The Song Remains the Same

by Allison Winn Scotch

  “I’m trying—you know, I got that new couch,” Nell says. “Think I’ll get some new clothes. But really, aren’t we are who we are?” Nell isn’t sure what she believes anymore. She made the vow to herself to be a changed woman, but tied to this vow is the idea that the plane crash could have been a blessing. All those people died, and even though she’s been given this second chance, this do-over, this makeover, the idea that this is a blessing seems disgusting almost—too trivial, too trite.

  Rory grunts because she doesn’t really know, either.

  “So, anyway,” Nell says, ordering a buttered bagel when the waitress makes her reappearance, “Dad.”

  Rory feels too hungover and too torn to ascend this hurdle, but she nods as if she’s ready, ready to answer whatever questions come her way. She’d promised her mother she wouldn’t go deep, wouldn’t plunge Nell all the way back in—and besides, she and Nell had their own problems that she was more than happy to put behind them—so she sips her coffee and wonders what version of the truth she can get away with. She was the better liar of the two of them anyway. Always had been. She’d gotten that from Indira.

  “I had the weirdest dream last night,” Nell says. “I was back on the plane, Mom was there, Jasper was there, Anderson was there.”

  At the mention of Anderson’s name, Rory nearly chokes on her coffee, forcibly swallowing and trying not to demonstrate her obvious alarm. Or her guilt. Or her regret. Which of the three was it? She’d made Anderson promise to pretend like it had never happened. This morning, while he was zippering his zipper, buttoning his waistband, tugging on a shirt to cover his body that, after four shots too many, Rory had unapologetically disrobed the night before. They hadn’t planned it, of course. They’d unintentionally collided at The Palms, a club downtown where she was doing her best to pretend that she didn’t miss Hugh, and he was doing his best…well, just doing his best, Rory supposed now. This morning, when the phone rang, Nell hadn’t recognized his voice, grainy, from the night spent screaming over too-loud techno music—and thank god for that, they both concurred when they awoke newly sober and absorbed the situation, mulled over the consequences.

  “What does your dream have to do with Dad?” Rory says.

  Nell shakes her head. “I don’t know. Something. Anyway”—she flips her hair—“okay, let’s start with this: I know that you didn’t always get along with him, but what do you remember about me? About the two of us?”

  “I got along with him well enough. I just didn’t idolize him, that’s all,” Rory says. “But you, no, you idolized him. You flat out worshipped him.”

  “Example.”

  Rory rubs her eyes. “After Dad left, you didn’t believe it. You refused to believe it for a good six months.”

  “Well, that seems normal. I mean, we were kids. Who would want to believe that their parent wasn’t coming back?”

  “No, it wasn’t just that. It wasn’t normal. That’s the whole point.” Rory presses her thumbs down on her temples in an attempt to beat back the shadow that the tequila left behind. “Mom would try to talk to you—I remember so clearly her trying to talk to you one night at dinner. She’d made this rice and bean dish because she freaked out when Dad left and had just gone vegetarian, and you insisted that she put out a plate for him. She refused because she thought you needed to accept that he was gone, but you kept nagging her, not even nagging, it was like needling, ribbing her—you couldn’t let it go.”

  The waitress approaches with their breakfast, sliding the dishes in front of them, and Nell tears a piece of bagel with her teeth, her eyes focused as she tries to remember.

  “So Mom kept saying no,” Rory continues, “and you kept insisting that he was going to come back, and that we had to make it totally clear that we wanted him back, or else of course he wouldn’t come, and how couldn’t she see this?”

  “And what were you doing while we were arguing?”

  “I was sitting on a stool watching everything unravel. That was the difference between us. I accepted it right away. We woke up one morning and Dad’s stuff was gone, and he’d left us each a postcard with a little stupid fucking drawing—which I guess was to signify his love or whatever—but I knew that it was his way of saying good-bye. I tossed mine in the garbage within a week. You? You tacked yours up to the bulletin board in your room for half the year, until you finally realized what he meant by it—that it was his suicide letter of sorts.”

  “Don’t say it like that,” Nell says.

  “See, even now you’re doing it—defending him.”

  Nell reaches over and dips a finger into Rory’s oatmeal for a taste, considering the point, and then says, “So what happened that night at dinner? Who won?”

  “Neither of you.” Rory’s teeth skate over the metal of her spoon. “Jesus, it was awful. You wouldn’t give up and she wouldn’t cave, and so eventually you tried to force yourself toward the oven to make a plate for him yourself, and Mom tried to block you, and you shoved her some more, and she shoved you some more…” Rory suddenly feels furiously ill, unsure if it’s from the tequila or the story. She grabs Nell’s hand.

  “This scar,” Rory says, running her index finger over a long vine just above the fold of Nell’s wrist and winding all the way down the shallow end of her arm. “That’s where you got it.”

  Nell pulls her arm from Rory’s fingers and examines the consequence of that evening.

