The Other Side of Now, page 29
In my dreams, I see Avalon as if it were an empty soundstage.
Nothing more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I keep my Dodgers hat low and my sunglasses on as I move through LAX. I’m recognized by a few people anyway, who whisper and point, and I fend off some who dash up, taking pictures of me or filming themselves with me as they ask if I really am pregnant, ask if I know the twist of the next Marvel movie Grayson is going to star in, and ask where I’ve been.
I go through the delirious motions of arrival. I wait in the long bathroom line, and, like many weary travelers, I see a sallow reflection I barely recognize, but in my case it’s uniquely unfamiliar.
I’m back to reality.
Thinned nose. Sharp collarbone. Plump lips. Never has a girl been so disappointed to see that she’s twenty pounds thinner.
I wait at the baggage carousel, get my suitcase, and then wait on the curb for my driver to arrive.
I get in, thankful to find the back of the car empty—no Lisa Michele here to talk my ear off about some horrible new infrared beauty product or whatever.
It’s sunny and bright, warm with a cool breeze. The car drives beneath blue skies with wispy white clouds. Sparkling green palm trees wave in the morning sun. The traffic is slow-moving because of the hour, but I don’t care. I feel empty. Like someone took an ice cream scooper to my insides.
The driver swears at the people who cut him off, lurching from lane to lane.
I realize, at some point, that I’m not tense. I’m heartbroken, but I’m not electrified with fear like I usually am in the car.
Instead, I feel shrouded in grief. The loss of Cillian. The loss of Kiera. The loss of Aimee, all over again.
I hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye.
I hadn’t had a real last moment with Kiera.
I never made up with Cillian’s mom, apologized for breaking her son’s heart and explained that my own heart was broken too.
I never met bloody Kay Donahue, tried her soup or listened to whatever gossip she’d have to impart.
I never thanked Cillian’s dad.
I forgot to tell Aimee about all the friends we had in high school and what they’re doing now, in my world.
I never got to tell Cillian all the ways he made me feel. Because there’s not enough time on earth for that.
It’s so incomplete. It’s as if my favorite show got canceled without wrapping up all the storylines. But that’s what grief is, isn’t it? Expectation and resolution slashed, leaving unfinished conversations behind.
Will it feel like this forever now? It can’t. I can’t.
These thoughts remind me uncomfortably of those days after Aimee died. I couldn’t make sense of the loss. It didn’t make any sense. I kept thinking I could use logic to talk my way out of the reality I was suddenly facing. The reality being that I would simply never have back the happiness that had fallen through my fingers and shattered on the ground beneath my feet, the shards of it lodging into my skin, past the calluses, and making me bleed.
Despite the traffic, we’re back at Grayson’s house sooner than I’m prepared for. I melt unhappily out of the back of the car and walk up the driveway.
I don’t get inside before I hear the jingling of her collar.
Dido comes running toward me.
The one silver lining to all this.
“Oh, Dido,” I say, feeling my love for her spill out all over the temperature-regulated concrete we stand on.
I drop to my knees and greet her, kissing her a million times and taking in her familiar scent.
I go around the back, Dido staying right at my heels, unwilling to leave me. I leave my suitcase on the porch and walk through the enormous open doors that lead to the living room, where I see Grayson sitting in front of an absolute cornucopia of junk food. I may be in a state of misery and confusion, but even I can tell that it’s a pretty hilarious amount of trash.
He sits up, and I see that he’s eating cake straight out of the butter-yellow Porto’s Bakery box. Really committing to the weight gain thing. I wonder if he’s choosing to forget that they could do it with prosthetics.
On the screen before him I see that he’s watching Charade.
“Babe!” he says. “Welcome home! How was it?”
Babe. More confirmation that I’m me again. Whatever that means.
“It was good,” I say, obviously not even getting close to the truth. “Looks like the carbo-loading thing is going well.”
“I know, right? Look, I’ve got the belly goin’,” he says, pointing at what is inarguably still a very lean abdomen. “Watching some Hitchcock.”
I glance at the screen. “This isn’t a Hitchcock movie. Stanley Donen directed it.”
Grayson looks at me, confused, then back at the screen.
I sigh, go to the fridge, and pull out a bottle of green juice from Pressed Juicery. I always feel depleted after a flight, but obviously, this time, I feel weirder than ever.
“I’m going to sit by the pool for a bit,” I say. Apparently melancholic sunbathing is my go-to activity when grieving.
I go upstairs and put on my bikini, feeling startled once again by my slimmer physique, my unfamiliar face. Dido pants beside me.
I stop at the freezer on my way to the pool and pull out a tub of Grayson’s Van Leeuwen ice cream. I grab a spoon, but don’t bother with a bowl, and leave the green juice behind.
I sit outside, eating the vanilla ice cream in the warm sunshine, in a beautiful life that no longer feels like my own and that maybe never did. I look up Cairdeas Pub and only find results related to the two words individually. When I type in Avalon at the end, I still get nothing relevant. Avalon has different businesses than the ones I would recognize.
I do this with every imaginable combination of things I saw and experienced there. Looking for the needle in the haystack that tells me what I found was real.
