SECRET Revealed (27 page)

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, and 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 back 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.

“I’m flattered, b-but—” I stammered, trying to resist the woman’s prodding, but unable to resist Alain’s urging. “I haven’t done this in so long—”

My protestations were to no avail. I was ushered closer and closer to a grinning Alain and his inviting quartet, one of whom was now plunking a stool right in front of the microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Alain said, extending his hand to help me up the steps of the stage. “Please welcome Solange Thompson.”

Over applause, I began apologizing ahead of time for what would no doubt be a disaster. When the applause ebbed, a microphone was slapped into my hand. What happened next occurred because there was just no time to course-correct, no time to stop the band from striking up “Summertime,” one of my favorites, no time to dig in my heels or flee in shock. Something took over for me, something ancient and beautiful, something embedded in my DNA. My body rose from the stool, and began to move to the opening chords, my eyes closed, my hand slapping out a gentle beat against my sequined thigh. Then I opened my mouth and sang. I sang words to a song long stored in the vault of my brain, and I sang it
well
. Alain leaned forward. We shared the mike for a few moving bars, our mouths
inches apart and in complete harmony, like we’d been doing this for a long time too. Tears were stinging my eyes. But I wasn’t crying. This wasn’t sadness. This was old joy. And when the crowd applauded, a few in the front row springing to their feet, I could have kissed them on every one of their French mouths.