The Light of Paris(78)

I decided to return her backhanded compliment with one of my own. “Thanks for hosting. Your house looks exactly like the Pottery Barn catalog.”

“Thank you!” Ashley said, clasping her hands together over her heart as though I had told her she had won the Miss America pageant. I should have known. Houses that look like the Pottery Barn catalog don’t get that way by accident. I wanted to give her a hug and tell her it would be okay if little Grayson poured chocolate milk on the raffia carpet, or if she ate a pastry without feeling guilty about it for once. And then I wanted to hug her even more when I realized she wouldn’t understand if I did.

My mother, spotting my sarcasm, changed the subject loudly. “You’re doing really lovely work on this fundraiser, Ashley. I’m honored to be a part of it.”

“We’re honored to have you, Simone. You always make such an impact,” Ashley said.

“Well, we’d better be going.” I picked up my clutch, which I’d left on the table in the foyer (Pottery Barn Sophia Console Table, $799 in the winter catalog).

“You don’t have to be rude,” my mother said when we were outside, walking down the steep steps to the car. It was just like Ashley to buy a house on a hill, so everyone would be winded by the time they got to the front door.

“She started it.” I hopped off the last step onto the sidewalk and headed to the car. My mother stepped delicately behind me and clicked open the car doors with the remote.

“How long are you staying?” she asked, settling herself behind the wheel, avoiding my eyes by pretending to adjust the rearview mirror.

“Don’t tell me you’ve already tired of my witty banter and charming company.”

“Be serious, Madeleine. You still haven’t talked to Phillip, at least not that I know, and you haven’t even mentioned going home.”

“Maybe I don’t want to go,” I said sullenly, dragging my hand over the seat belt so the rough edge grated on the tender web of flesh between my thumb and my forefinger. “Maybe I’ll move back here. I’ll live in the high-rise with you and Lydia Endicott. Won’t that be a barrel of laughs?” I bared my teeth at her in an evil grin, but she was looking at the road.

Pulling up to a stoplight, she pressed her fingers against her temples. “So you’re not going back to Phillip. Is that what you’re saying?”

There was a rawness and honesty to her voice that made my guilt crescendo. She didn’t want me to get a divorce. Everyone would know. Everyone would know I had failed, she had failed. But I couldn’t stay with him. I couldn’t live that way anymore. I hardly knew how I had managed for so long.

“I guess I am.”

She didn’t reply. She unfolded her fingers from around the steering wheel, pressing her palms flat and spreading her fingers wide for a moment before taking hold again.

I spoke to fill the silence, to try to explain, the words tumbling out over themselves. “I was so lonely, and you wanted it so badly, and I thought—I thought it would be my only chance. I knew it was important to you, it was embarrassing I was the only one left. I know you wanted me to get married.”

“It wasn’t an embarrassment. I was worried about you, yes. I’ve always worried about you, Madeleine. You’re so . . . different. And different can be painful.”

I had started to cry, and I was trying hard to control it, keeping my jaw tight, blinking my eyes quickly. Being different, if she had just let me be different, if anyone had let me be different, would have been so much less painful than this, than trying to live up to some impossible standard, to become someone I literally could never be. “I was happy. I think I was happy. The only thing that made me unhappy was that I knew I was letting you down.”

“You haven’t let me down.” She paused for a moment, flexed her hands on the wheel again. We were driving, as my mother did no matter the speed limit, at a steady thirty-five miles per hour, winding through the leafy streets. The houses, grand and quiet, problems hushed and hid away behind hedges and money, sat quietly observing us. “I just don’t think you’re really giving things a try, here, Madeleine. You can’t just give up. You need to see Phillip again. Give things a chance.”

I clenched my jaw, wishing she would listen to me, hear me for once. Clearly it was impossible for my mother to imagine what my life would be like if I divorced Phillip. The women she knew, no matter how miserable they were, didn’t divorce their husbands. Which is how you ended up with someone like Betsy Lynn Chivers, who had spent so long in misery, waiting for her awful husband to die, that she honestly couldn’t remember any other way to be. But I couldn’t picture a different path for me either. Would I move back here, go to committee meetings at Ashley Hathaway’s house, while everyone steered politely around me, giving me just enough berth to know they suspected divorce might be catching? Would I go back to work at Country Day, drafting politely guilt-inducing letters to people who received dozens of those fundraising appeals every day?

Or would I do something new? Would I dive into the Magnolia I had just discovered, this entire world that had existed beyond my peripheral vision for so long, where there were artists and musicians and people who didn’t care what I looked like or whether or not I ate my dessert at lunch and wouldn’t have blinked if I had told them I was going to art school and I didn’t want to get married at all? Would I fall in love with someone like Henry, someone who wanted to feed me rather than starve me, someone who wanted me to paint and dance and be part of things I cared about?