The Song Remains the Same Read online

“Erg, hello?” I manage when I pick up the phone from the pass-through on the third ring.

  “I’m a block away,” Anderson says. “I’m coming up.”

  I glance at Rory, who has flopped back on the couch, her arms thrust over her face.

  “Now’s not a good time.”

  “For me either,” he says, and it’s only then that I detect his drunkenness, his ever-so-slight slurring of words. Formeeither.

  “And, you are not supposed to be drinking, mixing your meds!”

  “Tell me about it, Mom,” he says. “I’ll be there in two.” The line goes dead.

  “I take it that wasn’t my boyfriend calling to beg for my forgiveness?” Rory says.

  Before I can answer, Peter pokes his head out of the bedroom door.

  “Hey,” he says sleepily, “what’s with the commotion?”

  “What’s not with the commotion?” Rory says. “Hugh dumped me, Anderson is drunk, and you are very lucky to have gotten laid.”

  His eyes bulge, and I shrug, and we both realize there’s no getting around it, so what the hell anyway. He moseys in and sits in the armchair opposite the sofa. He and Rory size each other up warily. The phone clangs again with my doorman’s announcement of Anderson’s arrival.

  Anderson smells of bourbon when I kiss him hello, his cheeks pocked with sweat from the Labor Day heat wave.

  “The paps followed me here,” he says. “No one leave for a while. They’re waiting outside.” For a second, I remember how different we are, how far apart our worlds were before they literally collided.

  “As if anyone here is in any condition to go anywhere,” Rory mutters. “Besides, shouldn’t you be in Saint Barts or the Hamptons, somewhere fancy, other than here?”

  “I can’t take the travel right now,” he says from the kitchen. He leans into the sink and douses his face with water, staining the color of his faded green hipster tee.

  “What distillery did you fall into?” I ask.

  “Don’t judge,” he answers, then straightens himself and pours a glass of water.

  “It’s hard not to,” I answer.

  “Judging is her specialty,” Rory says, still prostrate on the sofa, “at least when she wants it to be.” Peter raises his eyebrows and washes his hands over his face.

  “Shut up, Rory,” I say. And just like that, we’ve unraveled.

  She glances unobtrusively at Peter, then to me.

  “You’re right,” she says, genuinely contrite. “That wasn’t fair. Ignore me. I’m just a mess right now.”

  “That’s beautiful,” Anderson interjects.

  “Oh, you shut up, too, and cut the sarcasm,” I snap, startled at how quickly I can turn, how quickly my flip can switch. I’m supposed to be living in the moment! What is wrong with all of you that you’re all goddamn ruining it?

  “I wasn’t being sarcastic—I was talking about the painting.” He gestures to the sunburst—or whatever it’s intended to be—over the mantel.

  “It’s my dad’s,” Rory and I say in unison.

  “Jinx,” she says, but no one has the energy to laugh.

  I turn toward Anderson. “Oh, well, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” He shrugs.

  I sink next to him on the couch and assess the sad lot of our situations. Eventually, Anderson starts breathing deeply next to me, and Peter retreats uninvited to the bedroom, and Rory, too, stretches out in the armchair, her feet propped up on the ottoman. I pull a blanket over Anderson, then her, and then lean back against the pass-through, staring at my father’s brilliance, how I’d kept this magnificent, unavoidable reminder of him in my house, my home, the one place I could have exorcised him entirely. I stare at the reds and the golds and the biting black shards and absorb this contradiction, this realization that despite the many ways that my father scarred me, I never fully let myself heal.

  What had Liv said? That everything within our control is a choice. I close my eyes and wonder which feels farther away: the time when I once had control or the time when I had a choice in the matter anyway.

  14

  Rory and I converge at the gallery on Monday morning, with a plan to go couch shopping afterward—my attempt to regain control, to have a choice in the matter over my old life, over my new life. Anderson, because he is bored and can’t stand to be alone with everyone gone for the holiday weekend, joins us. “Besides,” he said over the phone, “I’ll sweet-talk the staff at Crate and Barrel and get you a discount. They do that for actors, you know.” I sighed and wondered how someone could be both amiable and insufferable at the same time.

