“What do you remember from afterward?” Monica asked. “From London and Greece and France?”
Simone smiled. “I remember you were so fierce in London. So protective. A guard dog. Pouring out all the booze, hiding the drugs.”
“Your friends didn’t like it.”
“My friends.” Simone waved her hand, dismissing the women, the notion of their friendship. “I remember being so glad that you were strong. That you could bark and bite at those women, not just because it was on my behalf, but because I had no bark and bite. None. I never did. And I thought it would protect you, that fierceness.”
Monica almost said that it did. That it both saved her and got her into a lot of trouble. But this was an interview, not a conversation.
“I don’t remember Greece at all,” Simone said, and Monica blinked. Astounded. “I was … in hindsight, it’s easy to see that I was dangerously depressed. I didn’t ever think about those months there until Charles …” Simone smiled, glancing over her shoulder to the shadows and the stairs. Monica wondered if he was listening. “Charles told me if we were going to be together, I needed to see a shrink and talk about some of the things I liked to pretend didn’t matter. Greece was one of the things we talked about.”
Monica remembered with photographic clarity the sight of her mother’s hand slung over the side of that thin bed. Mom, she remembered crying, Mom, please get out of bed. Please talk to me.
“You must have been terrified,” Simone said.
“It was a blast.” The sarcasm didn’t make her feel better. “What about France?”
“France was … scary.”
“Really?” Monica asked.
“You didn’t think so?”
You had come back to me. You smiled, laughed, held my hand as we walked along the river. Monica found herself unable to say those words. “I’m interviewing you,” she said instead.
“We had no more money. I’d spent all our savings. Used up everyone’s goodwill. And I knew we had to go back to the States. I’d been hiding for three years. We got back and I struggled to get work, crappy sitcoms and B movies, and game shows. And then Playboy called, and after that success, my agent told me about a reality TV show and I agreed.”
“Did you like doing Simone Says?”
“No. God, no.”
“Then why the hell were we doing it?” she yelled. She hadn’t meant to yell. She picked up a pencil, put it down. At loose ends inside herself.
“I was thirty-three years old, Monica. I didn’t even have a high school diploma. We had no money. None. The only other job offers coming my way with any real money attached were for adult films. I was just trying to make a living for us. A home. I wanted a chance to start over.”
“It must have been a relief when I left,” Monica said. The interview was slipping away from her, devolving into memory and accusation, and she was trying to rise above her feelings, but there was no getting away from them. She started to gather her things, ready to leave. To find Jackson and punish herself on him. To make this bad feeling acutely more painful.
This is what you do, a quiet voice whispered. When it gets too painful, when it gets too hard, you run away. Or you make things worse. It’s what you did with Jackson yesterday. It’s why you will never be happy.
Simone slipped her hand over Monica’s and she was so stunned, she didn’t move.
She forced herself to stay, to sit and be there in this painful, awful, honest moment. It was like holding her hand in a fire. She had to open her mouth to breathe through the pain.
“In a way, Monica, it was. I know how that sounds, but I was scared and you were so angry. And I made a lot of mistakes. More mistakes than I can count, but I should never have let you go.”
“You didn’t let me do anything … I ran away.”
“I could have dragged you back. I could have tried harder to keep you. But … by the time I tried, it was too late.”
She remembered her mother showing up backstage at random shows, asking her to come home, inviting her out for a meal, slipping her some money. All of which she refused. And then came the paparazzi blitz.
“Why the paparazzi, then?”
“You ran away from me, you wouldn’t come home. Wouldn’t speak to me and I … I knew what you were doing. The trouble you were flirting with, and I thought … if I could be everywhere, everywhere you turned, you couldn’t run. But … all I did was push you farther away.”
“Why are you doing this show now?” she asked. “This reality thing again.”
“Same mentality, I suppose. After you had so much success, I just wanted … I wanted you to know I was there.”
Monica didn’t want to understand. She had no interest in understanding this twisted, narcissistic behavior. But she did—because she’d behaved the same way. She’d retaliated against her mother using the same means.
Charles came back in the room, still in his robe, and he looked very pedestrian next to Simone’s slightly rumpled beauty.
“Why are you two together?” Monica blurted, apropos of nothing but trying to find some anchors in this new landscape.
Simone didn’t even flinch. One thing she could count on her mother for, she was pretty unshockable in the face of Monica’s shitty behavior.
“Why is anyone together?” Simone asked. “Why are you with the mayor? Oh, don’t look so shocked, Monica. It was all over the television in that America Today clip. He seems like a very nice man. Very protective of you.”
Done. This interview was done. Simone had just walked into a whole lot of none of her business. Monica gathered up all her stuff.
“That’s it?” Simone asked.
“That’s it.” Monica turned to Charles, who watched her with unreadable eyes behind his glasses. “Sorry to keep you up so late.”
“No.” Simone stood, her eyes flashing. She looked desperate, which was strange. Sort of alarming. “No. We’re not done.”
