I’d walk to the Marais and find one of those adorable vintage shops and buy something beautiful that would give me the confidence to see my husband for the first time in nearly a year.
• • •
I was so excited that I was ready more than two hours before I was supposed to meet Karl. I decided to walk to Le Select to burn off some of the nervous energy. I took the long way, bypassing the Pont de la Concorde in favor of the Pont Royal, which would allow me a leisurely stroll through the Tuileries. I felt the hair on my neck stand at attention as I approached the old wooden bench where Karl had kissed me that first time. The memory of it made my thighs quiver. I wanted to sit there and close my eyes and relive that perfect first night, but there was another young couple kissing on the bench. I watched them for a moment, so engrossed in one another they had no idea I was there. I remembered what that felt like. It had been such a long time, but I knew it well. When the woman turned her face slightly I saw that she wasn’t young at all. Upon closer inspection the two of them were even older than Karl and I. This, this more than anything, made me feel hopeful. Love, the kind of love that had you madly making out on a public park bench in Paris, was ageless.
I stopped on the bridge to gaze out at the Seine. I brushed my fingers across the rusty metal locks that lovestruck tourists kept fastening to all the Parisian bridges. The city authorities considered them an eyesore and came weekly with bolt cutters to remove them. But new ones appeared hours later. I laughed at how hopeless it was to try to put a stop to the follies of young love.
There was still time to spare when I squeezed into the tight quarters in front of the hostess stand at Le Select. I smoothed my sweaty palms over the thin blue crepe skirt I had bought. It hugged my thighs in a way that no longer made me self-conscious. I paired it with a man’s pinstriped oxford, unbuttoned one button more than I usually would have dared; it was an homage to the outfit I was wearing the first night I met Karl. I felt confident, like that woman Karl had bumped into in that bookstore so many years ago—the woman who talked back and had opinions and dreams and wasn’t afraid of showing a sliver of a black lace bra—the most expensive thing I’d purchased the previous afternoon.
A beautiful French girl with short bangs and a shorter skirt looked up at me with what I guessed was a perpetually irritated sneer on her face.
“Is the rest of your party here?” she demanded with a click of her tongue, hardly looking up from her clipboard.
“No. But he’ll be here soon.”
She released a heavy sigh. “I should not seat you then.” She didn’t say that she couldn’t, merely that she shouldn’t. I wasn’t above begging to make sure this evening went perfectly.
“Please,” I pleaded. “I’m meeting someone very important. I need to sit.”
She waved her hand, as if to say my needs were inconsequential, but grabbed two menus anyway and led me back to the table in the corner that I’d meticulously requested last week. I gave a pat to the tabby cat asleep on the bar and smiled at the gray-haired bartender. Once I sat down I ordered a gimlet, neat. A double would have soothed my nerves, but I also wanted my wits about me. I’d practiced what I wanted to say since I’d booked Karl’s plane ticket, but now, with my heart pounding in my head, I couldn’t recall a thing.
I heard the door to the restaurant open. A musty summer breeze drifted through the door along with a young mother struggling to keep her phone at her ear as she dragged a stroller in behind her. Paris in August is hot and muggy, and most Parisians flee the city for southern beaches. There’s a reason there are songs about springtime in Paris and not the summer.
The days were long and it would be light for another hour. I checked the time on my phone. I’d told Karl to meet me at six thirty and it was only a few minutes past the hour. My drink was empty, but I ordered a platter of oysters and an espresso to keep the waiter from hating me.
Six thirty came and went. Then, seven. Surely, he would come. I knew, since I booked his itinerary, that he would be coming straight from the airport. Perhaps there was traffic.
The waiter came again, this time with a concerned look in his eyes. He raised an eyebrow at the empty seat.
“I’m sorry. He must have been held up,” I said. “I can order for both of us.” I looked over the menu to try to decide what Karl would want. This wasn’t how I imagined it. I didn’t want us to dive right into plates of food. I’d wanted to draw things out, to let the evening unfold. But I felt obliged to order and selected a roast chicken for me and a filet mignon for Karl.
All around me other happy couples sat close to one another, whispering jokes and stories as they enjoyed their evening.
There was still no sign of my husband by the time the food arrived. I could tell the waiter felt sorry for me. “I can take it back to the kitchen to keep it warm,” he said. I shook my head and averted my eyes.
“I’ll eat it. I can pick at both of them. Just leave them.”
I felt a growing awareness that I had miscalculated this evening. I’d planned this all so quickly that I was sure this romantic gesture would be enough to persuade Karl to come, but there had always been a part of me that knew he might not get on that plane.
