Little Known Facts A Novel - By Christine Sneed Page 0,109
how could she be sure?), she couldn’t think of anyone she knew who was happy, not for more than an hour or two at a time.
Chapter 11
Hollywood Ending
If my son felt that he had to run away from home, I suppose there are worse places to run to than Paris. I’m relieved that he didn’t choose some remote region in China or an Alaskan outpost where modern conveniences and medical clinics are scarce. One of my fears, ever since I saw that movie about the boy who moves to Alaska and dies a wretched, lonely death because he accidentally ingests a poisonous plant, is that Billy will somehow come to a similar end. This is wholly irrational, I know—Billy doesn’t even like to camp—but one’s fears are hardly ever rational.
Despite Paris’s much admired charms, it’s hard for me to believe that my son will stay there for very long. My hunch (and hope) is that he will miss Los Angeles and his sister and friends here, his spacious condo and the energy of our sprawling dreamscape, if not also his father and me. I’m hurt that he wanted to leave and did so without any kind of warning—one day he was here, the next he wasn’t, and he left no note with any sort of hint about where he had gone and why. I realize that children leave behind their parents and childhood homes all the time, but both of my kids have lived in southern California their entire lives, having chosen to go to college here too. And usually when people leave, they give you a forwarding address or allow you the chance to say good-bye.
About Billy’s big move, my friends say, “It’s about time, isn’t it? Wasn’t it bound to happen sooner or later?” I know they’re right, but the comparison I make (only to myself) is this: his departure is like a cancer diagnosis. Despite the fact most of us have heard the sobering statistics—one in two people will suffer from some form of cancer before they die—when the diagnosis comes, it’s still a shock.
The irony is, my son and I seem to have grown closer across the distance of one entire continent and the Atlantic Ocean. He calls me every week now, or I call him and he calls back within a day or two. There are no more unreturned phone calls, no more plaintive or frustrated or angry pleas for him to call me back before I contact his building’s doorman and ask him to confirm that Billy is still alive. In the three months that he has lived in France, his attitude appears to have changed from bad to mostly good. He has told me twice that he loves me without me saying it first. He has started writing a screenplay (though he told me not to tell his father if I talked to him, because he did not want Renn to know anything about it until after he had finished it). He has a new girlfriend, a woman named Jorie who apparently is also taking time off from her regular life in the States to study art and learn French and finally make a real attempt at appreciating beauty. That’s how Billy has phrased it, at any rate. “There’s beauty to appreciate in California,” I told him after he said this.
His reply: “I knew you’d say that. But in France it’s different. The French practically invented beauty, at least in its modern conception.”
“You sound like a philosopher now,” I said. “I guess Paris is working for you.”
“It’s not just working,” he said quietly. “It’s saving me. I was going crazy in L.A. Things are a lot better now, but I had to get out of there to realize just how depressed I was.”
“Are you still running too many miles?” I asked him another time.
“No,” he said, “but I do run almost every day, and compared to what some people run, fifteen or twenty miles isn’t that much.”
“You don’t need to run more than a few miles at a time to stay in good shape if you’re already eating healthy.”
“I don’t do it just to stay in shape. I do it because I love it. I’m not changing my running regimen, Mom. We don’t need to keep discussing this.”
This is a little hard for me to accept, considering that it wasn’t very long ago that I got a phone call from Anna telling me that her brother was in the hospital because of what