“Do you think that’s fair to your fellow victims?” the producer who had called her said somewhat harshly. “You are an enormous presence. You have a name and a face that everyone recognizes. You have a voice you can use to speak up on their behalf, many of them don’t, some of them can’t even speak now, or barely speak French. We’ve tracked them all down, we know where they are, so many in hospitals, and you could show what an event like this does to people. You even lost your own mother. When people hear the word ‘injured,’ it conjures up a visit to the emergency room, and two hours later they go home. Some of these people have had over seventy surgeries. If I tell the story, I’m just another commentator. If you tell the story, everyone will listen. It doesn’t matter if you cry or choke up, people will want to hear it from you. And on top of it you’re a beautiful woman.” What he said was powerful and unnerved her. She felt anxious and panicked just listening to him.
“I have very bad scars on my face,” she said angrily. “I’m not making public appearances, and I’m still having surgeries myself.”
“That’s my point. No one knows that. Are you still modeling?”
“No, I can’t.” She sounded annoyed. She hated how pushy he was.
“Exactly. There are scores of people who can no longer work, nurses, secretaries, teachers, mothers, who have lost their arms and legs and can’t take care of their children, a doctor who can no longer practice. Don’t let the world think that it’s over. It’s not over for any of the survivors, or the next victims, because it will happen again.” Everyone believed that.
“Why me? Why do I have to be the one to do it?”
“Because you’re beautiful, and people would rather look at you than someone else. They’ll listen to you, and those scars on your face give you a legitimate voice. You owe it to your fellow survivors to do it, and all the victims, including your mother.” She wanted to hang up on him when he said that, but she didn’t. What he said was very compelling, but she didn’t want it to be true.
“I’m not going to be the poster child for anti-terrorism,” she said angrily.
“Why not? What better cause is there? We did a film on the Bataclan and the response was overwhelming.” She had wanted to do something to help others and had some social importance, but this was too close to home.
“I’ll think about it,” she said, but didn’t intend to. “When do you want to do it? I’m having surgery in New York on the anniversary,” she said smugly, thinking that would get her out of it.
“We want to start taping in a week, we have a lot of victims to see, and it’ll take us about six weeks to do it.”
“I’ll let you know,” she said, and was relieved to hang up. She hated how pushy he was, but his words had hit their mark, and had a ring of truth to them. She wondered if he was right. Did she have an obligation to the other survivors? But why her? She wasn’t convinced by his arguments, only haunted by them.
He called and left messages for her for the next five days, and she didn’t return his calls. She didn’t want to think about it, or be pressured into doing the show and exposing herself. She could think of dozens of reasons why she didn’t want to do it.
She lay awake thinking about it all one night, remembering the stories she had heard from the nurses about other victims, the countless people who had lost limbs, Cyril and her mother and thirty others who had lost their lives. She got up and walked around the apartment, and wound up in her mother’s study and said out loud, “Maman, what would you do?” And then she knew, because her mother was a selfless person, and would do what was right for the greater good. She tried to be honest about why she didn’t want to do it, and she knew it was because she didn’t want the world to see her with a ruined face, to see her as imperfect, when she had been so perfect before. Now she was flawed, but as Doug had said, it wasn’t her fault, any more than it was her mother’s fault that she was dead. Others had done it, and had died in the process. But others like them had to be brought to justice so it couldn’t happen again, and those who had paid so dearly with an arm or a leg or their life deserved to be honored and remembered. The show wasn’t about her. It was about them.
She went back to bed and slept peacefully for the next few hours, for the first time in days. In the morning she called the producer and growled into the phone. “I’ll do it,” she said, and he exclaimed with pleasure and thanked her. “When do we start?” she asked.