By eight o’clock the steak was cold. I apologized to the waiter and offered a halfhearted explanation in English for why my companion had yet to appear. I gripped the side of the table as I said it, my knuckles turning white, unable to admit what I knew was true.
Karl was not coming.
I quietly paid my bill and left without making eye contact with the waiter or hostess. As I slipped out the door, a soft mist had begun to fall. I bowed my head against the drizzle.
I retraced my steps back to the hotel, feeling first a sense of terrible despair. And then, as I crossed the Seine, my phone buzzed in my pocket. A message from Karl:
Tilly’s got a stomach bug. I’m sorry. I’ll see you in New York. Come home, Kate.
So, I wasn’t just stood up, there was a reason he didn’t show. I felt a flush of relief—even though I hated the thought that Tilly was sick. I read his message over and over, parsing each word. I chose to see it as an open door. I’ll see you in New York.
My relief morphed into another feeling. Something unexpected. A sense of conviction that despite everything, anything was still possible.
Epilogue
* * *
It was so hard to read the emotions on Karl’s face—fear, confusion, anger—as he opened the envelope I thrust into his hands. He sifted through the pages. I knew they were in the right order. I’d made sure of that in the cab ride on the way over.
On top of the pile was every letter I’d written to my husband in the past year. I should have mailed them after I wrote them, but I never did. I’d been too afraid for him to read them.
I wasn’t scared anymore.
Beneath the letters there were fifty pages of my novel. Only in hindsight did I realize I wrote the story of us. I couldn’t finish without him.
Karl gripped the pages with both hands.
“I’m sorry about Paris,” he said, looking at the papers, trying to make sense of what I had handed him. “I wanted to come.” His eyes were apologetic. He meant it.
“Paris isn’t going anywhere.” I stood straighter. “And neither am I.” I enjoyed the certainty in my voice.
Karl turned and placed the papers on the table we kept next to the door for mail and catalogs and keys and other detritus of our family’s life. I took the opportunity to step closer to my own front door, and when he turned back we were so close I could smell him. I could have leaned over and kissed him, but I didn’t.
In that moment our relationship flashed before me in vivid snapshots. I could also see snapshots from the future, a future in which there was a possibility we could find our way back to each other, stronger than ever, as the best versions of ourselves.
“I’m not the same woman who walked out on you a year ago,” I said. “Can we start there?” What I regretted the most w
as not trusting him enough to show him who I really was. I had to put on a facade to survive. “I don’t pretend to house a pearl. I am grit and soft tissue. I am flawed, but I am yours, if you’ll have me.”
I reached my hand to him. It lingered in the air for a moment before my husband brought his to meet it.
* * *
One year later . . .
* * *
The thick humid air covered my body like a warm cocoon. Tropical birds swooped above and around us, their incessant babble a cacophony of cheerful sounds. It reminded me of Thailand, but let’s be honest, the Ritz Carlton Maui couldn’t be further from the zen center . . . in more ways than one. It was Karl’s idea, this escape to Hawaii. He planned it, booked it, and surprised us all with it, no help from Sara at all.
The four of us sat down to dinner on the beach, barefoot, toes in the sand. The girls and I wore matching colorful sarongs, made by Buppha and mailed over to us just a few weeks before. A scrum of hula dancers in grass skirts and coconut bras swished by. Tilly leaped up from the table to imitate their manic hip swiveling. I stood and grabbed Izzy’s hand to start my own shimmy, a move I wouldn’t have dared in public a year ago. My husband laughed and, to my surprise, joined us.
We collapsed back into our chairs, exhausted and giddy from the impromptu performance. Karl had never looked more handsome. He gave me a sly smile with a nod toward the hammock strung between two palm trees just past the pool. I felt a shy blush creep from my breasts to my cheeks. We’d snuck out of our room and into that hammock shortly before dawn, while the girls were asleep, with the intention of chastely watching the sunrise. But then Karl kissed the front of my neck, softly at first, then with an increasing hunger, a hunger I’d missed for so long. He lifted my tank top over my head in one fell swoop and then slid his mouth down to my breasts, going back and forth between each one, caressing, stroking, nibbling, and licking with a frenzy that made me weak. When he finally pulled off his linen pants and thrust inside me, I was beyond ready. I came quickly and urgently, biting Karl on the shoulder as I did, hard enough to leave a mark.
I blushed looking at his shoulder now, knowing that that memento was right there under his white button-down shirt. He grinned back as if he could read my mind.
