Dawn
Morbus handed her the elixir for gratitude, a liquid that circulated itself inside the small glass vial, swirling from orange to red and reminding her of her favorite tulips.
She took the tiniest sip and immediately felt a warmth rush through her veins.
All the fear she’d felt a moment ago vanished.
—Morbus Rising
Audrey had texted just five minutes earlier:
Having breakfast downstairs. Join me if you’re up?
Part of me wanted to go back to sleep to escape the mounting number of questions I had to answer.
I’d started with Who is the author of Vineland?
And that had led me to Why has Mom lied to me about Winnie, saying she’s dead when she’s really alive?
Or does Mom even know her sister is alive?
But then, why would Winnie want everyone to think she was dead? Why write so anonymously?
And where is Winnie, anyway? How on earth am I going to find her?
It felt so unlikely that Winnie would want her identity as the author of the Vineland books known, after protecting it for so long. But maybe…Was she just waiting to be found? By me? Why else would she leave her name with Mason for me? And who else? Who was the other person?
The energy of all the questions drove me out of bed.
After taking Alfie out for a quick walk, I joined Audrey on the couch, where she was sipping coffee from a big—no doubt self-made—mug and reading a novel with a beach on the cover.
Another mug waited for me next to a stainless carafe on the coffee table, along with a bowl of cut strawberries and a plate of what looked like carrot muffins.
I took a dubious bite, but they were pretty good, for vegetarian pastry. The coffee was incredible.
I settled into my own corner of the couch, and Alfie joined me after gobbling his own organic real-food breakfast in the kitchen.
“You’re spoiling us,” I said.
“If I didn’t want to work in movies, I probably would have run a bed-and-breakfast,” Audrey replied as she set her book down beside her.
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, you know…a little cottage on the coast with four or five rooms. I like meeting new people and talking to them. And making them happy with simple things like coffee and muffins.”
“No wonder your guest room is so comfortable. I could have slept there forever.”
Audrey smiled, partially.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah.” She sighed. “I think I’m finally really grieving the loss of Jed. After that meeting I realized I just can’t keep going back. Nothing is going to change, and I need to move on.”
“But you need to be sad first.”
“Exactly.”
We were quiet for a minute or two while Alfie went and curled up next to her for comfort, and I sipped my coffee and ate more muffin and started to feel more awake.
“So,” I said. “Where do we even start with all the Winnie stuff?”
“Well…I didn’t sleep as well as you last night, so I did a pretty deep dive into the world of sober Facebook groups that discuss the identity of the author.
Many people have hypothesized that the author grew up in Napa or Sonoma, or Paso Robles or Calistoga, or about five other locations.
Apparently there are lots of treacherous drives in all of those places, and there are lots of arguments about what road and what vineyard the books might be referencing. No one even mentioned Hartley.
“There is one guy I kept seeing in the chats, who uses a shell account of some kind with the name Uncle Bernie. He argues with every theory anyone puts up, almost like he knows something he’s not telling. I finally decided to DM him. He hasn’t replied yet.”
“What did you say?”
“That I went to the Betty Ford Center and I’m Dawn Hartley’s best friend, and we are trying to find out more about the author and could he help us.”
“Maybe another Virgil?” I asked.
“You never know.”
“I wish my mom would hurry up and finish the book,” I said.
Audrey hesitated, and I could tell she wasn’t saying whatever she was thinking. “What?” I asked, not sure I really wanted to know.
“Why do you need her to read the book?”
I was about to answer So she can verify what we’ve read, but I realized before the words came out how ridiculous that was. Mason telling us that Winnie was the author was verification enough. But I did still want her to read it. “I’m not sure,” I replied.
“I mean…” Audrey went on in a hesitant tone, “it would be nice to have her help, but we can figure this out on our own. Look how far we’ve already gotten.”
Her words struck like lightning to my solar plexus.
I’d relied on Mom my whole life. She’d been my coach and guide and fixer.
In elementary school, if I got sick with nerves before a test, she’d let me stay home, and she’d always arrange for me to make it up.
