Chapter Three #2
I tear off my coat and look at my body in the full-length mirror.
My body, which has gained back the twenty pounds I’ve spent the last few years staving off by eating unsalted fish and calling an annual square of dark chocolate an indulgence.
I take in the softer stomach and sloping waist.
I don’t have the tightly snatched look I’ve grown used to.
I even have boobs again.
Maybe a full D cup, like I used to be before I started checking every nutritional label.
Huh.
If most celebrities I know looked in the mirror and saw the effects of their tireless hours on the Peloton vanish into thin air, they’d scream.
Perhaps spontaneously combust.
I feel fascinated.
And for some reason, a little relaxed.
When you’re “perfect,” you never truly are.
You don’t cross a finish line of hotness.
It’s a constant battle of maintenance that involves constant failure, and the goalposts are perpetually moving.
The filler fad is replaced by the newly chic dissolving of filler, but people still want to improve their natural appearance, so it’s all plasma injections and red light therapy from then on out until they discover that red light actually speeds up aging, and then everyone moves onto an all-cigarette diet or something.
It did wonders in the nineties , they’ll say, forgetting why we weren’t smoking.
Plus, everyone out there is watching for you to let it all slip.
For fuck’s sake, that time the paparazzi snapped the pictures where everyone thought I was pregnant?
I had an underweight BMI and had been on a diet of room-temperature water and fermented cabbage for a week for a magazine shoot.
Why did the water have to be room temp?
I don’t know.
That was just the advice I was given.
Despite the improvement in the realm of body acceptance, there is still a projection in our society of the internalized standards that have been imprinted upon us for generations.
No celebrity can go from 118 pounds to 132 without it getting noticed—even if it’s with a passive-aggressive headline like Ana Di Armas Embraces Natural Curves!
It’s the noticing, the caring, and the commenting that’s the problem.
I shake out of my stare and realize I’m freezing cold.
When I can’t find a thermostat, I stare at the fireplace in dread.
Fires are cute and all, but aren’t they a lot of work?
Sure.
Probably.
But I’m in the middle of ardent denial that something spooky is going on, so I’m happy to distract myself with a new task.
I get the phone that isn’t mine and type how to build a fire into Google.
I follow along with a video of a man in a flannel button-down who warns me about the flue, recommends his favorite kind of wood but admits that any dry wood will do, and demonstrates the best arrangement for the logs and where to stuff the wads of newspaper.
Luckily, there’s a box of paper products beside my pile of wood.
I check each one before balling it up, making sure I’m not burning tax documents—or worse, burning up any clues as to what’s going on.
Some article titled World Goes Mad or something.
Once the fire is roaring, I sit in front of it, finally warm.
Thank God for the internet.
I take a sip of the whiskey, which really is good, and set it down on the stone hearth beside me.
I then go back to the browser on the phone.
I type in everything I can think of.
Lana Lord Deadline
Lana Lord Wikipedia
Lana Lord Canceled
Lana Lord IMDB
Lana Lord Brilliance
Lana Lord Meg Bryan
As any search brings up millions of pages, Google has answers.
But none of them are right.
None of them are me.
I delete and think for a moment.
Then I type in:
Brilliance TV show
It comes right up.
Brilliance is a primetime “neo-soap” that follows the glamorous lives of several wealthy families living in Napa Valley.
Well, that’s correct.
I look at the cast list and see that Kim, who was playing the much smaller role of Velma last I checked, is now in my role.
What the hell is happening?
I google Grayson.
His name comes up, and according to an article posted a few hours ago:
Real-Life Couple?
Grayson and Elsa Have a Marvel-less Night Out at Musso that half a Xanax barely scratched the surface and it’s already the lowest dose.
I don’t think I’ve experienced any skull trauma.
Does international jet lag secretly mean this and no one ever mentioned it?
I got on a plane, I got off a plane, I went through customs, I got my bags, I got in a cab.
