Enough About Love (21 page)

Thomas smiles, kisses the nape of her neck. In spite of everything, he doesn’t actually mind if she shows it off, that ass of hers.

K
ARL AND
L
EA HAVE PUT
lots of gifts on the kitchen table.

Forty of them because this morning Anna is forty years old. Gifts in every shape, every color, wrapped in crepe paper, in velvet, in tissue paper. A real surprise. Anna plays the part accordingly.

“Open them, mommy, open them,” Karl and Lea cry while Stan cuts the little cake. She has already blown out the candles.

Anna opens them, alternating between large ones and tiny ones. In one, a stone painted bright red with a letter
A
in gold. In another, one of Lea’s drawings, which Anna unfolds carefully. A ginger cookie that she eats immediately. A salmon pink hair band. A red rose that she quickly puts in a glass. A queen of hearts, drawn by Karl … Anna wants to open a small one with a star design, but Karl and Lea protest, insisting she save it for the very end. A small glass for drinking tea. A plastic knight, “to defend her,” Lea explains …

One gift is different from all the others, smaller, more regular, more expensively wrapped too. She has seen it, she wants to put off the moment, but Stan nudges it toward her with one finger.

“Open it,” he says. “Happy birthday, my darling.”

Anna knows it is a piece of jewelry, probably a ring, probably gorgeous, probably priceless. She looks at her husband, shakes her head, her eyes shining.

“Thank you,” Anna breathes. “You shouldn’t have, Stan, you know very well why you shouldn’t have. I can’t accept it, you’re setting a trap for me. You shouldn’t do that.”

“Shush. It’s a ring, not a chain, not a padlock. I’m not buying you. You know that.”

“I’ll open your daddy’s present later, kids.”

Anna continues. So as not to disappoint Karl and Lea, she takes her time, but her high spirits have evaporated, every second suddenly weighs so heavily on her. Is this the last time they will celebrate her birthday as a family like this? In two months’ time, Karl will be eight. Can she ask him to celebrate that birthday without his father, then without her? Anna’s hands are shaking.

“The last present’s the most important,” the children cry. A scarlet envelope, inside, a sheet of white paper.

Lea has drawn a frieze around the margins, Karl has written on it in colored felt-tip pen.

The letter begins with “Lovely little mommy.” It is the most banal children’s letter, but every word cuts right through Anna. She reads it slowly, out loud at first, then quietly, ending in silence. When she has finished, she squeezes her children in her arms. There is a question in the letter. She replies with tears in her eyes: “Of course, my darlings, of course I’ll never leave you. You’re the loves of my life. The loves of my life.”

T
HE WIND BLOWS
through Louise’s blond hair streaked with the white she now allows to grow in. It is a very mild winter day on the Normandy coast.

“Come and help us, mommy,” says Maud, “Judith and me are going to dig a hole down to the water.”

Thomas squints in the light. Louise is rolling on the sand with her daughters, all three of them wave. With every move Louise makes, Thomas feels a sense of wonder as he glimpses the cheeky little girl he never knew.

Judith runs over to him, she wants a waffle, she is the one who takes his hand and drags him over to the crepe stall. Because Thomas “saved her life,” the child thinks, by some mischievous inversion of logic, that he is now her property. A waffle with sugar.

“Thomas?” Judith asks when Maud and Louise join them. “How did you meet mommy?”

She does not look away: she wants to know. Her cheek is white with sugar, Thomas wipes it with a napkin. Maud is also listening closely.

“I’ll leave you to explain it,” says Louise. “Make sure you tell it properly. I’ll be right back. And can you order me a tea?”

Thomas tells them, in his own way. He tries to be accurate, talks about the first evening, the first exchange of e-mails, he even talks about the Galápagos iguana whose skeleton shrinks when there is not enough food. But Judith is not at all interested in the reptile.

“And did you fall in love with mommy right away?”

“I think I did,” Thomas smiles, before correcting himself. “I’m sure I did.”

“And did you know about daddy?”

“Yes,” Thomas replies, as frankly as the question was asked.

