by Ella Berman
* * *
• • •
I sit Wren down on the curb outside In-N-Out and instruct her not to move. She’s already been sick in the gutter four times, maybe five. I drew the line at holding her hair back from her face because I never went to college and we’re not sorority sisters.
“I want to dance on the counter,” she mutters as I leave her, but she doesn’t move. Her upper body is slumped, now too heavy for her to hold up, and one of her false eyelashes is loose at the corner.
I order more food than we will ever be able to eat, then I sit down on the curb as Wren methodically works her way through each Double-Double burger and grilled cheese as if she hasn’t eaten in weeks.
“Thank you. I feel better,” she says, still slurring softly.
“We’re idiots. We should have eaten before we went out,” I say generously.
“I used to have an eating disorder, you know,” Wren says, unwrapping another burger.
“What kind?”
“All of them.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Want to know what kills a relationship faster than plutonium? Watching your girlfriend eat seventeen Oreos, three tubs of ice cream, two bags of Funyuns and a wheel of brie in one sitting,” Wren says.
“Obviously, Dylan has been a gem about it,” she adds after a beat, but there is an edge to her voice. She stretches her legs out in front of her restlessly, her leather shoes in the road. I stare down at the grilled cheese sandwich in my hand.
“You know he’ll always be in love with you. I just have to decide how much it bothers me,” she says. “Did you see his face earlier? It would be funny if it wasn’t so awful. And it’s not your hair, before you try to say it. He can’t even look at you. Or me.”
I put the grilled cheese down on the curb next to me and figure out what I need to say.
“I made him so unhappy.” The truth.
“Do you think you could ever unmake him unhappy?” Wren asks, staring at the gutter under our feet.
I think about it for a second before I shake my head.
“Probably not.”
She nods slowly, closing her eyes for too long when she blinks.
“I don’t think I can either,” she says miserably.
“Why are you doing this, Wren?” I ask. “Trying so hard to be friends. You know you really don’t have to pretend to like me.” I barely even like me, I add in my head.
Wren studies me for a moment before shrugging.
“I don’t know. Maybe I thought if I could see what Dylan saw in you, I could be enough for him too. Maybe I thought some of your magic would rub off on me. Or maybe I’m just a nice person, Grace, and you seemed like you needed a friend.”
I think about that for a moment, wondering if it’s true. I haven’t felt so lonely lately, or at least nowhere near as lonely as when I was surrounded by people who were paid to spend time with me.
“Can I give you some advice as a friend then?” I say slowly.
Wren nods.
“Don’t let Dylan get away. It will be the biggest mistake you’ll ever make.”
A Range Rover pulls up in front of us then, the tires crackling over the old burger wrappers by the side of the road, and Dylan rolls down his window. He breaks into a smile, his eyes creasing at the corners when he sees us both sitting on the curb, surrounded by In-N-Out wrappers. I look at Wren and she shrugs.
“I texted him,” Wren says hollowly.
“All right, you reprobates. Jump in,” Dylan says, and if he thinks this is weird, or if he’s annoyed that Wren got so drunk and is surprised that I’m not, he doesn’t let either of us know it.
I pick up our trash and dump it into the nearest trash can, because I don’t want Dylan to think we’re complete animals, and then I get into the back of the car. I figure Wren is going to sit in the front, but she climbs shakily into the other backseat instead, clipping her seat belt on silently. She stares out the window the entire drive to Malibu, so that after a while I have to open my window to drown out the silence.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I get out of the car at Coyote Sumac, telling Wren to call me tomorrow. She nods wordlessly in response. I watch Dylan drive back up the dirt track slowly, and I very nearly convince myself that watching them leave together is the easiest thing in the world.
I drink some cloudy water straight from the tap before collapsing onto the sofa. I turn on an old episode of Friends and try not to think about the intensity in Wren’s eyes all night. Maybe getting fucked up has been misunderstood this entire time, and it’s actually the only thing some of us can do to live in the moment.
