The Comeback

by Ella Berman

  “I’m sleeping,” I said, but she pushed it open anyway.

  “Emilia’s just left,” she said, standing above me. I looked up at her quickly and knew she wasn’t lying. Able hadn’t even bothered to come himself, had sent Emilia to assess the damage for him, perhaps even in an ironic nod to the role of protector that Emilia had promised to play when she first met my parents. Only Able and I knew just how short she’d fallen.

  Once the twins were no longer babies, Emilia had tried to reach out to me a few times—inviting me to the peach house for lunch or sending me bags filled with new clothes or makeup she thought I’d like. By that point, though, I already realized that whether she knew it or not, Emilia had only been at that first dinner to soften the blow for my parents, as if her presence could make the fact that they were handing me off to strangers more palatable for everyone. It turned out that Emilia rarely visited Able’s film sets and that she didn’t even enjoy the premieres or awards shows. She must have found it all either intimidating or boring, but I never got the chance to find out which it was, because I never spent any time with her without Able.

  “I’m not going back,” I said quietly.

  “Well, I’m not going to tell you what to do, but she told me to tell you that Able’s sorry.”

  I shook my head, willing her to leave me alone. My mother looked different, affected by Emilia’s visit in some way I couldn’t identify. I could still remember how she’d acted when we shared the hotel room during the shooting of the first assassin movie—giddy with excitement at first, then stung by my cool response and exhaustion. After that, the fault lines opened up and she grew mistrustful of me.

  “Sometimes when people work together creatively for a long time, they can say or do things to hurt the other person,” she said mechanically. “It’s part of the process.”

  “Okay,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut. Of all the ways I had imagined Able trying to make amends with me, sending his wife to influence my mother wasn’t one of them. He was sending me a message, I figured, that Emilia had no idea what had happened. Everything was always a power move with Able.

  “Emilia said he pushed you too hard on set this time. Is that true?” she said then, watching me.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “Especially with you.”

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. Even I could hear the contempt dripping from my voice. I recognized it instantly as the same disdain I’d heard from Able whenever he spoke about my parents, and I was now using it against her. My mom stood up taller and pushed her hair over her shoulder, and I watched as her lips twisted like they had all those years ago in the restaurant when we first met Able.

  “I’m sorry I’m not special enough to understand what it’s like to be you,” she said, and the ease with which she landed on her argument reminded me how close it always was to the surface.

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said warily. I didn’t want to engage in the same fight we had every time I came home, because it always seemed to end with me leaving.

  “We both know exactly what you meant. I would never understand what it’s like to be gifted, or talented, or special, because I’m just a mother, and not even a good one.”

  “Why are you making this about you?” I asked, and she just stared at me with her mouth open, helpless as a goldfish.

  “Don’t think that you coming back here is any sort of service to us,” she said then, and it made me wonder what it was Emilia could have said to her.

  “I wanted to come back.”

  “Sometimes the past is best left in the past,” she said, and it was only when I looked up and saw the bitterness in her eyes, the strange shape of her mouth, how it pulled against itself, that I understood the full implication of what Able had done to me. How far he’d alienated me from my family so that I could never go back to them, even when I needed them the most. In his most ambitious move yet, Able had turned me into a stranger in my own home.

  Neither Able nor Emilia actually needed to say one word to me. I returned to LA the following morning, and almost immediately signed on to the movie. I started drinking more and more, to forget what had happened and everything I’d left behind. I kept my distance from Emilia after that, and, like everyone else in my life apart from Able, she slipped off-screen, fading into the background.

  For the first time I let myself believe I was in control of my future, even though in reality everything was spinning away from me, just out of reach. Somehow, when I met Dylan at a party three weeks after my return, I even let myself believe that I could be normal for just long enough that he believed it too. I spent my first year off pretending to be anyone other than myself.

  * * *

  • • •

  When Lights of Berlin finally went into preproduction, I had to train for the role of the homicidal sex worker for a further ten months. It was grueling: the incomprehensible German lessons, the Krav Maga training with the former Mossad agent, the hours of body conditioning with the Russian ballet director, the driving stunts Able insisted would only work if I did them myself. I faced him every day, and every night I went home and drank enough vodka or snorted enough coke until I forgot his face. The only thing that stopped me from falling over the edge was Dylan. Each morning I woke up with him still next to me was another small indicator that maybe I wasn’t such a bad person. After a while, I even figured that if he believed in me so much, maybe it didn’t matter that I couldn’t believe in myself. By the time principal photography on Lights of Berlin began, we were already married.

  The film was shot on location in Europe, and when Dylan agreed to go with me, I thought that I could have broken the cycle for good. I felt stronger, braver, occasionally even happy with my new husband there, and it even seemed as if Able was finally respecting my boundaries. Yes, I was half-naked for most of the shoot, but he didn’t berate me on set or make me reshoot scenes unnecessarily in the middle of the night, or make any thinly veiled comments about my inability to grasp the reality of any given situation. He didn’t praise or single me out, either, but I told myself I didn’t need him to because this time was different. I even almost believed it. I started to think about my next project, believing that if I had Dylan by my side, then perhaps I could choose it myself. There was even already talk of an Oscar nomination, something I had never allowed myself to dream of up to this point. For the first time in my life, my future seemed full of potential, like maybe I could be happy one day, or at least baseline normal.

