Le Divorce by Diane Johnson Page A

speaking French, but the French aren’t so great at English. Our words have no significance for them. For instance, all the proper French ladies at the gym do their aerobics to American music, but they don’t hear it. There’s a rap song that goes “He’s a sexy motherfucker,” and this doesn’t cause them to miss a beat. These are words they don’t know.
    Talking of gyms, Roxy’s view is that the style of exercise is an indication of national character: in California, high-impact aerobics, that is, mindless pounding to loud rock music drowning out thought (“Happy Nation/Livin’ in a Happy Nation”); in France, narcissistic perfecting of the Fesses-Ab-Cuisses , or the Bras-Buste-Epaules class, or jazz dancing but with no regard for the beat.
    I appreciated Roxy’s niceness, liked it that after years of being the irritating little sister I was suddenly for her an object of gratitude and solicitude (she couldn’t do without me). For this reason I didn’t too much mind the faint superiority with whichshe now discoursed in a foreign tongue I would never master, or the proprietary air with which she explained which merchants came on which day to the market in the Place Maubert.
    Roxy and Charles-Henri lived—Roxy lives—just off the Place Maubert in the fifth Arrondissement. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, it is the scene of an open market. Long tables under awnings are set up, stout merchants behind them with food and flowers, a man selling porcelaine blanche , another offering to mend chairs. Across the Boulevard Saint Germain is a little fountain and some benches, and the Brasserie Espoir, romping dogs, clochards . In former days, a statue of Etienne Dolet (whoever that was) stood there, melted down or removed in the Revolution or some war. I found an old print of it in a book by André Breton which was too difficult to read.
    Her Place Maubert friends are Anne-Chantal Lartigue, a Frenchwoman, and Tammy de Bretteville, an American married to a French lawyer. When I arrived, they were both, so far as I could see, happily married women. I tried to look at them through the eyes of Janet Hollingsworth, to divine their tricks, their special Frenchness, but they seemed like regular women to me, though they did wear more beautiful shoes than us Americans in our tennies.
    The days wore on with Roxy in her strange state of denial, neither trying to communicate with Charles-Henri, to reproach or persuade him, nor taking any other action, and refusing to disclose her state of affairs to her friends. To them, Roxy must have seemed calm, as if nothing were wrong. If you are calm when something is wrong, people think you are cold and unfeeling. But of course Roxy was crying, and feeling awful, however cheerful she was looking with her market basket and gradually swelling belly in the Place Maubert, meeting Anne-Chantal or Tammy de Bretteville as usual. As Roxy’s waistbands slowly wouldn’t fit, the Charles-Henri situation continued in her mind to have the same inevitability as her pregnancy, the same sense of a foregone conclusion, of there being no way back, no way of not going through with it; and where most women would have fought for their marriage, whatever that may mean, she continued to behave with bitter apathy.
    “I’m just not ready to tell anyone,” Roxy said, for days running. “How can I? All the implied I-told-you-so’s. I couldn’t stand it.” (Our sister Judith, who had always referred to Charles-Henri as “the frog prince,” would surely say I told you so.) She didn’t phone anyone. I worried about her. I felt that she ought to tell her friends, so they could give her advice on how these matters are handled in France.
    One night, when Roxy and Gennie and I were having supper in the Brasserie Espoir, Roxy said, “Iz, I apologize for sweeping you into my marital problems. I know you aren’t having a good time, but you are being incredibly sweet. I know I’m just being a bitch and a