared from the Parisian sky, the birds were back, and the weather was almost balmy—I decided that there was no use in turning the reading of Lisa’s last letter into an occasion. I could very well incriminate myself on any pigeon-shit-coated bench.
Although I couldn’t help picturing Lisa seated as she wrote out my address, with just the right amount of flourish at the R and the H, seeing her handwriting on the front of the envelope no longer moved me into paroxysms of torrid daydreams as it once did. Usually, I was ritualistic with these readings, touching the outside of the envelope as if searching for braille, thumbing it, sniffing it, opening it carefully with the cap of a Bic pen. But this letter, this last one, wasn’t sticking to my heart. It registered with me elsewhere, aggravating the tension in my shoulders, registering as a dull thud just beneath my forehead. For the first time, it didn’t feel exciting, it just felt wrong.
The beginning of the letter was as I remembered it when Julien read it to me over the phone.
Dear Richard,
Yesterday, I passed a gallery and there was a photograph in it that made me think of something you might do. Or it made me think of you. I guess that’s the same thing. I know you don’t care much for photographs, but this was of a battered sailboat in a cornfield. There was a scarecrow in the boat. It didn’t look composed either, it looked like the world had grown around this boat. It was in black-and-white. Beautiful. I wish we had seen it together so that I could have heard what you thought of it. So that we could have talked.
So, scarecrows were a thing now. I’d seen quite a lot of them popping up in installation videos and short films. This was probably because they were fucking creepy. I’m glad we never got to have the conversation Lisa desired. I have absolutely nothing to say about a scarecrow in a boat.
I Am Having So Much Fun Without You Page 25