I’m about to switch off the TV when there is a knock at the front door. I creep toward it and look through the peephole at the distorted figure in front of me. I open the door and stand in the doorway with my arms folded across my chest.
“Can I come in?” Dylan asks, wincing slightly, probably at the obviousness of it all.
I turn around and walk back to the sofa, leaving him to close the door and follow me in. He leaves a gap between us when he joins me on the sofa.
“I think Wren just broke up with me. I mean she passed out at a pivotal moment, but I got the idea,” Dylan says, rubbing his eyes.
“I didn’t do anything,” I say, staring straight ahead at the TV, my stomach in knots.
“I know you didn’t,” Dylan says gently. “But she did say that you might have some shit to say to me. Or maybe she knew I had some shit to say to you. She’s pretty smart like that.”
We watch in silence as Phoebe gives birth to triplets on mute. After a while, Dylan shifts over so that our arms are touching, and he says my name so softly that I turn to him. He looks serious, older than I remembered, as he reaches over and turns off the TV.
“When you first left . . . I didn’t believe that there was a version of my life without you. Sometimes I still don’t,” he says slowly.
I nod wordlessly, willing myself not to cry. I want to say that the problem was I could never believe there was a version of my life with Dylan. It seemed inconceivable that I could ever be so normal. So likely to have three kids and two rescue dogs and retire happily to a beautiful ranch in Montecito. I remember how Dylan used to kiss the top of my head each morning before he left for work, and how, like everything else we did that had become a tradition, at some point I instinctively started to pull away from him so that there would be one less habit to break when it was over. I wonder now why he’s here, what he needs to get off his chest. The problem is that I can remember, in photographic detail, his face the night I tried to tell him about Able. He would deny it if I ever tried to tell him what I saw, but maybe I just know him better than he knows himself.
“Look, the end of us was just stupidly dark, and I wouldn’t want to revisit it or even, like, spend a long weekend there, but I do know that we were nearly perfect once. I remember it.” Dylan has been staring intently at the floor in front of his feet, but now he looks up at me again. “And I’m so fucking sorry for the part I played in the end. I just wanted you to know, whatever that means to you at this point.”
“We were miserable,” I say. “Or I was miserable, so I made you miserable, which made me more miserable, which made you more miserable. Our relationship was one never-ending clusterfuck of misery.”
“Can I take you out for dinner?” Dylan asks suddenly. I shake my head, smiling despite myself. He holds his hands up and shrugs.
“Look, I could be losing my mind, but what you just described didn’t sound like the worst to me,” he says, and a smile plays on his lips that would just need the smallest amount of encouragement to spread across his face. I wonder then what Dylan still sees in me after all this time and whether it’s something that is actually there or not. All I know is that on the first night of our honeymoon, we stayed up all night on a deserted beach in And
ros, and for once I didn’t need any vodka in my veins or anything else but him to reach the sunrise in the morning.
“There were good times too,” Dylan says as if he’s reading my mind, and I just nod in response, not trusting myself to speak for a moment.
“Did you know that when we were together and you went away anywhere, I’d plan your eulogy?” I ask, after a while.
“What?”
“Like, I wouldn’t even realize I was doing it, and then I’d be midway through composing a funny but heartbreaking speech in my head, about how classic it is that you would choose to die in the most polite, least messy way possible, when I’d realize what I was doing. That’s not normal, is it?”
Dylan is trying not to laugh, seemingly at a loss for anything to say.
“Nobody’s normal, Grace.”
“Except for you,” I say, and I’ve got him there because we both know that Dylan isn’t planning anyone’s eulogy in his head.
“So how did I go?”
“What?”
“When you used to picture it. How did I die?”
“Ventricular fibrillation in your sleep. It was always very peaceful.”
“Thanks, Grace. I guess that’s something.”
We sit in the dark, smiling for a few moments.
