Almost before she is in the street she can feel the morning hustle, the whirl of France at work, keeping it together. Marie acknowledges that she’s never had to struggle to make ends meet. Born into a middle-class family with traditional values, pampered at every turn, encouraged and steered by her parents in her every choice, she is in no position to understand how people get into a downward spiral. It’s not that she lacks compassion. She often puts herself in someone else’s position, in her clients’, for example, to understand what’s really at stake in their lives, what their risks are, what they stand to gain or lose.
As she emerges from the République Métro station she has only a few minutes’ walk to reach the bank at 9:05. Her coworkers are always friendly, greeting her with a smile, offering her a coffee before her meetings and asking for her well-considered opinion. Marie is a financial consultant, a privileged position, well up in the bank’s hierarchy. Her clients like her very much and her drawers are filled with all sorts of gifts: boxes of chocolates, bottles of wine, homemade preserves, scarves…When she arrives home from work in the evening, Marie likes to tell her husband about the day’s amusing little events or the disagreements she occasionally needs to address. Money lies at the heart of everything in her work. Her standard clients are people with enough income to contemplate lucrative investments. On Monday mornings Marie always has to check her best clients’ accounts to familiarize herself with any new transactions. On her huge desk there are framed photographs of Laurent and herself on vacation, her family, her sister and her nephew, and her late grandmother. It suddenly occurs to her that she doesn’t see enough of her family. Since she was born her parents have lived in a large house in Bois-le-Roi, just a few miles from Paris. Her sister lives with her husband and son in the Ninth Arrondissement, in the Saint-Georges neighborhood. The sisters are very close and are due to have lunch together today.
Her telephone starts to ring. Monsieur Collard doesn’t understand why a payment he asked to have made has still not gone through; Madame Siris would like to know whether she can use the money from her life insurance to give her son a new car for his birthday; Madame Frousard wonders whether her husband will still agree to pay her the lump sum he promised when they divorced. Each client has a problem, and Marie knows exactly how to solve it. The hours spool by, meetings come one after the other. In the distance there is chanting from demonstrations against a law allowing homosexuals to marry, it reverberates all over Paris. Through her office window, Marie watches hundreds of thousands of people tramping the streets and brandishing enormous pink-and-blue banners around the place de la République. Her parents told her they considered joining the demonstration but in the end they weren’t able to reach the location in time. Laurent is against this law too. Like many French children, Laurent and Marie were baptized, went to Bible study classes, and occasionally attended Mass with their parents on Sunday mornings or for religious festivals. Marie feels that this law is a question of religion and principle. “Well, they’re right, aren’t they?” her client exclaims. “Marriage is for a man and a woman, it always has been. Even some homosexuals are against this law.” Marie looks at her client and smiles. She thinks her comment vapid but is more comfortable concentrating on the woman’s home insurance contract.
It’s lunchtime. Marie slips out of the office to join her sister Roxane in a brasserie on the rue de Bretagne. All the streets that lead to the place de la République are still barricaded by the police. When they watched the news last night, Laurent admitted he was finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the endless demonstrations in Paris. Marie, on the other hand, finds it refreshing. She certainly won’t participate in any sort of protest movement but is happy other people do it for her.
Roxane is sitting at an outside table with her baby in his buggy. It’s her day off. Marie is happy to see her, kisses her and sits next to her. The child whimpers a little before Roxane gives him his bottle. Marie watches him fondly, strokes him, and showers him with affectionate pet names. Roxane tells her about her recent holiday with Julien in Rome. While they were away, the baby went to his grandparents, who couldn’t wait to look after him. Everyone in the family wants to know what Laurent and Marie are waiting for before having their first child. She is thirty-one, he thirty-three. There couldn’t be a better time to start a family. She just hasn’t had the opportunity to think about it. Their respective careers needed a while to take shape and so far their ambitions have been focused on work. “Watch out, you’ll be too old soon! You don’t want them calling you Grandma!” Roxane had her first child at twenty-four. She looks happy but tired. Yes, people talk about the tiredness but they don’t make a big thing of it. The joys of parenthood are enough to make other people understand that they too should throw themselves into the adventure. An hour has gone by. Marie and Roxane leave the restaurant and say goodbye with a long hug, promising they’ll call each other very soon.
* * *
—
It’s the end of the day. The sun is only just starting to set. Marie walks up the rue du Temple to buy a few things at the Monoprix supermarket. She’d like to cook something nice for Laurent this evening, there might be time to make a blanquette of veal. The autumn wind is pleasantly bracing on her face. People hurry through shop entrances. No one seems to dawdle in any one place, as if everyone has made a deliberate effort to go in different directions. There’s no such thing as stasis in Paris. She collects her bicycle, which she left near the bank yesterday because of the rain, puts her shopping in the small basket at the front, and sets off toward boulevard Voltaire.
Laurent isn’t home yet so she has a couple of hours left to prepare the meal. She knows he’ll be very happy to have his favorite dish when he comes home. As she peels the vegetables on the kitchen counter Marie thinks over what her sister said at lunchtime. She contemplates motherhood. As a child she already knew she’d be a mother and spent hours looking after the baby dolls her parents gave her for Christmas. She now feels ready to have a baby with Laurent, and maybe that’s why she thought of making this particular dish this evening. She’d like to stop taking the pill and start a family.
It’s eight thirty, time seems to be going so quickly. The blanquette is simmering and the table’s set. Marie recognizes Laurent’s ritual as he comes through the door. He lobs his keys onto the sideboard in the hall, hangs his coat on the hook, takes three steps before realizing he hasn’t closed the door, closes it, then calls her name—“Marie!”—to check that she’s there.
She can tell from his smile and how quickly he moves that he has good news to tell her. “I got the Lancarde case!” he announces. She’s thrilled and throws her arms around him to congratulate him. They hug tenderly, kiss, and look into each other’s eyes. He lifts her up, sits her gently on the sideboard, and kisses her again. Gérard Lancarde is a wealthy industrialist who specializes in the plastics market in Europe. His father, who founded the Calcum consortium fifty years ago, was meant to hand over more than half the ventures within the company when he officially took retirement. Except that a few years before the cession he married a Russian singer with a huge following in her own country, and, against his son’s advice, bequeathed to her a substantial proportion of his shares. Laurent is still reeling from receiving the news himself. “I don’t know if you have any idea, honey. This contract deals with an inheritance worth hundreds of millions of euros and he chose me, personally! I can’t believe it.” Marie is genuinely happy for him. Laurent goes over to the still-steaming casserole dish and she watches him affectionately, his childish pleasure, the way he slowly lifts the lid and closes his eyes as he smells the meat. But she suddenly remembers wanting a baby. With this new contract maybe Laurent won’t have time for that. A slight cramping feeling ripples through her stomach.