by Emily Beyda
“Shh,” he says, “it’s okay. Of course it was nice. It was perfect. You’re perfect. Don’t get so worked up. You’re good enough that you can stop. Finally. Isn’t that what you always wanted? To be a real person? To have your own life? To stop pretending?”
His voice is low and soft and kind. So loving it makes me clench my teeth. Inside me, everything is still. Like he always wanted. This has nothing to do with me. It has nothing to do with Rosanna, either.
“I can’t stop now,” I say. “It’s too late. I can’t stop now. She needs me. It would ruin her, ruin everything if I disappeared, too.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, still holding me tight. “I really am. But it’s just too dangerous. It’s over. It’s all over now. I need you here with me. Where it’s safe. All that’s left is one more excursion. You need to meet up with Marie and tell her you can’t see her anymore. Tell her it’s over. And we’ll stay here, you and me together. We’ll never be apart again. I promise you, sweetheart.”
And I know it’s done. I’m finished. Everything I’ve worked for, all my time and effort and work, it has all been for nothing. Worse than nothing—it has all been for Max. Max is the reason I’m here, he’s the reason I’m doing the work I’m doing. I notice his hair is just a little longer than it needs to be, his clothes rumpled, skin pale and waxy looking. I am so used to seeing Max that my mind has filled in the gaps that are there now, made his blank spaces whole. There is something in him that is unraveling. I wonder if I am the one pulling the string. If he will collapse if I turn my back on him and walk away.
And then I realize I can’t say no. I can’t go home. I can’t go back to my old life. I can’t go forward, either. There is no future for me, not the way I imagined. My account full of money has a name on it that only Max knows. My passport, my new identity, the future he promised me, all of it is tied up in him. In his letting me go. I see myself again in my apartment with that view of the Eiffel Tower, but Max is behind me, his arms wrapped tight around my waist. There is no future there. There is nothing but this room, and whatever Max has planned waiting for me on the other side of it. Maybe there never was a future. Maybe he never planned on letting me go, the account a fiction, my beautiful strange new self an impossible lie. I know too much now. There is nowhere in the world I will be safe from what I know, and no one who will believe me if I try to tell. I look like Rosanna. I have her face, her name. There are people all over Los Angeles who would swear that I am who I say I am, a host of waiters, stylists, paparazzi who would tell you that it’s happened again, Rosanna’s cracked, disappeared, leaving Max, I am sure, to be her sole protector and legal guardian. Even Marie would believe it. Our new friendship is precarious, she has no real faith in me. I have no proof of who I used to be. That girl, that anonymous girl, died a quiet death a long time ago. There is no one left who remembers her name.
“Okay,” I say. “I understand.”
I’ll tell Marie, I think. One last desperate gambit. I’ll tell her everything. It’s the only hope I have of getting out. I’ll make Max think I agree with him, I’ll meet her alone, and I’ll tell her everything. She will help me escape. Surely I can manage to convince her, no matter how crazy all this sounds. She knows Rosanna so well, knows what she is and isn’t like. She will have to believe me. I have to try. I know now that I have no other chance. I finally look into Max’s eyes. I smile a wide, false smile.
“And if you think it’s really what’s best for Rosanna, I’m glad,” I say, taking his hands in mine. “I’m glad that it’ll be just you and me. I really am. You’re right. It’s what we want. It’s all I’ve wanted all along. I love you, Max. I can’t wait for my real life to start. The two of us together always. Alone.”
* * *
—
Marie and I meet in our favorite café. Max texts her from Rosanna’s phone, which he has taken back from me, and within the hour he is dropping me outside the familiar brick building and I am walking toward her as she sits in a booth, our booth, twisting her engagement ring around on her finger. She seems distracted somehow. Like she doesn’t want to be here. I wonder what Max told her.
“Hey,” I say, “thank you for coming. It’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you, too,” she says. “What’s up? You said that we needed to talk?”
She’s looking at me with such trust that I can’t help but picture her expression once I tell her who I really am, the disappointment that will break across her face. She wants to help Rosanna, not me. She’ll hate me for being here, for keeping Rosanna from her. Not yet, I think. I’ll start slow.
