In Twenty Years: A Novel

by Allison Winn Scotch

  “That much is obvious.” Leon smiles.

  “I don’t know how to do it any other way.”

  “Listen, I admire my artists who are balls-out a hundred percent of the time.”

  “But?”

  “But what?” Leon looks at her, genuinely curious.

  “There’s a ‘but’ coming.”

  “No buts.”

  “But ‘perfect’ is a moving target.”

  Leon smiles, and Catherine can see why Lindy is drawn to him. The way his whole face opens up into kindness in the folds around his eyes. She thinks again of Bea, that maybe she sent him because she couldn’t be here herself. She knows this is crazy—Catherine doesn’t do spiritual juju—but she thinks it all the same.

  “I mean, I’m just saying that sometimes the bar keeps getting higher, and that’s enough to make the hurdles impossible for anyone.”

  “I don’t know how to do it any other way.” She’s ashamed of this admission. Not because working balls-out is anything to be ashamed of, but because if she were truly the best, she wouldn’t have to find another way in the first place. That’s why she keeps that notebook full of other people’s ideas; that’s why it was almost inevitable that she’d be exposed eventually. She is a fraud! In more ways than just one. How long did she think she could keep it secret?

  The emcee steps onto the stage, asking the crowd to hush. They’re about to begin.

  “I don’t know how to change,” Catherine says quietly. Then she remembers who she was twenty years ago, how far she’s come since then, and considers that it’s not that she doesn’t know how, it’s that she’s choosing not to.

  34

  LINDY

  Lindy can’t decide if she’s relieved or not that Mr. Pearson remembers her.

  “Of course I remember you,” he says, distracted by the first band’s opening number, an off-kilter headbanger, which ensures that they certainly will not be winning this battle. “I didn’t think you’d become anything other than a waitress who sang at bad open-mic nights.”

  “Yeah, I think that’s pretty much a direct quote.” Lindy presses her lips into a thin line and falls quiet while the lead guitar plays a particularly disharmonious chord arrangement. “I couldn’t have been worse than these guys.”

  “Works in progress.” Pearson grimaces. “Works in progress. And obviously I was wrong about you. I’m not too proud to admit it.”

  “Well, I appreciate that,” Lindy says, because she does. Because it’s the acknowledgment she seeks, after all.

  “I’m not above admitting I was a bit of a dick. But it’s not like you weren’t a pain in the ass too.”

  Lindy nods, conceding. She was. She still is. She’d like to be less of one, though.

  A kid who looks like a skinny freshman and who should seriously rethink the mustache he’s growing thrusts a clipboard at Pearson.

  “The full lineup,” he says, then notices Lindy. “Like, whoa.”

  Will, the hipster dude from before (full name: Will Overland—he tells Lindy this three times), waves him away. “Give her space, Brandon, give her space!”

  “I don’t need space. It’s fine.”

  “She certainly doesn’t need space,” Pearson agrees.

  “So you’re still keeping me in line?”

  “If I didn’t, who would?” He grins, and Lindy can see that maybe he was never the enemy, that with his calloused guitar hands and slightly graying temples, and his Sex Pistols shirt that somehow doesn’t look too trying-too-hard, maybe they could have been friends back then. She’d been too busy trying to buck the system, stick it to the man, to realize it.

  “I’m trying to be less of a pain in the ass,” she says.

  The lead singer introduces the band as Strange Fiction, and a smattering of applause spreads throughout the lawn. The singer looks mildly embarrassed to be there, but gamely continues, counting down—three, two, one—he jumps into a semisplit and lands on his feet—to the next disaster.

  “I put them on first so that no one could compare them to any of the better guys,” Pearson says. “God bless them, they want it so badly. Maybe with some time . . .”

  “You’d never have even put me on,” Lindy says. “I mean, if you’d done something like this. Which you never did. I firmly remember you being absolutely no fun.”

  “Oh God.” He rolls his eyes. “I was young and inexperienced and wanted to ‘prove myself.’ You guys had to take me seriously.” He hesitates. “But you’re right. I probably wouldn’t have put you on anyway.”

