Chapter XVII. Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe
XVII.
LE DéJEUNER SUR L’HERBE.
LOS ANGELES.
I don’t see Anouk for several days. Francois has a break in his schedule and returns home for a long weekend, and because we have all missed him tremendously, we make the most of his time.
An afternoon up at Zuma Beach, a visit to the Griffith Observatory, dinner at Nobu Malibu.
A long bike ride along the water, with a stop for lunch at Shutters on the Beach.
And on not one, not two, but three occasions: sex.
And the fact that it does not feel perfunctory is noteworthy.
The fact that for the first time in a long time, I allow myself to enjoy it.
“Hello, wife.” He corners me Sunday evening in the kitchen pantry, while I am prepping dinner. We are both fresh out of the shower post–bike ride, and I’m fetching cans of crushed tomatoes when he sidles up behind me, smelling of citrus and cedar.
“I’ve missed you,” he says, pressing himself against my back, his intention clear.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it feel like I’m doing?” His mouth moves to my earlobe and my response is immediate. He knows what it does to me.
“Fran, the kids…”
“They’re in their rooms.” With one hand he closes the door behind us, and with the other he draws me closer to him. His arm around my waist, his palm against my belly.
The pantry does not have a lock.
Something about sneaking like this feels illicit, alluring. Part of me needs this rush.
But as his hand steals into the waistband of my sweatpants, my mind wanders.
He doesn’t sound like her, or smell like her, or I imagine feel like her, and yet she is all I can think about when his hand forces its way between my legs.
His fingers slipping inside me, blunt and familiar.
Her hands, her perfume, her legs uncrossing in the Louis Vuitton skirt.
I picture the flesh on the inside of her knee, her mouth wrapping around the red-velvet cupcake, her biting her lip in the back of the Maybach.
And when he centers on my clit, it’s her I’m imagining.
Her fingers, her tongue. The risk of getting caught …
I come hard, and quickly, and even Francois seems shocked by my response. His free hand moving to cover my mouth.
“Ssshhh,” he warns.
It takes a moment to realize I am still clutching the canned tomatoes.
The following Wednesday morning after drop-off, I meet Anouk for a hike. My first in LA. She has talked me into a “not too challenging” trek at Will Rogers State Historic Park.
“I promise you’ll love it,” she’d said the night before on the phone.
Our phone calls had become more and more regular.
Light, casual exchanges that were occasionally flirty but never fully crossed the line.
Safe for anyone listening in, but also maddening.
“It’s not too narrow, too steep, too crowded.
This is the perfect virgin-Angeleno hike. ”
“Okay.” I laughed. “Be gentle with me.”
“Always.”
If I’d known better, I would have held her to those words.
The trail at Will Rogers is not quite what I expect.
The view is grand: downtown and the San Gabriel Mountains to the east, Catalina and the Pacific to the west. I had hoped to snap photos of vibrant flora: poppies and hyacinth and larkspur.
But the land here is arid, wanting. The ground covered in chapparal and low-lying scrub, casting the hills in a drab silvery-moss hue.
It’s a huge departure from the Hudson River Valley and New England and my hikes with Lorry, where everything was fecund, full of color and life.
Here, there are no hemlocks, no abundance of blossoms, no embrace of green.
It saddens me. And I imagine Lorry would have had the same response. What was he doing here, so far from home? And didn’t he long for the smell of green things?
“So I looked up your old boyfriend,” Anouk says, as we crest the hill near Inspiration Point. As if she were reading my mind.
“Did you?”
“He opened a studio in Santa Monica. On Main Street. The Soul Center.”
“The what?” I stop, panting. For all my Pilates and biking on the beach, I am short of breath. I consider myself in fairly good shape, but the lack of shade is brutal. Anouk has barely broken a sweat.
“The Sol Centre,” she repeats, and then proceeds to spell it for me.
I stand there looking at her, but not seeing. The glare of the sun and the heat playing tricks with my eyes. She’s a stick figure against a white horizon.
“Fuck,” I say eventually.
“Do you need water?”
“I need to sit down.”
“We’re almost at the top. Just a few meters more.”
I follow her around the bend, and up to a breathtaking overlook. We install ourselves on one of the handful of benches staring out toward the ocean. And it’s only after I’ve had some water and a few moments to breathe that I say what’s really on my mind.
“The Sol Centre?? You’re fucking kidding me.”
