by Ella Berman
The thing was, I could see with uncharacteristic clarity what would happen if I stayed. I would hurt him over and over again until neither of us could look at the other, and this time it would be irrefutably, unforgivably on purpose.
We got into bed soon after that, and Dylan fell straight back to sleep with a slight smile on his lips, the way he always did, and I curled into his back, breathing in his sandalwood smell. After he left for work, I took six Percocets and then curled up in a ball on the cool tiles of the bathroom floor, sobbing like I hadn’t since I was a baby. When the world around me finally started to fray at the edges, drifting out of reach, I called Laurel, who arranged for an unmarked ambulance to rush me to the emergency room for treatment.
Two days later, I was back in Anaheim.
Nobody ever thought to ask me why I’d done it.
* * *
• • •
The rental feels quiet once Dylan has left. I push the thought of him out of my mind in exactly the same way I have for the past year, and I start to unpack the boxes. I didn’t know what was officially mine and what was Dylan’s, or what he would notice or miss, or think of me when he didn’t see, so I brought only clothes with me, even though I’ve been wearing the same slip dress with college sweaters since I’ve been back in LA. Wren told me that she’s already spotted three women wearing the same outfit in Venice. Maybe they hate the sight of their own skin too.
I step out onto the porch and squint up at the peach house on the hill above. I can’t make out whether anyone is home, or even if Able’s car is in the drive, and I feel breathless and weak, my heart twisting like a knife in my chest. My nightmares all orbit around this house, yet somehow I have made my own way back here. I wonder if I thought that being so close might make me feel safer, when the truth is I can’t control any of it from here any more than I could from Anaheim.
I walk back inside the bungalow and sit on the sofa, staring at the blank wall in front of me as I try to fight against the familiar feeling of being dragged down to the dark place, dislodging the unruly shadows that have settled within me since I’ve been back in the city. The most vicious demons have always been my own, and I’ve never learned how to protect myself from them. I have tried moving quietly through the world, figuring that if I could just forget what happened, then I could move on, but maybe it doesn’t work like that. Maybe it’s never been that simple.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Everyone kept telling me how grateful I should be that Able had chosen me as his protégé. My agent called it a gift. That’s also what Able called it when he first made me touch him, at the age of fifteen, on the last day of that first movie shoot. He placed my hand on his erection over his jeans and told me that it was a secret gift between the two of us, because we had this special connection that nobody else understood.
That’s how it went for the next couple of years: he would shower me with gifts and attention during the first half of filming and then would pull back so suddenly that I was left chasing after him, needing his approval and praise in the same way I needed oxygen to breathe. Just like that day with the stunt fall, he would push me to my limit in every possible way. He would criticize everything from my weight to my American accent to my lack of emotional depth in a scene, constantly belittling me on set and pushing me to extremes both physically and mentally before leaving his juniors to deal with me when I inevitably broke. I was exhausted, desperate to please, skinny as a stray dog and covered in sores, but still he would force me to reshoot the same scene over and over again, running well into the early hours of the morning until every single member of the crew hated the sight of me. Then, just as I was giving up hope, certain that my new life was over and he had finally realized that I wasn’t the person he thought I was, Able would welcome me back into the glowing orbit around him. If I tried to talk to him about how he’d treated me, he would tell me that I had clearly misunderstood, reminding me that my brain had the tendency to work against me, and that I was lucky he knew me well enough to understand me. As he spoke, relief would flood through me in waves so intense I often found myself crying. He was everything to me—my mentor, my boss, my family—and being close to him made me feel as if I was finally doing something right. Only at that point Able would expect his own reward, too, making me kiss and touch him again on the final day of shooting or at the wrap party. As soon as it happened, I felt sick with confusion, regretting ever having courted his attention. I never told him to stop, and hadn’t I worked that much harder than the others to earn his rare praise? Hadn’t I felt colder when he wasn’t looking at me? I figured that I must be doing something awful to make him act like this, but I couldn’t figure out what it was, or how to stop it—I only knew that I deserved it.
I doubted myself and everyone around me, but rarely Able. Everyone had told me about this precious gift, so I took it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
An hour later, I’m driving up the dirt track with my car radio blasting a bad eighties power ballad at an unholy volume because, occasionally, if it’s the right song and it’s loud enough, music can drown out even the ugliest thoughts in my mind.
The December air is crisp so I roll the windows down, but I have to close them when I end up eating dust from the cars speeding alongside me on PCH. I drive slowly, with no real place to be and only a vague idea of what I want, but I still have to brake suddenly whenever a car in front of me decides to swing into a free beach parking space at the last minute. After a couple of miles, I spot a sign for an independent drugstore, and I signal to turn into the parking lot.
In the store, I approach a girl a few years younger than me. She is standing behind the cash register and playing on her phone. Her lip is pierced in two places, and she barely looks up when I speak to her.
“Hi, I’m looking for some binoculars.”
“Sorry, ma’am, this is a pharmacy.” She flicks at one of her lip rings with her tongue. I wait for her to finish. “We don’t sell binoculars.”
“I understand. Do you know where would sell binoculars?”
