• • •
At the end of May, WarWash sold to a German publishing magnate who spent a lot of time in Paris. Anne went to retrial with her winemakers, and they lost. In two years’ time, all our favorite bottles would have swollen lady bellies on them.
We’d resumed our Sunday lunches with the Bourigeauds, but only once a month. Although it appeared to be true that Alain’s opinion of me hadn’t shifted much either way, I’d lost face with Inès. I was in a sentimental meritocracy. I had to prove myself worthy before she was ready to have me back.
As for The Blue Bear, it spent most of the early summer propped up against our dining room wall. It was both a comfort and a hindrance, but every time we started to talk about where we could put it, no place seemed right. It carried history with it now, and not all of it was good. It was much too loaded an object to put in our bedroom, and Camille had long ago abandoned any desire to have it back in her room, which was currently covered with glow-in-the-dark posters of constellations, her latest obsession. The living room didn’t feel like the right place for it, and we agreed that if it were in the dining room, every time we had people over, it would invite their questions. The Blue Bear had reverted to what it originally had been, a private link between Anne and me, difficult to explain but completely comprehensible to us both.
But it couldn’t very well sit against the wall forever, and it seemed like a step in the wrong direction to store it in the basement once again. On our eighth wedding anniversary, Anne told me she had a solution. She also told me that it would require quite a bit of trust.
“It’s ours now, right?” she asked. “To do with as we please? You have papers to prove that?”
I said yes, excited. She was on the fringe of lawyer-speak, which meant that she was planning something potentially unlawful. She’d hired a babysitter for Camille and told me that we were going out to lunch, but that first she needed—we needed—to drop something off. And that I should wear sneakers, be prepared for a long walk.
By 11 a.m., we were on the sidewalk with The Blue Bear strapped haphazardly to a luggage dolly. Somewhat bluntly, Anne announced that we had to push it toward the Seine.
“This is our anniversary present? You’re throwing it in the river?”
She shook her head. “Come on.”
We pushed our way up the Rue de la Tombe-Issoire, which was harder than I thought, what with the dolly wheels spinning out every which way on the bumpy sidewalk. We went by the grim medical buildings around the Port Royal RER station where the scenery eventually gave way to smaller buildings and shops with roasted chickens in the windows and wicker baskets of fruit.
We passed parks where tiny children pushed plastic objects through playgrounds, watched by grandparents shooing pigeons from their charges. Young people on bicycles rolled merrily through puddles and a public bus pulled up to a corner and yawned, its passengers descending in a small parade of tweed. We walked on through the fourteenth into the sixth, pushing for a while, pausing to talk, with me more amused than nervous as to where our walk would take us. I was glad to just be near my wife, to be taking in various sights and happenings that we could discuss over lunch. As for the painting, I trusted her. Whatever destination she had picked for it, whatever kind of celebration, would be right.
After nearly an hour, we reached the Seine. Without speaking, Anne indicated that we should cross in front of the Institut de France, where they decided which words would enter the French lexicon each year, and push across the Quai de Conti to the Pont des Arts. The metal footbridge that led directly to the Louvre had chain-link guardrails that were covered—garroted, really—by thousands of padlocks. Lovers, tourists mainly, came to this spot to commemorate their devotion by writing their names on a padlock and locking it to the bridge. This tradition, which had gained popularity in recent years, had offered much-needed diversification to the illegal immigrants selling miniature Eiffel Towers along the river. Now the entrance to the bridge was lined with men selling various-size padlocks, some as small as the lock on a child’s diary, others as big as one’s hand.
“Okay,” said Anne, wiping a little bit of sweat from her forehead. “We’re here.”
I looked at the tourists taking photos, at the young people bent down in front of the cavalcade of locks to inspect the messages written on them.
“I’m okay if you want to be rid of it, but I don’t think I can handle throwing it into the river,” I said.
She gestured for me to help her get it over the steps. “We’re not.”
Once we got the thing to the middle of the bridge, Anne pushed it to the side and leaned against the railing, taking time to admire the domino view of bridges beyond bridges, white arcs across the Seine.
A man in a brightly patterned tunic approached and asked if we wanted to buy a lock.
“No thanks,” Anne said, grinning. “We’ve got one.”
I waited until he approached the couple next to us to speak. “You crazy little donkey,” I said. “You just want to leave it?”
She nodded, grinning wide.
“That’s the plan?” I asked. “This is our lock?”
She smirked. “Too sentimental?”
“No,” I said, basking in our closeness. “It’s right.”
I looked around at all the people on the Pont des Arts. There had to be at least fifty, maybe more.
“Won’t someone chase after us or something?”
“I’ve put some thought into that,” she said, pulling a sheet of paper from her bag. She held it up for me. In typed letters, it read GRATUIT, VRAIMENT.
“Free. Really,” I repeated.
She reached for my hand. “Are you okay with this?”
“I absolutely am.”
