SECRET Revealed

by L. Marie Adeline

  Matilda looked at me. “Pardon me?”

  “I can do it, Matilda,” I said.

  Matilda glanced around the table once more. Everyone had turned into owls, sitting still, eyes wide.

  “Will might object, Cassie.”

  “I’ll deal with that then.”

  Matilda eyed me carefully. “You can’t keep him, Cassie. After you train him, you have to let him go.”

  “I know. I’ve done it before. I can do it again.”

  Matilda sighed. “Okay then. Will Foret is our unanimous choice. And Cassie Robichaud will be his trainer. We’ll discuss the scenario at a later date,” she said, placing the folder back into her bag.

  I glanced around the table. The women looked variously impressed, worried and a little stunned. Of course it was risky; isn’t it always when it comes to sex? But deep down in the most secret part of my heart, the part I wouldn’t even reveal to myself, I hoped that by giving Will permission to join S.E.C.R.E.T., by showing him how to please another woman, then setting him free to do just that, maybe, just maybe, it would bring him back to me.

  SOLANGE

  The guilt I felt when I said good-bye to my sweet boy in front of his dad’s building was especially potent. I had left him before, for more than a few days, but never for such an odd, decadent reason. I had told Julius the truth, kind of. I told him I had landed a coveted interview with Pierre Castille and had secured a promise from New Orleans Magazine for a cover story. The magazine was thrilled and even offered to cover expenses.

  “Pierre Castille? You mean that rich dude who owns my building?”

  “He does?” I said, forgetting momentarily that the Castilles owned half of the Warehouse District.

  “I have a question for him,” Julius said. “Ask him when he’s going to upgrade our elevator system.”

  “I’ll be sure to put that on my list.”

  Watching Julius with Gus on the sidewalk, the both of them waving good-bye through my driver’s side window, I felt that pang again, that awful mother’s guilt that struck me like a low-grade fever.

  Later that night, while packing, I burst into tears before finally pulling myself together. It’s just for a week! You deserve this little break! This is an adventure. You’ve snagged the mother of all interviews. Be … brave. It’s Paris! In the springtime!

  And indeed, when I arrived, big, fat buds were bursting pink and white from the tiny trees outside the window of my unbearably plush suite at the Hotel George V. I glanced around the room in disbelief. With its dense red carpet, upholstered walls covered in gold damask and four-poster king-size bed, it might have been the nicest hotel I’d ever seen, let alone stayed in.

  The first thing I did after checking in was to call Gus. It was late at night for me, but dusk for my boy. Julius answered from the eighth hole at the Audubon golf course.

  “Hey there, just a sec,” he whispered. I could hear a whoosh in the background and some gleeful high-fiving. “Oh man, you should have seen that swing. The boy’s a natural!”

  “You think we have a Tiger Woods on our hands?” I said, choking up. I missed them. I missed them both just then.

  “Let’s hope. Then we can both retire in style, right, Gus? You got in okay?”

  “Yeah, I did. It’s really beautiful here,” I said, playing with the curly phone cord, staving off the guilt.

  “I bet. I’ve been picturing you there,” he said. “Walking the streets. The light on your skin …”

  Things got quiet for a second, oddly so.

  “Put Gus on for me?” I asked. Gus’s ebullience helped break the potent little spell that hung over his dad and me for a second.

  “Mom! I sunk the ball in four shots! Dad says that’s amazing for my first time. Can I take golf lessons? It’s so cool you’re in Paris! I want to go next time. Maybe I should learn French. I know, I know, Spanish is important, but it’s not so different and besides …”

  Gus always seemed charged with a special kind of energy when he got to spend long stretches with his dad. Boy energy. I loved it. After a good talk, we hung up, my heart a little less heavy.

  Everything came to a quiet halt for a second as I sat on the edge of the downy bed. Be here, I told myself. Don’t be in New Orleans, be here. Gus is fine. He’s with his dad. Let it go. It’s only temporary.

