Chapter Thirty-Six #2
I watch Once on my laptop and zone out through the entire thing but still cry during the reprise of “Falling Slowly.” I think about Tom and where he might be in the world right now.
Why he hasn’t called or texted. I try not to tell myself I blew our entire relationship out of proportion and he’s already writing a tragic love song about some other woman.
Or that Jen was right and he’s lying in Cara’s bed with a cigarette while I watch a movie about a vacuum repairman and fold my laundry.
I think about my mom and how long she might have been burying those fears about being a good mother.
Part of me is angry it took her so long to say something—that she wanted to keep me in this house, guard herself against being abandoned yet again more than she wanted me to find happiness outside of Cherry Grove.
I don’t know what to do with that anger, so when Once ends I look up a bootleg YouTube recording of Hadestown .
My laundry consists of artifacts from the tour and each one cuts a little deeper—my Cabaret shirt.
The I Enjoy Long Romantic Walks Through the Casino hat Pete and I bought Molly in Atlantic City.
The now-crumpled black Pie-grièche dress from Tom that I haven’t washed because I’ve never owned anything that requires dry cleaning.
I’d give anything to find his Trinity sweatpants mistakenly packed among my things, but unfortunately Lionel is no hack.
Eurydice croons sorrowfully from my laptop speakers as I press the fabric of the dress into my face and inhale.
Mostly it smells like me, which is disappointing, but there’s a whiff of Tom’s cologne or aftershave or something—that post-rain smell.
I have to lean into the bed to steady my legs. Scent memory really takes no prisoners.
Pain is not inevitable. If only I could get that in writing.
But maybe that’s the whole point. It’s not a leap of faith if there’s a safety net.
Before I can chicken out I grab my phone and send a text. As my fingers speed across the screen, it’s not the one I anticipate sending, but it feels right and for once I go with that feeling.
Clementine: Hey! Miss you. Hope all is well back home.
Clementine: If it’s not too late, would you mind telling your friend Jacob I’d love to audition?
Clementine: For West Side Story?
I assume it’s too early for her to see—I’ve stayed up until sunrise—but Indy responds before I’ve even sent my next text thanking her in advance.
Indy Russo: Hell yeah! What changed your mind?
Indy Russo: Wow I’m so excited. If you get the gig and move to NYC maybe we can be roomies!
I dodge her first question and respond only to the latter.
Clementine: Are you moving to New York??
Indy Russo: Why not!
I can’t help the smile that breaks across my face. I really do miss her.
Feeling steadier than I had yesterday, I open the unanswered text from Molly. Whatever she has to say to me, I can’t hide from it forever. I’m halfway through typing out a response when Willow howls her little heart out at our front door.
I hurtle from my room, leaving Molly’s text unanswered. Every bone in my body is vibrating with hope that it’s Tom. I’ve seen enough movies to be pumped full of marvelous, marginally sexist, gleeful hope that he’s hopped on a plane and flown to me, ready to sweep me off my feet.
A step from the door I realize I’m not wearing anything worthy of my first reunion with his gorgeous eyes and charming, broad grin but it’s too late and I’m too excited and I swing the door open and come face-to-face with…Molly.
“Molly?”
“Hi. You didn’t answer my text.”
“So you showed up at my house ?”
Molly tips her dark head of hair over the threshold like she’s afraid to come in. “Yeah. Why is it so weird in here?”
“It’s Dianen— Nevermind. What are you doing here?” It occurs to me to check the time, since I didn’t sleep a wink. The vintage Humpty-Dumpty clock beside the door tells me it’s almost six in the morning. “Am I hallucinating?”
Molly steps inside and wraps her fuzzy black sweatshirt tighter around herself. “No, but I might be. Is that a porcelain zebra?”
“His name is Paul. We won him at an estate auction.”
Molly stares at me from under those thick lashes. “Are you secretly crazy or something?”
“What are you doing in my house at six in the morning?”
“I’ve been staying in Austin, doing some session work with a producer there. I’m on my way to the airport and wanted to see you before I left.”
“What if I wasn’t home?”
“Depressed girls don’t leave the house. Takes one to know one.”
She takes a seat at the kitchen counter and I make us both coffees. Hers black, mine with enough vanilla oat milk and sugar to qualify as a milkshake.
“Lionel told everyone all the bullshit Jen pulled with you,” she says as I stir a caramel-colored whirlpool. “I guess Jen told him what happened…and how you left Halloran after.”
“Oh, great.” Jen was probably gloating to her protégé.
“She should have known Lionel’s allegiance is always to the hottest goss.”
I snort into the steam from my mug as I hand Molly hers. “She tell him why she went so psycho on me?”
When I look up, Molly’s expression has solidified into something kind of grave. The last time I saw that look she was apologizing to me in a marsh in Portland.
“About a month before the tour started, while we were in rehearsals, Jen asked me to fuck Halloran.”
My coffee nearly slips right out of my hands and onto the floor.
“I didn’t do it—don’t freak or anything.”
I am still motionless with shock. “Too late.”
“She told me he was thinking about canceling the tour altogether. That he wanted to refund every ticket sold and go back to Ireland for a while. She thought nothing would motivate him to stay on the road like a new muse.”
