“I told you, I had dinner with a client … a couple of clients.” I was trying to remember the story.
“Were you with Hayes?”
Fuck.
“Who?”
“Hayes Campbell. Were you with Hayes Campbell?” She was not asking it gently. She was not being polite. She knew.
And suddenly I could feel the black cod with miso threatening to make a reappearance. “Yes. He’s a client of mine. We had dinner.”
“A client? Don’t lie to me, Mom. I saw you. You were kissing him. I saw you.” Her tears were welling. And I could feel it, her pain, in my knees.
This is not how it was supposed to happen, in the confines of the narrow corridor with the walls closing in and her childhood photos taunting me and me playing defense. Not this way.
“Izz…” I’d begun to sweat.
“Oh my God. Are you dating him?”
“I’m not—”
“You’re dating him? You’re dating Hayes Campbell?!”
“Honey, I’m not dating him. We’re … we’re friends.” God, what a crock! I was standing there with his sperm still swimming inside me, and attempting to convince her otherwise. And my daughter could see right through me.
“Gross. Gross. Gross, Mom.” She was visibly shaking. “That is so gross! How can you be dating Hayes Campbell? You’re old! You’re like twice his age!”
If she’d wanted to hurt me, she’d succeeded.
I reached out for her shoulder, and she pushed me away. Her tears were pouring, and I got the impression that if she could have hit me, she would have.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Were you just not going to tell me?”
“Isabelle … I’m sorry.”
“I love him.”
“You don’t love him, Izz. You love the idea of him.”
She looked at me, her eyes wild with fury. “I. Love. Him.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
She began to ramble, snot running from her nose, her lips catching on her braces. “I heard the car, because the TV wasn’t on, so I heard the car, and I looked and it looked like him, but I was thinking, ‘No way.’ There was no way that was him, because he was supposed to be in London until later this week when they come for the AMAs, and Ellen, but it really looked like him and I searched it, and there are paparazzi shots of him landing at LAX today. And it’s him. It’s him. And he’s in our driveway and he’s kissing you. He’s kissing you. He picked you. And I hate you. I hate you I hate you…”
The way she’d said it, like it was a competition between us, made me numb. “Izz, I’m sorry.”
She shook her head, crazed. “Did you…? Are you…?” She trailed off, unable to articulate.
I did not know what sordid thoughts she was entertaining. But they were probably accurate.
“Oh God. How could you do this to me? How could you? Oh my God, this isn’t really happening!”
“Isabelle.” I reached for her again, and she recoiled.
“Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. What kind of mother are you?” she spat, stepping back into her pink-and-white bedroom. Ripping my heart.
“Izz, you’re making a much bigger deal out of this than it is—”
“Don’t come in here,” she said, slamming the door. Locking it. “Don’t come in here.”
I sat there. Outside of her closed door, for an hour. Listening to her sob and destroy things. And there was nothing I could do. Keep calm and carry on.
“I’m sorry, Izz. I’m sorry,” I kept repeating. But to her, it meant nothing. I’d waited until it was too late. And as Hayes had predicted, it was ugly.
* * *
She did not talk to me for a week.
* * *
On Monday, she went to school, looking as if she’d gone twelve rounds in a boxing match, she was that swollen. I insisted she stay home, but she refused: she did not want to be around me. I don’t know what she told her friends.
* * *
On Tuesday after school, she packed a bag and waited for Daniel to pick her up. When I pleaded with her again, and apologized again, she turned to me very coldly and asked, “Did you have sex with him?” And when I could not answer her, she started to cry.
* * *
She would not return until Sunday, when Daniel insisted on bringing her back. She had up to that point not responded to any of my calls or texts, but had no other option because Daniel was leaving town again. He dropped her off that afternoon, and when I attempted to hug her, she let me, although she did not hug back.
“I missed you,” I said, inhaling her. Her shampoo, her sunscreen.
She nodded, and then made her way into the house.
Daniel was in the driveway, pulling bags out of the trunk of the BMW. I moved to help him.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” he said.
“Thanks for bringing her.”
He shook his head, irritated. “It’s been a very fucked-up week.”