I did all of that while feeling completely fine—if, again, drained—and then woke up outside of the cottage in Avalon, where I expected to wake up.
The only thing that was unusual is that I fell asleep in the car.
I never fall asleep in cars.
Ever.
But after that, the house was as I expected it before I set off for the pub.
Wasn’t it?
I seem to have woken up in a different world.
One where I am not a celebrity but at least two strangers in Ireland seem to know me by my real name.
I get up, leaving the phone on the coffee table and taking my glass with me as I walk around the house, searching for clues.
The first thing that pops out is a piece of art above the bed.
It’s a large print of New York Movie , a painting by Edward Hopper.
It depicts a young blond woman standing in the dimly lit hallway of a theater, deep in thought, while a movie plays in the darkened room on just the other side of the wall.
I used to have a print of it pinned on my wall as a teenager.
This one is framed, but mine had been thumbtacked over and over again as I rearranged my room.
In fact, I still have it rolled up with a hair tie in the back of a closet somewhere at Grayson’s house.
I wanted to hang it, but Grayson said, “You don’t need to hang a ratty poster of the thing, I’ll get you the real one if I land the Marvel movie.”
He did, of course, get the Marvel role, and he did not, of course, miraculously obtain the painting.
Last I checked, it still hangs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
I step forward and look at the corners of the framed print.
There are countless little thumbtack holes.
This sends a strange flutter through me, and I don’t allow my mind to fully form the thoughts it wants to.
I notice more and more little familiarities of the place.
The books on the bookshelf.
Rear Window; an old, tattered copy of The World of Pooh; Something Borrowed and its other half, Something Blue; Call Me by Your Name; Fleabag: The Scriptures; I Capture the Castle; The Thorn Birds ; and countless other spines I recognize inherently because I own them too.
Or used to.
I donated over half of my books when I moved in with Grayson.
I open the closet and see that the collection of clothes is all in my size.
Not my LA size, but my real size.
But there’s an old burgundy sweatshirt I once got from Etsy, with the Seattle skyline from the opening sequence of Frasier .
There’s a pair of leather boots that I feel crazy for recognizing as the riding boots I had all the way through high school and college.
Except I donated them to Goodwill many years ago when my closet was too small to hold them and no one was wearing knee-high boots anymore.
I’d gone on to regret getting rid of them, as they were well-made Fryes and they would have lasted a lifetime and, as with everything, come back into style.
“ Okay ,” I whisper to myself, trying to stay relaxed, even though my heart and mind feel suspended in a state of…
what, confusion?
Dread?
Excitement?
Fear?
Insanity?
All of that?
In a way, this surreality feels satisfying and relieving.
As if I always suspected that a moment like this would come.
But the pragmatic, earth-bound side of me knows there must be an explanation.
Knows that you don’t get the letter from Hogwarts, knows that you don’t wake up in Merlin’s court, knows that reality always hits.
Even if something seems deeply bizarre, it never really is.
And yet.
Throughout the house, I am stunned to see that there are more trinkets I recognize but haven’t seen since I had them in Florida.
An old paperweight from my grandmother’s house.
A weird jade bookend I got at a thrift shop in Ybor City.
An enamel mug from a Disney World hotel that says Happy Camper .
It’s filled with pens, some stolen from restaurants and hotels, others the Pilot G2s which I learned to prefer when I worked in restaurants.
None of these things are one of a kind.
But, at this point, I’m starting to feel like I’d have to be an idiot to not see that somehow, in some way, these are my things.
I mean, they just are .
There’s no chance in the world, at least not the one I know, that all of these things end up in one place that is not my own.
Not even with the world’s best stalker.
I’ve systematically gotten rid of most of these things or left them at my parents’ house.
Lots of them should be long gone in unceremonious ways.
I finish the last of my whiskey and pull a wooden lidded box off one of the bookshelves in the living room.
Inside is a collection of things that I understand immediately.
I have always had a sentimental-things box and it looks an awful lot like this one, only the things inside are different.
