“Umm, we’ll see,” I say.
“It’s our first real Halloween in America, Mom. Please.”
“I know, Luce. We’ll see.”
On the Monday following Lucie’sNutcrackeraudition, I scoop her up after school and we make a beeline to the Palisades to see the posted results. Her class won’t start for another thirty minutes, but she insists on arriving early so that she’ll have time to process it ahead.
“Don’t come in with me,” she instructs upon our arrival. “If I get a really good part and I see your face, I’ll cry. And if I don’t get a good part and I see your face, I’ll cry, too. And I don’t want the other girls to think I’m overly emotional.”
“Okay.” I smile. “I see you’ve thought this through.”
“Yes. But wait here and I’ll come back and tell you what I got.”
I do as told, and when she returns to the car a few minutes later, I already know.
She slides into the front seat, the tears forming in her eyes. “I didn’t get it. I didn’t get Clara.”
“Oh, Luce, I’m sorry.”
“I know I did a good audition. I know my audition was good. It was great.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie.”
“They gave it to Mackenzie. And she’s not as good as I am. She’s not even close.”
I wrack my brain. Mackenzie. The blond with the nosey mom who’d mistaken me for the nanny. Figures.
I remain quiet for a moment, not wanting to say the wrong thing. “Miss Margaret must have her reasons for choosing who she cast, Luce.”
“But it’s not fair. I’m the better dancer. IknowI’m the better dancer.”
“Maybe Miss Margaret is looking for something different. Maybe a certain physicality, a specific height, I don’t know. Maybe she thinks you’d really shine in another part.”
“I’m just a featured dancer in the party scene.” The tears were falling.
“A featured dancer. That’s good, right?”
“I don’t even know what that is. It sounds like something she made up.” She wheezes then, struggling to breathe, and I reach across the console to hold her. “I don’t even know that I want to be in it. I don’t want to dance a make-believe role.”
I do not have the heart to tell her that all of it was make-believe.
“I wish we’d never left,” she says, sobbing. “I wish we never moved here. Why do we have to be here? It’s not like we see Papa anyway. Can’t we go back? Can’t we go back to Paris?”
Something inside of me breaks. But in that moment, I’m unable to find the words. And so I continue to hold her until she pulls away.
“Okay,” she says, wiping her face. “Okay. I have to go back in there. I have to be professional.”
“Okay,” I say to her, my twelve-year-old adult. “I love you.”
“I know.”
With the potential for an exhibit at the Hammer looming, I waste no time diving into the interview component ofOn Beauty, starting with my muse. Anouk and I spend a Thursday morning at my new studio, recording audio excerpts to be played over her images.
“Tell me a time when you’ve thought of your beauty as a burden.”
“Ha! When has it not been?” she sighs, leaning back from the microphone.
We’ve set up camp in the small office. A mic, a laptop, headphones.
