Game Theories

I have been plagued, lately, by an irrepressible urge to visit Paris. By my calculations, a seven year itch.

My love affair with Paris was slow to bloom. It finally hit me on my third visit, my forty-ninth birthday gift from my husband. We were trying desperately to salvage whatever we could, and he was astute enough to know it was pointless to wait for my fiftieth. At least we'll always have Paris.

It wasn't the first time it occurred to me that love, or at least my capacity for it, could be finite. A zero-sum game. I remember worrying about it before my second child was born, a bit uncomfortably close on the heels of my first. I think it was my mother-in-law who reassured me, but I was skeptical. She was right, though. My heart stretched, and it did it again for my third. And, as time went on, for a few dogs.

With Paris and my marriage, though, game theory seemed to apply. Maybe it's because everything about the city was so perfect that third time. A mad cow disease scare had marred my first visit, dashing my hopes of gorging on steak frittes and forcing me, every evening, to stare into the dead eyes of some unfortunate sea creature. The second time, it was just too damn cold, and it's difficult to fall prey to any kind of romantic spell with three kids and your mom in tow. The third time, though, with my marriage falling apart, Paris came together. Crisp, sunny, November weather. A quaint hotel on Ile St. Louis where we had to ring a bell to wake the night manager if we returned after nine. It didn't matter that we could touch all four walls of the room from the bed. All was forgotten in the morning when we descended the narrow winding staircase into the dungeon to devour our designated basket full of croissants and French bread. Love was unraveling but, hey, we were in Paris. We got along.

Seven years, and I barely remember why we were coming unglued, but I can still taste the croissants. I can still hear the sounds of my shoes on the pavement, still see the crowds of annoyingly compact French women, so purposeful, so efficient, so stylish no matter what the time of day. It was our third time, and we had already done the museums and the cathedrals and the Eiffel Tower and, when my mother was with us, about seventeen Louis Vuitton stores. This time, we just walked. Sometimes together, sometimes alone, but each of us, I think, always alone in our thoughts.

Our last morning there, while he slept, I walked, by myself, to visit the new Holocaust museum. A wife without a husband, a mother thousands of miles from her children, a Jew on the streets of Paris (even in le Marais) -- I felt conspicuously alone. Not particularly unhappy, just alone. And a little bit in the dark, in the City of Lights.

I've thought about returning to Paris several times, but somehow the itch has become stronger now, at the seven year mark. Maybe it's just coincidence, maybe it has nothing to do with seven years or Paris and it has everything to do with turning fifty-six or being almost three years into a divorce.

Maybe there's no theory to the game at all, but there's one thing I know -- it's not a zero-sum. There's always room for more.