Chapter Seventeen
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The next day at noon sharp, Aimee arrives with a box of fresh doughnuts and orange juice.
At about twelve fifteen, Kiera shows up in sunglasses, despite the overcast day, looking a little worse for wear.
“What are you eating?” I ask, looking at the white triangle in her hand and her full mouth.
“Tayto crisp sandwich. You want some?”
She holds it out like a sweet dog offering its horrid, ruined toy.
“Oh, I’m… I’m all set.”
I make a big pot of coffee while Aimee boils water for tea.
I go to put on gentle music so as not to rattle the visibly hungover Kiera, but I’m unable to withstand so much silence.
The other me has a playlist called shhh, it’s nice .
I press Shuffle and an acoustic, subdued version of “Blues Run the Game” comes on.
“Oh, that’s a lullaby, that is,” says Kiera, draping herself over the side of the sofa.
“I hope it’s okay I invited that one,” says Aimee.
“I figured, the more minds on it, the better.”
We both look at her.
I look to Kiera, who says, “I like to be a part of things.”
Aimee and I look at each other now, both resisting a laugh.
It’s our first look like this.
The kind of exchange you have with someone when you don’t need to use words.
“Of course it’s okay,” I say, knowing that Aimee really invited Kiera because she wanted the buffer.
It would probably be too much to hang out with me alone after we evidently hadn’t in so long.
I don’t mind at all.
It’s been even longer for me, except for the coffee date.
I’m surprised at how excited I am to work on this.
Brilliance lacks the artistic exploration I thought I’d one day have if I was lucky enough to succeed.
It’ll feel good to genuinely contribute.
Aimee sent me the file of the existing script this morning and I read it while I waited for them to arrive.
It seems fun.
A dark comedy with an emotional core, though she hasn’t figured out the ending yet.
It’s a quick two-act sixty minutes about two girls, Hailey and Lola, going back to their hometown for a high school reunion.
While they’re there, they decide to try to break into Hailey’s childhood home—now owned by someone else—to retrieve the time capsule they hid under the floorboards when they were sixteen.
It’s funny and smart, like Aimee.
But, despite what a perfectionist she is, the fact that she’s let it come down to the wire like this is not like Aimee.
I want to ask how she let it happen, but I know that’s the wrong thing to ask when you’re in the we have to pretend this is totally fine and doable phase.
“Want anything in your tea?” I ask Aimee, dropping the two bags of Earl Grey into the pot she pulled out.
Evidently everyone knows their way around this kitchen better than I do.
When she doesn’t answer, I look behind me to see she’s on her phone, looking furiously stressed.
“Kiera? Coffee or tea?”
“Coffee, please. Too much sugar, too much cream.”
“Got it.”
I give Kiera’s to her, then bring over the tea and mug for Aimee.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
She’s tapping her foot on her crossed leg, not listening.
Tapping away on her phone.
I look at Kiera, who shrugs.
“Hey, Aim?” I sit down next to her.
She looks up.
“Sorry. Fucking… crisis, ugh, dammit.”
“What’s going on?”
She drops the phone on the table and stares at the ceiling.
“The girls have dropped out.”
“The girls meaning—”
“The actors. The two leads of the show. The only people in the show. Basically.”
“ What? Those assholes. Let me see the text.”
She gestures at her phone and out of some ancient habit, I guess her passcode—all fours—and open the text thread.
It’s a group text between Aimee and two girls named Rebecca and Val.
Aimee—hey so, were really sorry to do this over text, but were both way to busy getting ready for the 1 act festival coming up and the summer term is way more intense than we thought it would be…
and tbh it seems like the show is not gonna be done in time anyway?
and neither of us want that critic to see us in something that seems unfinished.
Itd be like the first time he sees us in something and we just dont think its a good idea for our careers.
hope u figure something out though!
please dont be made at us!
xx
Then:
mad*
And:
ily, xx
Those texts came from Rebecca’s number, and are followed by a text from Val.
we feel so bad!
