Chapter XII. The Elephant in the Room.
XII.
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM.
LOS ANGELES.
The house is up on North Tigertail. An eleven-thousand-square-foot monstrosity complete with pool and tennis court and detached guesthouse. I imagine somewhere subterranean there’s a home theater, because those seem to be standard in this area of Brentwood.
I am greeted at the gate by a team of valets dressed in black and white, all women. And it’s not until I step out of my SUV, which I probably should have had washed for this occasion, that I catch their kitschy sign: VALET OF THE DOLLS. Ah, LA.
The woman who checks me in, a youngish blond in a formfitting jumpsuit—the kind that I imagine requires awkward removal in public-bathroom stalls—informs me that Anouk has yet to arrive.
“She’s not here yet,” she says, consulting her iPad.
“But please go in. Make yourself comfortable. Drink, nibble, shop.”
The grandeur of the entrance hall makes me anything but comfortable.
It’s Hollywood Regency redux. Marble floors and a mirrored ceiling, an extravagant arrangement of calla lilies and orchids on the center console, a Cy Twombly on the far wall.
I am welcomed with a flute of Veuve Clicquot and directed through a series of well-appointed rooms where a dozen artisans are selling their wares at individual boutiques.
Handmade jewelry with semiprecious stones, cashmere blankets and throws, exotic-leather clutches, artfully arranged succulents, to name a few.
There’s a catering staff dressed in white button-downs and pressed khakis, offering up trays of lobster bisque and Roquefort crostini with balsamic-roasted grapes.
A far cry from the apéro d?natoire I’m used to in Paris, where low-key meant miniquiches and pigs in a blanket from the frozen-food chain Picard.
Or at most, fatayer and kibbeh catered from a Lebanese restaurant.
All around me are high-gloss mid-thirties to mid-forties women in flowy dresses, with designer booties and handbags, who have no better place to be at eleven AM on a Wednesday than in the home of the wife of some studio head, buying items that they likely don’t need, and taking pride in the idea that 20 percent of the proceeds will go to save the elephants in Africa.
I’m going to need two glasses of champagne to get through this.
“Cecilia!” Anouk finds me in the elegant oval-shaped dining room, with its crystal chandelier and saffron walls. Makes her way over to the corner, kisses both my cheeks. She is wearing that perfume.
I push last night’s dream to the back of my mind.
“I’m sorry I’m late. Have you been here long?
There was a problem with the plane.” She is not self-conscious here.
She’s not particularly loud, but she’s not whispering either.
And whereas in groups like this I often find I want to make myself smaller, to disappear, if possible, Anouk is delightfully comfortable taking up space. As well she should be.
I notice some of the guests recognize her. Or more accurately, recognize her and then pretend they don’t. Quickly averting their eyes before a subtle glance back. The way people do with celebrities.
“Plane?” I ask her, setting down a navy-blue cashmere wrap after eyeing the price. “Did you just get in from somewhere?”
“No,” she says, and then lowers her voice. “We’re buying a new plane and Frederick is driving me insane with the details. He can’t decide on the carpet.
“Just a sparkling water with lime, please.” She smiles at a passing waiter as he offers up a tray of bubbly. “Actually, do you have any cranberry juice? I’d love sparkling water with a splash of cranberry.”
I must be looking at her funny, because the moment the waiter is gone, she says, “What? I can’t day drink. It goes bad quickly.”
“Oh no, I’m not judging,” I say. When what I really want to say is You have a fucking plane?? I wasn’t certain why, but it kind of seemed like the thing one would mention by the third date. Not that these were dates.
“Did you buy anything yet? We already made a big donation, so please don’t feel compelled. Isn’t this house incredible? Kelly Wearstler. C’est sublime. Come. Meet Minnie, our host!” she adds, before I can get a word in.
I follow Anouk into a study with luxurious chinoiserie wallpaper, where a group of women are fawning over teak salad tongs and two-hundred-dollar cheese boards.
They are a tribe here, the women. Like the Palisades ballet moms, they all feel cut from a similar cloth.
Thin, well accessorized, Botoxed. There are more brunettes in this bunch, two or three Asian Americans or Asian mixes (not including me).
And it is not lost on me that the other Asians would likely not claim me as their own.
But the fact that once again there is no one here who looks like me I find peculiar, since this is a fundraiser for an organization benefiting Africa, after all.
