Un Jour Comme Un Autre
(A Day Like Any Other)

Margot and Ona are having figs and hot chocolate at the table by the window. The open kitchen window with the short yellow curtains, which are now gently blowing up and out in a perfect way that rarely happens in actual life.

Sam notices. Says the same words to himself. Look. That rarely happens in actual life. He’s at the coffee machine again, pouring his third small cup of Yemen. Black and strong. How I like my women. One of his favorite jokes. Even though, it’d work better if he said black and sweet. Even though, it’d work even better if he said how I like my men because that’s funnier coming from someone who’s not gay. Maybe it’s not funny at all, he thinks. His head is down and he’s laughing softly as the automatic timer on the coffee machine ticks off.

“What is so funny, you?” Margot asks.

He turns to see her in the thin, yellow-white morning light. She is still in her nightgown, the barely beige one with the roses on it. The roses have thorns. He finds he is always staring at the thorns, counting them or reaching out to touch them, his fingers skimming over the slick satin ruffles.

He knows she has a lover. He knows who he is. He has seen them when they didn’t know he was watching. Sam has seen her lover light her cigarette and pat her ass at the market, while he watched from the window of the cafe. He has seen her throw her head back and laugh and laugh and laugh and touch this man’s hand. Sam knows. He will tell her tonight. He will send Ona to her grandmother’s. He’ll watch Margot’s wide eyes fill with tears. Or maybe she’ll grab the knife, like she’s done before. Maybe she’ll grab the knife after she’s cried all over her nightgown. Maybe she will cut her wrists with that knife. Maybe she will scream and he will grab her wrists before she cuts them. Maybe they’ll make love, this time on the kitchen floor. Maybe he will try to convince her that way. Maybe he will pull her hair and feel her back arch beneath him and beg her to promise he’ll be enough. This will be enough. Ona will be enough. She’s only four. Think about her. She is yours, Margot. We are yours. Please let us be enough.

“Nothing. I just made myself laugh. That’s all,” he says.

Margot woke before them that morning, her eyes smudged with last night’s eyeliner. She threw on her sundress and went down to the market for a small blue carton of figs. Les Figues. She saw Adrien smoking and tapping the glossy aubergines. She walked to stand next to him. Just to be next to him.

“He knows,” she said. Quickly. In French.

“What will you do?” he said.

“I love you,” she said softly, turning to him.

“Yes. I love you. Come to me. Tonight or tomorrow,” he said, tossing his cigarette to the ground. He pressed the toe of his boot on it.

She bought the figs and turned to walk away.

“Margot,” he said.

She looked at him, his khaki shirt wrinkled at the arms. His hair was slicked back, which made his nose look pointier. He was not as handsome as Sam. He did not love her as much. She knew this. It didn’t matter.

“How does he know?” he asked in French.

“He loves me,” she said, adjusting the strap of her dress.

She ate one fig on her walk back home. Une Figue.

She crept back into their apartment. Sam and Ona were still sleeping. She went to the bathroom and washed her face twice in the shower because that’s what she did when she’d been crying.

She put her rose nightgown back on. Sam liked it best.

Margot reapplied her eyeliner with liquid this time. Thickish on the top lid with a small wing flick at the corner. She was rubbing her bottom lip with her middle finger and watching the mirror when she heard Ona stirring in her bedroom. The shh shh of small feet between sheets.

Ona creaked open the bathroom door.

“Little bird, I have figs. And hot chocolate in a bowl?” Margot scooped her up and Ona wrapped her legs around her mother’s waist, arms around her neck.

“Yes,” Ona said and nodded. She buried her face into the nook of Margot’s neck and almost fell asleep again.

“Shh. Let’s not wake Daddy,” Margot said, snapping the bathroom light off.

Now there is French music in this small kitchen filled with wind. A woman’s voice and a trumpet.

“Who is this?” Sam asks.

“Brigitte Bardot. ‘Un Jour Comme Un Autre,’” she says.

“A Day Like Any Other,” he translates.

“Do you like it?” she asks.

“I like the trumpet, but her voice is too perfect,” he says, sitting at the only other chair at the table. He watches Ona drink the rest of the hot chocolate and reaches out to touch the top of her head, her crow-black hair.

“I knew you would like the trumpet,” Margot says, lighting her cigarette.

He takes one from the pack and she lights his, as well.

“I’m easy? Have I no secrets?” He feigns disappointment and inhales the smoke deeply, feeling it sweetly tickle inside of him, his lungs. It fills him up. He puts his hand to his chest and pretends to be crushed at this revelation.

“We all have secrets,” she says, smiling at first. She looks at him.

Her bright brown eyes search his face and his, hers. He knows she wants to tell him. He knows she knows he knows. They smoke and watch Ona color a flower she has drawn on the back of an envelope.

Sam touches a rose on Margot’s nightgown. She puts her chin in her hand, rests her free arm on the windowsill so the cigarette smoke can drift away.

That’s what we’ll do, he thinks, we’ll leave Paris.

