Chapter IX. In the Bubble.
IX.
IN THE BUBBLE.
PARIS.
My head is deep in the foie gras mi-cuit refrigerator at La Grande épicerie, the famed gourmet market at Le Bon Marché, on Friday afternoon, when Julien FaceTimes me.
It’s just after seven in the morning in California, and my thirteen-year-old son rarely calls to engage in casual conversation, so naturally, I imagine the worst.
“Everything okay?”
“Eryx invited me to go home with him after school and spend the night at his dad’s place in Malibu.
And Papa said I couldn’t go until I checked with you first, because you don’t know his parents.
So if I text you his dad’s number could you call him to make sure it’s okay and then I can go straight from school? Please say yes.”
He says all this while pacing through the rooms in our tree house. The camera randomly capturing walls, the ceiling, his latest Lego creation on his desk, the corner of his face.
I extract three packages of partially cooked foie gras before navigating the rest of the aisle. Goose liver. Duck liver. Paté aplenty. It’s a foodie’s paradise here, and yet my attention is six thousand miles away.
“Julien. Slow down. Who is Eric?”
He pauses, his face absurdly large in the camera. Bronze skin, amber eyes. A new pimple on his chin. “Eryx. Barlow. My friend at school. You don’t know him. But just text his dad, okay?”
“And say what exactly?”
“Euh!” he says. “That it’s okay if I sleep over there. Please, Mom. It’s me and Topher.”
“Who?”
“Just talk to Papa.” He begins moving again. I watch the scenery behind his head shift. Through his bedroom, down the hallway, into the kitchen. I spot the top of Lucie’s head at the island, a cascade of curls bowed over a bowl of cereal, and I get a pang in my gut. She is so far away from me.
“Hey, Ladybug.”
“Hi, Mommy,” she says without looking up.
Before I can see her little face, Julien passes the phone to Francois, and Lucie falls out of frame.
“Bonjour, ma belle.” My husband’s hair is sticking out in twenty-two different directions. A week’s worth of stubble lines his jaw. He wears bedraggled annoyingly well.
“Good morning to you, too.”
“One more day?”
“One more day. No problems holding down the fort?”
“Pffft.” He does that universal French thing with his mouth, the gesture that could be interpreted a hundred different ways. Today, it means “easy-peasy.” I think.
“So what’s the problem?”
“Hold on,” he says, crossing the room before calling out, “We are leaving in twelve minutes, les enfants. Make the beds, brush the teeth.”
His eyes shift from brown to blue as he makes his way through the dining area and living room with its wide expanse of glass. Eventually, he lands in our bedroom. Our bed, it appears, is still unmade.
“Did he tell you his plan?”
“To sleep at his friend’s house…”
“Yes. Did he tell you which friend?”
“Eric something?”
“Eryx. Barlow.” He pauses, as if for dramatic effect. “The son of Derrick Barlow and Cressida James.”
“Shut up.”
Cressida James and Derrick Barlow are Hollywood royalty.
She is an actress, with two Oscars and numerous Golden Globes to her name.
He is a former world number-one tennis player with a dozen Grand Slam titles.
Both are blond, beautiful, English. Their union and its combined Q-rating had landed them in the upper echelons of A-list celebs.
So much so that they were often referred to by a single-name moniker: Derrida.
And when they announced their divorce eighteen months prior it made the cover of every tabloid magazine on six continents.
Including Paris Match: DERRIDA DéCONSTRUIT.
I can only imagine what the French tabloids would say if they got wind of Fran and élodie’s affair. Quelle scandale! Pity the clueless foreign wife.
“Alors…” Fran smiles then. “I thought you might want to do that call.”
“Crap. This is where it starts, doesn’t it? Becoming Hollywood. We’re getting sucked in.”
“We are already there. In the bubble.” He pauses, angling his head. “Where are you?”
“Grande épicerie. Picking up goodies for everyone.”
“Ah, super! Don’t forget the saucisson sec.”
I smile, plucking a package of dried sausage from my basket and holding it up to the camera. “Already done.”
“You are the perfect wife.”
His words halt me. There are so many ways in which I can respond. And yet it’s probably best that I choose none of the above.
“I didn’t … I mean … I’m sorry,” Francois says, contrite.
I nod, and resume making my way through the aisles toward the butter.
“So,” he continues, “we got the hospital bill from the accident. Putain de merde.”
“Isn’t our insurance covering it?”
“I thought so, but apparently yours and the kids’ don’t start for ninety days.”
I freeze then. In addition to the ambulance and the ER, there’d been two follow-up appointments, a CAT scan, an MRI. “How much is it?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“How much, Fran?”
“Twenty-seven thousand.”
“Jesus Christ. How is that even possible?”
He shrugs. “America.”
In Paris, with the Carte Vitale and our mutuelle, it would have cost us no more than a couple of hundred. If that. “That’s insane. We have to pay all that?”
“Peut-être. The production is looking into it. We can discuss later.”
My eyes track him as he makes his way back into the living room, past the wall of glass, the lush courtyard, the granite pool. Our new home, where everything was extravagant. Even the price of healthcare.
I continue on to the wall of butter—échiré, Le Beurre Bordier, Beillevaire—the crème de la crème.
“Do you have any idea where I might find my old journals?” I ask.
I do not mention that I am trying to unearth the details of my enigmatic week in Mexico.
Of my supermodel tryst. Of what happened next, and my lingering guilt.
I don’t even mention that I’ve seen Anouk.
“I searched the apartment but had no luck.”
“T’as cherché dans la cave?”
The cellar. I’d completely forgotten. “No. No. I’ll look there. Thank you.”
“No problem. Okay, je bouge. The kids are going to be late. I’ll have Julien send you Derrick’s number.…”
“I’ll wait patiently.”
“Try not to get into any more accidents. I love you.” He says it like he means it.
“Je t’aime, aussi.”
That evening, after packing, and dinner with a couple of girlfriends, I head down to the storage space in the cellar of our building.
It is filled with bicycles, luggage, my magazine collection from the ’80s and ’90s (Elles, Vogues, Bazaars, élans, American Photographers), a few boxes of old paperwork, three cases of G.X.
Crochet Accord de Blancs, and seventeen cases of Saint-émilion.
The latter a generous gift during the promotion of Salut, Bordeaux!
And there, far in the back, among the cobwebs, and dust, and ghosts that I am certain inhabit a building that dates back to the turn of the last century, I find my journals.
I grab them all—1995, ’96, ’97—and head back upstairs.
And too tired to dissect and discern, I stuff all three in my carry-on to read on the plane.
I am convinced the answers to all my questions lie within.