by Sara Shepard
“Gabby,” I call out, bursting onto the street. “Gabby, wait!”
Gabby is scrambling in her suit and heels, her purse bouncing against her back. She banks around a corner, sweeping right past her parked car.
“Gabby,” I cry, chasing after her up the long street. She keeps running. “Gabby!” I scream. “Stop! I need to talk to you!”
“Just go, Eliza,” she calls over her shoulder. “Please.”
“I’m not leaving. Not until you tell me what the fuck is going on.”
She has run into an alleyway, and there’s no way out. She halts and spins around, shielding her hands against her chest. She looks frightened of me. Which is ridiculous, because it should be the opposite. Right now I have no idea who I should be afraid of. Maybe everyone.
“Tell me why Leonidas is texting you about the police,” I demand.
“It’s all a misunderstanding.”
“Bullshit.”
“Just let it go!”
“I’m not letting it go! You know something. Just like Mom knows something. How do you even know Leonidas?”
“We’ve been friends for a while. Out of worry for you.”
“Why is everyone so worried?” This last word explodes off my tongue, salty, fizzling.
Gabby’s bottom lip twitches. She is digging her thumbnail deeply into her palm.
“Why are you and Leonidas talking about Palm Springs?” I press. “Why is he talking about the police? What are you guys trying to cover up?”
Gabby juts her chin toward the sky. “Eliza, this isn’t some kind of conspiracy!”
“Really? You could’ve fooled me!” The blinking neon lights on the hotel across the street are only enhancing my dizziness. I turn away from them. “I know you have answers, so you’d better start talking. What are you keeping from me? Tell me what you know!”
I’m inches from her face now, my breath mingling with hers. Gabby tucks her chin into her chest. Her shoulders heave up and down. “Eliza,” she squeaks out. “Trying to figure out this pool thing, you’re just harming yourself. It’s making you so paranoid. So troubled, like before. We’re not trying to hurt you. We’re not the bad guys here. You’re sick. Whatever was happening to you before your brain incident is happening again.”
There’s part of me that wants to buy into what she’s saying—after all, I think it might be true, too. But I keep seeing those texts on the iPad screen. No. This isn’t just my brain. Not all of it. “I’m not just randomly falling into pools. And I heard Leonidas saying something sketchy on the phone the other day, and I remember Mom in that parking lot. I know you know something, maybe everything. You can be arrested for withholding evidence,” I warn her. “You know that, right? If you know something, you have to tell me. I can go to the police.”
Her eyes are shut. “Don’t go to the police.”
“Because that would get you in trouble, right?”
“Just let it go!” Her hands flail in front of her face.
“I can’t!” I scream.
I back away from her, my whole body heaving. I don’t realize I’m crying until the tears hit my mouth. We both stand there for a few beats, hardened in our shells. After several ragged breaths, Gabby looks at me again. Her eyes are dark and wet. “It was me, Eliza. I did it.”
My hands fall to my sides. A garbage truck passes by, and I concentrate on that for a moment, staring at the red plastic string of a trash bag that got caught outside the hopper. I try to imagine what could be in that trash bag. Porn magazines? Yogurt containers? Body parts?
When I turn back to Gabby, her head is dipped so low I can see her straight, neat part. “What did you do?” I whisper.
“I was at a conference at the Tranquility the same day as you. I-it was a weird coincidence to see you there. You were in the bar, and you were acting so strangely. Like you were going to have another seizure. I tried to calm you down, but you got violent with me. I realized you were really, really drunk. So I walked you outside to get some air. But you kept freaking out. You were just so drunk, and you were acting so ridiculous, and I was afraid you’d say . . .” She takes a big breath. “I wanted to sober you up. I wanted you to just . . . rest. So I pushed you in the pool. It was a knee-jerk reaction.” Gabby peeks at me. “I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry.”
“I was talking to you at the bar?” I try out, digging around in my brain. I wish I could remember this. I wish I could remember her.
“Yes. That’s right.” Her syllables come out choppily, like she’s pulling them, taffy-like, from her throat. “But then I walked you outside. I just didn’t want you making a spectacle of yourself. I was trying to do you a favor, but I realize now that it was a terrible decision.”