Xx
On one hand, I get where they’re coming from.
It’s insane that she’s not finished the last few scenes, and without something complete, it feels unlikely that they’ve reached a good flow with the rest of it.
But logic is simply not what friends are for.
“Those absolute bitches!” I say, handing the phone to Kiera, who has feebly come over.
“What careers?”
“Exactly! They’re sophomores!” she exclaims.
She’s been balled up with her knees by her chest, but now she releases her limbs, throwing her arms in the air with fury.
“They’re college students! They’re supposed to take every opportunity handed to them!”
“Haven’t they ever heard of commedia dell’arte?” I say.
“Has that fancy school not informed them of devised theatre ?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” says Aimee.
“That’d be like me lighting my hair on fire when striking a match and then calling it experimental art.”
Kiera raises a hand.
“I have a degree in that very thing, from that fancy school, and let me tell you, you’d have a grand chance of winding up in the history books with a stunt like that.”
I want to laugh, but resist.
“It’s okay, Aimee, we can—”
Aimee shakes her head.
“I don’t even blame them. It’s a shitty show.”
“It’s not a shitty show,” say both Kiera and I at the same time.
“Oh no, it is,” says Aimee, hysterical now.
“I know it is, because I have good taste. And because I’m a good writer. I’m a good writer who’s doing bad writing right now, and who left it until the last week to finish the play that could have changed my life.”
“I can’t get over the bad grammar in this, speaking of good writing,” says Kiera, putting the phone down, having made her way through the text.
“They’re useless. Good riddance, I say.”
“What was I thinking having a party? Or spending time with my children?”
“Okay, let’s all calm down a little,” I say.
“It’s a short show. You’re almost done. And you’re not totally out of luck.”
“Uh, really, because it feels like I just lost my life savings on a bad hand in Vegas.”
“Okay,” I say, deciding against perpetuating the Vegas metaphor with something stupid about Lady Luck.
“I’m an actress. My show is rarely done until the day we film, sometimes PAs are handing me scripts with substantial changes once I’m already in hair and makeup.”
Aimee and Kiera exchange a look, and I remember I’m not Lana Lord on vacation to visit my friend Aimee.
I’m Meg Bryan, their friend who is having—probably—a nervous breakdown.
“Believe me or not, but I can do this. Give me a role. You do the other one. Who better? You know it inside and out. And you were always good.”
“I haven’t acted in ages,” she says, blood draining further from her face.
“I’m completely rusty. And the costume would make me look ridiculous. Little stupid dress.”
“Aimee. You kind of have no choice. You’re down to the wire, the only thing you can do is have a ton of coffee, finish this script, get it to tech as soon as you can so they can figure out lighting cues, etc., and then start rehearsing with the final material. I’d say desperate times call for desperate measures, but frankly I cost a fortune these days, and I’ll do it for free.”
I smile to show I’m kidding, and to hopefully show how manageable and chill this all is.
“You’re right. I have no choice.”
“I mean.” I turn to Kiera.
“Unless you act.”
She furrows her brow and makes a pouty face as she shakes her head slowly.
“I go all stiff and sound like I’m reading a nutrition label.”
“She’s based on you, anyway. Lola.”
I turn to Aimee.
“On… me?”
She rolls her eyes.
“Yes. Ugh. Fine. Okay. Let’s figure this out. You’re Lola. I’m Hailey. Let’s finish this script.”
Our eyes linger on each other’s.
There is a jingle of a bell in the far, far back of my mind.
Aimee saying she wanted to write something one day.
We were both playing prostitutes—which was the word we used then, we were years before using sex worker — with very few lines in a stage adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s The Necklace, and we were sitting in the hallway in full hair and makeup.
Elaborate Gibson Girl wigs and extremely flattering corsets with big skirts—and she said, I don’t think I like being onstage.