“I know.”
He shut the trunk then and finally looked at me. “I warned you. I fucking warned you. Jesus Christ, Sol, what were you thinking?”
I did not respond.
“Seriously. What the hell were you thinking? He’s a kid. Have you lost your mind?”
My temples throbbed. For days my head had hurt, and my thoughts had been dark and slow and muddled, like being stuck inside a Turner painting.
“You know what, I’m not going to have this conversation with you. Not now. Possibly not ever.”
“No. You are. Because our daughter is a complete and total mess right now, and I fucking warned you this would happen, and this is not just about you…”
It killed me to hear this, to know that he was right.
“She’s been listening to Taylor Swift’s new album on repeat and saying that she finally understands her pain,” he continued. “I don’t even know what that means…”
“She’s hurting, Daniel. Her heart’s broken.”
“Because of this Hayes kid? Or because of you?”
That stung.
For a moment he was quiet, staring out at the street. “My God, Sol,” he said, low, “what are people going to think?”
It struck me: the fact that in the midst of all this he was thinking about appearances and judgment. It was base and unappealing. And I had to wonder if this is how I’d come across to Hayes. Caring about how things looked and what people thought and not what truly mattered.
A couple of hikers were descending the hill, and Daniel paused until they were fully out of earshot.
“How did this even happen?” he asked. “How long has this been going on?”
I didn’t answer. My mind was off in a thousand different places, a dozen different hotel rooms. New York. Cannes. Paris.
“Are you in love with him? My God, what am I asking? He’s like eighteen.”
“He’s not eighteen.”
“You have to end this.”
“Please don’t tell me what I have to do.”
“You have to end this. It’s like my wife is Mary Kay Letourneau.”
“I’m not your wife, Daniel.”
He froze then, realizing his error. It took him a moment to collect himself, and then: “I mentioned it to Noah, and Noah already knew. How the fuck did Noah know? Have you been talking to Noah?”
“No.”
“Then how the fuck did he know?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Soho House…”
“Soho House?”
I watched him processing, as if in slow motion. The sun glaring in his eyes.
“That was him? That was him who came over to our table at lunch? Were you fucking him then? Were you fucking him when he came over and introduced himself?”
“Daniel…”
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”
“Please, stop.”
“Eva’s pregnant. We’re getting married,” he spat.
If he had punched me in the face, it would not have hurt more.
“I was waiting for the right time to tell you, but it never came. I’m sorry.”
He stood there for a moment, not knowing quite what to do. And then he got into his BMW and drove away. Leaving me, once again, with the baggage.
* * *
On Monday, the day after August Moon performed “Sorrowed Talk” on the American Music Awards and walked away with four trophies, Hayes came to visit.
I had spent much of the previous Monday and Tuesday at the house in Malibu, crying. He’d held me and comforted me, and not once did he reprimand me for having waited so long. And then he expressed the desire to talk to her when things calmed down.
“I think it will only make things worse,” I’d said. We were sitting on the balcony, staring out at the waves, the rolling hills behind us.
“I don’t think it will. Part of what’s alienating her is that I don’t quite seem real. Like I’m the bloke in the poster and, to her anyway, I’m not tangible. She’s put me on some pedestal where I can’t possibly live up to whatever it is she has in her head. And she needs to see that I’m just kind of normal and human.”
“You? Normal? Human?”
He smiled. “Sometimes…”
And so, Monday afternoon, when I was still reeling about Daniel and Eva’s news, and when Isabelle was still punishing me with monosyllabic exchanges, Hayes showed up at the house. I had not given Isabelle warning. Because I did not want her to prepare or overthink it. I just wanted her to be. She was sitting on one of the lounges in the backyard, doing her homework, a blanket wrapped around her narrow shoulders.
“Izz, someone’s here to see you.”
She glanced up, and her expression when Hayes stepped out revealed what to me seemed the full extent of everything a thirteen-year-old girl could feel. Love and betrayal and heartbreak and expectation and disappointment and fury and lust and hurt. And the fact that it all fell on his shoulders worried me. But if he was daunted by it, it did not show.