“I wanted to apologize for the other night,” I say. “For my behavior. I shouldn’t have been drinking. I thought that I could just have one glass of wine, but I’m an addict, it doesn’t work like that. I should have known better, and I’m sorry.”
Marie gives me a strange look. “Really?” She says, “I thought you were fine. I mean, it was sort of odd that you left with Leo and Eleanor, I’ll give you that, I didn’t even know you guys were friends, but otherwise you were in peak form. Beau was totally charmed by you, by the way. He’s been texting me all morning about how he wants to cast you in that cockamamie Waiting for Godot project he’s been workshopping. God knows where he’s getting the funding.”
“So you didn’t think I was behaving strangely?”
“Not really,” she says. “Is that what this is about? Honestly, Rosanna, those parties are so exhausting that I don’t think I’d notice if Edward started making out with Beau. I’m so sorry you feel badly about your drinking. You know I support your sobriety. You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do to help, right? Like we have some really nice sparkling waters in the fridge, you should have asked for one. But as far as I’m concerned, it was fine, honestly. You were fine. We’re good.”
So Marie hadn’t noticed. Marie, who is supposed to know Rosanna better than anyone else in the world, who is supposed to be attuned to her every quirk and minor shift in personality, her confidante, her best friend, the woman who has known her nearly as long as she’s been alive, hadn’t noticed a thing. Hadn’t even noticed that her birthmark was missing.
“Oh,” I say. “Okay, that’s good. I’m glad.”
My voice is thin and shaky. Marie looks at me with concern. “Is that all you wanted to know?” she asks. “Is everything okay?”
I remember Eleanor’s face when she looked at Leo. How easy it was to persuade everyone he was crazy. Because what he was saying was impossible. What he was saying could never be true. And I realize what I’ve done. What can I say to Marie in this moment? That I am not the woman whose face I wear? The woman who knows everything about her? Whose eyes she looks into with recognition, love? No, what I have to tell her is impossible. The only way is for her to guess. She’ll never believe the truth if she hears it from my lying mouth.
“Do you ever feel like you’re not yourself?” I ask.
My throat is so tight I can barely squeeze the words out, like eking the last bits of toothpaste from an empty tube. Everything within me slows. Marie looks into my eyes with such compassionate understanding, and I think it’s over. Thank god, it’s over. She will recognize me. I will no longer be alone. She will share my burden or she will destroy me. At least I will no longer be under Max’s control. There she is, so close, so ordinary looking, the end of my life, arrived. She looks into my eyes. I into hers. I prepare to confess all the horrible things I’ve done, the lies I’ve told. The hurt I’ve caused Rosanna.
“I know the feeling,” she says.
She looks out the window to the street, where a family of tourists stands in the middle of the road, smiling at someone we cannot see. I feel a tremendous heaviness inside me, my heart bruised and aching, as tender as an overripe peach. I can feel Rosanna weighing down my body, my blood heavy with her blood, twice as warm. I am not alone. I have never been al
one, not this whole time. That’s what Max has forgotten.
“Sometimes it’s hard being Rosanna Feld,” I say.
Marie looks at me with a quickness that is almost like flinching, an emotion I cannot read flickering as quickly as a passing shadow across her face. I want her to see me. I want her to take my hands in hers, to tell me she understands. She knows exactly how hard it is. She’s here to help me survive.
“That’s exactly it,” she says, “the whole charade. You’re never allowed to just be another person, to live. To just be Rosanna, a woman with her own wants and needs and hurts. I felt that way at my party, too. Everyone looking at me like I was this perfect hostess with no needs of my own. And it’s, like, maybe I don’t care about your stupid sitcom. Maybe I don’t care about your feelings. I could go weeks without a single person asking me a question—well, nobody but my therapist, and I pay her. Even my family seems to see me as an imperfect reflection of my persona, this endlessly selfless earth mama, but I have needs, too, you know. You’re the only person who ever asks me questions like that. Who thinks about the way I might be hurting, too. I’m so glad you’re back. Sometimes I think you’re the only person who really understands me.”
Inside me, something cracks. And I know I can’t tell her. “I’m glad you feel that way,” I say, my voice pressed tight with tears. “I do understand you. I always have.”
