Chapter 15 - Beatrix
Chapter 15
Beatrix
Saturday, January 1, 2000
The door marked 312 looks like every other door in the hallway.
A dull beige, scuffed along the bottom from passing feet over the years, clipboard holding a thin stack of papers pinned in the middle, just below a small window.
It’s completely unfathomable to me now—standing here, with my own two feet planted in a hospital hallway that looks, smells, sounds too real for any dream—that my dad could exist on the other side of that door. Flesh and blood. All the things about him that no camcorder at the time could have captured, and we’d never really been the kind of family who was good at documenting life’s big or small moments on film. His warm, gravelly baritone that could have gotten him a voiceover career, if his books hadn’t taken off as they did; that trademark rumbling chuckle, building in speed as it rolled out, instantly cutting through any bad day at school, like a ray of sunshine or sip of warm soup in laughter form. The bright glint of his gray eyes, the fusion of mint and cedar that followed him wherever he went—a fervent devotion to both Old Spice and Doublemint. He could chew through a pack a day when he was working through a particularly thorny plot point.
Though he’ll surely smell like hospital through and through now, the glint most likely rubbed down flat, from jail, from sickness. From me.
“You ready for this?” Rocco asks, quietly, as he leans in from behind.
I let myself fall into him, steadying my back against his firm chest. “I don’t think I could ever possibly be ready for this.”
“Right. Yes. Relatively speaking, I suppose. More like ready enough.”
Sweat prickles down the back of my neck. My stomach swirls; I regret every car snack from the day. Everything I ate, except for the tamales. “You peek in the window first, okay? To be sure we’re alone. I know my mom’s always regretted that she went home. That she didn’t make a special request to stay over, and he was alone for midnight on New Year’s Eve. Alone for his last midnight, period. She knew he wouldn’t have long—the cancer had spread everywhere by the time he was getting proper care. But the cardiac arrest . . . she blinked, and he was gone.”
That thought, this night, the brutal finality of it all, sends a fresh wave of anxiety coursing through me. I close my eyes. Take a deep breath. Swallow.
“Of course, Bea.” Rocco cups his hands on top of my shoulders, leaning in for a quick peck on my neck from behind. I will the warmth he radiates to seep into me. “But you got this. You’ve spent the last seventeen years thinking about everything you wish you could have said or done. You wrote a whole script to help you to process. So right now? Let it all out. Because I have a feeling this really is your last chance. Unless the universe has more tricks up her sleeve, and I kind of hope she doesn’t. This trick’s enough for me.”
“God, imagine that?” I laugh, grateful for the fleeting distraction. “Living this whole week over and over, until we adequately unlock the puzzle. Hm. That’s actually helpful. If I tell myself that’s a possibility, it takes pressure off tonight. Maybe it’s the first of many goodbyes.”
“Let’s assume the best,” Rocco says, his hands moving from my shoulders down the length of my arms. His fingers find mine, latch on. “As grateful as I am for this last week with you, I’m also looking forward to my obnoxiously expensive but very worth it memory foam California king bed, in the home on the property I actually own, whilst living in the appropriate decade. Though hopefully that bed will have you in it now, too.”
“I would like that. Being in your decade-appropriate bed. With you.”
“Good.”
He gives me a smile so soft and sweet, I feel an actual ache when we let go of one another.
Rocco edges in front of me and leans toward the door, peering into the window. A long moment passes, and then he looks back at me, shaking his head. “All clear,” he says. “You got this.”
I nod, and take the first step closer.
“I’ll be here if you need me.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, and I feel that gratitude deep in my bones. I’m not sure I could do this alone, without the knowledge that Rocco’s right here with me.
My hand is on the door handle then, pushing it open. My feet somehow move forward, carrying me into the room.
I pry my eyes off the tiled floor to look up, and gasp.
Because it’s him.
It’s my dad, and he’s alive, and he’s staring straight at me.
“Daddy,” I say, the word falling apart on my lips.
A pause, those gray eyes wide, confused, but still alert, and then, “Bea?”
I rush over to his bed, not bothering to swipe away the tears that are already spilling down my cheeks. “You recognize me?”
