Элисон Скотч: The Song Remains the Same

“It doesn’t sound ridiculous to me at all,” he says, and looks at me with such openness that I believe him. He’s a professional but I’m buying it all the same. “Well, whatever your reason”—he clears his throat—“do know that I’m indebted to you for this.”

“For being blown up at thirty thousand feet and surviving?”

“No”—he shakes his sandy hair—“for talking to me.” He tilts his head like a rooster and eyes me. “You’re pretty cavalier for what you’ve gone through.”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t be if I could remember any of it. I’m sure I’d be horrified, in therapy for life.” I think of Anderson, who told me that he wakes each night, despite medication, in soaking sweats from the nightmares. “Come to think of it,” I say, “I might be anyway.”

“Well, I have to thank you regardless. This story—you really—you’re changing my life, too. I’ve been trying to get out of Iowa since I was eighteen. This might do it.”

“So I’m nothing more than leverage for you?”

His eyes noticeably widen and he rights himself upward.

“I’m kidding, Jamie. I’m kidding.” Who is he? Why is he so familiar? Why am I acting like we’ve known each other our lives through?

“You’re nothing like I expected you to be,” he says. “Not from what I’ve researched.”

Finally! Someone who frigging gets it! I think, but instead say, “What have you researched? You probably know more than I do.”

“Eleanor Slattery. Thirty-two. Named for the Beatles song ‘Eleanor Rigby’ but goes by Nell. Grew up in Bedford, New York. Sister of Rory Slattery—older by five years. Daughter of Francis Slattery, one of the geniuses behind the pop art movement of the sixties. Friend of Andy Warhol. Total recluse whom no one has heard from in years.”

“I thought my dad was dead.” I hear my heart beat.

“Dead?” He laughs, missing the innuendo of the moment. “No, not unless no one has reported it. Very much alive.”

I swallow, absorbing this. My mother told me that he was gone, but maybe I misinterpreted. Yes, maybe it was that. She simply meant gone—vanished. I’d assumed gone—dead. I chew the cuticle of my good hand, the one with the scar.

“Go on.”

“Well, underground or not, he was brilliant. May still be brilliant. That’s how you and your sister started your gallery: sold some prime pieces of his, established a reputation in the art world, and made your connections with old collectors in your very first show. You guys opened about six years ago—Rory was basically straight out of college at UVM.”

“And what do you mean, can you elaborate on…recluse?”

“Like…recluse,” he says, bewildered that he’s the one to fill me in on this gaping branch in my family tree. “Like, fell off the map when you were a teenager—thirteenish, I believe. J. D. Salinger–like.” He pauses. “Wait, that probably doesn’t help you.”

“No, it doesn’t really,” I answer.

I think of that big-haired, braced-teeth teenager in her polka-dotted prom dress, and the pity in my core nearly slices my guts open. That she—that I—had to deal with such nuclear emotional fallout of my father abandoning us right when I may have needed him the most, to come into my own. But I offer none of this to Jamie. It’s too much too soon to share with him, despite how much I want to, how much I want him to solve everything, put the bow on the package for me.

I say, “Don’t you need notes for this or something?”

“Not really.” His cheeks turn pink now. “Like I said, this is the big story for me. I’m pretty well versed on it.”

“Okay, continue.” I clamp down on the open-ended questions that this news has brought, too interested, like a masochist, in what else Jamie might unspool.

“Graduated third in your class in high school. Rumor had it that you were your father’s musical equivalent, but opted to focus on tennis in high school instead.”

“What does that mean?” I interrupt.

“That his thing was painting, your thing was music, but that it all blended together in your genes.” He hesitates, the reporter in him alarmed that he may have overlooked a fact. “I don’t know much about that angle, to be honest.”

I nod. “Keep going.”

“Earned a tennis scholarship to Lehigh but went to school in Binghamton. Dropped out of NYU law. Married Peter Horner five years ago, started your gallery with your sister shortly before that. Now recently separated from Peter Horner. Boarded plane that crashed in Iowa, and that’s where we’re at.”

Recently separated from Peter Horner? What?

“Wait, what? I’m separated from Peter?” I sit up, trying to get closer to him, as if that might clarify what he just said.

“Oh, shit. You didn’t know?” His already pink cheeks burn red, and yes, there it is, I trust him—he’s human in his mistakes, human in his empathy—a good reporter but still amateur enough to lower his guard. “Oh my god, you didn’t know? Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god. I didn’t know that you didn’t know.” He stands and starts pacing. “Shit. I thought you’d have known this! How can you not have known this?” He inhales and stares and reminds me of what I imagine he looked like at eight. “Please don’t have a heart attack.”

“You mean a literal heart attack, don’t you?” I say, and his head bounces. “No, Jamie, I’m not going to have a heart attack.” But I might fucking maim my family for not telling me! First my dad, then this? What else? Who else? What else is tucked in darkened corners that they know I can’t get to in my present state?

“Shit, shit, shit. I shouldn’t have said anything—Dr. Macht was very clear about not upsetting you, that you’re not ready for jarring conversations or emotional news.” He sits back on the edge of the bed. “Christ, I’m sorry.”

I chew the inside of my lip, assessing how pissed off I am, how devastated I am by the realization of my broken marriage. The answer: not so much. Probably not as much as if I remembered why I should be devastated in the first place.

“Why did we separate?” I ask simply.

“I’m not sure I should tell you,” he says.

“Look, Jamie, I like you. I have no idea why, but I like you. I trust you. Evidently, you’re the only one around here who is willing to tell me the facts of my life, facts that I cannot goddamn remember. So please. Level with me.”

He exhales, then runs his palms over and down his cheeks.

“I have significant doubts about this.”

I eye him, mulling how I can best deconstruct the situation to my advantage. It comes naturally, the idea, the manipulation to get him on my side for good. Like an old sweatshirt, too long tucked into the back of my closet. I slide it on and oh, yes, that feels just about right.

“Jamie, do you want to be part of Operation Free Nell Slattery?” I’d heard a similar such phrase on the news. It had a nice ring to it. Inspiring, I think.

“I’m sorry?”

“Do you want to be part of Operation Free Nell Slattery—you know, like, free me from the hospital?” Free me from this void of blackness.

“I do,” he says, taking it too seriously.

“Relax,” I say aloud. “You’re not selling me your soul. Besides, I thought journalists didn’t have souls to begin with.”

Ha ha, we say together.

“I have a soul,” he assures me. “That’s why I didn’t want to upset you in the first place.” You do. I nod. He does, I think. Which is exactly why I went to him to begin with. My gut instinct. I might not be armed with much, but at least I can listen to that. How it’s imploring me to start over, be different, tell him my story. All of the above.