Элисон Скотч - The Song Remains the Same

The dream still weaves in and out of me, even though I’m now alert. The Rolling Stones have wormed themselves into my ear, the thought of that New Year’s party as real as anything I know. “You can’t always get what you want! You can’t always get what you want!”

I laugh at the irony— so true —and hum a bit of the melody before swinging my legs out of bed, happy that I have the mobility to now do so. I peel off my dank pajamas and toss them— two points, swish! —into the laundry basket. Suddenly, something about that motion—the movement of my arm, the snap of my wrist—feels familiar, like a sense of déjà vu.

My father. Yes. I’m remembering my father. How old could I have been? I sift through the sensors of my brain. Thirteen? I shake my head. No, it wasn’t that summer in Virginia. It was before . Ten. Maybe I was ten. I can smell the air, a mix of paint and cigarettes, and see the glow of the easel, illuminated in the dim light of the room, in front of me. And though I may be meshing it all together—the dream and the memory and now this—I could swear that I can hear the Stones in the background, too. Where are we? My mind races, hunting for clues. Then it comes to me. His workshop. We are in Vermont, and he is teaching me the art of letting go, of giving in to randomness, of creating a masterpiece even when most of that masterpiece is out of your control.

“It’s not out of your control, Nell. It might seem out of your control, but it never really is.” He took my wrist, held it high above my shoulder with the brush in hand, and flicked it toward the canvas. Magenta paint spread like a firework. “See, my darling? Look there. You’ve just created a thing of beauty.” He leaned down to kiss my cheek, and I could smell—can smell even now—the ash and nicotine on his breath, and then I took a giant step back, like I was about to hurl a baseball or a shirt into the hamper, and let the paint fly.

I stare at my hamper now for a beat and try to remember more—where was my mother? Rory? What of them? But there’s nothing else; this must be enough for now. I reach for the phone to call Liv, but it is too early, so instead I gather up my father’s notebook that Jasper has delivered two decades too late, and stride into the living room, bursting with exuberance that something is working. The wires are being reignited, the switches are being reset.

I step into the kitchen and dump out a liberal amount of coffee grinds into the coffeemaker. Peter has left a note under a smiley face magnet on the fridge: Went for an early workout. Back by 7. To be honest, it hadn’t even occurred to me that he was gone.

The coffeemaker sputters to life, and I pour a dark mug, retrieve the notebook from the floor, and then sink into the couch.

I stop on the second-to-last image and turn the book horizontally, then vertically, trying to peer at it from all sides. It’s unlike any of the others, like a Georges Braque that I’ve seen in one of the books on my shelves: shattered fragments litter the page, as if my father had drawn what his mind saw, then dropped the picture like a mirror, sending the splinters every which way. I spin the image round and round, trying to place the pieces back in their rightful place. Slowly, cloaked in the artistic noise, an eye ekes itself out, then another eye, then the slope of a nose, the hint of a lip. But this isn’t Heather, I can tell that, even without knowing her. Having only dreamed her. These eyes are younger, less sure of themselves. Maybe, I think, these eyes are mine.

I reach for the phone. It’s early but what the hell. A man’s gravelly voice answers on the second ring.

“Hello?” I check the keypad to ensure I typed the right number. “Is Rory there?” I say. He grunts and then I hear sheets shifting, and then my sister comes on the line.

“What?” she snaps, offering neither a hello nor an explanation as to why a random guy is both answering her phone and sleeping beside her.

“Dad,” I say. “I need you to level with me. Tell me the truth. I need you to tell me everything you can remember about Dad.”

Rory rubs her eyes, flakes of old mascara fluttering down just below her lashes. The diner smells like fried eggs and burned hash browns, and the NYU kids in the booth next to hers—clearly still awake from an all-night bender—are laughing too loudly, throwing their youth in her face, that she can’t recover as quickly as they still can, as she once could.

“Okay, first of all, you are strictly forbidden, like ever again, to call me before eight thirty. Is that understood?” Rory says, then cranes her head around. “Jesus Christ, can the waitress bring me some goddamn coffee?”

“Understood,” Nell says.

“Second of all, why the urgency? You couldn’t wait until, you know, a reasonable hour to decide, after two months, that you have to hear our lovely childhood stories?” She rubs her eyes again. Her head feels like a giant crater, like someone has a sledgehammer driving right into her temples. She has a flash from last night. Oh god, last night. If she thinks about it much more, she’s going to hurl her brains out right here on the Formica table, with Lady Gaga singing in the background. She winces, wishing someone would turn down the music, stop the endless bleat of noise from the kitchen, from the fucking NYU kids three feet away.

“Because of this,” Nell says, and pulls out a sketch pad from her purse. “Jasper Aarons gave it to me.”

“Dad’s friend?” Rory tries to focus, to not betray herself. Of course she knows who Jasper Aarons is. Her mother nearly had a hysterectomy when she saw him that night at the gallery.

“Yeah, I met him for coffee. He said he’d had it for years.”

“What took him so long?” She waves her hand frantically for the waitress, then mouths coffee in an overexaggerated way.

“Are you okay?” Nell says.

“Hungover,” Rory says. Succinct. Enough of an explanation for now. She’s not sure if she should feel guilty or a little victorious. She watches Nell, so oblivious, and she knows: guilty. Most definitely guilty. One-upping Nell was fun until it wasn’t fun anymore. Like now. This, here, now—this is definitely not fun. Shit. She wishes she could rewind the past twelve hours.

“Moving on from Hugh just fine, I see,” Nell says. The waitress finally ambles over with a silver pot and two mugs. “Or I heard. This morning, when I called.”

Rory leans closer and examines her statement for judgment—normally, there would be more than a healthy serving of judgment, but she finds none, which guts her even further. Things weren’t like they used to be; Nell didn’t remember what they used to be, of course, but Rory did, so while Nell was being kinder, different, Rory kept on going like the old days. Tit for tat. Nell says she can jump, Rory then tries to jump higher. Oh, Jesus, she thinks again.

“Just one of those things—one off. One-nighter,” Rory says. “No one worth discussing.”

“Fair enough,” Nell says, happy to let it go.

“You’re not going to mock me, say that I’m doing myself irreparable harm? Need to stop acting like a child and start making grown-up, responsible life choices?” Rory gulps down a Herculean-size swallow of coffee and exhales at the relief it provides.

“Why would I say that?” Nell answers, sipping some coffee of her own.

“Just…before. You would have.”

“It’s not before.” Nell shrugs.

“You’ve changed.” Rory flags the waitress over once more. Oatmeal. That’s what she needs. To soak up the excess tequila before it seeps into her organs.