Cecilia hoped to one day possess that kind of self-assurance. She wondered how confident she would be if she hadn’t spent so much of her youth fielding negative commentary about her appearance. Too chubby, too curvy, too dark. Too exotic to be Black. Too Black to be exotic. She wondered who she would have been if she’d simply been told she was beautiful. She wondered if she would have believed it.
She was not aware of how long she’d been staring, but at some point, Anouk looked up and peered directly at her. As if she’d known she was being watched,intently. She smiled, her wide top lip folding upward. Cecilia felt herself flush. She waved and then awkwardly turned away, busying herself with her gloves.
“Yep,” Marc said, securing a sandbag at the base of the stand. “Something’s always happening.”
That afternoon’s shoot was about movement. It was, Cecilia thought, almost photojournalistic in its execution. Didier weaving in and outand around the models. Cecilia and Marc following with strobes and reflectors, in tow. There was Katrine, leaning over the billiards table, cue stick in hand. Her supple breasts almost, but not quite, spilling out of her dress. And Elliot, hair perfectly unperfect, shirtsleeves rolled, tie loosened, racking the balls. Looking every bit the entitled Oxbridge type. Jaya just off to the side, gazing narcissistically at her own reflection in a compact, reapplying a red lip. Anouk edged up onto the rail of the table, glassy-eyed, disheveled hair. And Bas, still in his suit jacket, pressed up between her legs. His hands on either side of her thighs, his head buried in her neck, her back arched over the table. This, Cecilia thought, would be nothing for Calvin Klein. But for di Varenna, it was pushing the envelope. Still, she surmised, it was art. And if Anouk and the other models had a problem with it, they did not let on.
XXIV.THIS SIDE OF PARADISE.
HAWAII.
AUGUST. 2015.
In August, after two months in the Mojave Desert and two months in Canada,Azimuth Risinggoes on hiatus and François comes home to us. Tense, sleep-deprived, wired. Director mode.
I call it the reentry. The beat it takes for him to fall back into his usual patterns. He alternates between sleeping and exercising incessantly. He barks orders and is mildly antisocial, and in turn I find myself slipping into my old habits. Searching for signs of infidelity. On his face, in his speech, his behavior. I wait for him to slip up and call me by the wrong pet name, or answer his phone too quickly, or not answer it at all. I scrutinize how he greets me, how he makes love, his smile. Anticipating something, anything off. But I can detect nil, and I wonder for how much longer will I be the suspicious wife.
I don’t stop to wonder if I am behaving suspiciously to him.
And then he surprises us all with a two-week trip to Hawaii. “An American vacation,” he calls it. None of us have ever been.
We spend the first few days in Maui at the Four Seasons, which is overrun with Angelenos. Julien and Lucie run into kids they know from Bancroft, ballet, and surf camp, making Wailea feel like a balmier extension of the Westside. Complete with the occasional mislabeling.
“My friends here are all jealous that I tan so quickly,” Lucie informs us during dinner on the second evening. We are seated on thepatio at Duo, one of a handful of restaurants on the property. It is the tail end of sunset. The sky shades of a ripe nectarine.
“Which friends?”
“Daisy from Miss Margaret’s class. And her twin sister, Camellia. They think I’m superlucky to be this color. They’ve been here for five days and are just red,” she adds, a mouth full of huli huli chicken.
Fran and I exchange looks across the table.
“They thought I was Mexican.”
“Mexican?” Julien looks up from his wagyu truffle burger.
“Because I’m kinda brown and have an accent.” She laughs.
“I hope you corrected them and told them you were Black, Luce,” I say, sipping from my margarita.
“Umm…” She lowers her eyes.
“Seriously?” Julien shakes his head. “Ugh.”
Our visit to Maui is followed by a week in Kauai at a new resort, in a detached four-bedroom villa with a private dipping pool that feels like paradise. We rent bikes, we hike, we swim in the sea. We charter a boat to snorkel, we paddleboard, we laugh, and all is well with the world.
And being there, away from Los Angeles and the Westside and labels and expectation, gives me clarity.
“I think I’ve figured out my project,” I say one afternoon when François and I are lolling in our garden hammock while the kids wander the resort grounds, Lucie in search of shaved ice, Julien as chaperone.
I’ve been taking photos of the sky. Each day, at various times. From this same perch. I’ve been playing with depths of field and focus. Each capture atmospheric, ephemeral, fleeting. Perhaps the start of something new.
Beneath me, François drifts off to sleep and returns again, his body occasionally jerking.
We have been like this for the better part of an hour.
“On Beauty?” he asks me, his hand in my hair. His arm cradling my shoulders. Vacation brings out the soft side of my husband. The playful, adoring, dreamy romantic.
“Yes. Originally, I’d visualized it as a series of photos that were inconversation with each other. Or compiled as a short film with commentary. But I don’t think it’s that.”
