The Light of Paris (2 page)

When we finished the tour, Miss Pine let her students spin off where they wanted—to sketch, she told them sternly, not to the gift shop or the café. A few of them wandered back to the Renaissance rooms (I suppose
Venus' bare breasts had been rather too much to turn down after all); a few others lingered with the vibrant beauty of the Impressionists.

“Listen,” Miss Pine said, coming over and thrusting a postcard at me, the edges slightly soft and bent from her bag, “if you change your mind and want to get in touch with your inner teenager, I'm teaching a painting class this weekend at a new studio in Bucktown. It starts tonight. You should come.”

Staring down at the postcard as though it were the door to Narnia, I pictured it: a bright studio, the smell of paint and canvas, the weight of the brush resting against the curve underneath my thumb, both new and familiar.

“That's very kind of you,” I said, slipping back into that smooth, emotionless voice that was my armor, “but I have plans.” My presence had been demanded at one of Phillip's dinners that night, and the next day I was leaving to visit my mother. I didn't want to do either of those things, would far rather have spent the weekend at that painting class, but my life was heavy with obligations and light on everything I wanted to do.

She shrugged. “Another time, then. My phone number is right there.” She pointed at the bottom of the card, and I saw a smudge of dried paint on the inside of her finger, a sight so familiar it confused me—was it her hand, or mine, a decade ago? “No pressure. Just fun.”

“Thank you,” I said, knowing I would never reach out to her. I knew it was better to keep that part of myself at bay, but to my surprise, that knowledge felt sharp and raw, as though it were new and not years old.

After Miss Pine and the students left, I ate a handful of cookies in the staff room, shoving them so quickly into my mouth that they scraped against my tongue, then gathered my things and went home. Sometimes I took the long way, in order to pass a string of galleries that always had something deliciously irreverent and exciting on display, but I had to meet Phillip. He was desperately trying to make a deal with a
developer named Teddy Stockton, which meant I was doomed to making polite conversation with Teddy's wife, Dimpy, and the other wives all night.

At home, I paused at the front door. Lately I had found myself in a strange, black moment of hope every night, a half wish that my husband would not come home.

I didn't want anything bad to happen to him; I just wished he would go away. He could disappear through a wormhole, or a circle of standing stones. Or maybe one day he would simply decide he'd had enough and move to some Caribbean island without me. I'd wish him well, honestly. I'd pack up his things and send them down to him with a tube of sunscreen and my best wishes. It would be tidy and emotionless and no one would be to blame.

I didn't wonder about the meaning behind these thoughts. I had spent so long swallowing every unpleasant feeling I had that it never occurred to me that having a recurring fantasy in which your husband disappears is probably a sign that something is terribly wrong.

But of course there was no magical circle of stones and no Caribbean island, because when I opened the door, there he was, standing in the kitchen, flipping through the mail. He looked, as he always did, as though he were posing for a catalog photo.

Phillip was older than I was, dancing on the edge of forty, but he would be one of those men who simply became better looking as he aged, less pretty and more handsome, like a movie star, or a newscaster. As I had no interest in plastic surgery, I imagined the gulf between our attractiveness would only continue to widen, until I, wrinkled and tired and gray, would look like the maiden aunt he generously escorted to charity functions.

“You're late,” he said as I set down my purse and reached for the sweater I kept in the coat closet. The floor-to-ceiling windows that allowed one to sit on the uncomfortable couch and admire the endless view of Lake Michigan were also, I was fairly sure, the main reason our
home was always so chilly. The moment I came home, even during the summer, I slipped on that sweater. I wore socks and slippers at all times and when I stepped out of the shower, I hurried as quickly as possible into a towel and a bathrobe, the water beading into ice on my skin.

