The Other Side of Now

Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I take a sip of my drink, stalling.

“Oh, Jesus, I’m not dead, am I?”

The elderly couple at the nearby table pause in feeding their enormous Great Pyrenees pieces of muffin to look at us.

I’m so shocked that I choke on my drink, laugh, and say, “ No!”

She eyes me and says, “Oh my God, I’m dead. Am I fucking dead?”

I don’t know why I don’t use the opening to tell her the truth.

Maybe it’s the panic in her eyes—she must really believe my story—or the fact that, as usual, I can’t say it out loud.

I am not only used to living in sunny California; I’m also used to living in denial.

Instead, I kick into acting mode and give it my best shot.

“God, how morbid. No, you’re not, you’re fine. You live in New York and you’re directing plays on Broadway. Not huge ones, some smaller stuff, but I mean, it’s Broadway. I only acted weird about it because… we don’t see each other all that much.”

There’s that difference between lying and acting.

The distance between the two is a hair’s width, but it’s there.

And right now, I am lying.

She narrows her eyes.

“Like what? What am I directing?”

“You did Three Tall Women recently. That one was pretty boring, if I’m honest, but it was well done. My favorite one you did was Death of a Salesman. You had Jake Gyllenhaal and Scarlett Johansson in that one. That’s probably the biggest…” I feign a scroll through the fictional repertoire.

“Yeah, that’s the biggest one you’ve done.”

I watch her mental gears turn.

“Okay. That’s pretty cool, then. But that”—she drops her voice—“ fortune teller . She said you had two lives. So that came true, right? But what she said to me…”

I will my cheeks to stay unflushed.

“Well, to be fair, she didn’t really say anything to you. We don’t know what your palm said.”

We look at each other and I know, just like back then, that we’re thinking the same thing.

That we do know.

Only difference now is that I’m sure.

“Maybe she just hates theatre,” I say.

Aimee snorts her drink at my joke.

She nods.

“Could be that.” She clears her throat.

“So why were you so frenzied about meeting up with me then? If I’m around in your real life, then it shouldn’t be a big deal, right? Even if we don’t see each other that much.” She looks suspicious.

“When I found out that this version of me messed things up, I wanted to fix it. That’s all.”

I can tell that she’s reluctant to believe me, but she acts like she does anyway.

Maybe because it sounds nice and she wants to believe me.

Maybe because she simply doesn’t want to argue about it.

I wonder if it sounds intoxicatingly appealing to her, this life I’ve invented.

If the mother of two who sits before me feels excited and wistful at the idea of a glitzy life like that.

If she wishes she could trade early mornings with kids for late salons with the literati of Manhattan.

It’s a lot better than the truth.

“So, what are we fighting about?” I ask.

Her face hardens a little again and I wish I hadn’t asked.

“It wasn’t one thing, you know? It wasn’t like you slept with my husband and now we don’t talk.”

“Well. I mean.” I cock my head briefly.

“What?”

“Well, if your husband is Theo, then definitely not.” It’s meant to be sort of a dark joke, but it comes off mean, so I add, “But I wouldn’t do that, even if you were with a young Robert Redford.”

“Who?”

My jaw drops.

“Do not tell me Robert Redford doesn’t exist here.”

She smiles.

“Kidding.”

“Oh, wow. You know, that Kiera girl has been really nice about all the things I don’t know.”

“What are old friends for?” She leans back and sips from her drink.

Somehow, she’s already on the last sip.

“ That Kiera girl. It’s funny to hear you act like you don’t know her. You two hang out all the time.”

“You’re friends with her too, right? She seems to know you. I’ve seen pictures of the three of us.”

“Of course, yeah, I mean everyone knows each other here. We’re friends. It’s more like you and Kiera are friends and therefore, she’s my friend too. It’s not like we spend time separately from you besides running into each other or at a party or something. Been a while since I’ve hung out with either of you, but that’s been the dynamic. It was.”

I shake my head.

