Chapter 19
After I text Alex that I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it over and assure him that I’m fine, I dial the number I told myself I would never need to dial.
Forty-five minutes later, I pull up to a large Mediterranean-style home in Larchmont, just a block away from the main street of shops and restaurants. The door swings open, and I’m greeted by Kimiko, dressed to the nines in a pale-pink maxi dress that matches her newly colored hair.
She doesn’t immediately invite me inside, just stares, frowning with concern.
“I know,” she says as if responding to something I said, even though I haven’t spoken. “It’s hard, isn’t it?”
Something about the way she says that and the expression on her face weirdly reminds me of my mother, and for the first time, I really feel that I’m speaking with a forty-two-year-old woman, not a twenty-year-old.
During my limited interactions with her the night we met, she came across as so blasé and over-the-top that it was easy to forget.
I have to take a deep breath to keep from bursting into tears again. As I do, she steps back inside and gestures for me to follow.
“Your house is nice,” I say. And I mean it. Brown-tiled floors meet white walls that stretch up to a wood-beamed ceiling. I follow her down a hallway lined with landscape paintings.
“Oh, yay, small talk,” she says sardonically, then glances back at me with a knowing smirk. “Yeah, it’s not bad. Eight years of what is essentially insider trading goes a long way.”
“Eight years? But—you were a kid back then.”
“I have an older cousin. He’s a real—how should I put it? A fuckup. Or he was. A harmless fuckup. Aimless, didn’t have goals—every parent’s nightmare, but he’s a good guy.
“I convinced him I was psychic and used the 2004 Super Bowl to prove it—I mean, how else would a twelve-year-old predict that wardrobe malfunction? He was eighteen, and we struck a deal. He invested in what I told him—, Facebook, Netflix, Google—and when I was eighteen, he transferred half to me. I sold some, kept most. Neither of us will ever have to work.”
As she speaks, we pass through a formal living room, continue to the back of the house, and stop in what appears to be a second, cozier living room.
“Have a seat. Red or white?”
“Red is…” I start, but I trail off as my attention is caught by the walls, every square inch of which is covered in art—art that is a far cry from the landscapes in the hallway.
Gruesome art.
Gruesome, specific art. My eyes land on an easel sitting in the corner that holds a canvas depicting the half-painted bloody body of a chopped-up ballerina.
Kimiko walks over, a bottle and two wineglasses in hand, and sees me staring.
“That one’s not done.”
She sets the bottle and glasses down, walks over to the easel, grabs the tarp next to it, and covers the canvas.
But that’s just one of many. Everywhere I look, I see the same two things: ballerinas and blood.
“You painted these?” I ask. She shrugs, not quite looking at me, sits down, and pours the wine.
The sight of the red liquid splashing into the glass immediately takes me back to Ellie’s party. The last time I drank red wine.
The memory freezes me in place. It takes me a moment to register that she’s speaking.
“I realize how it looks. You come visit a strange woman you met just once and find weird, violent imagery all over her walls. If you want to run, I won’t blame you.”
“I don’t want to run,” I assure her.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive,” I say. But I can’t help myself. “Did a ballerina ruin your life or something?”
“You could say that.” She laughs. “I was a ballerina, a lifetime ago.”
I wait for her to say more. She doesn’t.
“And now you’re a painter?” I prod.
“Aren’t we here to talk about you?”
“It can wait,” I say. I’m desperate for it to wait. I want to cling to any distraction life will give me—and Kimiko’s art is a fantastically bizarre distraction.
“Okay, but it’s not a happy story.”
I nearly laugh. No one looking at these walls could think they were inspired by something happy.
“I was a ballerina, until I wasn’t. And then I felt like I was nothing.
In the wake of my injury, a therapist suggested I try painting.
I took to it naturally, signed up for classes after a while.
I painted happy stuff then. Landscapes, some still lifes.
Always bright, peaceful images. Serene. My husband said I had the ability to capture joy in a way that brought him to tears.
“Since I couldn’t be a ballerina, I figured I’d try being a mom. Shortly into our marriage, after suffering my third miscarriage, I… I painted it. He didn’t like that.”
Something in the way she says that makes me freeze, my blood chilled from just a few simple words.
“When I began my second life, I had a hard time readjusting. The caseworkers, they warn you not to start earlier than five years old. And I didn’t. I was ten.” She shakes her head, seemingly baffled.