Louise is back, she takes his hand.

“You know, my darlings,” she says, “I’ve told you, there were already lots of things that weren’t right between daddy and me. We used to be very happy and the proof is that you’re both here, but we hadn’t been happy for a few years, even if it didn’t show. And then I met Thomas, and I really, really fell in love with him—in spite of his gray hair, I know—and everything felt so clear to me.”

“What wasn’t right, mommy?” Judith asks.

“For example, daddy and I didn’t want to have any more children together. But I, well, I still wanted a baby.”

“You want a baby, mommy?” Judith reiterated.

“Yes. Very much. Your daddy could still have one in five years, or ten years. But I’m a woman, it’s not the same. I’m nearly forty, and if I don’t have one soon, I won’t be able to
anymore, because I’d be too old, and that would make me so sad. Do you understand, girls?”

“Yes, mommy,” Judith says, concentrating.

Maud nods her head. Louise drinks her cup of tea.

“Well, I think we’ve managed it, Thomas and me. And we’re all going to have to move in together soon, into a bigger house. I’m pregnant. I’ve got a baby in my tummy.”

Thomas looks at Louise, dumbstruck. She has not told him anything. She kisses him gently on the side of his head, takes Judith on her lap.

“I’ve known for exactly three minutes. When I went to the pharmacy, it was to buy a test.”

“And does the test say if the baby’s going to be a little brother or a little sister?” Maud asks.

“No, my darling, it just says that I’m pregnant. And I’m very happy. The baby will be here in seven and a half months.”

“In September?” Thomas asks.

Louise nods.

“Hey, mommy?” Judith asks.

“Yes, sweetheart. I’m listening.”

“Hey, can I have another waffle?”

D
RAGONS AND WITCHES
, shooting stars and planets spin across the white wall in Karl and Lea’s bedroom. Lea chose this nightlight among all the others with their images of flowers and animals. Anna was not convinced, but Lea reminded her that dragons and witches do not exist, that no one should be afraid of them, and the argument was so rational it persuaded her mother.

“You have to go to sleep, children,” Anna says.

But Karl and Lea are not tired. Lea jumps on her bed and asks for a story. Anna takes a big illustrated copy of
Alice in Wonderland
from the bookshelf. She reads for a few minutes. Lea falls asleep first, breathing peacefully. Anna continues a little longer for Karl. A big marmalade cat smiles in the middle of the page.

“Alice,” Anna reads in a soft voice, “was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards
off.… ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat. ‘I don’t much care where—’ said Alice. ‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.”

Karl has gone to sleep. A blue witch on a broomstick launches across the door when Anna turns out the light.

Yes, Anna thinks, the Cat’s right, when you don’t know where you want to go, it doesn’t matter which path you take.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: associate professor

Prof. Daniel P. Reynolds

Leland Stanford Junior University

Dept of Evolutionary Biology

Dear Daniel,

I’m using this prompt means of communication because I’m delighted to confirm that I would very much like to accept the post of Associate Professor for six months and to run the HumanL@nguage project, as we discussed in Stockholm.

I will email you again shortly to let you know the dates for the weeks when I will return to France, so that you can set up the university schedule accordingly. I have arranged the details of
accommodation with John, and am planning to arrive next week to be ready for the first conferences.

I’m so happy that I’ll be working with your team, with John and Marina.

   With warmest wishes,
   Romain Vidal

Y
VES IS TRYING TO SPOT
A
NNA
at the entrance to the Rennes Métro station. He cannot find her. She is just across the street, on the sidewalk. She cannot believe he has not seen her. It must be because he does not see as well as she would like to think.

They walk together until they come to a café, where they sit at a table outside. Yves does not like sitting outside, where Anna—on the grounds that they are exposed to prying eyes—is distant, untouchable. He is sure that, already, they both know there are things that have not been said. But before anything else, Anna tells him about yesterday evening, at a friend’s apartment. She talks … about primitive communism, about a book that should be written on children’s education, and Yves watches her more than he listens. He watches and wonders about his own feelings, his desire for her, about the gap between illusion and reality. He knows she is going to leave him, just when everything has become so clear to him.

