by Sorenna Wise
“This isn’t a perfect world,” I said sadly.
Jake nodded. “Well, that’s the problem.”
The next morning, I picked up the phone and dialed the number Blaise had given me. As I listened to the ringing on the other end, I realized my heart was pounding. What the hell am I going to say? I thought. But before I had too much time to worry about it, the ringing was replaced by the sound of someone answering.
“Hello?” Mrs. Bridges’ voice was maternal and sweet, but also marked by the tone of the very rich.
“Hi,” I said, doing my best to mask my nervousness. “Is this Mrs. Bridges speaking?” I already knew it must be, but it was only polite to make sure.
“Yes, it is.” I could hear her smiling. “Can I help you?
That’s when I gave up on trying to come up with a plan and flat out lied to her. “Yes, I’m a friend of Alyson’s from Pelican, and I heard she’s been in kind of a rough spot lately. Do you think it would be all right if I came to see her? She gave our friend Blaise this number, and I thought I’d try to get in touch with her. If you’d rather I didn’t, that’s perfectly okay. I just wanted to see how she was doing.”
It was the perfect thing to say. “Oh, I’m sure she would love it if you came to visit! It’s so nice to hear from one of her friends. She never talks about anyone from there. But you know how she is.”
I chuckled. “Yeah. Anyway, I’m just making sure it’s okay with you. Is there any particular time that’s more convenient?”
“Well, I think she’s pretty much available whenever, dear,” Mrs. Bridges said. “She’s…taking some time to herself right now.” Her slight hesitation confirmed what Blaise had suspected: that Alyson wasn’t in the best condition as of late. I started to have misgivings again, but I knew I was too far in to be able to back out now.
“That’s what I heard,” I said. “Maybe I can cheer her up a little”
“I’m sure you will, sweetheart. Thank you for calling.”
I said goodbye, and after I hung up, I noted a number of things. Firstly, she’d never offered to put Alyson on the phone, even though that would’ve been the most logical thing to do if one of her friends called. Secondly, she’d never asked if I needed directions, although she could have easily assumed I’d already gotten them from Blaise or Alyson. Thirdly, I hadn’t specified a date or time, and she hadn’t wanted to know. Maybe she was planning on being out of the house no matter when I was there. Maybe she was out of the house a lot these days.
Still holding the phone in my hand, I went out to the living room. Jake lay on the sofa, sketching. “How was it?” he asked, without looking up from his sketchbook.
“I don’t know,” I said. He glanced at me, quizzically. “It was kind of strange. But I’m going. Where do her parents live?”
“They’re out in the country,” he said. “I’ll draw you a map. It’s maybe an hour drive. Did Blaise say he was going to give you gas money?”
“Eh. I had a lot of money saved up from the Pearl. It’s fine. Plus, if this means I never have to deal with her again, it’ll be worth it.”
“Can’t argue with that. When are you going?”
“I was thinking Thursday,” I said. “The theater’s having a final line rehearsal to make sure everyone’s memorized their parts, and they’re not using props, so we don’t have to be there.”
“Oh, so you’re substituting real drama for fake,” he quipped. “I see.”
I punched him gently in the shoulder. “Hopefully, there won’t be any real drama. In my head, we’ll either talk it out, or she’ll go nuts and I’ll get out of there.”
“Fifty-fifty chance either way,” Jake said. He flipped to a clean page and began to draw out the map.
And that’s how I ended up driving down a winding country road at 11:00 on a Thursday morning, heading for the home of a girl who had probably once defined herself as my arch-nemesis. Oddly, I wasn’t nervous anymore, and maybe that’s because I knew this was the endgame. However this weird little visit panned out, it was likely going to be the last time I saw Alyson, and that suited me just fine.
I know what you’re thinking. ‘Oh, Ari, that’s not how the story’s supposed to end. You and Alyson have to reach some kind of heartfelt conclusion about who you are as people and how you have way more in common than you thought. There’s not enough mutual understanding!” I hate to break it to you, but as much as it might have seemed like it at some points, this isn’t a Lifetime movie. It’s not hard to notice that real stories often don’t end the same way fictional ones do. But also, it’s not quite over yet. If you wanted to know what happened when I got there, today is your lucky day.
