each otherâs arms, but because they couldnât wait to fall into bed. They were exhausted from the tension of the weeks leading up to the big wedding, and then the following day Bill had slept on the flight to Paris, just the way Dan was now.
Lara had been too excited, too brimming with happiness to want to miss a minute of it. She had sipped champagne and solemnly eaten every scrap of airline food because she couldnât remember eating a thing at her own wedding and she was starving. She had watched the movie while every other person on the flight slept. She remembered it to this day.
Diary of a Mad Housewife,
it was called.
Perhaps the title had been an omen, she thought now with a wry smile. A prediction of things to come. And if the truth were known, some of those endless weeks when Bill was away and she was left alone with two small children, it had come true. When the kids jammed the faucet and flooded the bathroom and water was pouring down the stairs and she was panicked because she didnât know where the stopcock was to shut it off; and when Minnie hit Josh over the head with a toy train and there was blood everywhere and she had to rush, frantic, to the emergency room to have him stitched up; and when the rent was due and she was counting pennies and buying Hamburger Helper, eking things out.
Those
days she might have qualified for the mad-housewife role.
Then, Bill didnât earn much. He worked all hours and was often away, and her own life was dominated by her young children and the strain of holding their precarious financial life together. But, they had been happy then. Hadnât they? Yet now, recalling the stress and the overwhelming responsibilities that had rested on her young shoulders, Lara couldnât imagine how.
Her eyes lingered on Danâs sleeping face. His head drooped and she moved closer so that he might rest against her shoulder. She saw that everyone else was sleeping or watching the movie and was glad there was no one to observe her infatuation with her lover and to comment on their age difference. Then she reminded herself sternly that she shouldnât give a damn what anybody thought.
Oh, but you do,
the small, treacherous voice inside her whispered, and she sighed, ashamed. And, anyhow, was it infatuation? Or was this love? How was she supposed to tell?
As the plane flew steadily on toward Frankfurt, Lara recalled her and Billâs arrival at the Paris Ritz. She remembered how excited she had been to stay at the famous hotel where Ernest Hemingway had drunk martinis in the bar on the rue Cambon, and where he had âliberatedâ Paris after the war. And where Chanel had lived in a grand suite with a sweeping staircase. Chanel had shown her collections there, sitting half hidden on the stairs, smoking furiously as she spied on the reaction her new fashions were getting. Crowned heads and courtesans and movie stars had stayed at the luxurious hotel and, years later, the beautiful Princess Diana had eaten her last meal there. The Ritz was steeped in history and Lara had wallowed in its luxury like a happy seal.
Or had she?
Somewhere from the back of her mind, hidden foryears, she dredged up a memory of overwhelming fatigue. She had been only twenty and had never traveled farther afield from her California home than Chicago. Bill was twenty-eight and had spent most of his life in school, or as a hospital intern. They were a couple of immature young hicks in a foreign country, unsure of themselves and unsure of each other. She was irritable, he was moody. And their room had surely been the smallest in the grand hotel, looking out onto rooftops.
âLes toits de Paris,â
Bill had said, flaunting his knowledge of French and for some reason irritating the hell out of her, Why did he always have to be so pompous, so factual? She had stared at him as though she were seeing an alien from another planet.
That night they slept at opposite sides of the
lit
Lara had been too excited, too brimming with happiness to want to miss a minute of it. She had sipped champagne and solemnly eaten every scrap of airline food because she couldnât remember eating a thing at her own wedding and she was starving. She had watched the movie while every other person on the flight slept. She remembered it to this day.
Diary of a Mad Housewife,
it was called.
Perhaps the title had been an omen, she thought now with a wry smile. A prediction of things to come. And if the truth were known, some of those endless weeks when Bill was away and she was left alone with two small children, it had come true. When the kids jammed the faucet and flooded the bathroom and water was pouring down the stairs and she was panicked because she didnât know where the stopcock was to shut it off; and when Minnie hit Josh over the head with a toy train and there was blood everywhere and she had to rush, frantic, to the emergency room to have him stitched up; and when the rent was due and she was counting pennies and buying Hamburger Helper, eking things out.
Those
days she might have qualified for the mad-housewife role.
Then, Bill didnât earn much. He worked all hours and was often away, and her own life was dominated by her young children and the strain of holding their precarious financial life together. But, they had been happy then. Hadnât they? Yet now, recalling the stress and the overwhelming responsibilities that had rested on her young shoulders, Lara couldnât imagine how.
Her eyes lingered on Danâs sleeping face. His head drooped and she moved closer so that he might rest against her shoulder. She saw that everyone else was sleeping or watching the movie and was glad there was no one to observe her infatuation with her lover and to comment on their age difference. Then she reminded herself sternly that she shouldnât give a damn what anybody thought.
Oh, but you do,
the small, treacherous voice inside her whispered, and she sighed, ashamed. And, anyhow, was it infatuation? Or was this love? How was she supposed to tell?
As the plane flew steadily on toward Frankfurt, Lara recalled her and Billâs arrival at the Paris Ritz. She remembered how excited she had been to stay at the famous hotel where Ernest Hemingway had drunk martinis in the bar on the rue Cambon, and where he had âliberatedâ Paris after the war. And where Chanel had lived in a grand suite with a sweeping staircase. Chanel had shown her collections there, sitting half hidden on the stairs, smoking furiously as she spied on the reaction her new fashions were getting. Crowned heads and courtesans and movie stars had stayed at the luxurious hotel and, years later, the beautiful Princess Diana had eaten her last meal there. The Ritz was steeped in history and Lara had wallowed in its luxury like a happy seal.
Or had she?
Somewhere from the back of her mind, hidden foryears, she dredged up a memory of overwhelming fatigue. She had been only twenty and had never traveled farther afield from her California home than Chicago. Bill was twenty-eight and had spent most of his life in school, or as a hospital intern. They were a couple of immature young hicks in a foreign country, unsure of themselves and unsure of each other. She was irritable, he was moody. And their room had surely been the smallest in the grand hotel, looking out onto rooftops.
âLes toits de Paris,â
Bill had said, flaunting his knowledge of French and for some reason irritating the hell out of her, Why did he always have to be so pompous, so factual? She had stared at him as though she were seeing an alien from another planet.
That night they slept at opposite sides of the
lit
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