  I was wrapped in a towel waiting for the bath to fill. I would soon be eating mussels in wine with a nice Chablis, my feet encased in slippers. Matilda had told me whatever I needed was on the other end of a phone, answered by someone who would say, “Bonsoir, Madame Faraday!” (I didn’t have the heart to correct them; it was Mademoiselle.) What if I knew exactly what I needed but just couldn’t articulate it yet?

  I padded to the marble bathroom and shut off the taps, stripping down to my skin. I turned to take in my body in the full-length mirror behind the door. There I was, my whole story staring at me through the mirror—my barely perceptible yet strangely symmetrical stretch marks just below my rib cage, my smooth, firm thighs from my jock days. My arms were good arms, my breasts were beautiful breasts. My hair was shiny; it was a good cut. In a few months I would be forty-two, and I had never felt more alluring. S.E.C.R.E.T. had given me that. It had quieted that internal critic, giving me this newfound sense of my womanhood, even adding dimensions to it. I was grateful and too tired to soak in a bath for long, so I got out, wrapping my damp body in one of the comfiest bathrobes I had ever completely passed out in.

  A knock on the door woke me from what I thought was a brief nap. It was the bellhop bringing me pastries and coffee, for breakfast! Turned out I had slept the night. A thick card was perched on the tray between the butter and the sugar. I opened it like it was a Christmas gift to see the word Curiosity carved in elaborate scroll on one side and underneath, a handwritten query: Curious about what it would be like to go back in time?

  My do-over step! I shivered, excited, nervous. I tried to take my time, to enjoy my breakfast in front of the Juliet balcony: café au lait, fresh fruit, bread and jam, but I was too excited to see Paris to linger long over food.

  Just after the sun came up, I threw on a sweater and comfortable walking shoes and stepped out onto the Rue George V, where I passed a flock of nuns in traditional black garb funneling into the American Cathedral next door.

  The air was balmy and sweet, and it clung to my skin like a hug. Armed with a good street map, I decided to trek towards the Louvre, through the Tuileries, backtracking over to the Centre Georges Pompidou, a building I had once read wore its “messy skeleton of pipes and ventilation” on the outside, on purpose, “to leave room inside for all the art.” I remember grabbing that as a metaphor for the kind of life I wanted to live, back when I thought I was going to be a glamorous lounge singer, before the practical concerns of life kicked in. I’d see the sights later; today was just for getting the lay of the land.

  Strange to see for the first time a place that’s familiar to you only from books and movies. I don’t remember even wondering how Parisians actually lived, or about the price of real estate, or what their suburbs looked like or what kind of commutes these people would have or what the public school system was like. But that’s what I was thinking about that day, marveling over the riverside balconies, imagining life in some grand six-room apartment overlooking the Seine and the Eiffel Tower, throwing open the windows while wearing a white silk robe and sipping my coffee before waking up Gus for his bus. But would he take a bus in Paris? Or would I walk him to some ancient gorgeous building with old piping and stained-glass windows? Or would he be safe on his own? Would he make friends easily here? With other Americans? Or would I insist he make French friends?

  Stop it, Solange. Be here now.

  Sigh. Paris might be the only place in the world where you could fall in love with a room, a view, a street, or a neighborhood the way you would with a real person. That’s what was happening to me. My skin was flushed, my heart racing. I made a vow that we needed to bring Gus to Paris, an
d soon. Well maybe not we. I needed to bring him before he got too old to want to travel alone with his boring, old mother.

  I was never much of a shopper, but I could see how Paris could ruin a woman. I started to covet things I had never looked twice at before—dramatic hats, expensive purses, even a stunning cream-colored wedding dress with lace sleeves and a satin sash that was the same price my dad paid for our house on State Street, back when he bought it in the ’60s. It was all too much, too beautiful and too heady.

