Chapter XLVI. Mourning. Doves. #2
“Anyway, he says just before Christmas, he was at L’Avenue and there was a dinner party with a bunch of the people from the Azimuth movie celebrating. Cate Blanchett and Idris Elba and, you know, the sexy British guy from Inception. And Anouk was there.”
My pulse quickens. I almost know what he’s going to say before he says it.
“At the party?”
“Yes. And she was very much flirting with your husband. He says he knows it was your husband because he dropped by the table to say hello and she introduced him by name. I think perhaps she’d forgotten that you’d met Alain.
Or she did not realize that you and I talk from time to time.
But quand-même … I thought you would want to know. ”
I wish I could say I was shocked. I wish I could say I didn’t see it coming.
But I recall that conversation we had on Minnie’s terrace, at the save-the-elephants event.
When she’d confided about the first boy who’d broken her heart, and how she schemed to get revenge. How “dismissing him was delicious.”
Even if her dalliance with Lorry wasn’t triggered by my revelation about Cabo, going after Francois certainly was.
I do not confront my husband immediately upon his return.
He walks in with the kids laughing over a joke Lucie has apparently shared and proffering cookies.
“I know you love these,” he says, placing the white Farmshop bag on the kitchen island. His eyes, shifting to a dazzling blue in the light. “I got you the chocolaty chocolate chunk. Luce, tell Mommy the joke,” he directs, before turning back and winking at me. “You’ve got to hear this one, Cile.”
The interrogation will have to wait.
On Tuesday morning, after I’ve dropped the kids at school, I return home to find him in the media room reviewing a rough edit from Wintertide, the second film. And I light into him.
“What did you do? What did you do with Anouk Ferrand?”
He looks up at me at the entrance from his spot on the sectional, thrown. “What? What are you talking about?”
“In Paris. I know you saw her. What did you do? Why didn’t you tell me?”
He pauses the image on the screen then—Idris and Tamsin, mid-conversation in an alternate timeline—and adjusts his position, defensive.
“Nothing. I didn’t do anything. She joined us for dinner the night before the premiere. She was friends with the head of publicity for Sony. Gloria, I think.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Francois?”
“Because it didn’t stand out to me. It was a big dinner. There were lots of people there. And in between that and London and Rome and all the junkets, I didn’t remember everything to tell you.”
“She was hitting on you.”
“No. Not really, no. Maybe. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t do anything wrong, Cile.”
“You knew she was my good friend. She was my one real friend here, and you didn’t think to mention it?”
“I thought you had a falling-out. I thought that’s why she didn’t come to the Hammer. And you never talked about it, so I thought it was a bad subject. I didn’t want to bring her up.”
I’m quiet for a second, taking him in. He seems small to me, shrunken on the low-profile sofa. His jaw covered with stubble, his hair uncombed. Barefoot and sweatpants. The man with the number-one movie in the world for three weeks and counting.
“You were flirting with her in public, in Paris, and you didn’t think it would get back to me?”
“I wasn’t flirting with her, Cile.”
“Don’t lie to me, Fran. Please don’t lie to me.”
“I wouldn’t lie to you. Nothing happened. She was at dinner. And then a bunch of us went back to the apartment for a drink after, and she came with us.”
“To the apartment? Our apartment?”
“Yes. But it was, like, a big group. I couldn’t disinvite her. I couldn’t tell Gloria to leave her behind.”
“You invited her to our apartment?”
“I didn’t invite her. She just came with the group. It was a lot of people. I wouldn’t lie to you, Cile.”
“Like you wouldn’t lie about élodie??”
He cocks his head then, his expression perplexed, exasperated. Trying to discern where exactly the conversation turned. How we ended up here. Again.
“I told you the truth about élodie.”
“You only waited fifteen months.”
He sighs, sinking farther into the couch.
“Why did you tell me at all, Fran? You knew how much it would hurt me. Why would you tell me at all?”
The question goes unanswered as he reaches to rub the bridge of his nose. His telltale sign of stress.
“You didn’t love her,” I say.
“No.”
“So if you weren’t in love with her, if you had no real intention of walking away from me and the kids, then why did you feel the need to tell me? Other than to relieve yourself of the guilt?”
“Because I was afraid you’d find out from someone else.”
When I don’t respond, he adds, “I didn’t want to hurt you, Cile.”
“You didn’t want to hurt me? You didn’t want to hurt me?? Maybe you should have thought about that before you stuck your dick in your fucking ingenue.”
“Putain.”
“Maybe you should have thought about how it might blow up your entire family.”
“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”
There is a sudden bang on the wall of glass in the hall behind me. I spin around to see a small dove cowering in the courtyard, reeling from its crash. It scrambles, skids. I am not certain it will make it.
“I can’t stay here,” I say then. “I can’t stay in this house.”
“What do you mean you can’t stay?”
“I mean, I’m taking the kids and I’m going back to Paris.
You can finish editing your movies or whatever it is you have to do, but I’m not staying here.
In this country, with the racism and the guns.
And in this self-indulgent town, where ninth graders do cocaine.
And where everyone looks and dresses and thinks the same and there’s no individuality.
I gave it a chance, but it’s killing me.
I don’t want to live in a bubble! I don’t want to be comfortable with the narcissistic bullshit.
And the star-fucking. It’s stifling. I need diversity, I need variety.
I need gray skies and rain sometimes. And I need to get away from a place where even the birds want to kill themselves. ”
He bows his head then, overwhelmed, frustrated, lost. I can only imagine what he is thinking.
This big fat house, this big fat life, and still I am not happy.
This extent of privilege, for which we’d strived for so long, is not enough.
It might make our lives easier, desirable on the surface, but no more meaningful. No more satisfying. No more true.
“What do you want me to tell you, Cile?” he asks, eventually. “You want me to tell you it’s okay, leave, take the kids—that it won’t affect me? Because of course it will. But if you’re that unhappy, then go. I can’t make you stay here if you don’t want to be here. Go.”
He rises then and crosses the room, past me, and into the hallway.
“What are you doing? Where are you going?”
“I’m going to try and save that bird,” he says. “I’m giving it a chance.”
That evening, when Fran is at a dinner with the head of Brad Pitt’s production company, I ask the kids how they feel about returning to France. For a moment, they both look at me in disbelief. Lucie, vaguely confused. And then, Julien baring the slightest hint of a smile.
“Vraiment?”
“Vraiment. Really. Papa will stay behind to finish editing the movies, but we can go.”
“Like when? Like this summer?”
“No, like now. Like this month. I may have to put you in a French school, until spots open up at EIB or EJM,” I say, referencing two of the more competitive bilingual private schools. “But if you think you can handle that, then I’m happy to make it happen.”
“Yes!” Julien fist-pumps the air.
Lucie remains sedate. “Is this because of the drug thing?”
“It’s because of a lot of things, Luce.”
“But what if…?” She trails off, her eyes suddenly watering. “But what if Leelou finds her way home and we’re not here?”
I put down my fork and knife then and reach for her hands across the table. “Oh, Lucie. Leelou’s not coming home, honey. Leelou’s not coming home.”
Julien scoots his chair over and wraps his arm around his sister’s shoulders. A gesture that absolutely melts me. “It’s okay, Lu. It’s going to be okay. And if Leelou does come back, Papa will be here.”
She looks to me then, big amber eyes framed with wet lashes. Her long, untamed curls. “If we go home, do I have to go back to ballet?”
“Do you want to go back to ballet?”
She shrugs, tiny shoulders in an oversized sweatshirt. “I’m still thinking about it.”
“Okay.” I smile. “You do that. It’s your choice.”