Chapter XLVI. Mourning. Doves.
XLVI.
MOURNING. DOVES.
LOS ANGELES.
There is no going back to normal after my lunch with Lorry. There is simply spiraling. And the realization that everything I had held on to is slowly, surely unraveling.
The possibility that Anouk has been misleading me all along.
That her dalliance with Lorry was not prompted by my crushing reveal regarding her assault in Cabo.
But that it started long before that. That she was sleeping with him when we ran off to Vancouver.
That she lied when she’d said she wasn’t seeing anyone but me.
And I tie myself in knots trying to figure out when and how it started.
Was it me being too consumed with my work?
Again? Was I too busy creating art to pay attention to what was happening around me?
Was it the paparazzi shots with Cressida?
Is this all my fault? Did she just get bored? Does it matter?
That evening, I call my mother in Florida. And I do my best to hide the pain in my voice.
“Mummy, can you do me a favor? In the closet in my bedroom, on the floor in the back, there’s a cardboard box marked BOO. Burn it.”
“Burn it? What’s in the box?”
“It’s not important. Just throw it out, please. Get rid of it. I don’t ever want to see it again.”
“Are you sure, CeCe?”
“Yes.”
“All right.” And then, “Is everything okay?”
“Not exactly. But I can’t talk about it now.”
“Okay. Well, when you’re ready, I’m here.”
“Thanks, Mum.”
“You know, Cecilia. I’ve been thinking about the conversation we had last spring, about feeling at home in a place.
I think if you decide France is your home and that’s where you feel most yourself, then that’s where you should be.
You shouldn’t feel constricted by your roots, CeCe.
Or untethered without them. I think it’s like my orchids on the tree. You grow where you’re planted.”
Two days after our catastrophic lunch, when I am still alternately seething and reeling, too worked up to even bike, I force myself to go to the studio as a distraction.
I need to escape my own thoughts, the news, the quiet absence of Leelou.
And so I throw myself into conceptualizing a future project.
A coffee-table book about the modern diaspora, as Jane had suggested.
An exploration of living within the microcosm of wealth and whiteness.
There You Are I thought I might call it. Or Intersection.
Shortly after one o’clock, my phone buzzes with a number I do not recognize. I consider letting it go to voicemail, but something about the prefix is familiar, and so I answer.
“Good afternoon, this is Laura Vinecour, head of Upper School at Bancroft. Is this Mrs. Charlot?”
I’ve never gone by Mrs. Charlot, but naturally I say yes.
“I don’t want to alarm you,” she continues, “but we’ve had a serious incident here on campus. Not to worry, both kids are safe and sound. Lucie is still in class. But we are letting a few kids out early today and we were hoping you’d be able to come and pick up Julien.”
The hairs on the back of my neck rise. Despite her calm delivery, I detect the strain beneath.
“Is he in trouble? What happened?”
“No. He’s not in trouble. But we are requesting that you come directly to the office so that we can fill you in on the day’s events. I’ll have Julien here with me.”
“Is he okay?”
“He’s okay. He’s a little shook up, but he’ll be okay. I’m afraid I can’t explain more over the phone, it’s school policy in situations like this. Be certain to give the guard your name at the gate, they’re holding a spot for you in front of the main building.”
My anxiety begins to mount. Situations like what exactly?
And a spot in front of the main building?
Not the car-pool lane. Not the general parking lot.
Not even in the spots they auctioned off for three thousand dollars a pop at the annual fundraiser.
What could have possibly happened to warrant such singular treatment?
My mind races as I gather my things. I try to reach Julien, and his phone goes straight to voicemail. I text Fran, but he is on a flight home from New York, and not likely to respond. And so I spend the twenty-six-minute ride to Brentwood torturing myself, imagining possible scenarios.
By the time I arrive at the campus, I am sweating, my breathing is off, and I have to rely on Anouk’s mindfulness exercises to talk myself down. Bangles on my wrist. Feet in my shoes.
In the moment that I give my name to the security guard, it hits me. The idea that Anouk’s exercises must have come from Lorry. I want to vomit.
I park in front of the main building, as directed, noting two police cars just off to the side, an assault to my already frazzled nerves.
Inside, there are a handful of administrators clustered in the lobby, speaking in hushed voices.
The receptionist’s face is blotchy. She’s been crying.