“So we really aren’t close anymore here? Because I can’t imagine any world in which we aren’t.”

Unless, of course, death is in the way.

“We drifted apart.”

“Bullshit,” I say.

“That’s literally impossible in a town this small. If we’re not friends, it has to be on purpose.”

Her cheerful energy fades a little.

She looks at her phone screen and says, “Shoot, listen, I have to go. We can talk more, but the kids will be out of their playgroup soon and I still have to get groceries.”

I almost want to ask her if I can come, but then the idea of trying to continue this conversation while winding around the islands of the produce section stops me.

Also, if she wanted me to come, she would invite me.

But I have a trillion more questions.

How did Theo end up here?

How old are her kids?

What is life like here for us?

What is she lying about?

How did she end up here?

I need the confirmation.

That one I ask anyway.

“Before you go… how did you end up in Avalon?”

She lifts her shoulders to her ears and then lets them fall.

“I got taken off the wait-list.”

Aimee gives me a weak smile, and I give her one back.

“Okay.” She slaps her hands on her thighs.

“Now that I’m way overcaffeinated, it’s time to go pick up my hyper children so we can bounce off the walls together.”

“Do they have little accents?” I ask, silently agreeing to lighten the subject.

A real smile stretches across her face.

“They do. It’s so fucking adorable.”

“Wow,” I say, with a breath of disbelief.

“No kids in my other life, huh?” she asks.

“No,” I answer truthfully.

She nods, and then says, “Well. Glad I’m in this one then. They’re really cute.”

With that, she raises a hand in goodbye, hoists her mom-purse higher on her shoulder, and turns to go.

She hesitates and turns back.

“Are you busy tomorrow?”

“I have no idea. Apparently I have a job here. But besides that, I don’t know. Why?”

She laughs, and then says, slowly, “It’s Clare’s birthday.”

“Clare is…”

“Oh—my daughter. She’s turning five. If you want to come. If you’re busy, it’s fine, but… yeah. It’s at eleven. Kiera’s invited too, of course. I think she knows that. No need for gifts. We’ll have food and drinks and some music. It should be a good time.”

It’s a hint of forgiveness.

I’m well aware of the gravity of the moment, even if I do want to play it cool.

“Yeah, that sounds nice,” I say.

“I can’t wait to meet her. See her. I don’t know.”

She gives a small shake of the head.

“Right. Okay, well, I’ll see you then.”

And then she’s gone.

I can’t believe I’m able to let her go, but I have no choice.

The magnificent weight of the encounter hits me as I sit there in the aftershock.

It’s so big, so unknowably peculiar to have seen her again that I can hardly believe I was able to do anything but rub my eyes and gawk at her.

It’s how our brains work, I guess.

We come up against the strange or unexpected, and we adapt.

I got used to being famous.

I got used to living in California.

I got used to being without Aimee.

After she died, I would chastise myself.

How had I ever gone a day without appreciating her?

How had I gone a single Friday night without having her over?

How had I sat silently on the other end of the couch while we rewatched Moulin Rouge!

for the thousandth time instead of putting my arms around her and demanding she never leave the safety of that living room?

I pick up her empty cup, drained quickly as was always her way.

I set it down and absently slide it over the condensation on the table from hand to hand.

The answer to how is unsatisfying.

The truth is…

we live.

We can’t spend every moment treasuring the things we love.

We still get mad at the dog for tracking mud through the house even though one day, we would give anything to have her muddy paws back on our white carpet.

We still roll our eyes at our parents’ needy voicemails even though one day, those recorded moments will be all we have left.

My exceptionally depressing reverie about dead parents and dead dogs comes to a halt as the woman with the Great Pyrenees suddenly appears in the seat across from me.

“Dear God—hi,” I say.

“It’s nice to see you two girls patching things up,” she says.

“Oh. Um.” I smile.

“Thank—thank you, yeah, it’s nice.”

“Were you two rehearsing for the new play? I didn’t know you were going to be in it!”

“Play?”

“Isn’t it this weekend?”