Anna is talking about her husband, the things that connect her to him “incontrovertibly,” that is the word she uses, and she comes out with: “Yves, I’ll never be able to leave Yves.”

The Freudian slip makes Yves smile, but he can tell that she will, she will be able to leave Yves.

He does not repeat the things that have been said a thousand times. Perhaps this time he would succeed in formulating them even better, but what would be the point? You cannot spend your days saying the same things around and around in circles.

In spite of everything, he does say: “You’re leaving me because you’ve never known how to give us a future. That’s the invisible barrier you’ve kept coming up against, like a moth against a windowpane. I should have guessed, the future wasn’t for me: in your letters you always talked about might and could.”

Anna says nothing.

“You were waiting for some sort of sign in the clouds,” Yves goes on, “a bolt from the blue, what do I know? Some instruction from the world telling you you absolutely had to live with me. The sign never came, and it never will. It’s not for the sky to send instructions. Nothing will come, and that’s why I have to leave, it’s as simple as that.”

They stand up, he does not make a scene, he never has. The café where they are having lunch is called The Horizon. He merely points out the irony. And hands her an envelope.

“Here. I’ve written you a villanelle.”

“A what?”

“A poem, a sort of round with the first and third lines repeated … You can read it later.”

She puts the envelope in her handbag, carefully. Anna would so love it if, in just one letter, a man could change a woman’s
fate forever. Yves does not want to do anything to nurture that hope.

Even as they walk toward her car, when they really are going to leave each other, the happiness he feels from still being beside Anna is so strong that, right until the last minute, it protects him, stops him being entirely sad. A stroke of her hand, a kiss on her cheek, and her perfume, still. This will be his last sensual memory of Anna Stein. When he turns away from her, when he walks away, sadness will tear through him and a great void will open inside him.

Truman Capote could not finish
In Cold Blood
so long as Perry Smith and Dick Hickock had not been executed. He just cannot get any further with
Abkhazian Dominoes
so long as their relationship continues. This book which is about them will be written in the present tense. The present will definitely have been their tense. Of course the word also means gift. Let it be one.

He does not know this but behind him, Anna has turned around. She is watching him walk away. In a store window, just across the sidewalk, there is a pretty little dress, short, low cut, in blue cotton with drawstrings on the sleeves and a floaty flounced hem in navy tulle. Yves disappears at the end of the street, Anna has such a strong urge to cry, she goes into the store. She tries the dress on. It suits her so well.

I
N THE ONLY PHOTOGRAPH
of Piette that Thomas still has, her lovely legs will be long and tanned forever. Thomas has burned all the other pictures he took of her, including the nudes she had such fun posing for. Before throwing each image on the fire, he described it quietly: “Piette sitting on a stone bench, naked, her feet on tiptoes, thighs spread, doing nothing to hide her pussy, elbows on knees, her head resting in her hands, staring at the lens and laughing,” … or “Piette in the bathtub, with her chin on the white enamel rim, her buttocks emerging from the bubbles, as well as one foot.”

The flames left nothing. This photograph that Thomas did not want to burn tries to comprise all the different Piettes. Lying on a bed in a white cotton dress, with her legs in the air, she is reading through the speech that a friend wrote for their engagement party. It was an engagement just for the fun of it, but Piette had thought big and invited fifty friends to her parents’ old farmhouse.

Summer has started early, there is a warm breeze blowing and the sky is fittingly sky blue. They have put baskets of fruit out on the large table, apricots, cherries, the first peaches.

“Come with me,” Piette says in Thomas’s ear when coffee is being served.

In just a few days in Provence, her skin has caught the sun, her hair is lighter, and her nose and shoulders have a smattering of freckles. She is pregnant: beneath her dress her small breasts have grown heavier, become firmer, the nipples larger, and, as soon as they are alone, Thomas touches them gently, filled with emotion. Angels have pussies and breasts.