Chapter 21
Marlowe
On the drive back, Cilla watches the darkened landscape while I focus on the road.
The radio plays songs I’d sing along to on any other night.
I can’t use my own voice right now, for fear it might betray me in attempting a conversation.
Talking to Cilla only ever seems to lead me down risky paths, and the psychics said she has to let me go so she can find a meaningful relationship.
Who would I be to deprive her of that? And for what, other than my own selfish desires?
If we return to our real lives, she is an actress who lives in Los Angeles and I am a schoolteacher in Iowa. That isn’t a world where we make sense together.
When we pull into the psychics’ driveway, they’re on the front porch, sitting at the bistro table that came from my grandma—something no one in my family has ever made use of in our version of this house.
The presence of the psychics is both a surprise and a welcome buffer.
I don’t have to talk to Cilla directly. I can talk alongside her as we tell them about our time with Dallas.
Psychic Marlowe drills us for every detail we can spare, on everything from the performance (sensational) to the mozzarella sticks (forgettable).
At my fourth involuntary yawn, Psychic Priscilla claps her hands on her knees. “We need to let them go to bed,” she tells Psychic Marlowe. “She’s about to keel over.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Psychic Marlowe says. “I just love hearing every single piece of a story.”
It’s almost like she knows about Teddy. Maybe she does.
She is the psychic. But Cilla and I are the ones who seem to be using telepathy.
Despite no discussion on the matter, neither of us has mentioned him.
We must both agree it’s not our information to share, and that if their Dallas wants to open up to them about Teddy someday, that’s his decision to make.
“We’ve prepped the downstairs bedroom for you two,” Psychic Priscilla tells us.
“Oh,” I reply, suddenly very awake. “Are neither of the other upstairs bedrooms available?”
“We use one for crafting, and the other one is for meditation,” Psychic Marlowe says. “And as you know, the rest of our basement is for the business.”
“No problem,” Cilla says.
It is very much a problem. That room is tiny.
In my parents’ house, it’s my dad’s “man cave,” which is exactly as embarrassing as it sounds and also as cave-like as advertised.
Because the space is subterranean, the only window is a small rectangle at the very top of the wall, with a view of those metal tube things that let in some airflow.
The biggest bed that could possibly fit in there is a full, and that would leave very little floor room.
I’ll never be able to give Cilla the space from me she needs. Or really, the space I need.
Whatever twisted game the psychics are playing, they must be enjoying it, because when they take us downstairs, they open the door to reveal they have turned on only the side lamps, making it feel very intimate in here.
Then they whisper their goodnights swiftly, smiling with all of their teeth before closing us in our shared dungeon.
Forget my previous generosity. I don’t believe they’re grifters, but I do believe they are manipulating our reality to cater to their own enjoyment.
Instead of a red-walled ode to masculinity that is my dad’s man cave, the room is painted a nice shade of midnight blue with a gallery of mystical art on each side wall.
There’s a celestial tapestry hanging over a reddish-purple comforter that appears to be made of crushed velvet.
The bed itself does almost fill the space, with only narrow slivers on either side just wide enough for a person to walk down and side tables to squeeze in, those damned lamps atop them, casting their hypnotizing glow.
“I’ll take the floor,” I volunteer.
Cilla doesn’t even have to glance around before she asks, “And what floor would that be?”
Two piles of nightclothes await us at the end of the bed. I snatch mine and hurry to change in the bathroom, using it as an excuse to avoid the logistics of our sleep setup a bit longer.
Psychic Marlowe has given me a pair of plaid boxer shorts and an oversized cast T-shirt from the Garden Meadows Community Theater’s production of Cats. I get dressed, then brush my teeth with the supplies the psychics have provided.
“I’m just gonna sleep on the couch,” I say, popping barely more than my head in through the bedroom door.
“There’s plenty of room on the bed,” Cilla tells me.
“It’s fine.”
“Is that a Cats shirt?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“They’ve given us complementary ensembles.”
Poking my head in the tiniest bit farther, I make out little cats in a printed pattern across what looks to be the collar of a classic button-down pajama shirt. The rest of her body is covered, because she’s under a quilt she’s placed atop the comforter.
