The Comeback

by Ella Berman

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I turn my phone off like Esme taught me, knowing that it’s just a matter of time before the calls and texts come from Laurel and Nathan, asking why I so happily exposed myself like that, running across the road like someone was threatening to give me a lobotomy if I didn’t make it over at that exact moment.

  I change into a black T-shirt and a pair of Levi’s that I have to leave unzipped because they don’t fit me anymore, and I settle on my sofa with a jar of peanut butter and a banana. I am alternating bites of banana with gratifying spoonfuls of thick, claggy peanut butter when there’s a knock at my front door.

  I wipe my hands on my jeans and warily open the door. Emilia is standing on my doorstep, carrying three full Whole Foods canvas bags. When I see her looking, I pull the black T-shirt down over my exposed stomach.

  “Oh God. It’s worse than I thought,” she says, pushing past me and heaving the bags onto the Formica countertop of my kitchenette.

  “What is?” I ask defensively.

  “Sorry, darling, I didn’t mean to sound rude. It’s just, I saw how you inhaled those eggs yesterday and I figured you don’t have anyone around to . . . do anything for you. I always got the impression that Dylan looked after you. I don’t know, the thought of you being here on your own broke my heart.”

  My face heats up with shame that Emilia would be the person to identify that I’m not coping in some significant, crucial way and would try to fix me. I wonder if Able knows Emilia is here and whether she’s already told him how lonely, how tragically incapable, I am.

  “I’m okay,” I say as Emilia opens the kitchen cabinets. I know that they are all empty except for the one above the sink that houses the dusty thermos lid that was here when I moved in. Emilia pulls out four beautiful peach-colored plates from one of the canvas bags, and stacks them in the shelf next to the oven. While she’s doing it, I nudge a pile of empty pizza boxes underneath the table with my foot, and Emilia pretends not to see.

  “I’ve got you some things but we’re going to need to order more. Unless you think you won’t be here for too long?”

  I just shake my head in response, thinking of the look on Dylan’s face when he saw the scene in my living room earlier.

  “Okay. That’s fine. I think this could be great for you. A life-defining moment. I’m going to start unpacking, and you just stop me if you don’t like any of it, because Silver will eat it. She’d eat our neighbor’s dog if I let her, I swear to God. Just like her father.”

  She stacks my fridge with mainly green things, kale, spinach, avocados and other dark leafy vegetables, and then she fills my empty cupboards with dried pasta, beans and rice, and cans of organic soup.

  “You know, I actually spoke to Able this morning, and, between you and me, he’s freaking out about John Hamilton’s next movie. They’ve always had a friendly rivalry, you knew that, right? And everyone is talking about this new project of John’s like it’s the answer to the great myth of the universe, and it’s so different from the one Able’s working on that it’s really thrown him. I can tell he’s nervous because he’s asked me to fly out to Utah next week so that I can be there when he shows his new producers the director’s cut. Able’s already had some problems with them, so he’s worried they’re going to be difficult about it. You know how protective he is of his ‘vision.’”

  I note the slight rush I feel at the thought of Able having any sort of crisis in confidence, even though I know it won’t last long. I try to memorize Emilia’s words anyway, storing them up to devour later like scraps of food.

  As she talks, Emilia takes out a carton of eggs, a pint of cream, butter and some salt and pepper in deep blue grinders, and she lays them out on the surface next to the oven. She finds a frying pan in a drawer that I didn’t know existed and she washes it in the sink, using her fingers to pull off the flakes of old grease stuck to it. When she’s finished, she wipes her hands on her jeans and turns to me.

  “Is your boiler working? The water’s cold.”

  “I had a hot shower earlier . . .” I say, remembering the water burning my shoulders as I curled up on the shower floor. I make a note to locate the boiler once Emilia has left, even though I don’t know what I’m looking for.

