Даниэла Стил - The Affair

She loved the way she and Nicolas could talk into the wee hours, chasing an idea, or arguing over an abstract concept. Nicolas was a philosopher, an observer of the human condition, until he went mad over Pascale. Gregory was all about money, how to make it, how to keep it, how to invest it and make it grow. It was a different mindset. On the other hand, he was probably more disciplined and reliable than any of the men she’d known. As he said, he was an adult, and had been all his life.

They lingered over lunch, then he paid the check, they left the hotel, and walked to the Place Vendôme, where he headed to the hotel and she hailed a cab.

“Thank you for a lovely lunch and time with you, Gregory,” she said warmly.

“Call me Greg. I loved it. We’re going to do a great house together, Nadia.”

“I think so too.” She smiled at him.

She slid into the cab, and he waved as the taxi pulled away, to take her back to the Left Bank. The girls weren’t home yet, and she walked into her office and sat down at the desk. Greg was fascinatingly American. He had none of the tousled, casual, slightly off look of French men. He was so clean-cut and straight as an arrow. Nadia couldn’t imagine him doing something silly or childish or making a fool of himself. There was something sexy but stiff about him. And whatever he was, he seemed like a nice man. She couldn’t imagine herself dating him, even once she got free of Nicolas. She was nowhere near that yet. She couldn’t envision herself dating anyone, and certainly not a client. But for now, no matter what she told herself about him, or how unworthy he was, she still felt married to Nicolas, and wondered how long that would last. Her ties to him still held her fast. But in time those ties would dissolve. That was her mission now, to sever all the ties she had to Nicolas. She had already started the process.

Chapter 11

Nicolas didn’t come to see the girls in the first two weeks of October. He was in Brittany with Pascale, waiting for the baby to come. They had given up the house in Ramatuelle, and had had a good summer there, despite the superficial people she gathered around her. It was part of her life as a star. But now, in her mother’s tiny crowded home, she was getting down to the business of having a baby, and Nicolas had promised to stay with her until it came. He found the tiny town her mother lived in painfully boring. He and Pascale sat around playing cards every night or watching TV with her mother. He missed Sylvie and Laure and called them often, but he knew he had to be there with Pascale no matter what happened later, and he wanted to be at his son’s birth. He knew it was a magical moment, no matter what the circumstances. He had had no contact with Nadia since he left Paris, and felt he owed Pascale this time. Talking to Nadia would have been too awkward. They both knew why he was there.

Pascale and Nicolas went for long walks by the sea every day and ate her mother’s country cooking. Pascale felt heavy now, and uncomfortable at night, although she was as beautiful as ever. She couldn’t wait for her pregnancy to be over. She said to him at times that she felt as though aliens had taken over her body. The baby was fighting for space, and finally, three days after her due date, she went into labor. Her mother and Nicolas took her to the hospital. Pascale had insisted she wanted a natural delivery and wasn’t prepared for how painful it was. By the time she couldn’t stand it anymore and wanted drugs, it was too late to have them. She screamed piteously and Nicolas felt sorry for her. They did their best to help her stay calm, and in the end, no matter how she fought it, the baby tore through her and appeared. She lay crying afterwards, and refused to hold him. Nicolas was the first one to hold his son. He was a big, strapping baby with a lusty cry, and he looked just like her. It shocked Nicolas to realize that Pascale’s mother was younger than he was. She had had Pascale at sixteen, and was now a grandmother at thirty-eight.

The oddest thing was that Nicolas was sad not to be able to share this moment with Nadia. The baby hadn’t brought him closer to Pascale. It didn’t create a bond between them, which surprised him. And he felt sorry for the baby. Pascale had no idea how to be a mother, and no desire to learn. And he was a reluctant father. He’d been roped into it, duped by his lust for Pascale, but with no deep feelings for her.

Pascale looked at her son as though he belonged to someone else, and it reminded Nicolas that becoming a parent took more than just giving birth. You had to want to be one, and she didn’t. She had wanted a baby, but had no idea what that meant. She felt separate from the baby, and her mother said she had felt that way too when Pascale was born. They weren’t maternal women, and their children weren’t born from their love for the baby’s father, as his children with Nadia were. Pascale wanted to free herself of the baby and take her body back. It hadn’t been the magical experience she thought it would be. It was long and painful and hard. It was too much for her. All she wanted to do afterwards was sleep, and she refused to nurse him. Her mother helped take care of the baby in the hospital, and Nicolas did too. But it was different from what it had been with Sylvie and Laure. He and Nadia had been so excited to share them. His son had come into the world with a mother who was still a child herself, and a father who felt guilty every time he looked at him. Nicolas had feelings for him, but the baby wasn’t part of Nicolas’s family. He was a separate entity. When Pascale went home to her mother’s house, Nicolas spent a few days with them, feeling like an outsider, and then went back to Paris to his rented apartment. All he wanted to do was get away. He knew he didn’t belong in Brittany with them. He wanted to see his daughters, and to show them photographs of their brother when he saw them. He was sad about the life the baby would live, with Pascale and her mother. Nicolas was going to provide for him and already had, but it took more than money to parent a child, and Nicolas didn’t intend to be a full-time presence in his son’s life. He couldn’t be.

They had posed for photographs Pascale’s mother took, with Nicolas holding the baby, and within days, they appeared in the tabloids. Nicolas was sure that her mother had sold them to the press. He was wearing doctor’s scrubs, and smiling into the camera, as he held his son. The tabloids announced the baby’s birth, and Nicolas hoped that their interest in the baby’s arrival would end there. It provided a conclusion to their love story, and not a fairy-tale ending. They named the baby Benoit, which was the name Pascale had wanted. Nicolas acknowledged him by allowing him to use his last name, and intended to provide for him generously. He had made all the arrangements, and Pascale supported her mother so Benoit would lead a comfortable life. But somehow the infant didn’t seem as much his child as Sylvie and Laure had, because he didn’t love the boy’s mother in the same way. In the end, Nicolas discovered, it did make a difference. It was a relief to get back to Paris, after two weeks in Brittany. His time there seemed surreal, despite the arrival of his son. The baby wasn’t integrated into his life and never would be.

When he got back, he took the girls to the château for the weekend. It was beautiful there in the fall, and he filled his lungs with the familiar air of Normandy, thinking about the infant he had left in Brittany who had no place in his Paris life, which seemed sad to him.

He took the girls to the beach, even though the sea was rough and the weather chilly. The girls suddenly seemed so big and grown up to him. They were filled with tales about school and their friends. He’d seen Nadia when he picked them up and she waved from the distance. She was busy. The girls told him that she was doing a big job for an American.