Трейси Шевалье - The Virgin Blue

He looked around for the waiter.

‘No, no,’ I said. ‘Please. I'm not feeling well.’

‘Oh, right. Listen, let's get you home. We'll go now. Do you have your stuff with you?’ He glanced around.

‘No. Rick. Sit down. Please.’

He did, the uncertain look back in his face. I took a deep breath.

‘I'm not coming back with you.’

‘But – isn't that what this is all about?’

‘What's all about?’

‘This dinner. I thought you were coming back with me. I've got the car and everything.’

‘Is that what Mathilde told you?’

‘No, but I assumed -’

‘Well, you shouldn't have.’

‘But you're having my baby.’

‘Let's leave the baby out of this for a moment.’

‘We can't leave the baby out of it. It's there, isn't it?’

I sighed. ‘I guess so.’

Rick gulped the last of his wine and set his glass down.

It made a cracking noise against the table. ‘Look, Ella, you've got to explain something to me. You haven't said why you went to Switzerland. Did I do something wrong? Why are you being like this with me? You seem to be implying something's wrong with us . That's news to me. If anyone should be upset it's me . You're the one running around.’

I didn't know how to say it nicely. Rick seemed to sense this. ‘Just tell me,’ he said. ‘Be straight with me.’

‘It happened when we moved here. I feel different.’

‘How?’

‘It's hard to explain.’ I thought for a moment. ‘You know how you can buy an album and be obsessed with it for a while, play it all the time, know all the songs. And you think that you know it so well and it's special to you. Like for instance the first album you ever bought when you were a kid.’

‘The Beach Boys. Surf's Up .’

‘Right. Then one day you just stop playing it – not for any reason, it's not a conscious decision. You just suddenly don't need to listen to it anymore. It doesn't have the same power. You can hear it and know that they're still good songs, but they've lost their magic over you. Just like that.’

‘That's never happened with the Beach Boys. I still feel the same way when I listen to them.’

I brought my hand down hard on the table. ‘God dammit! Why do you do that?’

The few people in the restaurant looked up.

‘What?’ Rick hissed. ‘What did I do?’

‘You aren't listening to me. You take the metaphor and mangle it. You just won't listen to what I'm trying to say.’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘I don't think I love you anymore! That's what I'm trying to say, but you won't listen!’

‘Oh.’ He sat back. ‘Why didn't you just say it, then? Why did you have to drag the Beach Boys into it?’

‘I was trying to explain with a metaphor, to make it easier. But you insist on looking at it from your perspective.’

‘How else am I supposed to look at it?’

‘From my point of view! Mine!’ I rapped on my chest with my knuckles. ‘Can't you ever look at things from my point of view? You act so nice and easygoing with everyone, but you always get your way, you always make people see it from your point of view.’

‘Ella, do you want to know what I see from your point of view? I see a woman who's lost, directionless, doesn't know what she wants, so grabs at the idea of a baby as something to keep her busy. And she's bored with her husband so she fucks the first offer she gets.’

He stopped and looked away, embarrassed now, realizing he'd gone too far. I'd never heard him be so frank.

‘Rick,’ I said gently. ‘That's not my point of view, you see. That is most definitely your point of view.’ I began to cry, as much from relief as anything else.

The waiter came over and silently cleared away our untouched pizzas, then placed the bill on the table without being asked. Neither of us looked at it.

‘Is this – change in your feelings temporary or permanent?’ Rick asked when I'd stopped crying.

‘I don't know.’

He tried again. ‘This album thing you talked about. Does it ever change back? You know – do you ever get reobsessed with it?’

I thought about it. ‘Sometimes.’ But never for very long, I added to myself. The feeling never really returns.

‘So maybe the situation will change.’

‘Rick, all I know is that right now I can't come back with you.’ I could feel tears gathering behind my eyes again.

‘You know,’ I added, ‘I haven't even told you what happened in Switzerland. And in France too. What I found out about the Tourniers. A whole story. I could tell a whole story – filling in some gaps here and there. You see, it's like this whole different life is going on with me that you don't know anything about.’

Rick pinched his nose at the top of his brow between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Write it down,’ he said. He glanced at my psoriasis again. ‘Right now I gotta get out of here. It's too hot in here.’

When I got back Mathilde was still up, reading a magazine in the living room, her long legs propped up on the glass coffee table. She looked up at me inquiringly. I flopped down on the sofa and stared at the ceiling.

‘Rick wants to move to Germany,’ I announced.

‘ Vraiment ? That's sudden.’

‘Yes. I'm not going with him.’

‘To Germany?’ She made a face. ‘Of course not!’

I snorted. ‘Tell me, do you like any other country besides France?’

‘America.’

‘But you haven't even been there!’

‘Yes, but I'm sure I'd love it.’

‘It's hard to imagine going back. California would seem so alien.’

‘Is that what you're going to do?’

‘I don't know. But I'm not going to Germany.’

‘Did you tell Rick you're pregnant?’

I sat up. ‘How did you know?’

‘It's obvious! You're tired, food bothers you, though you eat a lot when you do eat. And when you're not talking you look like you're listening to something inside you. I remember it well from Sylvie. So who is the father?’

‘Rick.’

‘You are sure?’

‘Yes. We had been trying to conceive for a while, then we stopped, but obviously not before I got pregnant. Now that I think about it, I've had the symptoms for a few weeks.’

‘And Jean-Paul?’

I turned onto my stomach and pressed my face into one of the sofa cushions. ‘What about him?’

‘Are you going to see him? Talk to him?’

‘What can I say to him that he'd want to hear?’

‘ Mais – of course he would want to hear from you, even bad news. You haven't been very kind to him.’

‘Oh, I don't know about that. I thought I was being kind not contacting him.’

To my relief Mathilde changed the subject. ‘I'm taking Wednesday off,’ she said, ‘to go to Le Pont de Montvert, as you suggested. We'll take Sylvie too. She loves it up there. And of course you can see Monsieur Jourdain again.’

‘Oh, I can't wait.’

She shrieked and we began to laugh.

Wednesday morning Sylvie insisted on helping me dress. She came into the bathroom where I'd been changing into white shorts and an oatmeal-coloured shirt and leaned against the sink, watching me.

‘Why do you wear white all the time?’ she asked.

Oh, God, here we go again, I thought. ‘This shirt is not white,’ I stated. ‘It's – like the colour of cereal.’ I didn't know how to say oatmeal.

‘No, it isn't. My cornflakes are orange!’

I'd eaten three bowls of cornflakes earlier and was still hungry.

‘ Alors , what would you like me to wear?’

Sylvie clapped her hands and ran into the living room, where she began looking through my bag. ‘All your clothes are white or brown!’ she cried, disappointed. She pulled out Jean-Paul's blue shirt. ‘Except this. Wear this,’ she commanded. ‘How come you haven't worn this before?’