“Fame isn’t everything.” She shrugs. She’s used to feeding this line to journalists, particularly lately, when she’s on a junket for Rock N Roll Dreammakers. It’s about passing on your knowledge, breaking open doors for others! She’ll sometimes say, Fame is just a label other people put on you.
Lindy doesn’t believe a word of her own drivel. Because fame? Yeah, she does fucking love it.
Owen drills her with questions, apparently the only one who has really kept up with her career (“I have a lot of time on my hands,” he shrugs apologetically, as if there’s something wrong with being well versed in the life of Lindy Armstrong), and Lindy’s irritated that Annie hasn’t shown more of an interest, even though Annie has made it clear her interest level is hovering right around rage-hate. After graduation, when they lived in that hovel in the West Village that was, like, four hundred square feet between them, and Lindy would play some shitty show for drunk NYU students who would catcall about her boobs, Annie always showed an interest. It was Annie’s interest that gave Lindy hope. She would sell approximately four CDs, and drag herself home after, and Annie would wake up, even though she had to work the next morning, just to ask her if she got discovered that night.
It’s been thirteen years, Lindy thinks. When is she going to grow the fuck up?
“I don’t know how you almost failed that class,” Owen is saying. “The stuff you write now is amazing.”
“Thanks!” Lindy says too cheerfully, failing to mention that virtually none of her radio-worthy songs have been her own. “And now I have this TV show,” she adds. TV! She’d rather be playing gigs in dive bars across the Southeast, but gigs in dive bars don’t pay $4 million. And Lindy isn’t dumb enough to pretend that she doesn’t love all the stuff accompanying that cash. Still, Annie sits stone-faced. Lindy narrows her eyes. “Seriously, Col, I know lots of hot girls. You’ll see.”
Annie jabs something on her phone, then crosses her legs in those stupid leather pants, which Lindy actually adores and would probably wear, but which do not suit Annie at all.
“Nice pants,” Lindy says. “I think I own the same pair.”
“Mason and I are watching!” Owen interrupts. “I love that girl you chose for your team from, where was it, like, some small town in Wisconsin?”
“Kansas.” She doesn’t ask who Mason is, because she has a vague sense that she should know that he’s Catherine and Owen’s son, but she can’t for the life of her remember how old he is or if their other child is a boy or a girl.
“I’m never home,” Catherine says. Then, as if she realizes it’s time to bury the hatchet for causing a scene at the wedding, adds, “Or I’m sure I would.”
Lindy raises her eyebrows. Catherine didn’t give her much of a chance to explain after Annie fled the brunch, and then Bea chased after her, and Colin nursed three Bloody Marys. She marched over to the buffet line, where Lindy was eyeing the scrambled eggs and debating the bacon, and seethed, “How could you?”
“How could I what?”
“You know what you did, Lindy. Stop being so goddamn unaccountable. You knew how she felt. You knew what she wanted.”
“It didn’t mean anything.” Lindy tried to feign innocence, but Catherine was never anyone’s fool.
“Which makes it all the worse. And at our wedding. You did this at our wedding. You were my bridesmaids!”
“She’s a big girl,” Lindy said. “Everyone should grow up.”
Catherine scoffed, her bright eyes turning gray. “You should grow up, Lindy.” Then, “She’s your friend! I’m your friend. And you just made this weekend about you. Which, if I’m being honest, isn’t particularly surprising.”
Lindy thought she was being a little overdramatic, and Catherine had been a bit of a bridezilla, what with her insistence on those ridiculous plum-colored bridesmaid’s dresses that reminded Lindy of curdled pudding, and all of the peach-scented, hand-crafted candle favors they’d had to tie in twine on Friday, and home-pressed invitations Catherine had e-mailed them about, oh, a hundred times.
“Give me a break, Catherine.”
“Give you a break? I’m sorry that we can’t all be as important as your new cool friends, that you could barely bring yourself to wear the dress I picked out, that you being here feels like an inconvenience to your super-awesome life that is way cooler than mine! But this is the last straw, Lindy. I wanted you here, standing with me, because we were old friends. But you haven’t been acting that way at all.” She paused to take a breath, then kept on like a dam unplugged. “So I should give you a break? And then . . . and then this! With Colin! When we all knew how she felt! Jesus, he wanted Bea for years, and she would never, ever resort to this. There was an unspoken code.”