We stood there in silence for a while, watching the couples holding out their cameras with one hand to take a photo of themselves on the bridge, the tourists running their fingers along the different locks. Blue ones, gold ones, plastic-coated, plated, initials scrawled in permanent marker, in white correction fluid, some bearing no names at all. In the pink light reflecting off the sprawling Louvre, with the play of the river and the sun, the locks looked like a massive school of fish, happy to be exactly where they were, planning to swim nowhere. All their traveling done.
“Do you know what people do with the keys after they’ve locked their locks?” Anne asked, trailing her fingers along the painting’s edge.
“They keep them,” I said, turning my face into the sun.
“Nope,” she said. “They throw them in the Seine.”
I had a sudden vision of hundreds of keys, covered with algae and plankton, anchored there by whatever wish had been whispered before they had been tossed. “So, artist,” Anne said, her head tilted. “Should we see the dear boy off?”
Together, we undid the security cord and lifted the painting off the dolly.
“Jesus,” I said. “I’m nervous.”
“I know.” She giggled. “I am, too.”
“Do we run away after, or what? Will someone call the cops?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “We’ll just go. Although I want to keep the dolly. I use it all the time when—”
“Hey, Esquire,” I said “Let’s keep it romantic.”
She laughed and agreed that I was right, and then I admitted that it had been kind of useful for moving large things in the past, and so yes, why not, we’d extricate the dolly.
This bit of business settled, we reached for each other’s hand and stared at our big painting.
“Okay,” she said solemnly. “Good-bye.”
Just behind us, near the steps where the lock sellers gathered, we saw a gendarme giving the illegal vendors a hard time.
“Uh-oh,” Anne whispered. “Let’s make a break for it. You’ll push?”
I nodded, too happy to speak.
“Okay,” sh
e said. “On the count of three. One.”
I took my position right behind the empty cart.
“Two!”
I put my hands onto the push pads, and watched her bend her knees.
“Three! Go!”
Deliriously, ridiculously, we pushed our way forward, past the tourists, past the teenage lovers, past the vendors hurriedly gathering up their forbidden wares. We scurried down the steps on the right bank and dashed across the street with our unruly dolly, causing cars to honk and drivers to curse. At the perimeter of the Louvre, we crossed the street again, moving quickly toward a square just outside a church.
“Down there,” said Anne, pointing toward a small street that ran perpendicular to the park. “Come on!”
Before I turned to run again, I checked to see if there was anyone chasing after us to say that we didn’t have the right to do what we had done. There wasn’t anyone behind us. There wasn’t anyone. On that blue day, that perfect day, our new day in Paris, we were free to carry on.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Rebecca Gradinger: This book would still be in my desk drawer if it weren’t for you. You worked almost as hard as I did to make this happen. I’ll be forever thankful that it did.
Sally Kim and the fantastic team at Touchstone: Since our first encounter, I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, but apparently, it isn’t going to. Not only did I find the kindest, most even-keeled, and enthusiastic of editors, but she came backed by a delightful and talented team. Susan Moldow, David Falk, Meredith Vilarello, Brian Belfiglio, Jessica Roth, Wendy Sheanin, Christine Foye, John Muse, Paul O’Halloran, Elisabeth Watson, Cherlynne Li, Linda Sawicki, Carolyn Reidy, Melissa Vipperman-Cohen, and Sylvie Greenburg at Fletcher & Company: Thank you all for believing in this book.
To my family: From the red tent with interior pockets for my journals that fit around my mattress to the electric typewriter on which I wrote my first stories, as a little girl you gave me the means and space to dream. By not questioning my decisions, you gave me the confidence to keep making the right ones. Thank you for all you do.
Gabby: I still reach for my phone sometimes to call you. I know you’re somewhere reading this with our New Year’s Eve noisemakers and a cheap bottle of champagne. I did it! You’re always in my heart.
Annie: Thank you for understanding me. Gianni: Thank you for your generosity and your bon vivance.
My friends! You have danced with me, cooked with me, and survived my circuitous storytelling after too much Côtes du Rhône. Thank you for the decadence and beauty you’ve brought into my life.
Thank you to the teachers at Greenwich Academy who showed me so much support at a young age, and especially to the late Candace Barackman, who, when I started crying during a particularly grueling SAT math tutoring session, made me cry even harder by saying, “You just need to take this dumb test and you’ll be done with it! Everyone knows you’re going to be a writer.”
Thank you to the literary magazines who have supported my work and to the literary cheerleaders who have let me read it out loud. Thanks especially to Halimah Marcus, Benjamin Samuel, and Josh Milberg at Electric Literature, the good folks at Tin House, Slice Magazine, The Cupboard, and Penina Roth. Thank you Jim Shepard, Maggie Shipstead, Kevin Wilson, and Ned Beauman for saying such nice things out loud. Matt Bialer, thanks for being there first.
Mylo: Thank you for keeping my chair warm. And my heart.
Gabriela: My unexpected comet, my lucky loaf of bread— you were with me for each word of this. Thank you for letting me be a better version of myself.
And finally, Diego: You saw me through the beginning, the almost-end, and the transformation of this Blue Bear. There’s no one else I would have shared this journey with. Thank you for our life.
GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT is made to the following for permission to reprint the selected excerpts:
Excerpt from “Everything Good Between Men and Women” from Tremble appears courtesy of C. D. Wright.
