by Inès Bayard
When she arrives outside the shop on the rue des Orfèvres, she stands transfixed in front of the window display for a moment. The mannequins showing off the lingerie are very slim. She’s fat, she’ll never be able to get even one of her legs into those G-strings. She takes a deep breath and makes up her mind to go in. A sales assistant comes straight over to her to offer her help. “Hi. I’m looking for a matching set. Something chic and sexy.” She suddenly feels unsure. Bearing in mind the porn films Laurent likes, she’s not convinced that the combination of “chic and sexy” features in her husband’s fantasies, or the fantasies of men in general. The sales assistant shows her two sets in black-and-purple lace. Marie shakes her head and tries to find her cell phone, claiming there’s an emergency. She apologizes, says she’ll come back later. Laurent wouldn’t be turned on by chic lingerie.
She takes the Métro again and heads for Pigalle in the north of Paris. Tourists like strolling along the wide avenues in the Eighteenth Arrondissement, drifting toward the shops up at Montmartre and sampling the big brasseries. Marie has never thought of living in this neighborhood, this isn’t the sort of bustle she enjoys. The boulevard de Clichy isn’t very busy at ten in the morning but a few regulars at the big Video X Club movie theater are already hanging around outside, waiting impatiently for the start of the first screening. Marie knows she won’t meet anyone she knows in this part of Paris. She doesn’t feel like going into the Sexodrome, the huge sex supermarket on the corner. She’d prefer somewhere smaller, more intimate. The sign over Hot Pussy a little farther up the boulevard beckons to her. Large red drapes dotted with sequins hang over the doorway, which looks like the entrance to a cabaret rather than a sex shop. She peers furtively between the gaps in the drapes and sees two women chatting next to the checkout. They look friendly enough. Marie decides to go in, and a shrill bell like something from a dusty provincial hardware store announces her arrival to the sales assistants. A prolonged silence descends. With her dainty patent leather loafers, designer handbag, and sport-chic blouse, Marie doesn’t really look like the usual clientele. She wants to turn back, but one of the girls comes over to her as if greeting the First Lady.
“Good morning, madame. May I help you?”
Marie is aware of the carefully chosen words and opts to be equally polite: “Hello, yes. You see, I’d like to buy a little schoolgirl outfit.” Another silence. “And if possible, something all one color.”
The assistant asks Marie to follow her down to the basement where there are hundreds of outfits on hangers. “We have a lot of choice in school uniforms. We have red, blue, or green kilts. So there’s a wide choice, but if you don’t mind my saying, the red would suit you very well.” Marie is flattered. Along the side of the large basement she notices a small recess in red stone, lit with green and pink neon lights. The assistant explains that this is where the video booths and the peep show are. Intrigued, Marie asks what she means. “A girl dances in a booth and men watch from the other side. We just show porn films in the other booths.”
Marie has a sudden revelation about how simple male sexuality is, how little depth there is to it. With these objectified women dancing naked in a cage, these porn films featuring eager little school girls, these nurse’s uniforms, policewoman uniforms, gift-wrapped-with-a-bow outfits, dresses, skirts, stockings, vinyl…She’s standing facing a whole walk-in closet that reflects what most men want from sex. Reproducing what appeals to them from the porn films they watch or in the sexy ads on the Internet, featuring—in ninety-nine percent of cases—a girl who’s not entirely naked. The fantasy of a body free of any artifice arouses men but doesn’t necessarily make them want sex right away. Men like to feel they get a hard-on quickly, they find it reassuring. Everything leads back to her rape. Sex, violence, submission, pornography. Marie’s never thought to look for an explanation for the attack. Here in this sex shop, surrounded by all these accessories intended chiefly for men’s pleasure, she wonders furiously how many men in the world are raping women right now. The sort who abuse with no regrets. Her eye rests momentarily on a little old man emerging from one of the booths. He looks away with the slight hangdog disappointment of someone who’s fun is over now. Marie pities him. All the unpleasant associations fall apart. She can’t think straight, no longer sees the subtleties, has muddle-headed theories. Holding the schoolgirl outfit in her hand, she comes back to her senses. “Well then, I’ll take this one. Where can I try it on?” The assistant explains with some embarrassment that there are only three sizes and that she can’t try the clothes on without buying them afterward. Marie takes the medium. The miniskirt is bound to be a little tight but she refuses to go up to a large for now. It’s psychological.
