“Okay,” I say. “We don’t have to go. Nothing’s wrong with taking a day off.”
“No, I don’t want to go… ever.”
“What do you mean, Luce?Nutcrackerauditions are this Saturday. We thought you had a good chance of getting the Clara role this year, remember?”
“I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to audition. I don’t want to do ballet anymore, Mom.”
She says the words through sobs, and I am crushed. For as long asshe’d been able to walk, all Lucie wanted to do was ballet. Nothing else completely defined her in the way that dance did. For her to make such a pivot was almost unfathomable.
I shift the car into park. Kill the engine. “What happened, hon? What’s wrong? Is it because of Leelou?”
“No. I just don’t want to do it. Please don’t make me go.”
“But why the change of heart?”
She shrugs, palming her wet lashes. “I don’t know, I just… I know you love that I do this, and I don’t want to disappoint you, Mommy, but I just don’t want to do it anymore. I just don’t.”
“Oh, Luce. Oh, little Ladybug.”
Her words break me. I lean over the console to hold her, to inhale her, to absorb all her sorrow and pain.
“Please don’t worry about disappointing me. You can absolutely take a break. It’s not the end of the world. Ballet isn’t going anywhere. You can take a few months off and reassess in the winter.”
“No,” she says. “I don’t want to reassess. I’m not going back.”
She says it so definitively, I feel it in my gut. The grief. The loss. The end of something beautiful.
In the weeks following, she does not talk about it. And I do not want to push, for fear of her hardening her position, making a return less likely. We continue to put up signs for Leelou. We kick off a new school year. She attends the first of several bar and bat mitzvahs. But for the time being, ballet remains in the past.
XXXVII.SECRETS AND LIES.MIXED MEDIA.
VANCOUVER.
SEPTEMBER. 2016.
September in LA is like August in LA. Only hotter. With balmy Santa Ana winds and more threats of wildfires. That I am beginning to recognize the seasons here surprises me.
When I am not carting around the kids, I fill my days with work. WithOn Beautyscheduled to open at the Hammer in mid-November, I’m in crunch time. Spending almost all my non-Mom time at the studio. Scheduling the last of my photo sessions with subjects in New York, prepping prints, editing film and audio clips, timing the interplay of the two. The work is taxing, and when Anouk suggests we escape the heat for a long weekend in Vancouver, courtesy of their jet, I check that Parisa can take on extra hours, tell François that we want to see the exhibit on Picasso and his muses at the Vancouver Art Gallery before it closes, and leave.
With postproduction almost complete onBefore the Falland Sony thrilled with the final product, Fran has relaxed somewhat. The studio is planning a big winter opening to capitalize on the holiday rush and put them in contention for awards season. And while there is certainly some pressure, mostly he is excited about what’s to come: completing post on the second and third films, fielding offers about future projects, raising his quote. The world is his proverbial oyster.And so, when I tell him I’ll be taking off with Anouk for four days, he barely bats an eye.
She finds us a house on the water in Deep Cove, a small, picturesque bay in North Vancouver, surrounded by fjords and pines and a quaint village. The air is crisp and clean, the people are warm, the water is frigid, and it is perfect. We kayak and paddleboard and hike and eat freshly made donuts in the sun. We read and nap and make love and share long moments of silence and neither of us talks about our husbands. And I marvel at how easy it is to have an affair in the open when you can pass it off as your best friend. Because that is how we must look to outsiders. Two friends on a girls’ trip. Imbibing Picasso, eating ice cream, laughing loudly. It’s almost too easy. Almost.
“I made something for you. It’s small, but I think you’ll like it.”
We were sitting on the terrace overlooking the water just before dusk on Saturday evening, our last night in paradise. We’d polished off most of a bottle of rosé and a cheese plate. Neither of us wanted to go out. Neither of us wanted to cook. And so when Anouk headed inside to search for the list of recommended delivery places and returned with a package wrapped in brown paper, I was surprised.
“Youmademe something? When?”
“A few weeks back. I was just waiting for the right time to give it to you.”
She sits across from me on the lounge, watching as I unwrap the present. I am both giddy and a little buzzed, which is often how I feel in her presence. When I have her undivided attention.
For a moment, I am back in her villa at Querencia Bay, sitting on the wet bar while she tends to my hand, so well executed that there is not even a scar to remind me. And I am kissing her for the first time. The scent of metal, the sound of Bono’s voice lulling about artists being cannibals and poets being thieves:
All kill their inspiration and sing about the grief.
Twenty years later, the words hit differently.
