The Light of Paris Read Free

old.
    After Miss Pine and the students left, I ate a handful of cookies in the staff room, shoving them so quickly into my mouth that they scraped against my tongue, then gathered my things and went home. Sometimes I took the long way, in order to pass a string of galleries that always had something deliciously irreverent and exciting on display, but I had to meet Phillip. He was desperately trying to make a deal with adeveloper named Teddy Stockton, which meant I was doomed to making polite conversation with Teddy’s wife, Dimpy, and the other wives all night.
    At home, I paused at the front door. Lately I had found myself in a strange, black moment of hope every night, a half wish that my husband would not come home.
    I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him; I just wished he would go away. He could disappear through a wormhole, or a circle of standing stones. Or maybe one day he would simply decide he’d had enough and move to some Caribbean island without me. I’d wish him well, honestly. I’d pack up his things and send them down to him with a tube of sunscreen and my best wishes. It would be tidy and emotionless and no one would be to blame.
    I didn’t wonder about the meaning behind these thoughts. I had spent so long swallowing every unpleasant feeling I had that it never occurred to me that having a recurring fantasy in which your husband disappears is probably a sign that something is terribly wrong.
    But of course there was no magical circle of stones and no Caribbean island, because when I opened the door, there he was, standing in the kitchen, flipping through the mail. He looked, as he always did, as though he were posing for a catalog photo.
    Phillip was older than I was, dancing on the edge of forty, but he would be one of those men who simply became better looking as he aged, less pretty and more handsome, like a movie star, or a newscaster. As I had no interest in plastic surgery, I imagined the gulf between our attractiveness would only continue to widen, until I, wrinkled and tired and gray, would look like the maiden aunt he generously escorted to charity functions.
    â€œYou’re late,” he said as I set down my purse and reached for the sweater I kept in the coat closet. The floor-to-ceiling windows that allowed one to sit on the uncomfortable couch and admire the endless view of Lake Michigan were also, I was fairly sure, the main reason ourhome was always so chilly. The moment I came home, even during the summer, I slipped on that sweater. I wore socks and slippers at all times and when I stepped out of the shower, I hurried as quickly as possible into a towel and a bathrobe, the water beading into ice on my skin.
    â€œSorry,” I said perfunctorily, walking past him into the living room. We didn’t kiss hello or goodbye, not anymore. We had never been a particularly demonstrative couple—Phillip was too concerned with what other people thought, and I was too afraid, even after we were married, of being rejected—but now he didn’t even brush his lips across my forehead when he left for the day. The cool exterior we were required to present to the world had swept its way into our private lives, turning us into strangers at a cocktail party who were sure they had met before, giving each other curious glances across the room.
Don’t I know you from . . . Didn’t we once . . .
    Gathering the mail into a stack, he tapped the pile against the kitchen counter, a smooth, black granite that made it irritatingly impossible to find the dirty spots. “Hurry up. Put on the black dress you wore to the library fundraiser. You look like you ate too much today.”
    I looked down at the gray dress I had worn to the museum, trying to spot a telltale cookie bump. Maybe I had eaten a few too many, but I couldn’t have gained that much weight in an afternoon. Then again, Phillip always seemed to know when I had eaten something I