Back up on street level the other assistant, a chunky brunette poured into too-tight low-rise jeans, offers her the accessories that go with her outfit: schoolgirl glasses, a phallus-shaped lollipop, short white socks, a red hair ribbon, and a tartan vibrator. Marie takes the lollipop and the hair ribbon. The two salesgirls thank her for her visit and offer her a loyalty card that they stamp with the name Hot Pussy so that she can have a discount next time. Marie is pleased with what she’s bought but asks not to have a branded bag, so they hand her a large opaque black bag with no logo.
Once she’s home, Marie wants to try on the little outfit she’s bought, but first she needs to do her makeup. She’s never changed her ways: she always looks natural and sensible but this evening she wants to be someone different, to look like a slut for her husband. Black around her eyes, her mouth screaming red, her skin tone more orange than usual, her hair tied back with the red ribbon. Now she takes the black bag from the bed and takes out her acquisitions. The cropped top just about works, but her full breasts end up slipping down onto her stomach and there are stretch marks everywhere, indelible signs of her tragedy. The skirt is more difficult to put on and the love handles on her hips partly hide the belt. She looks like a fat pig or a transvestite, but definitely not the pretty schoolgirl in her husband’s film. In a last attempt at getting the look, she puts on the tie that goes with the top. She inspects her reflection in the full-length mirror and feels ridiculous, standing there like a great heavy lump. She doesn’t know why she had this stupid idea about a costume. Like other women her age, she should have stayed in the realm of sexy chic. Bulging out of the outfit, she struggles to undo the costume but has to lie flat on her back on the bed to reach all the buttons. She rolls over, battling with the scraps of fabric. The golden heart clasp on the belt pops off and lands on the carpet, and the lacing on the skirt tears with the pressure from her fat body.
All at once she hears a key turn in the lock on the front door. She freezes. She’s not expecting anyone. She leaps up from the bed but trips because of the too-tight skirt with its attached garter belt. The door slams and she hears Laurent’s voice. She scrambles over the floor and eventually manages to slough off part of the outfit. She reaches furtively for her robe in the bathroom to go and join her husband. Laurent is opening a tray of sushi on the coffee table in the living room. A woman is talking to him with her back to him as she pulls a few books from the shelves. Marie announces her presence with a little cough. Laurent turns around, his mouth full of sushi. His eyes register horror. Total silence in the room. He doesn’t recognize her.
“Marie? What on earth—I mean—I thought you went out.” The woman studies her curiously. Marie forgot to take off the schoolgirl tie and part of it is peeping out above her robe. Laurent stares at her. He’s ashamed for her but chooses to keep talking to dispel the embarrassment. “We’re here because I forgot my file in the kitchen this morning, but we need to get back to the office soon. Oh yes, I’d like to introduce Julia, my new coworker.” Julia is beautiful. She’s young, slim, willowy, molded into a beige suit that clings perfectly to her figure. Her long dark hair swept up in a ponytail brings out her golden complexion and her hazel eyes. Marie stands upright, the urge to cry constricting her throat. Julia
says hello, hardly dares to look her in the eye because her makeup is so obscene.
Marie thinks it best to withdraw. “Okay then, I’ll let you get on with your work. I have a lot to get on with too. Lovely to meet you, Julia.” As she lifts her arm to wave to her husband a stocking slips down to her ankles. Laurent closes his eyes, shamefaced. Marie instinctively pulls the stocking back up to her thigh and holds it with her hand. The pathetic absurdity of the situation reaches its height when she spots the phallus-shaped lollipop that fell out of the bag in the corridor. Luckily no one has noticed it. She snatches it up quickly and sneaks back to the bedroom. She takes off her makeup, the mascara squishing onto the damp cotton wool in great clumps. She can hear laughter at the far end of the corridor. They must be making fun of her. Yet another humiliation. She undresses and looks at her body. A hunk of dead flesh. It’s not desire that’s making her do all this. She must hide, conceal. And she must go pick Thomas up from the day nursery this evening. Time ticks by.