Marie, misunderstanding, takes my hands in hers and smiles. She is doing the best she can, I know that, but still, a quick little jolt of anger passes through me. I had thought…what? That this could all be over? That she would look at me and know? That Marie somehow, self-involved and still a little angry at her more successful friend for leaving her alone for so long, could save me from the trap I have wandered into, willingly, with open eyes? No. She can’t. It is not, it has never been, as simple as that.
Suddenly my body feels so light, so insubstantial that I think I might float away. Marie sits silent beside me. Just another woman. Another person chained to the real world who won’t believe a word I say. I realize in that moment how hopelessly alone Rosanna must feel. Marie doesn’t really know her. Max is too self-involved to be counted on. I am all she has. And she is all I have, too. The only person who can save me is Rosanna. She is the only person with enough power to save us both. Outside, the tourists have finished taking their picture. They walk back toward us, toward the curb, where my car, with Max inside it, waits, engine idling in the twilight, to take me home.
Max leaves me alone in the apartment.
“I won’t be gone long, darling,” he says. “I promise. There are a few loose ends I need to tie up, some things I need to get for us. And then I’ll be back to stay. We’ll never be apart again.”
“Don’t take long,” I say. “I miss you every second you’re gone.”
He likes this. He pulls me close and kisses me, just once, on the forehead.
“I’ll come back as soon as I can,” he says. “Don’t worry. And then you and I will sit down and talk about what comes next.”
He kisses me once more before he leaves. His lips are soft and warm, his body yielding. I think for a moment that he trusts me, that maybe he’ll leave the door unlocked. But when he closes it, the lock clicks with a pronounced certainty, the bolt sliding tight.
* * *
—
I sit by the window for a long time. Everything in my body is buzzing, weighed down by panic. I can hear a little voice whispering at the back of my brain telling me to get up, pack a bag, make plans. But even the smallest movement seems exhausting. I remember reading once about how difficult it is to build machines that move like humans do. There are so many infinities of choice in our every gesture, in the way we straighten and bend our muscles in a particular sequence, adjusting our balance, our gait. The complexity of each motion is paralyzing when we become conscious of it. I feel it now. I am aware of every small movement. Of the impossibility of motion. I am trapped in the body they have created for me, this beautiful, terrible machine. There is nothing I can do. No one is coming for me, not tonight. Not ever. Slowly the panic fades, a terrible numbness settling over me like snow.
I turn to the magazines, searching again for clues. Rosanna has always stood by me there. Maybe she will come through for me again now. But the words seem to slide, shifting and blurring, making me seasick. I cannot bring myself to look at Rosanna’s face directly. There is something uncanny about her expression; it is impossible to tell if she is laughing or screaming. Her red lips are always so wide that it is as if she is about to swallow me up. I force myself to focus on her hands, shift my own to mirror them, feeling the heat of an invisible coffee cup, clinching tight the handle of a heavy purse, her hands, my hands, ours. The idea of our two bodies calms me. Just as long as I don’t have to look at her face, the imperfect mirroring, like catching an unexpected glimpse of yourself in a darkened window, that minute lag. Something that looks like you, is almost you, almost, but not quite.
And then I realize something terrible. It isn’t her face at all. It’s me. It’s all me. I flip through the stack to make sure, scrutinizing every image. Every photo is an image of a day that I have lived, of my body in places I have gone with Max or at Max’s prompting— all me, all mine, my own, my movements, my decisions, my flaws. The world is empty of Rosanna. She has left no sign of herself behind. It is my face, my own face, that nauseates me. It is my own face I am unable to bring myself to see. I think of that dark, abandoned-looking house. Maybe there was no breakdown. Maybe Max has done to her what he wants to do to me. Maybe she’s trapped there, lonely, scared. And I helped him do it. I stand up too quickly, knocking the magazines to the floor. How has no one noticed? How is it possible that no one has noticed my disgusting imperfections, my flaws? No one but Leo. And everyone thinks that Leo is crazy. I want to step on the magazines, to destroy them, to tear through their cheap bright pages with my lips and teeth, I want, what I want is to consume them, to take them into myself, absorb them, my image, her face.