She laughs. “I promise I’m not. He holds meditation sessions and workshops there. They offer yoga classes, as well.”
I’m trying to picture it. Lorry, namaste-ing with a bunch of Westside housewives in pert ponytails and paper-thin exercise pants. The thought makes my stomach turn.
“It looks like a lovely space. Lots of bamboo and light. Very Zen.”
“I’m sure it is,” I say.
“If you feel up to it, we can take a class.”
She says it casually. Like, Hey, if you’re in the mood, let’s grab a milkshake. As if the very possibility did not send my heart racing.
And I did not know how to explain to her that it was not something I could do.
There was no casually seeing Lorry. There was the aftermath of a heartbreak, and a near suicide attempt, and months and months and months of crying myself sick.
And two years of antidepressants. There was a transatlantic move, and therapists on two continents.
And all of it because of him. All of it.
There was no casually seeing Lorry.
The Sol Centre, my ass.
“I think you’ll have to go without me,” I finally say.
A young couple with an infant arrive just then and install themselves a couple of benches over.
We watch as the dad delicately disassembles the baby from his carrier, and hands him to his mom to be fed.
Their movements—slow, precious, tentative—are universally identifiable as those of new parents.
And I feel a pang of nostalgia. Memories of strolling through the Parc Monceau with Francois carrying Julien in a BabyBjorn.
A picnic basket in one hand and a backpack stuffed with diapers and Mustela wipes.
How eager Fran was then to make everything perfect.
How enamored he was with us both. We were still newlyweds then.
A “marriage de pistolet” (as Andrew had jokingly dubbed it) at a mairie in Paris, much to the horror of our parents.
Particularly my mother, who was a virgin on her wedding night and let me know in no uncertain terms that I was making a huge mistake.
(“An artist? What were you thinking?”) I was twelve weeks pregnant that idyllic spring day.
The combination of morning sickness, the stress of an unexpected pregnancy, and a rushed nuptial resulted in a seven-pound weight loss.
My boobs were slightly heavier, but I was otherwise svelte in a modest ankle-length dress with three-quarter sleeves and a lace bodice.
Fran wore a navy suit, cognac dress shoes from J.M.
Weston. Although he insisted on switching to Adidas Gazelles for the after-party.
It was an intimate ceremony followed by an elegant reception for sixty at a private residence in the sixteenth.
Philippe had offered up his fabulous apartment on the Avenue Foch.
It had been in his family since the turn of the century.
And our guests dined on sole meunière and magret de canard and croquembouche while overlooking the gardens and their hundred-year-old chestnut trees.
We danced our first dance to “Crash into Me” by Dave Matthews Band.
The song, haunting and melancholy, was what Fran had played for me the first time we made love.
There, in his tiny chambre de bonne in Montmartre, with an Ikea mattress on the floor.
It became our song. And there, where we would occasionally spend entire weekends, is where he would take numerous titillating photos of me.
Photos that would one day end up in the bottom of his shoe closet.
“This was a lovely wedding, CeCe,” my mother had said to me, late on our wedding night, as the last of our guests were filing out. “Even if you did mangle the rules of etiquette.”
I’d made a deal with myself then to make Francois’s and my marriage work, if for no other reason than to prove my judgmental mother wrong. And so I had never mentioned élodie Cloutier.
“Well, just … think about it,” Anouk says now, snapping me back to the present day.
Right. Lorry. “I’ll think about it.”
We continue our hike, heading down the far side of the mountain, and as we approach the vista that overlooks Rustic Creek and the north side of Amalfi Drive, I’m struck by the real estate.
Multiple impressive homes dot the cliffs.
Massive estates with manicured lawns and infinity pools clinging to the overhangs. So much wealth it’s jarring.
The trail winds down through a grove of eucalyptus trees and spits us out at the far side of the park, near the horse stables. We meander down to Will Rogers’s historic ranch house and its grand lawn. The polo fields stretched out just beyond. At long last, green.
I endeavor to take a barrage of photos, Anouk just off to my side, watching me as I work. I like it.
I like her.
At one point she approaches me from behind, nuzzles the side of her face against the back of my neck. I flinch, and then giggle like a teenager.
“Are you … smelling me?”
“I’m inhaling you.”
She takes her finger then and runs it the length of my spine. “I’m going to go and sit in the shade, while you finish being Ansel Adams.”