I Met Someone

by Bruce Wagner

As they spoke, he saw that he was losing her; Dusty was swallowing her up, like that YouTube clip of the anaconda digesting a cow.

  “I think Kristen Stewart would be amazing as the mom—she’s a friend, and she’ll read it right away. My first choice for a director would be Lisa—Cholodenko—but she takes forever. I’d still like to get it to Sean, Sean Durkin. You know—Martha Marcy May Marlene. But I really want to get it to Kelly—Reichardt. Kelly would be so genius. She did Night Moves? With Jesse? Eisenberg? Have you seen it? Oh my God, Lego, you haven’t seen Night Moves? You will love it. Dakota’s in it? It’s totally the best thing Dakota’s ever done, she’s as good as Liz Olsen in Martha Marcy May Marlene, she’s better than Elizabeth. Kelly is the fuckin’ shit, and Night Moves is totally about a cult! Or culty behavior, but not like so dead-on, like Martha Marcy May Marlene. It’s much, much subtler. But I’m really surprised you don’t know about Kelly. You have to see it: Night Moves. Kelly’s totally great.”

  —

  In the morning, Dusty texted where are you? It jolted Allegra’s heart and she struggled against texting back. She almost answered fucking your girlfriend but didn’t. An hour later, after the violence of emotions settled, she got another: u there, leg? She went to SoulCycle and shut off her phone. After, she saw that Dusty had called three times and left a voicemail. She just sat in her car, her whole body vibrating.

  She put the message on speaker.

  “Hi, honey. I’m back around four and wanted to know if you’d be home. Can you be, to talk? Sorry I’ve been so unreachable. Hope you’re good and let me know if this afternoon or tonight works.”

  —

  Dusty spent her last few hours at the desert hotel Skyping with her shrink—part pep talk, part general rehearsal of what was to come.

  “This is your daughter,” said Ginevra. “Not your wife, not your lover. Those are nametags describing someone you don’t know anymore, someone you can’t place. Someone who no longer exists.” She sounded like a hypnotist. “You’ll find that in time you will never miss that person, not for a minute. Even the memory of those nametags will cease to exist.”

  “Tell me why I have to tell her again, Ginevra?” Her courage kept flagging. “What if she can’t handle it? I can barely handle it! Why can’t I just ‘break it off’? That’s what Livia thinks I should do . . . she’ll be hurt but at least she’ll be able to move on—how can she move on from this? At least if I tell her I’m seeing someone . . . she’ll be devastated but she might be able to fall in love again. ‘Again’—!” She spat the word, turning her face to the sky in delirious contempt of the cosmos. “I keep thinking of the last scene in Stella Dallas where Barbara Stanwyck’s standing in the rain, watching her daughter through the window as she gets married . . .”

  “She will move on,” said Ginevra, stone-faced. “You both will. But that cannot happen, Dusty, if you lie. You have got to live in your truth and create that space. You have to allow it . . . we’ve talked about all this. To deceive Allegra would be cruel. And remember, there’s no shame in what happened—zero. None. And it isn’t a movie, Dusty, you can’t just shout ‘I don’t love you anymore!’ and ride off into the sunset. You can’t wound her like that and expect either one of you to come out unscathed. It may work in the movies but not in real life.”

  “Real life!” snarled Dusty—for reality had betrayed her; she lay vanquished. She sighed and grew melancholy. “I know, I know. You’re right. It’s just so hard.”

  “It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do, bar none. And I would never minimize that, not for a moment. Wouldn’t even try. Reina wouldn’t have been able to do it, if you’ll pardon the godawful analogy—what I’m trying to say is that Reina would have lied, like she lied about everything in her life, lied to you. Dusty, you’ve always talked about breaking the cycle and now you can. Not to tell Allegra—not to tell Aurora—who you are—who she is—isn’t very loving. That isn’t love. I don’t know what it is but something tells me it isn’t love.”

  On the way back to L.A. she distracted herself with practical matters.

  There was so much to be undone . . .

