Элисон Скотч - The Song Remains the Same

“Anything look familiar?” Sam asks. Tina’s phone buzzes just then, precisely as predicted.

It is exactly as she described: a wall of cool brick, high, expansive ceilings. There are wide-open windows toward the back, with a view of the East River. Something about it feels familiar, and then I remember: my father’s paintings, the water, the vibrant fresh air were always his muses.

Tina cups her hand over the phone and whispers. “Listen, I’m sorry, this is a huge client whose deal just fell through. Can we talk later?”

I nod, and hoist myself to my feet, Sam with a palm on my back in case I falter.

“Should I set it up?” Tina asks, cradling the receiver between her neck and ear.

“Set what up?”

“The apartment—do you want to stop by and see it? Will it help?”

Will it help? I consider. At this point, it’s anyone’s guess.

“So listen,” Sam says, while we’re cabbing it to the gallery. “You know that I support anything that you want to do. Anything. Or maybe you don’t know that. Maybe you don’t remember that. But I hate to see you put so much stock in this one thing.”

“This is hardly one thing!”

“It’s just that before all of this, you never talked about your dad. Didn’t have this wild interest in chasing down his legacy.”

“I ran an art gallery entirely based on his legacy. So that can’t be true.”

She sighs and we both point ourselves toward our respective windows.

“I’m only saying that before, you wouldn’t have let this aspect eat you up.”

“Fair enough. Let’s let it go for now,” I say, though mean anything but. What if he’d come back for me? What if he fought every last selfish urge and regretted to his core the permanence of his mistakes? Wouldn’t that, couldn’t that change everything? Change him? Change the past? Or maybe I did already know that he’d come back for me, only I’ve forgotten it after the accident. I shake my head, the circular noise giving me a headache. How can I know who I am when I don’t even know what I knew? Don’t even know what was germane and what was relevant and what wouldn’t have changed anything even if I think it may have now?

Sam laughs. “You don’t fool me, Nell Slattery. I can see your mind working over there. I know you too well.”

“Okay, so what if I do want to dwell on it? What if he changed, realized how wrong he was? What if he came back at graduation and wanted to make amends.”

“What if he did?” The taxi pulls up to the gallery, and Sam reaches for her purse.

“Well, I don’t know,” I hesitate. “It seems like that should change something—change me, maybe.”

“Maybe it would,” she says, “though you always insisted that people never changed.” She wrinkles her nose. “I could swear, even, that you wrote a paper about it for a philosophy seminar we took our senior year.”

“I’m revisiting this theory. Tina confuses me, she’s nothing like who I thought she’d be.”

“That doesn’t mean your dad isn’t who you think he was.”

“Well, what about Peter?” I say, as I see Rory waving to me from inside the gallery. She’s gesturing at me to hurry up, flicking her wrist in a way that I find instantly annoying, like there’s no place more important for me to be than next to her at this very second. “Peter has changed.”

Sam says nothing. Rather, she opens her door to exit as an answer.

“You think he hasn’t?” I half-shout over the top of the cab, as she circles around the sidewalk to meet me.

“I think that he’s certainly made a good show of it. Been by your side. Stayed loyal.”

“Well, that’s something. I mean, isn’t that a change?” Rory is going apoplectic behind the front glass window. I stick up my index finger, telling her to hold on !

“That’s the easy part,” she says, before she links my elbow and we head inside. “What matters is that something else shifts, too.”

“Well, that’s the hitch of it all, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she says. “There’s always a hitch.”

“Don’t Stop Believing”

—Journey

I push open the doors to the gallery, the wind chimes twinkling hello. Thanks to the caterer, the air wafts with the perfect scent of baked puff pastry and quiche lorraine, and the music for the evening is vintage Journey, which Rory had told me yesterday is meant to be both ironic and nostalgic. When I said I didn’t really get it, she snapped her jaw closed, reminding me of a tropical fish, and stomped out of the room.

“Do you know how behind we are?” she says now by way of greeting. Behind her, a waiter inadvertently clangs together two serving trays, and she and I both cast our eyes back toward him to ensure disaster hasn’t struck. Disaster. Like that could be defined as a toppled station of pigs in a blanket.

“No, how far behind are we?”

If she senses my derision, she doesn’t betray it.

“We are very, very behind. We have approximately two hundred people showing up tonight for Hope’s first gallery show; we have the American Profiles crew coming—”

“Your idea, not mine,” I interrupt.

“What don’t you understand about publicity?” she says, adjusting the price placards in front of each work. “Publicity is publicity—you never got that. And now, the gallery is so hot, so in demand…” She does a double take. “What is that thing on top of your head?”

“It’s a beret.”

“Well, it looks like a sad, deflated pancake, and it needs to go.” She flutters her hand. “Along with the shade of purple of your sweater. There are clothes in the closet in the office.”

“What’s wrong with this shade of purple?”

“For grape jelly? Nothing. For our openings?” She sighs. “You’re the one who implemented the neutrals-only dress code here.”

Ah, well, that explains my closet.

“Well, I’m de-implementing it,” I say. “The sweater stays.”

“Fine.” She exhales. “The hat does not. Even without a dress code, it looks ridiculous.” There’s a knock on the front door, and Rory shouts, “It’s open!” and Jamie and two cameramen step inside.

“I’ll be in the back dealing with the bartenders,” Rory says. “Try to make yourself useful.” She tugs off the beret, which I have kept in place as she glides past.

“Hey,” Jamie says, and kisses me hello. “Want to go over the game plan for tonight?”

I glance around. Despite Rory’s instructions, I have nothing else to do. “Shoot.”

“Well, it shouldn’t be too hard. We’re mostly doing crowd shots, interviewing some friends and family. We want to see you back in your element.”

“So this is my element?” I spot Peter hustling across the street. He’s early.

“For our purposes, it is,” Jamie answers succinctly, impersonally, and for a flicker of a moment I’m reminded that at the heart of this, he’s a reporter, on the gig of a lifetime.

The wind chimes clang once again at Peter’s arrival.

“Hey, babe.” Peter kisses me fully on the mouth.

“You’re early.” I kiss him back, and then he surprises me with an embrace. For a second, my arms flop by my sides until my brain catches up with the situation. I sink into his bear chest and inhale the fall air still hovering around him. “What was that for?” I say when he’s finally untangled himself from me.

“I’m just glad to see you back in your element.” His eyes mist on cue. The new, more sympathetic me is touched that he’s so invested in my recovery. The old, less softened me can’t help but be annoyed that it’s been a few months and still he finds himself shattered.