“What were you expecting? A Hollywood ending? We’d get all this out in the open and I’d fall into your arms, a little girl again, grateful? It doesn’t work that way in the real world.”
“Well, when … when can I see you again? There’s more I could tell you. For your book.”
“I have enough.” There was no further need to see Simone. No more ghosts to chase.
“Monica!” she cried, sounding stern, her attempt at a mommy voice. Monica turned back around and saw her mother, tears swimming in her eyes, her face red with anger and remorse. “Please,” she whispered.
Oh, if only she’d said that when it really mattered! She thought of all the years she’d imagined her mother begging to have her back.
And here it was, just after she’d stopped caring.
It was as if the ropes that had been holding her in the same place all these years were cut at once and Monica was set free, set loose from the anger. The memories, the child she’d been. Even the woman she’d been just days ago.
She drifted away from all that weight dragging her down.
She took a deep breath, gasping at the pleasure of being free of all that pain and anger. And then gasping again at the unexpected ache of it.
“I’m not leaving,” Simone said.
“Then I guess I’ll see you around.” That was all Monica could give her.
She walked out the door, Reba trailing behind her. Outside the screen door, the summer night was quiet. It was after midnight, and even the bugs were asleep. There was nothing but black velvet silence out there.
“I’ll walk you home.” The screen door opened behind her and Charles came out, wearing a dressing robe and boots.
“No.” She smiled, because he looked so ridiculous and it was—at its heart—a nice thing to do. And she could recognize that now. She felt chagrined for her earlier anger. Turtle Man, honestly. “Thank you. I’ll be fine.”
“It’s late.”
“I’m a big girl.”
“At least to the end of the street.” He started walking past
her, and she had nothing to do but start walking herself.
“I won’t apologize for Simone,” he said.
“I don’t expect you to. I don’t expect anything from you, Charles.”
“I know. But I do want to say this. We learn how to be happy from our parents. We learn how to treasure it and work for it, how to sacrifice for it. We learn how precious happiness is from the example our parents set.”
“Simone didn’t set much of an example,” she said, feeling sad for both of them.
“I know. She didn’t learn from her father, who probably didn’t learn from his parents. But … you could break that cycle. If you wanted.”
“I don’t have any children. I’m in no danger of passing on my family’s shitty legacy.”
“But you could be happy,” he said, his voice soft in the night. His boots kicked gravel and somewhere along the ditches, bushes rustled. Reba growled in her throat.
“You’re not making my mother happy?” she asked. “Shame on you.”
“Some days are better than others, but I love her. And she loves me, and she tries. But happiness … happiness isn’t her natural state. There are days, and she’d tell you this herself, she is just too scared to try.”
Monica found herself smiling, a surprise. “I understand that all too well.”
“Then you know it doesn’t take any courage to expect the worst. But to try …” He whistled, as if there were just no words for how hard it was to try to be happy.
Isn’t that the truth, she thought.
She stopped at the edge of the road, the streetlights of the square just up ahead. “I’m okay from here,” she said.
“I hope so,” he answered and vanished back into the shadows, leaving her to walk toward the light by herself.
Chapter 23
At dawn Jackson was on the front porch of his house. Waiting. Phone in hand, condoms by his side. Fear and anger a snarling, snapping beast at his back.
Gwen hadn’t come home last night.
She hadn’t returned his texts.
His only comfort was that if she were lying dead in a ditch, he’d have heard about it by now.
When he saw her again … he shook his head, unable to even finish that sentence.
He braced his elbows on his knees and held his head in his hands, but at the sound of the front gate creaking open he lifted his head, like a dog catching a scent.
“Gwen?”
But it was Monica, holding paper coffee cups and a bag from Cora’s. The pink of her shirt, of her lips, glowed in the half-light. “No,” she said with a smile. She looked about as rough as he felt, wan with dark circles under her eyes. Somehow, though, she managed to be the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. And he found himself so susceptible to that right now, he wanted to put his head in her lap and let her tell him everything would be okay. “Just me. Where’s Gwen?”
“She didn’t come home last night.”
“Oh my God.” As she walked up the stone path toward him, the smell of fritters and coffee and … her pulled the trigger on the worst of his volatile emotions and he remembered the condoms beside him on the stairs. “Do you know where she is?” she asked.
“With Jay.” He grabbed the condoms. “What do you know about this?”
“She gave those to you?” Monica asked as she set down the coffee cups and grease-stained pastry bag.
“No. I took them from her shorts.”
“Jackson—” That she dared to sound reproving made him furious.
“Don’t. You. Dare lecture me on morality when it comes to teenagers. I’m not running around giving them condoms.”
“You think that’s what I was doing? Running around just handing out free condoms?”
“It sure as hell looks like it.”
“Your sister came to me, Jackson. Talking about having sex. What should I have done?”
“Told her to come talk to me.”
Calm, she watched him.
“What?” he demanded. “You have nothing to say?”
“Why would she come to you, Jackson? You don’t talk to her. You don’t talk to anyone.”