  “It should last longer than that. Let me send my guy around to look at it,” she says, then laughs. “Listen to me—‘my guy.’ It’s a plumber, for God’s sake. I’ve been in this city too long.”

  She puts the frying pan on the stove and lights one of the rings, after a couple of attempts.

  “I didn’t realize how close you were. We’re practically neighbors,” she says, dropping a peel of butter into the pan.

  “I can see your house from here,” I say, but she’s not really listening to me.

  “When you buy eggs at the grocery store, you have to open the carton to see if any of them are broken, okay?” she says, then glances at me to check whether it’s okay that she’s doing this. After that she carries on more confidently. “Some people use milk instead of cream when they make eggs, but the increase in calories is negligible when you take into account how much of a difference it makes to the taste. I’m from the East Coast, and we just don’t buy into all that crap. If you go into a coffee shop in Connecticut and ask for anything other than full-fat cow’s milk, they’ll just think you’re a millennial snowflake.”

  She turns back around and starts to stir the mixture with a fork. I pretend not to watch as I lean against the fridge. A strange, adrenaline-fueled disappointment sets in, and I have to force myself not to say anything that will lead back to Able. I forgot how familiar picking at the scab feels, and the realization that this might be what sustains me causes me to burn with shame.

  “Did your mom teach you to cook anything?”

  “I left home before she really had the chance,” I say, and I think Emilia winces slightly. I decide not to mention that when I was back there I didn’t want to let on just how incapable I was to either of them, how poor a job I’d done growing up without them.

  “You know, I remember that dinner at Nobu as if it were yesterday. It’s funny how the mind works, isn’t it?” Emilia muses as she stirs with the same baby-blue spatula she used at her place. “Your mom is such a character and so beautiful.”

  “Yeah, I guess she is.”

  “You look like her, you know.”

  I try not to think of my mother now—the empty look on her face as she watches TV all day, the bones jutting out of her tiny frame.

  “We’ve had some problems,” I say, before I know I’m going to, and I’m annoyed once I’ve said it. Emilia looks over her shoulder in concern. She drops the spatula onto the countertop and turns around to face me.

  “Well, I’m sure it will work out just fine. She’s very lucky to have you as a daughter,” she says, as confident in her assessment of my abilities as a daughter as she is about everything else.

  “I don’t think she’s lucky at all,” I say, shrugging. “She’d say I was the lucky one.”

  “Sometimes these things can be complicated,” she says kindly, and then she steps toward me and pulls me into a hug. My eyes fill with involuntary tears, even as I’m thinking how ironic it is that Emilia is the one to try to help me, after everything that’s happened. As she hugs me, I realize how horrified Able would be to know that she was even here, let alone that we had been talking about him. Maybe they will even argue about it on the phone later, and Able will become cold and withdrawn when the fight doesn’t unfold exactly how he wants it to. Maybe, without even meaning to, I have somehow started to infect his family the same way he’s infected mine. And that’s when the thought that has been fluttering in my chest since I arrived back in LA breaks through the darkness, soaring high above me before settling back inside my skin, reborn.

  I am the only one in this situation with nothing to lose.

  I pull
away from the hug under the pretense of checking on the eggs, which are now hard at the edges, curling and brown. I watch the smoke start to pour off the pan, and then I turn back to Emilia, finally meeting her eyes with my own.

  “I think you’re right,” I say slowly. “By the way, next time you speak to Able, please tell him I said hi.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Once Emilia has left, I turn my phone back on to call Nathan. Unexpectedly his assistant patches me straight through and he answers, albeit begrudgingly and sounding just one breath away from telling me he’s in a meeting.

  “Look—John Hamilton called a couple of weeks ago about a space movie—could we see what that’s about?” I ask quickly, trying to lace my voice with the perfect mix of gratitude and authority, always a delicate balance when dealing with an egomaniac.

  Nathan pauses, then he sighs heavily. “I’ll look into it, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. John Hamilton isn’t the kind of person who waits around.”