CHAPTER 11
Jake had told me Alyson was rich, but I didn’t understand what he meant until I saw the house. For one thing, there was an actual, wrought iron gate in the front, at the end of this long, pebbled driveway. Sitting in my car as I waited for it to open, I said out loud, “Are you kidding me?” The only times I’d ever seen houses like this, it was from afar, or in magazines. The sheer scope of it didn’t seem real.
A refined, singsong voice came crackling over the box on the wall outside of the gate. “Who is it?” I recognized Mrs. Bridges immediately.
“It’s Ari, Alyson’s friend?” I said. “We spoke on the phone.”
“Oh, yes, yes. It’s a good thing you caught me, dear. I was just heading out. Let me open the gate and call her down for you. I was right; this woman had no plans to be in the vicinity while Alyson and I were together. I couldn’t say I blamed her.
The com clicked off, and a moment later, the heavy gate began to swing open. Without its intricate design barring the way, I got my first good look at the Bridges manor. It was even more impressive than I’d thought as I pulled up. Easing up the driveway, I counted at least fifteen separate windows. The pillars supporting the front peak were huge, museum-sized. I pulled to the side, next to one of several spotless, extraordinarily expensive cars, and put mine in park. It was not without trepidation that I got out and began the walk up to the front door.
The house had a huge silver knocker in the shape of a lion’s head that I really wanted to use, but the door was already opening as I climbed the steps. Mrs. Bridges waited to meet me, her hands clasped in front of her, beaming. She looked like a cross between a movie star and the queen of England.
“Come right in, dear,” she said. “Alyson will be down in a moment. I’d love to stay, but I’ve got an important luncheon to attend. I’m sure you understand.” There was something meaningful in the undertone of her voice. I nodded.
“Of course. Thank you for having me.” I paused to look around the massive foyer. “Your house is beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it.” This, at least, was true. The floor was made of polished stone, and a double-sided staircase arced up to a balcony above an alcove between the steps in which a marble fireplace nestled. Each of the side walls held portraits—actual, painted portraits, the kind you have to sit for. I was flabbergasted. Never in my life had I seen such wealth so flagrantly displayed.
“You are positively the sweetest,” Mrs. Bridges told me, squeezing my hand. Then she glanced toward the top of the left stairs, and something in her benevolent face changed. Her eyes, which were blue like her daughter’s but much, much warmer, because strained. “There she is,” she said, in a peculiar, quiet voice. She checked her watch. “It was lovely to meet you, Ari. I’d best be off. You girls have a good time.” Right after she said that, she picked up the designer purse that was sitting in a chair by the door, and left.
Inside, Alyson and I stood face to face.
I don’t know what I was expecting her to say, if anything. What she did say was surprising, because it was so devoid of emotion. “Why did you tell my mother we were friends?
“What, was I going to tell her we were enemies?” For all the time I’d spent worrying about how I was going to interact with her, once Alyson was in front of me, I found it was a lot easier than I t
hought. She was, after all, just a person. The time away from her had lessened my fear.
She seemed to concede the point. “I guess Jake told you how to get here, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, but Blaise is the one who sent me.”
She gave me a weird look. “Really? Blaise? I did give him this number.”
“I know,” I said. “He didn’t feel like he could really call you, so he called me instead and asked me to come see if you were doing okay. And…I said I would.”
Alyson appraised me with those cool eyes. “Why?”
I held out my hands. “Honestly? I don’t know, man. But I do know you’ve got problems, and that there’s not a lot of people around who can help you.” What I really meant was, I know you don’t have friends, and she understood that perfectly. It didn’t seem to offend her; on the contrary, she stepped off the bottom stair and motioned me toward the recess with the fireplace.
“You might as well sit down,” she said. I sat at the smooth, marble-topped table. She sat across from me. There was a finely crafted chess set sitting on the lip of the fireplace. I wondered idly if she played. “So Jake must have told you everything,” she said, interrupting my train of thought. “It was only a matter of time.”
“Yeah,” I said. “After the date, we went home and he told me the whole thing.”
She smiled wryly. “After I made a fool of myself, you mean.”
“Believe it or not, he didn’t tell me about that.”
She arched an eyebrow. “And you didn’t ask?”
“Why would I? His past is his business.”
She looked down at the tabletop. “That’s…kind of you. You’re like him, you know. Jake was always remarkably kind. I think that’s why I loved him.” She hesitated. “It was kind of you to come here too. Even though I’m sure most of the things you heard about me were bad. I have to admit, I don’t really understand it. I don’t know what it’s like for people who care so much about others.”
