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. Jér?me 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.
“Is he an idiot?”
“No, Mom. Give me some credit. He’s smart. He’s educated and charming … I think you would like him actually. He’s British. He comes from a good family. He’s kind…”
“So what is the problem then?”
I hesitated for a moment. “Il a vingt ans.”
“Vingt ans?”
I don’t know why I thought telling her his age in French would lessen the blow. Evidently, I was mistaken.
“Vingt ans?!” she repeated. “Oh, Solène … Ce que tu es dr?le!”
It was not the response I had been expecting. I humored her? Well, I suppose it was better than disappointing her, disgusting her, disgracing her. All of which she had let me know, in no uncertain terms, that I had done at some point or another. Maybe, in her old age, she was softening.
She was quiet for a moment, stopping to gaze into the window at Longchamp. And then when she resumed walking, she turned to me and said, “Well, this is just sex, right?”
I looked at her, speechless, although I should not have been. This was my mother after all. She was nothing if not blunt.
“You cannot fall in love with him,” she continued. A warning. “Solène? You cannot…”
I said nothing.
Her face fell. “You have already fallen in love with him. Dis-donc!” She shook her head.
Now she was disappointed.
To my mother, falling in love was a bad thing. Not because I could get hurt, but because, to her, I was giving up my power. What a bizarre notion that was. That I could not completely open my heart and still be strong. That I was no longer in control of the relationship if I wasn’t in control of my feelings. And as if any of that actually mattered.
“Vingt ans,” she repeated, sighing. We were passing the Church of the Covenant as we neared Berkeley Street. “Eh bien … Well, maybe you are more French than I thought.”
And then I saw it, at the right corner of her mouth … the hint of a smile.
*
Anguilla was a magical place. A tiny slip of an island in the Lesser Antilles. Sleepy, subtle, even in its peak season. Hayes—or, more accurately, his assistant, Rana—had found us a secluded villa on the south shore with breathtaking views of Saint-Martin. Limestone, teak, exquisitely appointed. We had staff, we had security, and we had four bedrooms and seven days to ourselves.
“Do you like it?” he said. We were in the great room with its retractable glass doors opening to the terrace, the infinity pool, and a majestic panorama of the Caribbean.
“It’ll do.”
He smiled, squeezing me from behind. “Are you happy?”
“I am very happy.”
We stood like that for some time, his body pressed up against mine, his nose buried in my hair, soaking in the moment, the tropical breeze, the seascape, serenity.
“Come,” he said eventually. “Let’s see the rest of the place.”
We wandered through the various wings of the villa to see the additional bedrooms and their en suite baths, each with its own remarkable view. Outdoor showers and bathtubs perched on balconies, and Hayes took it in with the eagerness of a child.
“I assume we’re going to christen these all. Is that the plan?”
He laughed, nodding. “You know me far too well.”
“Well, I didn’t think we were coming here for the golf.”
When we entered the third bedroom, with its cool stone floors and its walls of glass, I noticed, set up along the south wall, an easel and, accompanying it, pencils, paper, a pack of newly purchased Holbein watercolors, and Kolinsky brushes.
“What is this? Did you see these? Hayes…”
He was standing in the doorway, still. And then I understood. He’d arranged for it.
“The light is incredible here,” he said. “I thought you might want to capture it.”
I turned to him, enveloping him, my heart full.
“You.”
“Me?”
“You like me.”
He paused for a moment, upsetting our usual back-and-forth.
“I love you,” he said. Without qualifiers, without conditions. He allowed it to sit there and wash over me. Warm, like the Caribbean sun.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he said; apparently, I hadn’t. “Just know that I do.”