But I find nothing. I knew I wouldn’t.
How can it be? How can any of it be?
I hate myself for the fact that it’s all already starting to fade away like some vivid dream I swore I’d never forget. The same thing that happened when Aimee died. She already felt like a memory, even a few days later. My mind adapting too fast to the new reality. How quickly the past tense needs to be employed.
I sit out there until the ice cream is completely gone and the wind turns too chilly. Then I go inside and find Grayson, now watching Vertigo.
“Hey, Grayson?”
“Yeah, babe.” He doesn’t take his eyes off the screen.
“I think we should break up.”
His face falls and he turns to me, sitting up. “No, really? Why?”
I shake my head. “It’s not right. This isn’t real.”
He lets his gaze fall to the floor and then shakes his head. “Man. That’s a bummer.”
“I think you’re in love with Elsa. You should ask her out.”
“Oh, come on, is this about that again? I’ve told you—”
“No, no. I’m not accusing you. I believe you. I believe you didn’t cheat on me. But I think you love her.”
He furrows his brow. “What happened, Lana?”
“My name is actually Meg. I know you know that, but … yeah, that’s my name.”
“I know, I—you introduced yourself as Lana, you introduce yourself as Lana to everyone. I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“It was. It was. But. I’m Meg.” I lift my arms, then let them fall against my lean thighs.
He nods and then stands, crumbs falling off of him. “Nice to meet you, Meg.”
He cocks a little smile, and it melts me a little. He’s sweet. If dumb. Gorgeous, if completely unattractive to me.
“Yeah. Look, I’m not mad at you. You didn’t do anything wrong. You’re actually really great. Especially for an actor,” I say, giving him the hint of a smile back. “But we were set up to be together, and we were lucky we actually liked each other. It worked for a while.”
“I understand. I’m really disappointed about this, but … I mean, I can’t change your mind?”
“I know what real love feels like, and this isn’t it. We both deserve to find it.”
He looks really serious for a moment. “Okay.”
“Okay. Well.” We both seem to think I’m going to say more, but then I don’t, only, “Well, I’ll see you.”
And then I go upstairs, find one of my overnight duffels, and pack it with the things I like, grabbing the boxes that hide my personal things. I fill a backpack with some clothes.
I throw on my sweatpants and a sports bra, tie a sweatshirt around my waist, and then go through the bedroom closet, looking for my tatty old Hopper print. I find it rolled up with the hair tie.
I grab Dido’s favorite toy, leash, food, bowl, and dog bed.
I don’t see Grayson again on my way out to the garage, where I unlock my big, stupid, ostentatious Land Rover and get in, tossing my bags and Dido’s in the back and letting Dido jump in after them onto her bed. I go back for the suitcases I’d packed for Avalon and never reopened, then decide to leave them. I can’t look at them. I don’t care about anything inside.
I’m leaving California with less and more than I came with.
I start the car, open the garage, and peel out, knowing that it’s the last time I’ll ever be here.
I don’t know where I’m going when I start driving, but by the time I hit the 10, I do. At the next traffic slowdown, I type in my parents’ address and settle in for the forty-hour drive.
I put on the Revolver album, roll the windows down, and drive away from the sunset.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Florida is as hot and humid as an Equinox steam room.
In the mornings, I lie by the pool with a paper towel wrapped around a bagel with cream cheese, happily eating carbs and drinking sugary bright orange juice my mom bought at Publix. In the evenings, I drink inexpensive Trader Joe’s wine—out of a juice glass—and sit on the back porch with my parents while my dad grills burgers to a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album. They have the neighbors over one night, and we play a lively game of Trivial Pursuit. No one cares whether I’m famous or not, they still tease me for forgetting the lyrics to the national anthem.
They are not the kind of parents who kept my room the same, like some strange shrine to the past. Years ago, my mom asked me for permission to put some things of mine in storage, then eventually told me she painted the room; then one day, it became what it is now. A nice, simple, comfy guest room with L.L.Bean percale sheets. A room that doesn’t resemble the one I grew up in.
I can’t believe it took me so long to go home again.
It’s not until Friday afternoon that my mom finds me by the pool and asks if we can talk, and I can see it’s something important.
I sit up, preparing myself for bad news; if she tells me she has cancer or something, I’m going to drive the Land Rover into the swamps of Alligator Alley.
Although, it’s a Land Rover, so it would probably be fine.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Well, honey, since we didn’t know you were coming, I made plans for this weekend. I can cancel them if you want, but—”
“Oh, no, Ma, do whatever. I’m fine.”
“Tonight I have plans to do dinner with Jenny. Your dad has dinner with Joe, and I do dinner with Jenny. It’s a little routine we’ve gotten into. Sometimes we all do something together, but tonight it’s us girls.”
I nod slowly as comprehension dawns. “Ah.”
Again, I think about how many times I tried to get my parents to move because I thought they needed some other kind of life. Even though I didn’t have my own figured out. Probably because I didn’t have my own figured out.
“You are welcome to join us, and in fact, I think it would mean a lot to her. To me. To you. To all of us.”
I haven’t seen or spoken to either of Aimee’s parents since the night we left for the party. When Jenny tossed Aimee the keys and said, Drive carefully, sweetie.
