“It’s not at zero,” I say. But could be.
“Well you need to tell me if it is,” he says. I consider my input so far, which has been passionless, distracted, and basic. But I’m too ashamed to confess. “Because I need to mentally prepare myself to take on the width of the entire Graceland load if that’s what’s needed.”
“I’m telling you,” I say. But I don’t tell him anything.
“Okay,” he says, assuaged. “Okay. I’m not trying to be a dick, it’s just… Oh, wait…”
I wait. While I do, I hear a noise in the bathroom, or outside of the door. There’s a noise somewhere.
“One sec!” he says. The chirp of chiming glee, brought on by Elsa’s arrival, surges through my phone. I sit up and press the phone against my chest to mute it.
“Sarah?” I whisper in the direction of the French doors that separate my bedroom, separate myself, from the hallway’s dusky haze.
I stand and stare out the window, listening.
Ryan says a muffled something. “What?” I ask, lifting the phone back to my ear as I head out into the hallway’s dimmed light.
“Someone wants to say hello,” Ryan says.
“Thomas,” Elsa asks.
“Hey,” I say into the phone, quietly, for fear that if Sarah is here, any noise could scare her away.
“Thanks for letting me stay. I know it’s not… Y’know, after…”
“It’s fine,” I say, listening as I speak. “It’s good.”
“Good,” she says, and chokes up a bit. “I’m so relieved to hear that. I’m looking forward to seeing you. What? Okay, yeah. Ryan told me to tell you we’ll be back late. Or later. So, don’t wait… Oh, no, stop! Stop!” There’s a high squeal of laughter and release. “He’s tickling me!” The connection dies.
“Sarah?” I say again, as I close my phone.
I listen, listen, listen.
But there is no sound.
There is no Sarah.
Forty-Five
In the middle of the night, my phone rings. I answer and a voice says, “Thomas?”
It’s my mother.
I try to ask where she is, but my mouth won’t open.
“Thomas, are you there?”
I try to make a sound with my throat, just to let her know it’s me. But nothing comes out.
“That’s too bad,” she says.
In my head I’m shouting, Mom! I’m here! Don’t hang up! Mom, please! Please! Don’t go! Don’t go!
“A real shame,” my mother says. Then she hangs up.
I wake into morning light, breathing out the words Don’t go, while tears stream down my face. Sad reality slowly sets in as I realize it’s a dream, and that my mother is still gone. My pillow is sopped with tears. A release, finally. Though I can’t stop shaking.
•••
I call my father to check in.
Dad sighs, then there’s a long pause. He makes a clicking sound with his tongue, and I expect his usual: go quiet or change the subject. But then he speaks, an outpour. “I’m handling your mother’s death very poorly, and it’s getting harder,” he says. “The woman deserves some peace. Christ, add it up: Carl; the miscarriage; Joshua; her cancer. But even so, I want her to come back to me and stay.”
I want to tell him he can’t think things like that. But why can’t he, when for so long I have, with Sarah?
“Just last night, I cried my eyes out over the efficiency of the dung beetle,” Dad says. “In the last six weeks all I’ve read are the backs of cereal boxes, wondering what the hell riboflavin does.”
“Dad, I’m sorry.”
“As for spilling guts, while I’ve got you on the phone, let’s make it a double,” he says. His tone shifts from self-pity to acute interest. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about Sarah.”
Surprised I tell him, “Oh. Okay.” Followed by a nervous exhale-laugh meant to indicate any talk of Sarah will lead down a series of disinteresting paths.
“Though I’ll save us going in circles and ask what I really want, which is, What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing,” I say.
“Which we both know is bullshit.”
He waits, but he’s right, so I’m silent.
“The not coming home, I get,” he says. “With what your mother was asking? But that girl—who was very nice, don’t get me wrong. But I can’t quite solve it.”
“I didn’t know she’d be there.”
“She,” he says.
“Sarah.”
“Right. ‘Sarah,’” he says, then takes in a deep breath and lets out a longer exhale. “If you’re in trouble, Thomas… If you’re struggling… I’m your father.”
“I know,” I say, wanting to ball up, to disappear.
“I know loss. I know vacancy to the end of this world and back. I’m telling you, you can talk to me.”
“I will,” I say. “I’ll try.”
I hear Dad’s shallow breathing. The sound of him listening.
“Dad, if it’d help, you can come visit.”
“I like the sound of that,” he says. “I appreciate the invite. But be careful—where my head’s at these days, I might just show up on a whim.”
•••
Wide awake, I get up, shower, then exit into crisp morning light to grab treats to make Elsa feel welcome, and to thank her—as lonely as I now feel—for leading me home.
I head downtown and grab three milk chocolate chip cookies from Specialty’s, then hop the BART and head toward Craftsman and Wolves, a fancy-pants pâtisserie in the Mission. I’m lower than ever on funds and after Ryan’s tongue-lashing, I’m hit with the full fright that if we don’t submit a finished script to Anarchy in six weeks, there’s no financial relief, no rent-funding windfall. Still, I go all out, and ask the barista to pick his four favorites. I end up with a Thai scone, a hazelnut financier, a cocoa-carrot muffin, and a muscovado morning bun.
