In Twenty Years: A Novel

by Allison Winn Scotch

  Tomorrow they’ll be packed up, gone. Tomorrow Bea’s birthday will have shifted to the last day of the yearly cycle, another 364 more until they all stop to remember her.

  The guy in the topcoat hands her a printout. “Had extras of these. Throw it out if you don’t want it.” He shrugs and continues disrobing.

  It’s the Map to Freedom—the trail where the settlers came in with their aspirations for a new life, how they built the city, where they planted their roots to stake their claim toward independence. There’s Franklin Square, there’s the Liberty Bell, there’s Independence Hall, where they signed the Declaration of Independence.

  Catherine squeezes the bridge of her nose, presses her eyes tight. How far would she walk for her own aspirations, her own slice of independence?

  Too far, she worries. Too far.

  28

  COLIN

  Colin is staring up at the brick facade of the Quad, thinking about all the nights he spent stretched out on Bea’s bed, talking until their eyes drooped and they scrambled awake a few hours later, late to whatever 9:00 a.m. seminar they’d foolishly enrolled in. Then he thinks about that first time he met Annie, in the unisex bathroom. How he could tell she was mortified to find him standing there in nothing but a towel; how he tried to make small talk to ease her mortification; how he thought it was pretty dang adorable that she was so mortified in the first place. It’s funny, he thinks, how breaking up with Annie that night had led him to Bea, and now maybe Bea is leading him back to Annie.

  “Let us in!” Annie shouts, shaking the locked metal gate under the arched entrance, covered in shadows. “Let us in, you fuckers!”

  You’d think she’d been imprisoned and was clawing her way out, not the reverse. Colin gazes at her. He can see she needs something, needs someone. He thinks to himself, She needs me. It’s been a long time since someone’s needed Colin. Since Bea. His patients need him, he supposes, but that’s work. That’s different.

  “These weren’t here when we went here,” Catherine refers to the bars and gates. “Also, I obviously can’t break in. After the day I’ve had.”

  “Yes, they were here,” Owen replies.

  “No, they definitely were not.”

  Owen sighs and kicks his toe against the sidewalk.

  Colin has a vague recollection of a security booth of sorts and maybe an ID detector, but he’s not so sure he’s willing to take sides. Metal bars? He can’t say. He wouldn’t lay down his life on it. Besides, what’s the difference? Things changed. They can’t expect that they can come back here and everything will be as it was.

  Annie is still braying into the open courtyard denied to her by these jailhouse bars, her voice echoing around the empty humid air. Colin watches her and wonders if she’d been this brazen, this unfettered back then, freshman year, if he’d have slept with her, if he’d ever have broken up with her. It’s almost as if he’s seeing her—the one who’d been lurking underneath all the other bullshit—for the first time. She steps onto a bar and propels herself a foot higher.

  “Let us in! I know you’re in there! I know you can hear me!”

  “Who are you screaming at?” Catherine asks, edgy, glancing around for amateur videographers. “Also, can we leave?”

  “Everyone,” Colin says. “She’s screaming at everyone. Let her.”

  “Fuck you, security guards! Fuck you very much!”

  Colin cocks his head as Annie roars; he’s a little turned on right now. She dismounts from her perch, her voice growing weary and cracking, and resigns herself to defeat. She slides down onto the grimy sidewalk, and Colin is beside her in an instant, rubbing her lower back, the space between her jeans and her pink tank top, which is damp from her efforts. He tries not to notice the stains of dog urine folded into the sidewalk cracks, the years-old chewing gum embedded into the concrete.

  Annie rests her head on his shoulder, the warmth from her body spreading onto his like an aura cast over them both. Maybe he should tell her about Bea, about what he did. He wonders if she’d still find him heroic, if she’d still let him guide her through the wreckage of this day, if she’d still link her elegant fingers into his.

  He suspects that she would not. He killed her, goddamn it! How do you go about spilling that secret to her dearest friends, the ones who loved her best? She asked for it, sure, and it was only a way to ease her suffering, but he didn’t have to; he could have drawn the line. Still, though, he would like to tell someone, ease his own burden, release himself from the prison of that secret.