  Obviously, they needed to divorce. Irreconcilable differences—just like Joni and Kilauren! It would have been funny if it weren’t so savagely, utterly grotesque. A backdoor revelation of “extraordinary circumstances” would allow for an annulment but what was the point? Anyway, delineating those circumstances, even with the highest degree of confidentiality, would only heighten the risk of a leak. No, divorce was the only way.

  But something else was bothering her; a troubling flaw in her therapist’s design . . .

  The plan was that as soon as Allegra had been told, she would begin therapy with Ginevra tout de suite, an “emergency,” stopgap measure, concomitant with the search for a “specialized outside practitioner.” The shrink was convinced that her daughter’s reaction to the unsettling news would be gradations of shock and anger followed by a “transition toward joyful integration.” But Dusty thought there was something condescending and almost laughably glib about the presumption that Allegra would be even temporarily amenable to baring her rage, confusion, and fear with her mother’s shrink. The projected outcome was a little too tidy in an Oprah kind of way, and Dusty had the feeling it wouldn’t go down like that. Maybe Ginevra was in some kind of denial and needed professional help herself; her colleagues no doubt would find the whole case one for the books. Even more controversial was her proposed injunction, shared with Dusty (overshared, as far as the actress was concerned), that Allegra not disclose the nature of her relationship with her mother to anyone outside the therapeutic bubble—at least in the initial weeks or months of however the fuck many years of counseling might be required to bring joyful integration closer at hand. (It was Ginevra’s opinion that healing could not take place if her client was buffeted by powerful and unpredictable outside forces. A “safe house” was required.) To Dusty, this seemed quixotic on a number of levels. What if Allegra was rebellious, combative, and unwilling? What if she went a little (or a lot) crazy behind the revelation and was compelled to confide in her besties—Jeremy, or some drunken Zoosk hookup, or whomever? And wouldn’t that be her right? Even if she found herself joyfully integrated at the very instant she was given the news, wouldn’t it be her prerogative to tell anyone she damn pleased? To shout it from the rooftops or take it door-to-door if she so chose? Wouldn’t that be the healthy, human response—to cleanse and renew, to transform oneself by reaching out to the tribe, to the family of man? Wasn’t it fallacious, hypocritical, and controlling of Ginevra to believe—to rule—that the truth be kept hidden under the rubric of therapeutic expedience? And what about the bugaboo that “secrets kill,” what happened to that? Wouldn’t a second conspiracy of silence be everyone’s undoing?

  Dusty reeled at the fiasco because in her gut and her heart, she knew what she knew: the world would find out.

  She pushed that fatal thought away and tried to imagine what a happy ending might look like—one where a newly empowered mother and child with an obscenely checkered past clandestinely followed their bliss and lived in their truth, with the whole family of man, woman, and Internet being none the wiser. Maybe Ginevra was right and that after a rocky intro, all’d go smooth as silk. Allegra would graduate from therapy summa cum laude then eagerly enlist in a P.R. charade that would promote the split as sophisticatedly amicable, with the gals remaining loyal confidantes, and best of friends. We’re even closer now in so many ways. Her old friend Diane Sawyer would do an exclusive; in the weeks and months after the two-hour with Di, they would cannily downscale to hipper venues like Kimmel, Colbert, and Fallon. Though maybe not Colbert. Photos of the uncoupled couple in supermarket weeklies and social media would be ubiquitous: the caring and charismatic divorcées being “spontaneous” in kitchen and living room, on pool deck and seashore, mouths open in evolved mid-laughter, with nothing to hide and nothing to proclaim
but the genius of their unashamed, no longer bed-sharing, modern love.

  Role models!

