“I can’t picture you as a boy,” Camille says, shifting her body to look at him. It’s true, she thinks, as she examines his face. The nose and jaw seem hardened from a permanent mold, as if he had been conceived a full-grown man.
For Halloween, Avis dresses as Sleeping Beauty. The costume is stiff from its packaging, with its crinoline petticoat and rough glittered designs, and she fusses with the white collar that projects from her shoulders. Camille has lost the battle over shoes and allows her to wear the transparent plastic mules that have come with the dress.
“You can wear them if you want, honey, but they won’t be comfortable for trick-or-treating,” Camille reminds her.
“Yes, they will,” Avis says, clicking over the bare floor. She turns and looks at Camille, her hair limp over her shoulders, un-princess-like. The teacher reported that she pushed another little girl this morning, just for sitting too close. The reproach in the teacher’s eyes, as she said this, had heated Camille’s blood.
“You dress up, too, Mommy.”
“No, no,” Camille says with forced sweetness, “I want to make sure you get all the candy.”
“Please dress up!”
She is already exhausted. Being alone with her daughter has been draining lately, and it is only out of obligation that she has agreed to circle the neighborhood tonight at a toddler’s pace. This is one of the times when being a mother feels like a form of slavery, this constant servitude to a tyrant’s whims. Nothing can come fast enough for her daughter, nothing is enough.
“How about we watch a movie together before we go?” Camille offers. “What would you like to see?”
Avis chooses a DVD about Sleeping Beauty, or Beauty and the Beast, or whatever Beauty, and sinks to the rug as if tranquilized. On the screen, a golden-haired girl sits down at a spinning wheel and emits a perfect drop of ruby blood. Strangely, watching the horror dawn on the animated girl’s face, Camille feels a sting of sympathy. It was just a simple, wrong motion that cannot be reversed. Before the creature understands the consequences, claws of sleep pull her under.
How smoothly Nick had slipped out of the yoke. Now, she supposes, he’ll trap this new woman into it, who has no idea how thoroughly a strong woman can be bent and broken. Or maybe she does know. Maybe she has already made arrangements for exhaustive child care. Maybe Victoria is smarter than Camille will ever be.
“Are we going to the parade now?” Avis asks when the movie ends.
Camille looks at her daughter. She has forgotten the town parade. The tantrum comes immediately, subdued by an impulsive offer to have dinner at Gulliver’s.
At the restaurant, Camille allows Avis to order whatever she wants. This, of course, is French fries and ice cream. Camille splurges on a fifteen-dollar grilled chicken salad for herself, in hopes of losing five pounds before Paris. The restaurant is full and loud. It was good, she tells herself, to take Avis out. It is something they should do more often. Perhaps Camille has failed her daughter in not orchestrating more contact with the world, not arranging the usual playdates or swim classes or story hours. She watches Avis across the table, bobbing for ice cubes in her water glass, and concedes that it would be nice for her to have some little friends of her own, little princes and princesses to accompany trick-or-treating. But not now. It makes more sense to start over in France. She hasn’t told Avis about the plan, but perhaps she will tonight. This might be just the time for it.
As they are waiting for their food, a large family comes into the restaurant, all costumed in some kind of Arabic dress. Camille smiles wryly. This kind of team costume is perfect, so typical, just the kind of thing that people here think is cute. The mother of the clan—Jesus, how many kids are there, six?—wears a look of proud satisfaction, her eyes scanning the dining room as she steers her herd to their table. This is probably a major outing for her, a highlight of her year. Halloween, Camille thinks, is such an American holiday, so thoroughly geared to a country of frustrated adults desperate to play dress-up.
Her gaze travels over this family and freezes. What she is seeing does not register at first. Her eyes are telling her that her doctor is there, sitting down with this family, wearing some sort of tunic. Her breath stops. It is not unusual, she reminds herself, in times of infatuation, to see a man’s face in all faces. She looks away, and then back. It is him, she is certain. But why is he with these people? Why is he dressed this way? He does not see her as the family settles around a table, and he takes a seat between two adolescent boys.