Chapter 41 2012
Her new, unbearable reality hits in shockwaves. Orson’s absence permeates her phone, her hands, her bed.
Every day she searches for his name. What is he doing, who is he with, how is he feeling.
She gorges until she makes herself sick on it, all the promotional materials for his new movie, the publicity shots and glib interviews and threads of speculation and baseless opinion, and herself absent from all of it.
As though she never existed. None of this will give her the rough bitten edges of his fingernails, or his late-night doubts, or his half-drunk coffee cups littered around the house, or the heartbeat of his affection in her pocket.
hi little thing—
this made me think of you—
I didn’t want to wake you but—
I’m feeling so bluuue without you—
love you too
really really
always
Is that all she gets from him? Always? What a pointless word. Dangerous, even.
She wanted more time. She was robbed of all the time she thought she would have, and it was—
Her fault.
And now Niamh is leaving, their flat a sea of cardboard, their life sorted into piles.
Yours, Mine, Trash, Donate, Sell. People from the Internet keep coming out to trade crumpled bills for the stuff of their lives: lamps, place mats, the Botero.
In all that time, Orson never came here. Because she wouldn’t let him.
Viola gets off the couch as Matthias, Niamh’s boyfriend, helps lift it outside and into someone’s van. When he comes back in, Niamh kisses him.
“He’s handy.”
“That’s why I’m keeping him.”
It’s pitiful watching the two of them, their all-encompassing happiness. Viola sits on the stained beige carpet and wraps herself in the blanket that she refused to pack.
“I’m going to be alone forever,” she says.
“Oh stop.”
“I’m fine with it. I’m going to die alone.”
“Well, of course you’re going to die alone. We all die alone. Honestly, I’ve been trying to tell you for years.” Niamh rolls her eyes and Viola leans her face into her palms.
“I don’t want to go home,” she says.
“Why not?”
“My dad.”
Somehow, she has come to blame him for everything that has happened with Orson.
For who else had taught her denial as a survival skill?
If she had not spent so long fearing the truth, there might be more to salvage.
If her father had only acknowledged the reality of their childhood—that they were a family torn between separate dreams—she might have seen things differently.
The unknown might not have terrified her so much. She doesn’t want to go back to silence.
“If I had been a betting woman when I met you,” Niamh says, “I’d have put this situation the other way around.”
“What do you mean?”
“Me being the star-fucker and you becoming the boring nester.”
“I’m not a star-fucker.”
“Well, I’m afraid in the technical sense you are.”
Another wave, her face stupid and hot. She pulls the blanket over her head and groans.
“Sorry, that’s not helping, is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
“Come in my suitcase, you sad sack. Just until you figure things out.”
Anything else feels like resistance. And Viola has no more energy to resist. She has no energy for anything. Reading is impossible. Reasoning is impossible. The master’s will not be completed. Of this she is certain.
They go.