Элисон Скотч - The Song Remains the Same

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.”

I swallow what feels like too much oxygen, and my heart feels like it might detonate inside my chest cavity. It couldn’t be that simple, could it? That he was out there, watching, doing what he needed to do for himself, but still minding us, tending to us along? From all reports, this seems entirely impossible, and yet…and yet. It gives me something to hold on to.

Tina reads my face. “Should I not have told you? Shit. I’m sorry, like I said, I talk too much.”

I exhale and gather my breath and stare at her for a beat. She perplexes me, Tina Marquis. On the surface, she is an epitomized Barbie doll, a Dallas cheerleader by way of upper-class Westchester. But slice beneath that skin, and it’s clear—from her corner office with view, to relaying just the story that I somehow need to hear—that she’s also much more than that. A contradiction when I was certain that people—Jasper, Rory, my mother, Peter—were easy reads from the start. I ease back in the leather chair and consider this: that people can still surprise you.

“Thanks for telling me,” I say. “Sincerely. I’d never have known this.”

“Are you sure it’s even true?” Sam says quietly. I’d forgotten that she was there. “You can’t forget that it might not actually be true.”

“But it might be,” Tina and I say at the same time.

“I guess that’s why we were best friends,” she says, grinning, her teeth the brightest shade of alabaster white. Then she flaps her hands—grounded and flighty at once. “Anyway, let’s get down to business before my phone starts ringing again. You wanted to know about the property I showed you.”

“Yes. I was, well, I’m hoping that it might trigger something.”

“Well, I called the current tenant and explained the circumstances, and he knew who you were. From the accident.” She dislodges some phlegm from her throat. “Said he’d be happy to have you come by if you’d like later in the week. But in the meantime, this is what I have.” She moves some papers—flyers, a floor plan—across her desk.