I’d only just stepped in and was sorting through the mail when I came across the package: a large padded manila envelope, with no return address, postmarked from Texas. I did not, to the best of my knowledge, know anyone in Texas. But that did not stop me from ripping it open and reaching inside. The second I touched it, I recoiled, horrified. I knew, without looking, precisely what it was. And for the second time that day I was shaking and sweating and feeling physically ill. Because there in the package was an enormous dildo. There was a note accompanying it. “Go fuck yourself,” it said, “and leave our boy alone.”
They’d found me. Somehow. They’d tracked me down and discovered where I lived and violated me in such a way that it felt as if they were in my house. I could hear panting as I rushed to put on the alarm and every light, and it took me a moment to realize the panting was mine. All the glass doors facing our cherished view were black and foreboding, and even when I turned on the patio lights I could not be certain someone was not there lurking. And it felt foolish to be so unnerved by what I was certain were teenage girls, but I could not rationalize it away. The fear.
I tried calling him. Over and over. But of course he did not answer. He was onstage in Colombia, drowned by the screams of thirty-five thousand girls. How could I expect him to pick up his phone?
I had the inclination to call Daniel, but then remembered he was against this all along. And the idea that he would leave his twenty-seven-weeks-pregnant wife on a Friday evening to come and check on me, when Isabelle was not even here, was absurd.
And it hit me then, how alone I was.
I called my mom and cried. And she listened to me blubber about being scared and torn, at the same time elated that I’d found someone who had taken the time to know me, and all the little things that made me so very happy. And how I did not want to let him go. And for the first time in as long as I could remember, it seemed to me she did not judge.
“C’est ?a, l’amour, Solène. Ce n’est pas toujours parfait. Ni jamais exactement comme tu le souhaites. Mais, quand ?a te tombe dessus, ?a ne se contr?le pas.”
Love, she said, was not always perfect, and not exactly how you expected it to be. But when it descended upon you, there was no controlling it.
*
Hayes called in the middle of the night. The show had gone well, he said, but he was alarmed by my numerous messages.
“What happened?” His voice was hoarse, froggy. It was almost two their time. In the morning they were flying to Peru.
I told him everything.
“Oh, Sol,” he said when I was done relaying the extent of the day’s lunacy. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s harassment, Hayes. I’m being sexually harassed … And I know it’s probably harmless young girls, but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels threatening. It feels real.”
He was quiet for a moment, and then: “What kind of security do you have there? At home?”
“I have an alarm system.”
“Do you have cameras?”
That seemed extreme. “No.”
“You need cameras.”
“Hayes, this is crazy. They’re girls. I don’t need cameras.”
“You need cameras. I’ll pay for them. I’ll have Rana ring you in the morning and she’ll get it all sorted.”
“Hayes…”
“You should have cameras, Solène. Why didn’t your ex-husband put in cameras? You’re a beautiful woman and a thirteen-year-old girl living alone in the hills. You should have cameras.”
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you, too. Get some sleep. I’ll call you when we get to Lima.”
*
In the morning, when I picked up Isabelle from Rose’s, she was not her usual chipper self. I expected tales of horror movies and late-night girl talk, but on the car ride home, she was solemn. It was becoming more and more customary.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. We were winding west on Sunset, approaching the 405. Isabelle was gazing out the passenger window, her face blank.
For a while she did not speak, and then, without diverting her attention, she said, “I don’t like people talking about you.”
“Are people talking about me?”
She nodded, quiet.
“Are your friends talking about me?”
She didn’t answer.
“I’m okay with people talking about me, Izz. People talk. That’s what they do. And we live in a world, a city, obsessed with celebrity … and people talk. And much of what they say is not true. So we just ignore it, okay? I don’t care what they say, because I know who I am. You know who I am. And we don’t let them define who we are for us.”
I caught her out of the side of my eye, wiping a tear that had fallen on her cheek, her gaze still fixed out the window.
“Hey.” I reached for her, our fingers interlocking. “I’m okay. We’re okay. We’re going to be okay.”
If I said it enough, perhaps I would actually believe it.
*
She spent the afternoon in her bedroom reading. And the few times I checked on her she seemed so melancholy it hurt my heart. But I did not press her, because talking about it seemed only to upset her more. So I left her alone.
And then I went against Hayes’s advice and all the rules I’d laid down for my daughter and myself and I got online and searched my own name. Because I wanted to know. What I was up against, what they were saying, what others were consuming without my knowledge. I wanted to know the worst of it.
There was much to behold. Tabloid gossip and myriad blog posts and speculation. How we had gotten together, how long it had been going on, how serious it was, how many years there were between us. Daily Mail and Perez Hilton and TMZ. Fake Twitter and Instagram accounts with variations of my name spewing lies and filth. Fan-run websites and Tumblr pages with cruel memes. The one that would stay with me longest was “Solène Marchand: Mother, Fucker.” And photos. Far beyond the boat excursion in Anguilla and shots of us leaving the Edison Ballroom, we’d been caught a dozen-odd times. Outside of the Ace Hotel, the SLS, LAX, Bestia, Whole Foods, Nobu—places I did not even recall seeing photographers. And it had been going on for months. There I was: boarding the boat in Saint-Tropez, exiting the Chateau Marmont with him in my car, leaving the London, standing in the taxi line outside of the Grand Palais, waiting by the valet in Miami, returning from my run in Central Park. All those moments when I assumed I was still anonymous, invisible—captured.
And suffice it to say, the things they said—the fans especially—were not kind. Biting, caustic, insulting, offensive. Sexist, ageist, awful. I had to wonder which of these things Isabelle’s friends were repeating to her. And how long she could attempt to ignore it. Because, I gathered, she could only internalize it for so long before it destroyed her.
And I realized then that part of the problem with Hayes’s “no comments on his personal life” policy was that he would not defend my virtue. He had the luxury of living in his cocoon because the fandom would always protect him. They worshipped him. They adored him. There is no telling what they would do for him. And in the most extreme cases, I feared what that meant for me, and my family.
*