Barry #2
“Let me tell you something: I don’t know what you believe.
Hell, I don’t even know what I believe still, but I do believe this: Someone in this universe made each of us to be unique.
And we spend our entire lives letting the world deplete us of our gifts one day at a time until we’re not even close to being the people we once dreamed of becoming.
I’ve never had my next day figured out, much less the next forty years.
I don’t plot out every detail of my life.
I’m not handcuffed to the norms of the world.
I can be who I’m meant to be, and I believe that—just like your Great-Uncle Teddy and all the men in there who are my family—my light changes not only those around us but also the world. ”
Ava tilts her head back, sun on her face, hair trailing in the water. She looks like a child for a moment, a girl on vacation,
a young woman free from the troubles of the world.
“Can I ask you a question?” I ask.
Ava doesn’t respond. I take her inertia as confirmation.
“What was it like to find your grandfather?”
Her body spasms in the water as if she’s had an electric shock, and she flails her arms in the water until she’s upright and
has steadied herself. I ready myself to be verbally dismembered by the girl I now remember who walked into the house and not
the kinder, gentler intruder who has recently overtaken her body.
“Thank you for asking,” she finally says, her voice breaking. “No one has asked me that.”
I nod and wait until she is ready to talk.
“Grandpa was the first person in my life who’s ever died,” she says. “I mean, I had a goldfish named Goldy . . .”
“So clever,” I interrupt.
Ava gives me the finger.
“. . . who died when I was a kid, but my parents wouldn’t even allow us to have, like, a dog or cat.
Too much care. Too much emotion. Too much mess.
But Grandpa was the first real person I’ve lost. I came home from school, and he was, like, just sitting in his chair watching ESPN like he always did.
I thought he was taking a nap. I got a snack, texted Gabe and my friends, came back out, and it was then I realized his eyes were open.
And I knew even though I didn’t know. I touched him . . .”
Ava stops.
“. . . and his head fell to the side.”
She looks toward the house. When she speaks again, her voice is a low hum.
“I feel like such a horrible person saying this, but he was so closed off that it was like he was already dead.”
She shakes her head, hard, as if she cannot believe she just uttered this aloud. Ava looks up, almost expecting a lightning
bolt to appear on a perfect day in the desert.
“It’s okay,” I say.
“No, it’s not,” she says. “I feel awful.”
“Ava, it’s okay,” I repeat, this time with more force.
“I mean, I think Grandpa loved me, but I’m not sure he ever liked me,” Ava says. “He never told me he loved me. He never really
said anything at all, just sat in that chair every single day and watched sports.” She clambers back onto the unicorn and
lets her hair dangle into the water. It floats on the surface like an underwater beast stalking her, waiting to pounce and
eat her whole. “I’m not sure he liked anything but the Cincinnati Reds. And even that was stretch.” She is silent for a moment.
“He and Grandma fought all the time, about everything. And then they just stopped talking. For, like, years. He’d eat dinner in his chair. He stopped going to church with her.
It was like they were strangers in their own home, and so Grandma focused all of her attention and anger on me. You know,
they weren’t really planning to go see my parents in London. That’s all a lie. Grandma just says that to make people think
everything was okay. He wouldn’t even get in the car to go to Meijer with her to grocery shop. I think he hated her guts.”
She takes a deep breath. “And I think she hated him.”
“Are you okay?”
Ava releases a sad, quick laugh.
“You’re the first person to ask me that, too.” She looks up at me. “I don’t know, to be honest.”
“And that’s okay, too, you know.”
My cell trills. I swim to the edge, grab it and tap a message.
“You’re on your phone way more than I am,” Ava says, raising a brow. “Boy trouble?”
“Are you psychic?”
“I know boys,” she says. “You’re acting pretty sus. I think you’re up to something, and you don’t want anyone to know.”
I cock my head and smile. “Bingo!” I say with a wink. “Street smart.”
