Le Divorce by Diane Johnson Read Free Book Online

the American Church Weekly Messenger —where to find what—and occasionally I teach an aerobics class at the American Center as a substitute instructor.
    I thought then how I would hate it if Roxeanne just packed up and left before I was ready.
    And now I think I have met the love of my life, but it is a grotesque and doomed situation. I did not plan for anything like this to happen.

7
    Virtue shuns ease as a companion. It demands a rough and thorny path.
    —Montaigne
    S UZANNE D E P ERSAND had come to see Roxy directly on the Monday. She came solemnly dressed in a navy linen suit, with her decorations in the lapel, as if she were going to some high state occasion, and spoke in English, because I was there.
    “I have talked to my son,” she said, accepting an herbal tea. “I am very unhappy about his behavior. Add to this, the behavior of Charlotte. I don’t know where it comes from. From their father perhaps.”
    “What about Charlotte?” Roxy roused herself from her lethargic mood.
    “What indeed? She has a liaison—it is too stupid. And with an Englishman! What I want to say to you, Roxeanne, is just to be sensible. You are aware that when the wife is pregnant, sometimes the husband—the nine months gets to seem long to him. He thinks it will never end, and some young and slender woman makes him think of happier times. He supposes he is thinking with his emotion, but it is really biological, his male need.”
    “If you mean about making love, you can do it up until the last two weeks,” said Roxy irritably.
    “Really? Tiens! That is surely unwise. In my day the doctors did not permit it. In any case, the forme , great ugly belly. Yes, sugar please. Hein! Original! Georges’s cousin Hortense also uses grains of sugar instead of cubes.”
    “It’s not up to me, it’s Charles-Henri’s deal,” said Roxy.
    “That is what I am trying to say. Expect nothing until the baby is born, then you can see. Maybe it will be a boy.”
    “A boy? An heir? I can’t believe this, I’m in a novel by Balzac,” snapped Roxy. Suzanne had the grace to laugh a little and finished her cup.
    “This has happened to other women, often, and by far the best course, they would most of them tell you, is to just go on with life as it unrolls,” she said.
    “I ask myself, is it wise to have this baby,” said Roxy suddenly, with a savage canniness. “It’s early. Maybe I shouldn’t go through with it. It’s stupid to bring a baby into an unstable home.” I recognized the wildness under her tone as being the real Roxy, dramatic and hysterical, but there was also an instant of calculation in her voice as she looked to see how this implied threat would affect Suzanne.
    Suzanne did seem startled, began to speak, stopped, gauging, I could see, the best way to handle a distraught foreign girl.
    “I’m thinking of not going through with it,” Roxy repeated.
    “Luckily you have weeks to decide something so large,” Suzanne said slowly, watching Roxy as she might a skittish wild animal. “You wouldn’t want to make that decision quickly.”
    I saw how smart Suzanne is, how she sensed Roxy’s panic and her stubborn streak, and wanted to avoid animating it with preaching or argument. But she had turned pale. Roxy had scared her. Her eyes met mine for an instant, and I could see that she would have liked to ask me if Roxy would do something like that. But of course, she did not know me, or how I would stand. How did she stand, for that matter?
    “I’ll call you tomorrow, ma chérie ,” she said. “ Bon courage . These things arrive, with men, and then pass.”
    “Frenchmen are spoiled by their mothers,” observed Roxy, when Suzanne had gone. “Charles-Henri can just do no wrong in her eyes.”
    “He’ll come back,” I predicted to Roxy. “You’ll have to decide whether you want to forgive him. And of course you will.”
    “It isn’t a question of forgiving him,” she said. “I don’t own him. He has his heart and