Chapter 5 #10
“Has she done the same for you?” Susan asks, curious despite herself to understand how their situation works. “Have you explored things with your version of the one who got away, or whatever I am to her?”
He shakes his head. “I’ve never doubted that Eliza is the person I want to be with.
But I also would never presume that her needs are the same.
I try to be flexible. Marriage is a made-up concept, anyway.
We can shape it so it works for us, rather than shape ourselves to fit something archaic.
I believe people should have the freedom to get the love they need however they want.
So, yeah. We agreed she needed to figure out her feelings for you, one way or another, because of the strength of our relationship.
It’s hard for me to feel safe with someone who is pining for someone else. ”
“This is insane,” Susan says, and then rushes to clarify: “Not what you’re saying about marriage. I mean, weirdly, that makes sense to me. The idea of Eliza pining.”
“Let me try to explain how I see it in a way that you can relate to,” Graham replies. They’re facing each other like it’s a business meeting.
“Okay.” She prepares herself to feel very annoyed.
He says, “I went to this music festival a few months ago for all these aging millennial bands. The bands I used to absolutely lose my mind over in high school. And some of them were transcendent. Wolf Parade still fucks. Franz Ferdinand blew me away. But most of them were horrible. Like, painfully bad. And I thought—were they always this terrible or are they just getting old? And if they were always terrible, why couldn’t I see it?
How could I love something so much that sounded like this?
The guy from Bloc Party could barely hit the notes of his own song.
And I started thinking about how when we’re young and don’t know any better, we love these things that are bad, and eventually we grow up and we realize how bad they are, but we don’t start liking newer, better things.
We continue to love that same awful old music, not because of what the music is but because it reminds us of how we used to feel when we listened to it. ”
Susan takes several gulps of coffee, until her throat is burning with acidity. “You’ve just described nostalgia,” she says. “What’s your point?”
“That’s how I think about what goes on between you and my wife. And what I’ve gathered is, you’re wrong for each other in every way. Together, you make bad music. But you can’t let it go because you’re still chasing that feeling.”
“And what do you think that feeling is?”
“I don’t really think that’s for me to say,” he says. “What do you think?”
Susan is too tired to be anything but totally honest. “Up until last night I didn’t know she was having a hard time letting it go. All these years, I’ve been obsessing over her, thinking it was completely unrequited.”
“But why?” he presses. “What is it that you can’t move on from? And I don’t mean what is it about her. I mean, what is it about you that you can’t let this go?”
She resists the urge to shut down, to hide from the magnitude of this question. They’re quiet for a long time as she tries to figure out how to answer.
It’s so much easier to talk to Graham than Eliza.
She appreciates the way he gets to the heart of the matter quickly.
It’s always been easier, she realizes, for her to hear hard truths from men than from women.
She wonders if it’s some internalized sexism, or something deeper about her own gender that she’s never bothered to examine. Probably both.
“It meant something, when we first met, that she was interested in me. I don’t mean to sound superficial, but a hot girl flirting with me—it was so validating.
Not just a hot girl but the girl that everyone wanted, you know?
And then when we reconnected in our twenties, she was still that girl.
She still had that power. It was like her interest in me somehow legitimized me.
Like if someone like Eliza wanted me then maybe I wasn’t so bad. ”
Graham makes a face as though this isn’t a real answer and says, “But surely you’ve had other attractive women interested in you.”
Susan sighs. He’s not wrong. Angie is certainly gorgeous, maybe even more than Eliza. Even Ramona is famous because of how she looks.
She listens to the Silver Lake sounds through the open window: a helicopter flying overhead, the truck rumbling down the street. A breeze moves through her hair, carrying the smell of jasmine and car exhaust. She runs a finger over the scar on her thumb.
“I think it has to do with possibility,” she says at last. “When Eliza and I met, we could be anything, anyone. The older I get, the less possibility there is. I am who I am. All my choices have led me here.”
“And you’re not happy being here?”
“Are you?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I think I am.”
Susan wonders if she’d be happy in his place, married to Eliza.
But she knows she wouldn’t be. She’s seen Eliza at her worst and she didn’t like it.