  Then, at the wrap party in a sex club in Berlin, Able pulled me aside and looked me dead in the eye as he told me that he no longer drew any inspiration from me. He thought my work on the film had been adequate, but he could tell from the dailies that I was losing something as I aged. The thing that had once set me apart from everyone else who auditioned for the first assassin movie, the thing that had compelled him to bind his entire career to mine up to that point, the light, the hunger, the talent or whatever you wanted to call it, was gone.

  I was always told that the reason Able and I never signed an official contract binding us to each other was because it would have been unethical to do so, but I now know it was just so Able could control the end too. Our working relationship was effectively over, as quickly and unceremoniously as that. I was twenty-one years old, just married, at the height of my career, and still the rejection burned through me like nothing I’d felt before, worse than any other part of it, worse even than that night in his office. I had spent the past eight years living my life in relation to Able, and I didn’t know who I was without him. I had been nothing before him, so why would I be anything after him? I could just about handle hating him, but it was the shame that pulled me under, pushing on my chest and making it hard for me to catch my breath. I understood that by waiting until he dropped me, I had turned myself into the least credible of sources. Nobody would ever believe me, even if I
could somehow find the words for what happened.

  The summer after the film wrapped, I worked harder than ever before to forget who I was for just a second, or a night, sometimes even a week. I chased drug after drug and lied to Dylan so shamelessly that when his ignorance started to feel deliberate, I finally had something to blame someone else for. The way he looked at me used to terrify me. I felt heavy with the weight of his love.

  Every so often I try to unravel it again, to see where I can remove my fingerprints, ones that Able marked from the start, but it is still too tangled.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I wake up late again, covered in sweat. The bedsheets are damp, and my hair has curled into salty tendrils stuck to the nape of my neck. I dreamed that I was back on the set of Lights of Berlin but the entire crew was made up of lizard people, and they were all communicating to each other in a complicated language I almost understood but didn’t. In a way, that was how it had always worked, except Able made sure that I was the alien on any film set, the only one who wasn’t allowed to understand how the magic actually worked. At the time I believed he was protecting me, but maybe he just needed me to be foreign, uncomprehending, so I depended on him that much more.

  I carry my binoculars out to the porch and squint through them, adjusting the focus on the side swiftly, as I have learned to do. The house on the hill is dark, and there are no cars in the drive. Before I can change my mind, I drop the binoculars on the porch chair and walk across the sand until I reach the white wooden beach steps leading to the four houses on the bluff overlooking Coyote Sumac. I’m breathing heavily by the time I climb the last step, and sweat is dripping between my breasts.

  I walk through the tall, sharp blades of grass between the back of the house and the road. The house is exactly as I remember it, a sprawling Mediterranean villa with a bright peach exterior and cream roof tiles, surrounded by beautiful, elegant gardens and shaded by palm trees. I think I wondered whether, just by being here and standing in front of it, its power over me could be lessened, but my heart is already beating fast in my chest and my breathing is labored. I know that the memories are about to start and that they’ll come in dark fragments at first and then thicker, stronger, until I feel as if I can reach out and touch them. I have already turned around, about to leave, when a car door slams behind me. I step backward, off-balance, as someone calls my name.

  “Grace . . . Grace Turner. Is that you?” Emilia asks, her mouth already widening into a smile. She walks toward me and kisses me on both cheeks. “Able didn’t tell me you were back in town! He’s so thoroughly useless.”

  My legs nearly give way at the mention of his name, but I recover, forcing a smile that is nearly passable.

  “Hyde,” I say. “They made me change it to Turner for the films but it was always Hyde. Remember?”

  “Of course it is,” Emilia says, looking disoriented for just a moment. “I never understood why they did that.”

  She takes a step back and looks me up and down, smiling again. “Beautiful girl. Well, woman now. What are you doing here? Last I heard you were in Venice?”

  “I was just . . . going for a walk. I didn’t realize . . . I’m actually living down in Coyote Sumac at the moment. Dylan and I . . .” I shake my head.

  “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. I heard that.” Emilia puts her head to one side and pushes out her lips slightly in the universal expression of sympathy for when your marriage has rotted. “You just missed Able, but come in for a coffee?”

  Emilia gestures toward the house with her head because she’s carrying four canvas bags full of groceries and two huge Fred Segal bags. When she sees me looking, she rolls her eyes, pretending to be embarrassed.

  “Christmas shopping. This is conspicuous consumption in action, Grace—it’s disgusting, I know. Come on.”

  I follow her into the house.

