The Song Remains the Same Read online

  “If I’ve learned anything in my job, it’s that people get stuck on stories that resonate. I mean, you were just some up-and-coming thirty-something woman whose life was wiped out, which to a lot of them seems like a blessing, not a curse—a second chance but also an unwanted chance. And they read about you and think, ‘What if that were me? What then?’ You are them, they are you. That’s what they’re thinking every time they see you.”

  “I get it, I know.” I do get it and I do know. I want the laugh track! “Anderson will never agree. He wants anonymity now, not more hype.”

  In fact, Anderson had just been released from his rehab center early last week, his body healing at an unexpectedly remarkable pace, and had flown back to New York to regroup, to see if he could pick up the shards where his life left off. His sister and mother came down from Boston to help him acclimate.

  He called two nights ago, after getting settled. I was watching Fatal Attraction, an ill-advised selection, to be sure, but a pop-culture classic all the same, and Rory had told me we used to watch the boiled-bunny scene over and over again, partially to terrorize ourselves, partially because we knew it was coming and would start giggling five minutes prior.

  When the cell phone vibrated, I was taking the movie a little too personally, letting it hit a little too close to my core, and all of those initial doubts about Peter were firing at full throttle—despite my mother’s plea for forgiveness, despite Peter’s own. I stared at Glenn Close and her savage eyes and wild, curly hair and wondered if that wasn’t Ginger, wasn’t Ginger exactly. And then I wondered if Michael Douglas could go back and do it over—before she boiled his bunny, before he realized the damage he had wrought on his wife and family—if he had really learned his lesson. Not because Glenn nearly kills them, but because he never should have done it in the first place. There’s a difference there, you know. But that’s the part we’ll never know.

  Ginger! Glenn!

  Even though I’d promised Peter I’d put it out of my head, that it didn’t matter, I couldn’t put it out of my head entirely. There was nothing else to fill it: no history to fall back on, no soft space to catch me when I was free-falling through my doubts. So when Anderson called, it was a relief—to plug that space with something else.

  “I wish you wouldn’t trust this guy Jamie too much,” he said. “My sister showed me those spots he did with you that ran last week. The three-parter. They’re up on YouTube.”

  I considered it. “Trust is a moving target right now. And besides, didn’t you once tell me that you have to control the press, not let them control you?”

  “Ah.” He laughed. “Now the student is the master. Like the Jet Li movies I used to watch when I got stoned.”

  Hollywood, I thought, a snap of a reminder of how different our worlds are.

  Today, in the hospital room, Jamie drops his head an inch, an acknowledgment that Anderson is no longer a feasible get. The master has checked out of the competition.

  “I told American Profiles as much. But I convinced them to take a serious look at just you.”

  “Why?”

  “Why take a look at just you? Or why would I do that?”

  “Why to both.”

  “The answer to both questions is the same,” he says. “When I pitched them, they told me that one of their producers has an in. Might have old information on your dad. To up the ante of the story, keep things going in case the audience is ready to move on.”

  “What kind of information?” A wave of adrenaline couched as a question.

  “Unclear,” Jamie says. “They didn’t want to play their hand until they were sure.” He hesitates. “The thing is, Nell, you asked me to find out what I can. So I am. I mean, without Anderson, this story could be dead or at least deadish. Dying. But if there’s a chance to find your dad…” He trails off because he doesn’t have to finish the thought out loud.

  I consider it: it seems like an easy swap, a no-brainer.

  “So this is what happens when I send an Iowa farm boy out to solve the great mysteries of my life.”

  “This is indeed,” he says.

  “The chance to maybe get the answers to everything.”

  “And who,” he says, “wouldn’t bet the house on chances like that?”

  7

  “Sweet Child o’ Mine”

  —Guns N’ Roses

  T wo days before I am set to head home to my husband, to my old—but new!—life, my mother and Rory converge to ensure that I am okay returning home with Peter, to Peter.

