by Sasha Dawn
She gives me her gimme-a-break look. “It’s possible,” I say. “I mean, every time I walk into an audition, and someone makes the connection between me and Jesse Joseph, it’s another bridge, another bonus. Maybe he just gave the kids his last name. Maybe their dad’s not involved, and he’s adopted them.”
Hayley shrugs. “Possible. But probable? They call him Daddy. In fact . . .”
Hayley pulls a small notebook from her purse and flips past notes about great works of literature, symbolism, and a hundred other things professors over-emphasize to suck the life right out of a story. On a blank page, she draws a horizontal line and begins marking it with little Xs, one of which she labels Leaves Ella, another Divorces Ella, and one at the end, which she coins Today. Ah. It’s a timeline.
“Think about it,” she continues. “We have a roughly ten-year timeline. At the beginning, we have the day he decided he was done being married to Ella. Five years later, we have the divorce being final. And five years after that, we have today. Jennica, who’s . . . how old?”
“Eight.”
“When’s her birthday?”
“I don’t know.”
Hayley rolls her eyes.
“What?” I say. “Like that’s something Dad would’ve mentioned to me?”
“No, I know. It’s just ridiculous that there’s so much we don’t know. We don’t know anything about these kids.”
“Duh. What do you think I’ve been trying to tell you for the past . . . forever?”
“Let’s assume she’s not newly eight. Let’s assume she’s somewhere between eight and nine. Eight and a half.”
“Wait.” I again check her bio on my phone. “Yeah, she’ll be nine in October.”
“That means she was born around here.” Hayley marks the line with another X—this one just past leaves Ella, and about five years before the divorce was final.
“That means,” Hayley says, “she was conceived around here.” The final X lands right before leaves Ella.
I look up at her. “He left us for them?”
“Well . . . come on. You had to have known he was involved with Miss Karissa before he left your mom. You’re not that naïve.”
“So we weren’t enough for him.” I mentally tumble backwards in time over all my aspirations. Every audition. Every role I didn’t get. But Jennica . . . she’s in a Gap commercial. Daddy’s shining star. I’m just a girl who’s been tossed a few pity roles, probably to appease my manager father. “We weren’t good enough.”
“I’m starting to wonder if anything would be good enough for him.”
I feel strange, like I’m in a foreign country and don’t speak the language but suddenly catch onto the fact that everyone’s making fun of me. Jennica is almost nine years old. My father is the same man today that he was yesterday, and every day for the past nine years. Yet suddenly, I feel differently about him.
I stare at my phone. He’s not calling. Not texting.
Hayley and I just walked out of his life, and he’s not even trying to explain himself. Not even trying to get us back.
It’s like the bottom of the world is dropping out from under me, and he’s simply watching me flush my way out of the solar system.
No hand reaches out to catch me. No voice at my back begs me to hang on.
“I stood up for him all this time,” says Hayley wearily. “I made so many excuses for him. I believed the best of him even when he gave me no reason to. God, this sucks.”
“But we have each other.” I lean my head against her shoulder. “We have each other. And Mom and Nana.”
“Always, sister.” Her cheek rests against the crown of my head. “Always.”
I cue up one of my new tracks and pop in an earbud. The other, I hand to Hayley, and together we listen.
I hear the words no one’s singing, in accompaniment to my notes:
Cloves of a new day
Cloaked in a new wave
Loved on a Tuesday
Lost on blue day
But I wouldn’t change it for the moon
I wouldn’t change it, for it’s doom
I would’ve sung it on the last day
of a rose blooming in June.
It’s a song about me, about what I’m feeling. But it’s also about more than that. It’s about losses that are bigger than just me.
With my mom so sick and fighting. With my dad recently carved out of my life. I think I know now that losing isn’t about not getting the role I had my heart set on. It’s not about missing an opportunity.
It’s about sorrow.
But it’s not about who hurt you or how or why.
It’s about hope and the will to survive.
I open my diary app and jot down these thoughts. They make a nice couplet.
Without thinking, I open Lyrically to share the two lines with Dylan Thomas. I stop myself, of course. “You don’t still talk to him, do you?” Hayley asks.
She’s obviously looking over my shoulder and knows I’m on Lyrically.
“No. I blocked him.” But a longing pulls at my heartstrings.
“Good,” my sister says.
“But I do miss talking to him.”
And the things that transpired today are exactly the types of things I would talk to him about. I’d get his perspective. He had a way of calming me down.
“Trust me, Lainey. There will be other guys. Real guys, who are who they say they are.”
We ride in silence to the hospital.
Chapter 38
Wednesday, June 14
Over the next few days I run myself into the ground, going from rehearsal to the hospital to the apartment, where the chores never seem to end.
Now I’m riding home on the L with Ted. My phone chimes.
Hayley: Any change in Ella’s prognosis?
Me: If anything I think she’s worse.
Me: It’s breaking my heart.
Hayley: She’s going to be ok
Me: I’m not sure this time.
Hayley: Has Dad been in to see her?
Me: No. I don’t expect him to.