  I grabbed lunch at a café under a vivid yellow-and-white awning. Next to me was a table of shopgirls on break, smoking and gossiping in French. How was it possible that Parisian women could make such a filthy addiction look so damn chic? All day it was hard to find a woman in Paris who didn’t have it going on, whether it was a perfectly placed scarf, or good bangs or just the right shoes. Women here seemed to enjoy and know how to be women. Even the older ones I saw laughed loud and long, their wide-open mouths displaying a crooked tooth here and there. Gray hair abounded, lipstick was smeared, shoes were scuffed, and yet they all seemed so feminine and so beautiful. Could I do that? Could I have the courage to age beautifully and honestly without Marsha’s frets about being a woman working in television and struggling to remain young-looking forever? I hoped so. Again, I thought about the women in S.E.C.R.E.T., marveling at Matilda’s striking agelessness and that of the other women I remembered from my induction, none of whom seemed the type to lose much sleep over wrinkles or gray hair.

  On my way back to the hotel, this time taking the crowded Champs-Élysées, I wondered what Gus and his dad were doing and if Gus would go to bed without a fuss. I missed them, and yet slipping naked between the cool sheet and the heavy duvet, I couldn’t have felt more serene.

  The serenity didn’t last. After that decadent nap and a long bath, the kind I hadn’t enjoyed since before Gus, there was a knock on my door. This time it wasn’t the bellhop but a tiny, very pretty black woman with a short red afro. She looked vaguely familiar, standing there holding heavy garment bags slung over one arm, and in the crook of the other, a big doctor’s bag of sorts. If she let go of either, she’d tip over.

  She screamed by way of saying hello. “Ahh! You probably don’t remember me,” she said in English, stepping around me into the room.

  I did recognize her. She was followed by a bellhop rolling in a tray of cheese, bread, fruit and champagne on ice.

  “Oh, you have a suite!” she squealed. “Not that I’m complaining about my room.”

  She hoisted the bags onto the bed, then turned and noticed my mouth was still agape.

  “Jeez. You don’t remember me.” She handed the bellhop a fist of euros, and waited for him to disappear before continuing in a dramatic whisper. “I’m Bernice. We met when you—I’m from S.E.C.R.E.T., hon. I’m here to prep you. For tonight!”

  “Right!”

  I could have kissed her. It was so nice to have someone from “home” here, and I was enveloped by an overwhelming sense of calm. She hung up the garment bags, then threw open the valise.

  “Makeup and hair now, dress later. I brought a few for you to choose from.”

  “What’s the scenario?”

  She made a sad face. “Oh, Solange. We’ve had to warn you about so many of your fantasies ahead of time, because of your job and being a mom and everything. Let’s have some surprises, shall we?” she said, lowering me to the seat in front of the dressing table mirror.

  I’d had hair and makeup people hovering around my head for most of my professional life, but it had never felt like this, so loving and caring. I was Bernice’s personal work of art, and my hair and makeup wasn’t just a job or a task; it was her artistic mission to make me beautiful.

  Normally I wore my hair in a conservative kind of bob—“newslady hair,” Julius affectionately called it. It wasn’t the sexiest choice, but it was good for work and easy to maintain. But Bernice asked me how I used to wear my hair back in my college days.

  “Big,” I said, making a motion to indicate out to here.

  “Yes!” she said, wetting and spraying and teasing and cultivating and curling my hair into a masterful homage to Miss Ross herself. My hair was so big and wild when she finished I swear she added weight as well as height to my dense curls. I hadn’t worn my hair like this in decades, and it seemed to shave years off my face.

  “Now, let’s pick the dress. Then lipstick. Yeah?”

  There were a half-dozen couture dresses and they all fit perfectly. The low-cut navy number was made with this shimmery Lycra material that felt incredible on my skin, but I was all nipples and ass in it. You could even see the outline of my belly button.

  “Nope.”

  The gold lamé minidress made me gasp it was so unbearably sexy. But then I bent to check how much it covered while sitting.

  “That’s gorgeous, Solange.”

  I gave her my best are you fucking kidding me face and strutted back to the bathroom to change. The silver dress was too Dynasty in the shoulders, though I loved how it scooped down the back. Both the little black dress and the puffy pink one did nothing for me. Last was a deep red satin gown that didn’t just fit, it encased me. It held me. It made my body appear taller and stronger than it really was, my arms longer, my legs endless.

  “Stunning,” Bernice said, adjusting the spaghetti straps, zipping the dress up the back.

