ONE EVENING AT THÉRÈSE’S retirement residence in the South of France, five months after Andrew’s death, there had been the outlines of trees against the sky as well, trees of a different kind. Palm trees, with pale light in the sky and pale light on the Mediterranean.
Over the years she and Thérèse had kept in touch and become friends, and that night they were sitting in canvas chairs on the patio, talking. Thérèse had a wool blanket over her knees even though it was May. She said she was often cold.
Thérèse was even thinner now, with a calm expression on her face nearly always. Her inner smile, as she’d once explained it to Margaret. Something she had taught herself. An inner smile through which to filter the world. What to allow in, what to keep out.
“Margaret,” she said. “Do you remember the time when you sent me that note about holding rights and the Yes and No boxes?”
“Yes, of course I do.”
“I thought so. At the time there was nothing more to be said about it, and it’s many years ago, but I want to talk about it now. Because in the time since, I have changed my mind. Now, at this stage in my life—you understand, the person I am now, not the one I was then—I would mark the Yes box as well.”
“You would? What happened?”
“Time happened. Now I would want to know. To be able to imagine him or her in later years. Mine would be fifty-four years old now. And it could be any woman or man out there. At the time I was in shock, Margaret. I despised that man, and I despised myself. I felt shamed. And I was so young. I knew nothing! The worst thing was that I blamed myself for the longest time.”
“And yet you didn’t keep it a secret.”
“I did for the first little while. But once I had my teaching certificate and I heard about École Olivier and its philosophy, and that they were looking for someone to help build it, I made the decision, and from then on I even used it as a kind of qualification. A badge of merit. And it worked.”
For a while they sat in silence. They could hear traffic from the street beyond the trees. A car door closing.
When Thérèse spoke again, she said that she had always liked Margaret’s story about choosing parents at Lakewood. There was method and resolve in it. “Did it work?” she said.
“Mostly.”
“And now?”
“On days when I’m not too shaky, it’s still in a safe place.”
Thérèse said she could understand that. Hers was in a safe place as well, and in some ways the entire episode had in the course of her life turned from a negative experience into a positive one, or at least an instructive one.
What she meant, she said, was that it had taught her to forgive herself and to be unafraid. And never again to allow herself to be shamed. It had made her into who she was, she said. And who with any luck she was still becoming. If she lived long enough.
Her hands were fingering the edge of the blanket. Dry hands. Thin, the veins dark.
“Other than that…” she said. “The saddest day of my life was when Philippe died. No, that’s not true. The days that followed all the next year were even sadder. But you know that. We’ve talked about it. And still, to this day. So you see, Margaret? I do understand about loss.”
There was silence between them for a while. Up in the palm trees, a breeze. Voices from somewhere.
“They’ll be calling for dinner any moment now,” Thérèse said. “The food’s quite good here, you’ll see. I’m so glad you came, Margaret. So very glad.”
Thérèse had been at École Olivier for a total of nearly thirty years. She’d been there from the earliest stages and had helped build it into a fully academic finishing school, right up to the baccalaureate level.
But then, more than ten years after Margaret’s time in France, two sets of parents made written complaints about Thérèse’s unorthodox teaching. One of the complaints specifically mentioned her Women’s Stories sessions. All too free and inappropriate, it said. Anti-Christian, anti-social, anti-family. At the very least, improper for girls that age.
An investigation followed. No real fault was found, and perhaps it was a coincidence that the girls whose parents had complained were friends and one of them had failed her baccalaureate. But the parents threatened to go directly to the Ministry of Education, and because the school’s reputation mattered greatly in terms of its finances, Thérèse was asked to resign.
The dismissal was a blow to her, but it also set her free to concentrate on her ideas around the inner self and fulfillment, and on her writing. She was fifty-five when she moved to furnished rooms and began helping in restaurant kitchens and serving at tables. She lived cheaply, like all the impoverished writers and poets in Paris, and set to work.
Her third and most famous book, Between Me and Myself, or Entre moi et moi-même in the original French, foreshadowed the bold new feminism to come and a woman’s right, even obligation, to take full responsibility for herself and to make her own choices in all things related to her person. Reviewers called it absolutely scandalous, even shameless, and an affront to marriage and a woman’s role within her family, but within less than a year Between Me and Myself was an international success.
In the dining room there were white tablecloths and flowers and good china and cutlery. Only subdued sounds came from the other tables in the room. Servers wore black skirts or trousers with long white aprons.
Over dinner she confided to Thérèse that in her darkest moments, when she leaned close to her bathroom mirror, she hated the person in there. And she feared that she’d become a good lawyer at a very high price. The law, she said, was after all only words. Lots of words that could be studied and remembered, and she was fortunate in that she was able at times to see connections that others had missed. But while success in her profession was one thing, she feared that she had failed at other things that normal women understood with perfect ease. Understood intuitively. Like how to keep your children close and safe, never mind how not to endanger your marriage.
Thérèse shook her head. “Give it time,” she said. “And a normal woman—what is that? The best I can say is, give it time.”
After dinner they walked to the taxi that would take her back to the hotel. Thérèse walked slowly, with her left arm in Margaret’s. A more fragile arm now, and her hair nearly white, still perfectly groomed, still held up with combs. Black ones now.
At the bottom of the steps leading from the entrance to the street, Thérèse stopped. She reached and in the dark put her hand to Margaret’s face and said, “About your sorrow, dear. There are no explanations, no reasons. And you know it. No one can take your sorrow away from you, or even lessen it for you. It is yours to bear, and after a while you will find that you can live with it. It will be a sweet pain close to your heart always, but in time that pain itself will become an important part of you. It is strange. It becomes almost something like a friend.”