Chapter 10 Regan & François
Regan the Greek Islands; a person painting; a fierce woman looking out an airplane window; and various handcrafted ceramics.
She saw then that it was time to shed her downtrodden divorcée persona, get up off the yoga studio floor, and flee the country.
She’d done the toddler years and put up with a bad man in her life for long enough. It was Regan’s time to shine.
That night, Regan googled “best places artist sexy.” The divorce agreement had given Regan her large Savannah home and monthly alimony. The house was worth a million dollars. Wearing her #1 Mom sweatshirt and sipping a vodka–Diet Coke, she scrolled the list of possible lives:
Number One: Paris. Regan opened a tab and read, deciding it was too expensive and also, French women seemed off-putting and frighteningly suave.
Number Two: New York. Nope, nope, nope: not far enough from Matt and his Baby Momma, a young woman who had once been the girls’ teacher at Savannah Country Day.
Number Three: Mexico City. Regan paused, but nah. She’d never been to Mexico. It seemed overwhelming and she liked Mexican food a bit too much.
She had reservations, too, about numbers four and five, Berlin and Kyoto.
But number six was Athens, Greece.
Athens, Greece! The city where her weird and wonderful family vacation had begun, a ten-day cruise from Athens to Barcelona.
It was the trip that had ruined her life in the perfect way.
Regan could envision herself striding past the Acropolis.
In her imagination, she wore a cape of some sort with knee-high boots.
One more Google search—“Zillow apartments for sale Acropolis Athens Greece”—and she was on her way.
Regan called a realtor friend and sold her She Crab Circle property in a week.
While packing up her adult life, Regan allowed herself to keep photos, notes, and clippings of any kind that she could work into collages.
She took breaks to peruse Facebook, where she followed artists she admired—visual artists mostly, many of whom worked in collage, but also some painters, ceramicists, and installation artists.
She peeked into these strangers’ workshops with envy, commented on their new work, and then somehow ended up in the section called People You May Know.
One of the people she might know was named Francois. Such a sexy name, thought Regan, who had not had a boyfriend since her divorce, despite the school moms encouraging her to “get on the apps.”
In the People You May Know section of Facebook, Regan clicked on Francois’s profile picture.
He was a handsome man with a white mustache and a crinkly cheeked smile.
Francois was a mathematician at Institut des Hautes études Scientifiques, south of Paris.
Regan knew he might not be real, but she also knew he might be real.
Why was Francois a person she might know?
How did Facebook connect Regan and a handsome mathematician in France?
Kismet, she decided, and requested his friendship. It all seemed innocent: Click!
A bloop sound alerted her to a note in Facebook Messenger—a note from Francois:
It read, Hello.
Hello, Regan responded.
How are you today?
In a departure, Regan was honest: Honestly, a little lonely.
I am also a little lonely. Are you at work?
Regan paused. At this point, packing and envisioning a new future was—in fact—her work. She typed, Yes.
You have a beautiful smile, wrote Francois.
Regan stared at the screen, rereading the words. Beautiful. No one ever called Regan beautiful. She was always “the good one,” the “younger sister of Lee Perkins,” praised for her subservience and kindheartedness, her cooking and mothering.
But to this stranger, Regan wasn’t Lee’s pudgy little sister or Matt’s disappointing wife. She had a beautiful smile. Regan scrutinized her profile picture, which had been taken at a wedding long ago. Not her wedding. She wore a pink silk top and matching lipstick.
Thank you, wrote Regan. She felt warm.
Regan remembered the first time a man had really seen her—it had been her high school art teacher, Mr. Ragdale.
He had been leaning against his blackboard, wearing khaki pants with his shirt tucked in.
Regan walked by, and when she turned around he was watching her and his face was soft as if she were special.
Regan had felt warm then, too.