  Annie groans and drops her head into her hands. He gazes over and wants so badly to fix her, to fix this. He’s never noticed her ears before, how small they are, how delicate. She’s wearing huge solitaire diamonds, which tug her earlobes low—probably a gift from her husband, who felt guilty about one thing or another. Colin has never bought a woman diamonds. Once, he considered a little necklace for Bea, but it felt like too much of an admission, an open gesture or proclamation, and they didn’t do open proclamations. And anyway, he didn’t buy them back then. That’s what matters now.

  No, Annie wouldn’t forgive him, wouldn’t understand that he would have walked to the end of the earth for Bea, so that’s what he did. Bea hated secrets, and yet because of her, he bore a nearly unimaginable one. He bristles, fidgeting on the sidewalk, uncomfortable with this new irritation with Bea. He gazes again toward Annie, who’s biting her thumbnail, pensive, silent.

  Annie must feel his stare and turns to meet his eyes.

  “I can’t remember why I needed to get in there so badly.” She shrugs. “It’s stupid. I’m tired.”

  Colin offers her a kind smile, the one Annie fell in love with eighteen years before. “I can’t remember a lot of things. Sometimes it’s better that way.”

  29

  LINDY

  Of course he wasn’t there. Her old professor, Mr. Pearson. What did she expect anyway?

  Well, she expected him to be there, to grovel, to apologize. To say, I was wrong about you. That’s what Lindy Armstrong is used to now, and damned if she didn’t actually believe she’d get the same from Mr. Pearson that she does from everyone else. Not everyone. Not Leon. Maybe not Tatiana, but usually her too.

  Not now, though. Tatiana is onto her, aware of the ruse, even if she’s not exactly sure how deep the ruse runs. She doesn’t know about the baby. Maybe she’d forgive her for Leon, but certainly not for the baby.

  Lindy runs her fingers over the shiny black grand piano in one of the music rooms she found unlocked, a disharmonious melody echoing around her. She slides out the bench and steps around it, sitting on the worn leather, straightening her spine, arching her fingers above the keys. She holds them there, then falters. She doesn’t know what to play. She eases her hands back into her lap.

  She’s lying to Leon too. And that lie is much more complicated. What’s she supposed to do? Just blurt it out? Surprise! I barely know you! I’m carrying your kid!

  She lies so easily to him, just like to Tatiana. Like she’s not even trying. That’s how easily she manipulates them, like butter. She and her sister used to do that Saturday Night Live routine—like buttah. She lies so easily it’s like sliding a knife through warm butter. It’s all so second nature to her that she can’t even differentiate between all the untruths: which are worse, which aren’t so bad.

  Lindy sighs. She should call her sister, but they’re not on the best of terms this week. Who knows why? Actually, she does; she forgot to FaceTime for her niece’s birthday, even though she promised, and then she subsequently ignored her sister’s passive-aggressive texts suggesting that five minutes out of her very important life shouldn’t be too much to ask. It wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t too much to ask. Why did Lindy make everything such a struggle?

  Like buttah.

  It’s not like she can call Tatiana for advice. And it’s not like she can ask Bea. Who else is l
eft? Her manager? Her publicist? Is there anyone she can trust who isn’t on her payroll? She squeezes her temples, a headache worming its way in.

  Annie. Of course Annie is left, but that bond has been blown to smithereens. For the first time in years, though, Lindy wonders if maybe she couldn’t try to glue it back together. Begin with apologizing for that moronic wedding weekend. End by telling her the truth, or some version of the truth. She doesn’t have to, like, pour her heart out about unrequited love or anything. Just say, Hey, I adored you, and I fucked it up, and I’m sorry.

  Her fingers find their way back to the keys, and she begins to play by instinct, by memory, but also by nostalgia, which she was certain she’d run out of years ago.