You need to step on the gas, Marie. This isn’t good enough. Look at the chart, you’re well below your targets.” Her branch manager’s office is the only one with an opaque closed door, a luxury that no one but Marie still values. Her work is starting not to matter to her anymore. The criticism passes her by, she doesn’t even try to justify herself. The meeting was planned for the end of the day so that Marie could mull over this conversation all night, right through till the next morning. A simple tough-love management technique.
Only Hervé is still here: “I need to finish filling in these personal files for tomorrow. You’ll need to be here this time.” Yet another quarterly meeting. Marie won’t go to it. She doesn’t know how she’ll react if she sees the CEO. Perhaps she’ll be frightened, sad, disgusted, or, conversely, empathetic or confident in the face of the secret that binds them. Her phone rings. “You remember we’re having dinner together at the Train Bleu this evening? Did you get the babysitter on the phone?” Marie takes an interest in her son only when she can free herself of her maternal responsibilities.
* * *
—
As she does every evening after work, she arrives at the day nursery late. Her contract with the child-care providers stipulates that she should pick up her son at seven o’clock. Today it’s eight o’clock. She apologizes to the employee who’s holding Thomas in her arms. The woman eyes her reproachfully. “I’m very sorry, ma’am, but maybe you should change your contract to extend Thomas’s time here by one hour a day, then everyone will know where they stand. Because this is the fifth time this week you’ve been late…” The other mothers turn to look at her. Not with compassion but unadulterated judgment. Marie is a bad mother, she knows she is. She says she’ll discuss it with her husband, settles Thomas in his buggy, and leaves. She hears the child-care worker’s voice through the door: “What about his Binky?” She doesn’t stop.
* * *
—
Marie doesn’t really remember when she and Laurent last had dinner at the Train Bleu. Most likely shortly after their wedding. When she arrived there that time, she wondered why her husband had arranged a romantic evening in the concourse of Gare de Lyon train station. Such a noisy place, often dirty and with some unsavory characters around in the evenings. A large mirrored staircase leads all the way up to the restaurant, whose blue sign lights up the wide arcades on the floor below. And all at once the grayness of everyday life disappears in the vast neo-Baroque architecture of the place. The station’s glass roof supported on large green pillars gives the restaurant an old-fashioned charm. Marie will never tire of Paris brasseries. She spots Laurent already at a table on the left-hand side of the room. He’s on the phone. He gets up from his chair and whispers to his wife: “I need to take this call, it’s very important, I’ll be a few minutes. You order, darling. A bottle of Pouilly-Fumé and I’ll have the panfried monkfish.”
