“The eleven-year-olds are still doing baby ballet,” she’d reported after her initial assessment in January, with Miss Margaret, the head of the program. “They’re not even close to ready for pointe.”
“Not everyone is on the same schedule, Lu.”
“Not everyone takes it seriously, you mean,” she’d huffed. “Some of them also do soccer. Which is all the wrong muscles.”
“Is Lucie going to audition forThe Nutcracker?” Allie asks menow.The Nutcrackerwas going up in December. We were still in March.
“I really don’t know. I imagine so.”
At that moment the doors swing open, thank God, and a flurry of sweaty, limber preadolescents pour into the waiting area. All buns and Bloch. It is easy to spot “my person.” Curly hair, caramel skin. She is surprised to see me in the crowd, and her eyes light up like the sun.
I bid a brusque farewell to Allie as Lucie and I work our way through the crowd.
“Who were you talking to?” she asks, as we file into the car.
“Mackenzie’s mom.”
“Ugh.” She snorts, fastening her seat belt. She has only recently made the California weight requirement and relishes front-seat sitting, when she can wrangle it away from her brother.
“Oh-kay… I take it she is not a friend of yours?”
She shrugs. “She’s fine. She’s just nosey.”
At that, I laugh. “Well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, then.”
My daughter sighs audibly and rolls her eyes. “Americans.” And in that moment I realize, my apple hasn’t fallen very far either.
I am just getting the feel of what it is to be a Westside mom, in huge part to our assistant, Parisa, a half-Mexican, half-Persian Jewish polyglot who’d lived in four countries before settling in LA to study acting at USC, and who after a decade of auditions and bit parts decided to throw in the towel. “I’m trying to figure out my next chapter,” she’d said to me at our initial interview over cups of tea at the house. “I know the layout of the city, I like working with kids, and I’d like to do something a little less demoralizing than waitress.” Parisa schooled me in the subtle differences of the various Whole Foods. Taught me never to take Sunset westbound between fourPMand sevenPM. And clued me in on the bike shop in Venice that sold a simple but elegant-looking bike for my rides on the beach.
Yet, despite becoming more situated, I’m disconcerted by the fact that I’ve not made any real new friends. Up until now I’ve filled thatvoid with family time and occasional business dinners with François’s reps and/or people from the production. But the night before he leaves to shoot in the Mojave Desert for two months, the impending isolation sets in.
“Do you have toothpaste?”
“Oui.”
“Sunscreen?”
“Oui.”
“Dental floss?”
He stops to look at me, where I am leaning against the doorjamb. We are in the master bath and I am doing something I have never done: hovering while he packs.
“Oui.You know they have pharmacies there, right?”
I nod, saying nothing. But it’s my stillness that he’s reading when he abandons his toiletries on the counter and makes his way across our big American bathroom to envelop me in his arms. His chin resting atop my head.
“You’re going to miss me. Is that what this is?”
“Maybe.”
“Moi aussi.But it’s going to go fast. I promise. I’ll be home in two weekends. And then two weekends after that. And you can come out with the kids any weekend Julien doesn’t have a competition.”
I nod, again. And he pulls back, looking down at me. His eye color muddied in this light. He is just a hair above five eleven, which is tall for the French. I like them tall.
“I love you,” he says.
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
