Chapter XXV. Before the Fall. #2
Sixteen years post-Columbine and the eighty-plus school shootings that had occurred since, and the most powerful nation in the world still hasn’t managed to solve this epidemic other than instructing its children to turn off the lights and hide. My kids deserve better. All kids deserve better.
“So for Halloween, I think I’m going to be a zombie cheerleader. There’s this street everyone goes to in Santa Monica that’s supposed to be amazing with, like, a haunted house and everything and the best trick-or-treating. Can we go?”
How quickly she could pivot. I was still thinking about six-year-olds awaiting their fate in a closet and my daughter had moved on to dead cheerleaders and free candy.
“Umm, we’ll see,” I say.
“It’s our first real Halloween in America, Mom. Please.”
“I know, Luce. We’ll see.”
On the Monday following Lucie’s Nutcracker audition, I scoop her up after school and we make a beeline to the Palisades to see the posted results. Her class won’t start for another thirty minutes, but she insists on arriving early so that she’ll have time to process it ahead.
“Don’t come in with me,” she instructs upon our arrival. “If I get a really good part and I see your face, I’ll cry. And if I don’t get a good part and I see your face, I’ll cry, too. And I don’t want the other girls to think I’m overly emotional.”
“Okay.” I smile. “I see you’ve thought this through.”
“Yes. But wait here and I’ll come back and tell you what I got.”
I do as told, and when she returns to the car a few minutes later, I already know.
She slides into the front seat, the tears forming in her eyes. “I didn’t get it. I didn’t get Clara.”
“Oh, Luce, I’m sorry.”
“I know I did a good audition. I know my audition was good. It was great.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie.”
“They gave it to Mackenzie. And she’s not as good as I am. She’s not even close.”
I wrack my brain. Mackenzie. The blond with the nosey mom who’d mistaken me for the nanny. Figures.
I remain quiet for a moment, not wanting to say the wrong thing. “Miss Margaret must have her reasons for choosing who she cast, Luce.”
“But it’s not fair. I’m the better dancer. I know I’m the better dancer.”
“Maybe Miss Margaret is looking for something different. Maybe a certain physicality, a specific height, I don’t know. Maybe she thinks you’d really shine in another part.”
“I’m just a featured dancer in the party scene.” The tears were falling.
“A featured dancer. That’s good, right?”
“I don’t even know what that is. It sounds like something she made up.” She wheezes then, struggling to breathe, and I reach across the console to hold her. “I don’t even know that I want to be in it. I don’t want to dance a make-believe role.”
I do not have the heart to tell her that all of it was make-believe.
“I wish we’d never left,” she says, sobbing. “I wish we never moved here. Why do we have to be here? It’s not like we see Papa anyway. Can’t we go back? Can’t we go back to Paris?”
Something inside of me breaks. But in that moment, I’m unable to find the words. And so I continue to hold her until she pulls away.
“Okay,” she says, wiping her face. “Okay. I have to go back in there. I have to be professional.”
“Okay,” I say to her, my twelve-year-old adult. “I love you.”
“I know.”
With the potential for an exhibit at the Hammer looming, I waste no time diving into the interview component of On Beauty, starting with my muse. Anouk and I spend a Thursday morning at my new studio, recording audio excerpts to be played over her images.
“Tell me a time when you’ve thought of your beauty as a burden.”
“Ha! When has it not been?” she sighs, leaning back from the microphone.
We’ve set up camp in the small office. A mic, a laptop, headphones.
“No, but this is not a nice thing to say. It’s honest, but it’s not nice,” Anouk continues.
“Because people think such a thing is a blessing and I should be grateful. Which I am, mostly. I know it’s a gift.
But I am also aware of how it works against me.
How it puts me in difficult positions. How there’s an expectation …
How there’s maintenance, upkeep. How demoralizing it can be when what you are known for is something that you can’t control.
That you did not create. That you were randomly given, and which can always be taken away.
Not a skill or an achievement. Just genetics.
Chance. How people assume you’re not smart because you can’t possibly have beauty and brains.
How other women can resent you. How men can expect things from you. …”
She trails off for a bit. I watch her mull something over, hold back, pivot.
“There’s something about not being responsible for what makes you special that can really eat away at you,” she says, leaning in.
“The modeling business can destroy your soul. The way they build you up, and then cast you aside when someone younger and hotter comes along. The way they discuss you and pick you apart, like you’re a commodity.
Which you are. But also, you’re a person.
And that person kind of gets forgotten. And you realize just how much they’ve been feeding off you. Consuming you.”
She pauses then, and for a moment I lose my place in my list of questions.
“Do you ever want to quit?”