In the Unlikely Event

by L.J. Shen

  She blinks at me, clearly willing her tears away, and I wrap my arms around her, speaking into her hair.

  “But I don’t have a baby to take care of, and I’m not doing this out of fear or desperation or because my conscience won’t allow me not to try. I’m doing this of my own free will. Because he makes my reality better than my dreams. Because I am so painfully aware that we will all end up like Glen and Kathleen one day. We come from dust and return to dust. But while I’m here, on this planet, breathing, living, I want to do this alongside the person who makes me laugh. Who loves me unconditionally. Who kept a tattered, stained napkin that was a complete lie for nearly a decade, on the off-chance we’d meet again.”

  “Kathleen…” Mom shakes her head.

  I realize no one has explicitly said that to her, that Kathleen is dead. She would have been just a little older than me, were she still alive.

  I nod solemnly. “Car accident.”

  “Oh God.”

  Mom breaks off the hug and sniffles, grabbing my cheeks in her oily, wrinkly, mom-hands. She examines my face with the precision of a hawk to see if there’s a crack in my mask, if I’m telling the whole truth.

  “It’s real, isn’t it? This thing with Mal,” she asks brokenly.

  “The realest.” I laugh, happy tears sliding down my cheeks.

  “And you know all about what happened with Glen?” She looks at me from under her fake eyelashes, blinking slowly.

  I nod. “About the scar, too. I’m not mad, Mom. I just wish you’d told me. I could’ve handled it. You didn’t have to go through all this effort.”

  “Oh, but I did.” She rushes into my words, sliding her hands from my cheeks to my arms, squeezing. “I wanted you to know you deserved to be loved. You are the most precious thing in my world, Aurora, even if you don’t always feel that way. I wanted you to think he adored you, but I had to keep you far enough away from him so you’d never know the truth.”

  “Is that why you didn’t want me to come to Ireland?”

  She sighs. “That, and we seem to have it hard for Irish men. I didn’t want you to move across the ocean and leave me in America. It was selfish, but you’re my only family.” Pause. “I mean, you and the cigarettes and the hairspray.”

  We both laugh, until I remember I have something I still need to clear up with her.

  “The pictures. You sent Mal the pictures with the mean things I wrote about him. You sent him a letter saying I aborted his baby. It started a chain reaction that caused everything to fall apart over here. You have no idea.”

  I’m not going to pin Kathleen’s death on Mom, obviously. But she did manipulate the hell out of our lives.

  She sniffs, wiping her nose with the sleeve of her glittery denim jacket, which has pink patches and a sequin collar. That’s a sight I didn’t think I’d live to see. Usually my mother will grab anything within reach, including the Bible or a kid in a bubble, and use them to wipe off her snot before tarnishing her precious clothes.

  “I know. There’s no better way to describe it than I was being manic. I didn’t trust Mal, and I didn’t want you to end up in a bad situation like me. When I sent him the pictures, I thought that’d be it. I should’ve known your love was stronger than that. When he kept sending letters, I lost it. I knew he’d get to you soon enough. So when I sat down to write him my own letter, I described everything I’d gone through when I found out I was pregnant with you—with one little alteration. I wrote it as if you had an abortion. I couldn’t stomach it. It took me three days to write the letter, and I went back and forth. I threw up every hour. But it just cemented the fact in my head that you shouldn’t be put in this position. Only now I can see what kind of damage it must have caused the three of you. Please know, I thought it was a fling. Puppy love. Something you’d grow out of in no time. At no point did I think you wouldn’t find a better man for yourself in America.”

  The sad part is, I believe her.

  I know she did horrible things, and still, I cannot help but feel compassion for her. I saw how hard her life was. We lived under the same roof. She always provided for me. She always did her best.

  I wrap my arms around her again, and we sob into each other’s shoulders. It’s the toughest—and by far best—conversation I’ve had with my mother. And it hurts like a bitch.

  “I love you, Mom. But if you do something like this again, I swear, I’m going to go apeshit on your ass.”