They are wrong for each other. But she’s been holding on to this idea of them together anyway, as though Eliza holds the keys to infinite possibility.
Maybe the opposite is true. Eliza is, if anything, in the way of the kind of expansiveness she longs for.
And Susan has been keeping her there. Pining after Eliza all these years has been hard, but it hasn’t been the hardest thing.
No: The hardest thing would be freeing up the Eliza-size space in her brain.
Susan wonders what she will be able to make room for, if she’s to finally let Eliza go, if she’s really about to accept that they aren’t soulmates and there’s nothing she can do about it.
Just like she’ll never be seventeen again, or twenty-seven, for that matter.
All this time she thought she was obsessing over Eliza, but really she was just infatuated with her own desire.
With how alive she felt when she loved someone with such abandon.
And she couldn’t let it go because it was easier to hold on to something that had already failed than to open herself up to getting heartbroken all over again.
Something clicks into place, albeit a little painfully. “Change has always been hard for me,” she says.
Susan thinks of growing up with her parents: how settled they were, how stable—yet monotonous—life was. How they never moved or changed jobs or traveled or took risks. How she didn’t, either.
“But, Susan, everything is changing all the time, regardless of our feelings about it.”
The truth of this settles over her.
And—she’d always felt that Eliza popped up at particularly pivotal moments, but looking back over the past twenty years, every moment feels pivotal. The time she spent alone matters just as much, if not more, than the time she spent with Eliza.
She thought Eliza was the chorus, but in truth, she’s more like the bridge. Or maybe even an interlude.
Susan finishes off her coffee with one final sip, its bitter dregs making her eyes water. “How much do I owe you for this session?” she asks.
“This one’s on the house,” Graham says. “In exchange for not running off with my wife.”
Susan starts to apologize but stops herself. Instead of saying sorry, she says something more accurate: “Thank you.”
Then she hears the sounds of Eliza coming home: the car in the driveway, the front door opening and shutting, her jingling keys, her sneakers squeaking on the hardwood floor.
When she appears in the doorway, wearing yoga pants and a matching sports bra, smoothie in hand, she looks back and forth between the two of them, taking her round sunglasses off.
“We’re all good, right?” she says. Her eyelids look a little bruised, the only evidence that she might be tired.
Susan and Graham nod together.
“We were just talking about bad music,” Susan says.
“I knew you’d hit it off,” Eliza says. And then, growing serious, she adds, “And, Susan, I’m sorry for being so messy last night. It won’t happen again.”
“I didn’t think it would,” Susan says.
Susan is lying in bed reading the news on her phone when she finally hears back from Katie.
“So sorry babe,” the text says. “Having a kid is crazy but I’m here now. Tell me everything. Where are you?”
Susan writes back, “I’m at Eliza’s house in California.”
Her phone promptly starts vibrating with a FaceTime. She answers it laughing. “Hi.”
Katie looks exhausted. Her pajama top is stained with what is likely baby food or maybe throw-up. But she’s grinning, her blue eyes wide, and Susan wishes more than anything that they could be in person so she could rest her head on Katie’s shoulder.
“You’re where?” Katie cries. “You’re not dating her again, are you?”
“No, no. God, I have so much to catch you up on.”
“I’m listening,” Katie says.
Susan wonders if she should tell Katie about the almost kiss, but she feels like it would be disrespectful to Eliza, and even to Graham, who she begrudgingly doesn’t hate. So she leaves it out, telling Katie everything else that’s happened since Dave messaged her on LinkedIn.
When she’s done, Katie says, “So, just so I’m getting this right, you’re in LA to reconnect with Eliza before doing social media for a film she wrote about what happened to her? I mean, it’s kind of the perfect job. It’s kind of like your whole life has led you to this moment?”
“That’s the short version, yes.” Susan laughs. “I mean, that was the plan. But then she lost her funding. So I guess now I’m not sure if it’s happening at all.”
“I’m sure she’ll figure out a way to get it done,” Katie says. “She seems resourceful.”
“I guess so, yeah.”
“But how are you feeling about being there?”
“I’m simultaneously thrilled and heartbroken,” she admits. “I’m so happy for Eliza that she has this beautiful life. But…”
“You still have feelings for her?”