Элисон Скотч - The Song Remains the Same

“Talking about what?”

“Nothing. Everything. We sat on the piano bench, and I played a little, then he played a little, then we played a little together.” I inhale now, getting my grip. “He said we used to do it when we were dating. It sounds silly to say, but it feels like he’s wooing me again.”

“So things have changed,” she says. A statement, not a question.

“Maybe things have changed,” I respond, less skeptically than I intended. With honest enthusiasm, actually. Because perhaps they have. Maybe Peter is different, or maybe we’re just different because, according to all parties, I am different. Maybe you can’t change that when you mix blue and red, you’re destined for purple, but what if you alter the hue, modify the depths of the blue? Change your variables, such that both your equation and the solution to that equation shift, too. Before, in my old life, I didn’t need him, and the simple fact is that I do now—mostly for the minutiae, but for the bigger things, too. And so maybe that tweak is enough. Accepting that he isn’t the sole one who needed to change—maybe I did, too.

“Thereby defeating your theory.”

“It’s a work-in-progress theory, not something carved in stone.”

“Fair enough,” she concedes.

“Also, I think I found a clue. Or something. I found a set of keys in the gallery, and well, it was like I held them and I knew that they were important.”

“Important how?”

“I don’t know. With my dad. Or something. I felt like they were tied to another memory, another time, something that’s close to the surface but that I can’t pull out yet.”

She makes a note on her pad now, and doesn’t respond.

“Can’t or don’t want to?”

“Can’t!” I say, annoyed at her intimation. “Why wouldn’t I want to? I look around here, and I’m jealous, mind-blowingly jealous, that you can remember your graduation, your…I don’t know…your classes in medical school!”

“I’m sure that consciously you do want to remember them,” she says. “But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that nearly every memory you think you have is tied to your dad.”

“Jesus, I know that you think I need to stop obsessing about him! But I honestly feel like he’s my answer.”

She looks up at me. “Why?”

“Why? Why? Aren’t you the therapist? Shouldn’t you be telling me that?” I run my hands down my brilliantly-hued sweater, as if removing excess lint, but really more as a way to show her: Look! I’ve focused on myself! I’m different! I’ve done the hard work, so why the hell won’t you let me focus on him ?

“I can’t tell you that,” she says plainly. If she picks up on my clues, she ignores them. “Because I don’t know that I agree.”

“Listen.” I exhale. “Like it or not, I need to know who he was. I feel like that can unlock who I was.”

“Look, Nell, I understand that this is difficult for you. And maybe we need to try something different—art therapy, which you expressed disinterest in. Or maybe music therapy, as I know that’s a passion. Or maybe we can discuss God and your take on why you’re here, why you survived.”

“Well, it’s not because of God.” I cut her off, slicing my hand in the air.

“Fine. Point made. But the direction you’re taking”—she pauses and chews the cap to her pen—“well, I think you need to decide which is more important: letting go of your past or uncovering it.”

“Well, what if they’re the same thing?” I retort.

“Well, what if they are?” she says back, just before her assistant buzzes her intercom to alert her for her next patient.

I mull over her point long after I’ve hailed a taxi and made my way home. Come dinnertime, after the microwave dings that it’s nuked my macaroni and cheese, I grab my TV dinner and tumble onto the (ruby red!) couch with a fork in hand. I know that Liv isn’t being unreasonable: that when you lose, very literally, your mind and survive the unsurvivable, the very purpose is to dig as deeply as you can go to unearth the core, the ultimate epicenter, and maybe this means shifting the spotlight more on myself, less on him. It’s easier the other way, though, isn’t it? I think. I’ve made changes, sure. I’ve become less judgmental. I’ve reveled in the newfound joy of life. I’ve overhauled my living room and my wardrobe, and yet…still. Still, I might be stuck right back where I started.

I test the noodles with my fork. Anderson feels guilt at surviving but I just feel…I contemplate it. I feel lost. That’s it exactly. And maybe I’m so lost because I had no idea who I was in the first place. Rory and Peter and Tina Marquis and my mother have all told me who I was, who I was supposed to be, but how can they really know? How can anyone really know? Can our lives be summed up by the assorted impressions of bystanders? Ice Queen. I ponder my high school nickname. Really? Surely, the Ice Queen couldn’t have been everything about me.

I set aside the plastic container and reach for the phone.

My mother picks up, out of breath, on the third ring. Oh Jesus, please don’t let me be interrupting their sex session.

“Darling! Yes, hello!” she says.

“Are you busy?”

“Well,” she hesitates. “A little.” Tate mutters something in the background. “But I’ll make time.” She clearly covers the phone with her hand and says something muffled to Tate.

“Were you in the middle of yoga?” I ask. Please, please let it be yoga!

“We can call it yoga if that makes you feel more comfortable, dear.” Oh for god’s sake, it’s no wonder I’m as fucked up as I am!

“So listen, Mom, I ran into Tina Marquis the other day.”

“Tina Marquis?” My mother’s voice creaks up a decibel as she tries to place the name. “Oh, the cheerleader from high school? I haven’t thought of her in ages, though I guess that’s not true since I occasionally see her mother at the market. It’s a shame what happened.”

“What’s a shame? What happened?”

“Oh, nothing of consequence. Just let herself go. As if she can’t still be living and loving her life in her sixties. Darling, if I have to tell you that I’m in the prime of my life, then you haven’t been listening.”

“Ugh, Mom, I’m listening. Can this not be about you and your weird fetishes and spirituality?”

She tuts and sounds offended. “Now, why do you have to go and be contrary?” She seems poised to unleash a diatribe, so I cut her off.

“Anyway, Tina Marquis said that Dad came back. In high school. For my graduation. Which, quite obviously, is the first I’ve heard of this. So is it true or not?”

There’s a long swab of dead air on the other end. I watch the cable box tick from 7:33 to 7:34 and glance down to notice my macaroni slowly congealing. Finally, I hear her inhale.

“That was never proven,” she says. “I really can’t say.”

“So it’s possible.”

“I don’t believe so, no. I would have known. You aren’t just married to a man for seventeen years of your life and don’t know these things.”

“But you didn’t know he was going to leave. How could you know if he came back?”

“Because I would have known!” she says, her temper slowly elevating. “I just would have. A wife knows these things. He would have told me, would have wanted to see you and Rory. He wouldn’t have just blown through town without so much as an explanation for why he left!”

“A wife just knows,” I say flatly. “That’s a ridiculous sort of explanation. Is that to convey that I should I have known about Peter? Done something to prevent him from sleeping with Ginger?”