Элисон Скотч: The Song Remains the Same

“Like Friends the sitcom?” She laughs. “Nell, nobody’s life is like Friends . That’s why we all watched it.” I hear the sheets stirring beneath her.

“So what you’re saying is that I was the rational one? Not a live-by-the-seat-of-my-pants type of girl?” I think of Anderson, of his infectious, mischievous energy, of how the space he occupied seemed bigger than oxygen, bigger than life. Of Monica and Rachel— screw it if it’s make-believe —and their ever-present laugh track. I wanted a laugh track. I wanted the life that came with that fucking laugh track.

“Not so much, but that’s what we loved about you,” Rory says. “You were the one we could count on. There’s a reason you went to law school, you know.”

“I went to law school?”

“You didn’t know?”

“Rory”—I sigh—“please. Don’t make me repeat myself. When I doubt, I don’t know. I don’t know. Okay?”

“Jesus, okay. ”

Both of us linger, the friction passing through the line, then evaporating.

“So, wait, I was a lawyer ?” That doesn’t feel right at all.

“No, you only went for a year and a half. Then you quit and Mom found you a job with one of her friends who was a director for One Life to Live .”

“The soap opera?” I’d seen it on during endless looping hours of my day.

“Yes, the soap opera!” Exasperation on her end. Like you have any right to be exasperated! “You were good at it, what can I say?” She sighs. “Eventually, you ran the office there—you know, paperwork and contracts and managing the staff and whatnot. Which is why I knew you could do the same thing at the gallery. And which is why you finally agreed. That and because Dad always told you that you had the eye, could have been great.”

“Great like him?” I sit up taller, intently staring out the window. Maybe this was my entree, my opening to the fabulous me. Yes, yes! I could have been great!

“Great like him,” she affirms. “Though you never quite were.” And just like that, I sink back into the pillow. “Not that I mean that rudely,” she says. “I just mean, you know, he was never quite satisfied. Music was always your thing anyway. I don’t know why he wouldn’t just let that be.” She snips herself, like maybe she’s revealed too much.

I gaze at the ceiling and make myself a vow: in this life, in this new life, I’ll have that greatness, that laugh track that the fabulous me deserved. A hundred and fifty-two people died. I didn’t. Maybe this is my chance, my rewind button, my fast-forward button. Both. Whichever. Either way, this is my chance to do things differently.

“I don’t want to be that person,” I say, “the one who could have been great.”

“Okay,” she says. I’m pretty sure I can hear her peeing in the background. “But it’s who you are.”

“I want the laugh track.”

“You’ve lost me,” she says.

“I want the excitement, I want some fun,” I say. “I want to be, well, extraordinary.”

“I think you’ve given us enough excitement for a while,” she says. The toilet flushes.

I glance up at the television. There he is.

“I need a favor.”

“Shoot.”

“Tomorrow, on your way in, stop Jamie Reardon and tell him that I’ll talk to him. Go out there and tell him that I’ll tell him my story.”

“That’s nuts,” she says. “You’re fragile! You’re not ready for that.”

“The thing is, Rory, I’m not ready for anything.”

J amie Reardon looks exactly like he does on TV: perfectly gelled blond hair, perfectly robin’s-egg-blue eyes. His teeth are alabaster, his smile more impish than you’d expect for a news reporter. He has a smattering of freckles across his nose that makeup must cover up on camera, and he’s lankier than I envisioned: the blazers that he sports on air make him look like a man, but when he shows up in my hospital room, he’s more of an overgrown boy. A farm boy, a replica of the type you’d think would be born and bred in Iowa.

Two days after I have vowed that I will take this second chance by the reins and steer the new me someplace better, after I have issued my decree to Rory—go out there and tell him that I’ll talk to him—here he is. Dr. Macht ushers him in and tells me he can think of better ideas than this. That I shouldn’t be wasting my energy granting press access, but I wave my arm at him because he doesn’t get it: that this is my chance to start being something great, that this is the first step toward fulfillment. Isn’t this my second chance? Who wouldn’t try to shake things up if they plummeted to the ground and discovered that their life wasn’t much of a life at all, and that a clean slate might be theirs for the taking? Maybe someone, but not me. Not the new me, anyway.

Rory staged a halfhearted intervention this morning—she showed up with my mother trailing behind her, who was muttering about privacy and exploitation and how I really didn’t know what I was doing. But I’d already decided. Who cared what Jamie Reardon unearthed, I said to my mom and Rory. Why did it matter? There wasn’t anything to hide from, to run from, right? This was the time to do the opposite of what I’d done before. Shouldn’t I be doing that? I pointed to the cover of People. Shouldn’t I be running as far from that person as possible? They stuttered, and my mother said that I was being crazy, that I was close to perfect before, which we both knew wasn’t true at all, and then Alicia came in to take my blood pressure, and that was that.

It’s only once we’re left alone and Jamie has taken out his digital recorder, plopped himself on the side of my bed like an old confidant, and cracked his knuckles, ready to go, that I realize I don’t have much of a story to tell. I feel myself blanch with the embarrassment of being so unprepared. I suspect that the old me wouldn’t have approved of such unpreparedness at all.

“I really didn’t think this through,” I say. “I, well, you probably know that I can’t remember anything. I don’t know how much I can help you.”

“Don’t worry,” he says. “Let’s just talk. I won’t even record it.”

“Okay.” I will myself to relax. “I’m very well versed in the first season of Friends, in Jamie Reardon’s reporting on cable TV, and on sleeping sixteen hours a day. And this.” I hold up the iPod on my lap. “The wider selection of musical hits from the past two decades. Any of those subjects are fair game.”

“So what you’re saying is you’re either rapidly becoming a pop culture expert or you’re about to lose your mind to boredom?”

“In a nutshell, yes.” I laugh.

“So you’re talking to me simply because you have nothing better to do?”

He’s good at this, I can see. Even as a local reporter. He’s smooth, comforting, intentionally easy to be around, like we’ve been friends since forever.

“No, it’s not just that.” I consider it. “I don’t know, this is going to sound weird, but I feel like everything I’ve learned about myself so far hasn’t resonated, is…indigestible.” I search for how to better articulate it. “Like, have you ever thought that you’re in a rut, even without realizing that you’re in a rut in the first place?”

I’m suddenly self-conscious, like I’m in an overly-meta TV show that I can’t quite reference. “That sounds ridiculous.” I hiccup. “After all I’ve been through, I know. That after all of that, I need to shake things up, try something new. This is what the new me should be doing: trying something the old me never would have done.”