Then in high school, she encouraged me to audition for plays.
She enrolled me in summer classes about film.
She rewarded me with praise and so many treats, like new clothes and CDs, when I brought home high grades or won a competition.
It created this loop where I sought her permission and approval for everything, and it was relatively easy to get.
When things got hard with Clark, she offered to help me however she could.
She put the down payment on my place in the Mission and cosigned for it on the mortgage—when I was thirty-nine years old!
Thinking back on it now, I felt hot with embarrassment.
When was I going to stand on my own two feet?
I sipped the delicious coffee, savoring it and what felt like a major revelation, but when I finally used my voice to say to Audrey “You’re right. We can do it on our own,” my voice was gravelly with emotion.
“We are doing it,” Audrey said, and I took her point: Have confidence. Take credit.
“We are,” I agreed.
“So I have a totally woo-woo suggestion about what to do next.”
“More woo than Mason?”
“Tarot. I haven’t been to my favorite reader in more than a year, and I have some questions to ask.”
“You think she’ll know where Winnie is?”
“No, it doesn’t work like that. But both of us are at big crossroads, trying to figure out what to do next. I firmly believe the answers are always inside us, and tarot can draw them out.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ve never done tarot, but I’ve always wanted to try.”
“Excellent,” Audrey said. “I love tarot virgins. Think about what you want to ask.”
“I need an example.”
“I’m planning to ask what Jed represents to me, and how I can move forward.”
I nodded. How do I grow the fuck up? What am I supposed to do next? How do I break out of this rut I’m in? Do I really have to stop drinking forever? “I might need to workshop questions with you.”
“Happy to. I’m going to head into the studio for a bit. I’ll get us appointments for tomorrow. What do you want to do today?”
“I think I might need my own Venice Beach walk. How far is it from you?”
“This time of day you should get there in less than forty-five. Dogs aren’t allowed on the beach itself, but they are allowed on the boardwalk. You can totally leave him with me if you want to get your feet wet.”
I looked down at Alfie, who sat and swished his tail eagerly on the floor. “You need a day out, too, don’t you, little guy.” It was not a question.
—
I managed to park right off Abbot Kinney, around the corner from a little café with a window to order from, where I got a cold mango-apple juice and said to a whining Alfie, “Hot dogs next, I promise.”
Then we walked along the boardwalk, joining the Rollerbladers in their neon spandex, and toned and tanned joggers in their premium athleisure, and the throngs of schleppy tourists like me.
The ocean lapped at the sand many yards to our left, and the Pacific Wheel on the Santa Monica Pier was an orange-and-yellow beacon about a mile in front of us.
I hated riding Ferris wheels—the heights terrified me—but it pulled me toward it nonetheless.
I’d forgotten how grotty Venice Beach was, the stalls along the boardwalk full of cheap T-shirts, boogie boards that would break after a single use, thin sunset-colored beach towels, and mountains of leather bracelets and bike plates with names on them.
Children with dripping ice cream cones pulled their reluctant parents toward all the beachy ephemera.
The sun was hot, but there was a cooling breeze off the ocean that blew Alfie’s ears back.
When we reached the Pier, I got both of us the promised hot dogs, and we found a bench where we sat and ate them. It was ambrosial after all the healthy vegetarian fare I’d been eating with Audrey. Alfie—who wolfed his down, then looked at me for more—clearly agreed.
I thought about my earlier conversation with Audrey, and my cheeks got hot when I recalled my embarrassment at my overreliance on my mother, who I’d always just blindly trusted.
What was it Audrey had said the other day?
Two things could be true. I had good reasons to trust Mom AND she was keeping a whopper of a secret from me.
Just as it could be true that I was a good and trustworthy person AND I had a problem with alcohol.
Something about that equation about me felt untrue, though.
More to the point, I didn’t feel entirely good about myself.
Maybe I needed to think less about what Mom did and didn’t tell me, and think more about what I have and have not told the people closest to me. Like Mom.
Like Clark.
At the thought of him and all the lies I told about how much I was drinking and why I felt so shitty all those days when he wanted to do something with me, I felt out of alignment with myself.
