Free Every Day by Elizabeth Richards Page B

her bare heels.
    On the parkway I pass right by our exit and take us all the way into Manhattan, by which time Daisy is fast asleep. I park at a meter on Broadway and 70th Street, take out the collapsible stroller, put Daisy in it, and wheel down to Tower on 65th Street. They’re my last hope before Fowler as a source for Jules and Jim.
    Of course they have it, three copies, all in, and it’s no trouble to join, only a dollar for membership. Sometimes I could kick myself for having moved to the suburbs. I stick thetreasure in the diaper bag and head back to the car to feed the meter, to extend my escape and take advantage of Daisy’s timely exhaustion. The car will put Daisy out if there are no other distractions, no matter what the time of day. I don’t tell this to other mothers of one-year-olds. I don’t say, “Daisy’s a dream baby. You hardly know she’s there.” It just gets said to me.
    I mull over visible diner opportunities, choosing 3 Guys, the cheapest. I get myself a Times and a window seat. Heaven. For now. I order one of the specials with eggs and try to pick out adulteresses from the passersby. I cannot tell who is one and who is not.
    Nothing in the newspaper interests me. And how much coffee can one person drink, in the end?
    How will we live? Who will stay and who will go? Other than the fact of his imminent death, Fowler is safe. He has only one mirror, and it doesn’t accuse. He has no one to answer to, no one but himself to disappoint. It has been said that there is nothing more treacherous than a family. I’ve been wrong to scoff at such profundity.
    I eat my breakfast, wishing I could love Simon, could love Fowler, in the easy way I love eating this meal, knowing they’re good for me and are happy investments. I have loved Simon in this way, but I’m not so certain anymore. I leave the diner with my sleeping baby, the envy of several retirees who seem to have no place to go to after the morning meal, frightened out of my wits: I don’t know if I can call what I know of myself with men “love.” I don’t know if I have any basis for knowing what that is.
    •   •   •
    At home, I note that Catherine, of the film, hasn’t got a clue either, but she’s not stymied by this fact. She plows ahead, steering herself between Jules and Jim without remorse. “Catch me,” she tells Jim, to whom she isn’t married.
    “She is a vision,” they each say.
    “The three lunatics,” the villagers say.
    “La femme est naturelle, donc abominable,” says Baudelaire.
    I watch instead of sleeping. Simon called tonight, sounding ragged. All force and certainty he was, on leaving Monday night. Now, like me, he sees where all that gets you. We miss our routine. I dare say we miss each other. I haven’t heard word one from Fowler, but that didn’t come up in our conversation. He spoke to each child, then asked me about each child. He needed to hear me talk about them. And I needed to tell him about them.
    “So you’re all right then,” he said.
    I told him no, as if I had a right, and that was the end of it.
    “Maybe she can’t belong to just one man,” says Jim.
    How dare I presume to compare myself to Catherine, to equate my level of looks to Jeanne Moreau’s?
    She presumes.
    She dresses up like a man to rendezvous with two men.
    She jumps into the Seine for effect.
    She marries and has a child.
    She wants the men alternately. And someone else as well. Albert somebody.
    She fucks all three.
    Granted, she drives off an unfinished bridge with one of them and kills herself, and him.
    I don’t believe we’re meant to pity her, except in recognizing where her sort of honesty gets us, to the bottom of a river.
    It’s another story. I’m not French, and I’m not wild. I’m watching a movie in a bedroom in New York. My children are sleeping. My husband is returning tomorrow evening to help sort things out so we don’t have to drive off a bridge.
    He said, “I’ll be home tomorrow