Элисон Скотч - The Song Remains the Same

Nell laughs at this. “I don’t know. People are who they are. Maybe I’m just evolving.”

“Semantics.”

Rory squints and assesses, wondering if Nell would react today like she had six months ago when Rory delivered the news about Peter, about Peter’s infidelity. If the same acid would infuse her voice, if she’d still shoot the messenger, say that Rory must feel vindicated in telling her this because she could finally top her sister in everything. Everything! Not only was she prettier, hipper, easier to talk to, got along with Mom, but now! Now! She could triumphantly point to Hugh and hold that over her, too. Rory scoffed—well, she more than scoffed, she unleashed at this wholly ridiculous posturing, and this was when more words were exchanged: about how Nell was always Dad’s favorite, and about how Rory never minded that, never minded Nell rubbing Rory’s face in that part of things, either. More things were said after that. More things that the two of them would wish they could undo but, of course, could not.

“I’m trying—you know, I got that new couch,” Nell says. “Think I’ll get some new clothes. But really, aren’t we are who we are?” Nell isn’t sure what she believes anymore. She made the vow to herself to be a changed woman, but tied to this vow is the idea that the plane crash could have been a blessing. All those people died, and even though she’s been given this second chance, this do-over, this makeover, the idea that this is a blessing seems disgusting almost—too trivial, too trite.

Rory grunts because she doesn’t really know, either.

“So, anyway,” Nell says, ordering a buttered bagel when the waitress makes her reappearance, “Dad.”

Rory feels too hungover and too torn to ascend this hurdle, but she nods as if she’s ready, ready to answer whatever questions come her way. She’d promised her mother she wouldn’t go deep, wouldn’t plunge Nell all the way back in—and besides, she and Nell had their own problems that she was more than happy to put behind them—so she sips her coffee and wonders what version of the truth she can get away with. She was the better liar of the two of them anyway. Always had been. She’d gotten that from Indira.

“I had the weirdest dream last night,” Nell says. “I was back on the plane, Mom was there, Jasper was there, Anderson was there.”

At the mention of Anderson’s name, Rory nearly chokes on her coffee, forcibly swallowing and trying not to demonstrate her obvious alarm. Or her guilt. Or her regret. Which of the three was it? She’d made Anderson promise to pretend like it had never happened. This morning, while he was zippering his zipper, buttoning his waistband, tugging on a shirt to cover his body that, after four shots too many, Rory had unapologetically disrobed the night before. They hadn’t planned it, of course. They’d unintentionally collided at The Palms, a club downtown where she was doing her best to pretend that she didn’t miss Hugh, and he was doing his best…well, just doing his best, Rory supposed now. This morning, when the phone rang, Nell hadn’t recognized his voice, grainy, from the night spent screaming over too-loud techno music—and thank god for that, they both concurred when they awoke newly sober and absorbed the situation, mulled over the consequences.

“What does your dream have to do with Dad?” Rory says.

Nell shakes her head. “I don’t know. Something. Anyway”—she flips her hair—“okay, let’s start with this: I know that you didn’t always get along with him, but what do you remember about me? About the two of us?”

“I got along with him well enough. I just didn’t idolize him, that’s all,” Rory says. “But you, no, you idolized him. You flat out worshipped him.”

“Example.”

Rory rubs her eyes. “After Dad left, you didn’t believe it. You refused to believe it for a good six months.”

“Well, that seems normal. I mean, we were kids. Who would want to believe that their parent wasn’t coming back?”

“No, it wasn’t just that. It wasn’t normal. That’s the whole point.” Rory presses her thumbs down on her temples in an attempt to beat back the shadow that the tequila left behind. “Mom would try to talk to you—I remember so clearly her trying to talk to you one night at dinner. She’d made this rice and bean dish because she freaked out when Dad left and had just gone vegetarian, and you insisted that she put out a plate for him. She refused because she thought you needed to accept that he was gone, but you kept nagging her, not even nagging, it was like needling, ribbing her—you couldn’t let it go.”

The waitress approaches with their breakfast, sliding the dishes in front of them, and Nell tears a piece of bagel with her teeth, her eyes focused as she tries to remember.

“So Mom kept saying no,” Rory continues, “and you kept insisting that he was going to come back, and that we had to make it totally clear that we wanted him back, or else of course he wouldn’t come, and how couldn’t she see this?”

“And what were you doing while we were arguing?”

“I was sitting on a stool watching everything unravel. That was the difference between us. I accepted it right away. We woke up one morning and Dad’s stuff was gone, and he’d left us each a postcard with a little stupid fucking drawing—which I guess was to signify his love or whatever—but I knew that it was his way of saying good-bye. I tossed mine in the garbage within a week. You? You tacked yours up to the bulletin board in your room for half the year, until you finally realized what he meant by it—that it was his suicide letter of sorts.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Nell says.

“See, even now you’re doing it—defending him.”

Nell reaches over and dips a finger into Rory’s oatmeal for a taste, considering the point, and then says, “So what happened that night at dinner? Who won?”

“Neither of you.” Rory’s teeth skate over the metal of her spoon. “Jesus, it was awful. You wouldn’t give up and she wouldn’t cave, and so eventually you tried to force yourself toward the oven to make a plate for him yourself, and Mom tried to block you, and you shoved her some more, and she shoved you some more…” Rory suddenly feels furiously ill, unsure if it’s from the tequila or the story. She grabs Nell’s hand.

“This scar,” Rory says, running her index finger over a long vine just above the fold of Nell’s wrist and winding all the way down the shallow end of her arm. “That’s where you got it.”

Nell pulls her arm from Rory’s fingers and examines the consequence of that evening.

“It wasn’t her fault,” Rory says quietly now. “I mean, it wasn’t intentional. She didn’t scar you on purpose.”

“When is it ever on purpose?” Nell asks, finally raising her eyes to meet her sister’s.

Rory sighs. “Mom was just so hysterical, and to be fair, you weren’t at your best. You were both delusional in your own way. You loving him too much, her hating him too much or…God, I don’t even know what she was doing. Blaming herself? Blaming Dad? Blaming God?”

“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.”