  It’s an old song, one of her first. She wrote it three months after moving to Nashville, and for the first time in as long as she could remember, she was alone. And alone not because she was being an asshole, but because she’d been brave enough to leave New York and Annie—though under unpleasant circumstances, it’s true. But semibrave all the same. To leave what you loved behind because it was self-preservation.

  But this song, it isn’t a song about loneliness; it isn’t a sad-sack love song. It’s a song about the courage you need to will yourself to fly, even if you aren’t sure you’d ever catch air. A song about courage and faith and generosity of spirit. A song about just about everything Lindy lost after the wedding and after Bea, in the years that followed in Nashville, then LA. She sat beneath her windowpane long after sunset, cross-legged, in torn long underwear and a floppy, fraying sweatshirt, as time faded into itself, just like she had at Bruiser; and she wrote every last stanza, every last note. It got her a CMA nod, but that’s not why Lindy loves it now, though for many years, maybe up until today, it was. The acknowledgment and the fame. That’s why she loved it.

  Now, her fingers glide over the keys, and she shuts her eyes and the music reverberates deep down, all the way to her soul.

  No, now she loves it because it’s hers.

  A funky-ish looking dude kicks her out. He’s lanky and smug and wears Elvis Costello–like glasses and has a wiry goatee that isn’t filled in enough.

  “You can’t be doing that,” he says, beckoned by her noise. “This room is supposed to be locked.”

  “Is it bothering you?” Lindy asks.

  “I’m writing next door, so yeah, it is.”

  She almost lashes out, telling him that whatever he’s writing can’t be as important as her, but she stops herself. Maybe without the Phillies hat he’d recognize her, be more deferential, let her stay. Maybe even beg her to play, beg her to teach him. But she’s wearing the cap low over her face, and he doesn’t appear to consider her special or famous or anything other than a nuisance.

  Anonymous. That’s what she is.

  She rises, pushing the bench back with her legs, its feet squeaking on the floor.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I was just revisiting. I used to go here.”

  He softens a bit, his shoulders relaxing.

  “Oh, that’s cool. An alum. Did you learn anything? Did Pearson make you any good?”

  “Mr. Pearson?”

  “Yeah,” he says, like he’d be speaking of anyone else. “Professor Pearson.” He waves an arm like Pearson owns the place. “He’s been here forever.”

  Lindy smiles. That’s right. She’d refused to call him “Professor” because he had, like, seven years on her. Ten at best.

  “He told me I was total shit.” She laughs.

  “Ouch! But . . . were you?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t know . . . but I don’t think so.” Her hands find her pockets, her shoulders rounding downward.

  “Hell if any of us know,” he says, biting his thumbnail. “You do music afterward? Because, like, my parents think this is the dumbest major ever. They want me to be a banker.”

  “I think most parents want their kid to be a banker. At least, instead of a musician.”

  “Yeah.” His face turns to shadows. “I mean, I guess I’ll go on the interviews. Internships and all of that shit.”

  “Well, don’t tell your parents that just yet. You haven’t even gotten out there, haven’t even tried.”

  “So you’d do it the same way all over again? Really?”

  Lindy can see now that he’s maybe nineteen—twenty, tops. Unsure, full of questions, just looking for a little hope.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I’ve screwed up plenty.”

  “Huh,” he says. “So . . .”

  Lindy tugs her cap lower, considering it.

  “I guess I’d do it all over again, sure. But maybe not the exact same way.”

  “Hindsight,” he says. “They say it’s everything.”

  “Nah, not everything. There’s foresight too.”

  “If I had foresight, I’d probably never do this in the first place.”

  “Maybe.” Lindy thinks of everything that lay on her own horizon, of all the havoc—both beautiful and awful—her choices up until now are about to wreak, all the people she’s lied to, all the hearts (mostly Tatiana’s) she’s about to break. “But maybe you’d know, and you’d do it anyway.”

  30

  ANNIE

  Annie has never been to a battle of the bands. In fact, she hasn’t been out dancing or to a club or lost herself in the beat of live music since just after Lindy moved out. Sure, she digs it when her instructor turns up the speakers superloud in her spinning classes—she puts her head down and bobs her shoulders and feels the music, feels alive, but it’s not quite the same, is it?