“Of course I do, I’d recognize you anywhere, but . . .” His eyes go even wider as he takes me in up close. I take him in, too, so precisely as I remember him, but also not at all. He’s at least forty pounds lighter, maybe more; grays peppering his thinning hair; skin pale and fragile-looking under the too-bright fluorescent ceiling lights. I want to swallow him up in my arms—too easy to do now, his shoulders are so narrow—and tell pretty lies, promise that everything is going to be alright. “You’ve aged more than seems, ah, reasonable since I last saw you. Maybe I’m . . . hallucinating? The exceptionally kind nurses have been rather generous with painkillers these past few days.”
“You’re not hallucinating.” I hadn’t adequately planned this part out. But . . . why not tell him about this past week? He’ll keep my secret. He has less than a day left on this Earth; it’s probably safe to say he’ll take it to the grave. The thought makes my throat squeeze; I let out a mangled sob-laugh. “This is going to sound ridiculous. Full-on bonkers. The kind of fiction you usually avoided, far too absurdist for you. Because ‘there are enough fascinating truths in our real world—’ ”
“To exclusively write and read realistic stories, for all of time,” he finishes, smiling. It’s what he’d always said; magic, fantasy, sci-fi, all fine creative endeavors, but for other people. Never for him. No, he’d prefer to lose himself in crimes that could very conceivably happen. Which, of course, proved to be too true.
It was the sheer believability of his books that undid him in the end.
“Yes, you’d ordinarily despise this story,” I say, smiling, too, because we’re here, together, talking. “But I’m hoping you quite like this one.”
He leans back against his pillow, and there it is—that glimmer in his eye I knew and loved so well. It wasn’t lost for good after all, despite everything.
I sit down on the edge of his bed, taking his hand between both of mine. I wrap all ten of my fingers securely around his, like if I hold him tightly enough, we’ll never have to come apart. “Well, it started a few days ago, on a seemingly inauspicious late December day in LA, in the year of 2016, with a highly flawed yet surprisingly endearing A-list actor and a trusty old silver German steed. . . .” And from there I tell him everything—about my film, the accident, our week as time travelers—succinctly enough for him to easily follow, but with enough colorful details to pull him in entirely. After all, he’s William Noel. I can’t disappoint him in his final hours with the last story he’ll ever hear from me.
Thank goodness he taught me so well.
When I finish, leaving off at our arrival here and Rocco charming his way past the front desk, he’s silent. His eyes havebeen closed for the last few minutes, but I can tell he’svery much awake, his attention tuned to every word Isay. The thoughtful furrow of his brow, the soft flutter of his lids, and the gentle curl of his smile that tips up higher as Igo.
Another moment passes, and then he opens his eyes. “That was quite a story.”
“Thank you. I have no idea how it ends for me and Rocco, but when we were trying to decide how best to spend tonight, the only idea that made sense was this. Driving here to see you.”
“You know how this ends for me, don’t you? Or more specifically. . . when.”
He doesn’t look altogether sad as he says it. Tired. Resigned. But also curious, like it’s just any other fact of life—another detail in a long and twisting story.
I nod.
“Soon?”
I nod again.
“Huh. Well, alright then. That’s about what I expected, I suppose. I can feel it, you know. Sense something’s shifting. I feel . . . different? Partly from the meds. But it’s more than that.” He shrugs, and I can see his collarbones poke through his thin hospital gown. “I won’t lie and say I don’t wish I had more time. We’ve missed too much as it is. The last year has been . . . less than ideal.” He chuckles, that throaty rumble I’ve missed with every cell of my body. I wish I had a smartphone, something, anything to record it. “But you’re here now. And you just told me what I suspect will go down as the very best story I’ve ever heard in my life. Maybe I should have read more magic-y things all along. I’ve been missing out.”
“No. You only like this particular magical story because it’s also real.”
“You are real then, aren’t you? This is actually happening? It’s not the meds?”
I nod, and the tears are back then. My body shakes, the weight of the sadness threatening to crash down on top ofme.
“Come here,” he says, his arms open wide. I let go of his hand and fall against him, as gently as I can, given his state. “My sweet, sweet girl,” he says, his warm palms smoothing over the back of my head.
“Why don’t you hate me?” I ask, the words muffled against his chest.
“How could I ever hate you?”
“Because I didn’t believe you.” The words sound so impossibly ugly out loud. How? How did I ever think my own father was capable of something so evil? “I should never have doubted you.”
“Eh, well. I should never have lied to you about my calls with Marjorie. That’s on me. But I was too scared to be honest. And there was quite a lot of other evidence that wasn’t necessarily in my favor. Circumstantial, but still. Compelling enough to do the trick.”