“This has been a weird day,” I say. “You just got dumped.”
“I did,” Dylan says, but he doesn’t move, and I don’t want him to. We sit next to each other, and my heart is drumming in my chest. Then Dylan stands up and stretches, his T-shirt lifting to expose the tattoo on his stomach that he let me do for him one morning in a New York hotel. A jagged, uneven heart filled in with solid black that kept getting bigger because I messed the lines up. And that’s when I remember. I remember when Dylan had just arrived in LA and was renting that studio apartment in Los Feliz with one gas hob for a kitchen and a toilet with a flush you had to stand on to make it work, but he saw it as his palace. I knew from that first night that all he wanted was to love me and that if I could just let him, I might actually feel safe for once in my life. I remember how I felt on our wedding day, my hair tumbling down my back with a silk ribbon plaited through it, when I thought maybe I could be the person he wanted me to be. I imagine what would happen if I kissed him right now. We’d probably end up fucking against the wall within seconds.
I stand up and I hug Dylan good-bye instead, breathing in his warm, familiar smell at the base of his neck, and for the first time in a while, I let myself believe that everything might actually work out okay.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I wake up to the sensation of my phone vibrating next to me. I pick it up and squint at the caller ID. I feel an unpleasant, complicated flicker of guilt when I see Emilia’s name and I wonder why I’m always the one feeling bad about everything. I pick up the call.
“Darling, I’m calling to see whether you want to come to the girls’ Christmas pageant this afternoon. Actually, who am I kidding, I don’t even want to go, but you would be doing me a massive favor. I hate doing this sort of thing alone.”
“I have a plan . . .” I say slowly, because I already told Esme she could come over. “But I think I can get out of it. I owe you, anyway.”
“Ugh, thank you!” Emilia says, ignoring my reference to the other night as I knew she would. “But please wear a disguise so nobody recognizes you. I don’t want to have to share you with all the Stepford wives at school.”
I promise her I will before hanging up the phone.
* * *
• • •
“Oh, Grace, what was the one thing I said?” Emilia asks when I slide into her car a couple of hours later. I look down at my ripped black jeans and black sweater and shrug.
“I’m disguised as a normal person,” I say, and when Emilia lets out a loud laugh, I feel guilty over how much I could ruin her life if I found the words.
“Aren’t we all,” she says after a moment, and she’s still laughing as we drive up the dirt track.
* * *
• • •
“Thank you so much for coming with me to this,” Emilia says as she pulls into the driveway of the girls’ school. “I always end up doing this sort of thing by myself.”
The car wheels shriek as they roll over the gravel. We pass the drop-off zone where I handed the girls over earlier in the week, heading instead to the underground parking structure.
“After all these years, I still hate being alone. Could you tell? You’re much more self-sufficient than I am, and I envy you for it,” Emilia says, but I ignore her generosity because we both know it’s not true in the slightest.
“Is Able still mad that you missed his screening?” I ask as Emilia slows down to let another car pass.
“He doesn’t exactly have a leg to stand on when it comes to missing important life events,” Emilia says lightly.
“Do you ever get angry about it?” I ask, surprising myself as soon as the words are out of my mouth.
“What?”
“Being by yourself,” I say, my voice steady.
“How could I be angry about that?” Emilia says, and I can tell that she’s about to change the subject.
“Well, it’s just . . . Able’s priorities,” I say, as if I don’t want to be the person pointing this out to her. “That he never shoots a movie in LA, they’re all on location. It was a running joke on set that he couldn’t stay in the city for more than six weeks at a time.”
Emilia pauses for a moment without looking at me, and even though I know I’m being unkind, I feel a jolt of satisfaction. “They have better tax breaks elsewhere. We’re looking for space E9.”
I point to an empty spot in front of us, and Emilia pulls into it. She turns the engine off.
“I’d never really thought of it being a choice,” she says.