And yet she manages to find a smile for me, and an ID badge, before leading me to Laura Vinecour’s office.
The head of Upper School is waiting for me. Alone. A Waspish mid-fifties woman in a gray pantsuit and a pussybow blouse. I have seen her at a handful of school events, but we’ve never exchanged more than pleasantries.
“Thank you for coming, Mrs. Charlot,” she says, rising.
Again, I am too agitated to correct her. “What’s going on? Why are the police here? Where’s Julien?”
She pauses. Sits. Gestures for me to do the same. I watch as she clasps her hands on her oak desk. A Diptyque candle burns on the shelf behind her. Notes of fig fill the air.
“One of our students ODed this morning on campus.”
It hits like a blow to the skull.
“Oh my God. Julien?”
“It wasn’t Julien. Julien is fine. And we think the student is going to be okay. Julien is the one who found them.”
“Oh my God,” I repeat, my tongue heavy in my mouth. “Where is he?”
“He’s a little traumatized. But he acted quickly and responsibly and for that the other student’s parents and all of us at the school are incredibly grateful.”
“Was it a friend?”
“Because of our privacy policy and the fact that the student is a minor, we are using the utmost discretion in our handling of this matter. We hope that you understand and will do the same.” She delivers it as if she is reading from a handbook.
I nod. “Where is he? Can I see him?”
“He’s with Jonas Fitzroy, our Upper School counselor. They’re on their way down now.”
She no sooner says it than there’s a knock on the door, and there in the threshold is my son and the ginger-haired facilitator from the council on race.
I place him immediately, but my attention’s on Julien.
His face drawn. His eyes bleary. He looks at once older and younger than his fifteen years.
He looks frayed. Whatever it was he witnessed this morning has changed him. My gentle boy.
The moment I embrace him, I lose it. The smell of his skin, the feel of his curls, the fact that he has suddenly gained so many inches on me.
I hold him and squeeze him, and inhale him as deeply as possible, and cry.
There in the head of the Upper School’s office.
Everything I’d been trying for so long to keep together, rushing out.
“It’s okay, Mom. It’s okay. I’m okay.”
My cheeks are wet, my hands are shaking. And for the millionth time I wonder what we are doing here.
He continues to hug me, tight. Tighter than he has in a very long time. Indifferent to anyone watching. And for well over a minute, he doesn’t let go.
“Let’s go home,” I say. “Let’s go home.”
In the hours that follow, the details are slowly revealed.
Julien’s friend, Topher. In the science-building bathroom.
Cocaine, likely laced. He’d excused himself during a biology lab and when he hadn’t returned by the bell, Julien went to look for him and found him unresponsive in a stall.
Even Lucie had heard some of the details, albeit filtered through school gossip.
I left a message for Topher’s mother, spoke briefly to Cressida, who was on location in Vancouver, made the kids grilled cheese and tomato soup, and insisted we all curl up to watch a screener of La La Land.
By the time Francois arrives home from LAX, we have succumbed to the shell shock, the kids on either side of me, asleep on the couch.
“I’m so sorry, Cile,” he says, soft, leaning over us, kissing my face, touching Julien’s hair. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here.”
“You’re never here,” I say. “You’re never here.”
The Monday after the incident, the kids are off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is a blessing. Not that I would have sent Julien anyway. He is still having nightmares, and not ready to be back on campus.
Without informing Francois, I spend the morning making calls to schools in Paris to check the protocol on matriculating midsemester.
Lucie is still in collège, the French equivalent of middle school.
Placing her would be relatively easy. But Julien will be in troisième, his first year of lycée, and finding an opening at an appropriate school could be challenging.
Regardless, after Friday’s calamity, I am up to the task.
Francois has taken the kids to lunch at Farmshop in the Country Mart when the text comes in from Clément. Since the shoot with Victoire, we’d spoken about half a dozen times. Mostly styling-related. The subject of Anouk had managed to not come up.
Can you talk?
He’d written it in French. No greeting. The urgency of it throws me.
“?a va bien, ma belle?” he answers on the first ring.
“Ouais. Toi?”
“Très bien.”
“What’s going on?”
“So, the other night, I had un petit apéro avec Alain. He has a new muse, by the way. Sophie is no more. This one is younger.”
“They always are,” I say, staring out at the pool from my vantage point in the bedroom. Wondering where this is leading.