by Hilary Reyl
Alice
P.S. I wrote a letter by hand because I didn’t want anything floating around online. Also, you seem like the kind of person who would want a handwritten note because you are so connected to the past.
I was in a bathroom stall when I read this letter. Here is how I responded: I screamed “Fuck!” eight times. I was sure screaming “Fuck” would break my tension, but I was wrong because right after I was done screaming I started to rock and to groan loudly. I didn’t want to be groaning in a bathroom stall. So I stopped myself by yelling “Fuck” again, ten times. Then I threw up. I had eaten mostly apricots for breakfast. The vomit was orange.
I texted Elisabeth to come get me right away.
Are you okay? she texted back immediately.
No. Then I took a Sharpie out of my backpack and wrote FUCK on the stall door. I felt better. FUCK, I wrote again.
So this was original speech.
A moment later, staring at my graffiti, I realized it wasn’t original at all.
When I said the word fuck, I was imitating Elisabeth when she stubs her toe or slices her finger in the kitchen. I wasn’t saying anything new.
I burst out laughing. Too loudly. Papa was right, there’s no such thing as original speech. It’s a sham idea. A joke. I laughed louder.
I finally stopped and came out of the stall. If there had been anyone in the bathroom, I had scared them away with my groaning, puking, and laughing. It was empty.
I rinsed out my mouth and splashed water on my face. I looked in the mirror, wishing I could be weirder looking so that I wouldn’t keep disappointing people. People get fooled by what Mom calls my “sweet, handsome face” into expecting sweet, handsome behavior. Then I freak them out. Not that I want to. I don’t like to be scared, so why would I choose to be scary?
My scariness would probably be easier to take if it was more visible, like if I was deformed or ugly. Then again, if I was ugly, Gilberte—or Alice—wouldn’t have been able to pretend she liked me, and I never would have been happy.
Even when you’re disappointing, you can still be disappointed.
Of all the faces on the emotion work sheets the teachers at The Center gave me when I was little to help me learn to recognize feelings, disappointed was the best fit. There was sad, happy, worried, angry, excited, and disappointed.
I really thought she liked me. The way she tickled my palm when she returned my earbud. The way she smiled when she said she would meet me at the bakery. The way she settled her hand in mine on the bench like a small animal getting cozy. The way she raised her eyebrows when she asked if Layla was my girlfriend. They say when you raise your eyebrows you are showing concern. But I guess I read her all wrong.
I put on my headphones to block out images of what I had just lost. Falling into the sound was like sinking into a pool of cotton balls. I was able to lose my train of thought.
But not for long.
Usually, once the music starts, there’s nothing else. No bathroom mirror. No note from my “friend.” Only sound. But today, even with the music playing, I could not stop thinking about the letter or forget where I was.
I texted Elisabeth to hurry, that I would be waiting on the street.
Are you sure you want to leave school this early? she wrote back.
Yes, I’m sure. I typed to the rhythm of the piano.
For the first time in my life, I was multitasking! Welcome to your generation, Martin.
When Elisabeth pulled up, I was in the middle of the second movement of my sonata. I asked her if it was okay if I kept my headphones on until it finished.
“Sure,” she said. “It’s really cool of you to ask if I mind. You’ve never asked that before.” After that, she drove and did not talk until my movement was over and I took the headphones off. Then she asked, “Do you feel okay now?”
“Not really.”
“Do you want to go home or drive into town? Or do you want to go find Mom on set? They’re shooting in the rose garden today. Arthur says it’s beautiful.”
“No, thanks. Let’s go home. I think the gardens might make me sad today.”
“What happened?”
“I’m disappointed. I don’t know if I can explain. But I have a question.”
“Shoot.”
“Am I a fool?”
“Who called you a fool?” She sped up around a narrow curve and the Smart car brushed against a lilac bush. There was a scratching sound. I felt the scratching behind my eyes. I did not want Elisabeth to feel sorry for me. I started to cry. “You’re not a fool,” she said.