I think I want to write something one day.
Really?
Like what?
I’d asked.
She had shrugged.
Maybe something about friendship.
There are too many romances.
Plus I know nothing about love .
Obviously.
I remember us both laughing and moving on, me not giving it another thought.
I think that was around when she got dumped for the first time.
I can’t believe how much I’ve forgotten.
It’s startling.
Even stranger is how it’s still in there, somewhere.
Every buried memory waiting to be excavated.
We go over the existing material, making a few changes as we go.
An idea for the ending starts to form in my mind, but I’m afraid to suggest it.
So I keep quiet.
For almost two hours and all of the tea and coffee, we go over every possible resolution for the characters, but nothing feels right.
It’s all leaving us cold.
It’s either too schmaltzy or too neat or too boring.
The ideas, in fact, even put Kiera to sleep.
She’s in her hoodie and sweatpants in the fetal position, lightly snoring from the couch.
Eventually, I realize that I have to share my idea.
I use my best acting skills to sound natural when I say it.
I gasp and grab her wrist.
“What if one of them is dead? What if the twist is that one of the two girls has been dead for years?”
I have trouble meeting Aimee’s eyes, but I can feel them on me.
“Which one should it be?”
“Definitely Lola,” I say.
“I mean, I think… what do you think? She’s the party girl. Hailey’s the nice one. She should be the one alive.”
I finally reach her eyes and I crumble beneath her stare.
She knows.
She knows.
Immediately she knows.
“How did she die?” asks Aimee.
My mouth is suddenly very dry, so I take a sip of water and shrug.
“I don’t know, maybe a—maybe a car accident?”
Aimee nods slowly.
Goose bumps rise on my arms and up my neck.
She.
Knows.
“Who was driving?” asks Aimee, her eyes boring into mine.
“Tell me the truth.”
My heart feels as though it’s shattering into a million pieces as I respond.
This has happened so suddenly I feel out of control.
A panic attack threatens in my nervous system.
“You were.”
There is a very, very long silence.
Aimee’s lips part briefly and then her attention is drawn away from me.
I see that Kiera is sitting up.
I can tell that she heard.
I look back at Aimee.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, uselessly, completely at a loss for what else to say.
Aimee and I both inhale at the same time, and then she shuts her notebook and says, “I think I’m going to go.”
“Aimee—”
“No,” she says firmly, in what is clearly her mom voice.
“I’m going. It’s all fine, I need to—I—Theo’s had the kids all day and I—I’ll see you at the rehearsal tomorrow, yeah?”
And then she’s gone.
The door shuts behind her, and then it’s Kiera and me.
She looks a million times better than she did earlier, the pink having returned to her cheeks, the rheumy look gone from her eyes.
She stands up and comes over to me, no hesitation in her posture as she puts her arms around me and squeezes me tight.
“Did that mean what… I think it meant?”
“If you think it meant Aimee died in the world I came from, then yes.” I’m freezing cold from the inside out, a shiver rattling me from my core.
“Aimee died. Aimee is dead.”
I have never said the words out loud.
I never had to.
Everyone who needed to know was there after it happened.
Our parents and everyone in town.
I never told anyone else she even existed.
I danced around it in therapy.
Thusly defeating a lot of the purpose of being there in the first place.
I feel sick and cold and tired and like I will never eat again, my hair hurts and my muscles are sore and my brain is completely empty and my heart is hollow.
I feel like I was just in the car crash all over again.
How strange it was to hurt all over, inside and out, but have hardly a scratch on me.
Hardly a scratch while Aimee…
Fuck.
I’m amazed when my arms manage to lift and hug Kiera back.
She hugs me even harder and says, “It wasn’t your fault.”
“It literally was,” I say.
My eyes prickle with unfamiliar tears.
It’s been years since I’ve cried off-screen.
“It wasn’t,” she says.
“It wasn’t your fault, Meg.”
