Apprenticed to Venus by Tristine Rainer

Author:Tristine Rainer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 2017-06-12T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

Greenwich Village, New York, 1964

ANAÏS

WHEN ANAÏS RETURNED TO CONVINCE Hugo that the rest ranch hadn’t been a lie, she found the situation to be worse than she’d feared. Hugo had taken a mistress, a Haitian-born dancer he’d met at his modern dance class. Driven by jealousy, Anaïs snuck into the back of the theater where the dancers rehearsed and observed Hugo and his mistress gyrating to wild drums. From the communication of their hips, Anaïs imagined that Hugo had, at last, found a woman attuned to his frenzied rhythms, and she panicked.

Needing to speak to someone, she phoned Renate. Ronnie picked up, but Anaïs heard Renate wailing. Between Renate’s heaving sobs and Ronnie’s attempts to explain, she finally made out that Renate had found her son unconscious on the living room floor and could not revive him. Peter was dead from a heroin overdose. Renate had had no idea that Peter had been using drugs and blamed herself. Anaïs wanted to return to Los Angeles immediately, but Ronnie insisted that Renate, distraught with grief and guilt, would not see anyone.

Anaïs was overcome with guilt for her own blindness. She and Renate’s other friends had considered Peter the child of their artists’ community. Yet preoccupied with their romantic intrigues, creative projects, and parties, none of them had noticed that their beloved boy was drowning. They’d let him slip away unseen and alone.

With a devastating clarity, Anaïs recognized that it didn’t matter that Hugo was finding satisfaction in another woman’s arms. It didn’t matter that she also loved and lived with Rupert. People needed to keep watch over one another, so that none were lost; people needed to be reminded that they were loved. She and Hugo had cared for and loved each other for three decades. They should not allow denial and a failure to communicate destroy a marriage that had sustained them both.

Denial was not benign; secrets were not benign. It was time for them to face and accept that they were bonded, but that their marriage could not satisfy their sexual needs. It was time for them to be open with each other, to have an open marriage. She would tell Hugo that she knew about his affair and that it was all right with her; they could love each other and have other lovers in their lives. It didn’t have to destroy their marriage.

When Hugo got home late that night and tried to slip under the covers without waking her, she snuggled up and wrapped her arms around him. She told him that he did not need to feel guilty that he had a mistress, because she had someone too.

Hugo flung her off, took his pillow, slammed the bedroom door, and abandoned her for his office.

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