  . . . Aurora will get her own therapist but then we’ll probably start joint sessions with Ginevra—maybe Allegra will even request that, demand it, and it’ll be very intense, tough at the beginning, then beautiful and so amazing. I’ll ask Livia if she’ll come bunk with us at the house—Aurora might want to stay elsewhere in those first turbulent days but maybe not, maybe she’ll be very brave; they’d just have to wait and see—because Allegra loved and trusted Livia, she was kind of the grandmother that Reina obviously could never have been. Livia will be a wonderful buffer and liaison, a surrogate maternal presence until Aurora can start to accept me as her own. What a complex and rich and scary and amazing time it will be! With Mom and daughter spending their days sequestered in Point Dume or Jackson Hole or the South of France or the Cotswolds (it could be as long as a year before we’re ready to deal with the press and the whole shopworn but still relevant conscious uncoupling cover story), or anywhere really, we’ll go anywhere and do anything we want as we get to know each other all over again, really just a process of deprogramming and resensitizing, probably approximating the few things I know about behavior mod. The ratfuck Joni Mitchell scenario—losing Aurora all over again—is definitely not part of the plan, though it’s true I can’t predict or paint a rosy picture and that it just may happen that Aurora has a period of adjustment where she does some drugging and sexing and acting out, which would/will probably be a healthy, “normal” response (as long as it doesn’t go too far) . . . the year will pass and by then she’ll be living in her own place and both of us will have found some (a lot?) equilibrium. We’ll do our decoupled dog and pony show for the press, our story will be that we hit a rough patch and went traveling to see if we could mend things but it didn’t work out and we’re sad but strong, and after three or four months the attention will die down and then just like that I’ll find out Aurora’s been seeing someone, and it’s serious. Maybe an older rock-star chick like Kim Gordon (if she were gay; though Kim’s probably a little too old) or an Amal Clooney politico-type or a studio exec of the caliber of Nina Jacobson or even Megan Ellison (wouldn’t that be a goof?). Then I’ll learn that Aurora’s pregnant and this time the baby would take, that would be the karma. I’ll be a grandma! Oh! Wouldn’t that be something? Wouldn’t that—

  She wondered what her own life would bring . . . saw herself being alone for a long, long while and was okay with that. Not lonely but alone. She envisaged entering a kind of monastery built from a rededicated devotion to work and career, a devotion to self, for now would be the time in her life, the time of her life, when all came full circle and she ripened to the spiritual experience. (With still a full quarter century remaining before death—who knew? She might go another forty years. Even Chakrapani implied she’d have a long life.) The idea of it, the plangency of the vision made her shiver. She saw both of them years later, having a Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving (with Ronny and his wife Sam as guests—and their daughters—Allegra’s half sisters!): Aurora with new wife and child, and Dusty announcing she too had met someone special. The couples would go on vacations together with the kids (Leggy’d have lots of babies) and—

  —NO. I cannot tell her. I can’t—I won’t! How could I? How can—

  Her heart fluttered as she pictured them—in just a few hours—in the living room up on Carla Ridge, its stage set for the full catastrophe. She’d allow herself a glass of wine beforehand, maybe a Vicodin—no!—better to be sober, essential to be sober. She would clear her throat and say, “I met someone,” then let the chips fall where they may. Let the mirrors and all the boughs break . . . If she could only find the courage to fire that first assassin’s shot—and survive the recoil . . . It’d be bloody, maddening, apocalyptic, but yes, in the end it would be for sure the best, the only thing. (It seemed almost insane to her that she had ever entertained the idea of proclaiming, “I am your mother.”) After I met someone, Allegra would be cowed, leveled, traumatized into silence, and that was when Dusty would tell her she’d arranged to give her fifty thousand a month for two years, five years, ten years, forever—a hundred thousand if she wanted. Throw in the Point Dume house as part of the settlement (though the pendulum kept swinging because with all its memories she was thinking the place might prove too burdensome for her ex). Aurora might try to talk her out of it, talk her out of not loving her anymore, might say something like, “No no no! I’ll wait for you, I’ll wait, let me wait! Until you get this new love out of your system! Just please don’t end it, Bunny, please don’t end it, please don’t end it—” That would be a dagger in Dusty’s heart, but of course she’d still be forced to pull a Stella Dallas, shouting, “I don’t love you, Allegra! I don’t think I ever did. I want a divorce—I want to be with her, her, her! We’re finished, do you hear me? We’re all washed up!”—

  NO!