“Oh, no, yeah, the play. Right. No, I’m not in it.”

She gives me a kind look, and then smiles and pats the table.

“We’ll see you tomorrow at the party. Say hello, Bernard,” she says to her husband.

“Hello,” he says.

“Now say goodbye, Bernard,” she adds, picking up the dog’s leash.

“Goodbye, Meg.”

“Bye, Bernard.” Then to her, “Bye.”

“Bye,” she says.

The dogs briefly acknowledge each other.

Once that exchange is finally over, I wait long enough to ensure that I don’t end up going the same direction as them and having to say goodbye six more times.

Then I gather my things to walk back to the cottage.

Once there, I try to call my parents again, but I still get no answer.

What the hell?

Isn’t the child supposed to be the aloof, unreachable one?

To be fair, my dad never answers.

But my mom almost always does.

I’m actually starting to get worried.

Again, we worry in my family.

I look through my texts.

Before I texted her apologizing for the early call, the last text exchange was four days ago.

Hey, thanks for that.

I’ll pay you back asap.

And her response:

No rush

I look back in the conversation, searching for clues about my life.

Some links to Sephora for products she read about; a picture of avocado egg rolls and a wine I’m sure is sauvignon blanc at the Cheesecake Factory along with the comment wish you were here!

; and a screenshot of a conversation with my aunt about the house that they grew up in having sold again.

These texts could very well be from my real life.

She’s one of the few people I talk to regularly on the phone, so our texts are usually pretty insubstantial but constant.

I look at my texts with my dad.

Not a lot of back-and-forth, which is consistent with the dad I know.

It’s mostly me sending him songs and him saying Nice!

or thanx.

I roll my eyes affectionately at this.

Classic Dad.

The last song I sent him was “The Melting of the Sun” by St.

Vincent.

His response: cool song!

Maybe I can see what their lives are like by looking online.

Maybe Mom has posted a picture of, like, healthy crackers from Trader Joe’s lately with a caption like yuck!

But I can’t find her.

Does the woman who, here, calls herself Char not do social media in this world?

I mean, good for her if that’s the case, but it’s not very helpful for me.

I need to stalk my parents, and even with the power of the internet, I’m getting nothing .

I give up, and then through the window I see a group of college-age kids walking toward the town.

I decide to finally see if I can take a look at Avalon School of the Arts.

I should have been curious, but the fact that Aimee is here kind of wiped away any other curiosities.

I know exactly where to go, if my memory serves (not a given).

I leash Maureen again and after a breezy little walk, I see it for the first time in real life.

Wow.

There it is.

There’s a low stone wall that breaks for the gated entrance, which is open.

A gold plaque says AVALON SCHOOL OF THE ARTS , then beneath that, FOUNDED 1792 .

I watch the students coming and going, and think, feeling unusually elderly at thirty, that they look so incredibly young.

Like seriously.

I see bad concealer amateurishly applied to cover up pimples and gawky bodies that haven’t yet filled out.

In LA, every teenager seems to have the anxiety, cut-crease eye shadow, and skin care routine of a much older person, but here, they look like real kids.

They look how Aimee and I must have looked on our trip to St.

Augustine.

Awkward.

Cute.

How we must have been when we were here, in this life.

I enter the courtyard at the front of the school.

There’s a fountain running in the center, and benches around squares of grass, a peaceful but enthusiastic energy around the place.

I hear snippets of students running lines, complaining about professors, and passionately describing the costumes of a production of Les Misérables they saw in the West End on holiday.

Some people notice Maureen and point, saying, O h, puppy!

and other things people say when a cute dog suddenly appears.

I expect to feel envy or relief that I had never been one of these kids, and in a way I feel both, and in another way I feel neither.

Growing up, I never spent time surrounded by people who all wanted the same things I did.

Not until LA, where none of us could really support each other since we were all squeaking by.

In my college, everyone was majoring in different things and in my classes, there was only vague passion.