“This isn’t about me, Monica. It’s about you getting involved in something that’s none of your business.” She kept pushing herself out of the corner she was supposed to be in. She bled into the edges of the town, his relationship with his sister, his plans for his life after Bishop.
“In the interest of full disclosure, she mentioned you caught her drinking, and I gave her my cell phone number and told her it would be better for her to call me for a ride than get into the car with someone who had been drinking.”
The top of his head felt like it had been blown off; he could only gape at her.
“I was only trying to help,” she said. “But you’re right. I should have told you.”
“This is how you help?” he snapped. “You learned this on that island of yours?”
She blinked at his viciousness but he couldn’t curb it. His whole life had started to fall apart the minute she blew into town like a hurricane, blowing apart the boundaries, the lines, the paths he needed.
“This isn’t your business,” he breathed, shaking the condoms in her face. “None of this is your business.”
Her lips went white at the edges, the small muscles flinching just like they had so long ago at The Pour House. I am hurting her. And I don’t know how to stop.
“What is my business, Jackson?” She stuck her chin out, as if asking for his best shot, and he didn’t think twice. He gave it to her.
“I think what happened in my office yesterday answers that question.”
The memory of her tipped over his desk, his hand holding her down, rippled through him, shaming him. That he brought it up like this—blaming her for it—made him even sicker.
She closed her eyes for a moment, as if gathering herself for another round. But when she opened them, there was a ghost of a smile on her beautiful lips and he was disarmed.
“This … this isn’t going the way I thought it would.” She stepped closer, looking up at his eyes, her body a breath away from his. And despite everything between them, he wanted to touch her. He curled his fists against the urge. Awareness that there was something different in the air didn’t sit well with him at the moment. He was raw. And his instinct was to circle the wagons, push her away.
“I came here to be brave,” she said. “I came here to try for happiness. I came to tell you I love you. I love you, Jackson.”
For a moment the words didn’t sink in. They didn’t mean anything. They were gibberish spoken in a foreign language.
“I … What?”
“I love you. I didn’t want it or expect it, but I love you.”
He opened his mouth—but there were no words he could apply to what ached in his bones. I didn’t want to hurt you. I don’t know what to say or do. I can’t see myself out of this.
“You don’t have to say anything,” she said, as if she knew just what the storm was inside of him. “I just … I just wanted to say it. I’ve never said it before.”
The front gate screeched open and there was Gwen, running up the front walk. The relief was painful, as though all his blood was falling through his body to his feet, leaving him numb and light-headed. “Jackson, I’m sorry,” she panted. “I fell asleep in Jay’s basement—”
“Go to your room.” He couldn’t even look at her, so he spat the words at her shoes.
She jerked to a halt, her eyes darting from him to Monica, and he wanted to scream at his sister not to look at Monica. That he was in charge. He was her family.
He held up the condoms.
“Did you tell him?” Gwen asked Monica, daring to act as if she were the affronted party.
“No. He … found them.”
“Found …” Gwen’s eyes swung to him. “You went through my room?”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“I’m not a little kid and you have no right—”
“I’
m in charge!” he cried. “I didn’t ask for this, Gwen. But you’re here and I’m here and Mom and Dad aren’t. I don’t know what you want from me! What more am I supposed to do for you?”
“What have you done for me?” she spat.
“I gave up my life!” The second the words were out he knew it was a mistake. He didn’t have to see her pain-filled face, her angry eyes. He didn’t have to hear Monica’s gasp of censure.
“You should just leave now,” Gwen said, stepping away from the hand he reached out to her. “Go, get on with your awesome life. I don’t need you. I never needed you. You were just too stupid to see it!” She stomped up the stairs and ran into the house. Into her room.
He watched her go, his bones aching.
I never needed you. You were just too stupid to see it.
God, if only he’d been that stupid, but he’d known she didn’t need him, not really, all along. All along.
Just as she probably knew how much he resented her for being the reason he had to give up his life.
“She didn’t mean that,” Monica whispered, trying to make it better. Trying to make it right. “Just like—”
“Like I didn’t mean it?” He looked up at her, his anger fading to grief. “We meant it, Monica. Those are the things we’ve always known and have just never been able to say.”
Her lips went hard. “Then shame on you.”
A tidal wave of exhaustion and resentment rolled over him. “I can’t do this all at once,” he whispered. “I can’t … the show, the Okra Festival, Gwen.” He looked at her. “You.”
She nodded as if she’d expected that. As if she’d come here knowing she would be hurt, knowing disaster would befall her, and he couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t wrap his head around it.
“We’re all connected, Jackson. All these people in your life who love you and who you try to hold at arm’s length. We’re connected and we’re messy. And we can’t live in the little compartments you want us to stay in. And I know you might not let me in, I know that might be too hard for you. I don’t fit into the idea you had for your life, and that’s too bad—mostly for you, because I could have been the best thing that ever happened to you. But I pray, Jackson, I pray you let your sister in, before you end up all alone. Before she ends up all alone.”
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