The Song Remains the Same (21 page)

“So then what?”

“You and Mom stopped talking for a few days. You spent all your time throwing out all this painting crap, tossing cans and brushes and drop cloths in the garbage like he could see you, like you were doing it out of revenge. You blasted your music.” Rory grins a little at this. “Guns N’ Roses. It was so ridiculous for a thirteen-year-old girl in Bedford, New York, but it screamed from your room and from the guesthouse for days. I don’t know, it was, like, your anger music or something.” She shrugs and takes another swallow of oatmeal. “And eventually, you moved on like it didn’t happen—though you stopped writing music, stopped making much of it really—and Mom, in her spiritual New Age misguidance, tried to talk to you about it endlessly. It just pushed you away even further. She’d enter a room, you’d leave it. That sort of thing.” Rory’s nausea has passed now, the sense that she might make it out of this entanglement without narcing on any of the parties involved. “I don’t know—I was only eight or nine. Too young for all of this crap in the first place.”

“And me? At thirteen, you think I was better prepared for it?” Nell asks sincerely.

“You?” Rory almost laughs. “Nelly, no one is prepared for it. That’s the whole problem. That’s why everything is so screwed up in the first place.”

19

I
 ’m meeting an old friend today, hoping she might be able to help me find some answers,” I say to Liv, the next Tuesday. She looks tired, less shiny than usual, and I wonder whom she shares her own problems with. We are perched on my new red couch, side by side, bodies angled toward each other’s, which is both comfortable and still slightly awkward, the intimacy of sharing the space.

“Answers to what?”

“What do you mean, ‘answers to what’? Answers to everything.”

“This friend has them?” I can’t tell if she’s pushing me or just generally cranky.

“Are you cranky?”

“No.” She half-smiles.

“Tired?”

“Let’s keep this about you. When you say ‘answers,’ it seems almost too simplistic that your friend might have them.”

“Isn’t that what this whole pursuit is about?” I say, testily. “Getting my goddamn answers.”

“Of course.” She nods. “I only meant that some of them need to come from you, not anyone else. Your friend, for example, can’t tell you how to feel about your miscarriage and what that meant for your relationship with Peter.”

“I take it, through your therapist terminology, that you think it might actually be time to discuss the miscarriage with Peter.”

“There is no therapist terminology involved,” she says. “Only that it’s something to consider. Something that perhaps you might want to discuss with me first before moving on to him.”

“I have considered it,” I say. “And I’ve decided that even the best relationships have their secrets. That maybe there is something to be said for some mystery, for
not
discussing everything.”

“There may indeed be something to be said for it, though I can’t help but think you’re now mixing up your parents’ relationship with your own.”

I firm my jaw. “Tell me why you’re cranky, and I’ll keep talking.”

“I do not negotiate with terrorists,” she says, but I don’t blink. “Fine,” she exhales. “My dog, Watson, he was sick last night, and I spent most of it at the vet’s. That’s all. He’s fine now.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say. “You could have rescheduled.”

“I’m not a rescheduler, don’t like missing things I’ve committed to.” I nod because the old me didn’t seem like she broke her commitments, either. “So back to your parents.”

“Back to my parents.” I stand to get myself some water. “I wasn’t specifically referring to them, no, but since you raised it, then, well, yes.”

“So your argument is that having secrets can do a relationship good, but—correct me if I’m wrong—what good came out of their own secrets?”

“Ask again later.” I set my glass down on the coffee table and
lower myself back to the couch. She, intentionally or not, shifts an inch farther away. “That’s the million-dollar question.”

“Nell, I’m urging you to take this a little more seriously.” She places her notes down beside her as if to demonstrate that she is
truly serious
now.

“I couldn’t be taking it more seriously!” I say. “How could I be taking this more seriously if I tried?”

“Part of my job—and yours—is to occasionally tap into places that might not want to be tapped into. I’ve noticed that one thing you are very good at is blocking out something that you may not want to address.”

“Well, of course I block out what I don’t want to address! Why wouldn’t I? In your psychological view, couldn’t you argue that, in fact, this entire
thing
”—I swirl my arms here and inadvertently knock her notes to the floor—“is an effort to block out what I don’t want to address?” I feel my pulse in my neck, instantly irritated at how easily she has broken this down, how simple a mark she has made me out to be. If she senses my sarcasm, she ignores it.