“I’ll drop Ona off at your mother’s. We can have the night to ourselves?” he says to Margot. She is reading in his chair.

“I do not like this book,” she says in her fussiest voice. Her English is nearly perfect, but she has that gorgeous French accent when she says it. The accent all men want to hear in their bed on the thickest black nights.

He looks down to see she’s laid the book in her lap. A Henry James he has never read.

“I haven’t read it,” he says.

“I assumed you had read them all,” she says, gesturing to one of the bookshelves.

“I haven’t.”

She hops up and kisses Ona on her mouth, her cheek, the top of her head.

“Goodbye, Little Bird. Be good for Mamie.”

“I will! We’re making cookies. She’s gonna let me slide the tray into the oven this time,” Ona says. She readjusts the stuffed pink poodle underneath her arm.

“Save some for me,” Margot says, putting her hands on her hips.

Sam is wearing what he wears most Saturday afternoons. A blue oxford and brown pants. This time, the pants are corduroy, the color of wet pennies. He takes off his black glasses.

He does not kiss Margot goodbye.

He looks back at her before he closes the door. She can’t describe the look on his face.

The closest she comes? Resolve. The end of something.

The door closes.

Rain. It starts on his way back from dropping Ona at Mamie’s. He buys a fresh pack of Gauloises and stops in a dimly-lit restaurant for a glass of Armagnac. Having both of them at the same time always makes him feel very American, very aware of his not-Frenchness.

Sam ached for a woman when he met Margot. All he’d been doing was working and reading and drinking and sleeping and smoking. He missed the United States. He was thinking of going back to New York or home to Kentucky. California? Maybe. Seeking balm for a sore heart, he invited Margot out for afternoon coffee. After coffee, dinner. After dinner, sitting and drinking red wine on her lush rug in front of the fire at her place. Later, more red wine, drunk and still drinking, talking for hours when he noticed the sky changing. Dark, lighter, light. He only touched her once that night. The small of her back as they walked into the restaurant.

After that night he never considered leaving France. Not until now.

Margot wanted Sam to kiss her on their first date. She both loved and hated he didn’t. She loved how his shirt was whitest-white. She loved how he smelled softly like mint and the cigarette he must’ve smoked on the way. She hated he had to ask what she was ordering before he made up his mind.

She loved his smile. It was sneaky. He seemed a completely different person when he smiled. She smiled when he did.

He is weak, Margot thought.

He falls in love too easily. I can tell.

I am afraid he will bore me. Or love me too much.

Now Sam is back at their apartment. It is just the two of them now. Now.

“We’re moving to the States,” he says.

“What do you mean, we are moving to the States? I am not moving to the States. I love Paris,” she says. She is brushing her hair over one shoulder.

“You’re her mother. You’re my wife and we’re a family.”

“Why are you telling me this? I know these things. I know this!” she says, throwing the brush at his feet.

“We have to leave Paris so we can get away from him.”

“Who?” she says and her voice is so thin and cold.

Sam looks away.

“Who? Who? The man you fuck when I am at work. The man who fucks you when Ona and I go to a movie and to get ice cream. Him. That man,” Sam rails.

“I do not know what you are talking about.”

“Look. We’ll go to the States. Start over. Let’s just start over,” he says.

“You cannot make me,” she says.

Sam grabs her arm too fast and too hard. He eases up, but only a little. He guides her down the hall to stand outside of Ona’s bedroom. He is still holding her arm. Her elbow is awkwardly angled at his chest and he drops it. She crosses her arms and looks into the room.

Ona’s bedroom is deep purple and there are glow stars all over the ceiling. Books are stacked next to her bed. Her stuffed rabbit rests against the pillow, politely waiting for Ona’s return.

“Don’t give us up for him. He doesn’t love you like we do.”

He turns his back on her and goes into their bedroom, slams the door. He can hear her crying now and saying she’s sorry.

She’s on the other side of the door sobbing. Gasping. Sam. Sam, I’m sorry. I love you. I love Ona. Okay. We will go to the States or wherever you want to go.

“GOD. DAMMIT. MARGOT.” He kicks the door. The wood splits at the bottom.

Once they are in New York, there are some quiet months and then, Marc Renard. It doesn’t take long for Sam to learn his name. Margot has become careless.

She’d left an envelope sticking out of her purse. It was on the kitchen counter and Sam only pulled it out as much as he needed, to read the name. Marc Renard. He put the envelope back exactly how he found it. He cleared his throat and felt a restless, heavy fire burning in his chest.

Now she has a new lover and she only thinks of Paris and Adrien when the wind blows a certain way. It doesn’t worry her. What worries her is this. Why was he so easy to forget? Why are they always so easy to forget? It must be something about them.

Sam would be easy to love again, if she wanted. He is loving and forgiving and easy on the eyes. But it’s not enough. She wants attention from every man and Sam is only one. She feels loyalty to her lovers. Loyalty to Sam never occurs to her. He is already hers. And it was too easy.