“I didn’t mean—”
“No, I know,” she says. “The truth is of course he could shoot here. But he needs his space to work, and I have a good life, so I really can’t complain.”
“Of course not,” I say, smiling at her, but I can feel that I’ve hit a nerve. We climb out of the car and take the elevator up to the grounds in silence.
The doors open up to the sprawling school campus, consisting of a cluster of log cabins that have been decorated by the kids, and a horse stable, an indoor swimming pool and three tennis courts. A goat attached to a long rope greets the parents by nuzzling at their pockets.
“I can promise you that this won’t be your typical nativity play, at least. We chose this school because it’s very . . . progressive,” Emilia says, any trace of uneasiness now gone. “They’re all lunatics.”
We walk past the tennis courts and follow signs to the playhouse. Before we get there, Emilia stops and ducks around the corner of the toilets, beckoning me to follow her.
“Judging by Silver and Ophelia’s rehearsals, we’re going to need a little help,” Emilia says as she roots around in her bag. She pulls something out and inhales deeply from it, the smell of fresh weed filling the air. She coughs slightly and then holds out the little stick to me. “The best OG Kush you’ll ever find. Want some?”
I look down at it and she immediately flinches, closing her hand so that I can no longer see the vape.
“I’m so sorry. I’m clueless sometimes.”
I shrug. “Weed was never one of my problem areas.”
“Even so,” Emilia says, and then she smiles. “Able hates that I do this.”
Something about the wistful way she says it makes me wonder if she’s still thinking about what I said in the car.
“How long is this play?” I ask.
“Two hours,” Emilia says, making an apologetic face. I hold my hand out and after a moment she drops her vape into it. I run my finger over her initials embossed in gold.
“Thanks,” I say, taking it from
her. I inhale once, and then twice, three times, only blowing out afterward. I immediately feel something happen, the warm tingling sensation growing as it spreads through my body. The world around me takes on a hazy, dreamlike quality, as if I can only really focus on one thing at a time.
When we walk back onto the path, the goat is staring at me. I nod at it and I’m not surprised when it politely nods back. I stifle a giggle as I follow Emilia through to the playhouse, an outdoor amphitheater with stone tiers around the stage and fairy lights laced around each level.
“The kids take most of their classes outside in the tree house. They have a goat-milking rotation,” Emilia informs me as we climb the steps, both of us struggling to keep a straight face. We choose seats near the back, and I can feel the effect of the weed even more now that I’ve stopped moving, a strange, warm feeling of contentedness slipping over me despite myself. I’m just wondering why I never really got into weed when, with the sun still high in the sky, the golden fairy lights flick on and I have to close my eyes because it all becomes too much of a moment.
The play starts, and I understand what Emilia meant. The story is hard to keep up with, an elaborate mix of Hanukkah, Christmas and Diwali celebrations, but when I recognize Silver and Ophelia shuffling onstage dressed as two candles in a human menorah, I find that I’m smiling, both corners of my mouth stretching even wider when Silver breaks character to wave at us.
For the nativity section, instead of frankincense, gold and myrrh, Jesus is given the gifts of acceptance, equality and kindness, as personified by three small children inexplicably dressed as two mermaids and a lobster. “Oh, sweet Jesus, spare us,” Emilia murmurs under her breath when the older kids, playing the shepherds, start a debate about the immaculate conception, which spitballs into a rap song about women’s reproductive rights over the years. When a boy comes out proudly dressed as a Roe v. Wade newspaper sandwich board, I can feel Emilia finally lose it next to me. She starts to laugh, and, when she lets out a loud snort, I can’t stop myself from grinning too. It could be the weed, but suddenly everything seems so insanely, improbably funny, and we’re both shaking with laughter. People eye us with a mixture of distaste and envy, and I feel like one of the lucky ones for a moment. A woman on the tier below us turns around to shush us, looking horrified. Her face changes instantly when she recognizes me, which only makes us laugh more. It’s the most I’ve laughed in a long time.