Chicken Skin – Chapter XVII

Christine wasn’t suffering much due to the improvement of the couple relationship. Quite on the contrary, Antoine was more often relaxed, more receptive. He didn’t have as many mood swings as before. It seemed that he had got back to a real state of well-being, and he visited her as often as he used to.

At first, she appreciated the difference in Antoine’s behavior. He also was less authoritarian. She put all that down to the success of his business and to her own constant and faithful presence by his side.

He wasn’t talking anymore about his arguments that used to be so frequent with his wife though. Consequently she began to worry.

Wasn’t that peace concealing a reconciliation of the couple which she would have to bear the cost of at the end?

She decided she would ask Antoine to discover where the things were exactly.

An evening, while they were having dinner together, she approached the subject as discreetly as she could. She didn’t want that Antoine suspect her anguish. She had to avoid to alarm him to make sure she would obtain a reliable answer. But, and that is the peculiarity of people who keep much quiet, her anxiety spreading through the words she pronounced, the agressivity she had intended to hide showed in her question.

Antoine bewared. He remained evasive about what was happening in his couple, assuring her that nothing had changed, and that the things remained at the same point with his wife.

Christine didn’t believe a word of it. She didn’t insist though, and swallowed the other questions she had been about to ask.

Of course, it had the effect to nurture her anxiety that considerably increased during the following days. She saw herself neglected, abandoned in aid of Judith who, as for her, prevailed in spite of the fact that she put Antoine through the wringer.

Christine, at the same time, had had to reassure, to support and to love a man who, even if he didn’t say much about it, was indubitably hurt by the vicissitudes of his married life.

All of Christine’s projects were dissolving. The dreams of a future life with Antoine she had entertained became devoid of hope, bereft of the slightest chance to come true in a near, or even more remote, future.

That wasn’t fair. She had to be sure, to make sure that Antoine wasn’t to leave her then and go back to an orderly and exclusive life as a couple, a life in which she wouldn’t have her place, a life she wouldn’t either have.