She knows the monkfish is a good choice but prefers to stick to her own favorite: hare à la royale. A memory surfaces in her mind. Marie used to enjoy cooking for her guests. She didn’t like being caught out when friends were coming for dinner and always allowed time to set the table beautifully, spending hours trawling through home decor shops for the rare item that would make all the difference. As a wedding gift, her mother had given them a fully equipped kitchen with a complete set of utensils and several recipe books. Marie wasn’t a mother back then. She thought she was doing it all for herself, perhaps partly for her husband, but mostly so that those around her noticed her capacity for delighting other people, giving them pleasure. Later, after her pregnancy, she came up with the idea of doing a big dinner, as she used to. Sophia came with a friend called Louise, a journalist for a political magazine whom she’d met at a medical symposium of her husband’s on female genital mutilation. Marie had wanted to cook hare à la royale that evening, a very complicated dish, especially in the way the meat is cut up. The whole thing could fall apart at the last minute: the stuffing could spill out, the string holding the parcel together while it cooked could snap, the block of foie gras could burn if sliced too thinly. The sauce wasn’t easy to make either, but luckily a good handheld mixer could achieve a sufficiently glossy effect to get a really good presentation on the plate. Game was always very stressful. Usually when she decided to embark on this sort of culinary endeavor, she started very early in the morning and went on till late in the evening, nonstop. From the woman’s first glance at her spattered apron, Marie could tell Louise belonged to the other camp: the camp of women who don’t cook but who work. Marie couldn’t quite make out how Louise herself experienced the evening, but the way she judged Marie’s status, however surreptitiously, left Marie with an indelibly stamped anger toward women like her. Louise exhibited her erudition with broad strokes, endlessly showed off her rhetorical prowess to impress everyone present, and shot Marie the odd faux-sympathetic glance from the kitchen doorway. She eventually made up her mind to cross the threshold as if stepping into a minefield. Marie had no desire to get to know this woman with her insincere offers of help and her clichés of a Parisian political journalist: tortoiseshell reading glasses on the top of her head, a man’s tweed jacket, and suede ankle boots. Back then Marie was already completely out of her depth as a mother, overweight with greasy hair however often she washed it, and hitching up her so-last-year clothes. She pretended to be relaxed all through the meal, forcing her face to soften instead of showing the disgust that this first meeting inspired in her. The terrible truths about homemakers only emerge when these women come face to face with their enemies—working women.
The huge clock hanging in the middle of the brasserie chimes nine o’clock. Marie hasn’t even noticed that the bottle of white wine is already on the table. Their food is being served. When Laurent returns she’s lost track of how much time has passed. “I need to go to New York next week, for about ten days, to meet my client’s wife’s American lawyers. I’m so sorry, I know it’s bad timing but I don’t have a choice. We could ask your parents to take Thomas, I’m sure they’d be happy to. It’s not fun for him being at the day nursery such long hours.”
Marie hasn’t told Laurent about her repeated late pickup times at the nursery. She thinks this through. It’s never bad news for her to spend time alone, especially without her son. She agrees to the plan as she savors her dinner, a pleasure she hasn’t experienced for a long time. The sauce is wonderful, the meat tender. She knows she won’t go to work while her husband’s away. She’ll stay at home, making the most of this free time to do nothing. The day before Laurent leaves she’ll call everyone for their news so she knows they won’t disturb her later.
“We need to be sure they’re not going to try some ploy behind our backs. The tiniest mistake and it would all be over. We’ve worked so hard on this case.” Marie asks Laurent whether his boss will be making the trip with him. “No, I’m going with Julia.” Just the mention of her name shatters Marie’s high spirits, sweeps aside the sumptuous set
ting and the exquisite food, and pollutes the premises as if tons of excrement were being poured over its gilded walls, running along the skirting boards and making the molding collapse. But this isn’t a humiliation too far for Marie. She’d rather concentrate on any traps liable to endanger her secret. If the space closes in on her, she’ll defend herself. If possibilities open up, perhaps she’ll go completely crazy before finally deciding to take action.
Laurent has been gone two days. Marie has entrusted Thomas to her parents, who are thrilled that she wants them to look after the child. She won’t go to the bank today, or tomorrow for that matter. Officially, she’s sick. She goes around with a large plastic bag, dropping all the framed photographs of Thomas and Laurent into it. She’ll put them back later. She knows she won’t set foot outside the apartment. She’s not going to work, the alarm clock is switched off, the fridge is full, her friends are busy, Laurent is far away, her parents are looking after her son, and her phone is on silent. There’s nothing left for Marie to live for. The plastic bag tears under the weight. Shards of glass scatter at her feet on the wooden floor. The photos spring out of their frames. Marie gazes at them briefly from above, carelessly nudges the debris aside with her foot. She doesn’t feel like vacuuming. She drops the bag in a corner of the room and ends up lying on the sofa, waiting for something to happen even though she knows perfectly well nothing will. She has to agree to do nothing, just wait for time to pass.