  “It’s your choice,” my mother says, all the while intimating her obvious preference. That moving forward mattered here, that forgiveness mattered here. “You are, of course, welcome to move back into my house.” She wraps her palm over mine.

  “I’d take her up on that,” Rory says.

  “Peter has assured me that he is more than capable,” my mother says, her words running over Rory’s.

  “I’m sure he assured you of many things,” Rory retorts, the two of them behaving as if I’m not sitting there listening to their bickering.

  “Whatever you’d like, dear,” my mother says, ignoring Rory. “Though certainly, your therapy will be easier to attend in New York, and there’s the whole issue of immersing yourself in your old world, which Dr. Macht says may help your memory.”

  Rory pshaws at this until she realizes she’s done so out loud, and then halfheartedly apologizes. “I wasn’t disrespecting Dr. Macht.”

  “You’re still stuck on Peter,” I say.

  “Some things are worth sticking to.”

  “Exactly!” my mom interjects, either misinterpreting or opting to misinterpret. “Her husband. Her marriage. Let her try to make it stick.” She pauses. “And,” she tuts, “there’s this whole concept of your vision of your makeover. I know that this is integral to that. We all—you, Peter, everyone—deserve a second chance. Darling, don’t forget that I’m sixty-five and still reinventing myself!”

  I listen to her, and while the old me might have rolled her eyes and internally retched, the new me tries to take heed. To do the opposite of what I’d have done before. And also, because, at the very least, I trust Dr. Macht. So I tell them that I’m choosing to make my marriage stick. I choose Peter, despite Rory’s misgivings, despite the small but pervasive voice that clangs in my ear, telling me otherwise. My mom tightens her grip on my hand and assures me that I won’t be sorry. Rory chews her gum and says nothing.

  And now, the day is here. Time, after all, marches on, with or without my memory, ushering my old life forward with it. Peter flies in to helm my entourage in taking me home.

  “You’ll be in excellent hands in New York,” Dr. Macht assures me, hours before my departure. “Besides, you must be itching to get back to it.”

  “I am,” I concede, though in fact, I am not. What is there to get back to? Rory and I have agreed that I’ll start back at the gallery—tentatively, a bit of time here and there—when I have the energy, and Peter has offered to sleep on the couch while we work toward forgiveness. He said it exactly like that, and I knew that my mother had gotten to him, too.

  My mom is bustling about, tittering and tattering—reminding me of a Road Runner cartoon I’d seen early one morning when I couldn’t sleep, and I wish she’d just be quiet. But I bite my lip and try to be grateful, try to remember that there are many things to be annoyed with, but my annoying mother caring too much probably isn’t one of them. She begins to hum to herself while puttering around the room, oblivious to the melody, until I instinctually join her. Then she pops her head up and says, “Oh!” and then melts a bit and embraces me and says, “We used to do that all the time when you were growing up.”

  Despite her whirlwind, however, there isn’t much to pack, but there are instructions to be dictated, charts and forms to transfer, a long list of good-byes and thank-yous to be said, and I say them all genuinely, with mixed emotions. My grief at leaving the calm and predictability of the hospital is a lump in
my throat that I try actively to swallow.

  The airline has arranged for a private flight, which is sort of cushy and enjoyable, even if the last time I was cloud-bound, I found myself falling from the sky, but since I don’t recall this, it’s all kind of placid, inoffensive. There is an overly kind flight attendant who keeps misting up every time she refills my water glass, and the copilot personally comes out to introduce himself, and my mom clutches my wrist a little too tightly at the warning Dr. Macht had issued—that the flight might elicit some post-traumatic symptoms, that a few slips of memory might find their way in. But when I lean my seat back and close my eyes, my earphones and accompanying music drowning out the engine noise, there is nothing. I try to envision that conversation with Anderson on the doomed plane—him imbibing a few too many vodka tonics, me telling him the story of the way my marriage had gone to shit—but still nothing. It’s only when we hit a pocket of angry air, with Guns N’ Roses screaming in my eardrums from my iPod—“She’s got a smile that it seems to me, reminds me of childhood memories”—that something rises up in me.

