The Rom-Commers

Chapter Twelve

HERE, I JUSThave to pause for a second and tell you something genuinely sad.

I apologize in advance.

I wish I could spare us all the heartache. I do.

I promise, if there were any way to skip it, I would.

But you have to know what happened first to understand what happened next.

Until you know the before, you can’t grasp the after. Why leaving my dad was so excruciating for me. Or why I never went away to college—getting a bachelor’s and a master’s online instead. Or why I’d squandered so much promise, or why I was willing—even preferred—to give up so much for my sister, or what a big deal it was for me to attempt to start my writing career in earnest.

Not to mention why it was extra-douchey for Charlie to refer lightly to my “failed career” as if his hot take was the only possible read on it. As if a cursory glance at anything could ever be the whole story. As if my life—my sorrow, my grief, my sacrifices—was something some ill-informed casual observer had any right to judge.

I have to tell you the thing I’ve been putting off telling you.

Stick with me. We’ll get through it—and we’ll be stronger on the other side, as all of us always are, for facing hard things and finding ways to keep going.

Plus: Bearing witness to the suffering of others? I don’t know if there’s anything kinder than that. And kindness is a form of emotional courage. And I’m not sure if this is common knowledge, but emotional courage is its own reward.

Lastly, I promise: everybody was okay now. Sort of. Mostly.

With obvious exceptions.

Iwas okay now, at least. Really. Honestly. Truly.

Okay enough, at least.

I’d had almost ten years to recover, after all.

Wow—had it really been that long?

Ten years since we took a family camping trip to Yosemite to celebrate my graduation from high school—and the writing scholarship I’d won to Smith College.

Ten years since the rockfall that ended our family as we knew it.

Ten years since I was sitting on an outcropping of rock while my dad belayed my mom, keeping the ropes on her harness tight while she worked her way up the rock face, and my sister, Sylvie, and I sunbathed—smacking on strawberry Fruit Roll-Ups as she begged me to tell her that seventh grade would be better than sixth.

But how stingy I was. “I can’t promise that,” I said. “Middle school is supposed to suck.”

“Emma,” Sylvie said, pouting. “Come on.”

But I didn’t give in. “Lean into the misery,” I told her, feeling wise and grown-up and cocky. “It’s good for you. It bolsters your emotional immune system.”

So smug. So foolish.

That morning—the last morning of our normal lives—is weirdly vivid in my mind to this day. I can see the honeyed yellow sunlight falling across our legs. I can see the mismatched purple and pink socks poking out of Sylvie’s hiking boots. I can see the frayed Band-Aid on her knee, and the Hello Kitty earrings I kept teasing her about, and the half-scratched-off hot-pink polish on her nails as she took a swig from her water bottle.

Such a goofy little kid.

I remember myself, too—that stranger I used to be. How the breeze was tickling my neck with escaped wisps from my ponytail. How I couldn’t wait for summer to end and college to start. How my high school boyfriend—Logan—had suggested we stay together even after leaving for opposite sides of the country for school, and I told him I’d “think about it.” How eager I was to grow up.

More than anything, I remember that feeling I kept carrying like a sunrise in my body that my life was really, genuinely, at last, about to begin.

I can place myself in the moment of that morning in vivid 3-D, as if it’s still happening somehow, over and over, on an endless loop—my dad still holding the belay rope, and my mom working her way ever higher on the rock face, the sound of the wind high above in the background like a rushing river nearby.

All of us totally fine. Better than fine. Happy.

If my life were a screenplay, I’d end the story right there and roll credits—and then maybe rewind and watch it again.

But real life’s not a loop, is it? There’s always another moment that follows.

What I remember best after that is sounds.

A series of clacks coming from high on the rock face almost like fireworks.

Then an unearthly clump sound right at the base of the rocks.

I didn’t see her fall.

I didn’t see the rock that hit my dad, either.

The rest of the memory is built only with the scaffolding we pieced together afterward: A patch of rocks came loose—like a mini-avalanche. One of those rocks hit my father on the head before he even knew anything was happening, knocking him unconscious. As he dropped to the ground, of course the belay rope swished upward, out of his hands. And how high up was my mother then? A hundred feet, maybe? Sometimes I look up at the rooflines of buildings and try to re-create it. Was it three stories she fell from? Four? Five?

I’m sure my dad knows. But I’ll never ask.

I didn’t see it in slow-mo, the way you might in a movie, even though I was right there. It was over before I knew what had happened. And then there was nothing to do but run to the spot where they both lay, bleeding, unconscious, twisted like no bodies should ever twist.

I was back at the rock where Sylvie was sitting before she’d even moved. “Don’t go over,” I said. “Stay right here.” We were too high for cell service, so I said, “I’m going for help.”

But she wasn’t listening. “Mom?” Sylvie whispered, staring in that direction.

I took Sylvie’s face between my hands and turned it to mine. “Don’t move from this rock. Don’t go over there. And don’t touch them, okay? That could hurt them worse.”

