by Ali Benjamin
The only thing that gives him pause is this: Isn’t the whole world filled with hidden surveillance cameras these days? If so, might Evie, after discovering the note, ask to see security footage from the parking lot? Would she recognize him? Not likely. But is there some kind of facial recognition technology that might identify him? Is his image stored in a database somewhere, his features, like his thoughts, reduced to ones and zeroes?
Just how much of the twenty-first-century dystopian nightmare has made it to this corner of the Berkshires, anyway?
Sunglasses. Maybe he needs sunglasses. Or wait. No.
He picks up Zo’s balaclava from the new sofa. Slips it into his back pocket.
“Okay, Alex,” he calls. “Let’s go! The ice cream train is leaving!”
* * *
—
Coneheads Ice Cream is locally made; the milk’s from humanely raised grass-fed cows, everything certified organic, fair trade, sustainably sourced. Some of the flavors are ironic, like Wilbur at the County Fair (bacon bits and cotton candy suspended in strawberry ice cream), or All-American Breakfast (doughnut chunks and soda-bottle gummies in coffee-flavored ice cream). Others speak to the sort of earnest back-to-the-land purity that’s accessible these days only for $7 a scoop: Clear Blue Sky (plain old blueberry), ’Tis a Gift to Be Simple (vanilla bean, hint of lavender, a wholesome nod to the Shaker community that once lived just a few miles from here), Spring Thaw (maple syrup with a touch of goat milk).
Behind the counter, a bored-looking Millennial watches videos on her iPhone. Ethan has to clear his throat twice before she looks up. “Dirty Leprechaun, please,” Alex barks at the girl. Coneheads’ version of mint chip.
The ice-cream girl sighs audibly, as if scooping ice cream isn’t literally what she’s being paid to do. She sets the phone down in slow motion. “Cup or cone?”
Ethan says “cup” exactly as Alex says “cone.” The server looks back and forth between them, apparently decides that Alex is in charge. She lifts a cone, starts to scoop.
“Rainbow sprinkles,” Alex tells the server. “Lots of rainbow sprinkles!”
“Sure, fine.” Her tone implies the mere prospect of sprinkles is exhausting.
Next to the cash register is a sign, framed in acrylic: Harassment of our servers will not be tolerated. Ethan points to it. “What’s up with this?”
“Why?” The girl lifts her eyes to his. “Do you plan to harass me?”
“I don’t. No.”
“Yeah, well. It’s pretty bad sometimes.”
He looks around. “But this is an ice-cream shop. For families.”
“And?” The server hands Alex a towering cone.
And now that Alex is taking her first licks, Ethan no longer has time for conversation. “Listen,” he tells the girl, “I’m just going to zip out while my daughter eats that cone. Quick errand. I’ll be back before she’s finished.”
The girl raises one eyebrow.
“Five minutes,” Ethan assures her. “Ten, tops.”
And when she just stares back—she’s an attitude problem on two legs, this one—Ethan opens his wallet, pulls out his last bill: $20. “This is all I’ve got,” he says.
She examines the twenty. Then she shrugs, takes it, and stuffs it in the pocket of her cutoffs. She picks up her phone and starts playing her video again.
“Be right back, Alex,” Ethan says. He kisses his daughter on the head. “You stay here and be good for the nice lady, okay?”
* * *
—
Ethan rests against a tree near the Humphrey parking lot. He catches his breath—he ran here, not in the shape he used to be—scans the cars.
There: Prius. Blue. New York plates, XTP-334. Bingo.
He slips the pink balaclava over his head, straightens it out. The acrylic’s itchy against his skin. It traps his hot breath. He pulls the note out, gives one last look at his own shaking, left-handwriting in bright green.
EVIE EMERLING:
I AM A FRIEND. WE ARE CONNECTED. I AM WRITING TO HELP YOU. THERE ARE THINGS YOU DON’T WANT REVEALED. WILL YOU TRUST ME ON THIS? DROP THE LAWSUIT. IF YOU DO ALL WILL BE WELL.
He refolds the paper. Deep breath. He tells himself that when his Bränd check finally comes in, he’ll donate a bunch of it to the women’s shelter in Bettsbridge. Make sure some good comes of this.
