The Reinvention of Love

I run to comfort them through every day. It is impossible to imagine not being attached to them, not being available to respond to their every need.
    But I do imagine this. I lie in my bed after I have visited my children’s rooms. Victor likes to work late, is always working late, and so I lie in my bed alone, imagining Charles there beside me. There could be no sweeter pleasure than waking up with him every morning, than turning over in the night to touch his soft skin.
    So, slowly, over time, I make myself believe the impossible. In order to be with my lover, I have to abandon my children.
    I tell myself that they are my husband’s children as well. He has formed a special bond with Léopoldine, and Charles and François-Victor will learn to be men from him. They need to remain with him. I could leave them in his care and he would look after them. He does love them.
    So, that is what I will do. I will take my baby, Dédé, with me, and I will leave the older children with their father. One child I can manage. One child I can bring with me to Charles.Dédé is much too young to abandon. She still has such need of me. The others are more independent and they become more independent with every day.
    I make this decision, and I tell no one about it. Not Charles. Not even Julie. It sickens me to think that this is what I will do, but I know that I will do it, just as I plunged the sharpened stick into the breast of the grouse. Feeling badly about it didn’t stop me from killing the bird. I have the sort of courage that a soldier has, and mostly it is useless to me. I would be good in a duel, better than Charles, who is constantly being challenged, but of course no woman is ever required to fight a duel. No, my courage will never be offered up to heroics, but only to the reprehensible act of forsaking my children.
    I make my decision, and I await my opportunity to act, and, as it turns out, I do not have to wait long.
    Victor comes home one evening and announces that we are moving. The landlord is evicting us because of all the controversy surrounding
Hernani
.
    “I’ve found us an apartment,” says Victor after supper. “On rue Jean-Goujon. It’s very spacious and bright. You’ll love it.”
    “That’s the other side of the river.”
    “I have to be near the theatre. Now more than ever. It’s very important. You know that.”
    Victor is always telling me what I know. Once I used to argue with him about this, but now I can’t be bothered. He’s clearly made up his mind. The apartment is already rented. He has had packing cases delivered and has told the children that we’re moving.
    It will be very difficult to rendezvous with Charles if we live across the river. It’s difficult now, when we live two doors apart.
    “When?” I say.
    “The beginning of the month.”
    That’s in just over a week.
    “Why didn’t you tell me before this?”
    “It happened so quickly. I didn’t know before this.”
    We are standing by the window in the sitting room, the window that overlooks the garden. Outside the children are playing some game that involves racing at top speed around the pond. It is time to call them in for bed, which is why I went over to the window in the first place.
    Victor is standing beside me. He’s not looking out into the garden, but rather is staring down at his hands resting on the window ledge. I look down as well. His hands are broad, ink-stained, the nails chipped and dirty. These hands write the words that keep us all alive. They are also the hands that wrote the play that is forcing us to move across the river.
    Victor slides his right hand towards my left hand, tentatively, like a cat slinking up on a bird.
    “It will be an adventure, my darling,” he says.
    I turn from the window before he can touch me.
    “I must call the children in for bed.”
    I sit on the edge of Dédé’s bed after she is tucked in and ready for sleep. She is excited about the move, keeps wanting to ask me questions, to talk about it.
    “Will there be flowers over there?” she asks. “Will there be cats?”
    “It’s the other side of the river, not the other side of the world,” I say.
    “Will there be apples?”
    “Of course.”
    “Will I have a bed?”
    “You will have this bed. We will load it into a cart and it will travel across the river and be set down in your new room.”
    Dédé laughs delightedly and clutches my hand. “Can I lie in it when it is on the cart?” she asks.
    “Shall we