  The finishing touch was red lipstick so glossy my mouth looked like it’d been dipped in a pot of slick candy-apple glaze.

  The front desk called to tell me my limo was waiting. I turned to Bernice.

  “Here we go.”

  “Knock ’em dead, Solange,” she said with a wink, hugging me good-bye loosely, not wanting to crush any aspect of the glittery masterpiece she’d created.

  Clacking my thousand-dollar heels across the magnificent marble foyer towards the ancient revolving doors, I caught a glimpse of what it would be like to be famous—not local-weekend-news-anchor famous, but notorious-famous, globally famous, whispered-about famous, gawked-at famous, Beyoncé famous; I was turning heads faster than I was passing them and it felt amazing. The driver lowered me (and my hair) into the back seat, and off we sped.

  Paris at night was a lurid parade, and my eyes danced wildly around, gathering all the details: the young couples walking hand-in-hand, the lit-up shops, the monuments and marble, the artists hawking their work, people selling prints and books from stalls lining the crowded sidewalks. We passed a cluster of cafés dotting four corners of a crossroads, the street we turned down so narrow that the buildings on either side became a white marble tunnel with no roof. We pulled up to a fancy place called the Chez Papas jazz club, where my driver lifted me out of the back seat to my uneasy feet.

  “Welcome,” said a doorman, his accent odd and undetectable. “Your table is waiting.”

  Inside, a tiny woman holding a tinier clipboard whisked me past the crowd encircling the stage, past the shiny wineglasses and the fur stoles, to a small table off to the side where I was seated with some fanfare. A maître d’ appeared to my right, arm slung with a white cloth, pouring me water and taking my drink order.

  “Campari and soda, s’il vous plaît.”

  Just then the room went black, and a curtain rose to a quartet of young men, one holding a double bass, one a horn, one on drums and the fourth a guitarist who kept his back to the crowd while he adjusted his strings. When the guitar player turned around, I gasped. It wasn’t Julius, but if you had frozen Julius in time twenty years ago, this is what he would have looked like: that sweet, sexy, wide-open face, slight gap between his teeth, brown skin burnished with that masculine vigor, all offset by the trademark goatee. This was Julius’s smile, his face with no worries, no sleepless nights, a face not etched with endless disappointments, divorce, failure, stress. It was as though S.E.C.R.E.T. had cloned my ex, bringing him back to a time when he was young, happy, confident, mine. Back when we were perfect.

  It all came crashing b
ack to me, those late nights, the low pay (the big hair!), Julius watching me adoringly from behind his turntables. It was fun while it lasted. But then late-night rehearsals cut into my study time. My grades suffered and I had to make a choice. I know I made the right one—I gave up dreams for goals, a hobby for a career. I had to, and I never regretted it. I never looked back. And yet, I had left something vital behind, a part of me I hadn’t thought I needed anymore or missed, until right now.

  My posture corrected as the singer’s hands circled the stand, bringing it more comfortably between his legs. He adjusted his guitar, strumming a few bars, his band following his lead. He brought his beautiful mouth to the microphone, his top lip snarling a little like Elvis’s, before delivering an aching rendition of “My Funny Valentine.”

  I felt the room turning towards him the way flowers lean heavy towards the sun. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, maybe thirty, this young man, but he sounded as though he’d been singing for decades, even through a war or two. His jazzy take on “I Can’t Make You Love Me” had me snapping and bobbing. Then he started up some banter with the crowd. He wasn’t French after all. He was American, Southern like me, which was at once incongruous and a bit of a relief.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to need some help with the next song,” he said, strumming his guitar. “It’s one of my favorites.”

  A hush came over the crowd.

  “Where is Solange Thompson?” he asked, using his hand to shade his eyes from the glare from the lights. “I think she’s here.”

  Solange Thompson? I didn’t register at first that he was talking to me, about me, at me, because he was using my maiden name. Then I felt someone’s hand on my upper arm, lifting me to my feet: the tiny woman with the clipboard.

  “You weel be so kind as to join Alain for a song?” she said, pressing me towards the stage.

  “Oh, no, there must be some mis—”

  “There she is,” Alain said, the spotlight finding me.