•••
Once I’m back home, I thump up the stairs to my apartment, then noisily enter, an alert to everyone inside that I’m home. Once I’m in, Ryan approaches, all smiles. “And I thought we were up early,” he says.
I hold up the three heaving bags of treats and tell him, “I brought you these. An Elsa welcome.”
In the kitchen, I lay out the cookies and the pâtisserie sweets.
“Craftsman and Wolves!” Ryan says, impressed. “These look amazing.”
I halve one of the chocolate chip cookies and offer it to him. “Not yet,” he says. “I’ll wait for her.”
“Wait’s over,” Elsa says, sheepish, as she comes in wearing pajama pants with the different faces of US presidents. Her blonde-streaked hair is a bedhead fluster. She looks at me with an expression bearing every apology.
At first, I look down. Seeing her brings me back: her handing me my phone with my mom on the other line; her answering my parents’ door before I knew she was playing the role of Sarah; the staircase with my parents, when I wouldn’t let her pass.
“I got up to pee and heard you two talking,” she says, so shy. “But I can come back in a bit.”
“Not at all,” Ryan says. But it’s my permission she’s after.
“Come in,” I say. “Breakfast is served.”
“He got us all this,” Ryan says.
Elsa’s face scrunches, a show of gratitude. “That’s so sweet.” Then she starts to cry. “Sorry.”
“You okay?” Ryan asks, genuine in his concern.
She nods, then breaks off a piece of scone and takes a tiny bite.
I step to her and put my hand on her shoulder. “It’s good to see you,” I say.
She turns fast and hugs me, her arms over my arms, so I’m barely able to pat her on the back. Ryan looks at me like, She’s a prize.
“It’s good to s
ee you, too,” she says, then backs away and wipes her eyes. “And clearly some of us are emotional!”
We all laugh as Elsa takes another bite of scone and puts her hand on Ryan’s back while she chews. “How’s your dad?” she asks.
“I talked to him this morning,” I say. “It’s slow going.”
“He’s such a nice man,” she tells Ryan. Then to me she says, “He’s called me a few times. I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course,” I say.
•••
I head back to bed for a bit and stare out of my open blinds. The clouds are a mess of cotton balls gummed together, the sun a fuzzy, gazillion-watt bulb. I think about my mother, the dream of her calling. My father, barely afloat. How my life right now feels like a slow train wreck with more carriages yet to crash.
Then my phone rings, a number I don’t know. Area code 646.
“I know it’s early,” a soft, vulnerable female voice says. “But last night I wanted to call, and didn’t. And I told myself if I still wanted to call when I woke up then I would. Oh, this is Carly, by the way.”
“Hey,” I say.
“I’m in San Francisco for a conference. You free to meet up for a drink?”
Forty-Six
That night at Latin American Club, I find Carly at the bar, sipping dark booze from a short glass. I lift onto a stool so we’re side by side, and without looking at me she says, “It’s good to see you.”
Before I can respond, a female bartender steps over and tosses a square, paper napkin into midair, so it spins, then lands soft in front of me. I point to Carly’s drink and say, “What she’s having.”
“Jameson on the rocks,” the bartender says, and spins away.
Carly turns to me and says, “I’m sorry about your mom.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“Oh, no,” she says. “Does that mean she’s gone?”
I nod.
“Fuck. I’m so sorry.”
My drink arrives and I tell her the simplest version in the shortest time: “My father and I assisted her suicide. I should have gone home sooner.” There’s silence between us, until I tell her my mother once hot-wired a car in Frankfurt, Germany so she could drive to visit friends in Heidelberg.
“No way,” Carly says.
“All facts,” I say.
“Must’ve been an amazing lady.”
My eyes well, but this time there are no tears. Carly raises her glass. We toast, and I drink.
“This is my favorite bar in town,” Carly says. “Everywhere else the music’s so loud, you have to scream.”
I take note. The room’s volume comes from the rumbling rise and fall of other conversations, shot through with the occasional cackle, or the crash of the bartender scooping ice.
We have a second drink. A third.
“It’s so stupid we met this way,” Carly says.
“What way?”
“In person,” she says, a mock scoff as she gets up to go to the bathroom. “We should have used the internet like everyone else. Since, y’know, it’s simultaneously trained us to have disastrously astronomical expectations for love and the lowest expectations of all time. Which I think is just…super healthy.” Carly laughs at her own joke then excuses herself.
Once Carly’s out of sight, the bartender points to my glass and asks, “Another?”
“Three’s my limit,” I tell her, and it’s true. My face is warm, and I feel pressure in the top of my head, like my scalp’s trying to shift forward.
I sip from my drink then take a peek down the length of the bar to find Carly on her way back, only she’s stopped, watching me from a distance. A look of stunned recognition’s overtaken her face.
I give her a look like, What?
