The Idea of You

by Robinne Lee

  “What is it about you and older women, Hayes Campbell?”

  He took the time to empty what was left in his glass and sign the check, a wry smile spreading across his mouth. “Who have you been talking to?”

  “No one.”

  “You were Googling.”

  “You told me not to. Remember?”

  He bit down on his lip, shaking his head. “Nothing. There’s nothing about me and older women.”

  “You’re lying.”

  He started to laugh. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  “I’m not letting you off that easy.”

  His sigh was audible. “I like all kinds of women.”

  “You like older women. You have a definite type.”

  “Are you my type?”

  “I’m guessing so.”

  He smiled, sinking back into the couch. “You think I meet plenty of hot, almost forty-year-old divorcées on the road?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  He snorted, crossing his arms in front of his chest, defensive. It was not his typical stance.

  “Tell me about Penelope,” I said.

  “What about her?”

  “Where did it happen, the first time?”

  “Switzerland.”

  “Switzerland?”

  He nodded. “Klosters. I went with Ol’s family on a ski holiday.”

  I started to laugh. “The family invited you to ski in Switzerland, and you fucked their daughter?”

  “To be fair, she fucked me.”

  For a moment, neither of us spoke. He sat there, guarded, a cryptic smile on his perfect face. And all I could think about was sitting on it.

  “Okay. Let’s go upstairs.”

  * * *

  I turned forty. And the world did not end. The firmament did not move. Gravity did not suddenly forsake me. My breasts, my ass, my eyelids were all pretty much where I’d left them the night before. As was my lover. In our big, big bed, his head on my pillow, his arm draped over my waist, clinging. As if maybe he were afraid to let me go.

  It was indulgent, as birthdays go. There was pampering and lovemaking and foie gras and a two-hour stroll along the Seine and autumn in the air and Hayes. Adoring, attentive, kind Hayes.

  In the early evening, while I prepped for our celebratory dinner, he watched me from his perch against the counter in the master bath. The room, like everything else in the penthouse suite, was luxurious. Exceptionally appointed, flawless marble, an infinity tub. Although Hayes would not give me an exact figure, I knew it was costing him thousands of dollars a night. Which was absurd, despite the fact that TAG Heuer was picking up half the tab.

  He stood there in black dress pants and a white shirt still unbuttoned, his hair blown dry and uncharacteristically neat. Gone were the boyish curls.

  “What are you thinking over there?”

  He shook his head, smiling. “I was thinking that you putting on makeup was somewhat redundant.”

  I laughed, applying eye shadow. “It’s not a lot.”

  “I like when I can see your skin. I like your skin.”

  “My skin likes you.” This was not untrue. It may have been Paris, or the change in climate, but it seemed to me that I was glowing.

  He smiled, absorbing the process. The liner, the curling, the mascara. “You’re unfolding the flower again.”

  “Am I?”

  He nodded. “Even though you’re covering yourself up … Watching you do it reveals more of you.”

  I put the mascara wand down then, meeting his eyes in the mirror. Thankful that, despite all the reflective surfaces in this gleaming salle de bains, the lighting design was particularly warm. It made my lingerie considerably more forgiving. Although I was not going to focus on that, because forty did not look terribly different than thirty-nine.

  “Who are you, Hayes Campbell?”

  He smiled, his hands burrowing in his pockets. “I’m your boyfriend.”

  “My twenty-year-old boyfriend?”

  “Your twenty-year-old boyfriend. Are you okay with that?”

  I grinned. “Do I have a choice?”

  “You always have a choice.” He’d appropriated my words, which I found amusing.

  “Then, yes … I am very okay with that.”

  “Come here.”

  I inched over to him. I had grown to love his “come here” and where it often led.

  He took my wrists in his hands then, his thumbs on my pulse points. “No watch?”

  I shook my head, holding his gaze.

  “Just as well,” he said, leaning in to kiss me. And then I felt it, a slight pinching on my right wrist.

  Eventually, he pulled away and I glanced down to discover an exquisite gold cuff bracelet adorning my arm. A one-inch band of delicate filigree work, Indian in design, intricately wrought and trimmed with pavé diamonds. Arguably the most singularly beautiful piece of jewelry I had ever seen.

  “Happy Birthday,” he said, soft.

  My eyes met his. There were a thousand and one things I could have said, but none of them would have been quite right. And so I wrapped my arms around his neck and held him, close. For a very long time.

