My Husband

When Ariane was a child, she could not have imagined living in a beautiful 1930s house in a posh neighborhood like hers. She only visited such a neighborhood on Wednesdays to play with her more affluent friends. Her grandfather was a housepainter; she wonders if he could have painted the house in which she lives. 

Ariane begins her second job at her desk, translating a novel from English to French. The first book she was offered to translate was one on Copernicus. Since then, she has had a steady stream of assignments. As she works on the current novel, she notices the preponderance of the phrase “let you go” (29). She wonders if one day, her husband will let go of her. Ariane knows that no matter which work she may be translating, it always reminds her of her husband. When she was working on the Copernicus book, she imagined learning that the sun, and not the earth, was the center of the solar system, which would be as devastating as her husband, her center, vanishing from her life.

Ariane is a meticulous translator, maintaining vocabulary books in different categories, such as a blue book for English plant names. A yellow book, which contains terms related to medicine and science, is currently missing, vexing Ariane. 

As the time for her husband’s return approaches, Ariane wraps up work on her computer, and curls up with a large book. She knows her husband loves seeing her read and write by hand. Ariane also thinks of an unopened letter she has stashed in the book. She has left the book in the open, hoping her husband finds the letter, but in vain.

Before heading out for the evening, Ariane repeats child-minding instructions to Zoe, the babysitter. Ariane tells Zoe that they’ll be home before 12:30 AM. Ariane notices the lamp she has never liked in her lounge, and asks Zoe if she would like to take it. Zoe politely refuses, as the lamp is too big for her attic room. Worrying how to discard the expensive lamp, Ariane leaves without kissing her children goodbye. She wonders if other mothers are as careless as she is and if Zoe judges her for her preoccupation.

Ariane’s first stop is the hair salon, where she gets her hair highlighted a pale blonde every month. The truth—which Ariane never admits to her friends—is that she is naturally dark-haired. When she met her husband, she was going through a blond phase; he liked her hair so much that she has maintained it ever since. At the time she first dyed her hair golden, Ariane was trying out a Grace Kelly persona, pretending to the stylist that she was divorced and child-free. She has kept up the story to the stylist over the years, expanding it to include a remarriage and sadness at not having children. 

After her hair’s been rinsed a lighter shade of gold, Ariane goes to the florist to buy a congratulatory bouquet for their hosts for the evening, new parents Nicolas and Louise. She buys peonies, which the seller tells her are wedding flowers. Ariane worries about choosing the wrong kind of bouquet. She meets her husband outside Nicolas and Louise’s building. Her husband compliments her hair, but the kiss he gives her is again perfunctory.

Nicolas is a childhood friend of Ariane’s husband. A high-flying finance executive, he lives in an impressive, large apartment downtown. Ariane has heard her husband speak wistfully about Nicolas’s lifestyle, and feels her husband resents their suburban existence. She comforts herself by thinking that she is at least more beautiful than Nicolas’s wife, Louise. 

Although Ariane’s parents did not give her much in the way of financial inheritance, they did give her good looks. Ariane is tall and slender, and resembles Nicole Kidman, the actor. After she met her husband, who is from a wealthy family, Ariane polished her beauty by dressing expensively and acting sophisticated. The change did not happen overnight: In the beginning, she used to feel out of place with her husband’s family, who judged her for what they considered her bad manners, such as mopping up her plate with bread. Over time, she purchased a book on manners and practiced the dos and don’ts of the manual.

As the four friends settle into the evening, they admire the first photos of Violette, Nicolas and Louise’s daughter. Ariane notices how Nicolas and Louise seem far more attuned to each other than she and her husband are. Her husband tells all their stories using an “I,” whereas Nicolas uses the collective “we” to describe his and Louise’s life. 

Three incidents from the evening jolt Ariane. The first is her husband’s account of the first few months of their son’s life. While Ariane remembers the period as one of togetherness, her husband calls it exhausting and sleepless, since their son had health issues at the time. The second is her husband’s funny recounting of a power outage after his birthday party three months ago. He describes the event as if Ariane had been absent, even though it was Ariane who had organized his party and guessed the code to silence the blaring security alarm during the power cut. 

The incident that Ariane hates the most is a party game, where the four of them list the fruits which best represent the others. Her husband chooses exotic pineapple for Louise, and modest clementine for Ariane. The choice fills Ariane with bitterness. She lists all these incidents in her diary when she gets home. Writing in her journal always helps calm her and enables her to find a solution to her problems.

When Ariane joins her husband in their bedroom, she asks him if they can sleep with the shutters open. As always, he refuses. Ariane feels she gave her husband a chance to make amends for the clementine incident, but he has blown the chance. She begins to cry, her back to him. Over the years, she has identified the two kinds of tears she sheds. One are tears of anger and frustration, which arrive in an outburst and leave her face red; the others are quiet tears of sadness, which simply pour out of her eyes, as they do now. 

Behind Ariane, her husband falls asleep. She is hurt that he did not even notice her crying. She breaks out into a nervous itch, something that happens to her very often. She screams in anger, waking her husband. After he gets up, Ariane tells him she was screaming in her sleep during a nightmare.