Mrs. March

by Virginia Feito

She was on her way to her favorite patisserie—a lovely little place with a red awning and a whitewashed bench in front.

She liked Patricia, whom she saw as a sort of plump, foulmouthed yet kindly innkeeper; the type of character who would protect a gaggle of lowly orphans in a Dickens novel.

“But isn’t this the first time he’s based a character on you?”

That character, she corrected herself. She’s not even real. Quite possibly based on a living model . . . but George would never . . . would he?

She looked at the server, clad in a black apron, which she found a tad lugubrious for a café—“I, no, not alone—”

He had not found her desirable in the least. In fact, he would likely consider the very notion of her naked body repulsive,

A husband, upon returning home from work, should always be received by a wife looking her best, and by a house so thoroughly kempt as to maintain his pride in it.

the trips to Nantes, the meetings with the historians at the Bibliothèque Universitaire, the books delivered to their apartment from helpful experts worldwide—

She had always been jealous of George’s intimate relationship with books: how he touched them, scribbled on them, bent and folded them, their pages impossibly ruffled. How he seemed to know them so thoroughly, finding in them something she couldn’t, as much as she tried.

“It’s a process called gavage,”

It’s a funny concept, guilt.