“I’ve been on a bloody plane for eleven hours and you’re telling me you’re not coming?”
“I’m coming. I’m just not staying.”
“Can’t she sleep at a girlfriend’s or something?”
“It’s a school night.”
He paused; I could picture him at the end of the line. Fingers pulling at his hair. “Fuck Daniel.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry… And Hayes, you can’t pick me up here. Isabelle is here and I don’t want her to see you.” This last bit I whispered, from my hiding space, tucked away in the confines of my bedroom closet. This is what it had come to. “I’ll just meet you in Malibu. Okay?”
He took a moment to respond, and even in his breathing I could hear the frustration. “You still haven’t told her?Solène, what are you waiting for?”
“I tried. I couldn’t—”
“Youpromised—”
“I know. Iwill.”
“The longer you wait, the more it’s going to hurt her.”
It landed.
The line went quiet for a second, and then: “Fine. I won’t come in the house. But I’m picking you up. Meet me out front. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
Isabelle unwittingly watched me dress for my date with Hayes. I had told her I was going to cocktails and dinner with a couple of clients. That I would not be home too late, but that she should probably not wait up for me. And I had left it at that.
“You look beautiful,” she said, her blue eyes wide, drinking in every detail.
I’d chosen a long black silk shirtdress with a deep neckline, equal parts alluring and demure. This I had learned from my unfailingly French mother: to be both a lady and a woman.
“You don’t look like a mom,” Isabelle observed.
“What does a mom look like to you?”
“I don’t know.” She smiled. “Cartier Love bracelet? Lululemon?”
I laughed at that, her referencing the staples of private-school carpool lanes.
There were so many things I wanted to teach her. That being a mother did not have to mean no longer being a woman. That she could continue to live outside the lines. That forty was not the end. That there was more joy to be had. That there was an Act II, an Act III, an Act IV if she wanted it… But at thirteen, I imagined, she did not care. I imagined she just wanted to feel safe. I could not blame her. We had already shaken her ground.
“AmI a mom?” I asked her then, kissing her forehead.
She nodded.
“Well, then, this is what a mom looks like.”
For someone who’d just gotten off an eleven-hour flight, Hayes was remarkably dewy. Poreless skin, the faintest hint of stubble lininghis jaw. And yet I would not let him kiss me until we’d cleared the driveway. Just in case.
“You are incorrigible,” he said. He’d pulled over the car near the bottom of the hill, in the shade of an avocado tree.
“Iam?”
“Youare.”
“Really?”
“You’ve fucked up everything.” He was kissing me then, one hand at the back of my head, the other between my knees.