He moves toward the Prius.
A voice behind him then. Impossible. “Daddy?”
He turns around, sees Alex standing there. Again, he has that strange sense of dissociation, like his daughter has split in two. She’s at Coneheads—he just bribed the impudent twentysomething to watch her. But somehow, inexplicably, Alex is also here, her face crinkled in confusion. Like Schrödinger’s cat, these mutually exclusive possibilities that are somehow, for the moment, equally true.
“Alex, I told you to wait.”
“Yeah, but I dropped my cone. Just after you left. The lady said she’d make me another one, but you had to pay for it, so I followed you. You run fast, Daddy! And why are you wearing Mommy’s dance mask? And can I have seven dollars?”
“I was cold,” he says. Alex stands there in her shorts and T-shirt.
He pulls the mask up to his forehead. Leaves it there, absurdly. “Look,” he pleads. “Just go back and tell the lady I gave her the last of my cash. Maybe she can pay for your cone from that.”
Alex’s jaw hardens. “Mommy said you’d get me ice cream.”
Ethan digs in his pockets. He sees himself, a ridiculous animal, creature of flesh and fur, looking for money that he already knows is not there. Pink hat sticking up off the top of his near-bald head like a glow-in-the-dark condom covering only the tip.
Dickhead. He’s become a literal dickhead.
Then a different voice: “Ethan?”
He turns around. Standing there is a college professor. A woman, middle-aged, wholly unfamiliar to him. How does she know his name? The woman’s unusually stylish for an academic: in chic black attire and tortoiseshell sunglasses. Expensive-looking, those shades. The professor lifts them, squints a little. “Ethan…Frome?”
That’s when it hits him: Evie.
Of course it’s Evie. It’s just a twenty-years-older version of Evie, that’s all. Evie’s aging like everyone else, time hurtling forward for her just as it is for Ethan. As soon as her features click into place, the years fall away entirely. Yes. There are Evie’s slight freckles, the angle of her jaw, the telltale way she tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
Evie hesitates, like perhaps she made a mistake, maybe she’s confused, could be some other penis-man digging in his pockets for loose change.
“Evie? Evie…Emerling?” he says, as if he’s not quite sure he remembers the name, as if her IMDB page isn’t six miles long.
“Wow!” Evie laughs. “What are the chances?”
God, that smile of hers. A twelve-million-dollar smile, really.
Evie steps forward awkwardly, hugs him. One of those professional, “lean in at the shoulders but keep the torso at a distance and don’t you fucking come near my pelvis” hugs. “What are you even doing here, Ethan? Do you teach college these days?”
“I, uh…”
I’m here to blackmail you, Evie.
Oh, nothing, just creep-stalking you in a ski-mask!
Warning you of a nefarious plan to ruin your career! That’s all!
“We live nearby,” Ethan explains. “My wife and I. Over in Starkfield. Wow, Evie. This is…such a crazy coincidence.” He is stuffed full of lies. He is spewing lies. His blood and bones and organs and tendons: all of these things are built from lies on top of lies, which were constructed from yet more lies.
“I just finished up a play reading,” Evie says. “I was just about to drive back to New York. Gosh, I almost didn’t recognize you wi
th that beard…you look terrific, Ethan.”
He looks like a giant wiener, that’s what he looks like. He reaches up to the top of his penis head, removes the balaclava, shoves it in his back pocket.
Evie glances at Alex, then back at Ethan.
“Oh. Uh, this is my daughter, Alex,” he says. He turns to Alex, “And this is…”
Evie extends her hand. “I’m Evie,” she says. “I’m an old friend of your dad’s. It’s lovely to meet you, Alex.”
Alex blinks up at Evie. “You’re pretty.” Ethan feels his face flush with heat, as if he’s the one who gave the compliment. Then Alex, oblivious, asks, “Do you like Coneheads ice cream?”
Evie smiles. “I’ve never tried Coneheads ice cream. Is it good?”
“Sooooo good!” Alex tells her. “You have to try the Dirty Leprechaun, it’s the best flavor you’ll ever have in a million trillion years. Except I dropped my cone, and my dad didn’t bring enough money to buy me a new one, so now I don’t get any.”
