Chapter 60
The ride back is awful. It’s terrible to be world-endingly livid and then have to get into something as silly as a golf cart.
We have no other choice. We squeeze in. No one talking, silently aware that we shouldn’t, so as not to upset Nora, who’s on Sammie’s lap this time.
Matt drives. Instead of taking us to Birdsong, he goes down the road, past the dunes, and up to another house.
Gladys’s house.
He picks up Nora and runs with her up the garden path, shielding her from the pouring rain.
We all watch in silence as he rings the bell, waits under the awning.
Gladys opens the door in that crisp, white shirt, and I just know her house is warm and cozy as it always was.
He says something to her and she listens, before smiling down at Nora and holding out her hand.
Nora takes it, and then Matt runs back to the golf cart.
I wonder if Sammie is remembering all the times as little kids we went over there, just like that, to be watched for a while so the grown-ups could go to dinner or do something else. Maybe to fight, like we were about to.
As soon as he’s back in, he says, “I listened to enough adults arguing as a kid. She’s heard enough between me and Beau. I’m not putting her through that here.”
This makes me feel worse, and I wish again that I could stuff it all down, not care. Let bygones be bygones. Water under the bridge. Not talk out the details.
It doesn’t matter how much I want that, because I can’t do it. The sadness and anger from all those years ago live in me like an anvil. Heavy, immovable, weighing me down, and present in every step I make.
It’s time to finally split open my flesh and remove it. Even if it kills me.
When we get back, no one peels off to shower or dry off. Sammie gets the pile of towels, but that’s the most we bother with.
We trudge out to the back porch and sit down at the table, the string lights absurdly merry above us, the storm reflectively wild and tempestuous.
Everyone sits but me, and the silence is physically painful. I stand facing the inside of the house, hand clamped around my mouth, thumb needling at the hard, tense muscle in my jaw. I can’t believe this is reality (is it though?) and that I’m about to finally face the demons.
“I have no idea what to say,” I start. “We’ve barely talked for years. With the exception of one extremely ill-advised trip to the middle of nowhere.” I don’t look at Austin, but I feel his eyes on me.
After a long moment, Sammie speaks.
“It wasn’t fair that you abandoned me the way you did.”
“Oh, please,” I half whisper. “Abandon you? You were an adult. And making your own choices, I think that much was very clear.”
“Are you mad because I kept getting back with Johnny? Because I didn’t want to go to our father’s funeral? Because I got pregnant?”
“All of the above!”
“It’s my life! I was allowed to do all those things!”
“Yeah, but—”
“But what? You iced me out because…”
“Because I did everything for you for years, gave up my childhood to take care of you and then you were just going to throw it all away! For someone so terrible. Forget selling my car and cheating on you and being generally unbearable, what about what he did to Austin? How do you live with that?”
She looks ashamed, face turning away. I can see she’s trying not to cry and pain fills my chest. I do my best to ignore it.
Austin looks uncomfortable, moving forward to lean on the table.
“Since I was fifteen years old I’ve felt like I was the only adult in the room, and I never asked for that.
Then when Dad’s fucking funeral happened and I had to do everything again and Babe didn’t help and you didn’t help and his wife didn’t help …
and then I asked you to come, and you didn’t. ” I breathe.
“I know, but—”
“And don’t even get me started on Babe’s ridiculous Switzerland plan.” I’m shaking now. “You were so gung ho about it from the jump you may as well have been holding the needle.”
“I was not gung ho about her dying, Didion, I was supportive of her wishes. Trust me when I say that she never even remotely hesitated. Don’t you know the feeling of talking to someone and knowing there’s not a single point in arguing with them? She had made up her mind.”
I wonder if she knows she’s mirroring Babe’s own words about Sammie herself. She couldn’t make her do something she didn’t want to do. And so she wouldn’t even try.
“But you should have tried!”
“I tried,” Matt says, then.
“You—”
“I tried to talk her out of it. I do believe in it and I think it’s fair for people to want to do. But it’s different when you know the person wanting to make that choice.”
I nod. “Yeah. It really is.” I round on Austin. “I tried to come to you that night.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” he says. “I was not myself during that time. Not at all.”
When I saw him in Texas, he had tried to talk about the past. Maybe I was attempting to be cool, maybe I was afraid of getting upset, maybe I was afraid I’d get hurt all over again, maybe I thought we’d have time to talk about it later.
It was all of that, I think. But I had stopped him.
Told him I just wanted to be in the moment, to have fun and not go through it all.
It worked. Fighting, breaking up, and then not talking about it had been our pattern in the past. I know it sounds toxic, but in a way, it was also releasing old baggage.
I rarely even remembered the old resentments.
Now, on the other hand.
“Then again! In Texas! I feel like … I felt so disposable. And Sammie, that night of the crash, I said it was Johnny or it was me.”
“Yeah, how do you think that felt? Hearing my sister give me an ultimatum where one of the options was that she’d give me up?”
“Oh, come on,” I insist.
“No, you come on! Ultimatums are not healthy!”
“I know that. We were children, but the thing is that you still left!”
“For years, you’ve made me feel like some of the choices I make in my own life will, if I’m not careful, cost me your very conditional love. You’d be hurt when I’d get back with Johnny and not tell you, but would you have told you?”
I’m at a loss.
“When I told you three years ago, you immediately left Mercy Island and practically stopped speaking to me. Doesn’t feel proportionate, and certainly doesn’t make me feel like it’s safe to talk to you about things.”
I exhale. Unable to explain everything going through my mind.
“That’s a simplification. You’re allowed to make your own mistakes, but he almost killed you, you lost the baby, and he ruined Austin’s career, all in one night.
That’s not even to mention how much hurt he put you through every other day of your relationship.
That should have been enough right there, but you got back with him over and over for years.
Forgive me for thinking that’s shockingly stupid. ”
Even as I say it, I know there’s a much, much healthier way to express this, but I don’t have access to it right now.
“And,” I gather the nerve to go on, “Sammie, it’s so hard to love you as much as I do. I’m always afraid of losing you, like I’ve lost everyone else.”
“Like we have lost everyone else. They were my grandparents too. My parents too.”
Put like that, I feel nauseous.
“But I know what you mean,” she generously adds.
“Joke’s on me, though. It’s not like the distance made me love you less. Instead I just got exactly what I was afraid of. I lost you anyway.” I shake my head and look down at my bare feet. “I do owe you an apology, Austin.”
He looks surprised and leans back in his chair. “Okay, let’s see where this is going.”
“I’m sorry I expected something from you that you couldn’t give.
I knew better in Texas than to fall for old Killjoy’s famous charm, but I did, and then, you know”—I laugh—“I did it all over again this weekend. So I’m sorry for thinking there was more here than there is.
Clearly, I was wrong over and over again. ”
“Not really an apology, is it?” he asks.
“Don’t you dare try to be cute right now,” I scold. “I know this is all probably my fault for ignoring everybody and for not getting in contact, but I just didn’t want to be the one to do it like I always— Do you even know why I left?”
Austin drops his chin. “I put it together. Phone, music, texts. Yeah. I figured it out.”
“How could you have done that to me?”
“Dammit, Didion,” yells Matt, to everyone’s surprise. “You are not the main character!”