Students who had chosen theatre because they liked it, not because they were dedicated to it.

What would it have been like to be in a college atmosphere like this, where everyone was here for their art, had to be really great to get accepted?

And yet where it seems safer?

In Florida it had been high-key as fuck, an endless loop of red Solo cups being filled with Fireball, chugging warm Natty Light in games of beer pong, and general education requirements that made it all feel like High School: The Sequel .

Here, I could have focused on what I loved.

Love.

I’m sure there’s a fair share of holding each other’s hair back after five-too-many shots of the cheapest whiskey they can get their hands on.

I think the drinking age is eighteen.

But it seems so much more serene.

I didn’t really get to be challenged by acting until I was in LA, going on auditions, getting burned in trials by fire.

I lived in a crappy ground-floor apartment without AC, with old, slatted windows that blocked out no sound, and every day it seemed like they were dragging the dumpster as slowly and loudly as possible down the asphalt driveway right on the other side of the wall.

It sounded like nails on a chalkboard amplified through a megaphone.

But my little hellhole was around the corner from incredibly historic places that made the whole thing feel worth it.

I went to a million cattle-call auditions.

Some turned out to be bigger than I expected, some smaller; some wound up being multi-level marketing scams, and some felt more like porn casting couch situations.

I got pretty good at figuring out the difference before driving all over town.

I tried to create a presence online but my attempts felt lame and uncomfortable.

I bartended late into the night and went out for things whenever I was off, getting shifts covered whenever something unexpected came up like a callback.

I lived paycheck to paycheck, going negative more often than I ever had a surplus.

And my eventual big break had little to do with my hard work or talent.

The only reason I am where I am today—or, was where I was a few days ago, anyway—is that I was bartending on a slow Thursday night when a studio executive came in with his friends, got drunk, and decided to discover someone.

Yeah.

Pretty ridiculous.

Old men in LA all pretend they have the power to make you a star, but of course very few of them do.

And the odds of being discovered like Lana Turner at a malt shop are even lower.

But I made him my signature Cherry Cola Vieux Carré riff (Michter’s Rye, Carpano Antica, Peychaud’s bitters, vanilla bean syrup, and a Luxardo maraschino cherry) and it caught his attention.

I didn’t ignore him like I would have if I’d been in a different mood.

And then he gave me an audition you usually need a good agent for.

He gave me an audition you usually need a good agent and a packed resume for.

It was his idea for Brilliance to come in hot with a completely fresh star.

Me.

My screen test went well—that part I can take credit for—and I got the role.

Then I got a little work done on my face and went on what was, at the time, the craziest diet and workout routine I had ever heard of.

We did press, they set me up with a team of managers and agents and people to tell me what to do and wear, they took over my social media, they hired paparazzi to take pictures of me doing things in places I wouldn’t normally be with celebrities I wouldn’t normally interact with.

Including Grayson.

We were supposed to go on a few dates, just to get a little buzz going—he’d been going out with too many models and was starting to look shallow—but we ended up liking each other.

I think I was a little starstruck, I mean he was Grayson fucking Gamble .

I was so pleasantly surprised that he was nice and fun and, I guess, human that it went a long way toward making me like him.

He liked me too, which was no surprise, I was putting my very best self on display.

Not only physically, as I had a new wardrobe and had been introduced to many beauty procedures I hadn’t previously known existed, but also I was confident.

On a blissful high that my career had started to take off.

So we decided to keep seeing each other.

It wasn’t pure romance; we always knew it made us look good.

And then, like in lots of flawed relationships, we got used to it and stopped wondering if we actually wanted it.

Until, I guess, he met Elsa.

And so that’s how I made it .

A star was born.

In a lab.

It’s funny.

People talk about nepo babies, but they forget about the blank canvases the industry picks to Pollock all over.

Maureen and I drift up the stairs and into the rotunda of the college now: a two-story hall with grand, ornate floors and walls made of gleaming chestnut wood that arch at the top, where the beams support a jade-green glass dome.

