Chapter 7 March 1995 Felicity Jenner—Library Member
Felicity Jenner—library member
My family and I have lived in Paris for nine months.
Miranda, a friend from my Oxford days, was the twelfth guest we’ve had.
Back in Manchester, no one came to visit in all our two years.
But when you move to Paris, suddenly you’re everyone’s best friend.
Or, as my daughter, Ellen, quipped, it’s not so much BFF as a free B and B.
Miranda’s gold bracelets jangled against her wrist as she pointed to the Eiffel Tower through my window. “What a view!” she gushed. “Your flat is amazing. How did you decide to move to France?”
“Franklin and I knew that a foreign language would give Ellen a step up on the uni application process,” I replied.
The truth, not that I ever admitted it, was this: ten months ago, Franklin came home from work, with no phone call to let us know he’d be an hour late. Over dinner, he announced that we were moving. No discussion. Just his decision based on what was best for his career.
Of course, poor Ellen, who’d just turned seventeen, had been miserable at the idea of leaving her friends. I tried to soothe her, but learning French and starting over once again were daunting. Then I realized that I’d be starting over, too. Goodbye, England. Goodbye, family. Goodbye, garden.
“Get good grades,” I’d told Ellen with each change of country, each new school. “You’re going to uni, and you won’t ever depend upon a man.”
The evening of the announcement, as Franklin and I got ready for bed, he tugging off his tie, I turning down the counterpane, he informed me that we’d be leaving in a month and that he expected me to deal with “details,” such as selling our home and packing up our life.
Franklin had never said “thank you” for organizing our relocation across the Channel, which entailed parsing a dozen bids from moving companies and perusing a hundred listings to find a perfect flat within walking distance of his work, across the Seine to his office on posh Avenue Montaigne.
Nor did he show appreciation for the breakfast of eggs and bacon that I prepared for him, and only him, since Ellen and I preferred lighter fare.
I’m certain he never acknowledged his assistant, either.
She and I were compensated to make his schedule run smoothly—she in francs; I with room, board, and jewelry on my birthday (certainly picked out by said assistant).
This was the lot of the executive’s wife, the trailing spouse.
Franklin would never put it so crassly, but in his mind, it’s My money, my choice.
What Ellen and I wanted didn’t signify, which is why we’d lived in Tokyo, Toronto, and Manchester.
With each move, Franklin kept the same job and colleagues, but Ellen and I started from scratch.
I’d considered divorcing him. Who doesn’t occasionally fantasize about leaving their spouse behind?
But in the end, I decided I couldn’t do that to my daughter.
I worried it would break Ellen’s heart if her father and I separated.
Recently the three of us had organized a visit to Oxford, where Ellen would start in the autumn. I was looking forward to giving them a tour, and Ellen was excited for her first college visit. Only as usual, Franklin canceled at the last moment. A merger needed his attention.
We tried not to let it bother us. At dinner in an Italian restaurant, I ordered myself a bottle of Chianti. Ellen stabbed at her spaghetti.
“Mum, aren’t you tired of living on his timetable?”
“I am, a bit.”
“He never keeps his promises to us. He’s never around. I hope you haven’t stayed for me.”
She’s perceptive, my Ellen.
Not wanting her to see the truth in my expression, I bent my head and busied myself with cutting my lasagna. “I stayed for both of us.”
“You deserve to live your own life.”
She reached across the table and hugged me so fiercely. I tear up just thinking about it.
My friend Miranda was right about one thing, though: our view was spectacular.
The flat I’d found, built for the 1889 World Fair, was marvelous—gorgeous moldings and a fireplace in each room.
Living in Paris should have been a dream come true, but too often, the flat felt too big and too empty.
Friends visited for a week, then returned to England.
And my life? I’d splurged on a bottle of real French champagne to toast our move to the city of romance, but Franklin always said he was too busy or too tired.
I sent cards to family, but they rarely responded.
While Ellen was in class, I took French lessons, one-on-one torture for me and the tutor, a chain-smoker who corrected my mistakes before they were all the way out of my mouth.
The one positive was my weekly trek to the ALP.
I first visited to see if they had bilingual study guides for Ellen and me.
Once I was inside, nostalgia hit me—the gentle thump of the date stamp hitting a book, the murmur of friendship, books in cellophane gleaming on the new arrivals shelf, spider plants hanging from macramé holders, all things tended and cherished.
It brought me back not just to the years I took baby Ellen to story hour but to my own childhood and treasured memories with Mum.
This time, as I loaded up on books (Cold Comfort Farm, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and my two Trollopes—Anthony and Joanna), Meg, a fellow Londoner, urged me to volunteer and tucked an application form into The Warden.
In the moment, I suspected she wanted a fellow Brit around, but later I saw that it was more than that: Meg had a sixth sense for what people needed.
At home, I began to fill out the form. Under the line for profession, I put “lawyer,” though I hadn’t practiced since we left England the first time, back when Ellen was a baby.
Under volunteer work, I put “development,” since I’d been active in raising funds for a nature conservancy and a local theater.
I wondered what kind of role I could play here.