Inside

by Alix Ohlin

  Azra raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

  “You glory in the pain you inflict. Grace doesn’t do that. People whose bodies are suffering can’t think clearly about their lives. You’re a fool if you think otherwise.”

  “It was really just a funny idea,” Azra told him.

  “Tug,” Grace said softly.

  He stood up suddenly and left the restaurant.

  Her mouth hanging open, Azra looked at her, and Grace shook her head. She wouldn’t follow him; he’d only be angry if she did. “It’s not about you,” she said to Azra.

  “What’s it about, then? My God.”

  “He’s been through a lot. It’s good, actually, for his emotions to come out like this. It means he’s not suppressing them.”

  Azra reached across the table and touched her arm. “Watch yourself,” she said.

  When she got back to her apartment, he wasn’t there. But in the morning she woke to find his legs wrapped around hers, their fingers interwoven. She turned and made love to him gently, as if he were injured or ill, and when they were done he was still pressed up against her.

  That’s how it went: one day lovely, the next flawed. In this respect, was it so much different from anybody else’s life?

  She wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary on the Tuesday morning in April when her session with Roch Messier was interrupted by a knock on the door. She thought it was likely her previous patient, who maybe had left an umbrella or something else behind. But when she saw the two blue-uniformed Sûreté du Québec officers in the hallway, she felt the dread she’d long nursed within herself, the sense that she’d known this would happen.

  One officer was male, the other female.

  “Madame,” said the woman, “are you Grace Tomlinson?”

  She nodded and led them to the reception area. They refused her invitation to sit down and stood uncomfortably, like early party guests, in the middle of the room.

  The woman asked, “You are an acquaintance of John Tugwell?”

  “Yes,” she said. Her chest felt frozen, as if a block of ice were lodged there.

  From the pocket of her heavy uniform coat the woman withdrew a note, unfolded it, and held it out to Grace. She didn’t take it, just read it in the officer’s hand. It had only her name and the words I’m sorry.

  “We found him on the mountain,” the officer said.

  She knew it was cowardly to faint, but she recognized in herself the need to exit the situation as quickly as possible. She couldn’t afford to be brave, to be composed, to be alive. Not right now. She let herself do it, and fell.

  Azra came to her apartment and sat with her through endless, empty hours. Everything had flown out of Grace’s hands: it wasn’t her place to identify the body, to make funeral arrangements, to call his sister or his ex-wife or friends she’d never even heard of. Her roots in his ground were shallow, and now the ground itself was gone.

  By eleven that night Azra was asleep on the couch and Grace was alone, awake, in her bed. She wanted desperately to talk to someone, and almost woke Azra up; but she didn’t, because the only person she wanted to talk to was Tug.

  The funeral was held in Toronto, where his sister lived, and Azra drove Grace there and back. They sat in the back and didn’t speak to anyone. Grace didn’t feel comfortable introducing herself to his family, since Tug had made no introductions himself. Ordinarily not a pill taker, she downed enough Valium to get her through the day, then the next, and the whole following week.

  She discovered that she longed to go back to work, to lose herself in the world of other people. Her patients were her only relief, their sessions the only time she was able to withstand her own thoughts, and she felt overwhelmed with gratitude. She needed them as much as they needed her, maybe even more.

  But each evening she was trapped at home, hopelessly angry at him, and she couldn’t stop crying, the tears fat and hot on her cheeks, her shoulders heaving, immobilized by grief. Pinioned in place on the toilet, in the shower. On the floor of the living room.

  Her mind veered constantly back to that day on the mountain, remembering that she’d nearly taken a different path entirely, that for an infinitesimally brief moment she’d considered just leaving him there—choices that would have saved her from having to endure this pain.

  None of which—the crying, the questions, the choices, her memories, her body’s memories—changed the fact that he was gone.