“Nell, look. I know you’re working hard here, and I know that you’re frustrated not to be making more progress. I’m only here to guide you, to suggest an opinion that may or may not be helpful.” She pauses, waiting for me to reel myself back in. “How about art?”

“How about it?”

“You’ve mentioned that you loved to paint, so how about art therapy? There are very conclusive studies that demonstrate how it can help in situations like yours.”

I shake my head. “I never said that I loved to paint. I said that my father always thought I could be great, like him. There’s a difference. What I’ve been told I always loved was music.”

She digests this, chewing on her lower lip, which must be an old habit from childhood, not one she could shed once she got her Ph.D.

“Well, this certainly leads to a different—albeit equally important—question,” she says finally. “We’ve spoken an awful lot about your father, much more so than about Peter or your marriage or any of the issues that, per your request, we can let rest for today. But your dad—in some ways, you seem more consumed with uncovering his past than your own.”

“Isn’t our time up yet?” I deadpan, and she just stares. “Okay, the truth is that I feel like the more I know about my dad, the more unanswered questions I have. And yes, I suppose I dwell on that. A lot. But so what? Isn’t that what you’re here for?”

“It’s part of what I’m here for, yes,” she concedes, and I think aha because there’s something truly satisfying about proving your therapist wrong. It’s the small victories these days. “But mostly what I’m here for is to help you figure out who you are
now,
not just who you were then.”

“Look,” I say flatly. “My dad left us, which must have been devastating. By all accounts it was devastating. And now, I can’t even remember that devastation. Why can’t I try to find out about it?”

“You are welcome to find out about it,” she says, finally reaching down, taking a breath, and retrieving her scattered notes from the floor. “But this ‘devastation,’ as you put it, has defined so much of how you are. Even in the absence of it! What’s wrong with that picture?”

“Ask my dad—he was the artist.”

“Nell,” she says, and I can tell she’s losing her patience.

“Fine.” I sulk. “Well, I was consumed with him once, and now I’m consumed with him all over again. Maybe this just proves that people don’t change.”

I gesture to the couch, as if to say, I tried! I got this enormous cherry tomato couch, but here I am, right back on the gerbil wheel, my father’s absence defining me in the same way that it always did.

“No,” she says, straightening her papers on her lap, then meeting my eyes. “People change. And you know that. It’s the not wanting to do the work involved that makes us complacent, and it’s that complacency that renders us right back where we started.”

Sam cuts out of work
early that afternoon and meets me in front of Tina Marquis’s building in midtown. I’m early, so I have the cab drop me five blocks north when we pass a boutique that looks too hip for the old me. The new me, the one that I’d just sworn to Liv is nothing more than an ephemeral fabrication, thinks,
Well, screw that. If anyone can change, it’s me.
So I shove ten dollars at my driver and stride into the store, scooping up a too-purple V-neck and an odd little beret that the salesgirl swears shaves five years off my age before she shyly tells me that she knows who I am and admires how I’m making myself over. I don’t dwell on her intimation that I’ve actually reached an age that needs shaving off or that I did, indeed, need a makeover. Instead I assess myself in the mirror and see that the new, fabulous me very much approves. Who the hell knows if people can change?

Sam waves to me and laughs a little at the beret.

“Nice,” she says, then rubs my arm.

“Just trying something new.” I’m self-conscious. My instinct is to tug that insipid hat right off my head and fling it across Third Avenue like a Frisbee, but then she says, “No, really, it’s nice. It’s new. It’s something.” So I kind of pat it with my right hand, an acknowledgment that it’s staying put, and we step through the revolving doors,
on our way to see Tina Marquis, the friend in whom I’ve placed my stock to answer my questions.

“I just want to say,” Sam hedges, while we wait in the elevator bank. “You know, you weren’t close with her, I mean, since I’ve known you. When we ran into her at Balthazar, it was all you could do to bring yourself to make small talk.”

“And the point being?”