  When we finally parted, I saw it—just beyond his shoulder, and in every corner of the room. Us, multiplied.

  malibu

  It was not supposed to happen this way. Our dalliance was supposed to be easy and casual and fun. It was not supposed to entail me wringing my hands about how and when exactly to break my daughter’s heart. But that is how I spent most of November. When the group’s first single from the new album was released and it felt as if suddenly they were everywhere. On the radio, on the TV, on a massive billboard on Sunset that made me simultaneously giddy and nauseated every time I drove past. Hayes, six stories high. When Isabelle was listening to “Sorrowed Talk” on repeat and I could not share with her that Hayes had given me six additional tracks from Wise or Naked for fear that she would tell her friends and somehow they might be leaked. Apparently this—leaking an album—was a thing. And I could not share with anyone how somehow their songs had gone from feeling like harmless pop ditties to inspired, earnest compositions. His words, his voice, affecting me in ways I could not have foreseen, profound. None of this was supposed to happen.

  They were performing at the American Music Awards. They were scheduled for several days of press leading up to the show, and Hayes arranged to arrive earlier than the rest of the group and rent a house in Malibu for a few days before heading down to the Chateau Marmont to stay with the others.

  I’d had every intention of breaking the news to Isabelle before then, but at each turn my attempts were thwarted.

  * * *

  “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” I said. We were hiking in Temescal Canyon the Sunday before Hayes’s arrival. She was leading.

  “Me, too.” She smiled back at me, eyes alight.

  “You wanna go first?”

  “I kind of like this guy, but he barely knows I exist.” The words spilled out of her mouth so quickly, it took me a second to register.

  And then I panicked. She’d been raving about him since the Sea Change opening. “Who?”

  “Avi Goldman. He’s a senior. He’s on the soccer team. He’s like perfect.”

  Oh, sweet relief. “That’s great, Izz.”

  “It’s not great, Mom. He sees me, but he looks right through me.” She was walking faster now, the narrow path winding. “It’s like I don’t even register.”

  “That’s likely in your head, peanut. You can always introduce yourself, say hi.”

  “It won’t matter. He only dates cool, pretty, popular girls. And I’m like…” She shook her head, trailing off.

  “You’re what?”

  “I’m an eighth-grade fencer with braces.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that’s not cool?” I smiled up at her.

  She stopped walking suddenly, her eyes welling with tears.

  “Oh, Izz, I’m sorry �
� It’s not going to always be this way. I promise you. You will not always feel this way.”

  “You can say that, because look at you.”

  I hesitated then. I did not want her making comparisons. “What is he, Avi? Seventeen? Eighteen? Boys that age don’t always have the best judgment. They don’t necessarily know what they want or what’s best for them. And even if he did, Izz, he’s not exactly age appropriate. Your father and I would never agree to that.” The irony of this was not lost on me.

  “I know. I just hate feeling invisible.”

  I hugged her then, close. “You will not always feel invisible, peanut. I promise.”

  She calmed down, and after sometime we began walking again. “So what’s your news?”

  “You know what? It can wait.”

  * * *

  And so it was that Hayes was coming to Los Angeles and I had failed him in the first thing he’d asked me to do. And then I failed in the second.

  He was flying in on Sunday and picking me up en route to the house in Malibu, and we were going to shack up there for the next three days, cut off from the rest of the world.

  And so I’d planned for Isabelle to stay with Daniel. “I need a couple of days to decompress,” I’d said to him, vague. But on Sunday morning he called to tell me he was flying to Chicago last minute for a deal and that he could not take Isabelle after all.

  I was irate.

  “Are you kidding me? We made arrangements.”

  “What do you want me to do, Sol? I didn’t choose this. Have Maria come.” His voice on the line sounded distant, removed. The idea that he would suggest our housekeeper move in for three days, as if she did not have other responsibilities, boggled the mind. But Daniel had grown up with live-in help. Daniel wrote the book on privilege.

  “Maria has kids of her own, Daniel. I can’t ask her to sit on a school night.”

  “What about Greta?”

  “I checked with Greta. She’s working.”

  “What is it you’re doing? Where are you going?”

  I hesitated. I was not ready.

  “Fuck. Is this the kid? Are you planning something with that kid? Solène…”

  I did not answer.

  “Look,” he said after a moment, “I’m sorry. I would tell you to just drop her here, but … Eva’s sick. And I don’t think you’d be comfortable with that arrangement anyway. I’ll be back on Tuesday—”

  “Forget it,” I said. “Forget it.”