Me: I’ve hardly talked to him.
Even when my paychecks hit and he usually sends me a “good job, kiddo,” my phone has been silent. Total freeze-out.
Me: If he’d admit what he did was wrong, and if he wanted to be different, things between us might change.
Me: But until he does that I don’t have anything to say to him.
Hayley: I wish he would.
Hayley: But I’m starting to think he’s just incapable.
Hayley: No one says no to him.
Hayley: He always has everything just as he likes it.
Hayley: But we shook him up.
And this is what happens when things don’t go his way. He pouts in a proverbial corner and makes life hell for the rest of us. And usually, I scramble around, try to make him talk to me, try to get him to tell me whatever it was I did wrong, whatever it was I did to deserve the cold shoulder.
I don’t care this time.
This time, I know I’m not wrong.
However, if I’m getting paid, and he’s taking a cut as my manager, and he’s not in contact with me . . .
How do I know I’m paying him the right amount?
I never thought I’d come to a place where I didn’t trust my own father to not swindle me, but after everything he’s lied about . . .
It’s not that I think he’s actually cheating me. But I no longer think he’s the type of person who wouldn’t.
“Hey, Ted?”
“Yeah.” He looks up from the book he’s reading.
“Is there a way to ask to see my pay stubs?”
“Well . . .” He tucks a thumb into the novel to bookmark his page. “It’s my understanding that that’s part of the court case. Full disclosure as to your earnings, his percentage of your earnings . . . and the determination of whether your father should continue to act as your manager.”
Wait. The court case is dealin
g with that directly? “I thought it was about child support and maintenance. And Mom being compensated for everything she’s done for me.”
“It is, but I think it’s more about gaining control of information. I know your mom had been trying to get the records for months, if not years. She seemed to think your father didn’t have enough time on his hands anymore to do justice to you and your career.”
Because he was busy getting gigs for Jennica.
“She said she wanted to manage me.”
“Mmhmm.”
The cancer sits in the air between us. “But even if she can’t now, Dad should’ve been paying her all along for taking me to auditions and rehearsals. I hope she at least gets some compensation out of the court case.”
“Well, it looks like your dad found a way to prove you didn’t need the escort to your auditions anymore.” He looks at me for a bit too long. “He hired a firm to record your movements, and he proved that you’re pretty self-sufficient and city savvy.”
“Wait. Hired someone.” It hits me: “It wasn’t Dylan Thomas following me?”
“I checked in this afternoon for an update, and the cops said that guy turned out to be a private investigator working for your dad.”
“My dad was having me followed?”
Ted nods.
“Tracking me to prove I went places all alone?”
“Looks that way.”
“But he knows I can do that now. That’s not the point Mom’s trying to make! The point is that I never used to do that when I was younger.”
“That’s what your mom is trying to prove.”
I picture the guy who followed me. I think about every hitch in my breath, every faltering heartbeat, all the time and energy I spent trying to figure out if he was really tailing me. All because my dad had wanted to score some points against my mom.
“God, I’m clueless, aren’t I? I didn’t know the first thing about who my dad really is . . . and then there’s the whole Dylan Thomas debacle. I mean, what kind of a girl becomes addicted to talking to a guy who isn’t who he says he is? Only to block him because I think he’s someone else?”
“Listen, Lainey. Don’t beat yourself up.”
“This stuff doesn’t happen to Hayley. She’s socially adept. She knows how to talk to people face to face. She has good judgment.” Although, until recently, she’s also been Dad’s staunchest defender.
“You’ll get there. And anyone can be fooled by a skilled liar.” He slips the glasses from his face and chews on one of the arms. Then, just when I think he’s going to say something, he leans back, slips his glasses back onto his face and goes back to his book.
“Ted? Do you think—I mean, since Dylan wasn’t actually stalking me—I mean, he’s shy, and I understand shy—maybe I should give Dylan another chance?”
He sighs heavily and turns a page. “Whether or not Dylan Thomas was stalking you, I still don’t think he was being completely honest with you.”
But I wonder . . .
My mother is giving Ted a second chance. Or he’s giving it to her.
Maybe that’s the right thing to do.
Or maybe it’s time to admit that I sort of fell for Dylan Thomas.
Okay, not sort of.
Did.
***
Later, I’m on my bio page on Lyrically.
My mouse hovers over the UNBLOCK button next to Dylan Thomas’s profile picture.
Should I?
Shouldn’t I?
Chapter 39
Saturday, July 8
“You’ll be home by next week,” I tell my mom. “You have to be.”
I’m supposed to be onstage for open mic at the Factory, and I really want my mother to hear me sing the song I call “Warrior” for the first time in public. I squeeze her hand.
She weakly tightens her fingers, as best she can, around mine. “Whether I’m there or not,” she says in a breathy, wheezing voice, “you have to go on.”
“Mom. No.”
“The show goes on, baby girl. Promise me. If I’m there, or if I’m not, you’ll sing that beautiful song.”