  * * *

  • • •

  The front door opens straight into the living room, which stretches all the way through to the back of the house, flanked by a double staircase leading to the bedrooms upstairs. Everything in the house is as rich and ornate as a private members’ club, in contrast to the usual expanse of empty white space and driftwood so common to mansions in Malibu. The walls are forest green, surrounding velvet sofas and a hissing, glowing wood burner. First-edition leather-bound books with gold embossed titles line the shelves, punctuated by expensive candles and framed black-and-white photographs of the family on the beach in Nantucket or skiing in Verbier. And the smell—still that suffocating sandalwood, after all these years.

  My legs feel like jelly as I follow Emilia, unable to stop. I realize now that I haven’t seen her since the Lights of Berlin premiere, where I threw up twice in the toilets before the film had even started. She seems calmer, happier than I remember, and I wonder if she’s on meds like everyone else with any sense in this city.

  The Christmas tree in the center of the room shimmers with gold and white baubles, and thousands of tiny lights on an invisible thread. Hundreds of porcelain carolers stand around the tree, staring up at it, frozen with their mouths half-open and their eyes glazed. The figurines also line every available surface, all dressed in red and green, some holding mini instruments and gifts. Emilia catches me staring at them and laughs quickly.

  “When my grandmother died I had this ridiculous fight with my least favorite cousin over who got to keep her collection of carolers. As you can see, I won and am now cursed to display every freaking one of them until the sweet release of death. At this point I don’t care if it’s hers or mine.”

  I touch one of them on the head. The caroler is wearing a red skating outfit, and she seems stricken by my touch. We walk past the door to Able’s office, and I wonder whether Emilia can see the beads of sweat forming above my lip, whether she can hear the shudder of my pulse as I place my hand on the closed door. I follow Emilia into the kitchen, wishing I’d brought my bottle of Percocet with me. Sometimes just knowing the pills are in my possession is enough to stop the panic from catching hold like a wildfire.

  The kitchen is different. They have redone it since I was last here, and everything is tasteful and overt at the same time, like Emilia. There is no sign of Able’s touch left in the house. I lean against the marble island, looking anywhere but Emilia’s eyes. Adrenaline courses through my veins and I suddenly, urgently, need the toilet, but I don’t want to be alone.

  “When was the last time we had you over? I’m always saying how much I miss having you around. It’s crazy that we’ve known you since you were just a kid, really, even though you never acted like one.” Emilia unpacks the shopping methodically as she speaks, making piles of similar items and then distributing them among the fridge, freezer and pantry. I take the opportunity to look at her now, taking in her unfashionably thin eyebrows and even thinner nose, her pale eyes the color of the Atlantic Ocean in winter. I realize now that I undervalued her beauty when I was younger—she is attractive in that subtle, fleece-and-jeans, country club way that grows every time you look at her, rewarding you for having noticed it in the first place.

  Please be aware that I recognized this as a mistake as soon as I walked through that door. For once, every single level of my consciousness seems to be united and they are all singing at me like a Greek chorus, instructing me to remove myself from the situation immediately, but of course I don’t know how. Emilia’s composure is unnerving me; I’ve always believed that the people who feel the most comfortable are the most dangerous to be around.

  Emilia picks up a light blue box and hands it to me. “Marrons glacés. We used to have them in Connecticut when I was a child, and they are absolutely the only thing that gets me in the holiday spirit in this furnace of a city. You must try one.”

  I open the box to find six round globes in individual foil packaging. I unwrap one with trembling fingers, pressing it into my dry mouth. The sweet icing crumble
s instantly, coating my tongue so that I don’t have to speak. My heart is beating so hard in my chest that I’m surprised it’s not visible through my shirt.

  “Isn’t that just heaven? Able brought them back from Paris for me. He may be useless in every other way, but my beautiful husband would never dare forget my marrons glacés.”

  “How’s the . . . writing going?” I ask, struggling to swallow. Emilia used to be a journalist at LA Weekly, but she gave it up a few years ago to write celebrity biographies and brightly colored airport novels. I cough slightly, acrid sugar caught at the back of my throat, and Emilia hands me a small bottle of water from the fridge.

  “I’m writing fiction now, you knew that, right? It’s total trash but there’s something cathartic about leaning into that without any fear. So what if I want to write a book about a vet falling back in love with her high school boyfriend in Montana? I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my Yale degree will now be utilized to provide comfort for people I’ll never meet. And that’s okay.” While she’s been talking, Emilia has whisked three eggs with some cream and salt. She drops the mixture into a frying pan and stirs absentmindedly with a pale blue spatula.

  “Of course Able is mortified. He’s always been such a snob, even though he’s the one from Utah.” She rolls her eyes again and shoves a loose strand of hair back behind her ear. She still has that perfect blond hair—glossy and tumbling, forming a wave over her shoulder and down her back like a cartoon. You can tell everything you need to know about Emilia from her hair, I think now, perhaps unkindly.

  I watch as she scrapes the scrambled eggs onto a plate and then stops, frowning. “I’m sorry. Did you say you wanted eggs?”

  “Okay,” I say, sitting down at the farmhouse table. I feel as if I’m in a dream, watching everything unfold around me without my permission, even though, like always, I’m the one who set it in motion.