This Little Family by Inès Bayard

Author:Inès Bayard [Bayard, Inès]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2020-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

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Tonight they’re watching a movie and going to bed early. “How did your first day at work go?” Marie lies, not wanting to lose credibility with her husband on the professional front. Line 9 of the Métro was down so she decided to take the bus for the first time in ages, but when it stopped to pick up some regulars she turned away and decided to walk. On the way home it came to her in a flash: she could drop everything. She would just leave an explanatory note for her husband and son, escape to the station or the airport in a taxi and leave with just a couple of suitcases. She knows she won’t manage to kill herself for now. Suicide needs a single moment of real courage. She’s not capable of it.

As she sits sweetly next to her husband, it suddenly strikes her she’s the perfect embodiment of what society most despises: a fat, weak, cowardly woman who doesn’t love her child, is contemplating leaving her family, and is sexually underactive, inefficient and incompetent at work, and already old. An ad for toilet paper comes on, carried along by the brisk lilt of a Wagner melody. A woman rubs her face with a piece of the pink paper to show viewers just how soft and nice it is. All at once an aura lights up her body and lifts it into a turquoise-blue sky scattered with big white clouds, then scrolls softly around a colorful bouquet of flowers. Marie sighs. Laurent opens the packet of potato chips on his knees. “Seriously, Wagner for a toilet paper ad? They could do better.”

The movie starts. She insisted on watching her favorite film, All about Eve, simply to witness for the hundredth time Bette Davis’s masterly performance. A woman she’s always aspired to resemble: beautiful, powerful, honest, passionate, loving, spirited, arrogant, hysterical, melancholy, and sensitive all at once. Margo Channing is the woman, a unique character who’ll never age. Marie is totally captivated by the movie. Laurent fills his face with potato chips dipped in a bowl of guacamole. He wanted to make his wife happy. It’s obvious you’re not a woman. That line pierces Marie’s heart. Her hands tense, tears spill down her cheeks. She feels as if the scene is being played out for her. “She really is kind of hysterical…Poor guy.” What men like Marie’s husband want most of all is peace and quiet. The poor man, the poor husband disoriented by his wife’s scenes when she’s trying to assert herself as she is and as she sees fit. With her mind, her body, and her voice. They like taking their wives in hand while still leaving them a small margin of freedom so they have access to modern amusements, such as work or “a drink with the girls.” The power that a husband has over his wife is hidden, even inverted. A woman who’s given her freedom suddenly finds it unjustified, delights in occasionally backpedaling into the sweet comfort of dependence.

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