Now that I remember it was raining, I remember that she actually said more after that. I mentally squint to find the words.
Drive carefully, sweetie. It’s supposed to rain later. Maybe let Meg drive?
Mom! had been Aimee’s only reply and last word to Jenny.
I stare at Dido, who is happily basking in the sun.
Then to my mom, “Okay. I’ll come.”
Three hours later, I’m showered and covered in aloe lotion after underestimating the power of the sun—for five days in a row—and wearing a borrowed matching set of what my mom calls her loungewear to go over to Aimee’s parents’ house.
“I don’t know why I’m so nervous,” I say to my mom as we drive down familiar, half-forgotten roads in her years-old SUV.
“It’s natural,” she says with a shrug that puts me, strangely, at ease.
Pulling up to the house makes my heart skip several beats in a row, my nervous system well aware of the last time I was here.
Thirty-three Blue Daze Lane. There it is. Aimee’s house.
The house looks so similar, and yet the differences are startling. Time has worn the place into something new. Something more settled. The flowers and trees around the house are bigger and older now, making it impossible to think I was only here yesterday.
It’s then I realize that the set that was built for Aimee’s play was mimicking a version of this house that hasn’t existed in a decade. Like she didn’t truly know how much it had changed.
As if she hadn’t been home in so long. As if her last memories were of the house when she was nineteen too.
The realization gives me chills. It’s like she was a ghost, only knowing what she knew when she died. And hadn’t she been, in a way?
I think of Cillian and Kiera and Maureen and have to shut my eyes hard to stop from crying.
Jenny comes out of her front door in a kaftan, looking breezy and comfortable. My mom told her I’d be coming, so it isn’t an unpleasant trauma surprise party.
When she sees me, her face breaks into a comforting smile and I realize that I have really, really missed her.
I walk right up to her and hug her. Having had my arms around Aimee only a few days ago, I’m vividly aware of the undeniable similarities between them. I squeeze her once, hard, and then let go.
“Come on in, ladies,” she says, not immediately putting a spotlight on how long it’s been since I was here and under what circumstances I left.
She’s not attaching importance to every second in the way I feared, and I relax as I walk inside.
The house, of course, has the same bones that it did when I last saw it. The counter in the kitchen that leads to the small dining room. The living room that takes a step to get down into. But things are different too.
I guess I’d expected … well, a time capsule. The same busy bulletin board with Post-it notes, an out-of-date calendar, and an irrelevant business card for Aimee’s old orthodontist. I’d been expecting the place to match exactly with my memories, like two negatives held up one behind the other.
But it’s not the same. I realize now that most of the furniture Jenny and Joe had back then was probably inherited or thrifted. They didn’t have a lot of money, and they were fairly young parents, which is the kind of thing kids don’t notice. Most people in their twenties and thirties, despite what the internet wants us to believe, are living in houses built out of the things they can find that work. They’re not usually curating space, like influencers want us to think they are.
Now, it’s a clean, mid-century style and it’s perfect for them.
The windows have been replaced with new ones, which probably make the bills lower and the house quieter. I remember being told to quiet down constantly when we were out back and they were trying to watch The Bachelor or whatever inside. I have a brief fantasy of being here together, grown, with our moms, and having wine, sitting outside the thick new windows.
The dining room table is clean and white, instead of the oak one where I used to sit and eat spaghetti. The couch is pale yellow with spindly, angled legs instead of the big, overstuffed one they used to have. The kitchen has new, updated appliances. The wood paneling is bright, painted clean white.
Jenny clearly kept living. Kept growing. Kept evolving. She didn’t freeze in time. I think I feared that everyone here had. That no one else had the ability to change but me, so coming home would be a frightening step into the past.
But it isn’t.
At first, it’s small talk about what I’ve been up to. She told me she’s watched the show and thinks I’m just marvelous on it.
When Jenny finishes making the tacos, we eat and chat about how good they are, and then—after the third margarita hits—I bring up the elephant in the room, even though I’m the only who can see it.
“So I had a crazy time in Ireland.”
That is what I lead with. A bewilderingly blasé start to a story that neither of them are going to believe.
For the next half hour, I tell the moms what happened in Avalon. They exchange a few looks here and there, and I push through.
“I know it sounds crazy,” I say. “It was crazy. And I don’t know what the hell it was, or how, but I’m telling you, it happened.”
I’m very clear about the fact that the internet results changed, that my face changed, that nothing was as it is in reality. I don’t want to raise hopes that maybe there was a mistake and Aimee is actually living in Ireland somewhere after pulling off the crime of a lifetime, faking her own death.
When I finish, I’m not sure what they’re going to say. I’m not sure if my mom is going to apologize for what I’ve said, if Jenny is going to change character completely and slap me across the face and accuse me of terrible lies.
“You know, this is going to sound crazy,” says Jenny, stirring her drink with her straw. “But I believe every word you said.”
My mom looks patient and kind as she nods at Jenny and says nothing.
“You do?” I ask.
“Yes. I do. There’s a ton of research on quantum science lately. I was listening to an episode of Radiolab that went into this kind of thing the other day.”