  I’ve tried to go without sleeping pills for the weekend, anxious of becoming dependent, so rest has come in fits and starts, and last night was no exception: me, staring at my alarm clock at 2:32 a.m., and now my eyes feel like marshmallows. Too puffy to open properly. Anderson hands me an extra venti latte he thought to pick up for me.

  “Ah, you read my mind,” I say, feeling momentarily guilty for faulting his earlier display of narcissism.

  He guzzles his own cup. “Insomnia. It’s robbing us of our last shred of dignity. You look like a train wreck, I feel like a train wreck.” But he smiles as he says this. We both know we could have lost much more by now.

  “I could use your help over here,” Rory says, her arms stacked with binders and free-floating papers.

  Rory is doing no better than either of us, having spent the duration of the weekend fused to my couch or on the cusp of my bed or curled up against the radiator, hashing and rehashing her implosion with Hugh. I listened, I listened some more, and though I wanted to seize her by the shoulders and yell, “Don’t you get it, this isn’t the end of the world!” I instead brewed coffee and warmed up cold leftovers and tried to appease her when I could. Making that choice that Liv had imparted: choosing to be there for her, asserting control when I could. This, I could do.

  Peter grew either bored or annoyed by Saturday evening, so offered a quick good-bye and headed out to…I don’t even know where. Thinking about it now in the gallery, I’m not sure I even asked, and I’m not sure that he told me when I woke up on Sunday morning and found him asleep, still clothed and smelling like stale cigarettes, next to me. I trusted him. I had to trust him even if I didn’t trust him. This was the bridge that we had to cross to get past beige.

  Rory thuds the binders down on the desk, atop the desk calendar with its reminders of my obstetrician appointments, while Anderson slides up the spare office chair, the wheels squeaking on the tile floor. He nudges me into it.

  “So this is what you did,” she says, gesturing to the binders. “These are your files, how you kept everything in order.”

  “I was the paper pusher.” Oh god, was I really a paper pusher? Where is the sex? The glamour? The tiny smidge of excitement that I actually enjoyed any aspect of this job?

  “But a good paper pusher at that.” Rory opens the top spiral. “Clients, all alphabetized—their last purchases, their likes and dislikes, their children’s names, their jobs. It’s all in here.”

  I flip through a few pages, amazed at how much about a person can be compartmentalized onto a single page. Just like my file, the one that tells Liv everything she needs to know about me. Not everything, I remind myself. Not even close to everything. I turn to the last page, then snap the cover closed, already uninterested. I sink back into the chair, scanning the room, my eyes surfing to the bookshelves against the wall. More binders. Only these are marked FRANCIS SLATTERY.

  “Are those Dad’s?” I flick my chin toward them.

  Rory spins quickly, her fingers finding their way to her neck.

  “What?” She laughs in a pitch too high to sound natural. “Oh, yes, those. Um, yes, those are Dad’s.”

  “Of his work?”

  She blinks an acknowledgment.

  “Didn’t Jamie ask you for these weeks ago? Back when he was researching?” I say. Operation Free Nell Slattery. Yes, let’s get back to that while we’re thinking of it. />
  She hesitates, wondering if she can slip through with the lie. “Okay, yes, he did. I’m sorry,” she says, more irritated than sorry. “I just didn’t want to drag all of this stuff back up again. And besides, I promised Mom.”

  You promised Mom? I start to say, until I think of my choice and my control over that choice, and I let it be. Of course she promised Mom. Mom, who was asserting her own control over things, too.

  Anderson ignores us both, strides to the shelves, and pulls down the notebooks. He thunks one in front of me and it flops open, concealing the desk calendar entirely. I’ve been trying to pretend that it wasn’t there, avoid eye contact like an ex-boyfriend at a cocktail party. Nine-week doctor’s appointment. No, no, let’s not think of such things right now. I try to refocus instead on OFNS, at what I might unearth.

  “So what are we looking at here?” he says, peering more closely at the pages.

  “Um, this one is of his stuff from the late eighties.” Rory runs her finger over a laminated sheet. “Here, look, this one is of Mom. A sketch of that portrait in Mom’s dining room,” she says to me.