“Being back in my child brain was weird. I used to think I was in control of myself—of my actions, if not my emotions or thoughts. But then I was a grown woman in a child’s body, having childlike tantrums even though I knew better.
It was disconcerting. Scary. And I didn’t have anyone to talk to—for years, I thought I was the only one. I felt so alone. Painting helped.
“I know it’s kind of disturbing, but I like it. After a lifetime of creating beautiful things—only beautiful things—of being expected to be a beautiful thing and nothing more, I find it liberating to create something ugly. Though I’m not quite brave enough to transform myself into an ugly thing.”
She stops talking, and the silence stretches on. It’s my turn, but I don’t know what to say.
“Do the other people from the group know about your paintings?” I ask carefully.
“Yeah, right,” she scoffs. “They’d have a field day. I’m sure they would see these paintings as confirmation of everything they already suspect.”
I want to know what they suspect, but I’m scared to ask. She eyes my glass.
“You haven’t touched your wine. Too reminiscent of all the blood on the walls?”
“I’m sorry. I—” I almost can’t get the words out. “I drank red wine the night I died. I seem to have lost the taste for it.”
Her eyes widen, and she stands.
“Oh, you don’t have to—”
She takes my glass and tosses the wine back like it’s a shot.
“You want to know why everyone hates me, right? I’m gonna need a couple more drinks for that. How about whiskey?”
She leaves and a minute later returns with two glasses of whiskey and a far-off look in her eyes.
“I had two kids. Reyna and Milo. They were six and eight.
“Whenever I hear people tell their stories about being up in that bizarre office, it always sounds like this rushed, manic frenzy, over before you know it. Not me. I stayed for what felt like days, sitting across from my caseworker in silence. I didn’t know what to say.
“What kind of mother would wish for her kids never to have been born? What kind of mother, if given the chance, would go back in time and make that wish a reality?
“But I knew—I knew—that there was no way for me to go back to that life and not feel miserable. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my children. Just—not in the ways that I think other moms love their children. Not the way I was supposed to, that I wanted to—
“Once I had gathered my thoughts, I asked a single question. What would happen to my kids if I went back to a time before they were born? He told me that if I did that, there would be near-zero odds of me having the same kids again.
“But that wasn’t what I was asking. I wanted to know what would happen to my kids.
The kids I left behind. The kids whose mom just died.
He said, ‘Regardless of what you choose, the children you left behind will continue to live their lives without a mother.’ Somehow, that made it easy.
I went back, and I made the choice never to be a mother again.
“Richard probably has the best poker face in the group, but when I first told my story, I swear he’s the one who judged me the most. He’s the only one who had kids the first time around.
He specifically went back to the day after his youngest was born, even though his problems started way before then, because he couldn’t imagine life without them.
“Steven and Marie have kids, and Trent and his partner are trying to adopt. They can’t imagine making the kind of decision I did. They know there’s something broken in me.
“So that’s it. That’s what you were picking up on.”
She shrugs and takes a sip of whiskey, and I’m left wondering what to do with all that. Because, yeah, it’s a lot. I can’t imagine what it took for her to make that choice, and for the first time I’m glad that my previous life was so… sparse. That coming back was an easy decision.
“I don’t think that makes you broken,” I say.
Kimiko lets out a bitter laugh. “Just wait till you have kids. You’ll get it then.”
I open my mouth to protest, but I know that empty platitudes won’t do either of us any good. I’d like to say I would never judge her regardless of the path my own relationship to motherhood takes, but I can’t promise that, can I? I can’t even imagine.
Kimiko waves away my worries.
“That’s a problem for our future selves. You came here to discuss your problems. I think. I couldn’t actually make out any words through all your blubbering on the phone.”
“I was not blubbering.”
“It’s okay. We all do it,” she says with grave seriousness, as if she’s offering sage insight. I can’t help but laugh at that, and then she cracks a smile, and the tension is broken.
“So, crying,” she says as a segue once our laughter dissolves. “I can only assume this is about a boy—or a girl—or a they. Either the singular or the plural; I don’t judge.”
I realize I didn’t talk about Alex or Ellie at the Second Take Anonymous meeting and have to take a deep breath to prepare myself for the info dump I’m about to throw at her.