“What was I freaking out about?”
“I don’t really know. I couldn’t understand you.”
“So you pushed me into a pool just because I was being drunk and ridiculous? When you knew I couldn’t swim?”
“I know. It’s awful. I wasn’t thinking.” She covers her face with her hands.
“Is it because of what happened when we were young?”
Her head shoots up. “. . . What?”
“How I . . . wasn’t nice. The vodka thing. And when I put you in the closet. And the time you needed stitches and never told on me.”
Gabby places a hand to her mouth. “Oh God, Eliza. No.”
I choose to believe her, because she looks honestly confused. “Okay, but why push me into the pool? Jesus, Gabby, if you wanted to sober me up, you could have shoved me down an elevator bank or thrown me in a fire. At least people wouldn’t have immediately assumed I did it to myself.”
“I wasn’t trying to frame you. It just . . . happened. You were standing by the pool, practically ready to dive in yourself, so . . .”
“And then you just left?” I’m still so stunned. I really, really didn’t think Gabby was capable of this sort of thing.
Her eyes dart back and forth. “I was about to dive in after you, but then I heard someone coming. So I took off.” She tilts her head up to the pinkish sky. “I shouldn’t have. I was freaked about it the whole night. I was ready to say something the next morning at the hospital because I thought they’d have the whole thing on camera and figure it out anyway. But then I found out that the—”
“—security cameras were out because of the storm,” I finish for her.
Gabby nods. “Right. Still, I should have said something. I know how it looked. Only, by then you were saying someone was trying to kill you, and that’s not what I was trying to do, and then that guy who works with the police came, which never happened before because it always was so clearly a suicide attempt, and then . . .” She puffs her eyes and blows out a breath. “I’m awful. I know. I let everyone believe you were trying to kill yourself, and you weren’t.”
“Uh, I know I wasn’t.” I say this wearily, though, not triumphantly. I wish I were feeling something grandiose right now—I’ve solved it!—but I just feel numb. This doesn’t solve everything, after all. It doesn’t solve the piece about me being completely and totally healed. It doesn’t make up for the memories I’ve forgotten. “So Mom knows about this, too, I guess? This is why she tracked me down in that alley and deleted that picture off my phone?”
She nods sheepishly. “We were on alert after you mentioned Leonidas last week—he knows about what happened in Palm Springs, too. It was me he was talking to on the phone that day you overheard him. But we didn’t think you were going to actually confront him. But then Leonidas called Mom to say something strange happened at his office—some guy tripped and made a big scene, and when Leonidas came back to his desk, his phone had been moved. Something felt off, he said. He had a weird feeling you’d just been there.”
I grit my teeth. I knew Desmond shouldn’t have been so histrionic. And had I really been that obvious?
“So Mom walked over from her office to see if you were in the area . . . and you were. She found you in the alley. She didn’t int
end to scare you, Eliza. She just wanted to talk to you.”
“But instead she deleted a screen shot of his phone with your number on it. She was trying to protect your needs over my sanity.” I sniff. “She always did favor you over me.”
“Don’t be silly.” Gabby looks embarrassed. “We were worried that you finding out I was involved might make you even more paranoid. But you have to understand—I was trying to help you that night in Palm Springs. You might not have tried to kill yourself, but you were still out of control that night. Self-destructive. You’re supposed to be taking care of yourself. You do need the help Mom keeps recommending.”
“You know, for someone you were afraid was paranoid, this definitely isn’t the way to help them—by making them feel even more paranoid.”
“I know.” Gabby’s head hangs low. “I realize that now.”
“And you didn’t five minutes ago? When you were telling me how sick I was? When you were saying I sound just like I did before the tumor?” I put my hands on my hips. “It’s not fair.”
“I know,” Gabby says, kicking at a pebble. “I’m sorry.”