  “Uh-uh,” I manage, gazing at the image but not really focused. Truth be told, even with the calendar out of sight, I’m distracted—that ex-boyfriend is hovering by the bar, and I’m spending more energy avoiding him than enjoying the party. Was I going to tell Peter? Was I going to keep it? These are the questions, in the whole lot of this mess, that no one else can answer for me.

  “She looks young here,” Anderson says, “happy.”

  “She was—at least the former. The latter was always more complicated with her. With them,” Rory offers, then shakes her head almost unconsciously. “Anyhoo, what’s that saying? The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and all that.”

  Freud, I think, remembering Liv. How much are we defined by our parents? How much is it possible to break free of that?

  “Rory, can I ask you something?” I can’t stop thinking about that damn calendar, about that nine-week appointment. It’s a pox on me, a blunt-force trauma. What was I going to do? “I know that you told me back in the hospital that you didn’t know that I was pregnant…but…you didn’t know anything? There were no signs? No indications about…my plans?”

  Both of their faces wash with alarm, and Anderson reaches for my shoulder as if to steady me, even though I’m seated.

  “You don’t have to be overly concerned,” I say. “I just, well, I’m just wondering.”

  “No, nothing,” Rory says, her face drooping. “I wish I’d known. I never would have sent you out to San Francisco.”

  “Eight weeks pregnant didn’t make me an invalid,” I offer. “I would have gone anyway.” I think about it. “Actually, I did go anyway.”

  “You told me,” Anderson offers.

  He leans against the desk in his brown cords and graphic tee like this is the most natural thing in the world. Like he’s delivering a line in one of his movies that will shift the tone of the scene entirely. And Rory and I, rightly so, play out the scene perfectly: double takes, popped eyes, then brows appropriately furrowed as if on cue.

  “I did?” I say, just as Rory says, “She did?” and I can’t tell if she’s jealous or astonished. “I barely knew you.”

  “Like I told you back in the hospital, we talked most of the flight. I tried to get you a vodka tonic, and that’s when you told me.” He drifts off, his face scrunching. “I think, honestly, you didn’t know what you were going to do. Or at least you didn’t offer me specifics. Which, I know, isn’t helpful, doesn’t really answer questions.”

  “Did I sound excited about it?” I try to envision it, the idea of becoming a mother, even if it meant being a single mother. Yes, maybe.

  “You know, I didn’t press it. I was half-drunk, and, well, it didn’t seem like the right thing to discuss with a stranger on a plane.”

  “Or maybe it’s the perfect thing to discuss with a stranger on the plane. Maybe that’s why I told you in the first place.”

  “Anyway,” Rory says, too sharply, “do you want to look through these or not?” She grabs for her phone and checks her messages once again. From her expression, clearly, still nothing from Hugh.

  “Jesus Christ, take it down a notch,” I say, then assess her. “Are you okay? I mean, beyond…that?” I gesture to her phone.

  “Okay, fine! Here’s the truth: you didn’t tell me you were pregnant because we weren’t speaking.” She sighs, runs her fingers through her greasy red hair, and sits atop the desk next to Anderson, a defeat. “I mean, we hadn’t spoken for a week or so before you left. I should have called you and made up. And of course if I knew that you were pregnant or knew that you were going to nearly die in a plane crash, of course I would have called you and made up. But…”

  “But what?” I say.

  “But, well, you were just so mean during that last fight. You were mean and said terrible things, and to be fair, I said terrible things of my own, and I just couldn’t forgive you like that, like snapping my fingers.”

  I exhale, closing my eyes, wishing it all didn’t have to be, what? So difficult? Yes, why does it all have to be so difficult? So I make the choice—as Liv would say—to make it easier.

  “I know that I should ask what I said, what we were fighting about, but…is it okay if I don’t?” I look up at my little sister, and she’s brokenhearted enough.

  She angles herself and kisses the top of my head.

  “It’s more than okay if we don’t.” Her voice catches. “I’m sorry that I didn’t know that you were pregnant. That you didn’t tell me even before we weren’t speaking. I should have, you should have. We should have made that space for each other. Sisters, you know? Always, before everything else.”