“There was no code! What code?” Lindy stared across the buffet to see if Bea could come defend her, put a rest to all this code business, save her from the spiral this was quickly taking, but Bea was still chasing Annie, trying to abort her own emotional hemorrhage. “What sort of bullshit is this code?”
Bea was nowhere in sight.
“Oh, you know what code. Don’t pretend for one second that you don’t know the code. You just didn’t care.”
“Fine.” Lindy flung her plate onto the buffet table, where it clanged against a carafe of orange juice, which promptly toppled to the carpeted floor. Catherine immediately dropped to her knees, grabbing wads of cloth napkins from the buffet, mopping up the orange stain like it was pooling blood. “Fine! You’re right! I’m a shitty person, I’m a selfish asshole. But I gave up a gig at The Bitter End to be here, when, I’ll be honest, I couldn’t give less than one shit if you have calla lilies or tiger lilies, when I don’t give a rat’s ass about your stupid peach-scented candles. I don’t need this shit, you’re right, Catherine, and for that, I’m the worst friend in the world. Happy wedding! Congratulations!” And then, because Lindy never felt safer than when she was running away from whatever obstacle lay in front of her, she fled out the same doors Annie had, though far enough behind not to catch up, not to feel the tremors from her wake.
Now, Lindy wonders if Catherine is sorry for the way she so easily blamed her, accused her, cast her out. Or maybe Catherine is waiting for Lindy’s own apology. Lindy almost snorts aloud. Like she should be sorry. It was sex. It was stupid sex, but Jesus! Been there, done that. She holds her chin high and waits for someone else to offer an olive branch, to grab hold and say, “Let’s just all move on.”
“Listen,” Catherine says now. “Let’s just get this out of the way. What’s going on here?”
“You first,” Lindy tuts. “I’m waiting.”
Catherine cocks her head, like she has absolutely no idea what Lindy is talking about, which, Lindy quickly realizes, she doesn’t.
“What I mean is, why on earth did Bea own this house? Why would she have made a will with this directive in it?”
Colin clears his throat, and they all swivel their gazes toward him. He presses back against the sand-colored couch, the late-day light from the bay window shadowing his face.
“No . . . nothing,” he says. “I don’t know.”
“Who has a will at twenty-seven?” Catherine asks.
“Bea,” Annie suggests earnestly.
Lindy rolls her eyes.
“Was . . . something going on with her? Did anyone talk to her after the wedding?” Catherine says, “It’s strange. Like she was almost preparing for it.”
“The wedding?” Annie says.
“Dying.” Catherine shakes her head.
None of them says anything then.
“I spoke with her a little bit,” Annie offers softly. “Just . . . well, when she left. Moved out.” She raises her head toward Lindy. “But then she was back in Honduras. I tried to e-mail her, but she never got back to me.” She shrugs, a sad gesture.
Lindy debates whether she should be flattered that A
nnie finally acknowledged her or pissed that she can’t bring herself to say her name.
“She called me a few times,” Catherine says, like she’s just remembering. “Left me a few messages, but we were on our honeymoon . . .” She looks to Owen like maybe he can fill in the blanks. “And when we got back, I can’t . . . I can’t remember if we ever got around to talking. No. No, actually, we didn’t. That was it, the last time I spoke with her was at our wedding.” She sighs. “I mean, if something was wrong, like, if she had a will for a reason, I didn’t know.”
“She didn’t have a will for a reason!” Colin snaps. “God. You’re acting like, she was, like suicidal! She had a huge trust, and I’m sure she was told to be responsible about it. It’s not like she was a stranger to people unexpectedly dying.”
The other four consider Bea’s parents and nod.
“Well, anyway. Is there something here for all of us?” Catherine looks around. They all look around. The living room is empty, other than the odd furnishings and well, them. “Why else did we come back?”
“We came back because we got the letter,” Annie says.