“It doesn’t matter. One lie shouldn’t have derailed a lifetime of truths. And they could have found the scissors in your hand, at the crime scene, with a full confession from you, and I still should have known it could never be possible. That there was another story hiding beneath the surface.”
“I guess if I should be disappointed in anything, it’s that you assumed the most obvious suspect was the correct one. The neighbor who just so happened to be at the library, too, while his family was conveniently out of town. An eccentricwriter obsessed with true crime, who was a perfect match with every known detail of her mystery lover. And who was of course writing a secret new manuscript with a plot that mirrored the crime itself.” He lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Just . . . so easy, all of it. I thought I taught you better than that.”
I can hear his smile without having to tilt my face up to see for myself. “How are you smiling at a time like this?”
“How do you know I’m smiling?”
“Because I still remember everything about you. You’ll be pleased to know you’ve proven very difficult to forget, even for five minutes at a time.”
“I’m not pleased—not if it means you’ve been holding on for so long you can’t appreciate your own life in the present.”
“How could I let go? After I was so horrible to you. Even when your name was cleared, when everyone else was tripping over themselves to apologize to you—the media, the publishing world, our neighbors—I didn’t come home.”
He’s quiet for a moment. I count the soft thumping beats of his heart against my cheek; it’s both a glorious miracle to hear it at all—my dad’s heart, still beating—and completely devastating, to know that hours from now, it will shudder and stop. Forever.
“Why didn’t you?” he asks then, quietly. “Come home? I’ve been wondering if I’d get to see you again. I was planning to write you a letter, tomorrow maybe. But I guess you never got that letter? Which means . . .”
He died before he could write it.
Or...
A flashing thought sears through every synapse of my brain. My breath hitches. I’m seeing stars, even with my eyes still open.
“Beatrix?”
“Sorry—I didn’t come home because I was too ashamed. But I just realized something. Maybe. I don’t know, because none of these rules make any actual sense.”
“Oh, another twist to the story!” He hugs me even tighter. “Tell me.”
“Maybe you didn’t write the letter before you . . .” Died, I can’t say, silly as that is because it’s the obvious, inevitable truth. “Maybe you didn’t write it because you didn’t need to. Because you saw me first.”
“Meaning . . .”
“There was never a version of time in which you didn’t see me. I just . . . didn’t know it yet. Not until today. But if I’m here now, maybe I was always here. We always had this time together. You never left before I had the chance to tell you I was sorry. And that I loved you more than anyone on this planet. Always have, always will.”
I’ll probably never know for sure—never know if it was always this way, that there was no parallel December 31, 1999, with a different outcome. But I want to believe this. Need to. And even if I’m wrong, if I wasn’t here the first time around, it’s hopefully a cosmic clean slate, at least for my dad. This, right here, is the only version he’ll take with him.
“Ah.” I hear the joy in his voice. The wonder and delight. “That’s a fun theory.”
True or false, it’s the surprise twist in his final hour that he never saw coming.
My father, the consummate creator of the literary world’s most shocking plot twists, could have received no greater gift on his deathbed.
“If I had written you that letter,” he says, “your path might have been very different. On one hand, it might have saved you some of the grief, the guilt you’ve let consume you all these years. But on the other . . .”
“It might have been too risky—might have changed too many things. That guilt was the fire that got me to where I am now. For better and for worse. Murder in the Books . . . it’s the only apology that felt remotely adequate. If I couldn’t say sorry before you left, I could say sorry to the world with my movie about you.”
“And now you can do both.”
I’ve barely been holding it together as it is, but these words split me down the middle—the beauty and the sadness twining together into something wholly new and incomprehensibly heartbreaking.
I tilt my face up to see him, and he’s looking down at me, his eyes as bright as I’ve ever seen them. Where will that light go in a few hours? How can something so luminous cease to exist, just like that?
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you better.”
“I love you best.”
“I love you most best.”
“Unacceptable. Best is the most. My superlative wins.”
It was how we’d always said it. I wonder now, for the first time, if my mom had sometimes felt left out. She’d never said anything if she did. But then again, my mom and I had never been the best at communicating.
“How is she, your mother?”
“How did you know that’s who I was thinking about?”
“Because I know you.”
“She’s . . . okay, I guess. We haven’t exactly been close since we lost you. She . . . resented me for not coming home to see you. For everything, really. As if I didn’t resent myself enough.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I could help to change that.”