  Every morning her eyes were swollen, deformed, and her throat cracked and salty. One Friday she woke to find the world blanketed in snow—the last storm of the year, surely. In the pale early light she called her answering service and asked them to cancel all her appointments for the day. Then she put her skis in the car and headed west to Gatineau Park. Snow was falling lightly as she sped along the highway. She used to go to Gatineau with Mitch, so long ago it seemed like another life. She had never been there with Tug.

  Her goal was to wear herself out in an enormous swath of white, blank calm. She started off fast, making long strides, her quads tight, her breath coming fast, her heart galloping in her chest. Though she was exhausted from lack of sleep her body felt strong, rich with stamina. She always felt like this right before her period, though it was late this month, probably due to stress. A suspicion blinked in her mind like a distant neon sign, then went out, then came back on again. It was possible; it wasn’t impossible. She wasn’t a teenager. She was always careful. Of course, as her mother had always told her, every method has its percentages.

  Thinking about this, she messed up a turn and almost crashed into a tree, correcting wildly at the last minute, her right pole flying up beside her. She found herself skiing hard down an incline into a grove of skinny birches, and then she was through them and into a clearing, all by herself in a pocket of space and snow.

  She stood there to catch her breath, leg muscles twitching, nose running. Twenty yards away, a fox raced to safety. She turned to Tug, to point it out to him, as if he were there. In that moment, she believed he would always be next to her, always the first person she wanted to tell about any miraculous or ordinary event, always the one whose reactions she sought, always the voice in her ear.

  “Tug,” she said out loud. Then she knelt down and washed her face in the snow.

  Two weeks later she was standing in the bathroom with a pregnancy test in her hand—the stick’s plus-sign result only confirming the changes she had already detected in her body—when the phone rang. She let it go, not caring. She hardly knew how to react. She’d always planned on it in some general sense; at the start of their marriage, before things went wrong, she and Mitch had discussed it, and once, on a trip out west to see her parents, she couldn’t resist buying, in an upscale craft shop, a tiny, hand-knit purple baby cap. With the divorce and its aftermath any thoughts of parenthood had lost their immediacy, but now added to this month’s turbulence was the idea that she could have a child.

  Whoever was calling wouldn’t stop. The phone kept ringing. She put the stick down and went into the living room to answer it.

  It was Annie’s mother, hysterical, her voice blurring the words, asking, “How could this be? Where did she go?”

  Grace listened, barely able to make sense of what she was saying. Annie had run away, apparently, and left a note saying she was leaving and never coming back, that they shouldn’t try to find her.

  “How could she do this?” Annie’s mother demanded.

  Grace murmured some vague response, such consolation as she could muster. She was so distracted that she could hardly concentrate.

  “I just don’t understand,” Annie’s mother was saying. “People don’t just do this. People don’t just disappear.”

  Grace spoke the right words, the comforting words, and they were on the phone for an hour. But throughout the call she was thinking, Yes, they do. People disappear all the time.

  TEN

  Los Angeles, 2003

  WHEN ANNE RETURNED from Edinburgh
, there were five voice-mail messages from her agent, Julia, each more frantic than the last.

  “Darling,” the last message went, “this is big. Call me today or else, I swear to God.”

  Anne stood in the hot, dusty apartment, her unpacked bag on the couch. Though most signs of Hilary and Alan had been removed, the place still didn’t feel like hers again. She walked around opening windows, glanced inside the empty fridge, and found a dead potted plant in the bedroom, tucked behind a curtain on the windowsill. Hilary must have bought it.

  Besides Julia, she had no one to call to say she was home.

  In the early morning, she ran five miles and was back at the apartment, showered and staring at the clock, by seven thirty. Since Julia never got in before ten, she went for a walk around the neighborhood, bought some groceries, and had a manicure. It was a beautiful late-August day, warm but not humid. Tributes were starting to go up, flowers and photographs, notices of ceremonies, everyone seeming a little teary and brave and on edge, the anniversary bearing down. Anne noticed these things only insofar as she wanted to disassociate herself from them. If she could have managed not to register the date at all, she would have. But as it was, she thought about Hilary’s due date and knew that it had passed.