“Please.” Lindy doesn’t mean to sneer like she does when she says this.
“Please, what?”
“Obviously we are here because of the letter . . . Hello!”
“Lindy!” Catherine says. “Please don’t start already, please. Let’s put our best faces forward.”
“This is my best face.”
Catherine sighs, too dramatically.
“You’re not happy with my face?”
Catherine pinches the bridge of her nose, like Lindy is a monster headache, a giant literal pain in her brain.
“OK, why don’t we start over?” Colin says. “Everyone is happy with everyone’s face.”
“No, please explain what exactly you don’t like about my face,” Lindy bleats. She knows she should drop it. God, why can’t she just let it go? Stop picking this fucking scab until it’s ripe and pink and bloody?
“Oh God,” Catherine groans.
“Catherine.” Owen steps closer. “Not now.”
“I’m fine,” she says, though spit flies a little from her mouth.
“Really?” he asks.
“Owen, please don’t start.” He sits down abruptly, dismissed, his chair squeaking, his skin flushed, his lips curled, as if he wasn’t trying to start anything before, but now very much may be considering starting something. Then, to Lindy, “Look. We’re all trying to get off on the right foot here. So let’s try that, OK?”
“Fine.”
“Great.”
“Fine,” Lindy says again, not sounding fine, not feeling fine. She thrusts her hands onto her hips, calculating how quickly she can get to the airport. The first flight probably isn’t until the morning. Shit. She juts her chin. “Fine, let’s talk about it then. Why the hell are we back here?”
“Bea asked us to,” Colin says, like this is the explanation that clarifies everything.
“And you did always do whatever Bea wanted,” Lindy replies.
“Lindy . . .” A long sigh from Colin.
“We all did,” Annie interrupts. “We all tried to do what she wanted. Not just Colin.”
“Well, she made us promise to be family, remember that?” Colin fiddles with his watch, his gaze fixed on the weathered wood floor. “So I guess we didn’t always do everything she wanted, after all.”
The strangest thing about returning to an enclave that encapsulated your youth is that you feel like nothing should have changed. Like you still have the right to be twenty and carefree and irresponsible. Like you still are twenty and carefree and irresponsible. Lindy has ditched the suffocation of their old house, of the rest of them, sitting around saying things like “Fine,” and “Great,” when nothing is fine or great at all, and now she’s racing down the sidewalk toward Smokey Joe’s, the old dive bar where they used to queue up the jukebox to Prince and grind on whomever they were hooking up with for the month (or the night), when she considers that this is the closest to freedom she’s been in ages. That she is irritated and pissed off and claustrophobic, but still, she’s irritated on her own terms.
She waits for the Don’t Walk sign to change, dipping her toe off the sidewalk, then stepping back quickly as a green Jeep flies by, too close, her thin white T-shirt clinging to her from the draft.
Colin chases her down the sidewalk.
“Come on, Linds. Wait up.” He jogs to a halt. “Don’t run off without trying. We’re not so bad.” He grins.
“I’m not running off. I’m going out for a drink.”
One drink, she’s decided, won’t matter. She’s played with fate in much more dangerous ways than this before.
Owen rushes through the shadows, out of breath.
“Wait, wait, I’m here too!”
Lindy groans. “So much for enjoying some solitude.”
“Sorry!” Owen says. “Jesus.”
“Forget it.” Lindy sighs. “Personal space has never been our forte.”
“Since when have you ever wanted solitude,” Colin says, more of a statement than a question, so she lets it go.
The light flips, traffic halting in front of them, and they fall in line with each other like they used to, silent for a bit, Owen’s flip-flops keeping beat against the pavement.
Owen shoves his hands into the cargo pockets of his shorts. “I think I’ve forgotten how it feels to be twenty. Like, no responsibilities, no worries. Shit, man.”
“What did we worry about at twenty?” Colin looks befuddled.
Lindy shrugs. “I didn’t worry about much, don’t worry about much now. What’s the point? Life happens.”
“Hey.” Owen perks up. “Don’t you have a song called that?”