  I reach up and run my hands over her pale cheeks. “Sisters. Always. Before everything else. I know that I can’t remember it, but I wish I’d told you, too.”

  The first of the American Profiles installments airs two and a half weeks later at nine o’clock. This one, Jamie explained when he called from his new office at the studio, will be mostly background—reacquainting viewers with who I was before the crash, piquing their interest so that they sign up for the months-long journey that we’re asking them to take with us. We hadn’t shot much new footage as a consequence, which was perfectly fine with me. What I was interested in—and I’d made this much clear to him—was unraveling my story, uncovering the pieces like an archaeologist who may have to brave the elements to dig up what really matters. Google had filled in enough of the obvious stuff: about the rise of my father into the art community, and later, about his spiral into the demons that he never quite tamed. But what I needed now were the intangibles, the things that Google—and Liv’s file—can’t quantify. Who I was in the in-between spaces.

  We’ve all huddled at our apartment for the airing. I call it the housewarming party for my new couch, the one I’d bought Labor Day Monday, and had paid the premium for rush delivery a few days later. It is oversize and angular, and yes, per my cliché, it is red—too modern, too large for the space, but damn if I don’t love it anyway. It’s something, I told Peter when he got home and eyed it and gaped, but smartly said nothing more. It’s something for my new start. So he nodded and kissed me hello, and then got himself a beer and sat down to break it in. The Salvation Army showed up and whisked the other one away, and I hoped, as I watched them stuff it out my front door, that maybe this could be symbolic: that they could truly usher out the old, wave in the new. I didn’t have too much else to hope for, so this seemed reasonable.

  Tonight, for my couch’s housewarming party, Anderson shows up with an orchid, my mother and Tate arrive with brownies, Rory totes in three overflowing bags from her favorite Vietnamese restaurant, and Jamie comes strictly with sweaty palms.

  Rory pops open the take-out containers, spreading them on the pass-through counter, and the apartment is filled with the tinkling of plates, the uncorking of wine bottles, the spread of conversation. Peter tu
rns the TV on mute as we wait for the nine o’clock hour to draw near, and as I sink into my new lipstick-hued couch, I’m struck with the sense that despite everything, I’m almost sort of lucky. That maybe it’s what my mother has opined: that if I didn’t know better, I’m happy. Maybe this is living in the moment, the absorbing of the smaller joys that can then snowball into bigger ones. Because I am feeling grateful: For Jamie, who is helping me weave the mystery of my life back together. For my sister, who feels like my trusted ally, even if we weren’t always so. For Anderson, who has his own set of issues to be sure—his inability to be alone, too much Hollywood speak, his love of all things alcoholic, but who isn’t letting that detract from his loyalty toward my own set of issues. And even for Peter, who has proven he’s willing to take whatever leaps I ask of him, even if I shouldn’t have had to ask for those leaps in the first place. Even, god help me, for my mother and Tate, both of whom instinctively irritate me like sandpaper, but since I am learning to rewire those instincts—choose it, control it!—even, yes, for them.

  Although Anderson has opted out of the segment, Jamie has found a way to weave him back in. He’s there, in the background story, and I glance over to him, wondering if he’s annoyed, but he catches my eye and bounces his shoulders, an acknowledgment that maybe we’re in each other’s background stories for life now, and that’s that. They highlight various scenes from his movies, most of which I haven’t seen, a few of which are vaguely familiar in a generic sort of way.

  “Oh my god,” Rory laughs, and it’s good to hear her laugh. “I didn’t realize you were in Battleship Wars!”

  “It’s a high point on my résumé,” he shoots back, smiling.

  “But Spielberg is calling now,” I say.

  As if on cue, the phone starts ringing, and Anderson catches my eye and winks.

  “That must be him.”

  “Just leave it,” I say to Peter, who has moved to pick it up. “Whoever it is, we can call back when this is over.” The phone still rings often these days, even six weeks since I’ve been home—the media, the reporters—mostly at the gallery, but still, from time to time here, too.