She holds my gaze as she steps forward, and once she’s in earshot her shoulders slump and she says, “Oh, fuck.”
“What?”
She lets out an exhale and puts the back of her hand to her forehead. “Oh, my god. We have met before.”
I look at her face and wait for it to register. But it doesn’t.
“Fuck,” she says, and barely shakes her head. Then she’s so still.
“You okay?” I ask her.
“Are you?” she asks, then leans back and takes a deep, stuttered breath.
I don’t know, now, so I don’t answer.
“Of course you wouldn’t remember,” she says. And I race through, trying to find her in my memory, but it’s all empty, it’s all air.
Finally, she whispers, “The funeral.”
My first thought is, What funeral? But then it hits me, so all I say is, “Oh.”
“I need some air,” Carly says. “Just a minute.”
She hurries past me, out the front door. I watch her walk to the right, through the frame of the bar’s wide window, an open hand on her forehead, until she’s out of sight.
Forty-Seven
At the funeral, members of her family took turns telling me why she took her own life. So convinced they understood the wirework of her mind.
At the wake, they found out I was the one who saw her jump.
•••
Family and friends asked, “Did she look unhappy?” “Was she beautiful?” “Had she cut her hair? It was getting so long.”
I told them, “She looked like all you could ever want.”
•••
“You could have stopped her,” a man said, his face pomegranate red. “You should have done whatever it took.”
“I tried,” I said.
I’d offered everything I had. Everything I was. With everyone in the room staring at me, with everyone judging, I realized it wasn’t all that very much.
•••
A middle-aged woman pulled me aside and looked at me with vague disappointment. She searched my face for answers, but there were no answers. “It’s the most selfish thing a person could do,” she said. “At least she could have left a note.”
•••
A family friend wanted to know, “Did she say anything?”
I thought of a few lies to salve their wounds:
I am going to miss you all so much.
Tell everyone I love them.
I’m going to be very sorry.
I disappointed them by shaking my head. Because she didn’t say any of it.
•••
“You’re so lucky to have seen her.”
“God help her.”
“You could have done more.”
“You’re part of the family now.”
“Was she crying?”
“How could you let this happen?”
“I think she was, well, you know, pregnant.”
“I think she was, well, a coward.”
“I think she was unwell.”
“She was selfish.”
“She was an angel.”
“She was a time bomb.”
“She was just like her mother.”
“She was ours.”
When they’d stopped talking, when the room had finally taken on a silence, and the younger handful of us that leaned against the room’s walls looked down, embarrassed by the procession of know-it-alls, I took a breath.
I leaned to the woman next to me, late-twenties, hair a dishwater-blonde bob, an elaborate tattoo on the inside of her right forearm. I asked, “How did you know Sarah?”
She leaned in, confused, and asked me, “Who’s Sarah?”
Forty-Eight
When Carly returns to the bar, she slides onto the stool next to me and takes a long, slow drink. She sets her glass back down on a damp napkin then says, “We were at the same funeral. Then over a year later we’re in the same room. In entirely different cities, on entirely different coasts. Isn’t that weird?”
“
Yeah,” I say.
“Yeah,” Carly mimics, to mock me. Then let’s out a pfft. “How many movies had you pitched before? Or even written?”
“None,” I say.
“Exactly,” she says. “So it’s fucking weird.”
I stop resisting, and nod because she’s right.
“Now, can you tell me, who’s Sarah?”
“You know,” I say.
“No,” she says, and reaches out. Before her hand lands on my forearm, I fear it’ll feel like fire. “But really.”
My neck tightens. I roll my shoulders, but it doesn’t help.
“The funeral,” I say. “Sarah’s.”
“Nope!” she says. “That funeral was for Jennifer’s suicide. She was a friend of a friend.”
Right then, a jolt fires through me, and something unlocks. To hold it in, I picture Sarah’s flower-patterned dress. The wind lifting her hair. Those weeks after, when I barely left the house. When the number of interactions in my day topped out at zero.
“By all accounts,” Carly says, “and I mean this in the nicest way possible, there is no Sarah.”
“That’s not true,” I object.
“Okay,” she relents. “I didn’t come here to shake up any delusions.”
This time I don’t protest.
“You’re so fucking weird, man,” Carly says, after an exhale. “Or crazy. In fact, let’s say crazy because that better explains why, of all the people in the world, I called you. It’s the clearest indication that I have terrible taste in men, and no shame.”
Carly gestures to the bartender, asking for the bill.
“I’ll take care of it,” I tell her.
“Fine.”
“I know what I have to do next,” I say.
“Cool,” she says like she’s over it. Followed by a head-shaking laugh. “Good luck with your to-do. I’m going to get some sleep. Call me if you’re ever not an asshole.”
Forty-Nine
Once home, I head to my bedroom and open my laptop. While Ryan and Elsa giggle in the living room, I go to Craigslist, then to Missed Connections. I click [ post ]. I type in the only word that can solve all of this. I type in: Sarah?
Collision Theory Page 14