I’m free. Finally, I’m free.
She fell to her knees and began to cry.
WIFE, INTERRUPTED
Sutton woke the first morning in her new Paris flat to sunlight. It spilled through the window and edged around her bed, warming her, welcoming and friendly. She rubbed a hand across her face, wiped the grit from her eyes, and stretched. The bed wasn’t overly large like the massive California king they had at home, just a standard European full, and she felt cozy and snug.
And famished, an alien sensation these past few months.
She rose, drank a glass of water, straightened the pencils on top of the desk. Pulled on a pair of tights and a tunic, slid her feet into clogs. Careful to make sure she had the key to the flat, she walked down the four flights to the street below, then up one block to the patisserie, where she bought a long, crusty baguette, then next door to the grocer, where she loaded up on fruit and vegetables, and finally, the cheese shop, where she purchased three varieties without looking at the labels. Ethan had allergies, so many of them, intolerances and sensitivities, so in order to coddle him and his bizarre issues she rarely bought food that she loved. Grabbing whatever struck her at the moment felt wildly indulgent.
She didn’t know exactly when she’d stopped loving him. Wasn’t completely sure she ever had.
They’d met at a book festival. Ethan was a writer, too, from London. A very celebrated novelist who had managed one brilliant book, gotten famous for it, and spent all his time now traveling the circuit, guest lecturing, and teaching the odd workshop, being paid exorbitant amounts of money to look fabulous at New York and London parties and appear frequently on Page Six with gorgeous women draped all over him like a bespoke suit.
He thought her books were trite, though he’d never said that. He’d never had to. It was in the way he smiled at her over the breakfast table, all indulgent, condescending benevolence, when she told him she was going into her office to work for the morning, and to please not interrupt unless he was bleeding or otherwise dying. She said it jokingly, but was dead serious. He had the most annoying ability to step inside her space at the most inopportune times. And lo, one hour later, just as she would be hitting her stride (the first thirty minutes being spent cruising the social networks, of course) here he would come, whistling.
“Ready for a break, darling? I thought we could have an early lunch.”
“I have an article due for the New Yorker, would you mind giving it a polish?”
“This chapter is giving me fits, could you help?”
And she’d always acquiesce, because that’s what good wives did. She fed and watered and laid herself down for sex at all hours and wrote and rewrote and polished his words till they shone, so he would stay happy, stay with her, and could continue getting the accolades that kept them in the heavily renovated Franklin Victorian McMansion they lived in, kept the adulation of the literati high.
Back in the flat, Sutton broke off a piece of the crusty bread, spread it with the soft, creamy cheese. Stared out her window at the Tour, smelled the smoke of a nearby fireplace. She was no longer a good wife. She no longer belonged to him. It was such a relief.
How had they arrived at this point, she and Ethan, as strangers again? Once, they were inseparable. They were horizontal as often as they were vertical. They had fun, laughs, joy, desires. Now, desire for Ethan was as foreign to her as this food she was buying, this city she had fled to. But that was why she came, to find a new life among the marble and grass and flowers. To escape. To start again. To start over. For herself.
Somehow, some way, she was going to eradicate the past half decade of her life.
And so she worked. And she ate again. And then she took a walk. Because that’s what writers living in Paris did.
There was something so wildly freeing about being able to step out onto the sidewalks and garner no attention. She was one woman among thousands here. An anonymous creature, with no past, no worries. To anyone who noticed, she was a Parisian, through and through—the clothes she’d bought were current continental fashion and very lovely; she’d had her hair cut in the loose, natural style favored here. She bought neutral makeup, stopped coloring her nails, had them buffed till they shone. She carried a black Longchamp bag with thin brown leather handles, wore large black sunglasses, and double wrapped a well-loved Hermès scarf around her slender neck. Her French sounded native, was exceptionally fluent, with a local accent. There were so many strangers in Paris now, no one gave her a second thought. She’d overheard two women complaining that 30 percent of the people living in Paris didn’t even speak French. They were becoming a city of immigrants, and the natives resented this, but if your French was excellent, all doors opened.
There was nothing—nothing—to give her away. She fit in like a grain of sand on an endless stretch of beach.
As she rambled through the fine Parisian air, she allowed herself the indulgence of a memory. She needed to wean herself off her past, slowly, carefully, so she could leave it entirely behind. But one memory wouldn’t hurt.
A BIT OF BACKSTORY
Then
When she’d first met Ethan, at the requisite Friday night cocktail party for the talent, with his smooth smile and too-long, devil-may-care hair (expertly highlighted, she found out later), all she could think about was his skin. Seeing more of it. Touching it while lying next to him in the bed on a Sunday morning. Running her hands along his sides, across his broad back, and down, farther, to the silk she knew waited for her.
The desire for him, for their life to come, was sharp and immediate and she’d never felt anything like it before, with anyone. She watched his lips, full and laughing, and his teeth, shiny and slightly crooked, the front right overlapping the edge of its twin. And she just wanted to get him naked and see all of him.
It disturbed her, this reaction. Especially when she threw everything away and followed through on her urges. If only she’d resisted. Would she be here now?
He was beautiful in the way of hypermasculine men; he knew he was attractive, knew every woman in the room was imagining what it would be like to have him looking at, talking to, being with her.
Somehow, she was the one who caught his attention. She’d been drinking; these events always made her nervous and uncomfortable, so by the time she ran into him she was loose and downright flirty. There were two lines for the bar, and he was to her right. She tried not to stare, truly she did. Not only was he stunning, he was being lauded as one of the best literary minds of a generation, and the idea that she was within arm’s reach of such genius made her giddy.