“Are they still there?”
“My grandparents have all passed away.”
“I’m sorry…”
“It’s okay. It happens when you get to ninety.”
He smiled then. “Yes, I suppose that makes sense.”
“I have cousins in Geneva. I don’t see them as often as I’d like.”
“That’s not entirely a bad thing,” he croaked, his voice still hoarse from the morning’s show. “Mine serve as a brutal reminder that I’m not doing something more noble with my life.”
I smiled. “You still have time.”
“You’ll remind my parents of that, won’t you? Not that they’re not proud. I do think they’re genuinely proud. But I believe they see this as a temporary thing. Sort of ‘Oh, Hayes and his little pop group. Isn’t that nice?’”
“The burden of being an only child…”
“Yes. Sole bearer of all their dreams. Utter torture.”
I smiled at that. And yet I understood. If I calculated the time and energy Daniel and I had put into Isabelle thus far, cultivating this extraordinary person—French-immersion toddler programs, private school, fencing lessons, sleepaway camp, ballet, theater, all of it—I imagine it might be a bit of a shock if she decided to quit school and run off to join the circus. (Despite the fact that we’d footed the bill for trapeze lessons.)
“What?” He’d pushed away the dismantled turkey club and was reclining in his chair. “Your expression tells me you’re siding with them.”
“Notsidingexactly…”
“But?”
I laughed. “I’m a parent. We have expectations. This is not to say I never went against my parents’ wishes, or went after things solely for me, because I did. And some of it I lived to regret and some of it I didn’t. But I think you kind of have to do that. That’s what growing up is all about.”
He was quiet for a moment. “What did you live to regret?”
“Getting married at twenty-five… which isn’tridiculous, per se, but for me it was too young…”
“Is that why it didn’t last?”
“Partly. We were young.Iwas young. I was still figuring things out: who I was, what I wanted. And ultimately we wanted different things. I don’t think it was anyone’s fault. We’re just really different people.”
He nodded. “What is it you want, Solène?”
I hesitated. There was more than one way to interpret the question. “What everyone wants probably: to be happy. But I’m still defining that for myself. I had toredefinemyself. Because I didn’t want to be just ‘Daniel’s wife’ or ‘Isabelle’s mom.’ I wanted to go back to work, and Daniel did not want that.”
“Did you resent him?”
“Eventually. And still… I don’t want to be put in a box. I want to do things that feed me. I want to surround myself with art and fascinating people and stimulating experiences… and beauty. I want to surprise myself.”
Hayes smiled then, slow, knowing. “It’s like unfolding a flower.”
“It’s what?”
“You, revealing yourself. You, who vowed to share as little as possible.”
I sat there for a moment, not speaking.
“That sounds totally corny, doesn’t it?” His cheeks flushed. “Okay, pretend I never said that.”
I laughed then. “Okay.”
