My family arrived in Mougins (house #8) late in the summer of 1986. It’s the first house I can really remember. The bulk of our belongings, which had only just made it to Europe from California, were now rerouted here, so we were again reunited with the never-ending bed and Mobutu the gorilla painting.
I was going through a phase where I changed my name every few days. I would announce over breakfast that I was now Rainbow Raindrop Sunshine Moonlight, and I would only answer to that one name, and the next day I would claim to be Princess Moon Star, and so on. Variations on a celestial princess theme. In the end, my family just called me Tyler the Tyrant. Mom and Dad had impressed upon us that our surname was now Kane; this I had accepted, and then I quickly went around naming everything else as I saw fit, myself included.
It was here in Mougins, in the only house we never gave a name, that all the laughter and noise of our childhood grew a shade quieter. Mom was unhappy from the moment we arrived. The house had marble floors and ivory carpets, with a grand staircase down which Mom would glide, diaphanous and thin, warning us not to run in socks on the polished floors, her voice echoing spookily through the rooms.
I haven’t been back, but Mougins looks picturesque in photos, burnt-umber rooftops and tightly wound streets spiraling like the shell of a snail into the hillside. Mom remembers a sterile ostentation. She says Mougins was an enclave for the filthy rich, like Baby Doc, the Haitian dictator who lived next door to us. We had a Saudi Arabian arms dealer on the other side, who was courting me on behalf of his son in the mistaken belief we were an important American family. Occasionally I would be summoned for play dates or their emissary would come laden with sweets and toys and present them to me. Caitlin and Evan glowered as I tried to eat every one before Mom told me to share.
One day when walking past one of these grand houses, a hulk of a dog bounded out barking at us, but as soon as we said hello, she rolled onto her back, legs splayed in the air, panting adoringly. We adopted Bricky after that, an unloved German shepherd, whose real family we never met. Each time we left the house she ran behind the car, and Dad had to circle the roundabout to tire her out so she didn’t follow us all the way up the highway.
Evan and Caitlin attended the international school nearby, which turned out to be a shambles. The school had told Dad they would be renovating and moving to better premises, but the renovations never happened, and now Evan and Caitlin’s schooling was suffering, which added to Mom’s list of grievances. She didn’t like the garden here either. It wasn’t her garden, she said, and what was the point of planting anything when Dad had arranged for a man to come every week and preen out its imperfections. She took a job working in the lending library for a dose of daily normality. But she didn’t take pleasure in speaking French as she had Portuguese—French was the language of boarding school classrooms, a language imposed on her. At the root of these grievances was a grander realization, which had hit her as we were leaving Portugal: we were never going home.
Increasingly, Dad withdrew into fugitive life, spending time with his coconspirators, who Mom dubbed The Fugues. She saw them as complicit in Dad’s downfall, the men who had encouraged him to keep smuggling, because without his involvement their income would evaporate. She didn’t want to waste another minute of her life discussing the vagaries of the fugitive existence, which was all they seemed capable of sharing. The women swapped notes on how to get kids enrolled in school under fake names; how to stay in touch with family and friends back home; how much to tell the children; and the men discussed their legal cases.
As Reagan’s war on drugs raged on back in America, the sentences faced by this clique of former pot traffickers kept mounting, tightening the bonds between them. When you can’t tell new friends about your past, the people within your inner circle become the only ones who really know you. It was in this community that Dad felt most comfortable, and it was this community that made Mom feel like her entire life was now dictated by his fugitive status.
Mostly they fought in long, drawn-out silence, but the rare times they fought out loud, Dad was defensive and challenged her unhappiness, saying she hadn’t made any effort to make friends or settle in here like she had in Portugal. She was living in the South of France in a beautiful house with all the money and time she could want. His legal situation was a strain, but there were worse things a husband could do, like cheat or run off. In exchange, she didn’t have to cook, or clean, or work, or do anything she didn’t want to do. Many people would think she was very lucky; the other fugitive wives didn’t seem to have any trouble adjusting, he said. And she responded that if he wanted the sort of woman who could be placated with a pair of designer shoes and a jaunt on a fucking yacht, he should have married one.
After three grim months in Mougins, Dad agreed to move to England if it would make Mom happy. He felt we should wait until the end of the school year so as not to interrupt our education more than was necessary, but he later agonized over the decision after things had fallen apart. If only we had left right away, he thought, perhaps it would have been different.
For our remaining time in that house with no name and no stories we want to share, they slipped into a bitter dance of recrimination and regret, his retreat into denial propelled by her own stormy silence. We would have gone to England with or without Dad, not that it was ever said out loud.
* * *
One afternoon, shortly before we were due to leave, we all heard the same terrible howl from the dining room, and we ran downstairs to see what had happened. In the dining room, Dad had Bricky in a corner, and it was clear he had just planted a firm kick on her ribs. He stepped back when we came in, the trance of rage broken. We looked down at the dog, her tail between her legs, and up at Dad, who, now that his frustration had been spent on the ribs of a hungry dog, stood lost and confused, anger still flashing across his jaw in place of the shame he was reluctant to feel.
“The piece of shit got hold of the dinner—took it right off the table,” Dad said in his defense, indicating to the room around him. It looked like a massacre. Dad had bought steaks from the butcher, planning a special dinner for the family, and had left them on the dining room table, and now the red meat was strewn all over the ivory carpets. Grisly lumps of gnawed steak bone. Mom hated those carpets. What sort of people have ivory carpets? she would say.
Noting her disgust and our shocked little faces, Dad stormed out of the room to his office. We watched as Mom started to pick up the pieces of meat and collect them in a pile in the middle of the table, but the maid appeared, making those shuffling, wafting motions parents make when children are in the way, and Mom disappeared back outside through the sliding doors.
Sensing it was over, Bricky slunk away too, head held low, refusing to be comforted or loved, to return to her real family, in a kennel at the end of the drive.