Evie laughs. “Well, how about I get you some ice cream, then? I’ve got a few minutes before I have to get on the road. I’d love to try this Coneheads.”
* * *
—
She’s still so beautiful.
Sure, Evie’s older, fine lines around her eyes. But once you get used to that, once your eyes adjust, account for the years that have passed, she’s somehow just as lovely, as she’d been back in the ’90s.
The girl behind the counter lifts her eyebrows in genuine surprise as soon as she sees Evie walk through the door. That’s right, Ethan thinks to himself, not without satisfaction. Look who this ol’ dad brought to your shop: Evie Emerling. Weren’t expecting that, were you?
Evie pays for the ice cream: another mammoth cone for Alex, peewee dishes for the adults, Dirty Leprechauns all around. The girl scoops more enthusiastically this time, passing herself off as a moderately adequate server, while Alex babbles away like Evie’s her newfound best friend. Alex tells Evie about school, about Mr. Pancake FuzzyPaws, about Hypatia. “She’s mostly a good dog, except for all the times when she pees on the floor. We clean it up, but sometimes when it rains, the whole house smells like pee.”
Evie laughs. “Is she old?”
“Getting there, yeah,” says Ethan. “Like most of us, I suppose.” Because surely Evie sees his lines, too, his middle-aged girth.
Alex bounces in her seat as she shovels another scoop in her mouth. “We got the dog from the shelter—well, my parents did, before they even had me. My mom says she has PTSD.”
“The dog does,” Ethan clarifies. “Not her mom.”
Evie laughs. “What’s her name?”
“Dog’s name or my mom’s?” Alex asks. And when Evie says, both, Alex answers, “Hypatia and Zenobia.”
“Dog, Mom, respectively,” Ethan clarifies.
Alex is already popping the last of her cone into her mouth. “Daddy, can I have the dance mask?”
Ethan ignores the request, but Alex ignores his ignoring.
“Daddy. Daddy. Daddy. I want the dance mask. Daddy. I know you hear me. Daddy.”
Fine. He pulls the balaclava from his back pocket. “Phone,” commands Alex. She opens her palm, and when he hands this over, too, she adds, “And earbuds.”
Alex puts in the earbuds, then slips the balaclava over her head, begins twirling around the ice-cream shop. Evie treats the whole thing like it’s the most normal behavior in the world. She turns back to Ethan. “Is your dog’s name really Hypatia?”
“Yeah,” Ethan says. “She’s named after a Greek philosopher from about 400 b.c….”
“I know who Hypatia is. Actually, I’ve always considered Hypatia to be history’s first woman celebrity.”
Ethan looks at her curiously, unsure of her meaning. Evie shrugs. “Everyone loved her, until they didn’t. Then they stoned her to death.”
Ethan coughs. “So you’re doing that David Mamet play?” He catches himself, and adds, “I mean, I heard they were staging a Mamet reading this week.”
Evie shakes her head. “Lauren Gunderson.”
“Who?”
“Lauren Gunderson? She was the most produced playwright in America last year.”
“Oh. No kidding. Excuse my ignorance, then.”
“Well, it was supposed to be Mamet, but the organizers pulled his play.”
“Why?”
“He slapped a twenty-five-thousand-dollar fine on any theater that held a post-show discussion of his work. A lot of people were pushing back against some of his messages during talkbacks, and I guess he didn’t want to subject himself to that kind of criticism. So he issued the fine, and the theater canceled that reading, and we read Lauren’s latest instead. It was terrific, actually. But tell me, Ethan, what are you up to these days?”
“Hashtag Dad Life, I guess. Breakfasts and laundry and teacher conferences.”
“Well, your kid’s fantastic.”
He glances over: his kid, at this moment, looks like a miniature bank robber. She’s moving her hips from one side to the other while making some martial-arts move with her fists.
“Well, she’s something, anyway,” Ethan says. “What she’s not is easy.”
Evie keeps her eyes on Alex. “Trust me. That’s a good thing.”