“You know, my grandma made that,” I say, gesturing to the quilt. “It’s all of our high school show shirts stitched together.”
“That’s very sweet.” Cilla runs a hand across it. “All of my show shirts are long gone.”
“Where’d they go?”
“My mom cut them all up on graduation day, right after I told her I was moving to LA. I imagine they ended up in whatever landfill the trash service uses in Garden Meadows.”
Her mom still lives in town. I see her on occasion, but we don’t have the kind of relationship where I’d say hi.
I’m not even sure she knows who I am, or if Cilla ever confided in her about our rivalry the way I regaled my own parents with the tales over breakfast most mornings before school.
I only know her mom didn’t make it to many of our shows in high school—not any, come to think of it.
I always chalked that up to the messy divorce she’d gone through with Cilla’s dad years prior, something I knew about from scraps I’d pick up during conversations with our castmates.
Her mom had to work two jobs to support them, and she didn’t have a lot of free time for Cilla. Or so I assumed.
“Why did she do that? Was she mad you were leaving?” I ask.
“I don’t know if mad is the right word. Maybe more like resentful.”
“Was she…not proud of you?” I try next. These are the exact kinds of questions I should not be asking, because personal ones will only bring us closer, when what we need to do is grow further apart.
It just seems impossible that her mother wouldn’t be proud of her.
Cilla laughs, but it’s bitter and quick. “She’d want me to make it clear that she’s plenty proud now.”
“What about back then?” I ask.
“Back then, I was a nuisance to her. So I figured leaving would be no problem. I’d finally be out of her way.
I didn’t realize leaving would make her jealous.
When I got my first acting agent in LA, she found their information online and submitted herself, too.
My agent thought it was a joke. I had to pretend it was. ”
I creep toward the bed to perch on the smallest sliver of space that will hold me. “I didn’t know your mom wanted to be an actor,” I say.
“She didn’t,” Cilla says. “My mom had no idea what she wanted. Growing up, she was a chameleon. Every two years, she became someone totally different. She wanted to be a jazz singer. A therapist. She had plans to open a restaurant. Then it was a spa. Then it was an arcade. She’d work all these weird jobs to save up the funds, and then poof, she’d change her mind right when things started making sense, and it was like none of it ever happened.
I’d teach myself a jazz song to impress her, and she’d tell me she hated that kind of music.
There was never any figuring her out. Definitely no pleasing her.
Even my own name was another one of her phases.
She was obsessed with Elvis when I was born.
By the time I was old enough to ask about it, she didn’t care about him at all anymore.
So I can’t really buy the idea that she’s ‘healed from all of that’ as she claims. How could I trust that this time is different than the last, oh, four hundred? ”
“I had no idea any of that was going on in high school,” I say.
“Wasn’t the kind of thing I could open up to you about. Or anybody. Not even Jaz, though I’m sure she figured out some of it.”
I feel the glow of privilege and the wobbly shock of trust. She’s handing me a piece of herself she’s never given to anyone else. Who would I be to turn that away?
“I mean, how can anyone ever trust that someone’s truly different?” I ask.
It’s meant to be a question for her, but the answer comes to me first.
“That’s what faith is for,” I say.
Faith.
How funny to offer this solution when faith is the very thing that’s escaped me for so long.
Somewhere along the way, I lost my faith in myself.
My dreams, my accomplishments, my own desires.
Right here, in the crammed guest bedroom of another version of my life, my faith is attempting to return, a boomerang that’s spent sixteen years arcing its way back to me, slamming into my chest with so much force I can’t ignore it anymore.
“Your mom should be very proud of you,” I tell Cilla. “You’ve accomplished so much, and you did it all on your own.”
“None of what I’ve accomplished is real,” she says, downplaying it in that way she loves to do.
“But it doesn’t matter anyway, because my mom thinks it is, and that’s exactly why I don’t trust that she wants to make amends with me now.
I think she wants to be around me because she believes I’m finally someone worth knowing, and she wants some of that attention for herself.
Little does she know she’s late to the party.
My time as someone worth knowing has expired, and I’m just another face in the crowd again. ”
“You’ve always been worth knowing,” I insist. “And what you’ve accomplished does matter.