“You can’t. Because she can’t know—that I was here. That would change too much.”
He nods. “I promise I won’t tell her. But you’ve got to promise me something, too.”
When I don’t immediately respond, he stares me down.
“Fine, I promise. Even though I suspect I won’t like it.”
“Make things right with your mom. When you get back. Because you will get back. I refuse to die thinking your story ends here, in the wrong time. I may not know all the twists to come, but you’re far from the end.”
“Okay,” I say, because there’s no other choice, is there? It’s the least I can do to redeem myself. Maybe I’ll even tell her, someday, about what happened; maybe she’ll believe me. Maybe she won’t. But I need to try.
“Now bring him in here,” he says, grinning at me.
“Who?”
“Rocco! Your time-traveling companion. More than that, I suspect.” The grin grows wider.
I lean in and kiss his cheek. I kiss it a few more times. I breathe him in as much as my lungs will allow.
“Okay.” I slowly pull away, reluctant to lose even a second of this time together.
Rocco is right where I left him, standing in the hallway with a look of such deep concern on his face when he sees me,my heart swells. My heart is filled with so many things—too many, more than I knew it could possibly withstand all in the same moment. “Come in,” I say, and he nods and follows.
My dad and Rocco exchange hellos like old friends. Rocco hugs him with great care, like he would do anything to keep my dad whole for as long as the universe would allow. He perches on one side of the bed then, and I settle in on the other.
“It’s been the honor of my life, playing you in Bea’s movie,” Rocco says. “The greatest challenge—in part because your daughter didn’t go particularly easy on me.” He catches my eye, smiling. “Not that I would have wanted it any other way. And it’s also been the greatest reward, because the role is so complex and rich. Your daughter, she wrote a true masterpiece. I’m incredibly sorry that any of you had to experience what you did. But your daughter made an exceptionally special kind of lemonade out of some very nasty lemons.”
The laugh that erupts from my father feels impossibly large for such a fragile-looking man, and it’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s a sound I’ll replay in my mind for the rest of my time on Earth, this moment here with Dad. With Rocco.
My dad is okay. He’s dying, but he’s okay.
We all are, or at least we’re going to be.
I tell him about how I spend my New Year’s Eves now, each one after this night; I found a drive-in theater in Glendale that plays Alfred Hitchcock marathons every December 31, his old tradition. Our old tradition, before everything fell apart. Nothing and no one topped Hitchcock for him. I was more neutral, but it delighted him when I joined, so I did. So that’s what I do now, every year—tucked inside Delilah, comfort eating my way through a buffet of snacks, sobbing my eyes out to Hitchcock flicks.
“You couldn’t have found a better way to honor me,” he says, smiling so big, it looks like it might crack his sunken cheekbones down the middle.
We tell him more about 2016 then—dazzling him with stories about smart cars and smartphones and i-everything—and I’ve lost all track of time until Rocco says, “It’s midnight. Happy 2000.”
I take a deep breath. We all do. Waiting.
Is this our Cinderella moment?
Did we break the magic spell?
The clock on the wall above my dad’s bed continues to tick. 12:00 becomes 12:01 becomes 12:02.
We’d known, of course, coming here, that this likely wasn’t the solution, if there even is one. But even now, stuck here on the other side of the millennium, it was still the right choice. For me, at least.
Rocco . . . he put our return on the line to gift me this moment right here.
It’s the most selfless thing anyone’s ever done for me.
“We’re still here,” Rocco says, staring at the clock. Looking dazed but not surprised.
“For now,” my dad says, extending a hand to each of us. “But have some faith.”
We talk for a little while longer, about nothing, really, all of us distracted with everything that has and hasn’t happened tonight. When I notice my dad’s eyelids growing heavy, blinking shut during lapses in conversation, I look at Rocco. He nods back.
As much as I don’t want to admit it, I know.
It’s time to go.
“I love you, Daddy.” I kiss him again, keeping my lips against his cheek for a moment, trying to absorb any of his warmth that I can to take with me. “I’m sorry, and I love you, and I’ll carry you with me forever.”
“It’s been a pleasure,” Rocco says, his voice as somber as I’ve ever heard it. “I’ll help Bea do the carrying, I promise.”
My dad is sleeping now, looking deeply peaceful. A small smile playing on his lips.
Rocco stands first, coming around the side of the bed to help me up. My eyes stay pinned on my father as my feet move toward the door, an invisible tether connecting us even after the door has closed.