  “Twenty years later and you still suck.”

  Pearson laughs easily. “Not as much.”

  “So you really didn’t think I’d make it?” Lindy’s not sure why his answer matters so much to her, but it does.

  “It wasn’t my job to tell you that you’d make it. It was my job to teach you enough so you could.”

  “So you take credit for my success?”

  He smiles. “I take credit for nothing.” He gestures to Will, who pops over like a lapdog. Pearson tells him to cut the band’s third song. Will trots toward the stage to deliver the message: Sorry, you suck. “But, listen, you were a pain in the ass. Just to be one. Maybe I was a dick just to be one back. But you weren’t standing on principle; you just wanted to get under my skin for the sake of it. You were a pain in the ass for the sake of it.”

  “But that’s what made me successful.”

  He checks something off on the clipboard. “I doubt that’s what made you successful. That might just be what you think made you successful.”

  “Well, you already told me it’s not my talent.”

  “I didn’t say that.” He looks at her now, and she can tell it’s not because she’s Lindy Armstrong, but because she’s some kid he used to know, some kid who maybe had potential but who was too pigheaded to recognize that artistic integrity and asshole-like behavior were not synonymous.

  “I could have sworn I heard you say that,” Lindy mutters, the levity of the conversation gone.

  “That was the problem with you, Armstrong. You always heard what you thought people were saying, and never paid close enough attention to actually hear the truth.”

  Will has taken to the spotlight like a cat does to milk. He’s lingering too long up there, soaking it in, bantering with the crowd.

  “He’s just supposed to introduce the next band,” Pearson says. “He’s become a bit of a stage whore.”

  “All right,” Will says, his voice echoing over the lawn. “Before we bring out the next band, I have a huge surprise for you.”

  Some guy shouts, “I hope it’s not that they suck dog shit like the last band!” And then a few people clap and holler.

  “Quiet down, quiet down. I want everyone on their feet for this.” No one moves except for three drunk girls down front. “Come on, everyone up!” Reluctantly, like a slow wave, people slink upward.

  Lindy looks at Pearson, who appears befuddled.

  “Ugh,” she says. “Shit.” She had hoped Pearson had quietly nixed Will’s unbridled enthusiasm for a performance when her back was turned.

  “We have a grade-A superstar here tonight!” Will yells, too loudly, the mic too close to his mouth.

  “Shut up!” the same heckler bellows.

  Will ignores him. “Seriously, folks! Who watches Rock N Roll Dreammakers? Come on, don’t be embarrassed to admit it!”

  At least half the crowd claps now, a buzz building, a rumbling like an oncoming train.

  “OK, who owns her last album, Don’t Make Me?”

  The screaming starts in the back and begins to build to a fever pitch.

  “Jesus,” Lindy says. “I’m not here for this! Did you approve this?”

  “Do you seriously think I approved this?” Pearson replies.

  “Well, shit.” She chews her
lip, blows air out of her nose. Shit. She wanted to find Leon, have a private moment to tell him the truth.

  “I don’t remember you ever wanting to be inconspicuous.”

  Everyone is on their feet now, clapping and hooting, and Will, to his damn credit, has handled the crescendo perfectly.

  “Well, all right! That’s what I thought! Because we have Lindy goddamn Armstrong here tonight!”

  The three drunk girls down front start shrieking—real, honest-to-God shrieking.

  “I don’t want to go up there,” Lindy whispers. “This isn’t what I came here for!”

  “Really?” Pearson raises an eyebrow.

  “Welcome her, everyone! She’s a good old alumna, and she’s back to show us how it’s done!” Then he adds, shaking his free fist toward the blinding stage lights: “Screw you, Mom and Dad! I’m not applying for that internship! Yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaahhhhh!”

  The lawn has ignited now, yelling and howling and exploding with applause that until maybe yesterday, Lindy thought was everything. Validation, triumph, acceptance, happiness. Somehow happiness had gotten tangled up with all the rest, so skewed and jumbled in the mix that she wasn’t able to parse it out, distinguish it all on its own.