  No no no no no . . . how can I do that? How can I do that to my baby, how can—

  To keep from screaming she told herself that Allegra was a survivor, over and over she thought it, then said it aloud, hoping to convince herself it was so, and that’s why it would all be okay—because Allegra had the family blood, survivor blood, Wilding-Whitmore blood—and that her darling would take a hard fall, of course she would, then be able to get up again and stand tall, head held high, until she found another love, a big love, bigger than life, real and unperverse, the love she was meant to have from the beginning. Your mother was just a starter marriage . . . that’s what Dusty kept telling herself as she sped through Covina astride her faithful pendulum—now fantasizing about what would happen if she told Allegra the truth, then mother and daughter united to share their reality with the planet. Would that really be the worst of worst things? Would it really be the end? Might in fact transparency be the solution—to everything? Why not tell all? The shockproof social media zeitgeist devoured the daily commedia of anarchy and annihilatory transgressions with all the fuss of a whale inhaling plankton. The yelp of an accidentally incestuous marriage, even a beloved faggot movie star’s, would hardly be discernible among the twittering cries and whispers of the Web, a restless organism that greedily homogenized crowdfunding, dicpix, pandas, and beheadings. Dusty replayed the fantasy tape of a P.R.-spun divorce (whether or not they fessed up the truth, the mature and loving lesbian breakup narrative would still remain the same) but this time Dusty mixed in the yucky, high-opera, mind-blowing admission. There would be initial public scorn and revulsion, but she foresaw the unstoppable backlash of popular acceptance and compassion, the metamorphosizing of fear and loathing into profound respect for yet another worthy Profiles in Courage addition to the American freakshow canon. The mutant couple might even finagle a Time Person of the Year! All families had monsters in the cellar born of deliberate misdeeds—why should a national treasure worry if she and her child, innocents, were temporarily sacrificed, martyred to the cause of dark and hidden things? They’d practically be performing a public and cultural service! And before long, they would be martyrs no more, but mavericks—heroines and outlier pioneers, marching into the history books.

  There would always be haters . . . She and Allegra were used to being vilified for their privilegy, cougary union. So maybe it would be best to face the music: then she might truly earn the name Mother Courage. Some fool once said that irony was dead. How genius would it be to declare that shame itself had died?

  Twenty minutes from Trousdale, her brain played more scenes from the phantom, psychotronic, Keeping Up With the Wilders HBO doc—the one where Laura Poitras points the camera on Dusty as she tells Allegra, “I’m your mom.” How would the girl react? What would she say, what would she do? Would she bolt? Or—after a moment, an hour—would she rush toward her? Cleave to her blood? What an embrace that would be! Would she cry, “Mama!”? Was it obscene that Dusty actually yearned for such a sentimental, middle-class result, so saccharine a cliché? (S
he wondered.) And why would they hug each other, why should Aurora even want that? Wouldn’t the aberrant nature of their involvement forever preclude such a “natural” impulse? Yet, knowing everything that she knew, Dusty ached with the thought of not being able to wrap her arms around her baby . . . and if she couldn’t, in that raw moment, that moment of courage and sacrifice and honesty, when would they be able to hug, when would she be able to shower her child with a mother’s kisses—when would the moratorium end? How much time must go by before what transpired between them would be neutralized? Could it be? Might it be possible they never touch again? That the terminus of their physical contact turned out to be the violent lovemaking of weeks ago on the night of the Buddhist soirée? What a horror! It was easy for Dusty to imagine things falling apart, once they had their “talk.” Doomed! . . . and if that was to be the case, what was the point in telling her the truth? If, in the end, the result was that they never touched again—that Ginevra’s theory was unsound, and on Dusty’s revelation, the scales of the serpent’s tail didn’t fall away but multiplied . . .

  Lovers no more, nor mother and daughter could be—

  With the lights of downtown L.A. finally visible, all her fantasies collapsed like scaffolding in a fire.

  —

  Allegra was standing at the open door of her car, poking around in the backseat. When her wife pulled in, she pretended not to notice.

  Dusty parked and walked over, heart going wild in its cage. She said a smiley, too boisterous “Hi!” Allegra took her in with a side-glance; face subtly imploding, she returned to hassle some luggage, removing a Goyard tote that was resting on a duffel. She plunked it into the front floorboard.

  “What’s goin’ on?” said Dusty.

  “What’s goin’ on? What does it look like?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Where am I going? Where am I going? Where are you going? Where have you been?”