11
I’m worried about Ari after my conversation with Mme Dupont, so I decide to give Cillian a call. The sun is barely up in California, far too early for Cillian. He used to stay in bed until midday in protest against ‘militant morning culture’.
‘There’s this bogus idea that larks are more wholesome and morally upright than night owls, but it’s a myth, Fifi – created by corporations to increase productivity and therefore their bottom line. I refuse to be a cog in the wheel.’
I received this philosophy, or some variation of it, daily as I left for work. At the time, Cillian was gainfully unemployed, his attentions focused on a business plan, the details of which he preferred not to get into as it was in the ‘marinading phase’ of development. ‘You don’t want to rush these things,’ he’d warn. ‘Too many startups fail due to insufficient rumination in the embryonic stages. You want to take your time, let the idea percolate.’
I’m surprised when he answers the phone on the second ring. I’d expected him to be sleeping.
‘There she is. How you doing, Fifi?’
He’s sitting on the balcony of his house, a beachfront villa in Malibu, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows. His hair, the colour of an EasyJet flight, is tied in a top knot, a set of Buddhist prayer beads twisted around his wrist. His skin is glowing, like he’s just worked out or had sex. Los Angeles Cillian is more mindful about ‘creating a space for play’ than Dublin Cillian, so it’s probably the latter. On the sand below, I can make out a couple of surfers hitting the waves and further out to sea, a giant oil tanker.
‘You’ve grown your hair,’ I remark.
‘Yeah, just trying something different. Gotta keep the mind open to new ideas.’
He takes a sip of herbal tea and eases back into a brown leather Egg chair.
‘So how’s it all going over there? How’s our boy doing?’
Cillian chose the name Aristotle. He was taking an online philosophy course when I was pregnant to complement his burgeoning career as a life coach and had liked Aristotle’s vibe. He wasn’t like the other philosophers, Fifi. He didn’t ask, “How do I live a good life?” He said the question we should put to ourselves is, “What kind of person do I want to be?”’
I’m well aware that naming my child after one of the most celebrated philosophers to ever live is a punchy move, but after a forty-hour labour, you could have put the pi symbol on Ari’s birth certificate and I wouldn’t have objected.
‘He’s not settling in at school,’ I say, feeling a familiar knot of anxiety in my stomach. ‘He hasn’t made any friends. Honestly, I think Margaret is his best friend.’
Cillian smiles. ‘Ah, Margaret. You know I bought her at the gift shop at Monterey Bay Aquarium? You should have seen the place. I remember this huge spiny lobster in one of the tanks and I was blown away by her. She was so … majestic. We locked eyes and I swear, Fifi, I could feel her inside me . It was like we were one. Did you know lobsters keep growing forever? We don’t know exactly how long they live because there aren’t any traps big enough to catch the largest ones.’
I wonder whether he was at one with the one-kilo lobster he devoured the time I took him to Roly’s bistro to celebrate his first appearance on Ireland AM .
‘They probably don’t live very long,’ I say. ‘Lobsters eat one another.’
Cillian ignores the comment and continues with his paean to marine life.
‘Man, living out here, the Pacific on your doorstep, it’s humbling. Seriously, I am humbled every day by nature’s beauty. And I can’t stop thinking about what we’re doing to our oceans, what kind of world Ari’s generation will inherit. I read the other day that the equivalent of a garbage truckload of plastic is dumped into the sea every single minute. Can you believe it?’
He pauses to let the gravitas of the statement sink in, but I’m distracted by his use of the word ‘garbage’. We say nothing for a couple of seconds to allow Cillian a moment to recover from his brand new discovery that sea life is fucked. When the appropriate amount of time has passed, I tell him that Ari’s teacher is concerned that Ari has yet to grasp the concept of death.
‘She said we need to find a dead bee and poke it, so Ari can understand it isn’t coming back to life. She said we shouldn’t run from reality, that life is better when we accept that nothing lasts.’
‘That makes sense to me. The beauty of all this’ – he gestures behind him, without looking, at the oil tanker in the distance – ‘is its impermanence. You need to understand loss to really appreciate life.’
I resist the urge to tell Cillian he already gave Ari an excellent education in loss when he walked out on us.
‘I don’t know why we came here,’ I say quietly.
‘To have an adventure! To live, for a change.’ Cillian leans forward in his chair. ‘The Fiadh I met at that Frames concert wouldn’t have questioned herself for a minute.’
‘The Fiadh you met at the Frames concert didn’t have a child and a mountain of bills to pay and a dad responsible for bankrupting the Irish economy. Oh, and a partner who moved eight thousand kilometres to get away from her.’