“Spill it,” she says, pushing through the water to the other side of the pool with me.
“Can you keep a secret?”
Ava mimes locking her lips with a key. “Vault.”
I turn my screen towards her.
“This is Kyle. My boy trouble.”
“That’s Billy the Hillbilly!” she gasps.
“Vault! Remember?”
“Sorry, he may be old, but he’s hot.”
“Which is why I’m in trouble.”
For some reason—again, perhaps the two cocktails I’ve had coupled with the fact I will never see her again—I tell this stranger
about breaking up with Kyle and seeing him again recently and his indecent proposal.
“This is like a spicy rom-com,” Ava says. “But, like, for old gay people.”
“Thank you,” I say in a deadpan tone. “And? Do you have any advice, boy wizard?”
“It seems like you and all of your friends have spent your entire lives trying to live openly and honestly without secrets,”
Ava says very seriously. “Why would you let someone, like, walk into your life again after all these years and completely
fuck it up by asking you to be dishonest? Believe me, if Billy the Hillbilly is doing this with you, it’s not his first rodeo.”
I am stunned by her clarity and wisdom.
“But what if I still have feelings for him? What if I made a mistake? What if he can resurrect my career?”
“TBH? What you just said is the biggest cap I’ve heard in a minute.”
I have no idea what Ava just said but pretend as if I do.
“Go on.”
“He’s using you, bruh. He wants a little boy toy in the desert. Then, when the movie is over, he’ll go back to his life, and
you’ll be replaced with someone else.”
“But he promised me a role in his movie.”
“Is he lying? And is it worth it?” Ava asks. “You just preached to me about being unique, and I’m sorry, but cheating is basic
as fuck.”
Ava suddenly flips over on the floaty. On her lower back is an infinity tattoo, the ink freshly purple, the skin surrounding
it still pink.
“Gabe and I got matching tattoos after my grandpa died,” she says, catching me looking. “It was a way to bond us together,
and a way for me to see my future as having infinite possibilities, not like my grandma and grandpa.”
“That’s permanent,” I say.
“No shit, Sherlock,” she says. “My family is gonna find out. And maybe it’s a mistake, but it’s my mistake.”
Ava flips back over to face me.
“Your mistake isn’t permanent yet,” she continues. “But I guarantee it’s a mistake that will leave a bigger mark than my tattoo.
It’ll leave a forever mark. Inside. One that will never fade. At least I can turn this tattoo into, like, a butterfly or something
if Gabe turns out to be a total asshole, but can you turn your scar into something beautiful if your fling with Kyle goes
up in smoke? Just know you have to be able to live with the consequences of your decision. You, Barry, and no one else. If
not, walk away. Now.”
“What if it never happens?” I ask.
“You said you haven’t had the next day figured out for the last forty years,” she says. “You said you love the unknown. You said my light could change not only those around us but also the world. So could yours. I actually don’t think you have boy troubles.”
“I don’t?” I ask. “What do I have, then?”
“You have Barry troubles,” Ava says. “All the boys in your life are just a distraction from your dream because you don’t think
that you’re good enough. And that’s really pretty sad, don’t you think?”
My cell trills.
Ava glares at me.
I ignore it. She smiles.
“Alexa?” she calls. “Play . . .”
Ava turns to me.
“What’s the name of the singer out here who has your name?”
“Barry Manilow.”
“What Barry Manilow song would you suggest we listen to?”
“Alexa?” I call. “Play ‘I Made It Through the Rain.’”
When the song finishes, Ava says, “That was beautiful.”
It’s then I notice she has tears in her eyes.
“My turn,” she continues. “Alexa, play ‘Anti-Hero’ by Taylor Swift.”
This time, Ava sings along, spitting the lyrics of the chorus into my own face.
“Yeah, you are the problem,” she says with a laugh.
My cell trills again.
I ignore it again.
“Good boy,” she says, pulling me into the pool.