Someone has inscribed his or her name into the sidewalk; it looks like either Anna or Anne. Anger broils in my stomach, and at the same time, my heart is broken. I picture all of them sitting in the hospital waiting room in Palm Springs before I woke up, concocting this plan. Okay, so we’ll just say that she did it to herself. Even though she didn’t, it’s clear she’s still messed up, and it’s best just to send her off again. Right? Yes, right. Okay, break.
On one hand, I feel oddly comforted by the fact that I have a family who cares enough to concoct complicated scenarios to help me. On the other, it’s hurtful that they thought I was so gullible that I’d just buy into the idea that I was crazy without asking questions. They don’t know me at all. They don’t understand me at all.
Gabby is quietly crying. I cross my arms over my chest, trying not to care. “I love you, Eliza,” she says. “I truly think of you as a sister. I’ve always cared about you, even when you’ve been a difficult person to care about. But I get it if you hate me. And if this happened to me, if I fell into a pool and woke up and had people telling me I’d done it on purpose, I’d be clamoring for answers, too. Mom and Dad are going to be furious I came clean with you, but I’m glad I did. Now maybe you can drop it. Now maybe you can just live your life. Be happy.”
“Be happy,” I spit out. “Poof. Just like that.”
“It’s all any of us want for you. Just to live your life. To not be scared. To not be . . . sick.” She steps a little closer to me. I can smell something coming off her pores, soap and sweat. “Are you going to tell the police? They’ve asked me a few questions. They know I was there. I haven’t told them what really happened, though. I guess that’s in your hands now.”
I think of all those calls to the tip line. All those unanswered messages. All the hours I’ve spent obsessing over this. All this time, Gabby was lying to me. It makes my head pound.
But I also think of the MRI that’s scheduled. I can buy that I was drinking at the Tranquility because there was something wrong again in my head. I can also buy that the paranoid feelings rushed back, too—symptoms of the tumor. Maybe I fell into a death spiral of self-loathing. Maybe I began to think someone was after me. I consider my bike ride in Santa Monica again. That day, I’d been overcome with the certainty that someone was pursing me on a bike, and I’d become so afraid, I’d hurtled into the ocean. I remember standing on the pool’s edge at the Tranquility gripped with the same sort of fear.
It’s not improbable to believe my family’s been right all along. Maybe it is happening again. And maybe, in a backward way, Gabby pushing me into the water is her way of calling it to my attention—and my family’s attention—so that I can get the help I need.
I clear my throat. Part of me wants to say that yes, I’m going to tell the cops. I’ve been manipulated, after all. Lied to. But part of me just feels tired. I do want it to be over. I’m sick of being angry and paranoid. “No,” I say. “It’s fine.”
Her face opens like a flower. “Really?”
She throws her arms around me and hugs tight. We stand there for a while, in the middle of Sunset, rocking back and forth. “I’m sorry,” Gabby keeps saying. “I just want you to be better.” I think she means to say happy but is too distraught to realize her mistake.
We break apart. Gabby insists on driving me back to the house, but all at once there’s somewhere I want to go, and I don’t want to waste the time stuck in traffic just to get my car. I can pick it up tomorrow. I’ve done all right without it for this long, after all.
I feel scooped-out and ravaged, betrayed and shocked, but also calmer than I’ve felt in weeks. Gabby is right. Maybe I do need to find happiness, or at least something to distract me from the pain, just like how her boss is dating her so he doesn’t have to think about his sick child every moment of the day. I suppose that’s all anyone can do, though it’s not something I’d indulged in. Instead, I’ve been crouching and shrieking and panicking at every turn, my whole life one big anxiety attack. Maybe that’s no way to live.
After I get inside an Uber, I give the Westwood address of the apartment building I’ve looked up online several times since Desmond told it to me. When I get there and peer into the lighted windows, I spy Desmond pacing back and forth in the front window, talking to someone out of view. It’s like in the movies. When I ring the buzzer on the street, I see him stop through the glass and peek out the curtain. His expression is startled for a moment when he sees me, and then he mouths something into the phone and disappears from view. And then there he is, in the lobby, flinging the front door open, his smile surprised and pleased. And I fall into his arms, deciding that my happiness, my real life, hopefully full of love and joy and truth, starts right now.