There are three Polaroids right on top.
One of Cillian—he’s really so hot—behind the pub bar like he was tonight, looking annoyed but indulgent.
For some reason this makes me smile.
One is of that girl Kiera flicking off the camera with an older woman laughing hard—she looks so much like her, and I think it must be her mom.
Bloody Kay Donahue.
The last is one of…
me.
Holding a puppy.
A little auburn golden retriever.
I look at Maureen and show her the picture.
“Is that you?”
She hops off the couch, comes over to me, then lies down and puts her chin on my knee.
I look happy in the picture, grinning cheesily for the camera with bright red lipstick, wearing a black turtleneck sweater and tiny gold hoop earrings.
My hair is in a long, one-length bob.
V French.
Also in the box, I find movie ticket stubs, and a place card with my name on it that, if I had to guess, I would say is from a wedding.
With it, there’s a matching place card with Cillian’s name on it.
Cillian Madden.
There’s an old loose fortune-telling miracle fish, one of those red pieces of cellophane shaped like a Swedish fish candy that curl up if…
something.
There’s a bar napkin from a place called èan, a coaster that says NOTE , the letters arranged to rise, crest in the middle, and fall.
There are a few bottle caps and champagne corks.
There’s a tiny, tiny glass frame with a flower pressed in it.
There’s a small pale blue book I recognize from my own life.
The Words of John F.
Kennedy .
I don’t even know where it came from or how I ended up with it, but it’s one of those weird little things I’ve always had that I think came from my dad’s side of the family?
There are stacks of photos and other pieces of paper in the box, but I set it aside, needing a minute.
I sigh and pet Maureen.
This house could literally not be more perfect for me if I had designed it myself.
It could not be more representative of me if I lived here.
It has far more of my taste and belongings than Grayson’s house does; when I moved in with him, I brought very little, never wanting to seem like a bother and knowing he had everything we would need.
I had also chaotically thrown out most of my own possessions anyway for emotional or unemotional reasons and then often regretted it, as with the boots.
According to everyone in LA, this is because I’m such a Cancer .
Apparently my moon is Sagittarius so that’s why I dump everything, but I care later because my sun…
rises…
I don’t know.
I’ve never understood it.
I take a deep breath and center myself around one truth.
I am in my own body.
Even if it’s different than last I saw it, it’s still me.
I am me.
I can see, breathe, touch, hear, and—God knows after that amazing beer and meal—I can taste.
Deep breath in, deep breath out.
I have always loved movies.
And reading.
I love stories.
And I’ve rolled my eyes at the main character of every magical movie I’ve seen and book I’ve read when they buy into the fantasy world a little too quickly or when they aren’t getting it fast enough.
Like, hello, Bill Murray, it’s the same day again, catch on, duh.
Or, on the contrary: Wow, Owen Wilson, you sure bought into the whole traveling back to the twenties every night thing pretty fast.
But I don’t know, man.
I am seriously starting to think that’s happening to me somehow, and I don’t have any clue what to think or do.
Or say.
Or—anything.
It’s hard to react at all because it’s confusing.
On one hand it feels obvious: Something crazy has happened.
But on the other hand: I know crazy stuff doesn’t happen.
And whether I believe it or not, this isn’t a simple trip to Ireland anymore.
I experiment with the evidential truth.
I am not Lana Lord.
Not an actress on a show.
I am myself, but kind of the old me.
I…
live in Avalon?
Or at the very least, this house is filled with my things.
Also, I appear to have a past that I don’t remember living, like meeting Maureen when she was a puppy.
I appear to be friends with Kiera.
I appear to have some sort of past or friendship or, I don’t know, rivalry, with Cillian.
That cracked phone is mine.
And if that’s my phone, then there are answers in there.
I scan my brain hard for these memories that should, I guess, be there, but the life I think of as my own is all I find.
I go back over to the unfamiliar phone and open the photos app.