  Back at the apartment, she called Julia, whose assistant put her through right away, an unprecedented act.

  “Darling girl,” Julia said, “where the fuck have you been?”

  “I told you. Scotland, in a play.”

  “You and your plays,” Julia said, trying to sound fond, though her disgust was obvious. Julia was about toothpaste commercials, modeling if necessary. She was about getting your face out there. “Fortunately for you, they waited. You must’ve really done a number on that guy.”

  The first guy who came to Anne’s mind was Sergio, sprawled on the unforgiving cobblestones, his eyes flashing when he rose up again to hit her, his anger laid bare. Then she refocused and said, “What guy?”

  “Michael Linker,” Julia said, as if everybody knew who this was. “He saw you in that godforsaken thing on Long Island.” At the time, Julia had called the godforsaken thing a masterpiece of contemporary drama.

  “Whatever,” Anne said.

  “Not whatever! He just got promoted to a new studio-exec position and wants you to audition for this pilot that sounds amazing. Gritty family drama, lots of sex. It’s a cable show. You need to be on a plane to Los Angeles today. Call me back with your flight info and I’ll get you a car on both ends.”

  Anne had been telling Julia for months that she didn’t want to leave New York, that she wasn’t interested in television, that independent films were the only projects for which she wanted to be considered. Standing in her apartment, the air conditioner wheezing asthmatically, she realized that nobody cared what she wanted.

  “Annie,” Julia said. “You’re on this, right?”

  “I’m there,” she said.

  That night she got on a plane, no longer tracking whether she ought to be asleep or awake. In California the car delivered her to a hotel, where she took a bubble bath, then ordered room service. Outside, the sun glared over a tangled mass of highways. Her interview wasn’t until the next day, and she had hours to enjoy herself on someone else’s money. So she went swimming at the hotel pool, then took another long bath. She remembered Hilary, when she first came to stay, gulping down donuts and any other food in the apartment. In retrospect, her appetite was surely fueled by pregnancy, but she also seemed to believe in eating while the eating was good, like a feral cat. Anne felt the same way about creature comforts. When luxury was available, she would gorge herself.

  Then she pulled out the script that had been waiting for her when she checked in. She read it through and started rehearsing her lines. Low expectations or not, she wasn’t going to sabotage herself. She’d work with what she had. She remembered Julia’s parting words. “You may not be the best or the prettiest, but you don’t have to be,” she’d said. “You only need to seduce one person at a time.”

  Her appointment was at ten, on a studio lot. When she arrived, two people were waiting—Michael Linker, her fan from the play, and a woman he introduced as Diane. The office was both lavish and uncomfortable, designed to put newcomers at a disadvantage. Michael sat on a white Lucite desk, lounging in jeans and a crisp white shirt. Diane leaned back against a windowsill piled high with scripts. Anne was given an entire white leather couch to herself, into the depths of which she sank gracelessly, looking up at them.

  “Thanks so much for coming in,” Michael said.

  “Yes, thank you,” Diane echoed, smiling broadly. “We’re so happy you could make the trip. Michael’s been raving about you ever since he got back from the Hamptons, and finally I just couldn’t stand it anymore and told myself, I have to see this girl!”

  “You were incredible in that play,” Michael said. “You ruled the stage, and that final scene was, my God, so heartbreaking.”

  “And Michael’s not easy to impress,” Diane said. “I hardly ever hear him gush like that.”

  This was clearly a lie. It was their job to gush. Anne crossed her legs, trapped in the couch, and kept smiling. “Thanks. You guys are so nice.”

  “It’s our pleasure, really,” Diane said. She had long, dirty-blond hair and wide-set, strangely vibrant blue eyes. Anne wondered if they were colored contacts. She was having a little trouble concentrating. Ordinarily she worked best one-on-one, responding to cues from the person in front of her; with two people, though, each broadcasting a distinct sexual energy, she couldn’t quite figure out how to play the situation.

