Little Known Facts A Novel - By Christine Sneed Page 0,71

and said, “Well, yes, I guess I did.”

“I bet there’s more to that story,” I said.

But she only shook her head and said that she guessed she just had a good ear for languages. There probably is more to it than this, but it’s not my habit to pressure girlfriends for detailed histories of their past relationships or flings. Elise would likely have told me if I’d probed a bit, but the last thing I need to do is act the jealous boyfriend who also happens to be old enough to be her father. In fact, I think I might even be a couple of years older than both of her parents. But really, so what. My body is still in very good working order. I see no reason not to be with her if she wants to be with me too.

In Cannes to celebrate her leading-actress win, I bought her a three-carat emerald ring. It was too soon to buy her a diamond, in part because everyone would have cried “Engagement!” as eager as the media is to marry its stars off, often with the tacit hope that things will soon devolve into a spectacularly acrimonious divorce. Although I’m not eager to get married again, the thought has crossed my mind a few times. I know that at some point she does want to get married, though maybe not to me, and I haven’t dared to ask if she wants kids, nor has she told me. I’d really prefer not to have another child; raising kids is one of the things that I probably am too old for, or else I just don’t want to devote the energy to it again. Still, if having a baby turned out to be one of her fondest wishes, I’d probably have to give in.

C. J1 AND J2

I keep two journals—one of them, J1, to be published after my death if the executor of my estate (who is my attorney, not one of my kids) thinks enough people will want to read it. The other journal, J2, I don’t and won’t share with anyone. To protect the people I leave behind (and myself, sure), I start a new notebook each year and destroy the one that precedes it. This is where I write down the things that I have done or the thoughts I have had that sometimes make it hard to sleep at night. I can’t talk to my psychiatrist about these things because I don’t want him to think badly of me (not any more than he probably already does). Despite the risks, I need to keep this second journal because it’s like a pressure valve—if it weren’t there, my life would blow up.

There are entries about my relationship with Isis in J2, entries about my ex-wives and other women and my children and friends and brother. I’ve also written about shady things that I have witnessed and done nothing about, things I have done myself and later regretted, or, sometimes, regretted while I was doing them. I almost never read through the book before I burn it each year, always on January first—I think of this as a cleansing, a way to start over, and I always hope that each year there will be fewer entries, or shorter ones, or ones that could go in my other journal, the one for public consumption.

Lucy, I think, has seen one or two of the J2s, which is why, probably, she never believed me when I lied to her about a few things that happened while I was on location (or, once in a while, at home in L.A.). She would never admit to reading my journal, but I’m almost certain that she did—the specificity of her complaints and accusations made me realize that she had to have read some part of that year’s J2. I have always tried to keep it locked up in the glove compartment of my car when I’m not at home. If I am, I keep it in a desk drawer, one in which I eventually had a special lock installed (too late, unfortunately, to keep the diary from Lucy) because desk locks, my brother Phil and I discovered while we were growing up and snooping in our father’s study, can be picked with bobby pins or the kind of tiny screwdriver used to repair eyeglasses.

Each year’s J2 always starts off slow—only a few entries for the first several months, but then, around June or July, for some