Track 8 Delilah
Delilah
Delilah’s mother picks up on the first ring.
“Delilah Eve,” she says flatly, without bothering with hello, “you had better have a good explanation for this.”
“Hi, Mommy,” Delilah says, curling up more deeply into the nest of pillows and comforters she’s managed to construct from the bedding stored in Roscoe’s various hidden compartments.
The mattress of the stowaway bed is surprisingly comfortable, soft and squishy, and the battery-operated fairy lights strung around the van’s interior echo the fire outside well enough that she feels warm and cozy and safe, despite the shit show of circumstances that got her here. “How are you?”
“I am lucky I didn’t have a stroke, thank you for asking. A hitchhiker, Delilah? Seriously?”
Delilah winces. “They’re not—”
“They?”
“They like the gender-neutral pronoun, not they like multiple people,” Delilah says quickly, and then, while she’s managing to get words in edgewise, “And they’re not a hitchhiker, seriously.”
“Then how exactly did they end up in your car?”
This is why people say you should never give your manager your mom’s phone number, Delilah thinks, but she launches into the story anyway, trying to smooth down its rough edges—in particular, skipping over the part where she was looking at her phone instead of at the traffic around her, because that’s the kind of thing that would have her mother chasing her across the continental United States just to bundle her home until she proves she can make responsible choices again—and emphasizing every kind, sincere, and otherwise definitely not sketchy thing Emmett has said or done since they met.
“So just to be clear,” her mother says when Delilah finishes. “This person is not sleeping in there with you. Correct?”
“No, Mom. They’re camping out by the fire. Being a perfect…gentleperson.”
Her mother purses her lips, then says, “Are you feeling safe, Delilah?”
She’s not, Delilah knows, asking about Emmett.
Delilah thinks about the meds in her toiletry kit, open and half spilled across Roscoe’s little counter: the mood stabilizer to keep her steady, not too high and not too low; the carefully monitored antidepressants to stop her from sinking too far down; the lesser-used antipsychotic for when she flies too close to the sun; the benzos for when everything is going too fast and all she wants to do is spin out and scream.
But despite everything that’s happened over the past day and a half, Delilah doesn’t think she’s falling or flying. She feels…not steady exactly, but not unsafe either.
Her head is a mess, but it’s clear. She knows what she wants, and it’s the same thing she wanted before Sam decided to blow up her life: to have an adventure, to write a banger of an album, to make music that lasts.
“I’m okay,” Delilah says. “Really.”
Her mother looks at her, her expression still worried, but whatever she sees on Delilah’s face seems to reassure her, at least enough that she sits back and sighs. “Okay,” she says. “Tell me about your day, then. I want to hear all about it.”
So Delilah tells her—about Iris’s pep talk on their way to the train as she listened to Delilah complain and handed her doughnuts like the beacon of unconditional love in Delilah’s life she’s been for the past decade.
About the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn and the poetry that made her cry.
About the store clerk in Philly who had to bend at the waist to kiss Delilah’s cheek and how Emmett, unexpectedly, flushed pink when they’d gotten a kiss of their own.
About the old lesbian couple who owned the restaurant where they went for dinner and the quality of the peanut butter chocolate cake.
About Emmett building them a campfire and Delilah making up queer fairy tales on the spot, just to see how many happily-ever-afters she could come up with—a fuck you to her own happily-ever-after falling out of reach.
Delilah’s hands move as she talks, almost without her noticing, and find their way to the notebook and pen she never keeps too far out of reach.
She starts scribbling absently, the way she always does when half her brain has an idea and the rest of her head is occupied—she does some of her best work like that, when her inner critic is too busy with what her mouth is doing to pay much attention to her thoughts or her hands.
She’ll look at the notes later, maybe when she’s had another glass of wine, or when she’s close enough to the edge of sleep that she won’t rip them apart too badly.
She hopes.
“You know, I hate to say it,” her mother says when Delilah finally runs out of stories from the last twelve hours, “but I think your grandmother would really enjoy this Emmett person.”