I bury my face in the thick cotton of her soft hoodie, gritting my teeth hard to keep from fully sobbing, afraid that if I topple over into the sadness, I’ll never come out.
“It was,” I say.
“She was driving, but it was my—my fault.”
“It’s okay. It’s okay.”
I shake my head against her, not believing her words, but feeling deeply touched by them anyway.
Especially because I know that to Kiera, this all must be an elaborate hallucination on my part.
It must be.
People don’t come back to life.
People don’t appear from parallel lives.
I gather the fabric in my hands and she says, “It’s okay, love. It’s okay. It’s okay,” over and over again.
I can’t stop from sobbing now.
“Cry, it’s okay.”
A long time passes.
Somehow, without a conscious decision on my part, we go from standing to sitting on the ground; eventually I’m a puddle in her lap.
I go through waves of crying and not being able to breathe and then stillness, and I know that she won’t leave even when I start up again.
I know she won’t be annoyed; even though she jokes around a lot, I know she won’t this time.
Whatever this is, she’s here.
An Ethiopian song I distantly know from the depths of my own playlists has come on, and with surprising clarity I remember it’s called “Homesickness.” Part one or two, not sure which.
I don’t think I would have recalled even the title if I wasn’t experiencing the feeling myself then.
The feeling of homesickness in a new and truer sense of the word.
It’s then, with devastating clarity, that I feel almost transported back to the scene.
The headlights.
The stoplights changing from red to yellow to green and back again.
I remember feeling that it was odd that they went on and on like that, they were on a schedule of some kind.
They’d had a major role in what had just happened—the biggest, maybe, and yet on they went.
There were sirens in the distance, coming toward us, and it was weird to know they were for us.
I’d never had a personal relationship with the sound before.
The radio was still on.
The other driver was trying to speak to me, then looked in our car and saw…
Aimee.
And so, I had looked.
She had looked unnatural and broken.
Too still.
Her hand was in her lap, the back of her knuckles flat against her thigh.
Her hair was hanging down in front of her face, blowing a little in the impartial breeze.
I noticed and considered the stupidest things.
Like how she’d picked those pale-blue jean shorts to wear.
That white tank top.
For tonight.
For this, and she didn’t know.
She wore socks with tennis shoes, as if she’d ever need to worry about a blister again.
So strange that she had protected herself from a little discomfort like that, but that it wouldn’t matter anyway.
My eyes had landed eventually on the pink coiled rubber key chain that she sometimes stretched out to the size of a basketball and then watched shrink back down, then on the sticker on the back window, which was shattered now, that bore the name of the band Death Cab for Cutie, which she had meticulously stuck there even though it wasn’t her car and her parents both hated it and thought it seemed like bad luck.
I took in the neutral buildings around us: the McDonald’s that wasn’t open past midnight and the gas station and ABC store nearby.
Everything I observed in that time, which was only a few seconds, seemed suddenly to be doomed and to have always been doomed to be a part of that moment.
Omens, portents of tragedy.
All pieces that had to fall into place on the march toward the inevitable, as if this scene could not, would not, have happened if she had a different key chain.
The shorts were a part of it.
The tank top, the shoes and socks.
They were all a part of it, suddenly promoted to the ominously important positions of being The Tank Top and The Shorts and The Shoes and Socks.
Because I knew she was dead.
Right away.
Now I wonder if I had firm confirmation, if maybe I’d tried to shake her or something, but in my memory, it was just the strong instinct and the way her body was positioned.
Or maybe a soul knows when it’s suddenly alone.
Whatever it was, I knew she was gone.
Seeing her at Joy’s the other day, it hadn’t been simply the shock of seeing someone who had been absent.
It was as if her body had reconstructed itself, bones cracking and righting themselves until she stood before me, like a Tim Burton character, back from the dead and fully restored.
My mind loops for a while on these images until it finally grows weary and slows down again.
