The Woman I Wanted to Be Read Online Free PDF Page A

Brussels. On the weekends, our family spent Sundays in the country at my great-great-aunt and -uncle’s villa. They had a beautiful house on the edge of a large forest, the Forêt de Soignes. I loved walking in the woods, picking chestnuts in the winters and berries in the summers. My father would play cards with the men and my mother gossiped with the women. We ate a lot of good food. On the long, gray days, I lost myself reading Stendhal, Maupassant, Zola, and, on a lighter note, my favorite, The Adventures of Tintin, comic books about a daring young boy reporter created by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé. I lived vicariously through Tintin’s travels and exploits. Would I ever discover all these exotic places in the world? It seemed like nothing would ever happen to me.
    When I had a few days off from school and my parents could not travel, I would often visit my aunt Mathilde in Paris. She had an elegant boutique off the Faubourg Saint-Honoré catering to a loyal, international clientele. She sold printed cashmere sweaters and jersey dresses and suits. I would spend entire days in the shop. My job was to fold the clothes and put them back in order. It was my first encounter with fashion, retail, and the secret virtues of jersey fabrics.
    In Paris, I also visited my cousins, Eliane and Nadia Neiman, the two daughters of my father’s rich cousin Abraham, who had invented the theft alarm for cars. The girls spoke perfect Russian, gave piano recitals, and were very sophisticated. I felt terribly awkward and provincial when I visited them for tea or lunch at their villa in Neuilly. During the summers, my brother and I would go to summer camp near Montreux in the Swiss Alps or in the North Sea resort of Le Coq-sur-Mer in Belgium. We would also go on trips with my parents and my aunts and uncles to the South of France or the Swiss mountains.
    My parents were a good-looking couple, and they loved each other very much, but my father wasn’t as sensitive around my mother as he should have been. He didn’t want to acknowledge her wounds, so he ignored them. He was a hardworking, generous man, but he could be indifferent and sometimes verbally harsh. I don’t think he had any real love affairs after he married my mother. He traveled frequently on business, and I am sure he did not always spend his nights alone, but that was not the problem between my parents. It was his insensitivity toward her that made her feel vulnerable. So the scene was set for what came next. And what came next was a man named Hans Muller.
    T he letter, addressed to my mother, was on the table in our front hall that day when I came back from school. For reasons that I still cannot fathom, I opened the blue envelope with the very clear handwriting. It was from someone named Hans Muller, who, I realized as I read, was a friend of hers. I did not know who this Hans was and I do not recall what the letter said, but I remember that my heart started to beat fast. I felt something major had happened, something that would change all of our lives, and that something was Hans. Knowing I had done something wrong, I carefully put the letter back in the blue envelope and left it on the table, but the damage was done. My mother came home, saw the envelope, and I confessed I’d opened it. I had never seen her so upset and angry. Though I was twelve at the time, she reacted in a very violent way, slapping me across the face with all her strength. I was desperate, I was in pain, I was ashamed. Whatever had come upon me to open that letter?
    My face was only a little bruised the next day when I went to class,but my insides were crushed. I had disappointed my mother. I had betrayed her trust. We never discussed it again and I am not sure what she told my father that night when he came home. Was he home anyway or was he traveling? I don’t remember. I felt terrible, and to this day I have never again opened a letter or looked at a document or an email that was not addressed