“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?”
ANNA
• •
DRAGONS 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.
ROMAIN
• •
From: romain.vidal@parisdescartes.fr
To: danielreynolds@stanford.edu
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
YVES AND ANNA
• •
YVES IS TRYING TO SPOT ANNA 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.