Oh God.
There are answers, all right.
It’s a treasure trove of answers that pose more questions.
There’s a selfie of me that I never took holding up a cup of hot chocolate I don’t remember drinking.
There are several pictures of food in nice, unfamiliar restaurants.
A frankly staggering number of pictures of Maureen.
There are pictures of me and Kiera together and of Kiera by herself.
The answers being, Oh, this is what this life looks like .
And the questions all being along the lines of, What the fuck is going on and who are these people?
I press Play on a video of Kiera.
It starts and I hear my own voice say, “Okay, go.”
Kiera skewers a sausage with her fork, takes a bite, and then says, “Please date me, I’m a grand time.”
I hear myself burst into laughter and say, “You can’t say please date me , you psycho!”
“It’s a dating app, that’s the whole point!”
I make a pfft sound, and then it stops.
It reminds me so much of the video of me and Aimee that I’d unearthed before leaving LA.
Two friends having an embarrassing, funny, fun time and making fools of themselves.
It is undeniably my voice.
These selfies are of me.
The little freckle on my cheekbone and slightly crooked gumline above my right lateral incisor—I know it’s called exactly that because I recently had an appointment with an oral surgeon to discuss correcting it.
It’s me in these photos.
It’s also like me to take pictures of my drinks and my food, to record people I like, and it was my first thought as I watched it to think, “You can’t say please date me , that’s psycho,” even before hearing my own voice say it.
I tap on the Favorites album, feeling a little breathless.
There’s a picture of me and Cillian.
We’re sitting at a picnic table, a late-afternoon golden sun shining on us.
I have my smiling mouth open and a hand up, and I can read myself well enough to know that I’m in a good mood but joke-mad, insisting something to him.
He is holding a finger up, as if he’s going to press it against my lips to tell me to be quiet.
But he looks happy too, amused by me, tolerant and patient.
I spread my fingers apart on the screen to zoom into the photo and I see a look in his eyes I’ve never seen in someone who was looking at me.
My unfiltered, not-over-considered thought is that that guy looks like he is desperately, madly in love with that girl.
I zoom in on my own face and feel my heart plunge as I realize that girl sure looks a great deal like she’s in love with that guy too.
I turn off the phone screen, feeling an overwhelming urge to go find Cillian and rope him into helping me solve my mystery.
No, that would be psycho.
I yawn deeply and collapse backward on the couch.
It really is as soft as a cloud and I feel suddenly heavy under the drawing curtain of fatigue—the kind of tired that you know will take you away to the restful, dreamy land of unconsciousness the second your head hits the pillow, if not a few seconds before.
I squeeze my eyes shut and then force them wide open.
I can’t fall asleep right now.
I’ve always had a bad habit of falling asleep in places that aren’t a bed.
I’ve done it since I was a kid.
My parents will laugh to this day about how I’d fall asleep in my high chair or in a sandbox with other toddlers.
One notable time, I fell asleep while getting a haircut.
There’s a picture of my dad and me, me snoozing away in my little haircutting cape.
Except in a car.
I’m usually never more awake than in a car.
When I was a kid and fell asleep, it was because I was ultra-relaxed, or as my mom says, always ready to travel to dreamland.
Now when I do it, on the couch or on a lawn chair, it’s not because I’m relaxed; it’s because I’m constantly operating on about four hours of sleep and living under the demanding undertakings of trying to be charming and actorly and not-anxious.
Right now, I’m jet-lagged and I’ve barely slept in over twenty-four hours.
My eyes drift shut as I scroll through more of the favorite photos.
I literally cannot keep my eyelids open, but I keep trying.
Who can sleep when their world is splitting in two?
I roll over and try to open my eyes again, one last time, and they focus briefly on a picture on the wall beside the couch.
Sleep takes over, and I don’t get a chance to think it’s odd that there’s a picture—a recent-looking one—of me, Kiera, and Aimee.
Aimee, who has been dead for eleven years.