The House

“Tell me about it. That's why Marie-Louise and I keep winding up together. That, and a house we bought together, and a business, and an apartment we share in Paris, that I pay for and she uses. But every time we break up, we both look around and it scares the shit out of us, so we wind up back together. After fourteen years, at least we know what we're getting. She's not psycho, I'm not dysfunctional. We're not ripping each other off, or cheating on each other. At least I hope not,” he said with a rueful grin, since she was six thousand miles away in Paris. “But one of these days I suspect she'll go back to Paris and stay there, and we'll have to pull apart our business, which wouldn't be a great thing for either of us. We make pretty decent money working together. She's a good woman. We're just very different. Maybe that's a good thing. But she always says she doesn't want to grow old here. And I can't see myself moving to Paris. For one thing, I still don't speak decent French. I get by, but it would be hard to work there. And if we're not married, I can't get work papers. Marie-Louise says she'll never get married, and in her case, she means it. And she sure as hell doesn't want children.” Neither did Sarah. She and Marie-Louise had that in common, although everything else about them was different.

“God, things are so complicated these days, aren't they? Everyone has such screwed-up ideas about relationships and how they want to live. Everyone has ‘issues.’ Nothing is easy. People don't just say ‘I do’ and walk off into the sunset together and make it work. We construct these crazy arrangements that sort of work and sort of don't, and maybe could work, but then again they couldn't. I wonder if it was always like that. I just don't think so,” Sarah said, looking thoughtful as she mused about it.

“We're probably all like that because none of us saw happy marriages at home when we were growing up. Our parents' generation stayed together and hated each other. Ours either doesn't get married at all, or gets divorced at the drop of a hat. Nobody tries to work it out. If it's not comfortable, and they get a wedgie and their shorts bunch up, they dump it,” he said, and Sarah laughed at how he described it. But she didn't disagree with him.

“Maybe you're right,” Sarah said, looking pensive. It was an interesting theory.

“What about your parents? Were they happy?” he asked, watching her. He liked her. He could sense that she was a truly decent person, with integrity and good values. But so was Marie-Louise, she just had very sharp edges. And she'd had a tough childhood, which impacted her still, whether she admitted it or not.

“Of course not.” Sarah laughed at the question he'd asked her. “My father was a raging alcoholic, and my mother covered for him. She supported all of us, while he lay around in the bedroom too drunk to move and she made excuses for him. I hated him for doing that. And then he died when I was sixteen. I can't even say I missed him. It was almost as though he'd never been there. In fact, it was easier once he wasn't.” And for much of her early life, she wished he hadn't been. And then felt guilty about it after he died.

“Did she remarry?” he asked with interest. “She must have been young when she was widowed, if you were only sixteen.”

“She was a year older than I am now, come to think of it. She sold real estate, and then became an interior decorator and made pretty decent money. She paid my way through Harvard, and then Stanford law school. But she never remarried. She's had a bunch of very temporary boyfriends. They're always alcoholic or dysfunctional, or she thinks they are. Mostly she hangs out with her girlfriends now, and goes to book clubs.”

“That's sad,” Jeff said sympathetically.

“Yeah, it is, although she claims she's happy. I don't believe her. I wouldn't be. That's why I hang on to my weekend guy. I don't want to wind up twenty years from now doing book clubs like my mom.”

“You will anyway,” Jeff said bluntly. “He's taking up real estate in your life. You really think he'll stick around for twenty years?”

“Probably not,” she said honestly, “but he's here now. That's the problem. I guess one of these days it'll fall apart, but I'm in no hurry to push it. I hate those lonely weekends.”

“I know. I get it. So do I. I don't mean to sound smug about it. I don't have the answers either.”

They left the restaurant after that. And they had come in separate cars, so they hugged each other and she drove home. The phone was ringing off the hook when she got in. She glanced at her watch and was surprised to see that it was eleven. She had turned her cell phone off during dinner.

“Where the fuck were you?” Phil was livid.

“Jesus. Relax. I went out to dinner. It was no big deal. I had sushi.”

“Again? With who?” He nearly came through the phone at her, and she couldn't help wondering if he was jealous, or just being an asshole. Maybe he'd been out himself and had been drinking.