“Tonight . . . again?” he mouthed silently, his hand creeping up my bare thigh, a look of delight crossing his features as he realized there was nothing beneath my sarong.
“Tonight,” I said out loud. The girls had no idea what I was talking about.
A beautiful waitress, who reminded me of a younger Mia with her long red hair and porcelain skin, delivered our food. I watched her check out my husband and felt a slight thrill, a second shot of electricity between my thighs.
The girls chattered excitedly about the giant sea turtle they had seen earlier that day. I leaned over to cut a piece of Tilly’s fish for her and the quotidian delight of this mundane task actually delighted me.
I’m happy. I’m fucking happy. The thought was a marvel considering how hard it was to get here. Standing on my doorstep a year ago, I didn’t know if my husband would take me back.
Karl didn’t sweep me into his arms and plant a long, passionate kiss on my lips right there on our stairs. My life isn’t a Lifetime movie, after all. But he did tentatively keep the metaphorical door open for the next few months. I didn’t move back in right away. As luck would have it, one of Karl’s authors was vacating his studio apartment in the West Village, right on Jane Street, a few doors down from the first apartment we had lived in together. The writer, one of those confirmed bachelor types from another era, was delighted to have me house and cat sit while he went off on book tour. Aside from the fickle felines who insisted on drinking from the toilet bowl and shitting in my shoe, the cozy room was a little slice of paradise. That’s where Karl and I finally tumbled back in bed, one stormy evening after a long dinner at Barbuto, our first real step back to each other. That night Karl whispered to me, “I love you, Kate. But more importantly, I want you and I need you. Sometimes you don’t realize what you have or want until it’s gone. Don’t leave me again, promise?” The desperation in his eyes filled me with guilt—how could I have left this man? And how could he have forgiven me for doing so? I chose to see both scenarios as a testament to the strength of our connection. I moved back into our house and our bed the following weekend.
Not that it was instantly perfect—there were plenty of tears, mine and his. There was screaming and door slamming and vows to end it once and for all. We needed that, though. We’d been too civil for too goddamn long. Now our emotions were real and raw and honest and often messy. We spent late nights talking about what kind of life we wanted to have, how we were going to recommit to our dreams—and to each other. Karl promised to work less and to challenge me to write more. I vowed to be more open and honest. I promised never to run away again. We both agreed it was important that we remembered what it was like to screw like twenty-year-olds whenever we could, like, say, in a hammock under the stars.
I understood, more than ever, that I was an incredibly lucky woman. Sometimes I woke up and wondered whether I deserved this second chance at happiness, but I tried hard to keep those kinds of thoughts at bay. If I learned anything from my year away it’s that we all have to fight for our happiness. And that we all deserve a second chance, no matter what it takes to get there.
Now, here on our last night in paradise after a truly magical week, it all felt worth it. It was one of those moments where everything was exactly how it should be.
The waitress returned with a sly smile on her face. She looked at Karl like they were exchanging some kind of inside joke and plunked a whole coconut in front of me.
“Thank you?” I said it like a question. “Appetizer?”
“You can turn it into a bra,” Tilly said, and both girls giggled.
I knocked on the outside and realized it was split in two.
“Open it,” Karl said.
My head fell to the side in confusion. “OK.” I picked up the half coconut and just as quickly dropped it on the ground with a gasp.
I gazed down at the plain gold band, catching the light from the tiki torches around us. I hadn’t worn a ring since I asked Mia to pawn them in Thailand.
I looked up at Karl. For a second I was the girl in the Paris bookshop again, heart racing, flush with one thought: It’s you.
It had always been Karl. And we had always been destined for a happy ending. Right then, that night at the dinner table, in front of the kids, he took my hand. And, for the second time in our relationship, he proposed.
Acknowledgments
* * *
I always wanted to write a novel, but for a long time I didn’t believe that I could. It took a village of people to make me believe that this was actually possible.
Thank you to Liza, my fearless and exacting editor. You never let me give up. You pushed me to be a better writer. I was so blessed to get to work with you, but I am even more grateful to count you as a friend.
I thought about my daughters every day as I wrote this book. I love the two of you more than you will ever know. I want you both to be proud of me as you grow up into brilliant and interesting women.
Ten years ago I met a man in a bookshop in Paris and my life changed forever. He believed in me, so I believed in me too. Charles, you are my rock, my inspiration, and the love of my life.
About the Author
* * *
PAULINE TURNER BROOKS is a graduate of the MFA program at Columbia University. She is married to Charles Brooks, and they have two children. Marriage Vacation is her first novel.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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