Once my breathing has returned to normal, Kiera pushes my hair off my damp face, pats me on the back, and says, “I have an idea. Why don’t you slip back into something comfy and we’ll watch a little Titanic , eh? We can eat somethin’ and have some tea. We’ll watch someone else’s horrible tragedy. What do you say?”
I breathe in deeply, letting the muscles in my stomach relax—or at least deflate—a little.
In my real life, if I got anywhere close to feeling this intensity of emotion, I’d be jumping on the Peloton or booking it to Equinox.
Or taking one of my prescribed Xanax.
It’s not until I think about this that I realize that, since that first night landing in Avalon, I haven’t actually had a panic attack.
Except for this burst of very real, worthy emotion, I’ve been okay.
Despite it all.
“That sounds good,” I say, wiping the tears from under my eyes and laughing at the pile of spent tissues that has accumulated on the floor beside our pietà.
Kiera conjures a fresh box from somewhere.
She rubs my arm and says, “Okay, go get changed. You look far too cute for lazing. We don’t have work, so nothing to worry about.”
I completely forgot I had a job, so this is a good reminder and good news.
I take off the remains of my makeup, giving a sorry laugh at it streaking down my puffy cheeks, and put my hair in an efficient, comfy ponytail.
When I go into the bedroom, I see Kiera has set out an outfit.
It warms my gaping heart as I put on my favorite sweatpants, a cashmere T-shirt, and Cillian’s Avalon Rugby Club sweatshirt.
I feel a little lovesick and lame putting it on, but choose not to care.
I curl up on the couch while Kiera fusses around tidying the place up, putting on the Christmas lights.
I open the phone and go to the texts with Aimee—the last exchange being the file she’d sent, which I had thumbs-upped.
I type out a few different things.
I’m sorry.
I love you.
Please don’t hate me.
Please come back.
But I delete them all.
“All right,” says Kiera with a clap, once everything is done.
“Need anything else? Food is on the way.”
“No, I don’t think so,” I say.
Then I get an idea.
“Actually, let’s light one of those candles.”
She gives me a look of exaggerated shock.
“One of the candles?”
I shrug.
“What am I waiting for, you know? You only live once.”
I give a puffy sniff and then we both laugh.
“Jesus Christ, and I thought the Irish had gallows humor!” She is truly laughing now, which is contagious, and suddenly neither of us can catch our breath.
When I can finally say, “Oh my God, that’s awful,” I get up and go retrieve one of the candles, finding a box of matches from the drawer above the cabinet to light it.
It smells amazing.
“It must feel weird, me having this reaction. Getting so incredibly upset,” I say.
“I mean, it’s not real to you. And she’s clearly alive. Here.”
“I feel sad for you both,” she says.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on for you, I really don’t. But it doesn’t matter. There’s no question that everything you’re feeling is real.”
I nod.
“Thanks.”
“Pretty glad I’m not Aimee, though. I’d be having an existential crisis if I were her. I mean, God .”
I exhale loudly and say, “Yeah. That’s what I’m afraid of. What if the universe collapses?”
“I don’t think you need to worry about that, you narcissist. Let’s watch your movie, shall we?”
I snort and plunk down on the couch.
I feel myself tear up almost as soon as the Paramount logo clears the screen.
The rumble, those first few instrumental notes, then the vocals start and I’m ready to fall apart.
The sepia imagery begins, people waving goodbye for the last time, not knowing it’s the last time.
I heard that James Cameron used some real footage in that part, but I don’t know if it’s true.
It hardly matters, it’s devastating.
Especially when it cuts to the inky-blue water, gently churning.
Why do I love this movie so much?
I mean, besides the fact that it’s literally a perfect film.
I think about it as Bill Paxton navigates the wreckage.
It always makes me cry, this movie.
In real life, I never cry.
I never get choked up, I never tear up.
It’s like I save it all up for the big catharsis.
The Notebook too.
God, I’m basic.
