Le Divorce

28

Whoever you may be, never discuss with another the interests of your own heart; the heart alone can plead its own cause and plumb the depths of its own wounds.

—Adolphe

“IT IS I, the renegade Charlotte,” said Charlotte de Persand Saxe over the telephone in tones of great gaiety, late Friday afternoon. Chester and Margeeve had gone with Roxy to the crèche, to be introduced as responsables authorized to pick up Gennie.

“Roxy isn’t here,” I said. “How are you? Are you in Paris?”

“I am calling you. I am here, on my way to Lyon. I thought maybe if you had time for a coffee? I thought, you could tell me the family news.”

This was surprising, since I would be the least informed of anyone in the family, the most unable to distinguish discord from lively discourse, say in discussions at the table. For instance, I still did not really understand how things stood with Charlotte and her husband Bob. What had been, surely, a sexual scandal—her “liaison,” as Suzanne had put it, with an Englishman—had now subsided to some mythology about “Charlotte’s job in London.” Bob appeared from time to time at Sunday lunch, and the children were often there. I had even stopped holding anything against Charlotte about the cat (Roxy had not), because I assumed I had somehow missed the explanation. In a way, I was getting used to being slightly out of it, and it was restful, I suppose like being deaf, where the wits can wander in inner reflection.

We met in the Vues de Notre Dame. “It is difficult being in London,” she sighed, lighting another cigarette seconds after stubbing out the first, and pouting flirtatiously at the waiter. It seemed to me her hair was paler, and she had gained a pound or two. “The English have so little sense of plaisir, and it is so gray there. But the work is interesting. I miss the children, but they are coming on their holidays. How is your French getting along?”

She had heard that our parents had arrived. She had heard about developments concerning Saint Ursula. She too deplored Antoine’s interference, and she worried about Charles-Henri.

Then, abruptly, she said, her eyes on me, “My aunt is coming to lunch on Sunday.” At first I didn’t understand, and my blankness must have showed, for she leaned forward.

“My uncle Edgar’s wife, my aunt Amélie. The family is in an uproar, you know.”

Had she been sent to tell me that her family knew about me and Edgar? What was I supposed to do? Blood drained from my head, so that at first I blurted, “Do you think—do you think they’ll say anything to my parents?” It was just something to say. I didn’t care what they said to my parents, I couldn’t shock my parents. It was I who was shocked.

Here I had been thinking about her, and about Roxy and Charles-Henri. Now I had a sensation that was like the moment in the surf when you have been borne to shore, the wave behind you lifting and buoying you up, when all at once the sea withdraws, the sand beneath you changes direction, water sucks you back, scrapes you over the sharp backs of shells, the firm bottom is gone. At this moment, the rich warm tide of French life turned, or, to change the metaphor, like a film running backward, I suddenly saw a jumble of images, of foie gras and buses, musical concerts in medieval churches, the windows of chocolate shops like museums, lacy G-string bikinis—all these things running backward pulling me back toward the beach-bunny movie that had been my life in the Santa Barbara reel.

All would be lost. The scenes I had been dreading—Margeeve and Chester finding out about how ill Roxy had been—were not the scenes I should have been dreading. My own life was to be ruined.

Was it Edgar I regretted? It seemed so, the man himself, whom I loved and who loved me as long as it didn’t get too disruptive and attract the scrutiny (amused? irate?) of his sister and wife and nieces and nephews. . . . Even in a panic I did not think, I did not make the mistake of thinking later, when I went over and over this conversation in my mind, that Edgar would fight for me or disrupt his life. No, I knew my place. I was a simple one-celled animal, the au pair girl, the junior player, without protection. I would be discarded. I knew that.

I hoped otherwise, of course.

“At first I thought, very strange, then I thought, not so strange,” Charlotte continued, lowering her voice still further. “My uncle has a bad reputation, you know. I suppose he is attractive, but very old, surely?”

Scenes flashed before me. The elderly man and young woman in a restaurant. He is handsome, well tailored, slightly florid, distinguished silver hair, perhaps slightly stout, hands lightly raddled. He is known, people look toward him trying to remember where they have seen him. Young smiling woman with him, neat in dark suit, hair knotted like a ballerina’s on the nape of her neck. Long neck, good nose, good profile, ladylike. Expensive bag. Up close, they would be heard discussing Prokofiev. They have been to the ballet. People looking couldn’t know that she is wearing stockings instead of pantyhose, held up with frilly black ribbon garters, and blue lace underwear, the artillerie de nuit he will help her wriggle out of later, when he will kiss, caress la foufoune, she will kiss, caress la bite, they will pass a sweaty, satisfying hour, but they will not skip dessert now; he is having salade d’agrumes, she is having clafoutis.

Are they in love? No one would think anything of the kind in any case, from their airy laughter. Perhaps each has a different definition. The young woman believes him wise, witty, paternal, worldly, cultivated, and a great lover. She believes he is the key to her future, though how this mechanism of fate might operate, she could not say. His power over her is not why she loves him. She usually dislikes people with power over her, even sexual power. She wants to be the one to have it. But he has sexual power too. It is not that she is passive, but that he has the ideas and dictates the rhythm. He is a sensualist and can teach that. She was always kind of grab-it-and-go, before. He has focus. For instance, when he focuses on the area of thigh between the top of the stocking and la foufoune itself, on that little crease at the top of the leg, it is as if he had never touched, kissed, admired that particular landscape before, never seen something so alluring.