“But I am easy to trick.”
“I don’t think you’re easy to trick,” she said. “That’s not it at all. I do think you have a really strong picture of your world in your head, and it can be very different from other people’s pictures. They might think you’re naïve and that they are making fun of you, but what you are is original. That can seem foolish to people who aren’t used to it. You can’t entirely blame them.”
I didn’t respond to Elisabeth. What I did was take her final sentence—“You can’t entirely blame them”—and say it over and over in my head. I kept repeating it silently at the cottage while I changed into my swim trunks, dove into our pool, which Mom does not believe in heating, and started going back and forth. Our pool is only four strokes long, but I did not get frustrated about the quick turns because my mind was also turning quickly inside. “You can’t entirely blame them, you can’t entirely blame them, you can’t entirely blame them . . .” With the rhythm of the words and the strokes, I was able to think.
Here is what I thought: Gilberte/Alice wrote me a letter. Even if it is a terrible letter, she did get one thing right: I enjoy handwritten letters on real paper. At least she’s been paying attention. And even if she is deceitful, I still want her near me. But I don’t think she’s deceitful. I think maybe I didn’t look at her clearly enough to see how she felt.
I’m disappointed, but I guess I should get used to the way kids act. If I was as general-ed as Simon, Gilberte/ Alice, and their friends, and if I lived someplace where not a lot new happens and people are mostly excited about smoking and Renaissance history, I would probably be a moth to the flame of movie glamour too. I would tell lies to get myself invited to a movie-star party.
I stopped swimming and looked up at the sky. I counted five birds, very high up. Then I saw a sixth one. The more I looked, the more birds I saw. My body standing still in the cool water was muscular. My eyes were strong enough to count a thousand birds.
I am not a fool and the moths are not assholes.
I wished I could call Maeva or text Layla to tell them what I planned to do next, but it was 2:30 a.m. in Los Angeles. I had to believe that they would support me. But I also had to make my decision on my own.
I did not want to take more time away from Elisabeth’s work. So I got dressed and walked all the way back to school to find the moths. It wouldn’t be a party without them.
Saturday, June 11
10:50 a.m.
There’s a postcard taped to my wall. It’s a painting of an erupting volcano. I look at it when things are rough. It’s called The Eruption of Mount Vesuvius. It’s by an English Romantic painter named J. M. W. Turner. It looks across a fiery bay to the exploding mountain. There are boats getting tossed around and there is a crowd of people staring up from the beach. Compared to the volcano, the people are tiny, but they are still very detailed.
I am guessing that this painting was one of Marcel’s favorites, because it’s both scary and totally awesome at the same time. It brings me huge relief. If the volcano rocks and groans for me when I stare at it, then I don’t have to do it myself.
Marcel’s grandmother wanted to fill his room at Combray with images of beautiful sites and scenes from history. She was scared photographs would be “vulgar” because they were too “utilitarian.” So she asked Mr. Swann to help her find photographs of paintings of the sites and scenes. She thought this would avoid “c
ommercial banality.” In this way, she gave Marcel several “thicknesses,” or layers, of art: the original, the painting, and the photograph of the painting.
In my postcard collection, I have two of the pictures that Marcel’s grandmother gave to him: Corot’s Chartres Cathedral and Turner’s Vesuvius. They’re both on my wall here.
After I got home from school yesterday, I stared at the Turner volcano for forty-five minutes, tracing the lava flows with my finger. Mom knocked on my door. So did Elisabeth. They asked if I was okay. I told them I was busy.
Mom knocked again. She asked, did I remember that people are coming at 7:30 p.m.?
Of course I remembered. What a stupid question. I have a painfully accurate memory. Mom, of all people, should know this. I did not tell her she was being illogical because I have learned that, when people get worried or anxious, they ask stupid questions, and it’s mean to call them on it. So instead of saying, “Why would you ask me that?” I said, “I’m busy,” again, which was true. I was busy going over what happened with the moths.
