Distressed Assets #11
Lili sinks back into her chair, clutching her phone to her chest.
Distant, the sounds of children running through the grass; the thud of her heart.
There’s a breath in; a breath out.
Scenery rushes by the windows. Fast train, quiet seats. Lili stares at the wash of colors, forehead resting against the glass.
Across from her, James sits down. He hands her a cup of coffee, disposable Styrofoam.
“Here,” he says. “Sorry, it’s just black. There wasn’t anything but normal milk.”
“Thanks,” Lili murmurs. Her knees are drawn into her chest. She lets the hot drink balance against her legs.
“Ami’s still getting food, I think they have some fruit or something, not a ton of vegan options—I should have brought some
things for the train, we’ve got a few more hours still—”
She shakes her head. “Don’t worry, really, I’m not hungry.”
“Li—”
“Jamie, please,” she whispers. “I’m tired, let’s just—not.”
He watches her for a moment more, considering, as if about to say something. Unsure, taken aback by this regression. He seems
almost helpless, so unlike him.
Lili looks away, back to the window.
Amina had already tried speaking with her. That morning, she’d caught Lili coming back to the apartment from the gardens.
She was downstairs at the pharmacy, picking up extra sunscreen and dressed for her gallery meeting. She waved at Lili through
the glass, beckoning her inside. Hey. Amina had grinned. Europeans have crazy good sunscreen, thought I’d stock up, was getting you some, too—
I’m covered, Lili replied, glancing over the shelves of foreign brands, plastic packaging. Cold voice, weak air-conditioning.
Amina glanced at her sharp, with a frown of confusion. You okay?
She nodded. I’ve got to pack, I’ll see you in a bit.
Li, wait, wait—did something happen? Last night, you seemed—
See you upstairs, Lili said, leaving Amina in the pharmacy. Good luck with your meeting.
Now, the whoosh of the train car door, surge of outside noise, as a group of French teenagers walk into the carriage. Babble
of French, green bottles of Badoit and plastic-wrapped sandwiches from the bar car, their hands grasping headrests for balance
as they find their seats.
Lili stares out the window.
The loneliness crowds in so much stronger, tenser, tighter.
They get a rental car at the train station. It has a manual transmission. James and Amina argue over who drives, while Lili
lets the sun rest on her face.
Amina knows the area well, spent childhood summers coming here.
As she drives, she points out hilltop villages.
The windows are rolled down, and a warm wind drifts through the car.
All around them, sun gloss and softness.
Lush pines, terra-cotta rooftops, bright sun of the French Riviera, the smell of orange blossoms.
The house is beautiful. The undergrowth outside the iron gate buzzes with insects; the long driveway crunches under the car
tires as they drive past a row of cypress trees leading to the huge ocher villa. It’s soothingly quiet, with the thrum of
cicadas, laden fig trees. Nearby, the sea.
As her friends unpack, Lili wanders through the house. It is cool, even in the high heat. The sound of unseen water cascades,
birds chirping. An open cookbook, peaches in the kitchen. Windows look out on the backyard, the pool, and the glimmering expanse
of the sea. Bougainvillea climbs over the trellis, shading the dining terrace, heavy with fragrance and the buzz of bees.
Lili heads outside. She sits by the pool, finds her cigarettes.
As she settles, the wind off the Mediterranean knocks together the heads of the flowers nearby: sun-warmed peonies, the scent
of fully blossomed honeysuckle.
It’s extravagant, all of it—beyond extravagant, but she doesn’t have the energy to protest it; doesn’t really feel like a
person.
Behind her, in the house, she hears the footsteps and voices of her friends.
Lili sits by the pool—dusk arriving, an immense sky over the sea—and tries, again, to breathe. Her fingers, holding her cigarette,
are clumsy.
This is it, now.
This is how we learn to breathe underwater.
This is how we learn to live, without.
Leo season is over.
When she comes back inside, James has started cooking dinner. Onions sizzle in the pan, fat heirloom tomatoes, a block of
cheese in wax paper. Amina is chopping tarragon on the wooden butcher block.
“I was thinking we could take the boat out tomorrow,” James says, stirring risotto. “I can manage most of the sailing if you
two just help with some of the ropes.”
Amina hums in agreement. “Let’s do that. We can head out early, spend the day. Li, I packed a couple of your swimsuits, I wasn’t sure which one you’d want.”
“You guys can go without me,” Lili says.
James looks at her, sharply. Amina just sighs.
“We told you, we’d like to spend time with you,” she says.
Lili shakes her head. “You don’t have to do that, Ami—the pretending.”