“Sorry,” I said perfunctorily, walking past him into the living room. We didn't kiss hello or goodbye, not anymore. We had never been a particularly demonstrative couple—Phillip was too concerned with what other people thought, and I was too afraid, even after we were married, of being rejected—but now he didn't even brush his lips across my forehead when he left for the day. The cool exterior we were required to present to the world had swept its way into our private lives, turning us into strangers at a cocktail party who were sure they had met before, giving each other curious glances across the room.
Don't I know you from . . . Didn't we once . . .

Gathering the mail into a stack, he tapped the pile against the kitchen counter, a smooth, black granite that made it irritatingly impossible to find the dirty spots. “Hurry up. Put on the black dress you wore to the library fundraiser. You look like you ate too much today.”

I looked down at the gray dress I had worn to the museum, trying to spot a telltale cookie bump. Maybe I had eaten a few too many, but I couldn't have gained that much weight in an afternoon. Then again, Phillip always seemed to know when I had eaten something I shouldn't have. He was like a well-dressed bloodhound, and if I ate anything other than carrot sticks, he nailed me for it every time, even though I had finally learned to check my shirts for powdered sugar before going home.

“Fine,” I said, heading into the bedroom to change into the black dress. Fighting with him wasn't worth the effort—it was easier to eat what he told me to, wear what he wanted me to, act how he thought I should. He was a little like my mother in that way, though in a competition between them, he'd never win. Phillip was used to getting his way, but my mother could kill you with canapés and kindness.

I changed into the assigned dress and slipped on a pair of heels that
pinched at my toes. My stomach was tight and painful, but there were no antacids left in the bathroom. After going through a couple of evening bags and the bedside table, I finally found some in my closet and threw them in my mouth, wiping my hands on the hem of my dress as I walked back into the living room.

“I'm ready to go,” I announced, hanging my sweater in the closet.

Phillip, who had been flipping impatiently through channels on the television, turned and looked at me. “What is that on your dress?”

I looked down to see the outline of my chalky fingers on the bottom of the skirt. “Oh, you know. I was working a crime scene.”

No smile. He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Just clean up, Madeleine. We're going to be late.”

“And I'd hate to miss a moment with Dimpy,” I said. I walked over to the kitchen and wet the corner of a towel, dabbing at the dust until it disappeared. Throwing the damp towel onto the counter, I sighed loudly, which was my best passive-aggressive effort at letting Phillip know I didn't want to go to this dinner. I didn't want to pretend to be interested in real estate investment and development, and I didn't want to make conversation with the wives. I hated that we were always on the periphery. And maybe it was worse that night because I knew I could have been with Miss Pine. I could have been painting, and afterward I could have gotten a steak sandwich, which was definitely not on my diet and even more definitely would have been delicious, Phillip's sense of smell be damned.

Instead, we went to Twelve, which was about trendy cocktails, tiny, artfully arranged portions on enormous plates, and waiters so attentive I felt like I had to put my arm protectively around my meager dinner lest they whisk it away if I stopped to take a breath.

“Madeleine, hellllllooooo,” Dimpy Stockton brayed at me. We'd seen each other only a few days ago at the Women's Club, and we weren't particular friends, but you might have thought, from the performance she gave, that we were reuniting after the war.

“Hi, Dimpy,” I said as she dropped a cool, perfumed kiss on each of my cheeks. She looked exactly like you would expect someone named Dimpy Stockton to look, with a shockingly tight facelift and a pile of cocktail rings more threatening than a set of brass knuckles.

“I thought I might see you at the historical society board meeting today,” she said, and there was an odd scolding tone to her voice.

“Oh, on Fridays I read to orphans,” I said solemnly.

“Isn't that nice? You're always so community-minded.” Dimpy patted me on the hand. I tilted my head at her. How disconnected from reality was she? Life wasn't a production of
Annie
. You couldn't just go to an orphanage and corral unsuspecting children into storytime. But Dimpy was sailing along happily. “You missed the most ghastly argument,” she said, tossing her head back and regaling me with a story about the trauma of choosing a theme for the annual gala.

