Page 107 of Jane Deyre
I snicker, my tone becoming self-deprecating.
“Ha! If Mommy and Daddy only knew how often I couldn’t get out of bed because I was so hungover or strung out. Blanche duped them, convincing her parents we’d become the latest, most revered literary power couple.
“The problem was I wasn’t in love with Blanche. Suckered in by her beauty, she was someone I could get high with and get off on. And I wasn’t ready to get married, so I took Rowland up on his offer and went to live with him in Paris. Blanche’s farewell words to me: ‘Fuck you, bastard. You’ll be back.’”
Jane continues to listen. Silently. Not moving. Her face still a blank canvas.
“I was excited. I envisioned living an expat life much like my literary heroes, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Sitting at Les Deux Magots or Café des Fleurs. Spewing out words and having heady conversations with other writers, artists, and musicians. I was wrong.
“My life in Paris made my life in New York look like I’d been living on a potato farm in Idaho. Rowland had become the king of the party scene and knew every beautiful person—and drug dealer—in the City of Light. From the Left Bank to the Right Bank, and every arrondissement in between. Rather than writing, I spent my days conked out on whatever bed I ended up in, sleeping off the drugs and booze, and my nights clubbing with him, getting high all over again. Sleep. Fuck. Snort. Repeat.
“It was at one of these clubs that I met Céline Varens. She was a lounge singer with a voice like Adele’s...”
“Like your daughter’s?” Jane asks, interrupting me for the first time.
“No, like Adele, the British singer, whom she idolized.”
Jane utters a small embarrassed “oh.” “She must have had a really great voice.”
“She did. It was mesmerizing. Powerful and sensual. But it was her beauty that blinded me. And seduced me. She made Blanche look like a diamond in the rough. It was love at first sight. Or should I say lust. After her show, we snorted a couple of lines and fucked in the bathroom. And the next coked-out day, I married her. I honestly can’t tell you when, where, or how. That’s how far gone I was. And the truth, I didn’t know who I married.”
Jane cocks her head. “What do you mean?”
“One thing I’ve learned as a biographer is people are not always who they seem to be. Céline was hardly who I thought she was. Like me, she was a fucked-up mess. A cokehead. But she was also mercurial. Unpredictable. One day she’d be as sweet as sugar, the next a raving maniac. Crawling on the floor like a savage animal. Attacking me with her claws. Tearing at my clothes. Screaming obscenities.” I involuntarily rub a finger over the scar she left on my temple, wishing Jane would rub it too. She doesn’t.
“A doctor I made her see said she was schizoid and suicidal. I wanted to divorce her, but she refused. And getting a divorce in France is extremely hard. Especially for an expat.
“Then, I got a wake-up call. Rowland OD’d. They found him in the bathroom of some club, drowning in a pool of vomit. As fucked up as he was, I loved him like a brother. I think he died to send me a message. To become sober. I knew I could no longer stay in Paris. Or continue to live the life I was leading.
“So six years ago, I left Paris. Left Céline. And returned to the States. Went back to New York. The last thing I heard about Céline was that she jumped into the Seine and almost died. And that she was committed to some insane asylum near the French Alps.”
Brushing a strand of hair off Jane’s face, I take a break. She jerks her head away and then holds me fiercely in her gaze.
“You lied to me! You told me you didn’t have a wife... that she was dead.”
My exact words to her flash in my head.She’s dead to me.
“It waslikeshe was dead. She was out of sight. Out of mind. I didn’t even get a monthly bill from the sanitarium she was confined in because in France they have socialized medicine and the government pays for those kinds of things. Still unable to divorce her without jumping through hoops, I didn’t want her to burden my life. Ruin it for me for other women, though I certainly wasn’t looking for one until I met you.” I pause and hang my head before looking back up at Jane. The icy coldness in her eyes sends a chill down my spine. “I know it was selfish of me...”
“It was wrong. So, so wrong!” Her froideur morphs into fury. “You deceived me! And you deceived your daughter! She had the right to know about her mother!”
“And I had the right to know about my daughter!” I slam back at her in my defense. After all we’ve been through today, we’re having a goddamn fight. The bath is no longer a balm. It’s become a war zone.
A belligerent Jane looks straight into my eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I never knew I had a daughter until she showed up at the front gate a few months ago.”
“Didn’t you know Céline was pregnant with Adele when she was committed?” She fires the words at me.
I shake my head. “I didn’t have a clue. I had no contact with the asylum; they didn’t know about me. I only recently found out she gave birth to Adele there, but because she was incompetent to be a mother—deemed a danger—the baby was quietly taken away from her and given to Céline’s next of kin. A French cousin, who lived in Britain and convinced little bilingual Adele that her real mother was on a trip far away. After losing her job, the woman could no longer take care of Adele and her new boyfriend didn’t want her around... so she shipped her off to me. With paternity papers.”
“All that time you never knew about her?”
“Yeah. I know... it’s hard to believe.”
A grim understanding settles over Jane’s features as I tell her about Céline’s death.
“The next contact I had with Adele’s guardian was a text I received ten days ago. That Céline had died of an aneurysm and that I needed to travel to France immediately to make funeral arrangements.”