“There’s a Best Buy kind of near Santa Monica . . . You might want to try there.”
I nod but I don’t move, and she seems worried for me.
“How far is it from here?”
She furrows her brow. “Don’t you have an iPhone, ma’am?”
“Look I’m really sorry, but can you stop calling me ma’am? I’m twenty-two years old,” I say, folding my arms across my chest. “And no. Do you sell phones here?”
She shakes her head.
“You can get that at Best Buy too. Take a left out of here. Maybe fifteen to twenty miles?” she says, and when I still don’t move, she scribbles down some directions on a Post-it and hands it over to me.
“Thanks,” I say, debating whether or not I need to tip her. I feel bad for snapping at her, but when I try to hand her twenty dollars, she seems so alarmed that I stuff it back in my bag.
“Are you okay?” she asks as I’m leaving, and she’s looking me up and down. I look down, too, at my sweat-stained Lakers T-shirt hanging over the slip dress, now torn and ragged at the hem, and a pair of promotional Crocs that I found at the house in Venice on my feet. They’re lined with sheepskin and they’re the most comfortable things I’ve ever owned.
“I think so?” I say, but I must not be very convincing because she still seems like she feels sorry for me.
I get back in the car and just sit for a moment, sweat pooling on my upper lip. I have let other people do everything for me for my entire life, and most of the time I didn’t even know it was happening. Even after I met Dylan, we were only ever pretending to be like any regular college-age couple when really we had a slew of assistants, drivers, wellness coaches and housekeepers organizing our lives. Groceries magically appeared in our fridge every week, and we would stand next to precooked meals from our chef even as we ordered Vietnamese food or sushi to be
delivered to our door. I’m not sure I could tell you how to call a cab or make a cup of coffee if somebody were holding a machete to my throat, and what’s worse, I don’t think I’ve ever realized that until now.
* * *
• • •
“I’m looking for binoculars,” I tell the first person I see when I walk into Best Buy, twenty miles and three perilous U-turns later. The sales assistant is in his late teens and has an unappealing film of baby fluff covering his upper lip. The rest of his face and neck is clean-shaven, other than one more distinct patch of fuzz over his prominent Adam’s apple. When I see how it leaps around when he swallows, I can understand why he was reluctant to shave it. His name tag says Ethan.
“Oh wow. Binoculars. For bird-w . . . watching?” The poor guy is physically shaking. He’s already recognized me. I keep having to remind myself that I’m back in LA, where everyone is raised on a diet of Access Hollywood and E!, and Oscar nominations are discussed over a bowl of Cheerios in the morning.
I try to seem humble and grateful while Ethan leads me down the correct aisle and waits in front of the binoculars for my response.
“Dolphin watching, whale watching. I suppose maybe some birds.”
Ethan nods and passes me a box from the shelf. While I’m looking at it, he puts one hand inside his pocket, his eyes scanning to check if anyone is watching us, and then he pulls out his phone. After a moment I shrug, understanding that he wants a photo with me. Ethan adjusts the angle of his hand so that we’re both in the frame, and just as I’m attempting to assemble my features into something vaguely acceptable, he takes the photo. A flash goes off from the front, startling me. He puts his phone back into his pocket and takes the binoculars from me.
“I actually also need to get a phone, can you help me with that too?” I ask, thinking of Laurel.
Ethan leads me to a different section of the painfully bright store. I request the most basic model, and as he talks me through the setup process, I can see that he is trying to hide that he has an erection underneath his regulation chinos. I feel a vague mixture of disgust and embarrassment for him, and I hope that he isn’t going to remember my new phone number and stalk me.
“I can ring you up right here, you don’t have to get in line or anything.” He picks up a tablet and presses a few things on it. I hand over my credit card.
“Hey, can you . . . can you say the line?” Ethan asks while we’re waiting for the payment to go through, and I know instantly what he means. He’s talking about my final line in Lights of Berlin, the one strangers demand I send in a voice note to their cousin in Atlanta, or on FaceTime to their dad in Hungary. The one that made audiences burst into spontaneous rounds of applause in movie theaters all around the world as tears dried on their cheeks. The one that never fails to remind me of how much I owe the world, instead of the other way around.
A man in a bright yellow hoodie hovers close to us now, too, waiting.
“I am so sorry, but I’m not actually allowed to,” I say. “You know . . . for contractual reasons.”
Ethan nods and blinks a lot. The hoodie guy moves on.
“Can I . . . ask where you went then? When you were hiding out?” Ethan squeaks, like we’re on a true crime show and I’m a missing child off a 1980s milk carton.
“It was an illusion. Grace Turner never really existed,” I say, but I can tell that he is confused, unsatisfied with my response.
“I went home. To see my parents. They’re getting older,” I say, aware as I do that I’m offering up too much information to the kid with the boner in Best Buy. Am I lonely? Maybe I should call Laurel.
“Thank you for your help, Ethan,” I say once the payment has gone through, and I hope I’m saying it in a way that comes across as sincere and not like I can’t wait to get out of the store and be by myself again. I leave the store with my baseball cap back on and my head lowered, wondering about the kind of person who worries more about hurting the feelings of the guy in Best Buy than their own husband’s.
