The Light of Paris(86)

My mother cleared her throat, surprisingly awkwardly for her. “Shall we go into the parlor?” she asked. Without waiting for an answer, she led us regally into the front room. She and Phillip ended up sitting together on the sofa while I took the chair opposite. It looked as though we were conducting an awkward job interview rather than having a family reunion. “The house looks lovely, Mother,” Phillip said.

“Thank you,” she preened, and I had to admit it did look good, especially without all the things we had sold, packed, or otherwise disposed of. Remembering the things I had packed away for myself, with the full knowledge there was no room in my home for them, made me feel guilty, and I rearranged my face so it wouldn’t show.

“How are the preparations going for the move?” he asked, leaning slightly toward my mother and placing his hand on hers, as though she might need moral support through the difficulties of the conversation.

“It’s going well. There’s just so much to do,” my mother said. She made it sound as if she were organizing an invasion of Russia instead of moving house, which, frankly, people do literally every day, but my mother had always had a tendency for the dramatic, especially around men. Just call her Scarlett. I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if she had leaned back and laid her hand over her forehead in a swoon.

Phillip looked over at my mother with kind sympathy and patted her hand. He could be so charming when he wanted to be. When we had been dating, he was one of those men who always knew when to send flowers, who told you how nice you looked when he picked you up, whose dates were elaborate as scenes from a romantic movie. It had been nice, being treated that way.

“And how are you, Phillip? How is work? And your lovely mother?”

I snorted aloud and my mother shot me a withering glare. Mrs. Spencer and my mother, despite their essentially being two peas in a pod, loathed each other. The wedding weekend they had been inseparable, cooing over everything, bending their heads together as though they were sharing secrets, and then at the breakfast the morning after the wedding, when Mrs. Spencer had left early to go to the airport, my mother had whispered to me, “I thought she’d never leave.”

“My mother is well, thank you so much for asking. And work is busy. We’re growing. We’re going to have to move to some new offices soon or we’ll all be sitting on top of each other.”

“Isn’t that something,” my mother said with the same cheerful, if vague, lack of interest she’d always taken in my father’s work. I couldn’t blame her; whatever Phillip did involved the sort of inscrutable financial transactions that populate the pages of The Wall Street Journal and I understood it only vaguely. Amortization and deeds and all kinds of impenetrable abbreviations: REIT and GLA and TPTI. It wasn’t that it was uninteresting . . . no, actually, it was uninteresting.

The conversation had ground to a screeching halt. “It’s so nice of you to come,” my mother said. “Isn’t it nice of him?”

“Yes . . .” I said cautiously. Her question felt like a trap. “How long are you staying?”

“Just a day. I’ve got to get back to the office. I figured I’d come and help you pack up. We’ve got tickets on the noon flight home tomorrow.”

The warmth that had been growing inside me froze. “But my mother . . .” I started.

She cut me off. “I can manage things around here.”

“There’s still so much to do . . .” I said weakly.

“I’d hate to keep you from Phillip any longer.” The smile on my mother’s face had steel underneath it. I was going.

“So it’s settled, then,” he said, and I saw the unfriendly resolve in his eyes when he turned to smile at me, in triumph, not in warmth. As much as I didn’t want the shame and discomfort of a divorce, my mother and Phillip wanted it even less. I heard the “lock” of wedlock clicking shut.

And what did it matter? Henry had turned me away. I could see only two vague images of what my life might look like without Phillip, and both were terrifyingly empty. Either it would look exactly like my life in Chicago, only with bonus ostracism, or it would be an unsure world in which I would have to make my own way. I couldn’t predict my future based on a couple of outings with Sharon and Henry, who had their own lives and were in no way bound to be my guides through anything. And Henry—well, Henry wasn’t interested anyway. What was I even thinking? I had a husband and a life. A perfectly good life. A life a lot of people would have been terribly envious of. Just because it wasn’t the right life for me didn’t give me license to throw it away.

“Well. We should all go out to dinner tonight to celebrate. I mean, after Madeleine takes a shower, of course.” Phillip’s eyes flicked over me again. I folded my arms, trying to disguise the bulge at my waist where the chocolate lava cake and strawberry jam and raspberry Italian sodas were making themselves known. “I saw there’s a new restaurant next door—shall we try it?”

My mother looked as though Phillip had suggested we all have slugs for afternoon tea. “Never. We’ll have dinner at the hotel when we drop off Madeleine’s bags.”

“Not any good?” Phillip asked.

“It’s excellent.” I didn’t want to go there either, not with their critical eyes keeping me from eating what I wanted to eat, and definitely not with Phillip and Henry in the same room. I could hardly let them both occupy space in my head.