“Minnie, I want you to meet Cecilia Chen.” Anouk has ushered me over to a bubbly blond in a sunflower-yellow dress. She is wearing a colossal canary diamond on her ring finger.
I notice diamonds here in a way I never have before. Cuts and carats and clarity. Rings here feel like an announcement of a sort. A way of communicating one’s wealth and power and position in this town. Like titles in the UK. Or Ivy League car decals on the East Coast.
Minnie greets me with a bright smile and an earnest handshake. “Minnie Atherton. Anouk says such lovely things about you.”
“Does she?”
“Brilliant photographer. Equally brilliant husband. Superstylish, and very kind. That last bit you don’t hear often.”
“Ha!” This was all surprising to me. “Thank you for that, Anouk.”
“This entire town is buzzing about the Azimuth Rising trilogy,” Minnie continues. “You must be very proud.”
“I am,” I say. It comes out a moment delayed and somewhat stilted, as I am wondering whether it was she or Anouk who took the time to look up Fran’s dossier.
“Well, we’re all excited to see what he does with that property. I mean, no pressure or anything.” She laughs, tossing back her head. “Anyway, I need to start the program, but we should do lunch sometime. Let’s set that up, Anouk. Yes? Come. Come see Gustav’s presentation on the elephants.”
She summons all fifty or so of us into the maximalist living room—where French doors open onto the patio with views of the pool, the backyard, and the tennis court below—and sashays to the center.
“Ladies, loves, gentlemen, thank you so much for coming out to support the Save the Forest Elephants of Congo Initiative. Four years ago, I visited Africa for the first time and was blown away by its beauty. The land, the animals, the people”—here she clutches her throat for emphasis, her yellow diamond catching the light—“so elegant and regal and proud of their culture. It was profoundly moving. Like my soul belonged there. Since then, I’ve been back half a dozen times.
Botswana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Kenya, such a gem, South Africa.
Oh, and Jen’s fortieth in Morocco! But that’s a whole different story. ”
“What happens in Morocco…!” a woman pipes from the far side of the room.
Minnie laughs and continues. “Anyway, in Botswana I met the extraordinary Gustav, whose organization targets the forest elephants in Central Africa. Which are being poached in larger numbers than those of the savannahs, and so are more endangered. Naturally I told him I’d be honored to throw them a fundraiser.
So, without further ado, Gustav Nelson.”
Gustav appears to be no older than thirty.
And although he is confident and passionate about his work and his elephants, I can’t help but feel slightly unsettled.
Maybe it’s his inorganic mid-Atlantic accent that I assume is covering for something.
Maybe it’s his man bun and beard. Maybe it’s because he keeps referencing Africa’s “natural resources” and I can’t but think of its people.
Or the six-carat ring on our host’s finger … and wonder, what the actual fuck?
My eyes scan the space in search of someone, anyone, who might also see the irony of this situation, but I am the only noticeably Black person in the room.
Including the waitstaff, who are predominantly Latine.
I try to catch Anouk’s eye, but she’s looking deep into her glass of cranberry-splashed sparkling water, and at that moment I know that she will not have advice on how to raise a Black son in this country.
And that maybe Francois was right, and that I am in a bubble, too.
And I can’t help but wonder how I got here.
A middle-class girl from a third-world island.
And that perhaps I had become the elephant in the room.
“Did you know there were forest elephants and savannah elephants?” Anouk says to me, somewhat wryly, after the presentation, when the Brentwood wives have returned to their shopping and their cucumber rounds with smoked salmon and dill.
We’ve found a quiet moment on the back patio taking in the view, the hills stretching in the distance.
“I knew there were African and Indian. And that, I fear, was the full extent of my pachyderm knowledge.”
“I’m impressed that you know the word pachyderm.”
I look over to her then, still clutching her cranberry spritzer.
Her face angled up toward the sun. She is wearing a blue-and-white-striped button-down, cream-colored trousers, the tiniest of ponytails at the nape of her neck.
A welcome dose of sleek amid all those flowy dresses.
I have an unexpected impulse to run my index finger along the line of her jaw.
I wonder how she would respond if I acted on it.
“I also know that baby elephants stay with their mothers longer than any other mammals other than humans, and orangutans, and that they grieve when another one in their pack dies, and they cry real tears.”
She smiles. “You learned that at Yale?”
“YouTube.” I laugh. And then, “Were you googling me?”
“Peut-être.”