Chapter XLVI. Mourning. Doves. #3
On Thursday afternoon, a curious envelope arrives for me in the mail.
There is no stamp. No return address. Just my first and last name handwritten in green ink.
I open it before I even get inside. And midway up the path, I freeze.
There is no letter within, no note. But instead, a familiar black-and-white photograph.
A man’s hand wedged between a pair of female thighs.
It takes a moment. And then it registers.
I flip it over. And written on the back in a distinctive delicate cursive are the words HIKE UP YOUR SKIRT A LITTLE MORE.
I’m shaking by the time I get inside the house. My temples throbbing, my breaths quick and shallow. In my frenzied state, I locate Fran in the kitchen, where he is standing at the island, reading Variety on his iPad and sipping an espresso.
“What is this??” I yell, waving the photo in his face. “What is this??? How did she get this???”
He stills my shaking hand long enough to scrutinize the image.
“She who? I don’t know what you’re talking about. What is this?” It takes a half second, the realization spreading across his face. “Where did you get this?”
“In the mail. Anouk. She left it in the fucking mailbox.”
“How would she have this?”
“You tell me. It was in our bedroom closet. In Paris. In the box behind your sneakers.”
He looks at me, dumbfounded.
“What the fuck was she doing in our bedroom, Francois??”
“I don’t know, Cile. I don’t know.”
“What did you do with her?”
“Putain! I didn’t do anything. Je te jure! I didn’t touch her. I told you a bunch of them came to the house after dinner for un petit digestif. And she was there. I told you this. But I didn’t touch her.”
“She was in our bedroom??”
“We were all in the salon, Cile. Maybe she stepped out to go to the bathroom. I don’t know. I don’t remember. I wasn’t watching her the entire time. But I promise you I didn’t take her in there. I’m not stupid, you know.”
For a moment, I watch him. His eyes shifting from blue to brown and back again. And I genuinely don’t know whether to believe him.
“This is how it’s going to continue, isn’t it?” I say, eventually. “This is how it’s always going to be. I can’t trust you. I may never be able to trust you again. I don’t want to live like this, Fran. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. I don’t want to doubt you.”
“Then don’t,” he says, grabbing my wrists. His eyes, his face, his soul imploring. “Don’t. I’m here, Cile. I’m here. I love you. I fucked up, I know. And I’m sorry. But I’m here. J’suis là. Je suis là.”
For a moment, I don’t say anything. He is crying. For the first time in as long as I can remember. And something inside of me breaks.
“I’m sorry you don’t like LA. I’m sorry America isn’t all the things it promised to be.
But all of this … everything … none of it matters if I don’t have you and the kids.
Go to Paris if you have to go to Paris. If you feel stifled here.
Go. Make your art. Live your life. I’m going to finish these movies,” he says.
“And then I’m coming home. I promise you; I’m coming home. ”
I don’t know what it is about the way he’s said it, but I desperately want to believe him. And I begin to think that whatever detours we have taken these past few years—whatever meandering journeys through art and muses and infidelities—maybe all along we’ve been heading toward the same place.
In the days following, as I pack and make arrangements and clean out my studio, I unearth all my photos of Anouk.
The shoot in her pool house, the snapshots from Sri Lanka, from Napa, from Deep Cove.
And while each brings back a specific memory, my response to them is peculiar.
Not a shattering devastation, like revisiting the Hamptons photos I’d taken of Lorry, so much as a quiet melancholy.
The loss of a friendship. Someone who was once dear to me who betrayed me and moved on.
And really, I have no reason to continue to wallow.
She was not my entire world. Not the way Lorry had been at one time.
Not like Fran, or the kids. What we’d shared, no matter how immediate and intense, pales in comparison to what I have at home.
And I realize then, that with élodie, perhaps Fran felt the same.
I don’t hear from her again before we leave.
On one unseasonably warm evening, I find myself in her neighborhood.
My car leading me to places I wasn’t certain I wanted to go.
And for a long time, I sit there, on the other side of the meridian, staring at the tall hedges and the imposing security gate.
Knowing what exquisite enigmas lay beyond.
The discreet butler, the Ironman husband, the audacious son.
And Anouk. Beautiful Anouk. And as much as I want to hate her, as much as I want to label her as vengeful and malevolent, I cannot.
Because I have come to know her and her eccentricities far too intimately.
Because part of me understands that her behavior was a response to a lifetime of being admired, objectified, consumed.
Entrenched in her bubble. And because part of me still sees her as the girl I left behind, on the beach.
It is time for me to let go.