“You cared about Jake,” I said gently. “That’s something.”
“I cared too much,” she said. “That’s how I am. Either I care so much it destroys the thing I love, or I just don’t feel anything at all. That’s what the pills do—they keep me from feeling too much. But Jake made me feel a lot of things, so I foolishly assumed he was just as good as the medicine. Obviously, I was wrong.”
“Are you taking it now?” I asked. She nodded.
“You don’t have to worry.” There was a deep poignancy in her voice. “I have promised myself I’ll never go off it again, and that means I can’t ever go near Jake. I’ll stay here until I’m well enough to be part of the world again, and then…I don’t know where I’ll go, but it won’t be back to Pelican.”
This was the best news she could have given me, but I was taken aback by how sad it made me feel. Sad for her, mostly. “That’s good,” I said, “but I didn’t come here to make sure you were out of my life for good. I could never do that. I just want to know you’ll be okay.”
She examined her hands for a long time. “I haven’t told this to anyone,” she said, “but you might get it because you loved Blaise and he left you. Do you know what I learned from my time with Jake?” She met my eyes, and I looked back at her. “Love is for real people only.” I tilted my head. “When I was with him, I was only pretending to be a human being. I wasn’t good. I wasn’t functional. I did things I never should have done. I know how much I hurt him. But I never took a step back because I was too afraid to assess my own actions objectively. If I had, it would have been clear as day that I did not belong with him. I couldn’t handle that. So I just kept on being this awful sham of a person. And I dragged Jake along with me.”
There was a disturbing amount of sense in what she was saying. I remembered how I felt when I was with Blaise, that not only was the life I lived with him unreal, there was no possible way it could be what real life was about, because it was horrible. I was lucky because I didn’t have any mental illnesses clouding my perceptions. I couldn’t imagine how it must have been for her.
“The worst of it is,” she added, “that I could have stopped it. It’s not like I threw the medicine away. At any time I wanted, I could have started to take it again, thereby saving both of us from further humiliation. But I didn’t. All I can say is that I forgot how to think.” A sad smile crept across her face. “I’m still astonished that he took so long to end it. I think he really wanted to help me.” She laughed, but bitterly. “The best thing he could have done was to send me to the mental hospital, but of course he would never have done that. He thought too highly of me.”
“He didn’t think you would go,” I said. It was the only thing I could think of to say that wouldn’t make me sound stupid or insensitive.
“I probably wouldn’t,” she said. “In my heart, I was convinced he was the solution to all of my problems. It’s too bad that heart was only made of pills and paper.” She let out her breath. “When I heard of you, I was crushed. The irrational parts of my brain took over. I became obsessed with finding out who you were, why he liked you, what made you so much better than me. And when I saw you for the first time, I knew. No one can pretend to be someone like you.”
Then, to my surprise, she reached over and took my hand. “Look,” she said, turning it over and holding it next to her own soft palm. I had calluses underneath my fingers from lifting trays at the Pearl and moving furniture at the theater. The heels of my hands were rough and dry. She pointed to them. “My skin is perfect. My nails are perfect. But yours are real.”
“Isn’t there someone underneath all that, though?” I said.
“I think so,” Alyson replied. “I hope so. At least now I understand that the medicine is for her, not…whoever she is when I’m not taking it.” She chewed her lip. “It’s all right to hope, isn’t it? That’s something you…we…do?”
“Yes,” I said. “And we hope for other people, too, just as we care. For instance, I hope that one day, you’ll figure out what it means to be happy.”
Alyson blinked. Her eyes were brighter than usual. “You know,” she said quietly, “I don’t think anyone’s ever said that to me before. I’ve never even said that to myself.”
Our meeting didn’t last long after that. There were no hugs, no heartfelt goodbyes. There was only a simple thank you, and a shaking of two hands. As I drove back down the driveway and out through the gate, my mind lingered on the things she said. Her unvarnished honesty gleamed like a jewel. Maybe you’ll get it because you loved Blaise and he left you. Maybe I would understand her because I had been hurt like she had, because I had lost something in a way that was, in my eyes, beyond my control.
In some sense, Alyson Bridges was right, but she was also wrong. I don’t think that the heart that loved Jake was the one she’d made out of “pills and paper.” As they say, and as I’m sure she knows, some hearts aren’t hardly true.
But some are, and those are the ones that get broken.