Excerpt from Fear and Trembling/Repetition (Kierkegaard’s Writings, Volume VI) by Søren Kierkegaard, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, copyright © 1983 by Howard V. Hong, appears courtesy of Princeton University Press.
Excerpt from Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, Vol. 6: Autobiographical, Part 2: 1848–1855 by Søren Kierkegaard, edited by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, appears courtesy of Indiana University Press.
Excerpt from “Brits 45 Mins from Doom” by George Pascoe-Watson, originally published September 25, 2002, in The Sun.
Excerpt from The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell, copyright © 2009, appears courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.
From On the Road by Jack Kerouac, copyright © 1955, 1957 by Jack Kerouac, renewed © 1983 by Stella Kerouac, renewed © 1985 by Stella Kerouac and Jack Kerouac. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.
TOUCHSTONE READING GROUP GUIDE
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I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You
Courtney Maum
Richard Haddon’s life seems picture-perfect. He has a beautiful French wife and a healthy daughter; a flourishing artistic career; and, to top it off, an American mistress on the side named Lisa. But when Lisa leaves him to marry another man—and his wife, Anne-Laure, discovers his affair—reality begins to set in for Richard. He must face his decision to cheat on his wife and sell out as an artist simultaneously; he must mourn the loss of his mistress, his marriage, and his sense of self all at once. As if by fate’s hand, the sudden sale of an old painting from early in his career and marriage suddenly spurs Richard out of his slump, and he becomes determined to mend his mistakes and make his wife fall back in love with him, whatever the cost. Poignant and sincere, I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You explores what it takes to right a wrong, and how to figure out what’s worth saving.
For Discussion
1. The novel begins with the statement, “Moments of great import are often tinged with darkness because perversely we yearn to be let down” (p. 1). Consider this in light of Anne-Laure and Richard’s marriage. In what ways is their marriage “tinged with darkness”? Do you agree that Richard wanted to be let down? Why or why not?
2. Early in the novel, Richard explains their financial situation: Richard, a struggling artist, and Anne-Laure, a law student, accept help from Anne’s parents to buy a house while expecting their daughter. While Anne “never felt guilty about accepting her parents’ cash” (p. 29), Richard did, feeling that he let “the shame of such a handout build inside . . . until it made me feel like less of a man, less of an artist, less than everything I had one day hoped to be” (p. 29). Discuss the theme of shame in the novel. How do Richard’s expectations for himself differ from the reality of his life? In what way(s) does shame drive Richard to do what he does? Do you think shame also drives Anne-Laure?
3. The Blue Bear is continually compared to Richard’s key paintings throughout the novel. While the former was painted during a particularly emotional time in Richard’s life, the latter series “was effortless . . . [m]editative” (p. 31), painted in a “nostalgic fugue state” (p. 31). How do the two paintings act as metaphors for Richard’s life? Do you think there is any meaning in Richard painting himself outside of the room, with a limited point of view, in the key paintings and in The Blue Bear?
4. Discuss the ways in which Richard and Anne-Laure’s marriage is portrayed in the novel. Are their marital problems unusual or ordinary? Can you determine what might have gone wrong in their marriage to cause Richard to stray?
5. So much of the novel centers on the power of the visual to transcend language. And it is Richard, the artist, who struggles the most with finding the words to say what he means. In a casual conversation with Anne, Richard refers to himself as a “traitor” for wanting to leave Julian’s gallery—a word loaded with meaning given Richard’s recent past. Richard laments
his inability to express himself, claiming his “words were never right” (p. 66). What are other examples in the novel when words fail Richard? In what ways does he rely on his artwork to do the talking for him? Does Richard ultimately discover a way to express himself?
6. Revisit the scene where Anne-Laure discovers Lisa’s letters in Richard’s bag (pages 95-99). What makes this scene so heart-wrenching? Do you think Anne-Laure did the right thing by asking Richard to leave immediately? Would you have done the same? Imagine Richard had thrown away the letters as he planned—do you think their marriage would have healed sooner?
7. Revisit the scene on page 184 when Anne-Laure reveals to her parents that Richard was unfaithful. How does the their response to infidelity compare with the response from Richard’s parents? How does Lisa’s response differ from the responses of Richard’s and Anne-Laure’s parents? Discuss how these three responses—French, British, and American—might imply cultural differences regarding extramarital affairs.
8. The personal—Richard and Anne-Laure’s relationship—and the political—the increasing conflict in Iraq—intersect greatly in the novel. How do they relate? How do they evoke different kinds of uncertainty?
9. Why do you think Richard decides to move out of the house? Do you think he believes in the saying, If you love something, give it away? Do you? Turn to page 244 and discuss.
10. Do you think that Richard and Anne-Laure feel similarly about infidelity? Does one character seem more flexible about the rules of monogamy? If so, do these responses support or debunk cultural stereotypes?
11. Discuss Richard’s video project. What’s at stake for him in this project? How does it have a similar voice, so to speak, as The Blue Bear? In what ways do both projects explore absence?
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