A little while later, Jack Dawson has just won tickets to America in a poker game when there’s a knock on the door.
“I got it,” says Kiera.
She gets up and opens it.
It’s Cillian.
I flush and try, idiotically, to hide that I’m wearing his rugby sweatshirt.
He’s holding a brown paper bag and he looks past Kiera to me.
I pause the movie and wave at him.
“Hi.”
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say, and then burst into tears.
I’m suddenly flooding with emotions.
Were these my options?
Stone-cold ice queen or Waterworld: The Person ?
He hands Kiera the bag and comes to crouch in front of me on the floor.
“What’s happened?”
I look at Kiera.
“I’d say it’s bad tact to go talking about it, but then again, I don’t think there are rules about this kind of thing,” she says.
“I don’t know, maybe it’s not—”
“Don’t tell me then,” he says.
“Not if you don’t want. Are you okay?”
His tone is efficient, and it lends me a feeling of stability I can’t give myself at the moment.
“I’m okay,” I say.
“It’s some… it’s some other-life bullshit.”
He exchanges a look with Kiera as he puts a hand on my knee.
As he does, he sees what’s on the screen.
“Oh, fuck’s sake,” he says.
“You’re welcome to stay and watch,” I say, suddenly, through another unexpected urge to burst into laughter.
Kiera mutters something to him as she passes him with the food.
I don’t hear what she says, but whatever it was, he responds to me, saying, “It can’t hurt to watch it a sixteenth time, I suppose.”
He’s brought over chicken soup with white rice and seemingly fresh bread with salted butter.
“Is this your soup, Cillian?” Kiera asks.
“Must be, it’s the best.”
“Yeah, I made it. Had the time. Mammy made the soda bread. Don’t tell her it’s for Meg.” He winks at me and I smile.
Kiera splits the soup into three oversized mugs and puts the bread and butter on a wooden cutting board.
She opens a bottle of red wine and pours it into three juice glasses.
I sit in the middle.
Kiera is on my left, resting her bowl on the armrest.
Cillian sits on my right, holding his soup by the mug handle and leaning forward to eat it.
I put mine on a pillow in my lap.
I feel overcome with a deep gratitude for the moment.
For the out-of-season Christmas lights that are slung around the room.
For James Cameron.
For the embracing nature of borrowed boy clothes.
But mostly for Kiera and Cillian.
Kiera heard more than I ever even told to a therapist.
And she still likes me after hearing it.
She came over and hugged me.
She told me it wasn’t my fault.
She stayed with me in a way I didn’t realize I needed.
And Cillian.
He doesn’t even know what’s going on, but when Kiera asked him to come—apparently she told him it would be good if he could stop by, maybe bring some comfort food—he made food and came.
When he saw that I was upset, he didn’t need to hear anything about it.
He was willing to sit down and watch a three-hour movie that I am well aware he doesn’t want to watch for the sixteenth time.
They’re here.
And it doesn’t feel big.
It doesn’t feel intense.
It feels nice, right, small, cozy, real.
I blubber and when they turn to me, I say, through yet more tears, “You guys are so nice.”
They exchange a bewildered look.
“She’s lost her mind, but it’s kind of nice, isn’t it?” asks Kiera.
Cillian smiles at me, then rubs my knee for a moment before returning his attention to the screen.
I try not to speak along with the movie, but when Cillian catches me mouthing Rose’s line I believe you are blushing, Mr.
Big Artiste.
I can’t imagine Monsieur Monet blushing, he gives me an indulgent shake of the head and manages not to seem the least bit irritated with me.
A steady stream of tears falls out of my eyes unbidden for most of the movie, and I feel that I know deeply now that the grief doesn’t have much to do with Rose and Jack’s fated love story.
I know it’s about Aimee’s and mine.
It’s about all of this.
The real reason I’m crying is because I am already mourning this life.
I am afraid that I’ll have to say goodbye, and I don’t know if I can live through it all over again.