I get down on my knees, close to the floor. I pick up each magazine carefully, lifting with the tips of my fingers, gentle. It’s important that I do not damage any part of her but that false face. I fan them out in a protective circle, sitting at the center, feeling the energy coming off them in steady waves, a powerful undertow. On the table above me is a sharp little paring knife. I had been using it, a moment before, to slice a small red pear onto a small blue plate. Now I open each magazine to the pages where Rosanna’s face should be. Gently, meticulously, I slice out the faces with perfect jabbing cuts, removing them from her body. I want to leave the faces empty so there will be a space for her when she comes back into the world with me. When the time comes for her to be reborn and my flawed face becomes her own. I sit still for a long time, the faces held tight in my clenched hands. I can feel the paper softening, the ink starting to bleed, the edges of the images melting into my skin. Then slowly, deliberately, I put them into my mouth.
At first it is difficult. The paper is stiff and refuses to buckle, coating my tongue with something thick and toxic tasting. But it gets easier. The edges of the faces begin to soften and collapse into bitter paste. I can slide each one in between my lips tenderly, like communion, like a kiss, until finally I hold them all in my mouth, sanding their sharp edges down with my tongue, blanketing them in the nauseating rise and swell of spit, some of which trickles from the corners of my lips, black, I see, when I use the back of my hand to wipe it away. I chew and chew until they collapse into liquid, something like melted plastic, bile. I want desperately to spit them out. But I don’t. I close my eyes. I force myself to swallow. The ink drips sticky down my throat. With it comes a new lightness. I wonder if Rosanna, wherever she is, can feel it, too. I picture her alone, sitting in the big white kitchen of that big white house, so close to where I sit, flipping through the same stack of magazines, considering the imperfect lines of my face. As she watc
hes, it shifts, just a little, and transforms into her own. She sees herself restored. Whole again. I think of all the women across the country, in kitchens and bathrooms and waiting rooms, on airplanes and in the back rows of classrooms, at a stoplight behind the wheels of their cars, in line at the grocery store, reading these magazines. I think of all of them experiencing the same quick moment of transition, my face melting into Rosanna’s. Isn’t she beautiful, they will say to themselves. Isn’t she just the most perfect thing?
I stand. I stretch. I am no longer dizzy. I feel a new solidity, an assurance that I haven’t felt in a long time. I am tied to this body. No power on earth can erase me. I gather the magazines into a neat stack. I place them on the table, my hands steady. I check my teeth, lightly streaked with black ink, in the reflection in the window. I run my tongue across them until they shine clean. I look down the canyon in the direction of Rosanna’s house. If I stand on the roof of my building, I might be able to see all the way to her garden, the broken mirror glint of her swimming pool. If she looks up, she will see me, too, her shadow, her reflection, close enough to touch. I feel something quiet click into place. Rosanna is with me now. I know what it is I have to do.
I take three of my sleeping pills and crush them to powder with the flat back of a spoon. I mix them with a splash of water until they dissolve into runny paste. I take a Diet Coke from the fridge and keep it ready on the windowsill, next to the glass. I pick up one of the faceless magazines, pretend to read. I sit back down. I wait for Max.
* * *
—
Loneliness presses tight around me, a confining embrace. The sun sets, the parrots settling, chattering to one another, rustling their wings. No cars pass up the hill. And even if one did, if I ran down into the street, if I got one to stop for me, somehow, what would I say? Below me, the city’s grid switches on, all those lights down all those boulevards going bright at the exact same instant, everything coordinated, serene. In the stagnant little reflecting pool at the courtyard’s center, the moon is rising, creeping, wide and flat and white, a tooth in a smiling, faceless mouth. Rosanna is in her house, in her bed, so close, the thrum of her growing stronger inside me. She needs me as much as I need her. More. She is out there, as alone as I am. I cannot give her up. That is the only thing I know, that I am all Rosanna has in the world, and she is all I have. We are, to each other, the only thing. I can feel her clamoring to speak, clawing at my throat. I open my mouth so her words can come out. What? I think. What is it that you want to tell me? And then a sound. The bolt turning. A light knock on the door. He has never knocked before. I open the can of soda, pour it into the glass. A little stir is enough to lift the powder up and distribute it farther, the bubbles agitating it into a finer and more invisible stream, the bitterness of artificial sweetener masking that deeper bitter taste. I take a drop on my own tongue just to make sure, but it tastes the same it always does, chemical, too sweet.