If you have no morals and no problem being revolted by yourself, I guess I can see Jen’s thought process. Molly is in many ways the Halloran-muse archetype: moody, talented, beautiful, hard to please. Gives off a slouching-toward-Bethlehem kind of vibe.
“I told her I’d try—he’s obviously hot and we’ve known each other since that first tour. I figured Jen was a good person to have owe me one as I try to build a career in music. But Halloran had zero interest in me at all. And I wasn’t going to throw myself at him, you know?”
I nod, still wrapping my head around the fact that at one point Molly attempted to seduce the man I’m in love with and he was not interested. That and Jen acting as a pimp to her own star client. A morning of revelations indeed.
“He still didn’t cancel the tour,” Molly adds. “Obviously.”
“He’d never do that to all his fans.”
“Guess not. But Jen had been trying to find a way to get him back into the industry machine ever since. Lionel said she freaked out when Halloran turned Brad down in New York. Jen knows he writes his best music when he’s sad…
” Molly shrugs. “She played you into breaking his heart. Her plan worked, too. Apparently he agreed to another album the day after you left.”
It’s like finding out your favorite show is coming back on the air but knowing the whole cast hates one another. “No way.”
Molly sips her coffee with a nod. “Guess we’re going back on tour. In a few years, of course. He’s slow as shit.”
Everything about Jen crystalizes in my mind.
When she’d given Grayson’s article to Tom—that wasn’t just for him—she was building up ammunition to send me packing.
If Lionel knew Grayson went for the fresh meat, surely Jen had as well…
she’d wanted division among the band so she could blame me for it.
And when she was furious about the Joe Jennings interview—that wasn’t because she gave a shit about Tom’s feelings. She was worried about how a negative experience like that might further encourage Tom to step back from fame altogether.
Even giving me the duet…She likely knew Halloran and I were falling for each other. Indy figured it out all on her own—and Jen knew Halloran ten times better than Indy knew either of us. Jen was building toward this orchestrated heartbreak all along, and I fell right into her trap.
And she succeeded, too—she manipulated Tom into his third studio album.
“Jen’s a mastermind,” I say. “I hope Tom fires her.”
“She’s not even that smart. Those lies were so unrealistic. I hope you weren’t dumb enough to believe her.”
I gulp milky coffee. “I knew you didn’t almost leave over ‘If Not for My Baby.’?”
“I was pissed, but I’m not a nutcase. And Cara and Tom dating? Ridiculous. They’re like brother and sister.”
That halts the sugar in my mouth. In fact, I almost spit it onto Molly, but self-preservation instincts rear me back. “They aren’t getting back together?”
Molly looks at me like I’ve just blown marbles out my nose. “Back together? They never dated. I think she’s gay.”
I’m an absolute idiot. “Oh.”
“Conor said he’d never seen Halloran like this.” Molly doesn’t pick up on my continent-sized rescrambling of everything I thought I knew. All those weeks, assuming Cara had been Tom’s devastating heartbreak…I’d never even asked.
My mom was right about everything.
I’d been so frightened of falling in love with Tom, I’d told myself an entire story that wasn’t even remotely true.
How many other walls had I put up to avoid what she went through…
to do the abandoning before anyone could do it to me?
Because I was so sure I’d suffer my mom’s same fate.
So sure that all love ended in heartbreak, I’d done the job myself.
It dawns on me right there in the bleary-eyed hours in my kitchen that I’d not accomplished any brave thing back in Los Angeles telling Tom that I loved him. I’d still been beating the pain before it could beat me, just as Mike had said. Waving my white flag before anyone had even attacked.
Loving someone doesn’t mean saying it out loud one time on a tour bus and then running for the hills.
Loving someone means choosing them every day regardless of all the things that might stand in your way.
Or, for some of us, the things we put there ourselves.
That’s how I level these walls and stomp right over them.
Molly riffles through her bag and pulls out a blank envelope. “Here.”
I slide my finger under the seam and open it up, finding a piece of paper with something printed on it. When I unfold it, my mouth hangs open.
“We all pitched in,” Molly says. “It was Indy’s idea, but I bullied all the guys into helping out, so…”
In my hand is a one-way ticket for a flight from Austin to Kerry Airport that leaves in five hours.
“Molly you didn’t have to—”
“Please,” she cuts me off. “Don’t get all mushy. We all hate Jen. It was mostly because of that.”
When I finally look up she’s got her rare smile on. She can blame Jen’s overlordship all she wants—but Molly is a fierce protector of the people she loves. And I am stupidly grateful to be one of those people.
“I tried to tell you yesterday—”
“I know,” I say, still a bit in awe.
“According to Lionel, there’s a place in Austin that does same-day passports. Usually they’re like thousands of dollars but he knows a guy who knows a guy or something. He said they’d help you out.”
When I round the counter to wrap my arms around her, she doesn’t even flinch.
“Thank you,” I tell her.
“It’s not business class or anything.” I don’t release her despite the squirming. “And the only seats left were in the back. You’re gonna need a neck pillow.”
“Understood,” I say into her hair.
When the hug—which is mostly just me—ends, she looks me dead in the eye. “Take the trip, Clementine. You guys deserve to be happy.”
“Oh, hello.” My mom sounds chipper for the hour, and I am smacked over the head once more with how fine she was always going to be without me.
“Mom, Molly. Molly, Mom.” I’m already up and scrambling for my closet. I have a plane to catch.