It’s the kind of shit you can only really build in a century like the 1700s, when architecture like this was a priority and time must have stretched on endlessly.

Two girls breeze past me, laughing.

One of them is saying, “If I have to do another mime routine, so help me God I’m transferring!” in a charming English accent.

Of course it’s impossible not to think of them as an iteration of what might have been for Aimee and me.

Two girls happily loathing the requirements of our fun little major.

I spend over an hour walking the halls, waiting to be told dogs aren’t allowed, feeling the strangeness of being in a place I’d imagined so often.

When I was a teenager, I used to fall asleep imagining this place.

Imagining my foreign life.

Ever since I gave up my acceptance, and particularly since Aimee died, my wandering mind has come here, to this life, to this world—a dependable fantasy as intoxicating as dreaming of a crush.

I walk past classrooms and see some of the afternoon classes where students are engaged in history lectures, public speaking practice, and, in one particularly lively class, a deep dive on Lee Strasberg.

The big stage at Avalon Playhouse is locked, and I see it’s empty and dark through the small window in the door, but I do walk past a black box theater where a guy and a girl are onstage in front of the rest of their class, both gripping books rolled open to the relevant page.

He steps toward her and puts a hand on his chest, saying, “You think this is easy for me?”

She shakes her head.

“No, I don’t, I—”

He doesn’t come in early enough, so the interruption seems false when he says, “You think I like being this kind of man?”

“Of course not.” She sounds tearful and intimidated.

I recognize the book in the girl’s hand.

It’s a sleepy drama about an abusive husband and his battered housewife who murders him in the end.

I used to practice these scenes when I was doing auditions.

I played it differently than that.

I lean on the doorframe.

It makes the door open farther, and everyone turns to me when they hear it.

“Oh, look who it is,” says the teacher.

I know from the ledger outside that it’s likely to be someone named Professor Lehman.

For a moment, I forget myself and think she recognizes me as Lana Lord.

But then I remember.

“Hi,” I say, putting up a quick, apologetic hand.

“I’m so sorry to interrupt. I was watching. You guys are great.”

“Come on in, Meggie,” Professor Lehman says.

She tells the class, “This is Meg Bryan, she was a student of mine. And it looks like she’s stolen Maureen again.”

I hear a few of them snigger and repeat my name.

I roll my eyes and take a moment to think the worst of them.

The old wow, your name sounds like Meg Ryan bit.

I guess it’s nice that people still know who she is, her rom-coms living on.

“Meggie was good,” says Professor Lehman, head moving to follow me as I walk a little farther into the room.

“Untapped potential. She never let herself break through, and then she quit acting before she got there. A shame to see a natural talent go to waste like that.”

I feel a little embarrassed, then remember she isn’t really talking about me.

“What did you think of the scene?” she asks.

The students shift on the stage: The boy crosses his arms challengingly, and the girl looks a little hopeful.

“It was great. You guys are doing a great job.”

“No, they’re not,” says Professor Lehman.

“It’s dead! The scene is dead. We all know it—that’s why we’re here today, we’re workshopping. We’re not here to congratulate each other on how amazing we all are. The scene isn’t working. Now, I’m going to ask you again: What did you think of the scene?”

I don’t need any psychic memories to suddenly know what it’s like to be her student.

“Um…”

“We don’t do um in this classroom, Meg, you know that.”

“Right.” I almost say um again but catch myself in time.

I do wish I’d had her around when I started auditioning, because I made that mistake all the time.

“I think there’s a way to add some depth. It’s easy to say he’s the abusive husband, she’s the shrinking violet. The wife is scared until the end when she snaps. But there’s another way to play it, where both characters’ anger is present onstage, so the audience doesn’t know which of them is going to snap. Right now, it’s a bully pushing until he gets punished, and that’s not really very interesting.”

The guy looks satisfied, as if the note isn’t for him.

The girl blushes.