Walking down the big hill to town, I had texted Simon and Gilberte/Alice to meet me right after school under the basketball hoop in the yard, but I hadn’t texted back when they asked why.
They had both shown up. They looked down at their feet while I told them I wanted them to come to the party even if they were using me.
The weird thing was that while I was waiting for them to come to the basketball court, I was trembling. I thought I might throw up again. But when I saw how nervous they were, staring at their shoes like I usually do, I started talking fast in order to make them less uncomfortable. I stopped shaking.
I told them that I was used to people wanting to hang out with me because of Mom. I told them about Layla being a moth like them, only not as normal. And I explained that people usually become attached to other people for very weird reasons (think Mr. Swann and Odette) and that it probably wasn’t worth getting upset about. I didn’t care if they liked me at first because of who my mother is. It was a doorway into somewhere else. Eventually, if we become friends, they might realize they like Mom because she is related to me instead of wanting to be friends with me because she’s famous.
They ended up laughing. It was a relief.
I never imagined I would be able to make general-ed kids feel better about themselves. It’s like all the practicing I’ve done at The Center has translated into this new world. I took a lifeguarding course once, and I always wondered if the techniques you used on the dummies would work on real people. Now I know.
After our conversation in the yard, I was okay.
When I got home, I got shaky again. So I went into my room to stare at the volcano postcard. Suddenly it seemed crazy to have invited the kids from school to this party with my family and Mom’s cast and crew. How the hell was I going to manage to connect such different groups? It was going to be noisy, confusing, and stressful. What had I taken on?
“Are you freaking out in there?” Elisabeth asked through my door. “Don’t worry. We’re not going to bite your friends.”
“I’m busy,” was all I could say.
The person who finally got me out was Bernadette. She did it by threatening about my salads. She said that if I did not slice, seed, and salt my tomatoes soon, they would not have time to drain in the colanders I had set up, and then my salad—tomatoes, olives, red onion, chevre, parsley, olive oil—would be soggy. This would be a “desecration.” Bernadette also reminded me that she had prepped three kilos of green beans for me, which was hours of work. If I did not come downstairs and blanch them soon, her work would be wasted. The beans would not cool in time for the vinaigrette.
My awe of Bernadette is like Marcel’s awe of Françoise, the family cook. It’s not rational, but it’s powerful. I stopped staring at Vesuvius, got up, and headed downstairs to work.
While I was cooking, I was able to focus on my tasks and stop worrying about how the party was going to be. Papa says that work is the best distraction.
They all came: Gilberte/Alice, Simon, Marianne, and the Giotto-chested boys. They came riding double on mopeds. Simon brought a bottle of rosé in a bag from his mom’s supermarket, Intermarché. Mom said, “Merci.”
It was happening the way weather happens. Breaking like a storm. I wanted to run upstairs, but I didn’t.
I introduced Gilberte as “Alice” to Elisabeth and to Mom. They say pretending to believe in reality is the first step to belonging there. But it can be confusing. I didn’t sound very convincing, though, because Elisabeth took me aside and said, “Is that her? So her actual name is not Gilberte? It’s Alice?”
“Well, it is and it isn’t,” I said quietly. I might as well have spoken out loud because none of the moths can understand English.
“Got it.” Elisabeth didn’t seem annoyed by my confusion. “Well, whoever she is, she’s pretty.”
“Yeah, she is. You think she’s pretty too. You like her freckles.”
“Pronouns,” she whispered.
“I mean, I like her freckles.”
She smiled, squeezed my hand, and spun me out to face the friends or the moths or whatever they are. Then she turned around to give Arthur a kiss. Her top plunged down her back. She made it yesterday out of black silk. She’s been sewing a lot since her breakup with Jason and starting to see Arthur. She seems happier. She doesn’t act as nervous about her organic chemistry.