“You’re probably right.” Grandma Batya loves anyone with a good ear for storytelling, and she loves them all the more if the stories they tell are older than she is. “Maybe I can introduce them someday.”
The words slip out unexpectedly. Her mother’s eyebrows shoot up, and Delilah becomes too aware of her own expression shifting into something like chagrined surprise and her fingers fumbling to hold on to her pen.
“Oh,” her mother says after a moment of uncertain silence.
“You think they’ll stick around after your trip, then? ”
She says it carefully, but Delilah hears what she’s getting at with the question. “I mean, it’s not like we’ve talked about it or anything, but, like, they seem cool. I don’t know why we wouldn’t keep in touch.”
“Hm,” her mom says, which is code for don’t love where this is going, kiddo.
It’s the same hm she’d given when Delilah told her she was moving to LA, when she’d decided not to go forward with a solo album after Sam convinced her it wasn’t the right time, when she’d agreed to all of Sam’s wedding planning ideas even when her own got shot down again and again. “Well, I guess we’ll have to see.”
“Guess so,” Delilah says. She’s too tired to make her case for why they have good vibes should be enough of a reason to have let Emmett into the van and to want to keep them around.
The blankets have warmed her up enough that tiredness is finally starting to give way to actual sleepiness, her body and mind both heavy and quiet enough that she’s pretty sure she won’t even need to dig a Xanax out of her bag, though she’ll probably take one anyway.
“I think I should probably go soon. I’m falling asleep on the phone. ”
“I can see that,” her mom says, all affectionate amusement now. “Text me in the morning so I know you’re alive, please.”
Delilah rolls her eyes. “Yes, Mommy.”
“And call me tomorrow night.”
“Yes, Mommy.”
“Okay.” She pauses. “I love you.”
Something in Delilah’s chest goes fuzzy and soft. “I love you, too.”
She waits for her mother to hang up first, then double-clicks the button on the side of her phone to turn the screen blank and then back on.
The photo on her lock screen is still the one from the engagement pictures she and Sam took six months ago, the one with the two of them beaming into each other’s eyes, the late spring sunshine making them glow.
Delilah makes a face and unlocks her phone to find something to replace it.
Scrolling through the photos she’d taken since picking up the van, her thumb hovers over the picture of Emmett petting the dog by the bookstore, knitted pride colors visible in the background, and she considers it for two heartbeats too many before scrolling further back.
She finds a picture she took in Brooklyn of a pigeon looking like it was waiting for the subway and sets that as her background instead.
The pigeon could probably be a metaphor. She’ll figure out what it’s a metaphor for later.
A glance at the clock is enough to make her wince, and she swipes through her apps until she finds the archives of Iris’s podcast. She hates listening to the sound of her own voice—blah blah blah, irony—but she loves the sound of Iris’s.
She has so many memories of drifting off to the sound of Iris rambling on about one thing or another that this is probably the next best thing to having her in the room.
Delilah’s never been good at sleeping alone.
She plugs her phone in and puts it on the counter, along with her notebook and pen. Whatever she writes tomorrow will be better, she decides, reaching up to hit the switch on the fairy lights and plunging Roscoe into darkness. It’ll have to be.
She closes her eyes and falls asleep to the sound of the wind and her own pounding heart, her best friend’s voice a soothing murmur in her ear.
[excerpt from a Rolling Stone interview]
So, I have to ask—Sam, you’ve been in this world since you were a baby, but Delilah, this is still all new to you. You girls just hit the top of the charts. What are you hoping will happen next?
Knight, laughing: Oh, don’t get her started.
We want to get her started!
Cohen: No, Sam’s right. I mean, I don’t even know if I have a good answer.
Every part of this whole thing has been—I don’t know, I don’t even have words for it.
I mean, I’m twenty-five, and this isn’t—I never thought I’d still be here, you know?
So anytime someone asks me about this, I just end up rambling.
You never thought you’d be here—meaning this far into your career?
Cohen: Well—
Knight: Delilah.
Cohen: —Yeah. I mean…yeah. Something like that.