Adele’s expression showed feigned irritation, but it was evident that she loved him deeply. Their back-and-forth went on for a few minutes and ended in a kiss that I looked away from to give them their privacy. Sid said a pleasant goodbye and went to make a coffee for himself before returning to work.
“I adore that man.” Adele sighed.
“You make a wonderful couple.”
She tried to shrug off my remark, but admitted she felt incredibly fortunate to be with him, and also that he’d been a hard man to win over. That seemed strange, because Adele’s personality was irresistible. She was a good storyteller, and as she walked through the room chatting away, I found myself more and more enchanted with her.
I looked at the photos hanging on the wall, some of which showed a much younger Sid. He was a member of the Mohawk nation, as evidenced by the flag he was waving in one of the snapshots. There was a long history of the Mohawk people fighting for their rights to the land they had tended for time immemorial.
I stopped in front of another black-and-white photo, peeking closely, with the persistent sense that I knew her from somewhere. And then I remembered, and yelped with surprise. It was her! My goodness, that teenager posing with a César Award was her!
My heart was racing as I turned around, and I hoped I wouldn’t faint.
“You’re Adele LaCroix!” I exclaimed, hardly able to speak. “I loved your movies when I was a girl. I loved-loved-loved them! I loved you!”
“Thank you!”
“I saw your first movie when I was nine, and right away you became my favorite actress. I bought every magazine you were ever in.”
“How sweet of you.”
“Jeez, I know I’m acting like a lunatic, but I can’t help it! It’s you!” I shook my hands in the air. “I cried so much in that movie where you became an orphan… It meant so much to me back then.”
“That was my favorite.”
“Mine too! I just admire you so much. I even wrote you a letter. Did you get it? I mean, I’m sure you didn’t. Why would I even think such a thing… You must have gotten millions of them.” Please, God, shut me up. Make my mouth stop moving. “I swear I’m a normal person. It’s just that…it’s you! I’m sorry, I promise I’ll be quiet now.”
Adele burst out laughing.
My legs were shaking. My whole body was. I tried and failed to suppress a nervous giggle. I couldn’t stop looking at her. I was in the same room as my girlhood idol, I was in her house, I’d even had tea with her.
OMG!
She watched me patiently, with a pleasant look on her face, while I grew increasingly embarrassed by my childish response. Taking a deep breath, I tried to act like an adult who wasn’t dying to get her autograph.
“I hope you don’t mind the question, but why did you stop making movies? You utterly disappeared.”
She sat on a stool and seemed to size me up, as if not sure whether it was worth it to respond. Finally, she motioned for me to sit down beside her. I almost ran over as she began: “I just lost interest in it. I mean, it’s more complicated than that. My mother was an actress, my father was a director, and everyone just took it for granted that I’d follow in their footsteps, but with time, it stopped making me happy and turned into something almost mechanical, thoughtless. I was acting, but there was no passion in it, you know? So I quit. This wasn’t the life I wanted; it was the one the people around me wanted for me. And that wasn’t fair.”
“Did your friends and family support you?”
“Not at first. They thought the glamour life was all there was, and couldn’t understand how a person might want anything else. They were worried about the press and what people would say about me. In the end, it’s all about sensationalism and how many newspapers they can sell, and no one cares if what they write is actually true.”
“Yeah, I remember the headlines,” I said softly.
“They published horrible things, stories about airplane crashes, rehabilitation clinics, unwanted pregnancies… I just tried to laugh it off. What else could I do?”
“How’d you wind up here, then?”
Her facial muscles relaxed.
“Some scenes in my last movie were filmed here. And I fell in love with the place, the people. I met Sid. He’s the most wonderful man in the world.”
“Was it love at first sight?”
The question made her blush a little.
“For me, it was. I had never seen a man as…impressive as him.”