He looks wounded. ‘That’s not fair. We both agreed this was something I had to do.’
Ari had just taken his first steps when Cillian mentioned he’d been approached at a seminar by an agent representing some of the world’s biggest names in wellness and personal development. We were having a picnic in the Phoenix Park, Ari marvelling at the deer in the distance, Cillian and me marvelling at Ari. He wobbled between us to rapturous applause. We’d tucked into homemade red velvet cake (I got the ratio of flour to butter wrong. You could have taken out one of the deer with the end result. Cillian said the density of the sponge was down to my lack of manifesting) when he mooted the idea of moving to California.
The marinading stage of his business plan had paid off, and in the space of three years he had become Ireland’s leading (and only) ‘lifestyle guru’. It started with a series of videos on YouTube. Each week, Cillian hosted an episode of Take Back Control , in which he promised subscribers that ‘with a touch of ancient philosophy, a smattering of neuroscience, a whack of daily affirmations and a smidgen of meditation, you can reset your thought patterns and change your life’. He downplayed the Anglo-Irish accent he picked up at boarding school in order to appeal to a wider audience and soon had over a hundred thousand followers across his social media channels.
When ‘Take Back Control’ gained momentum as the slogan for Brexit and Cillian started to receive tweets in praise of tightening border restrictions, he rebranded as the Brain Alchemist, a moniker bestowed on him by a besotted journalist at my paper. She did a profile on him for the weekend magazine, in which she likened the ‘cognitive miracles’ he performed to the ancient practice of turning base metals into gold. The piece ran as a cover story with the headline ‘This Man Will Change Your Life’. Offers of work came flooding in. Startups and established businesses with their finger on the pulse asked Cillian to run motivational retreats for their employees. He was invited to host panel talks and seminars in the UK and Europe, and ran life-coaching sessions for a number of VIP clients. His local paper, The Gorey Gazette , hailed him as ‘Buddha-meets-Brené Brown for the millennial generation’.
Now, America was calling. He said he wanted Ari and me to go with him. That he wouldn’t dream of embarking on his journey – both literal and metaphorical – without us. I knew he would, he knew he would, but we agreed to carry on pretending.
‘Hey Feeeeeaaaah!’
A ripped abdomen fills the screen. It belongs to Nicole, Cillian’s forty-five-year-old girlfriend. She’s wearing a bralet and leggings with a flames motif up the sides. Nicole is third in command in the narcotics division at LAPD. She and Cillian met at an organic grocery shop that had a on-site psychic. Cillian was getting a palm reading. The woman told him that true love was around the corner. Ten minutes later, his trolley crashed into Nicole’s in the nut butter aisle.
I can’t say I was thrilled Cillian met someone a month after leaving us, though it could have been worse. He could have taken up with a twenty-five-year-old Pilates instructor. Whatever you say about Cillian, you can’t accuse him of being unoriginal. And I quite like Nicole. Cillian must have told her about my anal prolapse after Ari’s birth, because she sent me an email just to say hi and also, there’s this woman in LA doing amazing things with weak pelvic floors, and you might want to check out this link to her free demonstrations.
‘Hi Nicole, how’s it going?’ I say.
‘The usual. Couple of assholes in my department trying to bust my balls. Can’t stand having a woman calling the shots. How’s France?’
‘Oh you know, la vie en rose .’
‘I’d better run. I’m meeting a few girlfriends for a hike before heading into the office. Good to see you, Fiadh. Say hi to Ari for me.’
She leans over and kisses Cillian, her perfectly formed rear end swallowing the camera.
‘Run for the hills, Nicole! He’s a bollox!’ I say.
‘You’re so funny. She’s funny, Cil. See you guys later.’
She pronounces ‘Cil’ as though it’s spelt with an ‘s’. Cillian doesn’t correct her, his gaze following her out the door, utterly besotted.
‘Hey, guess who I might be taking on as a client?’ he says when he finally re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere.
‘Who?’
‘I’m not really meant to say. It’s all very hush-hush. Seriously, nothing might come of it …’
‘Oh just tell me already.’
Cillian looks around him, checking over the balcony for good measure.
‘Gwyneth Paltrow,’ he says in a deliberately poor attempt at a whisper. He sits back, interlocking his hands behind his head – the cat that got the vaginal jade egg.
‘I’m not being funny, but what does Gwyneth Paltrow need you for?’
‘We’re all students in life, Fifi. Even the master needs a sensei. Seriously, though, I’m helping her with her impostor syndrome.’