  Fear. Terror. Not a memory of the downed flight, but something almost as alive. Something else, from way back when, though what it is or what it was, I can’t nail down. It sparks up through my neck, my goose bumps alert like pinpricks, then down to my bowels, and for a good minute, I think I’m going to puke. I slam the headphones down, lower my head toward my lap, my ribs barking, and breathe.

  Breathe.

  Peter, alarmed, tosses aside his Sports Illustrated and peppers me to ensure that I’m okay, but I’m too busy mentally searching for something concrete, a sliver of a recollection, to answer. Finally, the turbulence passes and so, too, does the horror, the accompanying nausea.

  “Did you remember?” he asks.

  “Almost,” I say, because it feels like I almost did. “An emotional memory, maybe. My subconscious.”

  “That’s a start,” he says, squeezing my hand. I right myself and squeeze it back. He is sturdy, this one. Not perfect. Ginger! But sturdy all the same. A port in this treacherous storm. So maybe my mother was right: that to find your way back to something worth keeping, you have to bob and weave, throw your fists up, and fight. I can do that: throw my fists up, even if my initial instincts—he’s too meaty, the betrayal too large—told me otherwise.

  Anderson greets us at touchdown, and a security officer stewards us through the intestines of the airport—the back hallways, the poorly lit corridors, toward the exit. I’m begrudgingly in a wheelchair, accepting Dr. Macht’s advice not to push myself, to be kind to my body, to trust what it can do for me when it’s ready to do it for me.

  “There’s more press here for you than there were for me,” Anderson says, a sly smile awash his still movie-star-handsome face, his recovery complete in the few weeks since I’ve seen him. “I’d be jealous if I weren’t trying hard not to care.” He laughs. “My ego is the one thing that hasn’t been dented in all of this.” I laugh, too, and we agree that it is so good to see each other, like a homecoming of sorts.

  We’ve already put a plan in place: that Peter will go out and make a statement on my behalf. The flight has exhausted me, and besides, I’ve promised Jamie his American Profiles exclusive. The security guard steers Peter left, and we break off like a wishbone toward the right. Anderson presses the doors open to the outside, and my mom wheels me into the blinding sun high in the New York sky. The early August humidity swaddles me—a warm embrace when I’ve spent too much of the past four weeks indoors in a hospital with its reminder that death is never too far away—and I inhale deeply, gloriously. Unexpected relief when I’d been dreading this unknown and what it could bring. Yes, it was wise to listen to my mother, to swim past the stream I would have chosen and let her guide me to something new.

  I glance over my shoulder at her now, in her turquoise muumuu and loose gold earrings, and then at Anderson whose face has mostly healed and doesn’t betray a single scar of what we’ve been through. He is skinnier now, though, his cheekbones like knives.

  I’m home, I think, and I might actually be okay.

  Of course—and I can only know this later, know this with hindsight that time can bring—therein lies the problem with forgetting everything: you don’t remember that trouble is always just around the bend.

  8

  “Running on Empty”

  —Jackson Browne

  Our apartment is nothing like the one I’d seen on Friends. I know it’s ridiculous, but I can’t help but be just a little disappointed. There are no vaulted ceilings, no quirky knickknacks, no sweeping balcony or expansive living room in which to host gathered pals for board game night.

  “Well, here we are,” Peter says, my suitcase landing with a thud beside him. “I hope it’s, er, what you were expecting. You had a say in most of it.”

  “It’s good, it’s great,” I answer, shuffling into the (tiny!) living room that wouldn’t even make up one quarter of Monica and Rachel’s. I leave the wheelchair in the hallway—I don’t, even symbolically, want to bring it over the threshold. That promise of the new me!

  “I, um, decorated this?”