A police car flies down the block before she can reply, its siren reverberating around them, its lights bouncing off the neighboring stores. Twenty years ago, police sirens were like background noise, ever present, a part of the fabric of the campus: so too was the nervous apprehension if you walked home solo too late at night or found yourself locked out after dark. It was ironic: the rich kids thrust into the inner city. Of all of them, Annie was the only one who had even come close to understanding the perils that lay in wait behind the shadows.
Lindy risked it once—she’d broken up with her boyfriend the hour before and then couldn’t convince him to escort her home because, well, she’d been a real bitch when she dumped him, callously, unceremoniously, just after he asked her to a fraternity formal—and she was mugged outside the McDonald’s two blocks from their house, just kitty-corner from where they stood now, though a Jamba Juice had long ago replaced the McDonald’s.
Lindy tries to remember that guy’s name, the one who stood his ground and refused to accompany her home, but she can’t recall. Greg? Craig? She remembers him being cute but maybe annoying. She isn’t sure. Bea and Annie told her she was a moron to dump him—he was hot and kind and smart and already had a job lined up at Goldman—but Lindy felt suffocated, like maybe he was too into her, more into her than she was comfortable with.
“I think that sounds pretty wonderful,” Annie had said. They’d been pouring cereal into plastic cups, dinner for the night. “Who wouldn’t want to be loved in that way?”
“There does need to be a balance,” Bea remarked. She mixed some Cocoa Puffs in with Honeycomb. “But I did once read that it’s better to be the one less in love than the one more so.”
“So that’s your plan? To always be the one a little less in love?”
“I have you guys. I don’t need to be in love.” Bea shrugged. “I need an occasional warm body and tequila.”
“Not the worst plan,” Lindy concurred. Though she watched Annie spoon her own Cocoa Puffs and wondered what it would take to convince her that she was worthy of being loved too.
Anyway, regardless of Greg/Craig’s positive attributes and/or Annie’s urging to keep him around, Lindy dumped him. And then she got mugged. And now she’s here, in that same spot, twenty years later, staring at the neon glow of the Jamba Juice sign, and the sidewalks aren’t littered with empty cigarette packs and used napkins and sometimes much more disgusting things like old condoms or the occasional syringe. Greg or Craig is long gone, and she can stand up for herself against any sort of threat, and she is famous and a millionaire and invincible.
“Let’s do this!” she says, once the whirling sirens have faded southward. “Let’s party like it’s 1999!”
Owen slaps her five, and Colin shakes his head but grins.
“Lindy Armstrong,” he says, “you never change.”
“Fuck you, Colin.” She smiles as she says it, but she’s really thinking, No, fuck you, all I’ve done is change. After all, she’s a worldwide brand now, a meteoric star, a VIP with an entourage and celebrities on speed dial, and certainly not the girl who cared about making these fools happy. They didn’t get that: that she did actually care.
At Smoke’s, all three of them are carded, not because they resemble actual teenagers, but because this is an old Smoke’s tradition. State your name into the microphone and video camera. Lindy had forgotten about it until the microphone is thrust in front of her. But then it’s all so natural to her—the mic out front, the (imaginary) spotlight. So she howls and says, “Lindy Armstrong, bitch!” and the bouncer, who’s dressed as George Washington, does a double take, and then howls back, “Holy shit!” and insists they snap a selfie, which Lindy happily does because finally, finally, someone recognizes that she matters.
The upstairs of the bar is dark—dimmed sconces punctuate the walls, muted halogen bulbs hang over the booths, shadowy enough to conceal the enormity of Lindy’s fame for now. Her eyes take a moment to adjust. Though it’s summer session and most of the undergrads have retreated to their jobs as camp counselors, or vacations with their parents (or if they’re really lucky—the Wharton students, most likely—internships with self-important companies like McKinsey or Goldman), it’s still crowded for a Thursday night in July. The air conditioner is feebly cooling the humid air that’s seeped in from outside, and all the girls have tossed their hair into messy buns, exposing their long, nubile necks, highlighting their subtle collarbones, their youthful cleavage. Lindy used to be young and wily too.
In Twenty Years: A Novel Page 7
