Chapter XXXVII. Secrets and Lies, Mixed Media.
XXXVII.
SECRETS AND LIES. MIXED MEDIA.
VANCOUVER.
September in LA is like August in LA. Only hotter. With balmy Santa Ana winds and more threats of wildfires. That I am beginning to recognize the seasons here surprises me.
When I am not carting around the kids, I fill my days with work.
With On Beauty scheduled to open at the Hammer in mid-November, I’m in crunch time.
Spending almost all my non-Mom time at the studio.
Scheduling the last of my photo sessions with subjects in New York, prepping prints, editing film and audio clips, timing the interplay of the two.
The work is taxing, and when Anouk suggests we escape the heat for a long weekend in Vancouver, courtesy of their jet, I check that Parisa can take on extra hours, tell Francois that we want to see the exhibit on Picasso and his muses at the Vancouver Art Gallery before it closes, and leave.
With postproduction almost complete on Before the Fall and Sony thrilled with the final product, Fran has relaxed somewhat.
The studio is planning a big winter opening to capitalize on the holiday rush and put them in contention for awards season.
And while there is certainly some pressure, mostly he is excited about what’s to come: completing post on the second and third films, fielding offers about future projects, raising his quote.
The world is his proverbial oyster. And so, when I tell him I’ll be taking off with Anouk for four days, he barely bats an eye.
She finds us a house on the water in Deep Cove, a small, picturesque bay in North Vancouver, surrounded by fjords and pines and a quaint village.
The air is crisp and clean, the people are warm, the water is frigid, and it is perfect.
We kayak and paddleboard and hike and eat freshly made donuts in the sun.
We read and nap and make love and share long moments of silence and neither of us talks about our husbands.
And I marvel at how easy it is to have an affair in the open when you can pass it off as your best friend.
Because that is how we must look to outsiders.
Two friends on a girls’ trip. Imbibing Picasso, eating ice cream, laughing loudly. It’s almost too easy. Almost.
“I made something for you. It’s small, but I think you’ll like it.”
We were sitting on the terrace overlooking the water just before dusk on Saturday evening, our last night in paradise.
We’d polished off most of a bottle of rosé and a cheese plate.
Neither of us wanted to go out. Neither of us wanted to cook.
And so when Anouk headed inside to search for the list of recommended delivery places and returned with a package wrapped in brown paper, I was surprised.
“You made me something? When?”
“A few weeks back. I was just waiting for the right time to give it to you.”
She sits across from me on the lounge, watching as I unwrap the present. I am both giddy and a little buzzed, which is often how I feel in her presence. When I have her undivided attention.
For a moment, I am back in her villa at Querencia Bay, sitting on the wet bar while she tends to my hand, so well executed that there is not even a scar to remind me.
And I am kissing her for the first time.
The scent of metal, the sound of Bono’s voice lulling about artists being cannibals and poets being thieves:
All kill their inspiration and sing about the grief.
Twenty years later, the words hit differently.
Inside Anouk’s pristine packaging is a shadow-box frame encasing an intricate collage.
The kind she told me about that night on the beach in Cabo, and that I’d spotted on the wall in her dressing room the first time I’d visited her home.
Mounted within is one of her elegant line drawings of a familiar seascape, minimalist, ink on linen.
A pressed dendrobium orchid. A wooden cocktail stirrer with AMAN engraved on the head.
A scattering of dried tea leaves, affixed to look like a swarm of constellations.
And a black-and-white photo of the two of us flanking a baby elephant.
I’d taken it at the sanctuary near Udawalawe and gifted it to her the previous Christmas.
On the back of it I’d written THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM.
“Oh, Anouk.”
“It’s from our time in Sri Lanka.”
“Yes. It’s beautiful. Thank you.”
For a moment I lose myself in the details.
The tea-leaf stars, the etching. Her artistry.
I am moved that she has taken the time to create something so specific, so personal.
Particularly because I thought I’d felt her, us, distancing these past several months.
Not over any one thing. Not that I was any less attracted to her. Just life getting in the way.
“I wanted you to have something to remember it,” she says, tightening her cashmere cardigan around her shoulders and reaching for her glass of wine.
“I would have remembered it no matter what. But this is truly special. Thank you. I didn’t know we were exchanging gifts.”
“We’re not.”
She turns her attention toward the water, and I observe her. The half-light hitting her face just so. Her cheekbone bronzed, her wide upturned lip, her hair curling at the nape of her neck. And because I am feeling strangely secure about my place in her world, and hers in mine, I bring it up.
“May I ask you something? Who’s Delphine?”
I sense her stiffen.
“What?”
“Delphine? Who is she?”
A series of expressions washes over her face. Pain? Loss? Anger? “She was a very good friend,” she says eventually. “And then she wasn’t. It was a long time ago.”
“How long?”
She shrugs. “Long. It’s not important … Who told you about Delphine?”
“Sacha.”
“Ha. Sacha is a child. And a mischievous one at that.”
“He asked me if I was the new Delphine.”
“Did he?”
Sacha had just begun his freshman year at Bard College in upstate New York, studying music. Mischievous, perhaps. But no longer a child.
For a second, I say nothing, and then, “Were you sleeping with her?”
“I was. Yes.”
“Were you sleeping with Minnie?”
“Oh là là … So many questions.”
“Is that why we left Hayden’s so quickly the night of the concert?”
She stares at me with her big green eyes, ruminating. And I detect something there. Condescension. Annoyance.
“Cecilia. Were you under the impression I’d never done this before?”
“I wasn’t. I just thought you weren’t doing it with anyone while you were doing it with me. I mean, besides your husband.”
“I’m not. I wasn’t.” She pauses. “Is this why you needed a label?”
“Maybe.”
“I’m not,” she repeats. “Just you. Promise.”
I let it sit there, the nonadmission. I am not certain I entirely believe her.
But it strikes me then that I’m also not certain it matters.
That knowing that she likely had similar relationships with Minnie and Delphine does not make me feel any different.
No more sad or enraged or even disappointed.
If anything, I feel numb. And for a moment I wonder if this is how it was for Francois with élodie.
The ability to separate sex and attraction not from emotion, per se, but from something far more intense, profound, sacred.
Is this the difference between limerence and love?
“Oh,” she says, popping up and moving toward the glass doors. “I completely forgot the menus. How do you feel about Vietnamese?”