“Us. You.”
It took me a moment to register what I was seeing. A group of people in conversation from a distance. A vast well-lit space. And then it came together. The lobby of the Mandarin Oriental. The morning Simon took the girls to the Apple Store. Hayes and I had our backs to the camera. The others were facing us, their features coming in and out of focus. I couldn’t make out any of our conversation, but it did not matter. The girls doing the recording had included a precise play-by-play.
“Is his hand on her ass? Holy shit, his hand is on her ass. Are you getting this? Shhh, I’m getting it. His hand is totally on her ass. Shhh. Did she just say ‘Mom’? Did she call her ‘Mom’? Oh my God, is that her daughter? No way! Holy fuck, that’s herdaughter.Duuuude, your mom is fucking Hayes Campbell.Whoa. Sucksto be her. Um, she just got into an elevator with Simon, I don’t think she’s hurting right now. But still, imagine your mom is fucking Hayes Campbell. That’s like the fanfic that writes itself. She probably gets to call him ‘Daddy.’ ‘Hey, Daddy.’ ‘Hiiiiii, Daddy.’ ‘I have an itch that needs scratching, Daddy.’ ‘Daddy, why don’t you—’”
“Turn it off. Turn it off turn it off turn it off!” I slammed the laptop shut so forcefully, Isabelle’s canister of markers flew off the desk. “Ignore it, Izz. Ignore it. No one’s looking at that.”
“Really?” She looked up at me, her eyes welling. “Because apparently it already has thirty-four thousand views.”
I was shaking. “Please don’t watch that. Promise me you will not watch that.”
“It’s out there, Mom.”
“It’s out there, but we don’t have to let it in here. You have to promise me, Izz.” I stooped to her level, taking her hands in mine. “You have to promise me that you will not search for those things. You will not go looking for those things. You will not Google. Because it’s only going to hurt you. It’s only going to hurtus. Those people don’t know us. They don’t know you. They don’t know me. They don’t know Hayes. They’re going to say some really hurtful things and we just have to ignore it. Okay?”
She was crying now. The tears rushing. Her pain, palpable.
“Promise me, Izz. Please. Promise me.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Okay.”
But I knew it in my heart: there was no ignoring this.
Isabelle and I spent Christmas with my parents in Cambridge. Technically it was not my year to have her, but since Daniel was taking her to Maui for the second half of the holiday, he conceded Christmas. Coparenting was a complicated thing.
My mother and father fawned over Isabelle. They adored her and encouraged her in a way that I had not felt they’d done for me.She was free to have her flaws, to be a little too loud, a little too dramatic, a little too American. And I think they found her amusing. Like a piece of Pop Art in a collection of Realists. They’d been much less forgiving with their own daughter.
In my parents’ house there were reminders of my failures. There, in the library, amidst my father’s numerous honors and awards and my mother’s whimsical sketches. My wedding invitation, which my mother had mounted and encased in a shadow box frame with hydrangea petals from my bouquet. “Professor and Mrs. Jérôme Marchand request the honour of your presence at the wedding of their daughter Solène Marie to Mr. Daniel Prentice Ford…” They’d had them printed in French as well. There was my acceptance letter from Harvard. That not so much a failure as a reminder of my father’s disappointment. And the numerous photos of me as a would-be ballerina.
For all these reasons I’d delayed telling them about Hayes. Because I knew there would be judgment. But now that it was out there in the public, I could no longer put it off.
“I’m going to tell you something, but you have to promise you’ll keep your criticisms to yourself.”
It was twilight, two days before Christmas, and my mother and I were strolling on Newbury Street, awash in its holiday glow. It had been raining on and off, with temperatures in the forties. The chill penetrating my coat, cutting to my bones. I’d lost five pounds since New York. It was not intentional.
“Eh, pffft,” my mother said, making that typically French gesture of disdain. “C’est parfois difficile.”
“It’s not difficult, Mom. Just try it.”
“Okay,alors.Vas-y.What is it?”
“I’m seeing this guy. He’s in a band.” I’d begun to make a concerted effort to no longer refer to Hayes as a “boy.” If not for his dignity, then for mine.
“A band?” she repeated. “Does he do drugs? Does he have tattoos?”
“No.” I smiled. “No drugs. No tattoos.”
“Is he poor?”
“No.” The idea was amusing to me, Hayes struggling. “It’s a fairly successful band. The premiere Isabelle has been talking about was for his group.”
“C’est quoi, leur nom?”
“August Moon.”
She shook her head. “Never ’eard of them.”
I laughed, my breath visible in the air. A car drove by us then, honking its horn. It struck me as a nostalgic sound, gridlock, wheels rolling over cold wet pavement. Winter in the city.