‘You do know impostor syndrome has been debunked as a theory? Self-doubt isn’t a pathology.’
Sometimes, I try to remember what Cillian sounded like before he went down the rabbit hole of self-improvement. Last week, he told me he was a ‘people pleaser’. The only person Cillian has ever pleased is himself. It’s not that I don’t believe in personal growth. It’s in our DNA to want to be better, expand the limits of what’s possible. Without striving, the world wouldn’t have antibiotics or artificial limbs or those onesies fitted with mop heads to enable babies to polish the floor as they learn how to crawl. But I’m not sure what contemplating your navel or pursuing clean sleeping contributes to society at large. (That said, sleep is fairly important. There might be fewer wars if presidents got more than four hours’ shut-eye a night.)
We speak some more about Ari. Cillian agrees to come out in September to see him, ‘crazy work schedule permitting’, and tells me he saw Seth Rogen eating a burrito outside his house the other day. ‘That’s what I love about this place,’ he says. ‘Every day brings something special and surprising.’ I want to say I don’t think witnessing Seth Rogen eating a burrito outside his own home is particularly special or surprising, but Cillian’s so high on his life in LA, I don’t want to seem bitter that my big French adventure isn’t panning out.
Before I hang up, he says, ‘Hey, Fifi?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Don’t be afraid to poke the bee.’
I check my phone – balls, I’m late for Ari. Lifting my untouched coffee, I tear downstairs, bumping straight into Jack, coming out of the kitchen. The contents of the cup spill over my t-shirt.
‘Oh shit, sorry!’ Jack says, pulling a hanky out of his pocket and handing it to me. ‘Let me get you an ice pack.’
‘Thanks,’ I say, accepting the hanky and dabbing at my top. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not hot.’
It's a narrow space, the doorway between the kitchen and the hall, and I’m close enough to Jack to smell his skin – oatmeal soap and sweat.
‘Rough day?’ he says.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘You seem distracted. And you’ve got toothpaste on your face.’
I clutch at my chin, remembering the spot I tried to annihilate this morning. Typical of Cillian not to notice. They say there’s no scientific evidence to suggest toothpaste works on spots, but Yiv and I have been doing it since we were fourteen and it’s a hill we’re prepared to die on.
‘I was just on the phone to Ari’s dad,’ I say, rubbing at the toothpaste with my sleeve.
‘You’re married?’
‘No. Cillian doesn’t believe in marriage. Or me for that matter. I think. We’re not together anymore is what I mean. He lives in LA.’
‘That must be tough for Ari.’
‘Yeah, well, Cillian needs to be there for work.’
‘What does he do?’
‘He’s a life coach-slash-motivational speaker, an influencer I guess.’ I hate the word, but what else do you call someone who has ten million followers on Instagram and starts posts with, ‘A lot of you have asked about my haircare routine’? ‘You might have heard of him. Cillian Sparks?’
‘Wait, the Brain Alchemist?’
I cringe at hearing the words come out of Jack’s mouth. ‘Yep.’
‘We had him on the show about a year ago. Lauren did the interview. I think he was promoting a book or something. He’s, umm, passionate about his work.’
‘That he is.’
Cillian’s an easy target, but I’m not about to slag off my ex to Jack Hamilton.
‘Actually, he’s just taken on Gwyneth Paltrow as a client. He’s helping her with her impostor syndrome,’ I say, like it’s a shared achievement.
‘That isn’t a thing. Everyone feels like they’re faking it.’
He notes the look of surprise on my face. ‘What?’ he says.
‘Nothing. I’m off to buy ingredients for dinner. Any requests?’
‘Don’t worry about me, thanks. I have plans this evening.’
‘Oh. Up to anything exciting?’
‘Sabrina Rousseau is introducing me to a few friends of hers. I gather it’s a kind of Welcome-to-Cordes thing.’
Seriously? I’ve been here six weeks and the closest I got to a welcome from Sabrina was a Bonne journée when I added a pear and chocolate tart to my usual order.
‘How lovely,’ I trill, trying to disguise the bitterness in my voice. ‘Well, have a nice time and I guess I’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow.’
‘See you then,’ he says, stepping past me, his arm brushing lightly against my shoulder. He opens the front door then stalls, turning to face me. ‘It’s a pity Myriam threw out your granola, by the way. It could have done with some sweetener, but I quite enjoyed the taste.’
He hovers for a second and then he’s gone, closing the door behind him. If I didn’t know better, I’d say there was something vaguely flirtatious about his tone. I dismiss the idea immediately, because I do know better. I can confidently say I’m the farthest thing from Jack Hamilton’s type.