Bruce Wagner - I Met Someone

Role models!

… Aurora will get her own therapist but then we’ll probably start joint sessions with Ginevra — maybe Allegra will even request that, demand it, and it’ll be very intense, tough at the beginning, then beautiful and so amazing. I’ll ask Livia if she’ll come bunk with us at the house — Aurora might want to stay elsewhere in those first turbulent days but maybe not, maybe she’ll be very brave; they’d just have to wait and see — because Allegra loved and trusted Livia, she was kind of the grandmother that Reina obviously could never have been. Livia will be a wonderful buffer and liaison, a surrogate maternal presence until Aurora can start to accept me as her own. What a complex and rich and scary and amazing time it will be! With Mom and daughter spending their days sequestered in Point Dume or Jackson Hole or the South of France or the Cotswolds ( it could be as long as a year before we’re ready to deal with the press and the whole shopworn but still relevant conscious uncoupling cover story ) , or anywhere really, we’ll go anywhere and do anything we want as we get to know each other all over again, really just a process of deprogramming and resensitizing, probably approximating the few things I know about behavior mod. The ratfuck Joni Mitchell scenario — losing Aurora all over again — is definitely not part of the plan, though it’s true I can’t predict or paint a rosy picture and that it just may happen that Aurora has a period of adjustment where she does some drugging and sexing and acting out, which would/will probably be a healthy, “normal” response ( as long as it doesn’t go too far ) … the year will pass and by then she’ll be living in her own place and both of us will have found some ( a lot? ) equilibrium. We’ll do our decoupled dog and pony show for the press, our story will be that we hit a rough patch and went traveling to see if we could mend things but it didn’t work out and we’re sad but strong, and after three or four months the attention will die down and then just like that I’ll find out Aurora’s been seeing someone, and it’s serious. Maybe an older rock-star chick like Kim Gordon ( if she were gay; though Kim’s probably a little too old ) or an Amal Clooney politico-type or a studio exec of the caliber of Nina Jacobson or even Megan Ellison ( wouldn’t that be a goof? ) . Then I’ll learn that Aurora’s pregnant and this time the baby would take, that would be the karma. I’ll be a grandma! Oh! Wouldn’t that be something? Wouldn’t that —

She wondered what her own life would bring… saw herself being alone for a long, long while and was okay with that. Not lonely but alone. She envisaged entering a kind of monastery built from a rededicated devotion to work and career, a devotion to self, for now would be the time in her life, the time of her life, when all came full circle and she ripened to the spiritual experience. (With still a full quarter century remaining before death — who knew? She might go another forty years. Even Chakrapani implied she’d have a long life.) The idea of it, the plangency of the vision made her shiver. She saw both of them years later, having a Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving (with Ronny and his wife Sam as guests — and their daughters — Allegra’s half sisters!): Aurora with new wife and child, and Dusty announcing she too had met someone special. The couples would go on vacations together with the kids (Leggy’d have lots of babies) and—

— NO. I cannot tell her. I can’t — I won’t ! How could I? How can —

Her heart fluttered as she pictured them — in just a few hours — in the living room up on Carla Ridge, its stage set for the full catastrophe. She’d allow herself a glass of wine beforehand, maybe a Vicodin— no! — better to be sober, essential to be sober. She would clear her throat and say, “I met someone,” then let the chips fall where they may. Let the mirrors and all the boughs break… If she could only find the courage to fire that first assassin’s shot— and survive the recoil… It’d be bloody, maddening, apocalyptic, but yes, in the end it would be for sure the best, the only thing. (It seemed almost insane to her that she had ever entertained the idea of proclaiming, “I am your mother.”) After I met someone , Allegra would be cowed, leveled, traumatized into silence, and that was when Dusty would tell her she’d arranged to give her fifty thousand a month for two years, five years, ten years, forever — a hundred thousand if she wanted. Throw in the Point Dume house as part of the settlement (though the pendulum kept swinging because with all its memories she was thinking the place might prove too burdensome for her ex). Aurora might try to talk her out of it, talk her out of not loving her anymore , might say something like, “No no no! I’ll wait for you, I’ll wait, let me wait! Until you get this new love out of your system! Just please don’t end it, Bunny, please don’t end it, please don’t end it —” That would be a dagger in Dusty’s heart, but of course she’d still be forced to pull a Stella Dallas, shouting, “I don’t love you, Allegra! I don’t think I ever did . I want a divorce —I want to be with her, her, her ! We’re finished , do you hear me? We’re all washed up!”—

NO!

No no no no no… how can I do that? How can I do that to my baby, how can —

To keep from screaming she told herself that Allegra was a survivor, over and over she thought it, then said it aloud, hoping to convince herself it was so, and that’s why it would all be okay — because Allegra had the family blood, survivor blood, Wilding- Whitmore blood — and that her darling would take a hard fall, of course she would, then be able to get up again and stand tall, head held high, until she found another love, a big love, bigger than life, real and unperverse, the love she was meant to have from the beginning. Your mother was just a starter marriage … that’s what Dusty kept telling herself as she sped through Covina astride her faithful pendulum — now fantasizing about what would happen if she told Allegra the truth, then mother and daughter united to share their reality with the planet. Would that really be the worst of worst things? Would it really be the end? Might in fact transparency be the solution — to everything? Why not tell all? The shockproof social media zeitgeist devoured the daily commedia of anarchy and annihilatory transgressions with all the fuss of a whale inhaling plankton. The yelp of an accidentally incestuous marriage, even a beloved faggot movie star’s, would hardly be discernible among the twittering cries and whispers of the Web, a restless organism that greedily homogenized crowdfunding, dicpix, pandas, and beheadings. Dusty replayed the fantasy tape of a P.R.-spun divorce (whether or not they fessed up the truth, the mature and loving lesbian breakup narrative would still remain the same) but this time Dusty mixed in the yucky, high-opera, mind-blowing admission. There would be initial public scorn and revulsion, but she foresaw the unstoppable backlash of popular acceptance and compassion, the metamorphosizing of fear and loathing into profound respect for yet another worthy Profiles in Courage addition to the American freakshow canon. The mutant couple might even finagle a Time Person of the Year! All families had monsters in the cellar born of deliberate misdeeds — why should a national treasure worry if she and her child, innocents , were temporarily sacrificed, martyred to the cause of dark and hidden things? They’d practically be performing a public and cultural service! And before long, they would be martyrs no more, but mavericks — heroines and outlier pioneers, marching into the history books.