  Lindy stands immobile on the side stage, paralyzed, her legs unwilling to surrender, torn between what she thought mattered since she lost track of her old friends, and what she realized actually does matter in the hours since they’ve been reunited.

  “You’d better get out there,” Pearson says. “Do what you do best.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve kept tabs,” he says. “Even caught a show two years ago.”

  “Really?” Her stomach spins. “So, then what? What is it that I do best?”

  “Fake it.” He shrugs. “I have no idea how you didn’t know that until today.”

  35

  ANNIE

  “Oh my God!” Annie shouts, covering her ears like Gus used to when he didn’t want to be told it was bedtime. “Oh my God, does it always have to be about her?” She looks at Colin. “Seriously? Why is it always about her? Why am I sitting here listening to a Lindy Armstrong concert instead of enjoying my perfectly fine evening with crappy college bands?”

  “Shhhh,” the undergrad next to her hisses. “I’m videoing!” Her phone is held aloft, her face aglow with the bliss of stumbling on a real superstar in their midst.

  “Oh, shut up!” Annie says. “She’s not all that special.” Then to Colin, she says, “Seriously, what is so great about Lindy goddamn Armstrong?”

  Annie’s on her feet quickly, marching down the lawn, weaving in and out of the throngs of fans who are pulsing to the beat of one of Lindy’s new singles, something about female empowerment and girls’ nights and no men allowed. (Annie recalls that might be the name of the song: “No Men Allowed,” because she thinks Gus was singing along to it last week on his iPhone.) Annie finds this particularly ironic, not only because she’s now downed several of those beers that Colin toted along, but also because Lindy knows jackshit about girls’ nights and friendship and female empowerment.

  “This is crap,” she says to two girls who have their arms flung around each other’s shoulders, nearly tearful with reverence.

  “She’s the worst,” she says to another threesome, who gape at the stage with doe-eyed admiration.

  “She didn’t write a word of this!” she hisses, as she passes by those crew guys, the very ones who beckoned Annie here in the first place.

  She wedges her way through the drunk girls up front.

  “Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me!”

  “Ann, Annie, stop!” Colin is two steps behind her, Leon, one step behind him. Catherine and Owen pull up the rear somewhere.

  Colin reaches for her shoulder. “Come on, Ann. Come on. Whatever you need to say, don’t say it here.”

  “Why are you so forgiving of her? Why are all of you so forgiving of her?” Annie cries. “You!” She points at Leon. “She stranded you with a group of strangers when you came all this way for her!”

  Leon stares at his feet.

  “And you!” She pokes Colin in the chest, hard enough that he winces. “She slept with you knowing it would break my heart!”

  Annie can feel the blood rushing to her face, and even though she’s well past tipsy and also pretty sure that Colin is into her tonight, she regrets the jealousy, the shrillness in her voice. She is not that woman! She lived with Baxter’s infidelity for years, for God’s sake. Why is she dragging this up now?

  So she adds as a means of distraction, “Bea didn’t like it either.”

  “You’re right, Bea didn’t like it, OK? I’ve felt guilty about it ever since. But she forgave me, and we moved on, and can we please stop keeping score, all of us? All of you? She just . . . she wanted us to be happy. She made me promise to be happy.”

  “When did she make you promise this?” Catherine asks.

  “I don’t know. Sometime!”

  “I’m confused,” Catherine says. “Like, this was part of a philosophical discussion that you guys had while she was in Honduras after the wedding? I thought she was barely reachable in Honduras?”

  “No,” Colin says.

  “No, what? It was not part of a philosophical discussion that you guys had while she was in Honduras?”

  Leon, who knows nothing about any of this, says, “Well, I’m sure they had some private conversations every now and again, right, dude?”

  Catherine narrows her eyes. “When did she tell you this, Colin? I’m unclear on the timing.”

  “I don’t know! Years ago. What are you, the Bea police?”