“We’re not pretending—”
“You didn’t come to France to lug me around,” Lili insists. “You didn’t plan this holiday to have me crash. I’m totally fine,
I can take care of myself—you’ve done enough, both of you. I don’t want to ruin your entire vacation.”
“You’re not ruining anything—we want to hang out with you, we want to talk to you—”
“Amina, please,” Lili begs, the keenness of her voice rising above the pitch of her friend’s words. “Please, just—I just . . .”
Silence hovers for a few uncomfortable beats. She feels a rush of embarrassment, and shame: how they keep trying to take care
of her, how they’ve insisted on paying for all of this—the family villa, the food—and she doesn’t know how not to ruin it:
with her presence, with her absence.
Another sigh falls heavy. Almost exasperated, but mostly sad. Lili doesn’t look at them.
“You’re coming with us,” Amina insists. Her knife starts chopping through the herbs again, hard. “To the boat, tomorrow.”
Lili closes her eyes for a moment, suddenly resoundingly exhausted, again. “Okay,” she whispers.
She wants to be more: She wants to make Amina grin, and James laugh; she wants her friends to feel happiness around her, rather
than this frustrated helplessness; she wants to feel like she makes their days brighter by being with them, rather than ruining
them; she wants to trust that she can show them the wound of herself, and they’d want her still. She wants that so badly,
and Amina and Jamie are so close—so close—the rustle of her friend’s hair as she determinedly chops herbs, Jamie’s quick glance at them while he stirs the risotto,
and Lili wants to reach for them, trying to find comfort, but—
Her friends feel like they’re nowhere near her, and she’s miles and miles away.
As soon as the bedroom door closes behind her, she starts sobbing. These ragged, full-body cracks in her chest that she tries
to suppress, the impact from the park, that hollow ringing, the disconnect of the call—just that morning, just that morning.
She finds the ground, pressing her forehead against her knees, trying to hold herself together. It’s a huge house, but she
tries to hold her gasps in, to stay quiet as she cries.
There is nothing in her hands; there is nothing in her hands.
A breath in, a breath out: what she will keep doing, again and again, without him.
She doesn’t sleep.
Through the night, she lies awake. She leans against the ornate metal headboard, white flaked with age, with the sheets tangled
around her. In the dark, alone, her heart feels like a small, scared animal. In her hands, with blankets around her ankles,
the night’s heavy heat pressing in through the open windows, she attempts to calm it, to soothe it. In her insufficient palms,
with murmurs, words without actual comfort.
Because what can she say?
That she deserves this—to be blocked out of his life, carved out; exactly what she had done to him—that she must live with
this? That her actions have consequences, and terrible things return terrible things?
She tries to breathe around the shape of things she wants, things she’s done.
Because the wants she has—him, only him, with her here, in this bed, this night, holding her, maybe also unable to sleep,
dark blue night—they will become unspeakable, each day.
She tries to adjust under the weight of it: her own actions. The sobs, again, that shake her, the bleariness of exhaustion,
how tired she is; and she deserves it, being alone with this sadness. She deserves it, even as she wishes—even as she wants
to scream—that deserving doesn’t mean wanting.
She wants to hold herself. She wants to throw herself away.
Outside, the sky is lightening, and there are birds. Morning.
They start spending days on the water. Waking up early, they head down to the docks in Cassis, the little seaside town. Radiant
blue winks under her feet, stepping onto the boat. Immediate happiness comes over James as he lets loose the mooring lines
and starts up the motor to ease them out of the harbor.
Exploring the calanques along the coast, with the shine of turquoise waves, incredible scale of limestone cliffs, dazzling
sky above. They stop in coves and beaches. Amina points out the red rock of the Massif de l’Esterel, the Corniche roads nestled
into cliffsides, the names of these different villages dotted along the coast.
Across this sea, another world: Lebanon, a part of her family unreachable to her. Her mother had never been to France, the
home of one of her first languages. Foreign tongue, mother tongue: distant land, countries on the shared Mediterranean. Lili
turns away.
As they sail, Lili watches how James moves around the boat, adapting to the sway of balance, intuition in how he knows when
to accommodate for the wind, taking moments to enjoy the sun on his face. Sensing her interest—even if it’s just a desire
for distraction—he shows her how to tie knots and narrates what he’s doing as he moves around the boat. Sunbathing on the
bow, Amina dozes with a book.
“There’s Saint-Tropez,” James calls out, pointing at the coast. “Fancy lunch?”
And it’s this town, and then another one; and so, the days go.