“Is it?” he asks. And he realizes that the question is real. He wants Evie to tell him, yes, it’s a great thing, that someday the world will see and appreciate what he and Zo see on a good day, that there is room in this world for a girl who talks too much, who interrupts, who can’t sleep and who struggles to read social cues, a girl who slaps Valentine stickers on classmates, and doesn’t care about multiplication, and sings like Janis Joplin, and sometimes gets so angry that gray rings form beneath her eyes. He wants Evie to reassure him, to cast a definitive judgment, just as Maddy did the other night.
Yes, Alex is great. No, Ethan, you don’t need to worry.
But there’s no guarantee that Evie will answer the way he wants, and that’s not her job anyway, so he blurts another question over the first one. “You uh…You ever see Randy out in L.A.?”
Evie says nothing, just keeps watching Alex dance.
“My old partner, I mean. Randy Riverstone. Remember him?”
And then: “Kind of a colorful guy, Randy.”
Evie looks down, jabs her ice cream a few times with her spoon but does not take a bite. “I don’t see Randy. No.”
Is there some warning in her voice? I don’t know if you know what’s happening, but if you do, back off.
“Oh,” Ethan says. “I just figured, you know, L.A. Anyway, he and I have mostly lost touch. Different worlds these days.”
Don’t worry. I don’t know anything about anything.
Ethan shifts in his seat, glances around the shop. He can tell that the girl behind the counter is pretending not to listen in on their conversation. He lowers his voice a little. “So…what’s it like being famous, anyway?” It’s a dumb question, and maybe a rude one. Didn’t she once have a stalker? Maybe the guy killed Evie’s cat? Maybe that happened to someone else.
“Being famous…” says Evie. She hesitates, then says, “I’m very fortunate.”
It’s a practiced answer, and Ethan senses there’s more she wants to say. “But…” he prompts.
“But, to be honest, it also feels like being wrong all the time. It’s like…if I dress for the cameras, people say I’m trying too hard. But when I dress for myself, I’m frumpy, a slob. I did one interview where I talked about the books I love; some people got mad at me because they didn’t like those particular books. Other people said I was putting on airs for talking about books at all. And then there was still another group that insisted I was lying, because I’m clearly too stupid to read books. It feels like I’m always doing one thing wrong, or another thing wrong, a
nd whichever it is, people insist on telling me.” She shakes her head. “I shouldn’t complain. I really am incredibly lucky, and I know it. But on a bad day, and I have plenty, being famous feels like the worst voices in your head came to life and started a Twitter account.”
Ripples of sadness. Ethan can feel them coming off of Evie, too, just as they did from the trees, the grass, last night. Funny: you’d think that Evie Emerling and the guy in the UPS Store, and maybe even Ethan himself would have nothing in common, but they all have sorrow in common.
Alex comes over, rips her mask off, pauses the music. “Here’s what I don’t understand.” She plops down on her seat, peers into Ethan’s ice-cream bowl, sees it’s empty, then frowns. Evie slides her own bowl, still almost entirely untouched, across the table to Alex, who digs right in. “Why didn’t Elphaba pretend she was going along with the Wizard? If she’d pretended to be on his side, she could have fought the power from the inside.”
“Alex, not everyone wants to talk about Wicked all the time,” Ethan warns.
But Evie leans in toward Alex. “You know, I’ve wondered that too. I suspect Elphaba knew that fighting from the inside would never be enough. Because some people need to see others being brave, in order to become brave themselves. Or maybe it’s even more basic than that. Maybe if they never see anyone standing for what’s right, they won’t know the difference between right and wrong.”
Alex takes a bite of Evie’s ice cream, pondering. “But it didn’t work. Because people didn’t think Elphaba was brave or right. They thought she was wicked and sent her away.”
Evie nods. “That’s true. I guess that’s the risk she had to take. It’s a predicament.”
“It’s a dilemma,” Alex responds.
“A conundrum,” says Evie.
“A pickle,” says Alex.
“It’s a quandary.” Ethan laughs. It strikes him how absurd this all is. He’s at an ice-cream shop with one of the world’s most bankable superstars. Twelve million for her last film, and here she is, discussing with his daughter the morality decision matrix of the Wicked Witch of the West.