We are both quiet for a second, and then, “Oh, Cecilia…”
“For twenty years I’ve kept that inside. For a long time, I even believed it,” I say, remembering Gwendolyn Kenter’s pinched expression that evening under the portico. Her thick, blond bob scraped back off her face. Her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Her quilted down vest and icy-gray eyes.
“When you followed me to France and made me fall for you all over again before breaking me,” I continue, “a third fucking time. Which was my fault, really, because by then I should have known better. But I assume she said something to you in Provence and got under your skin, which kept you from coming back. When I cried myself to sleep for months and held on to hope that somehow, someday you’d return, despite what your mom had said. Despite your idea of wanting a legacy and thinking that what I was doing, assisting a photographer, working in fashion, was not highbrow enough for you. That perhaps it was an embarrassment to your parents and yoursocioeconomicgroup. And I carried that shame, for so long. I hated myself. And the idea that I was a middle-class girl from a third-world island and no amount of Ivy League degrees would change that. That I would have to jumpthrough hoops my entire life just to breathe your air. For so long, Lorry…”
I catch my breath.
His expression is unreadable.
“But you know what? I’m pretty good with who I am,” I say, believing it. “I’m pretty good. Thank you for lunch.”
XLVI.MOURNING. DOVES.
LOS ANGELES.
JANUARY. 2017.
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 markedBOO. 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 AreI thought I might call it. OrIntersection.
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 byMrs. 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?”