* * *
• • •
As I enter in the security code, I hear a telephone ring from somewhere inside my new house. Once I’m inside, I locate a white landline plugged in to the wall behind the sofa. I pick the phone up tentatively because I didn’t know landlines still existed, let alone that I had one.
“Grace, what are you doing?” It’s Laurel. Of course she managed to get my number before I even knew I had a phone. She sounds exasperated with me already.
“I just walked through the door. I’ve been shopping,” I offer proudly, because it sounds like something normal people do. I balance the landline between my shoulder and ear while I try to turn on my new phone. I’ve already forgotten everything Ethan told me.
“No, I know that. You’re all over everything looking batshit crazy in Best Buy, allegedly talking to some kid about your decrepit parents. You know your mom is just going to love that, by the way.”
“Wait—what?”
“Grace. This shit is instant, you have to remember. You don’t talk to people you don’t know, and you always look at the very least mentally sound, because they’ll try to catch you off guard. If you need something, just call me and I’ll get it for you next time. I told you we needed a plan. For fuck’s sake, Grace. Binoculars? They’re saying you lost your mind and went bird-watching in the Amazon for the past year.”
“Who? I thought they said my parents were old,” I say, slightly distracted because Laurel is being so helpful that I’m now wondering whether she’s been on my payroll the entire time I was away. I can’t remember what we agreed when we met, but life coaching sounds expensive and I don’t know when I’ll work again.
“They don’t care about anything, Grace. They’ll say whatever they want. Some kid who served you in Best Buy said you seemed disoriented. What a fucking word.”
“The guy in Best Buy? Ethan? He could barely speak. I felt bad for him.”
“Don’t ever feel bad for them. Rule number one. Kids are different these days, okay? They’re not how we were when we were younger.”
I’m about ten years younger than Laurel, but I don’t think that now is the time to mention it. In fact, there’s never a good time to mention it. Once a kid in Starbucks asked if she was my stepmom and she nearly spat at him.
“I’m sure I used to talk to people. Didn’t I? This has never happened before.”
Laurel is silent for a couple of seconds.
“You disrupted the balance, Grace. You left, and by leaving you showed weakness. It’s open season.”
“Is that why you’re shouting at me now too?”
“Maybe,” she says softly.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Under Laurel’s advice, I lay low in Coyote Sumac for the next couple of days, away from the press that she tells me are now circling the glass house like locusts. I order pizza delivery in the evening, thick, chewy dough covered with melted cheese and garlicky meat, and I eat the leftovers for lunch the next day. The only person who sees me is the delivery guy, and I make sure to answer the door in a baseball cap and sunglasses, even at night. He probably assumes I’m recovering from some invasive cosmetic surgery procedure, and he politely averts his eyes when I hand him the cash.
Filling my time is problematic. I find it hard to concentrate on the TV for too long, and the inane reality shows that I could probably just about tolerate remind me too much of my mom for me to watch. I spend the majority of my time sitting in the lawn chair on my porch instead, breathing in the salty Malibu air and watching the peach house through my binoculars. Because of how the property is angled in relation to mine, I can see the roof terrace and the dark blue pool at the back of their house clearly, and each day at noon I watch Able’s wife, Emilia, swim lengths for half an hour, emerging at twelve thirty p.m. with her blond hair slick and glittering in the December sun. In a strange way her routine has
become comforting to me, as if it is also my own.
I am sitting like that one day, squinting up at the house, when the phone starts to ring inside my rental. I assume it’s Laurel, and I’m irritated that I have to lower the binoculars because it’s the exact time of day that Emilia likes to go for her swim, but I walk through the screen door anyway.
“I sent a nude,” the voice on the other end of the line says.
“Esme?”
“That’s why I got suspended.”
“Oh Jesus,” I say. “How did you get this number?”
“Dylan.”
“Oh great,” I reply. “I guess I’m the only one who doesn’t have it.”
“Look, my friend has a therapy session in Brentwood at three today. Can I hang out at yours while she’s there?” Esme asks impatiently.
I pause, looking down at the binoculars in my hand. I rarely see Emilia after her swim anyway.
“Sure.”
* * *
• • •
An hour later, a red car roars down the dirt track to Coyote Sumac, and I know instantly that it’s Esme and her friend because they’re driving in the way only privileged teenagers from the suburbs can: carelessly, unflinching in their belief that they’re invincible. I watch from the porch as the G-Wagon pulls to a sharp stop outside my house. The car engine cuts out, and along with it the music, a thin voice warbling shrilly over a synthesized beat.
I almost don’t recognize Esme when she climbs out of the car. She’s finally out of her school uniform, wearing a cropped striped T-shirt and ripped black jeans. Her black hair cloaks her shoulders, and the heavy powder on her face is a couple of shades too pale even for her. Her brown eyes are rimmed with black liquid eyeliner that has left a mini inkblot test on each of her eyelids, and the overall effect of all that effort is that she seems younger than she is, more vulnerable. I want to reach out and brush some of it off, but even I know that this would be a bad way to kick off our sister playdate.