  She laughs, grateful for the fact I lightened up the mood.

  “Oh, trust me. I know better than to mess with kismet, fate, and their peers. So what are you going to do about Summer?”

  She pulls away, running a loving hand along my arm. It’s the first time she’s ever done that, and I feel a rush of excitement, like we’re morphing into something different. More real. “You know, in the spirit of forgiveness and moving on and all the mumbo-jumbo you millennials are into?”

  “Oh, you know… I think I’m going to let karma beat her down for a little while.”

  A NOTE FROM GLEN (RORY’S DEAD FATHER)

  I cocked up.

  That is a blanket statement, of course, because that happened quite a lot, literally and figuratively. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I threw everything in the shitter. Maybe when I had my first drop of alcohol, when I was eleven. Uncle Paddy left the bottle on our kitchen counter, and my parents, who’d fought all night, slept in. It made sense to try whatever it was that made grown-ups in my family able to tolerate each other and put a smile on their faces.

  I was hooked after that.

  Or maybe it was when I knocked up Elaine, Kathleen’s mother. It was all fun and games until I had someone else to take care of, and I didn’t know how, because my own parents had expected us to raise ourselves. I had a few more brothers—six or seven, I don’t remember—but I was the youngest. My parents were in their forties when I was born, and they never showed the slightest interest in me.

  Maybe it was when I ran away from Elaine and Kathleen and locked myself in my parents’ old house and wrote “Belle’s Bells.” Not a day passed when I wasn’t asked about that song—on the street, in a letter, a fan email, or by a prodding radio host who remembered I was still alive and called me for a brief interview, usually around November.

  I wish I could tell you it was about Elaine.

  Or the girl before her.

  Or the girl before her.

  I wish I could tell you it was about Kathleen.

  But the truth is, this wonderful song about love and heartbreak and addiction and angst and all the things that make people’s hearts move is about…alcohol.

  A stiff drink to take it all away.

  Which is why, till the day I died, people speculated as to what it was about.

  Now, Rory and Debbie were a different story altogether. I think I actually fell in love with Debbie in Paris. When she told me she was pregnant, my gut reaction was to tell her to move to Ireland with me. So I did.

  She tried to make it on her own in America, but when she realized it was harder than she’d thought, she finally accepted my offer. By which time, I was a deadbeat drunk, not an artist drunk. Quite a difference.

  I could tell you I didn’t move to America because I had a daughter I couldn’t leave, and later a son, too. But I wasn’t that great a da. I was torn and messed up, but had only myself to blame.

  The day I hurt Rory was the day I lost hope. It is hard to rationalize and make excuses for a no-show father, but it is impossible to justify one who hurt his own baby.

  I came out of jail worse than I went in, with one big difference—I stopped trying to reach out to Debbie and see Rory, and I started putting an effort into what I had.

  Kathleen knew I was a terrible, abusive drunk, but I did my best with her.

  With Mal, too. It broke my heart to see my daughter pining for a boy who was waiting for the big bang. She was just a floating star in his universe. I knew those things couldn’t be changed.

  I knew b
ecause her mother wasn’t it, either. Debbie was.

  But being dead is actually centuries better than being a guilt-ridden drunken fool. If you’re wondering what it’s like on the other side, let me tell you, it’s not that bad. Weather’s nice all year round, though you can’t really feel it. I don’t have a body, so that’s a bit of a downer. No one does. I’m not above the clouds, nor am I under the ground. There’s no heaven, nor hell. I’m in everything, though. In the air and in the trees. On butterfly wings and in the cow shit and between the cracks on the floor. I’m on top of skyscrapers in Beijing and on a dandelion in a small town in Nebraska.

  Being dead, you don’t always feel the spirit of other people who are dead, unless you know them really well and they’re beside you.

  Right now, I can feel Kathleen. She’s standing right next to me, asking if we should go for it. Not with words. It’s unspoken, like the meaning behind really good song lyrics.