I nodded at whatever Dimpy was saying, watching Phillip glad-handing his way around the table. When he smiled, it was dazzling, and it reminded me of how charming he had been when we first met, how having his attention focused on me had felt rare and precious, had made me into someone else, someone who might have something beautiful and special inside her after all.

Over time, he had treated me less and less that way, focusing his charm on people from whom he still needed something, people who hadn't already sworn to spend their lives with him. Now I could see his charisma was an act, something he turned on and off at will, but I could still recall the way it had felt to be held in the sunlight of his smile, and that only made being out of it colder.

Before Phillip, I had been biding my time until I got married, at which point I assumed my life would really begin. While the girls I had gone to school with found perfect husbands and had perfect babies, I went on blind dates my mother arranged for me with the sons and grandsons of women she knew from the country club. I never managed to retain their
attention for more than a few dates (though, to be fair, they rarely retained mine for more than a few minutes). I had lived alone and worked in the alumni department of Magnolia Country Day, the same school I had attended, where I wrote fundraising appeals that managed to be gracefully desperate, and helped organize an endless parade of events even I didn't want to go to. I painted, and I read, and the years went by, until I looked up and I was almost thirty and still no one had chosen me.

Phillip's interest in me had come as a relief. Finally, I would not be the only single one at class reunions. Finally, my mother would be happy with me. Finally, I would have proof that someone thought I was beautiful, someone thought I was enough, someone thought I was worth marrying. I wore my engagement ring like a sigil to ward off everyone's doubt and pity, most of all my own.

My mother, of course, had been thrilled with Phillip's pedigree. His great-greats of some ordinal or another had made a fortune in real estate, and now the men of the family continued to make the money and the women spent it, an arrangement I found incredibly depressing for copious reasons. I found out after we were married that all was not as smooth as that—when Phillip's father died, he had left the family's real estate investment business in crisis, threatening the livelihood of miscellaneous cousins and brothers-in-law, and it was only through a lot of fist-clenchingly tough deals and a handful of patient investors, including my father, that the ship had been righted and everyone could go back to shopping in blissful ignorance.

Did I ask why he'd never married? Of course I did. I was almost thirty and single, so basically I might as well have been dead, and Phillip was thirty-five, which was not as problematic for a man, but was still old enough to raise some eyebrows. He told me he'd been engaged and she had broken his heart, and that he had never recovered. Until me, I guess.

But I knew why he had married me. It was because I was so eager to please, because he would be in control and I would not object when he
told me what to wear or what I could eat or how I should spend my time. And it was because his family's business was in trouble and my father might become an investor if Phillip could only get close enough, and how much closer can you get than to marry a man's spinsterish daughter?

I know. I should have seen it coming. But I had been tired of Sunday night dinners at my parents' house, tired of social events at which I was the only unmarried one, tired of the same job I had held since my college graduation, tied to the endless, thudding repetition of the academic year. And because I thought being married would change things. I thought it would make me someone special. I thought it would mean, at last, that I wasn't wrong and ugly and broken.

So I put aside my misgivings and I married him. I married him and I had the wedding my mother had given up all hope of my having, and I moved to Chicago to be with him, and I told myself this was a sign, a sign that I might be something more than how people had seen me for my entire life. A sign that I might not be as beautiful as my mother wanted me to be, that I might never fit in as easily as everyone around me seemed to, but that someone thought I mattered.

And for a while, that had been enough. Enough for Phillip and me to convince ourselves we were in something that at least resembled love. But it didn't feel that way now. It wasn't enough anymore.

Around me, Dimpy and the other wives kept up a running chatter that I found myself unable to focus on. Most nights I would have suffered through the conversation, distracting myself with other things, but I felt unable to settle down, shifting in my chair, tugging at my dress. Meeting those kids and Miss Pine had reminded me of who I used to be, and now here I sat, squirming in a stylishly aggressive chair, tracing the steps of every tiny decision I had made that had led me away from her.