  Hayes, as I expected, was not so understanding.

  Landed.

  He’d texted shortly before three-thirty.

  Need to talk. Change of plans. Call me.

  Will do.

  And then, much later:

  Fucking paps. Sorry. Ringing you soon.

  “Hi.” He called after what seemed an eternity.

  “Hi, yourself. How was your flight?”

  “Long.” His voice was hoarse, raspy.

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes. Why? Are we doing phone sex stuff again?”

  I laughed. “No. Just wanted to know where you were.”

  “I’m in the car. I’m coming to get you.”

  “About that…” I said, and then I told him. That Daniel had flaked, that Daniel knew, that I could join him in Malibu for the evening, but that I could not stay because Isabelle would be home alone. And that I could come up during the day on Monday, but in the evening I would have to return again.

  He was not happy. “What? What kind of rubbish is that?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “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—”

  “You promised—”

  “I know. I will.”

  “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.

  “Am I 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 lining his 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.

  “I am?”

  “You are.”

  “Really?”

  “You’ve fucked up everything.” He was kissing me then, one hand at the back of my head, the other between my knees.

  “Do you want to just take me back home then?”

  “I should…” His hand had found its way beneath my “you don’t look like a mom” dress, no time wasted.

  “Is this your hello?”

  “This is my hello.”

  “Hello, Hayes.” I trembled. His fingers, pulling aside my underwear.

  “Hello, Solène.”

  There was a song playing that I did not recognize, the smell of new leather, sleek lines on the dash. Where did he get this car? Did someone like Hayes Campbell just walk into Budget or Enterprise and ask for an Audi R8 Spyder? Was he even old enough to rent a car? So many questions. His rings, cool against my skin. His fingers.

  “Did you miss me?” I spoke after several minutes, my breathing erratic.

  “Not at all,” he slurred, his breath hot in my ear. “I quite enjoy being six thousand miles away from you. Especially when I come to town and you can’t manage to get a fucking sitter.” He withdrew his hand then suddenly and turned back toward the steering wheel. “Where am I going?”

  It took me a moment. “Whoa. Oh-kay … Make a right on Sunset and then take it all the way down to the PCH.”

  He didn’t say anything after that, but he reached out to hold my hand while he dr
ove. And we remained that way, all the way up the coast.

  * * *

  Hayes’s people had found him a 5,500-square-foot sleek, contemporary house on the cliffs with heart-stopping views and retractable walls of glass and a chef’s kitchen and designer everything, and the fact that we were just visiting saddened me. Because for a moment I allowed myself to imagine what life could be like if we played house there. And maybe I could sell my half of the gallery and send Isabelle to Malibu High School and spend my days painting watercolors and making love and being happy. And then I attempted to picture Hayes as Isabelle’s stepfather and I started to laugh.

  “What?” he said.

  We were in the master suite and I was drinking in the view from the oversized window seat while he was riffling through his luggage.

  “Nothing. I … It’s perfect here.”

  “It is.”

  “Is it for sale? Do you know?”

  “I don’t,” he said, curt. “I’m jumping in the shower. We have reservations for Nobu at seven-thirty. That leaves about an hour to do the things I want to do to you. Don’t go anywhere.”

  * * *

  At Nobu, we dined under the stars. A luxuriant feast of sushi and sake and Hayes’s fingertips playing over my palm at the table. He filled me in on developments in his schedule. The album being released in December to coincide with the documentary, August Moon: Naked. The film premiere scheduled for New York. The tour that would begin in February, last a little over eight months, and take him to five different continents. I tried not to think about it all because much of it translated to time apart. And the thought of that made me miserable.

  No fewer than nine people stopped by our table. Those who knew him, or claimed they knew him; three fans. Hayes was gracious at every turn, but I could see it wearing away at him.

  “I probably should have picked someplace more low-profile,” he said. “But it’s Sunday. And it’s November. I assumed it would be quieter.”

  “It’s still Nobu.”

  He was silent for a moment, staring out toward the water. A splattering of stars, a half-moon, a seamless black horizon.

  “What if I quit the band?”

  “I thought you said that was impossible.”

  “It’s not impossible, it’s just … complicated.”

  “What would you do if you quit?”

  “I don’t know.” He turned back to me then, and reached out to finger my bracelet. The cuff he’d given me in Paris. I had yet to take it off. “I’m just tired. I want a break.”