“So, you”—I point at her—“bring up your confidence and sort of”—I look for the right word—“seethe a little more, and you”—I point at him—“bring a little more fear into your performance, because that’s where your character’s anger is coming from. Then you both meet in the middle and you’ll find a more interesting story. Less predictable.”

Everyone blinks at me and I shrug a little.

“Let’s run it Meg’s way, from the top,” says Professor Lehman, spinning in her seat and crossing her legs as she watches the stage.

Both actors look more nervous now.

They do it again, but neither of them nails it.

“No, no, no,” says the teacher.

“Meg, why don’t you go show them how to do it? You read as Isabel.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t. That’s—they’re doing a good—”

“Now, Meg.”

Yikes.

She holds out her hand, flapping fingers, and I realize she wants me to hand over Maureen’s leash.

I do, then see the girl is handing me her script, but I don’t need it.

I’ve heard the scene twice, and I vaguely remember it anyway.

I hand it back to her, slightly bashful as I tell her I’m good.

She smiles politely, but I can tell she hates me on a soul level.

I completely understand.

My knees feel weak.

I haven’t been on a stage in a long, long time and screen acting is completely different.

The scene begins with a short monologue from him, and then, as Isabel, I say under my breath, “There was another way. You didn’t take it.”

I choose to sit at the table rather than stand, adding dynamics to the scene.

Making my character look more powerful in her certainty and stability and his character, Jason, looming and desperate.

He steps toward me, putting a hand on his chest and saying, “You think this is easy for me?”

Instead of shivering and stuttering, I smile up at him.

It disarms the actor and he looks unseated.

“No, I don’t,” I say coolly, imbuing a subtext that Isabel thinks Jason is too stupid to find anything easy.

I wait until he’s about to speak, thinking I’ve forgotten my line, then I say, “I—”

It unseats him again.

“Y-you think I like being this kind of man?”

There’s a nervousness there now.

It’s better.

“Of course not.” I drop my chin.

I am saying: Who would want to be a man like you?

The scene ends as he does some stage business, getting a bottle of vodka out of the freezer and chugging it before storming off.

But this time he’s anxious; he almost walks the wrong way off the stage.

It plays.

It’s kind of awful dialogue.

Exactly the sort of show that makes outsiders hate drama kids: acting for actors and no one else.

The room erupts in applause, and Professor Lehman stands.

“Brava, Meg! Brava!”

I laugh a little at the use of brava .

I’ve missed the silliness, the pretension of theatre.

I get off the stage feeling strangely energized.

I end up staying another hour as they run the scene again and again, trying to nail it.

Maureen lies at my feet, seemingly never unhappy with where she is.

I sit in the audience with the other students and watch as they take notes and try, hard, to break through to the other side.

To try to find the reality of the story.

When they run it the last time, the girl playing Isabel does better than I did.

I genuinely get chills when she smiles.

This is why I love acting.

Because it’s playing.

It’s learning.

It’s on-the-spot energy that changes and evolves.

I thank Professor Lehman, who thanks me back, and then I slip out before the class is over so I don’t end up in a conversation I don’t know how to have with someone who thinks she knows me.

The walk home feels good, and I realize that the Avalon version of me would have done that every day of college, then taken this walk back to the cottage.

What a fun, quaint routine that would have been.

A lot better than declining coke in the bathroom at every bar in WeHo for the first few years of my independence.

College in Florida hadn’t felt like independence since it was so close to home.

It would have been nice to be here, in such an insulated place, while still taking such a big gamble on myself.

I get back to the cottage and put together a plate of cheese and crackers, then go through the house, familiarizing myself, with Maureen trailing loyally at my heel.

I listen to Father John Misty on the Bluetooth speaker I found in the bedroom and wonder how I ever forgot how much I loved the feeling of being onstage.

While I’m snooping through my own life, Maureen suddenly howls and starts to bark her low, sweet bark.

There’s a knock on the door, and I open it.

It’s Kiera, like I expected, as it’s after seven.

But she looks sheepish when I open the door.

“What happened?” I ask.

“I think I fucked up.”