The members of the cast and crew were all milling around, drinking, eating olives and anchovies. The kids from school were in their own cluster. My salads were ready on a buffet in the kitchen along with the cold poached salmon and roast chicken, which we were serving room temperature. It wasn’t dinnertime yet.
A pair of soft bare arms grabbed me from behind. It’s a good thing I’m not super sensory about being touched, because people can be very invasive.
It was Fuchsia.
“Hey, special one!” She really called me that. “Are these your friends? Aren’t you going to introduce me?”
I froze.
She laughed. “Let me help you. ‘Guys, this is my friend, Fuchsia. Fuchsia, this is . . .’” Here she gestured to Simon, meaning that this was my cue to insert his name. Then she brushed her fingers against my cheek.
I was grateful to Fuchsia for her prompt. Prompting is a reassuring technique. It’s a part of what they call “scaffolding” at The Center. Fuchsia’s fingers on my skin while she prompted me reminded me of Papa’s thumb caressing my cheek to relax my jaw while he helped me learn to talk. Papa gave me scaffolding all the time.
For example, at breakfast, he might ask: “Would you like eggs or cereal?” When I stared into my napkin instead of answering, he would give me words to build on: “I would like . . .”
At first, I repeated, “I would like eggs or cereal.” Finally, one day when I was five, I got it. Papa asked, “Would you like oatmeal or pancakes?” Then he prompted, “I would like . . .” Suddenly, I realized I wanted pancakes. I said, “I would like pancakes! Just pancakes!”
Papa started crying. He said it was because he was happy.
I spent a few moments remembering the pancake morning. I forgot about Fuchsia. So, she prompted me again, which was nice of her. “‘Fuchsia,’” she said, “‘this is . . .’” and she gestured to Simon a second time.
I kicked in. “Fuchsia,” I said, “this is Simon.”
“Lovely to meet you, Simon.” She held out her hand to him.
He stared at her breasts. Then he forced himself to focus on her face while he shook hands. I have done this myself. “Hello, Fuchsia,” he said, with such a strong French accent that I reeled from the difference between his coolness in French and his flailing English.
Then I used Fuchsia’s introductory formula again, but this time I grouped all the others together in a list, with “Alice” at the end.
“Great to meet all you guys! Welcome to our party!” Fuchsia was bubbly, like she was demonstrating a positive personality type in one of
Maeva’s role-playing games. I appreciated her effort.
The kids mostly mumbled something back at Fuchsia in broken English. Except for Gilberte/Alice, who stuck with what she knows, which is usually a good idea. She said, “Enchantée.”
“Enchantée,” Fuchsia tossed back. Then she moved on into the crowd.
I’m not so good at gauging other people’s comfort levels, except when I recognize my own symptoms in other people. Then I get sensitive. This is called “empathy.”
I had empathy with my moth friends at the party because I saw them looking down at their feet a lot, not mingling, eating and drinking furtively, like squirrels. They reminded me of me in unfamiliar groups. This made me ache for them.
They were uncomfortable for two reasons.
1. They were shy with the cast and the movie crew. Fuchsia and Gloria, Baxter and Peter were all mythical beings to them. Seeing your myths in the flesh is overwhelming.
2. People around them were speaking English, which meant they had no idea what was going on.
Here in Mom’s world, on our terrace with the film crew, the cool kids from the lycée were the ones who were on the outside.
For the first time in my life, I thought I might be a useful guide. Not that I could explain to them what was going on, or who was friends with whom, or what the gossip was. But if there is one thing I can do, it’s translate. The space between French and English is my comfort zone. When I translate, I go back and forth; I swim laps, up one side and down the other. I can’t think too much or I’ll lose the rhythm.
I figured that if I decoded for the moths, they would be okay. It was exciting.
What I did was this: I found the closest conversation that I was comfortable approaching, which was between Mom and Peter. I began translating bits of it in a loud whisper to Gilberte/Alice while the others listened in.
