Free Le Divorce by Diane Johnson

you are at me, my mother is too, and you can imagine how I feel about all this.”
    “I’m just meddling, really. I’m in the dark,” I said. “Roxy doesn’t tell me anything. I just thought maybe there’s something I could do.”
    “How’s my dear little Gennie? I hope to see her soon, I just haven’t known how to work it out with Roxy, when I can visit and so on. I miss her so much.”
    “She misses you,” I said, regretting the accusing tone as this slipped out. “She’s fine. She asks for you, but then she forgets. She’s only three.”
    Charles-Henri: “Oh, mon Dieu . Are you having something?”
    Me (not understanding): “Huh?”
    Charles-Henri: “I might have a sandwich, I didn’t have lunch.” Having been a number of weeks in France, I should have been aware of how at any awkward point in a conversation, the subject reverts to food. He waved at the waiter and ordered. “Sandwich rillettes .”
    “Your family is being really nice, really supportive,” I said. “The point is, no one seems to know what’s the matter, between you and Roxy, I mean.” I was being as direct as possible.
    “Ah. There’s nothing wrong between us,” he said, and seeing my surprise, added a protestation about how much he loved Roxy and Gennie.
    “Maybe I’ll have a sandwich,” I said. “Jambon fromage.” He waved for the waiter. There was a silence, the transition, the waiter again. How can you ask pointed questions without asking them pointedly? Like, why are you being such an asshole, if you love them so much?
    “I feel absolutely in the wrong. I am the culpable one, there’s no question,” he said. Why is it men love to confess to badness? They have learned that women love to forgive—or so they think. In reality, no one ever forgives anything, that I can see.
    “Couldn’t you, you know, seek counseling? Don’t they have marriage counseling here?”
    “Isabel, there’s nothing I can do about this. I—I’ve met the woman of my life, the love of my life, it’s an inevitability. I want to be only with her. That would be hard for any woman to understand, and I know that Roxy doesn’t understand.”
    I felt a big relief at this. It was as Charles-Henri’s mother had diagnosed, he’d got a crush on someone, a temporary effect of Roxy’s pregnancy, and all Roxy would have to do, if she could forgive him, was to have the baby and wait it out.
    He could not forbear to talk about his new love. “Magda Tellman. She was formerly a teacher of sociology in Nantes. She’s very brilliant. Married to an American, isn’t that comic, in a way? A coincidence, each of us married to an American. The Tellmans are separated, we’re separated. So symmetrical a situation.”
    He went on, tensely, trying to convince me, I wasn’t sure of what. “I know it sounds unnecessary, extreme, romantic in the bad sense, it’s just that there’s nothing I can do. Believe me, there’s a certain relief in that. To arrive for once in life at a certainty. Certitude?”
    “Either,” I said. I pitied him his romantic heart, as I pitied Roxeanne hers. At that moment I was glad I hadn’t got one.
    He did not seem to lose interest in being there talking to me. He continued to ask questions about Roxy, but I think he really wanted to talk to someone about Magda, about this wonderful thing (despite the complications) love. About how it removed all element of choice, and about how well he was painting. About how good could come out of bad. Eventually, we said goodbye.My questions remained. Had Charles-Henri told Roxy about his passion in these same exorbitant terms? Was it a shame to her so humiliating that she didn’t want even me to know? Could I mention to her that I had seen him, and that I knew about Magda (what a name!)?
     
    Something odd happened as I was walking over to get Gennie at the crèche. I was crossing the esplanade in front of Notre Dame. This windswept stretch, crowded with tourists gawking up, knotted around,