Элисон Скотч - The Song Remains the Same

“Great, then the five of us should get it done in no time,” Rory tuts, retreating to the office, extinguishing the argument.

Peter starts to disagree but I see him reassess and opt not to push it—it being what? His luck, Rory’s nerves? Instead, he plucks his keys from his jeans pocket and stuffs them in Anderson’s hand.

“Thank you, Ror, it was fun,” I say, righting myself from the bench, kissing her cheek.

“Did it…help? Jog anything?”

I shake my head no. “But it was fun all the same.”

“I’ll be home right after you,” Peter says, pecking my forehead.

“No hurry.” I’m already dreaming of my bed, of swaddling myself in the down comforter and tumbling to sleep. Besides, Peter is still banished to the couch, so it’s not like I’ll notice that he’s gone.

“I drank too much,” Anderson confesses once the town car has pulled away and we’re coasting up the West Side Highway. “I shouldn’t be drinking with my meds.”

“I’ve told you as much,” I say, trying not to sound judgmental, though judgmental might be the old me’s natural setting, my autotune. But I get it. I do. If I were brave enough to wash this all with a pill or a few drinks on top of a pill, I might, too.

“Thanks again for coming. I know you have fancy places to be.”

“Nowhere fancy to be at all. New York in August?” He laughs. “All the cool kids have left anyway.”

“But you’re a cool kid.”

“Less cool than you’d think. Or trying to be anyway.”

“How’s that going?” I’ve read Page Six. I know that he was out at some underground club two nights ago, know that he went home with a Victoria’s Secret model, that the lead gossip story the next day read “Crash and Yearn!”

The town car cruises over a bump and Anderson winces, giving him an out. “You’re still in pain?” I ask.

“Not that much,” he says. “Well, psychological. The nightmares. They don’t stop, not with therapy, not with a girl, not with anything. I’m trying to wean myself, you know, off the meds, but then my brain goes into overdrive. Night sweats, heart palpitations…My therapist says it might take a year to stop thinking about it, and even then, it might come back in fits and starts.”

“That will be weird, too, though, right? I can’t even imagine what we thought about before we thought about this.”

“I can,” he says. “I thought about landing my next job, pushing my career to the next level, breaking up or hooking up with whomever I was with…I don’t know, ridiculous stuff. But still, I’d give my balls to be able to just think about all of that.”

I reach over and squeeze his hand.

“You’re still doing well with the breaking up–hooking up stuff.”

He accepts the jab. “Medicinal balm.”

“In addition to the meds.”

“In addition to the meds,” he says, then smiles. “Can’t hurt.”

“Old habits die hard.”

“Something like that.”

“Did I tell you,” I say, letting go of his fingers, “that I remembered something?” His eyes pop but he burps into his hand as his way of saying no. “It was almost like a dream, but it wasn’t. Even though I don’t really remember it, and even though my mom and sister tell me otherwise, it happened, I know it. Or so my therapist says.”

“That’s my new favorite line,” he says. “‘So my therapist says.’ Mine’s the only one I trust anymore.”

“Well, there’s me.” I rest my head on his shoulder.

“Well, there’s you. That’s true. The girl who saved my life. But you’re as fucked up as I am.”

We both laugh, and I straighten myself up.

“But anyway,” I say, “I did, I did see something. I just don’t know what it means yet.”

“Our brains are strange beasts.”

“That’s helpful.”

“Sorry,” he says. “Too actorly. Ugh, what a stereotype I’ve turned into. I’m trying not to be, though—not to be such a stereotype.”

“Stumbling around drunk isn’t exactly breaking the cliché.”

“I know.” He hangs his head. “My shrink says the same thing.” He catches himself. “There it is again.” We both go quiet. “Oh, so here’s some good news,” he says finally. “All of this excitement has significantly upped my Hollywood stock.”

“Ha ha.”

“I’ve been offered a Spielberg film. We start shooting in North Carolina just after Thanksgiving, if I accept.”

“If you accept? You can’t say no to that.”

He shrugs. “Like I said, I’m reprioritizing.”

“Don’t abandon your life because of this one terrible thing that happened to us, Anderson. I thought the whole point of the two of us surviving was that we got our second chance, our chance to live the lives we were meant to be living.”

I consider the promise I made to the new me. Isn’t that it? Isn’t that the entire purpose?

“That’s it exactly!” he says, clapping his hands together. “What if this isn’t the life I’m meant to be living? I mean, this acting thing is so flimsy—it’s me dressing up in costumes and saying someone else’s words!”

“But don’t you love it?”

“Sometimes,” he says. “Sometimes it just seems like life.”

The car stops abruptly at a light, and we both—too tensely—grab the other’s wrist. When we finally let go, I’m certain he can feel the imprint of my grasp, as I can his. Holding him, just like I had outside the gallery, feels solid, like I’m finally sinking into something that won’t ebb out beneath me. He says that I’m the girl who saved his life, but what if he’s the one person to understand me, the one person to save mine? I shake my head and shrug this off. No, there’s also Peter.

“Aftershocks,” he says once we’ve started moving again. “Even with the therapy and medication, there are always the aftershocks.”

“Every Breath You Take”

—The Police

J amie, Peter, and I decamp to my mother’s house in Bedford for the weekend. Jamie, because we’re forging ahead with American Profiles and this is our initial background research. They’d announced the exclusive just yesterday; Page Six had covered it this morning with the headline “Whoa, Nelly!” I actually laughed when Anderson called to tell me. Peter, because, well, we can use a weekend away, even if that means enduring my mother and Tate.

My mom is right about both my so-called memory and the house: there’s no wraparound porch, no lanterns at the entry. Still, though, there is a sweeping expanse of lawn, and it seems entirely feasible that while parts of my recollection were indeed conjured up, parts of it could certainly be plausible. The late summer night on the grass with my sister. Well, why not?

Jamie is staying in the guesthouse behind the main house, while I’m in my childhood room and Peter is in Rory’s. My mom twirls around like a holistic whirlybird: she knows better than to be swirling around in a fit of nervous energy, but she can’t help herself. Just calm the fuck down! I want to yell at her, like she shouldn’t know about energy transference and Zen postures and blah, blah, blah —how she’s making the rest of us tense—but I clamp down and shut it. Maybe there is something to be learned from her kindness, her generous spirit, even if that same spirit irritates the hell out of me. I tell myself to force a smile whenever I feel like snapping. Eventually, she turns on the living room stereo and seems to decompress, almost visibly, at the lilt of the classical music. I stand in the door frame and watch her, until she catches me and says, “I’m sorry. I know that I’m a nut. This helps.”