“Sometimes it feels like I live in an office building,” I’d remarked one night, shutting the door to the kitchen, though it barely muffled his voice on the other side of it. My father didn’t have a dedicated home office. Or, rather,everyroom was his office. On a number of occasions, I’d seen him take his laptop and phone with him into the bathroom.
“He’s just very passionate about his work,” my mom told me. “He’s always been like that, ever since I met him. Don’t you think it’s inspiring, hearing all his speeches to his employees?”
When my parents first got married, some people had speculated that my mother was only after my father’s money and resources. But I could tell, in those moments, just from the way she spoke about him, that she truly loved him.
That’s what scares me the most, looking back on everything now: The love was there, it had feltreal—and all it had gotten my mother in return was the worst heartbreak of her life.
15
Chanel
The call comes at five in the morning.
That’s how I know it’s bad news, even before I pick up. Good news respects your schedule—it lets you sleep in and do your hair and choose your outfit for the morning. Bad news doesn’t really care about any of that, since it’s going to ruin your day anyway.
“Oh my god, Chanel, I’m so sorry,” Jamie says immediately into the phone.
“What?” I say, rubbing my eyes, wrestling against sleep for clarity. “What are you talking about?”
“I saw the news,” she says.
“What news?” I ask, sitting upright now, already pulling open Baidu. My fingers quiver over the phone screen and I keep typing my own name wrong, but it turns out that it doesn’t matter because it comes up automatically in the trending searches. It’s in the top three this morning. I stare at the little red fire symbol next to the headline, the one that’s only used for the hottest topics.
BREAKING: Coco Cao files for divorce from Cao Yunchen
It takes me three tries to read through the full article. Maybe it’s some sort of automatic self-defense mechanism kicking in, but my brain refuses to absorb anything on the page. The words keep blurring together on the screen, skipping out of reach, until I make myself sit down with the phone balanced on my knees and stare at the sentences a stranger somewhere wrote about the most personal pain I’ve ever experienced.
After twenty years of marriage, nightclub owner Cao Yunchen and model Coco Cao have officially called it quits. A close source to the Beijing-born billionaire has revealed that the pair split up in late December of last year.
This news may come as a shock to those who have been rooting for the power couple since their famously extravagant fairy-tale wedding, which was reported to have cost over $25 million. Gift bags alone were heavily sponsored by luxury brands and valued at $20,000 each, including an all-expense-paid, week-long vacation to Sanya, with some bags resold after the event for $100,000. An estimated three hundred of the total two thousand guests were fellow celebrities.
A number of eagle-eyed fans from Coco Cao’s official fan club, however, have said there were signs early on. Coco Cao was first photographed without her wedding ring outside Sanlitun on January 28, though it later appeared in the series of selfies she shared on Weibo on February 4.
Fans have also connected the divorce to Coco Cao’s recentnoticeable weight loss. While she is known for her tall, slender figure, fans expressed their concerns after photos of the supermodel in a low-cut gown at a Bulgari event went viral, noting her “sickly” complexion.
Other sources claim that the couple has become increasingly hostile as legalities proceed, to the point where they’re no longer even speaking to each other. Rumors of Cao Yunchen cheating with a much younger womancontinue to circulate.
Their only daughter, eighteen-year-old Chanel Cao (@chanel.cao), is currently in her final year at Airington International Boarding School. She’s reported to be living with her mother, though she was spotted entering her father’s nightclub, Club Sixty-Eight Hours, last night.
Neither Coco Cao nor Cao Yunchen has publicly commented on the divorce.
More articles keep popping up. They’re delving deeper into my family history, connecting the dots, concocting their own theories about why it happened. My parents’ marriage is now a museum with a full tour and free entry. My childhood photos have now become the face of the Great Tragic Divorce.
I slam my phone down on the bed, my blood pounding in my ears.
The timing feels too close to be a coincidence. Had someone spotted me at the club last night? Had they witnessed my fight with my father? Is that why they’re leaking the story now?
Or could it be some kind of extreme effort to sabotage my prom queen campaign?
If so, it’s working. At school, the news has clearly made its way around already. People still say hi, but there are a hundred unspoken questions tucked into that single word, questions I know they’re all dying to find out.Is the news true? How long was your father cheating on your mom? When did you first realize?
From all the pitying glances I’m getting, you’d think somebody in my immediate family had died in a freak accident. But underneath their pity, I can sense their glee too.
Finally. Proof that my life isn’t so blessed, that I’m not so absurdly, outrageously lucky, that I don’t get to have everything. They’ll go to bed and remind themselves that yes, I might be enjoying the nice cars and the luxury handbags and the TV appearances, but do theyreallywant to be me, knowing my dad cheated on my mom with someone closer to my age than hers?
It’s a blow to my reputation, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to recover from this. I can feel my vision of myself as prom queen—perfect, beautiful, admired—starting to disintegrate at the edges, slipping further and further out of reach. Even if the fated fire hasn’t happened yet, my life seems to be going up in flames already.
Maybe my prime is already over, the way every actor or singer must have a peak and inevitable subsequent downfall. Maybe my life will never be as good as it once was.