We walk down the hallway and out of the hospital.
Back to Delilah.
* * *
We don’t discuss it, but I settle into the passenger seat this time.
I’m not sure where we’re going now. Back to LA? Somewhere else, anywhere else, because maybe nothing we do matters? But I do know I’m not in driving condition.
I’m so overwhelmingly grateful for everything that just happened. The proper goodbye I never knew I’d have. I got to apologize to my father. I got to see him, hear him, hold his hand. I got to introduce him to Rocco—something I couldn’t have comprehended the importance of before today. I’m relieved, comforted, hopeful.
But above all, I’m devastated.
Because I’ve lost him all over again.
“I’m sorry,” Rocco says, reaching for me from the driver’s seat. The car is still off. He doesn’t know where we’re going either.
I lean against him, letting my head fall against his shoulder. “It’s awful, reliving it all again. But I’m glad we did this. Thank you for supporting it. Because there’s nowhere else I would’ve rather been at midnight. Even if . . .”
“Even if we’re still here,” he finishes for me. “And nothing’s changed.”
I nod. “Even then.”
“I’m glad, too.”
It’s as simple as that. Even if that leaves us with no answers, no ideas, no way out.
He’s silent for a beat, and then: “Do you want to go back to LA?”
“Yes? Maybe? I don’t know. I’m not sure how to make sense of anything right now.” Whatever adventurous rush there was from the first few days, the adrenaline of the shock, the novelty of it all . . . it’s gone now.
I want to go home.
I want to call my mom, say hello, ask her how she’s doing. Talk about something real with her. Try to be something more than what we are now.
I want to be back on set.
I want to spend more time with Rocco, relearning him on our own terms.
“I’m so glad you were here with me,” I say, because that’s the strongest truth I can put words to right now. There’s more there, I’m certain there is; I can feel it, something new—or maybe something very old—taking shape along the edges of my mind, filling in the tiny spaces that haven’t yet been overtaken by grief.
But for now, all I can say is, “You decide where to go. I trust you.” I really do. I trust him as much as I’ve ever trusted anyone.
He nods, his chin grazing against my forehead. I tilt my head back and press my lips against his, kissing him as deeply as I ever have, and I hope it says all the other words I’m not ready to put out into the world. Especially this world, the one that feels like it’s no longer meant to be ours. If it ever was, this second time around.
We pull away and put our seat belts on, and Rocco starts the car.
“Let’s go back to LA,” he says. “I don’t know how or when we’re going to sort this out, but my gut tells me we belong where it all started. Then and now. It should be a smooth ride, driving through the night.”
“That sounds good.” Or as good as anything could at this point. The least wrong.
He rests his right hand on my thigh, and I turn to look up at the row of windows on the third floor as we drive out of the parking lot. Counting, trying to pinpoint which window is Dad’s—squinting as if I can see his sleeping shape from behind the drawn blinds—until the hospital disappears from view.
* * *
The drive home—or not home, but the closest thing we have to it right now—is as efficient as any ride from Tucson to LA could be.
I sleep for most of it, minus one bathroom stop at a grimy roadside gas station that feels like a crime scene in the making. Rocco orders a twenty-four-ounce coffee that tastes like “charred ass sweat and sawdust”—his words—that he drinks anyway, playing my tapes on loop to keep himself alert.
When I open my eyes next, sunlight is streaming through Delilah’s windows, and we’re in LA. Driving along Sunset.
“We’re back,” I say, turning to Rocco.
He glances over, giving me a sleepy smile. “We are back. To 1999 LA, that is. Or no . . . Welcome to 2000.” He tilts his head toward the window, and I look out as we cruise past Tower Records. Still there. Still operational.
I let that sink in for a moment. The shock of it hitting all over again, even if I didn’t rationally expect anything to be different. “Where should we go?” I ask. The idea of going back to our motel makes my stomach knot. Not that I don’t have plenty of . . . pleasant . . . memories there, but it felt like a temporary way station, on the way to something better. Not this, us still here, more confused than ever.
“Maybe we grab food and then drive to the beach or something? I’ve always loved Zuma. I could do with a little ocean gazing to set me straight.”
“Yeah, that sounds—”
Before I can finish, I feel Rocco’s arm press firmly across my chest. I hear the loud squeal of brakes on pavement, metal on metal, like a rumbling peal of thunder, and then everything goes dark.