  “Years ago, when?” Annie cries. “I tried to reach her for weeks before she . . . for weeks before we got the news, and she never called me back. Was she mad at me? Oh God, I shouldn’t have thrown such a fit at the wedding.” She eyes Catherine. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have. I was so stupid!”

  “She wasn’t mad at you, Annie.” Colin’s voice has turned brittle. “My God! Will everyone just stop and shut up for a minute? It was when she was sick, OK? She told me this when she was sick. Her cancer came back. Quickly.” He shakes his head like he still can’t believe it. “She was too sick to call you all back after the wedding, with all of that crap, and then she was gone. OK? None of this is about you . . . or you . . . or you.” He points to all of them. “It was about Bea. What she wanted, how she wanted it, so stop turning this into drama that it’s not.”

  Lindy wails in the background. Annie’s hand covers her mouth, her eyes wide and round and bright with shock.

  “What?” she says.

  “What?” Catherine says.

  “Fuck,” Colin says. “Fuck. This isn’t . . . this wasn’t how you were supposed to find out. You weren’t supposed to find out.”

  “What?” Catherine’s shoulders are curled up near her ears. “What are you talking about? Cancer? I don’t . . .” She pauses, like the news is broadcast from Mars, taking a moment to catch up with her brain, with the reality. “Wait . . . you knew she was sick this whole time? You told us it was a car accident! It came from you—all of this! It started with you . . .” She spits out the words. “You let us sit around and wonder about the details. Wonder exactly what happened. Do you know how many times I’ve replayed Bea slamming into a tree or swerving off the road? Or . . . dying by herself, all alone?”

  “I wasn’t letting you sit around!” he says. “I just . . . she was dead, OK? She was already dead! Would it have been better to imagine her going through chemo?”

  “That’s bullshit! If we’d known, maybe we could have helped save her! Done . . . I don’t know . . . but something. I cannot believe the lie started with you.”

  “We couldn’t have saved her,” Colin snaps. “You can’t just go around saving people just because you want to! I’m a doctor. I know!”
r />   “That’s ridiculous!” Catherine yells. “I cannot believe this. What did she used to say? That we were her family. Well, we obviously weren’t family. You don’t do these sorts of things to family! Lie to them forever.”

  Lindy hits a high note.

  “SHUT UP, LINDY ARMSTRONG!” Annie screeches toward the stage. “And by the way.” She jabs Catherine. “That’s exactly what I’ve been saying! Family! What crap. Look at her. Look at her!” She flaps her arms toward Lindy. “We’re not family! She was the first to leave. She’s always leaving us. She never wanted to be part of us for a second longer than she had to be!”

  “God, Annie, will you please just let it go!” Catherine raises her hands in the air. “She’s only acting this way because she was in love with you and doesn’t know any better. Christ! It’s been forever. Can we get it together already? Move on?”

  Annie feels something run cold, then hot, then cold again, through her. But then she’s marching once more—the others falling in line behind her like an army of ants, toward the stage, onward, with no idea what she’s doing exactly, or why she’s doing it, only that she’s had it up to here with Lindy Armstrong. After she stormed off from the hospital, the rest of them were wondering whether Lindy was OK (well, they were half wondering whether she was OK, but it’s easy to pretend they were swelling with concern), and here Lindy was, preparing for a surprise performance! Looking to boost her notoriety! Hoping to relive her glory days!

  “This is just crap. Crap, crap, crap.” Annie says. “That she made this weekend about her. This weekend was about Bea.”

  “I thought this weekend was about you guys,” Leon interjects.

  “Why are you even talking?” Annie shouts, mostly because Lindy is howling the chorus, and no one can really hear anything if they don’t match their own voices to decibel level ten. “Why are you even here? Did Lindy invite you? Did Lindy call you and say, ‘Baby daddy, come down and play house with me?’ Did she? Did she do that?” Annie doesn’t even realize what she’s said until they’re all frozen, heads tilted, jaws agape slightly more than they should be. Finally. One secret slithers out that’s impossible to ignore. Annie doesn’t dare breathe.