The Reinvention of Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

I mustn’t poison what we have by thinking of the future. I close my eyes briefly. I can smell the last of the blossom, a perfume so clean and sweet that it is hard to imagine anything more perfect.
    The names of the apples that I like best are the simple names. I find them more profound than the poetic ones, because I imagine the simple titles bear witness to the places or the circumstances where the apples were first found.
    River. Sunrise. Field. Day. Sunset. Star. Hunger.
    “If you could name an apple,” I ask Adèle, “what would you call it?”
    I think she will pick a flowery name, something poetic that makes a tangle in the mouth. But she answers swiftly, as though she was thinking of the question long before I asked it.
    “I would call it after you,” she says.
    “Charles?”
    “No, not Charles,” she says. “Your other name. Charlotte.”

I ARRIVE FIRST AND TAKE A SEAT near the back of the church. It is afternoon. The building is empty except for me, and my slightest movement echoes loudly in the cavernous chamber. The pew is uncomfortable and when I shift on the hard wooden bench the rustle of my skirts can be heard throughout the vaulted room.
    When our time is short and the day is a good one, Adèle and I meet in the orchard. When our time is short, and the weather is inclement, we meet in the church. Today it is rainy and cool outside, and the unheated church feels damp. So much easier to believe in God when the sun is shining and the stained glass window shuffles its colours over the grey stone and dark wood interior.
    I like arriving first. I like the anticipation of waiting for Adèle, the sound of the heavy doors creaking open, her quick footsteps on the stone floor. I like watching her walk down the aisle towards me, her face flushed from hurrying. That first moment, when she looks for me and finds me is a moment I never tire of witnessing. That moment of recognition is one of the most satisfying in life. The instant that a lover seeks you out. The instant of understanding something, of working out the answer to a problem that has been puzzling you for some time. The moment when something suddenly becomes clear.
    This church is not the closest one to Notre-Dame-des-Champs where Adèle and I live. We cannot risk going to the church in our own neighbourhood. It is not that we fearmeeting Victor, as he is rarely inside a church, but more that we fear meeting someone who knows Victor and Adèle. And that church is the one in which Victor and Adèle were married. So we frequent this modest church, many streets away, where we are fairly certain we will not be discovered. But even then, we take precautions. We come in the middle of the afternoon when the church will be empty. And I come dressed as a woman.
    You might think this is the secret I was referring to earlier, but this is not it. Dressing as a woman to rendezvous with Adèle is simply strategy. Two women in a church are not given a second thought, a second glance. Two women can sit close together on the same pew, can walk down the street with their arms linked, and arouse no suspicion. They will not be thought of as lovers. They will merely be two friends who are out enjoying the city together.
    I borrow my mother’s clothes. As she lives temporarily with me, it is not difficult for me to take a dress or two from her wardrobe and return them before she has noticed their absence. I look remarkably like my mother, with my high forehead and my delicate features, and I make a convincing woman. Sometimes I wonder if Victor did see us together, whether he would be able to tell that his wife’s new friend was, in fact, his old friend. It is tempting to put this to the test, but part of my being a convincing woman is that I act the role with confidence and I fear that I would lose my nerve in the presence of Victor, that I would falter, and that he would discover my true identity.
    I like being a woman. There is a freedom in it that I find a relief.