  They’ve made their way through campus, down past the graffiti-covered bridge over the freeway, and onto the banks of the Schuylkill River, near the crew house, where those rower boys must spend half their days in and out of the water, coasting atop it for miles and miles. There are hundreds of others there now too: on blankets, with six-packs (or twelve-packs), sprawled on top of or next to or wedged near one another. It’s dark by now, the lights of the river walkway illuminating the lawn, along with iPhone screens lit up like electronic fireflies.

  Annie thinks this might be what Woodstock felt like.

  Maybe not exactly.

  But something. Maybe it felt something like this. Like community.

  Annie can’t remember the last time she felt a sense of community. That stupid PTA doesn’t make her feel like she’s part of any community! Her goddamn Facebook feed doesn’t make her feel like she belongs! She thinks of Bea, and how maybe that was the last time she felt it, back then. Maybe, possibly, when she first met Baxter, but she lost herself so quickly with him, the constant swirl of pretending to be better than she was . . . God, how long has it been since she was at peace, since she felt comfortable in her own skin? Lindy challenged her once, to stop apologizing just for a day—don’t say “I’m sorry” for her complicated coffee order, don’t offer “I’m sorry,” when some guy jostles her on the subway. “Stand tall,” Lindy said. “You can do it. Then you’ll start to stand taller on your own.”

  Well. Look how well that worked out! Screw you, Lindy!

  She wants to text this exactly to Lindy—Hey, fuck you for everything!—but it occurs to her, very briefly and fairly hazily, that Lindy has made her bed (along with a fetus), so Annie will just let her lie in it.

  Annie finds an open pocket on the lawn and tumbles onto the grass, the others following suit, Owen and Catherine flanking Annie and Colin like awkward bookends. Leon stands behind them, casting about, maybe searching for Lindy, maybe just feeling a little lost. Maybe stoned. Hell, Annie doesn’t know. He’s not her problem; she’s not his babysitter. She’s tired of being some man’s goddamn babysitter!

  Colin grabbed some Amstels at Wawa along the way, so he twists off a cap and passes one her way. She probably shouldn’t have another—she’s still a little glassy from the tequila at the house, but so
what? So what? What’s the worst that can happen? She’ll ruin her marriage? Her husband will text her a picture of his disgusting penis that was intended for someone else and—Oopsie!—send it to her?

  Annie has watched enough cop shows to narrow it down to one suspect. It’s not difficult to figure out that “Cici” is probably Cecilia Kirkpatrick, whose daughter is in Gus’s grade and who managed a deal or two with Baxter a few years ago. She and Baxter had gone to high school together. She remembers him telling her that—that they hadn’t really been friends, but they hadn’t not been friends either. At the time, Annie was impressed with Cecilia’s ability to juggle a high-powered job, three kids, a Labrador, and a cushy position on the PTA (auction cochair!). Not to mention the upkeep at the Hamptons house. (They owned, didn’t rent, like Annie and Baxter.) But now she wonders if Cici’s life weren’t just another Instagram shot, like so many Annie uploaded herself lately: all filter, no substance.

  Well, shit. Does this mean she has to stop posting on Facebook? Does everyone know about this except her? Is she the laughingstock of the PTA? Does Cici swirl into meetings with her freshly made blueberry muffins and whisper to Rue McLaughlin (current PTA president): Oh, that Baxter, he is just such a naughty little boy!

  Annie resolves to unfriend Cici on Facebook immediately.

  “Hey,” Colin says, leaning over, whispering in her ear. Annie feels his breath against her skin and thinks it feels like heaven. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers.” They clink the necks of their bottles together, then Annie chugs half immediately. She hiccups. “Please don’t tell me to slow down.”

  “I would never tell you to slow down.”

  Annie tilts her head back, peering at Leon upside down, like Gus used to when he was little.

  “Why are you trying to find her? Don’t you think she’d find you if she wanted to?”

  “I’m just hanging,” Leon says. “Don’t worry about me.”