“Okay,” Sylvie said, still whispering, her eyes glassy.

“I’ll be right back,” I said.

Then it hit her I was leaving. Her voice wavered with panic. “But what do I do?”

“Talk to them,” I said. “Just keep talking. Say I’m going for help. Say I’ll be right back. Say it’s all going to be okay.”

It wasn’t all going to be okay. That much was already clear.

“Don’t leave me,” Sylvie pleaded.

“I have to,” I said. “Be strong. And just keep talking.”

What else could I possibly do? I left.

I ran down the trail. Fully sprinted—no pack or supplies or water. I tripped on a root at some point but scrambled up to keep going—only discovering later I’d sprained my ankle and never even felt it.

I have no idea how long it took to make it to the trailhead—no sense of time—but when I found a lady with a working cell phone I was almost too out of breath to speak. “There was a rockfall,” I panted, pointing back up the trail. “My mom was climbing. My parents are hurt.” And then, as she was dialing for help, I heard myself say the only thing left that I knew for sure. “It’s bad. It’s bad. It’s bad.”

HERE’S A TRUTHthat never changes: My mom didn’t survive the fall.

The rescue workers said she probably died on impact. By the time they arrived, she was already gone—and my dad was critical. A rescue team strapped my dad to a backboard and readied him for helicopter transport to the ER. Another team—a recovery team—stayed behind to collect my mother.

They sent Sylvie and me with my dad. Decisions had to be made.

Sylvie didn’t want to leave our mom. She screamed—feral with panic—and tried to go to her.

She was so enraged with me for that. For leaving our mom behind. Alone.

I asked her about it once, years later—if she was still mad.

“I was never mad at you,” she said, like I was crazy.

“Yes, you were,” I said. “You scratched me on the face.”

Sylvie frowned, like that didn’t sound like her. Then she said, “I don’t remember anything about that day.”

Maybe that’s a blessing. I wouldn’t wish those memories on her. The sound of my mother hitting that cliff base still woke me up in the night.

And then I always got up and went to check on my sleeping dad in the other room.

My kindhearted dad, who lived.

BEFORE THE ROCKFALL,my parents were both musicians. They played in the symphony together. My father was a cellist, and my mom played clarinet. At work, they were friendly and professional. At home, they teased each other and played duets all the time.

My dad survived that day, yes—but he never played cello again.

After almost ten years, and more physical and occupational therapy than any of us can fathom, there were two lasting effects he couldn’t overcome: the hemiplegia on his left side, which never resolved. He could use that side, but only with difficulty. He could walk, but only slowly and mostly with a walker. That whole side—including the fingers that used to work the frets on his cello—stayed tight and jerky and full of tremors.

But that wasn’t the condition that held us hostage. It was the Ménière’s disease that messed with his balance, and the sudden drop attacks that slammed him to the ground out of nowhere, that kept me on high alert.

When the drop attacks happened, he went down hard—sometimes hitting his head. But even just off days could put him out of commission. He had to lie on his bed all day holding on to the edges because he felt like he was on a tiny raft being tossed in a vast, stormy ocean. Some months were worse than others, and sometimes he went long stretches when he felt fine. But he never knew when it would hit, which was why he didn’t drive anymore, and he couldn’t live alone.

He needed someone looking out for him 24–7, and—until I boarded that plane and flew to LA—that someone was always me.

The plan, as you’ve already heard Logan complain about, was for me to take the first ten years, and for Sylvie to take the second—and then to figure it out from there. Sylvie was twelve when we lost our mom, and the only thing I cared about in those early years—or maybe even my reason to keep going—was to give her the best childhood I could, despite it all.

To be as mom-ish as I could in our mom’s stead.

I baked cookies. I drove her to parties. I took her for makeovers at the mall. I helped her fray her jeans. I supervised homework. I did laundry. I focused so hard on Sylvie and my dad that I almost forgot about myself. I just put my head down and kept going.

A relief, in a lot of ways.

I made my life about Sylvie’s life.

Maybe staying so busy was a lifeline out of my own grief. But I willingly made myself a supporting character in my own story.

Sylvie was the star—and I was the dependable sister who helped her shine.

I wanted to shine, too, in my way. I didn’t give up all my dreams. I kept writing, and kept studying stories, and kept fantasizing about some distant future where I would make it all happen. But I thought—and worried—much more about my Sylvie, and my dad, too, than I did about myself. And maybe, in a way, I started wanting my fantasies about the future to stay fantasies.

Right? Because if fantasies come true, they can’t be fantasies anymore.

And then what do you have to fantasize about?

All to say, I got very comfortable living like that.

And everything that had happened since I came to LA? It was the opposite of comfortable. And it was certainly the opposite of fantasy.

Of course I should seize this opportunity. Of course I should be here and do this! Whatever “this” would turn out to be. There wasn’t another reasonable choice. When you finally get your chance, you have to take it.

But it was one thing to live your dreams in theory—and it was absolutely another thing to clumsily, awkwardly, terrifiedly do it for real.