13, Rue Therese - Elena Mauli Shapiro [66]
Still, in life, she is primarily Henri’s wife, and she has clearly failed that function. She ought to feel low, and for the first time, she is beginning to.
Louise gets out of bed and puts her shoes on her bare feet, and her black coat over her nightgown. She goes and stands outside. It is much colder than it was during the day; the freshness of the air cuts into her lungs. She listens to the quiet, straining to hear a noise. She can make out rustlings in the grass that are so slight that she is unsure whether they are her own fancy. The sky is a perfect black, speckled with more stars than Louise remembers ever seeing. She gets a slight crick in her neck looking up at them.
Her marriage has made her know herself. If she is a cliff face at the edge of the ocean, then marriage is the water washing over her, shaping her through the years. This erosion uncovers hidden things in the rock: A vein of quartz, glittering in the sun. An unexpected fissure, now even more threatening to her structural integrity for being uncovered.
The water has worn her down and some part of her has dissolved away into the ocean, never to be seen again.
Tomorrow morning she will leave. She will pack her bag and make sure she leaves everything in the house as she’s found it. She will strip the bed, fold the sheets, and put them away, secretly pleased that she is leaving her scent in them—leaving her mark on this place if only until the next time they are washed— and that no one will ever know this. She will even leave one of the bedroom doors slightly ajar at the same angle she first pushed it open from. She will lock the front entrance behind her and slip the key she shouldn’t have kept back into her coat pocket. She will walk to the motorcycle backwards, in order to look at the house, the dark pond, the lush grass, for as long as possible.
Jouir comme ça
LOUISE GETS HOME IN the middle of the afternoon, determined to cook her husband a beautiful meal. She will light candles. She will speak softly and tell him how much she loves him. She might even tell him of what happened with Garance, to explain her disappearance, her need to get away to think for a while. Saying anything about Xavier Langlais is, of course, out of the question. She cannot tell if she is at a beginning or at an end with that man. How will she keep herself sane with him living in the apartment below hers? What if, one quiet night, she hears him make love to his wife? It seems then that the walls around her should fall to pieces as her throbbing brain bursts asunder, like an overripe fruit.
The notepad she has left on the dining room table hasn’t moved. Her note is still there, untouched. Except—below it, Henri has made his own addition, also jotted hastily in pencil:
Henri—
I am gone for a couple of days to get some air. I will return. I love you. I’m sorry.
Your wife,
Louise
Louise—
Your leaving like this with no explanation and no word on when you will return has made it impossible for me to stay in this apartment for the time being. I cannot sleep here alone. I have gone to stay a few days with Pierre. If you come home and find this, you may fetch me there. In any case, I will return before the end of the week. I wonder if you will be here waiting?
I wish I knew what is happening.
I am angry. I think that I love you too—you will have to tell me who it is that I love. Explain.
Your husband,
Henri
Henri is angry! Will he still be angry when she sees him? What will he look like then? Should she go to him at Pierre’s house? What does Pierre think about all this? What if her father knows she’s left? Louise can see the three men around her, like a stern tribunal, questioning her hurtful flightiness.
She will not cook a beautiful dinner for tonight. She must go to Cleper’s house to fetch her husband immediately. She