  “Mostly.” He goes into the kitchen, which isn’t much of a kitchen, more of an abutting space off the living room with a few sad-looking appliances. I can see him through the pass-through in the wall. He’s nervous—I don’t know him well anymore, but I can tell that much. He fidgets around the kitchen, opening the refrigerator, closing it, opening a cabinet, closing that, too, finally settling on a giant plastic container of mixed nuts left out on the counter. He pushes them through the open-aired square toward me.

  “Hungry?”

  I shake my head and circle the space, the rubber of my sneakers squeaking along the wood flooring.

  “It’s strange. This place doesn’t much feel like me. Like, this rug?” I run my toe back and forth over the worn, though beautiful, Oriental pattern atop the wood. “This rug doesn’t feel like me at all.”

  “Your mom gave that to us. It was from one of your dad’s studios back in the day.”

  Upon hearing this, I ease myself down, slowly, running my fingers over the tapestry, like maybe I’ll intuit something, hear—what?—the guidance of my father telling me who I am? What happened to him? Why he is no longer family? I’ve asked my mother twice for an explanation of not only why he left but why she intimated that he died (“You misunderstood, dear! I only said that he was gone!”), but I can see how much it pains her to discuss it, and besides, she says, it is only one dark cloud in our history—there are so many brighter ones. Let’s leave it for another time. So I do. Jamie’s lead at American Profiles, though, is making calls, and he assures me every time I ask—which is often—that we’ll know more soon.

  I stand as sharply as my body allows—it’s weary from a month of mostly nonuse, and my hip emits an angry crack. “Ow, shit!”

  Peter is next to me like lightning. “Here, sit, sit.” He guides me to a faded, plush golden couch that seems better suited for a Victorian old-age home.

  “Erg, I’m okay. I just forgot for a second.”

  He grins. “Well, for more than just a second.”

  It takes me a moment to realize what he means.

  “Touché.” I smile.

  “Well, that’s a good thing, that you were able to forget about it.”

  We fall silent.

  “This is weird,” I say finally.

  He laughs so violently, tiny shards of cashews spray onto the gilded sofa.

  “I’m sorry!” He bats a hand in front of his face. “I’m nervous…I don’t know why.”

  “Me, too,” I say, even though I’m not so much, but it seems to put him at ease. He has told me that he knows I am risking everything by taking a chance on him again, and I have thanked him for this acknowledgment, for realizing that there is work, tangible work, to be done on both our parts. That, even with my amnesia, I can’t just pretend to forget. Or remember.

  “That painting right
there.” I point to the one over the mantel, an abstract that is big and boisterous with red and gold concentric circles, and also sad and bleak with stark shards of black cutting through, evoking how the sun might look on its last day, right before it exploded and decimated the earth and its population. “My dad’s?”

  “It was your favorite. The only one we have.”

  “Just one?”

  “Just that one,” he says.

  “Huh,” I say finally, turning away. I look around and notice that the white walls are either bare or covered in black-and-white photographs. A bulletin board next to the kitchen pass-through is pocked with Post-its, small pieces of itemized papers, receipts, but it’s an organized chaos, meticulous almost. Where’s the bright blue wall from Friends? Where’s the joy? Where’s the color? Where is the sectional that we all sink into after a shitty day at the office and nurse our cheap wine on?

  I slide onto the couch, running my fingers over the faded fabric. “Please tell me this couch was also a hand-me-down from my mom.”

  He laughs. “No, this couch was all you. I hated it. But you saw it at the flea market and insisted.”

  “It’s sort of awful.” I push myself to stand, and he steadies me, both of us staring down at the monstrosity. “I can’t believe I insisted.”

  “We’d just moved in together, and you were trying on your sea legs. I don’t know. You wanted ‘funky-chic,’ or something like that. I think it was a direct reaction to some fight you and Rory were in.”

  “About what?”

  “God, I don’t know, but the general nature of your fights seemed to be about your finding her irresponsible and her finding you tightly wound. So you got annoyed with her, tried to prove her wrong, and we ended up with this.” He raises his eyebrows.

  “And that?” I gesture toward a faded black piano in the corner next to the television. “Yours for work, I assume?”