  We do things we shouldn’t do all the time, Kath and I. There’s no protocol against it, and if there is, they didn’t hand it to us when we switched over to the other side.

  I’ve turned off lights in a pub when Mal and Rory needed to get the point.

  Made it snow.

  Shut down electricity.

  I did everything I could to signal to Rory that Mal is the one, that he is not like me.

  That he will not let her down—he will love her forever.

  But I’ve never made an entire street light up before, especially a street as crowded as Drury.

  “Think we can do it?” I ask Kathleen voicelessly.

  I’m tucked between the bricks of a red Drury Street building, and she’s on top of a bus stop. I can feel her nod.

  “Let’s give them something to freak out about.”

  (ANOTHER) NOTE FROM KATHLEEN

  I told you I’m not the villain.

  P.S. She better be good to my kid.

  P.P.S. Yes, of course, I regret telling Aurora Rory I would never take care of her child. A bit late to change it now, though.

  P.P.P.S. Fine. They do look cute together. Happy?

  (ANOTHER) NOTE FROM SUMMER

  Me again.

  I mean, like, duh. I needed closure with my best friend—didn’t I?

  Even when it became painfully clear that Rory wasn’t going to come back to our apartment in New York. Not that I didn’t understand. She was now with the love of her life, living the charmed little existence she’d always dreamed of.

  Plus, I screwed up. I know I did. It doesn’t matter that she wanted to break up with Callum, that she never felt for him an ounce of what she feels toward Mal, that I was pretty sure their relationship wouldn’t last another day, or that we were both very drunk.

  I made one mistake. I wouldn’t allow any more of them to stack up. I needed her forgiveness to move on.

  I flew out to Ireland. Extreme, huh? I think so, too, considering the amount of rehearsal I bailed on just to be able to patch things up with my BFF (best fucking friend). I took a cab to Tolka straight from the airport three months after she found out about Callum and me. Three months after she started ghosting me.

  I found her in a compromising position on the grass in her backyard, being nailed by her new husband. I swear he was planting her like a flower. I interrupted them mid-fuck, but only by accident. The door was unlocked—I remembered Rory used to complain that Mal always kept it unlocked—and I waltzed in. When I realized what was happening before my eyes, I started backing up, but my butt hit the breakfast nook and knocked a Guinness bottle to the floor, and they both turned around to see where the noise came from.

  The first thing Rory did was throw her dress at me, then she proceeded to bolt up on her feet and chase me naked around the cottage, yelling, “You screwed my boyfriend” really loudly.

  Mal leaned against a wall, arms crossed, a smirk on his face, watching the entire thing half-naked and fully hard. He was gorgeous. I finally realized why she couldn’t shake him all those years. Not only did he look a thousand times better in person, but he also has this cocky, sweet, you’ll-never-tame-me expression that just speaks to the inner fixer-upper women have.

  Mal then made us all coffee and tea before he announced that he was going to pick his daughter up from school.

  On the couch, Rory grabbed my hand and told me, “You know what the worst part is? I wasn’t even mad at you for sleeping with him. You’re right. I did tell you I was going to break up with him a gazillion times, though it was still a mistake. I was mad because you didn’t tell me. And because you kept pushing me into his arms for your own, selfish reasons, despite my doubts. The lie is bigger than the sin.”

  “I know.” I broke down in tears.

  I was tired from the flight and from being eaten alive by my own guilt (AKA not the way one likes to be eaten). I just couldn’t take it anymore.

  “I know all those things. I just thought I could sweep it under the carpet and pretend like it never happened. I wanted it to work out between you guys—right up to the point you were in Greece, actually.” I gnawed at my lower lip.

  “Why? What happened?” Rory asked, taking a sip of her tea.

  She was normally a coffee drinker. Another thing that changed after she moved to Ireland.