“I just don’t want you to get your hopes up, that’s all. Maybe she knows something, maybe she doesn’t. But you’re practically levitating with excitement, and I just want you to be realistic.”

“It’s the beret,” I say, as we step into the elevator. “It conveys a sense of whimsy. I can assure you I’m not levitating.” I punch the button.

“Nell, I’m serious.”

“I know,” I say. “But I called her.
I called her,
and no one knows why. So there must be something there. There must be something important.”

“Just…be cautious.” She laughs almost incredulously as she says this, both of our eyes on the ascending lighted numbers overhead. “I can’t believe that of all people, I’m now saying that to you.”

Before I can register this, the doors ding open, and we step over the precipice. I look to our left and Tina is throwing herself toward us from two cubes away. Her blond hair flies behind her, her neck wrapped in a scarf, her perfect cleavage tugged tight by a magenta cashmere tee. She is my nineties sitcom character in the flesh—beautiful, crisp, a moving image of spasmodic energy.

“Nell!” she says breathlessly, like she’s been running down the halls to greet us, which, I consider, she may have. “I am
so
glad that you changed your mind and reached out to me!” She holds both hands and steps back to assess. “Nice beret! Chic, chic, chic!”

I’m embarrassed all over again, that both of them have so obviously noticed my blatant attempts to step outside myself, but brush past it. “You know Sam, from the pizza place.”

“So nice to see you again, Sam,” Tina says, extending her hand, offering up a firm, seemingly professional handshake. I’d pegged her for an overzealous shake, a cartoonish clutch to match her caricature of enthusiasm. I cock my head, my meter reassessing.

“So how well did you guys know each other growing up?” Sam says, as Tina leads us back to her office. I scan the floor, surveying the cubicles, the busy worker bees with their heads tucked down, their glazed eyes on their screens, their headsets pressed into their ears, and see if any bells of recognition ring.

“Best friends through freshman year, less so after that,” Tina says. “We…well, you know high school, we all went our own way.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “I know that I changed. You don’t have to be kind to spare my feelings.”

“Oh, doll, it wasn’t that. You were who you were. I admired it. You did your own thing. You didn’t give a shit about the politics of high school.”

She gestures to an open door, and Sam and I walk through and situate ourselves in two leather chairs facing her steel metal desk. Behind it, through the window, is an ample view of the skyline.

“You just had to grow up faster than the rest of us,” she continues. “Didn’t care about the trivialities of the cheerleading squad, the winter dance planning, the glee club.” She squints and reconsiders. “Actually, you were the star of middle school glee club for a while there. Until you weren’t. Stopped enjoying it so much. You fulfilled it solely for the credit eventually.” She laughs. “Hell, you could have done it in your sleep.”

“Did you know my dad?” I ask, without even thinking about
it. Right back to the patterns that Liv implored me to reconsider. Maybe I haven’t changed. Maybe this beret is just window dressing.

“Not well,” Tina answers, her face dropping. “We all knew who he was, of course, but he didn’t seem to be around much. After I ran into you at the pizza place the other night, I called my mom and asked the same thing because I couldn’t remember much of him, and I always wondered. She said that your parents never conveyed that they were having problems right up until the moment he left. One day he was there, and the next day, gone. And then she said your mom went a little crazy.” Her eyes grow to orbs. “Oh god, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I tend to have a little verbal diarrhea.”

“I’ve noticed,” I say but not unkindly. “But no offense taken.”

“My mom did tell me something that you might not have known. Well, might not know now, anyway. I don’t know if you knew back then.” Tina rises and either instinctively or intentionally closes her door.

“What’s that?”

“That there was a rumor at our high school graduation that your dad showed up.”

“What? At the actual graduation? No, no, I didn’t know!”
Shouldn’t my mom have mentioned
that?

“Well, it was never confirmed.” Tina sits back down and reaches for a pencil, drubbing it on her desk. “Just one of those things that made its way through the town like wildfire. Someone thought she saw him at Jake’s Coffee, then someone else claimed she could have sworn that he was loitering—with a full beard and bowler’s hat—toward the back of the gym during the processional, and it took off from there. But it was like the Loch Ness monster: never confirmed despite various sightings.”