Before I could chicken out, I texted to ask if he had a few minutes to talk.
The three dots appeared right away, and he replied, Sure.
I dialed his number and held the phone to my ear.
“This is a surprise,” he said as a greeting, but with curiosity, not sarcasm. How long had it been since we broke up? Nearly a year.
“Yeah, I bet. Is that okay?”
“I guess it depends.”
“Well…” How to start? In order not to talk myself out of it, I hadn’t come up with a script first. Maybe that was shortsighted, but there I was. “I’m in Los Angeles with Audrey, and we’ve been looking for my aunt Winnie. You know, the one I thought was dead?”
“She’s not dead?”
“She’s not dead. I can’t tell you everything because I haven’t figured it all out yet, but long story very short, I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened between us. About what I did.”
“Listen, Dawn, you don’t have to…”
“Hang on one sec, okay? I know I don’t have to do anything, but I want to.” Then it occurred to me: “Is it okay if I say a few things by way of apology?”
“Sure.”
He didn’t sound sure, but I was already in this deep, so I went on.
“I’ve always wondered if you knew how much I was drinking and how much it took me out of the relationship.
And I’m calling to tell you that whatever you suspected was true, or even if you didn’t suspect, I was drinking way too much.
And I’m so sorry for the way that changed things between us. ”
He was quiet longer than I expected, but then he replied, “I did know. And…I felt like maybe the relationship was why you were drinking so much.”
“Oh god, Clark, no,” I rushed to say, horrified that he might have thought my reason for drinking was not being happy with him. “My drinking is and has always been entirely my problem. And it is a problem. It had nothing to do with you.”
I heard him sad-laugh on the other end of the line. “Regardless, I wish I had been able to make you happier.”
“You were fighting a losing battle,” I said, “because I’ve come to realize that the only person who can do that is me.” Not Mom. Not Audrey. No one else but me.
We were both quiet a minute. I heard around me the noise of the ocean waves and the rides on the pier accompanied by hundreds of voices screaming with joy and excitement, and I felt…relieved. More in alignment.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, “for checking out on you. There were so many races I wish I’d gone to, shows I wish I’d watched with you, ways I could have been with you.
” In the damn moment. Except, I finally admitted to myself, Clark had not been a big love.
He was safe and kind, and I’d stayed with him because I was afraid of getting out there again, afraid of risking my heart elsewhere.
Maybe one of the reasons I’d been drinking had been to numb that knowledge about myself.
“I was so unfair to you,” I added because it seemed to encapsulate everything else.
“Thank you for saying that.”
I was tempted to grovel, but I didn’t want to put him in the position of making me feel better. He’d done that more than enough already. Instead, I looked out at the ocean and ran my hand down Alfie’s sun-warmed head.
“Are you doing a program or something? Isn’t there a step where people make amends?” he asked.
“At the moment, I’m only doing the Audrey program. I haven’t had anything to drink in close to six months.”
“That’s great, congratulations.” It sounded like he really meant it.
“Thanks.”
“So, listen, I’m glad we talked,” he said. “But I have to get to a…thing.”
“Hot date?” The words were out before I could stop them.
“Um…”
I laughed. “I’m happy for you. She’s a lucky girl.”
“Take care,” he said. “And say hi to Audrey for me.”
“Will do.”
We said our goodbyes and hung up.
What a gift. As I had after the meeting in Palm Springs, I felt lighter after saying the things I needed to say and having them so generously received.
Lifting my eyes to the highest of the Ferris wheel baskets, I thought, Thanks for calling me out here.
Then, since I was on a bravery roll, I texted Dennis.
How long is North by Northwest at the Roxie? I’m out of town for a few days, but I’d love to go.
Popcorn and Coke. And Hitchcock. And Dennis.
I already knew I felt differently about Dennis than I ever did about Clark. He was a risk.
Less than a second after I tapped send, a text from my mother popped in.
You’re right. The author definitely knows Hartley. Let me make a few phone calls, and I’ll reach out as soon as I know more.