  “I ran into Whitney, Ryner’s assistant, at Saks. Before you growl at me, I was just looking around, not working on inflating my overdraft situation.” I cleared my throat. “Anyway, I could swear she was sporting a baby bump. It was so easy to figure out with her malnourished self. Of course, I had no intention of saying hi to her, so I did what every character in a B-grade romantic comedy does and hid behind the mannequins. Whit was walking around with someone who looked like she could be her mother, rubbing her swollen belly. The woman asked her, ‘Do you really think he’s going to leave his girlfriend for you?’ And Whitney replied, ‘I don’t know, and I don’t care. He got me an apartment next to his so he can be close to the baby. If Callum wants to marry Little Miss Awkward, I’m not going to ruin his plans as long as he keeps the cash flow coming. Which he will.’”

  Rory’s eyes flared, and she sucked in a breath, straightening her back. More than anything, she looked casually outraged. Like, when you tell your friend about something insane that happened to one of your colleagues at work. She seemed completely emotionally detached from the story, which made it easier to tell her.

  “What happened then?” she asked.

  “Well, at first I thought, What are the chances? But then, I remembered you always told me Whitney was extra touchy with Callum and totally had the hots for him. Pieces started falling together. He’d cheated on you before, why wouldn’t he do it again? I tried to call when you were in Greece, but you didn’t pick up. Then what happened between us came out, and it was too late. I swear not telling you was the worst thing I’ve ever done, Rory. I swear. There’s never any way a boy could come between us.”

  Rory put her hand on mine and smiled. “I know.”

  “You do?” I felt my entire face twisting in pain.

  She nodded. “I’ve known it for a long time—that I was going to forgive you, that is. I figured we should have this conversation face to face, so I was going to do it when I came to visit Mom in a few weeks. But you beat me to it. Look, I know how crappy it feels to cheat on someone. I agonized over what I did to Callum. Still do. Because it doesn’t matter that he cheated—I’m better than that. Or I should have been. I don’t regret being with Mal, but I regret that it happened before I broke up with Callum. That’s for me to live with, a permanent stain on my conscience, and yet here I am—living. So I’m asking you to do the same. Live with your mistake, Cinder-freaking-rella. Learn from it, and go find your Richard Gere.”

  We stared at each other for a while, smiling quietly. It felt like a promising hello, but somehow also a bittersweet goodbye. Nothing would be the same, I knew, with or without Rory’s forgiveness. She was not coming back—not to live in New York, anyway, and yet she chose to give me the beauti
ful gift of forgiveness.

  “For the record, I hate your new husband for taking you away from me.” I sniffed, crossing my arms and looking the other way to further prove my point.

  “For the record, he resents you, too, for what we did to his pictures,” she snorted.

  “You told him!” I grabbed a throw pillow and threw it in her face.

  She caught it in the air and tossed it back at me, laughing.

  It hit my face and fell in my lap.

  “Bitch,” I shrieked.

  “Traitor.” She waggled her eyebrows.

  We both collapsed to the floor, holding our bellies, giggling, and I knew that with or without her, I’d eventually be all right.

  Now I’m at the Dublin Airport, waiting for my flight back to New York.

  There’s a tall, dark, handsome-type guy sitting across from me, waiting for the same flight and reading a paperback of The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. By the pace at which he flips the pages—barely every minute or so—I know he’s focused on me from the corner of his eye.

  I slip one foot out of my pump and wiggle my hot pink toenails, popping the mint gum between my lips and eyeing him brazenly.

  He looks up, a polite smile on his face. “May I help you?” he asks.

  “No, but I can help you.” I flash him a grin.

  His brow rises. “You can? Please enlighten me as to how.”

  “I can move somewhere else, so you won’t be distracted and can finish your book. It’s a wonderful novel, you know? Vlad the Impaler was the real MVP.”

  God bless my weird obsession with Eastern European folklore.

  Tall, Dark, and Handsome closes the book and rests it on his crossed legs, sitting back and giving me his full attention.

  “Do you have a name?”

  “What am I, Arya Stark? Of course, I have a name.”

  He bursts out in laughter, which instantly makes me smile. My heart is pounding all over my chest. I steal a glance at his left hand. No ring. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t involved.