“I promise.” I climb into the tiny hospital bed with her.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that she isn’t getting better. She isn’t responding to treatment the way the doctors hoped she would. And it feels like there’s a lot more room in this hospital bed than there used to be.
The doctors and nurses say all the right things when I talk to them.
And she’s still witty and she still smiles.
But yesterday, I caught Nana Adie all-out bawling in the waiting room. She sees it, too. We both hear what the doctors won’t say.
My mother is slowly dying. My beautiful, graceful mother. She’s fading away.
“Let’s get a picture,” I say. “I won’t post it if you don’t want.”
“I don’t mind,” Mom whispers.
“You’re beautiful,” I tell her. I kiss her cheek and think of all the times I pulled away when she used to peck mine. Tears prick my eyes, but I will them away. I don’t want her to see me cry.
I snap a selfie of the two of us and post it to my Instagram: My #mauvelous mother. #PinkStrong.
I stay with her until she falls asleep. Eventually I carefully climb out of the bed, contain my sadness until I reach the family waiting area, and burst into tears.
I sit against the wall and bury my head in my hands, sobbing violently. I want to scream.
After what feels like an hour, I pull in a long, difficult breath and dare myself to hold my head up.
The first thing I see: A pink-and-gold swirled origami moon, just sitting there on a side table where people usually perch their Styrofoam coffee cups.
I peel myself up from the floor and grasp it. Eagerly, I unfold it.
Afraid of what the future holds
Afraid my story will never be told
Well, my life’s always on-air
My life’s always a bear
But I reach high for the gold
I seek only the bold
I fight because I care
I live because I dare.
“Lainey?”
“Ted.”
“You okay, kid?” He folds me into his arms.
“She’s dying,” I say between sobs. “I don’t know how to live without her.”
Ted squeezes me. “You’ve got to hang in there. She’s still fighting. You can’t give up while she’s still fighting.”
I nod against his shoulder, and finally back away, wiping tears from my cheeks.
“You need a break. Want to walk Vinny? Nana’s here. And we’ll come right back.”
***
It’s almost two in the morning, but I can’t sleep. Even Nana has turned in by now.
I log into Lyrically. I find Dylan Thomas’s page.
Unblock.
Me: Hi.
Within a few minutes, he responds.
Dylan: Hey!
Me: Why are you up?
Dylan: I’m not entirely. The message alert on Lyrically woke me.
Dylan: I’ve been trying to reach you.
Me: I’ve been confused.
Dylan: About?
Me: Us.
Me: You and me.
Me: What we are. What we aren’t.
Me: Why I feel I can tell you everything
Me: but you hide behind a screen.
Dylan: So do you.
Me: But I don’t watch you from a distance.
Dylan: I know. That sucked, didn’t it?
Dylan: I really am sorry.
Dylan: If I’d been more confident, I wouldn’t have done it.
Dylan: But every time I tried to tell you who I am
Dylan: I froze.
Dylan: Not that that’s an excuse.
Dylan: I’m sorry I hurt you.
Me: You SCARED me.
Dylan: I’m sorry about that, too.
I don’t know what to say, and he must not either because for long m
inutes, I stare at a quiet screen. Finally, he starts typing again.
Dylan: Is there any way we can start over?
I’m not sure I believe in starting over. I’ve never seen anyone succeed at it. And yet I find myself typing . . .
Me: Next week.
Me: Open mic.
Me: The Factory.
Me: I’ll be singing a song I wrote entirely on my own.
Me: Notes, lyrics, the whole shebang.
Me: No screen.
Me: I’ll be getting real.
Me: Maybe you can, too.
Dylan: You want me there?
Me: Yes.
Dylan: Then I’ll be there.
Me: It’s time we meet face to face.
Me: I sing in front of the whole world.
Me: And you shake my hand and let me know the real you.
Dylan: Madelaine?
Me: ?
Dylan: These past few weeks without our chats have been AWFUL.
***
Later, when I’m finally dozing off, my phone buzzes again with a message from my sister:
Hayley: The Vagabonds site!
Hayley: There’s a rumor that they’re about to release a new song.
Hayley: This is a sign.
Hayley: Good things are coming.
Chapter 40
Friday, July 14
I wish I shared in my sister’s optimism.
Sure, it looks like Vagabonds are back in business and that thrills me. After a year-long hiatus, they’re back on social media and rumor has it they’ll be releasing a song by tomorrow morning. There’s also talk of an upcoming album and even a tour. Nothing is official yet, but Dad texted me to ask if I wanted to see the show when they come to Chicago in October. United Center, Concert Club . . . the whole shebang.
I haven’t replied to Dad.
“So you’re not going to go?” McKenna asks as we sit talking before the open mic starts.
“I don’t know,” I say. I mean, of course I want to go, but not at the expense of something else. It’s hard to juggle professional productions and school as it is, and if I’m starting at the academy soon, I’ll be even busier than usual. Plus I don’t know what Mom’s going to be going through by the time the mythical tour kicks off.
Besides, I have an inkling Dad offered as a way to bridge the gap between us without having to change anything.
Still, I can’t wait to see what snippet of genius the band will be dropping.