ELIZA
DESMOND LIKES EGGOS for breakfast. Blueberry, specifically, with Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup, and when he handles the bottle he speaks to Mrs. Butterworth with deference and is very careful not to touch her plastic breasts. He sleeps in his socks, and if even a day goes by without shaving he has dark stubble that makes a sandpaper sound when you rub it with your palm. I got him to shave off the Guy Fawkes facial hair, and already he looks much better. His lips are full and sensuous—I have no idea why he was hiding them. I catch him glancing at himself in the mirror, though, rubbing his smooth upper lip and chin in lament, but I choose to ignore it. I’m working on him getting a haircut next, but when I delicately mentioned that he could use a trim he looked horrified and backed away from me, pulling his hair into a hat, as though he thought I might set it on fire then and there.
He sleeps in a bedroom full of light in a big, well-made bed with a tufted headboard. I am told it’s his parents’ bedroom; they’re both ambassadors and rarely here. The apartment has a lot of leather chairs and fiddly French cabinets, courtesy of his parents, but some of the design elements are of his choosing. Like the bowls of potpourri on the high shelf. When I’m alone in the room with it, I take the strange dried fruit pieces out of the bowls one by one, trying to crush them between my fingers, but they won’t yield.
There is a jar of Sea Breeze on the vanity. His shower curtain has tiny printed sailboats, which were so incongruous to his being they made me laugh. “Oh, my brother, Stefan, hung that,” he says. I meet Stefan, his brother the dabbler, a portly guy with kinky hair to his waist and huge nostrils. He looks nothing like Desmond, though apparently they are biologically related. Stefan wears stained T-shirts and wrinkled khakis and carries around a jug full of whole milk that he slowly drains through the course of a day.
In the little hallway just outside the kitchen is a cabinet full of Desmond’s authentic absinthe collection and a bunch of vintage absinthe spoons. He keeps the cabinet locked because, he says, one time Stefan got in there and drank a whole bottle and almost died.
“You don’t cross wormwood,” he says spookily. “It has a majestic powe
r over all of us.”
His windows look out onto a courtyard with a Roman fountain filled with pennies and dimes. He has an owl sculpture made out of tin on his mantel; if it were to fall, its beak would impale a toe. Over the couch is an afghan his aunt knitted for his parents when they got married. He tells me these things on days two and three, as we drink coffee, as we rub each other’s feet, as we kiss and kiss and kiss, his mouth so big and different, his movements surprisingly sure, his body engulfing mine in bed, despite its smallness everywhere else.
He admits he writes poetry. I tell him about Kiki’s awful sonnets. Together, we look through his high school yearbook—he looked like Guy Fawkes even then and was even skinnier.
We cook dinners together, weird gourmet things that involve cheesecloth and double boiling and cauldrons—one of the nice things about living in an apartment actually owned by fifty-year-olds is that they have nice cookware. On day two of our courtship, Desmond builds a special shelf for my vitamins, and I move them in. We read from a book of epigraphs from fifteenth-century tombstones. We put on Halloween masks (a gorilla and a pug, from Stefan’s closet) and sit on the balcony, waiting for people to notice us. The masks smell organic, like skin and dairy. The smell of sour milk leaks out of Stefan’s pores.
Desmond shows me a layout for the next comic-con and explains the new exhibits and the big draws; I pretend to be interested, but mostly I’m just disappointed nothing like The Addams Family will be there. I talk to him about my time in the hospital. Desmond listens. And he adores. I wake up some mornings and he’s just staring at me, starry-eyed. He stands close to me in the elevator. He sneaks his hand up my skirt whenever people’s backs are turned and sometimes even when they’re not. When we go out to dinner, I feel his fingers tickling my thigh, and I jokingly swat him away. I find his woolly eyebrows strangely sensuous to lick. He buys me an Addams Family cartoon book from the 1940s, and together we look through it, marveling over the artwork.
On our second Saturday together, I’m sitting on the couch, looking at my cell phone, daring myself to open a review of The Dots. More people have read the galleys, and the opinions were starting to trickle in.