  “I’m sure he isn’t but, honestly, Nathan, I’ll put the work in. I promise. I’ll audition, or do whatever I need to do to get that part.”

  “Okay, Grace. That’s good to hear, I guess,” he says, and that’s when I know I can wear him down if I really want to. I just have to play it perfectly.

  “Thanks, Nathan, you’ve always understood me better than anyone.”

  “For my sins,” he says, and, if I’m not mistaken, I think I can hear a touch of warmth in his voice.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The paparazzi shots of me running across Pacific Coast Highway are, by all accounts, disastrous. My hair is greasy and clumped together, and my clothes are stained and sweat marked. There is a feral look in my eyes that I don’t recognize as I streak across the road, my back curved like a hunted animal. I look so deranged that they would almost be funny if I didn’t have to swear forty times to Laurel that I hadn’t completely lost my mind, and if Nathan hadn’t called me to say only “John Hamilton is out” before hanging up on me.

  My publicist, Nan, also rang me when she saw the coverage, and she strongly advised me to release a statement saying I was seeking treatment for exhaustion, brought on by my back-to-back work schedule since I was fourteen. I refused and she quit on the spot, sounding resigned, as if she’d tried every other possible option but I still just refused to play the game. In reality, exhaustion is a cheap excuse, and she would have known that. Everyone knows that it is a euphemism for a drug problem or an eating disorder, afforded only to those privileged enough to have access to a publicist who can barter and lie on their behalf. No, Nan’s resignation had more to do with the fact that when I was in demand, she had to work overtime to cover up my transgressions, and that her life would be a lot easier without me now that I’m not. She knew I would never agree to the statement; she just wanted a way out that wouldn’t be her fault. I don’t resent her for any of it. Conversely I actually envy her if she is able to justify her actions to herself in this way.

  Esme is the one who shows me the pictures on her phone, over iced tea on my porch one morning while Blake is at therapy. She’s created a whole album of the coverage, and one of the headlines accompanying the pictures was “Crazed and On the Run,” which Esme seems to find amusing. She also makes sure to highlight an anonymous tell-all from an alleged former friend of mine, claiming she personally saw me rail an eight-ball of coke alone at a party a couple of years ago. My “friend” ended her statement by saying that even then she could tell I was running from my demons. How poetic.

  “So what exactly were you running from?” Esme asks once I’ve read the piece, and because she’s still a kid, I’m worried that she actually wants an answer.

  “It was really hot,” I say.

  Two teenage boys are skating up and down the path below my porch, practicing tricks on their skateboards. The younger one falls off, skinning his knees as his friend howls with laughter. I try not to notice that the kid is limping slightly when he pretends to be fine, because I don’t want to have to feel sorry for him too. Esme is staring at them, too, but she frowns when I catch her.

  “Shall we?” I say, pointing to the water. I’ve promised to go swimming with Esme, but it’s still too chilly to even be outside, let alone in the water. I imagine this is what having children is like, always having to do something you’d really rather not in order to not let them down.

  “Not yet,” Esme says tersely, shooting another glance at the skateboarders, who are now practicing flips over a piece of driftwood.

  “Why are you staring at them?” Esme hisses, borderline hysterical. She’s being so dramatic that I have to try not to smile.

  “Do you like one of them?” I ask, unsure of the correct terminology because I missed out on all of this. Esme lets out an anguished sound, and I somehow manage not to point out that she’s actually drawing more attention to herself.

  “All right, it’s okay,” I say. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  We sit in silence for a few moments, and I’m about to start discussing global warming or something when Esme speaks again. She has been quietly fuming, her fingers curled into fists on her lap. “Do you even have any friends? Because you’re always by yourself.”

  “Wow,” I respond, only slightly offended because it’s the sort of thing I would ask.

  “It’s weirder because you’re famous.”

  “I do have friends,” I say, thinking about Dylan. “It just gets more complicated as you get older.”