Sure, an award isn’t everything, but it’s at least proof that you have gotten so much further into your career than you give yourself credit for.
Not only did you up and leave Garden Meadows at eighteen, but you also managed to build an entire life for yourself, from scratch, all the way on the other side of the country in a business that’s nearly impossible to break into. ”
She regards me for a long while. “How come you don’t act anymore?”
It’s a question I’ve balked at for years.
It’s so easy to avoid. Most people don’t want the actual answer.
Those who can’t do, teach! Cilla’s truth makes me brave enough to offer my own.
And there’s something about the size of this room and the dim lights.
It’s like we’re in a cocoon together, protected from the outside world.
“I couldn’t figure out how to make myself good enough to get other people to believe in me the way I used to believe in myself,” I admit.
“Back in high school, I used to trust myself completely. I naively thought that the work I put in would be enough, because I gave everything I had to it. And Dallas always validated that. So did my parents. They told me that if I worked hard for something, it would become mine. Once I got into auditioning, I learned very quickly that the world did not care how hard I worked. And it definitely didn’t care how much I loved acting or how seriously I took it. ”
I pause, suddenly panicked. I’m so far past all of my usual barricades that I can’t see any of my known stopping points.
Cilla reaches across the bed and squeezes my hand.
“I gave it as many years as I could, but at a certain point, it became embarrassing for me to keep trying to make it,” I continue, her gesture urging me forward.
“I had no money left to my name and no way to make enough to support myself as a creative. I knew if I came back here, Dallas would take me under his wing, and the rent for an apartment in Garden Meadows would be cheap enough for me to actually afford. I convinced myself that teaching theater was basically what I set out to do anyway. I made myself believe it was enough.”
“Is it?” she questions.
“No,” I whisper. “The truth is, I think about auditioning again all the time. I’m just scared…”
“Of what?”
“All the ways it could go wrong. How ridiculous I might look. Learning that I’m still not good enough.
I don’t want to be so cynical, but to be optimistic would be to ignore every piece of proof I’ve gathered over the last sixteen years.
” I stare at the celestial tapestry. “But then I keep thinking of what Teddy said to Dallas about going back to New York. Dallas never made it there. He never got to live his real dream. We think we have so much time, and even when we bend it and climb into pockets we didn’t know existed, there still isn’t enough… ”
I let my words trail off, prepared to have this conversation drift away, lost to the promise of sleep.
Except Cilla whispers back. She walks with me down this path the same way she’s walked with me across all of space and time.
“You’re the reason I am where I am,” she says.
“You were always so sure of what you wanted in high school, and I never felt very sure of anything. When we graduated, I thought, why can’t that be me, too?
Why can’t I be sure? What do I really have to lose?
So I left Garden Meadows. But I just went and made myself into someone else. To be myself has always scared me.”
“Why?”
“It’s hard to face constant disappointment,” she says.
“There’s no good thing that happens in my career that doesn’t come with three immediate downsides right behind it.
For years, I was so good at not letting it bother me.
I kept telling myself I thrived on uncertainty.
It was all I’d ever known. But I’m staring down the barrel of thirty-five, and I’m realizing I have no role in my own life.
I’ve been letting everyone else decide things on my behalf, because then I don’t have to take ownership of how much I want any of it.
That would mean accepting I care. And to care is to be so, so vulnerable.
And to be vulnerable is to hurt, over and over again.
It’s too hard. It makes me want to be done with acting forever.
I just want to feel settled in something for once in my life. ”
“You will,” I tell her, thinking once again of the psychic reading. How they told her she needs to release her past.
Release me.
“Good night,” I say, rising up to go. At the door, I turn. “You shouldn’t give up acting. You’re way too good, and your instincts are always spot-on. Even with everything happening with us. You’re always the one to understand it long before I do. You just get it.”
“Thank you,” she says softly.
“And your vulnerability doesn’t make you weak; it makes you brave,” I say, because I’m not quite done yet. “And you are brave. You dazzle everyone you meet. That’s not a performance. That’s you.”
“Wait,” Cilla says. “Stay.”