Her love for Sam burned brightest before they married. And it was re-lit the first time she saw Ona smile. Ona was born with the same black, black hair as Margot. The same black, black hair as her mother. But the smile on Ona’s face was Sam’s.

One day in Paris, Margot was on the couch with her knees bent and her sock feet on the coffee table. Seven-week-old Ona was in the warm hammock of her thighs. Margot was making little pbb pbb pbb noises and holding Ona’s tiny hands when she smiled for the first time. A full smile with an almost-dimple in her right cheek. Margot started to cry.

Sam walked through the door, carrying a bag of groceries.

“Are you okay? What happened?” he asked, looking around the apartment to figure it out for himself.

“She smiles just like you,” Margot said. She picked Ona up and turned her around to show Sam.

He took Ona in his arms and put his hand on the back of her head, whispered something to her Margot could not hear.

“I love you. Both of you,” Margot said softly.

“We love you,” Sam said, reaching out his hand for her.

She took it and stood up, looked down at their feet. Sam’s brown boots and her own blue and white striped socks. The new shaggy brown rug her mother had gotten them for a wedding present.

Look at this. I am choosing to love you, she thought.

No other man interests Margot until she meets Marc. Marc reminds her of her father. He is so tall and smokes and smokes. You are so French, she tells him. He laughs and takes her hand, kisses it. She doesn’t feel the need to resist him because he, too, is from Paris. He’s married like her and that means neither one of them is doing anything wrong. I hate it here, she says to him too often. They don’t understand, she says.

She doesn’t try to hide it from Sam anymore. A year in the States and she doesn’t bother showering before she comes home. She knows she smells like sex and Marc’s cologne. Sam knows it too. She and Marc speak only French when they are together. And she doesn’t bother switching back immediately when she comes home. She and Ona swap French sentences as Sam looks at them over the top of his New York Times.

“Sorry,” she says to him thinly, catching herself, “but French feels lighter in my mouth.”

Sam reaches for his mug of coffee and gives a half-smile.

“I love French and English. I love them both,” Ona says, motioning to her daddy for a sip.

“A very small sip,” he says, cupping his hand under her chin.

“Where were you?” he asks, not looking at Margot.

“Walking,” she says, rubbing her feet.

“You should just pack your stuff and leave, don’t you think?” Sam says one afternoon, while Ona is at school.

“Is that what you want me to do? Leave?”

“Why would I want you to stay? You’re not mine. And you’re not here for Ona like you should be,” he says. He knows that little bit will hurt the most.

“Oh fuck you. I love my daughter. But you bring me here? You think I can be happy here? I should not have come,” she says.

“Why do you do this?” he asks. His heart, a small broken cup, cracked and spilling over.

“I do what I want to do. And I have always been this way. You knew it.”

Her eyes are wilder now. He resists the urge to punch something. To spit.

“Why don’t you find another woman? Why haven’t you done it?!” she says.

“I don’t have time because I’m being a proper father to our child.”

She doesn’t say anything. He wonders how she does that. He concludes her brain must not register things like normal people. And that thought won’t stop tapping his arm when he’s flipping his pillow to the cool side in the middle of the night. It pours all over him as he dries his hair after his shower. What’s wrong with her?

“Look. You were right about coming here. It was a bad idea. I was wrong. Now I guess you should leave,” he says, keeping his voice even. Keeping his hands on his hips.

She steps out onto the balcony to smoke. He laughs at her thinking he hasn’t considered other women. Or maybe she doesn’t care he scans the eyes of almost every woman he meets. It doesn’t matter if he likes her face. It doesn’t matter if a woman is freckled or awkwardly tall or if her oily hair is blowing into her mouth while she waits for the subway to come to a complete stop.

Are they all like her?

Margot is a maenad. Or anything evil and snakelike with sharp claws where her hands should be. Her hair, tangled branches with thorns. Her voice, deep water. She speaks and he drowns. Her poisonous kisses will take his last breath. Her red mouth will devour his heart.

Sam never regrets Ona. Ona is proof there can be good. Proof a saturnine woman, serpentine and bloodless, can give life to a small and holy little bird.

He swaps his dour expression for a full grin when he sees Ona clomping down the smooth concrete steps of her school. He helps get her backpack off and carries it. They walk hand in hand past the chain link fences separating playgrounds from sidewalks. They walk hand in hand and wait at crosswalks for the cabs and limos and cars and bikes to come to a complete stop. Ona kicks at a pile of dried leaves. She tells her daddy about her new best friend who draws the prettiest yellow flowers with long green stems.

Sam and Margot are still legally married when Margot is killed. Ona has turned six. Margot has taken a new lover and Marc doesn’t accept it as easily as Sam did. Marc strangles her, hangs himself. Sam lies to his daughter about the details. He says her mother was hit by a car when she stopped to shoo a kitten onto the sidewalk; the driver wasn’t paying attention.

So Ona, we need to pray for people, even when they hurt other people. Whether they mean to or not. His throat is thick. His voice, a small fire.