French Exit

by Patrick deWitt

Sometimes the world corrected itself, she knew this, for it had so many times in her past. She understood intuitively that it would not correct itself now, though.

Susan folded the towel on the table and said, “I want you to know that I am trying to fall out of love with you.”

“My plan was to die before the money ran out. But I kept and keep not dying, and here I am.”

And because, and because, and because.

Once she said, “I keep trying to march in time but the drummer’s out to get me.”

Frances asked me if I wanted to go back to school and I said I didn’t and she said that that was fine, but that I’d need to spend regular time in museums and libraries.” “What’s ‘regular time’ mean?” said Susan. “Five hours a day, five days a week. The Met, the Cloisters, the Frick, the Morgan Library. Place to place to place.”

He drank, at times to excess, but there was nothing dark about it; he was looking not to kill a thought but to reset the clock, to force an occurrence. He called her one morning after a late night, and though obviously in great physical pain he spoke with earnest regard of the unassailable justice of the hangover.

Everyone in Manhattan heard about the affair because I told them. Charles’s marriage crumbled and he came around to chastise me, but also to ask if I’d run away with him.

Possibly you won’t like to think of your mother as one who lived, but I’ll tell you something: it’s fun to run from one brightly burning disaster to the next.”

And if such a place as hell exists then that’s where she collects her mail.”

Frances was impressed by how unbothered he was by his impotency. “It’s very common,” he said. “I’ve never experienced it,” Frances admitted. “Very, very common.”

her homeliness summoned double takes,

She had occasionally in her life found herself loving men not in spite of but for their stupidity. Suavity was never more than playacting, she knew this, and it endeared them to her that they themselves were unaware of their transparency.

“You made love to her?” “Well, yes.” “Did you do a good job?” “Not a very good one, no.” “Do you normally do a good job?” “Sometimes I do. I think the problem is that I don’t care enough.” Frances said, “If you do one thing well, it might as well be that.”

He didn’t take the notion of God seriously but couldn’t deny the feeling of beatitude he knew when he sat in a church pew. He attributed this to aesthetics; he wasn’t conflicted about it.

She had in her youth thought of her beauty as something to be weaponized, something capable of inflicting pain,

You know what would have been nicer, though? If he’d not bought me a sailboat at all, but instead ceased fucking every lukewarm hole that crossed his field of vision.”

Frances was restless, and she moved to the kitchen nook, to smoke and drink tap water, to feel her loneliness and to think of it.

Frances thought of her childhood, of her father in his robe carrying her up the stairs on Christmas Eve. He smelled of cigarettes and drink and aftershave, a combination of scents that she loved devotedly from this moment and through the span of her life.

Frances stared at the tree. She half-closed her eyes and the Christmas lights became stretched-out spears, pulsing and tilting.

“Do you ever feel,” she asked, “that adulthood was thrust upon you at too young an age, and that you are still essentially a child mimicking the behaviors of the adults all around you in hopes they won’t discover the meager contents of your heart?”

“I could have done anything,” said Frances. “I could have been anything. I gave you my life and you turned it into bad television.”

Frances asked, “Do you and Don still make love?” “Every year on his birthday.” “But not your birthday.” “Just a nice dinner for me, thank you. Sometimes we go again around Easter.” Frances lit a cigarette. “Do you regret not having children?” “Never once. Never for a day. Do you regret having one?” Frances laughed. “I’m being serious,” said Joan. “Oh. Well, sometimes I do, to be honest.” “But you wouldn’t change him.” “Yes, I would.” “But you wouldn’t change him much.” “I’d change him quite a bit.” “But you love him.” “So much that it pains me.”

“I told Don I had to run to Paris because I thought you were going to kill yourself. He was fiddling with the television remote and he told me, ‘Tell her hello, if you get there in time.’”

To be honest, I’ve come to appreciate the way he is. I had a moment earlier this year where I realized that I am, at the base of it, happy, and that Don and I have fulfilled what we set out to fulfill for each other. Can you understand how shocking this was for me?”

She shook her head. “You get older and you don’t even want love. Not the love we believed in when we were young. Who has the energy for that? I mean, when I think of the way we used to carry on about it.”

yes, my life is riddled by clichés, but do you know what a cliché is? It’s a story so fine and thrilling that it’s grown old in its hopeful retelling.”

Without consorting about it they’d all dressed up, and the women’s perfumes fought for supremacy in the living room.

Madeleine patted Mme Reynard on the back. “Please don’t cry. Your makeup’s going to run—and there’s so much of it.”

He tried to think of some interesting things to say to her. This was what he believed his mother craved the most, for a person to say interesting things.

and now the group had one last drink—the drink they would regret in the morning. They were silent for this event. There was nothing the matter; everyone was happy, satisfied. But a tiredness had come over them, and they eased into their fatigue, comfortable enough with one another to let it show.

“I want to kill him for destroying what was a very perfect story of love,”

“Reasons,” she said. “Because you were your father. Because you were me. Because we were all three of us so ruinous.”

“I’ll take those ones.” “How many?” “A big armful.” Malcolm made his purchase and exited the florist’s. He was a young man without socks on walking in the golden, late-morning Parisian sun with a bouquet of pink ranunculus in his arms. He looked down at them, admiring them, and wondering who they were for. They were for Susan, he decided.

He felt nimble as he navigated the sidewalk, moving around the bodies, men and women alone in their minds, freighted with their intimate informations.