  “Okay, my dear,” Michael said. “Enough shameless flattery. Are you relaxed? Let’s talk about the story. Then let’s hear you work with it.”

  The character was an abused woman who triumphs against the odds and finds love again. In the scene Anne had been given, she confronts her cold, unremorseful husband, the abuser, with anger, tears, and recriminations.

  Now sitting behind his desk, Michael was reading the husband’s part. Diane had pulled up a chair beside him and was fiddling with her nails.

  Anne figured she knew this much: When sex is there at the beginning, it’s still there at the end. Even a woman who hates you still wants you to think she’s beautiful, desirable, so great that you never should’ve treated her so badly, never should’ve let her go. So she played the scene as sexy as she could make it.

  When she was done, Diane muttered something under her breath, but Anne couldn’t hear what it was.

  “Fabulous,” Michael said routinely. “Could you just give us a minute, darling?”

  “Sure.” She stood outside in the hallway, breathing a bit heavily, adrenalized and a little turned on. An old boyfriend, a medical-school dropout, had told her that when he needed to calm down during sex, he used the images of diseased skin from his dermatology textbook. Pustules, rashes, oozing sores. Of course, after he told her this, during sex she was always thinking about him thinking about skin diseases, and pretty soon she was too turned off to see him again. But she kept the technique. After running through the images in her mind, she felt more nauseated than anything else.

  The door opened and Diane smiled at her, blue eyes glowing. “Let’s go down the hall and see if the camera loves you as much as we do, okay?”

  She went through the scene again, this time with an actor Michael brought out without explaining who he was. Anne didn’t recognize him. When they were done, he unbuckled his belt, peeked down his pants, and said, “Scared the shit out of you, didn’t she, buddy?” Then he laughed and left the room, patting Michael on the shoulder. Anne could have turned this remark over endlessly in her mind, but didn’t. Her mother had once told her that whoever cares the least has the greatest advantage. It wasn’t a motto she herself had been very good at putting into practice. But Anne was.

  And it must have worked, because months passed before she went back to New York. She let her apartment languish there, unpaid—it wasn’t her nam
e on the lease, and the furniture was worthless, so who cared?—as a new life in L.A. grew up around her.

  She was cast in the pilot and had read-throughs with the actor playing her husband—not the one from the original audition, but a kindly type who brought a charming snakiness to the role that was significantly more disturbing. As she studied the script, she realized that what she’d thought was a starring role was in fact a small, supporting one. How had she gotten this impression? Had they actually lied to her or simply let her believe something that wasn’t true?

  The main character was a man who had partnered with her husband in a business deal whose crookedness extended to the top echelons of a major corporation and, from there, to the government. Her job was to be beautiful and damaged—at one point she was taken hostage—and in most of her scenes she had no lines, because she’d been gagged.

  Diane found her a place to stay, a tiny mother-in-law cottage on some producer’s estate. It had a sweet little yard clustered with cactus and blooming plants, fuchsia petals leaning gaudy and lovely against the stucco walls. Beyond the garden was the mansion where the producer lived, a Spanish-style villa with a red tiled roof. Diane also leased her a car and gave her an advance on her salary. She was almost impossibly helpful, and from this Anne could only deduce that Diane thought she was going places. When she told Julia what was happening, a tightness stole into her agent’s voice that she recognized as the palpable fear that Anne would screw it all up. This fear was justified. The easier things came to her, the more worthless they felt, and the more she was tempted to cast them aside.

  But she liked Diane. She could be catty and obnoxious and she talked shit about Michael behind his back. She told Anne that her little cottage was hideous and had to be redecorated as bluntly as she had told her that her ass was saggy and she needed to join a gym.

  “I don’t do gyms,” Anne said.

  “Honey, this is L.A.,” Diane said. “You don’t have a choice.”