  Esme opens her mouth, but I shoot her a warning look and she closes it again.

  “Everything gets more complicated as you get older,” she says, sounding wiser than her years for once. I think she wants to say something else, so I wait out the uncomfortable pause that follows.

  “The girls at school don’t speak to me anymore,” she says, shifting in the lawn chair.

  “What?”

  “Do you mean ‘what’ or ‘why’?” she asks, but I can tell she’s upset from the way she pulls at the piece of hair falling just in front of her right ear. When she was a kid, she used to twist it so hard that it stopped growing, and for a while she just had this strange mod-style sideburn on one side. I didn’t realize she still did it, and a quiet fury that anybody could hurt this person takes hold of me, surprising in its force.

  “I liked this guy so I hooked up with him at a party, then he changed his mind about me and told everyone, and now they think I’m a slut.”

  Esme scrolls through something on her phone, frowning. “And now he goes out with my ex–best friend so none of my friends are allowed to speak to me anymore.”

  “Is your friend hooking up with him now?”

  “Of course,” Esme replies witheringly.

  “So why isn’t she a slut?”

  “Because they’re committed,” Esme says mechanically, without a trace of irony.

  “That’s stupid,” I say stupidly.

  “It’s how it works, Grace. I don’t expect you to understand the nuances of teenage dating.”

  “Come on, Esme. This is serious,” I say, and Esme folds her arms across her chest. I remember what I said to her about the bad guys winning, and try not to wince.

  “Was he also the guy you sent the nude to?” I ask quietly.

  “It was fake,” Esme says, and even though my sister is partly, mostly, still a stranger to me, I think I can tell that she’s lying by the way her eyes dart instantly down to the ground. “But everyone still reposts it all the time, and they write disgusting things on anything I share, even when it’s, like, literally a photo of me holding a lizard.”

  “Right,” I say slowly, out of my depth and sort of wishing I’d never asked. “You know, I’m not sure you’re supposed to hold lizards.”

  “Ugh, Grace!”

  “If it makes you feel any better, millions of people have seen me
naked,” I say, but Esme just stares back at me as if I’m missing the point, which I possibly am, but only because I can’t explain it properly. I want to tell her that I know all about the power imbalance that exists every time you meet someone who’s seen you at your most vulnerable, whether or not it was your choice in the first place. How you have to hope that they don’t use it against you in some way, or say something flippant that might burn its way into your sense of self, resurfacing every time you look at your body in the mirror or undress in front your partner.

  “Have you talked to Mom about it?” I ask instead.

  “She knows I was suspended for indecent exposure,” Esme says, annoyed at the question. “But my school would never admit what actually happened because it makes them look shitty. And it’s not like she’s going to ask—you know she doesn’t like talking about anything like that. She probably thinks I streaked across the football field or something.”

  “Can you just delete the app?” I ask, and Esme reacts as if I’ve just suggested she remove her own toenails with a pair of rusty tweezers. “Maybe transfer schools?”

  “You don’t understand,” Esme says slowly. I can hear my fall from grace in surround sound. “My school is supposed to be shaping the most brilliant minds of our generation, but it’s just the fucking same as anywhere else.”

  Esme picks her phone up again and then drops it straight back down next to her as if it’s burning hot. “Can we talk about something else?”

  “Okay . . .” I say, but I can’t think of anything else to talk about. I know that I should tell her that everything will be okay, but who am I to talk?

  “Do you still want to go swimming?” I ask eventually.

  The boys have disappeared and Esme nods, but she is more subdued than usual, so I stride confidently down the porch steps and onto the sand, trying to set a good example for the first time in my life. Goose bumps are already spreading over my arms and legs, but there’s no way we’re not going in now. Once I reach the water, I lift my face up and let the salty wind whip my cheeks as I wait for my sister to join me. She follows me, dropping her T-shirt onto the sand at the last minute and carefully wrapping her phone in it.