Элисон Скотч - The Song Remains the Same

“So why was she at the gallery?” Rory says, offering a détente.

“I’m trying to figure that out. I’ve made some calls.”

“But what’s your gut telling you?” I ask, before it occurs to me that I stopped trusting my gut a long time ago, so why the hell should I trust Anderson’s?

“Unsure,” he says. “Only that wherever Paige Connor goes, a shit storm is sure to follow.”

My mother, never afraid of drama, embraces her inner actor for the cameras. There is weeping when she speaks of our childhood, there is weeping when she speaks of the crash, there is weeping—subtle, stoic weeping—when she’s not speaking, when she is simply asked to stare at the nearby tree while the camera pans away from her. I observe her from the sidelines and pang with sympathy, not because I necessarily believe all of her tears but because clearly she has suffered, and for that, I suppose, she should be allowed her due, her right to grieve, even if it’s on national television.

“The Ice Queen is thawing,” I say aloud, though Anderson doesn’t get it and Rory is too far out of earshot to hear me.

A small huddle of spectators has gathered on the traverse to watch us unspool our melodrama, and Anderson has doled out half a dozen or so autographs, mostly to twenty-something women who push their breasts forward, even in their peacoats, and toss their hair over their shoulders when he stops to chat. He swallows up the attention but for less time than I’d have expected, and soon enough he’s bored, back over to me, back by my side.

“I thought you might want to take one home for the afternoon,” I say.

“Too early,” he says back. “I have a newly implemented no-sex-before-six rule.”

“Impressive,” I say. “High bar of moral standards.”

“I try,” he says, and we both smile because we know that he does, that he is. That six months ago, he would have tucked his hand in the back pocket of one of the brunettes and hailed the nearest, fastest taxi.

My mother’s tear ducts do manage to dry up, however, when Jamie raises the subject of my father. He’d told me via e-mail last night, that they were going to have to address it. My dad was the elephant in the media room: nearly everyone who was tuning in now knew who he was. Thanks to me, he’s never been more famous. Rory confided last week that the offers she was getting on his remaining pieces were enough to fund our nonexistent children’s college funds, a comment I wholly ignored, as it spewed up a wealth of issues about my pregnancy all over again. I should have raised this with Liv, how I was stuffing these feelings down my emotional bowels, but, well, it seemed easier not to. Easier to pretend that Rory hadn’t said it, that my nonexistent children once very much existed, that life was stitching itself back up. If I opened myself up to more—the looming quagmire of the miscarriage and the pregnancy and what the hell I was going to do about both the baby and the marriage—well, it was like a row of dominoes: toss one over, and the rest were bound to falter sooner or later. And besides, now that things were mostly smoothed over, why upend them? Why stir up trouble when I’ve finally clamped the lid on it?

I lean against the cool bark of a locust tree and listen.

“Is it disappointing to you”—Jamie asks my mom, as they stop by a bench on the east side of the park and sit—“that Francis hasn’t been back in touch with the family, after all that you’ve been through?”

My mother looks shell-shocked at the question, and I’m not sure if it’s because I hadn’t prepped her on the subject matter or if it’s simply too public a forum to discuss such a topic. But then I realize that nothing is too public for my mother, for god’s sake, so it’s obviously the former. She stutters and stalls for time by blotting her mascara with a wadded-up tissue.

“I try my best not to discuss her father to the media,” she says when she finds her tongue. “But I will say that, of course, I am disappointed to my deepest core that even though he is a recluse, he couldn’t come out from wherever he may be to support Nell.”

Jamie offers a nod, the type you suspect news reporters practice in the mirror. He is in his element now, plasticized almost, an altered incarnation of whom I know him to be.

“So there has been no contact— none —since the outside world stopped hearing from him as well?” Jamie presses her. He knows this will make headlines, could land him a permanent slot on the American Profiles team. He also knows—or I hope has at least considered—that he is asking on my behalf. That was the deal: get me some answers, and I’ll get you your exclusive . So I watch, and I hope that he is mostly doing this for me, even though my gut— my damn gut, shut up, I don’t trust you anyway! —nips at me, telling me otherwise.

“You have to understand”—my mother says—“what it was like to live with a genius like Francis. I suppose that part of me always felt that I was living on borrowed time with him. But I made those choices as an adult. Our children did not. So even if he wanted to come back into their lives, he’d hurt them too much for me to allow that once he left.”

I feel something come unhinged inside of me, torpedoing down, deep, deeper. Next to me, Rory furrows her brow and gnaws on her index finger cuticle, then glances toward me, perplexed.

“So you’re saying that, in fact, you have heard from him over the years?”

“No, no, no, no, no, no.” My mother pales and starts to stammer again. “I’m saying that if I had heard from him, I’m not sure it would have been welcome. He probably knew that.” She nods to herself, as if this is any sort of affirmation that she’s convinced us.

It wouldn’t have been welcome? What about her lecture in the hospital? What about these past few months, her nudging me back into my marriage, back to my husband, back to my old life?

I can’t help myself. My previous moments of goodwill be damned. Hello, old me, so nice to see you again!

“But what about forgiveness?” I shout off camera. Jamie turns and looks at me, alarmed, as if to say: This is not part of my plan. I give him a look back saying, Yes it is. I want my answers. You knew the deal, too. I keep going: “What about all of that crap that you fed me to forgive my own husband for his indiscretions and that everyone has to look inside themselves and find a way to heal, blah, blah, crap cakes, crap cakes!”

Jamie signals to the cameraman to cut, but then thinks better of it, and he circles his finger around in a loop: keep shooting. At the base of our instinct, we really are who we are. He’s the newsman on the hunt for his scoop.

I signal back to the cameraman— quit! —though I don’t really know the industry signal, so it mostly looks like I’m trying to slit my neck, or maybe like I want to slit my mother’s neck. Either way, the cameraman doesn’t obey, and the tape keeps rolling while my mother digs herself deeper. Quit! This is not open to a public forum. We both got what we wanted, now quit! I jerk my hand across my neck once more, but Jamie simultaneously rolls his fingers. Keep rolling.

My mother, of course, doesn’t quit. Once she’s unleashed, she can’t quit, can’t tuck back her ball of emotion if she tried.

“Nell! I have done nothing wrong!” She waves her arms. “I did forgive your father, and if he is out there watching, Francis, darling, please, come back and help your daughter.” She turns toward the camera to issue her plea, akin to a soap opera gone bad, even though she’s still speaking to me. “Everything that I imparted to you about forgiveness and healing and your own marriage came from a place of true sincerity. I have worked for years to get to that place for myself! I only wished it for you as well.”