  “It wasn’t her fault,” Rory says quietly now. “I mean, it wasn’t intentional. She didn’t scar you on purpose.”

  “When is it ever on purpose?” Nell asks, finally raising her eyes to meet her sister’s.

  Rory sighs. “Mom was just so hysterical, and to be fair, you weren’t at your best. You were both delusional in your own way. You loving him too much, her hating him too much or…God, I don’t even know what she was doing. Blaming herself? Blaming Dad? Blaming God?”

  “So then what?”

  “You and Mom stopped talking for a few days. You spent all your time throwing out all this painting crap, tossing cans and brushes and drop cloths in the garbage like he could see you, like you were doing it out of revenge. You blasted your music.” Rory grins a little at this. “Guns N’ Roses. It was so ridiculous for a thirteen-year-old girl in Bedford, New York, but it screamed from your room and from the guesthouse for days. I don’t know, it was, like, your anger music or something.” She shrugs and takes another swallow of oatmeal. “And eventually, you moved on like it didn’t happen—though you stopped writing music, stopped making much of it really—and Mom, in her spiritual New Age misguidance, tried to talk to you about it endlessly. It just pushed you away even further. She’d enter a room, you’d leave it. That sort of thing.” Rory’s nausea has passed now, the sense that she might make it out of this entanglement without narcing on any of the parties involved. “I don’t know—I was only eight or nine. Too young for all of this crap in the first place.”

  “And me? At thirteen, you think I was better prepared for it?” Nell asks sincerely.

  “You?” Rory almost laughs. “Nelly, no one is prepared for it. That’s the whole problem. That’s why everything is so screwed up in the first place.”

  19

  I ’m meeting an old friend today, hoping she might be able to help me find some answers,” I say to Liv, the next Tuesday. She looks tired, less shiny than usual, and I wonder whom she shares her own problems with. We are perched on my new red couch, side by side, bodies angled toward each other’s, which is both comfortable and still slightly awkward, the intimacy of sharing the space.

  “Answers to what?”

  “What do you mean, ‘answers to what’? Answers to everything.”

  “This friend has them?” I can’t tell if she’s pushing me or just generally cranky.

  “Are you cranky?”

  “No.” She half-smiles.

  “Tired?”

  “Let’s keep this about you. When you say ‘answers,’ it seems almost too simpli
stic that your friend might have them.”

  “Isn’t that what this whole pursuit is about?” I say, testily. “Getting my goddamn answers.”

  “Of course.” She nods. “I only meant that some of them need to come from you, not anyone else. Your friend, for example, can’t tell you how to feel about your miscarriage and what that meant for your relationship with Peter.”

  “I take it, through your therapist terminology, that you think it might actually be time to discuss the miscarriage with Peter.”

  “There is no therapist terminology involved,” she says. “Only that it’s something to consider. Something that perhaps you might want to discuss with me first before moving on to him.”

  “I have considered it,” I say. “And I’ve decided that even the best relationships have their secrets. That maybe there is something to be said for some mystery, for not discussing everything.”

  “There may indeed be something to be said for it, though I can’t help but think you’re now mixing up your parents’ relationship with your own.”

  I firm my jaw. “Tell me why you’re cranky, and I’ll keep talking.”

  “I do not negotiate with terrorists,” she says, but I don’t blink. “Fine,” she exhales. “My dog, Watson, he was sick last night, and I spent most of it at the vet’s. That’s all. He’s fine now.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I say. “You could have rescheduled.”

  “I’m not a rescheduler, don’t like missing things I’ve committed to.” I nod because the old me didn’t seem like she broke her commitments, either. “So back to your parents.”

  “Back to my parents.” I stand to get myself some water. “I wasn’t specifically referring to them, no, but since you raised it, then, well, yes.”

  “So your argument is that having secrets can do a relationship good, but—correct me if I’m wrong—what good came out of their own secrets?”

  “Ask again later.” I set my glass down on the coffee table and lower myself back to the couch. She, intentionally or not, shifts an inch farther away. “That’s the million-dollar question.”

  “Nell, I’m urging you to take this a little more seriously.” She places her notes down beside her as if to demonstrate that she is truly serious now.

  “I couldn’t be taking it more seriously!” I say. “How could I be taking this more seriously if I tried?”

  “Part of my job—and yours—is to occasionally tap into places that might not want to be tapped into. I’ve noticed that one thing you are very good at is blocking out something that you may not want to address.”

  “Well, of course I block out what I don’t want to address! Why wouldn’t I? In your psychological view, couldn’t you argue that, in fact, this entire thing”—I swirl my arms here and inadvertently knock her notes to the floor—“is an effort to block out what I don’t want to address?” I feel my pulse in my neck, instantly irritated at how easily she has broken this down, how simple a mark she has made me out to be. If she senses my sarcasm, she ignores it.

  “Nell, look. I know you’re working hard here, and I know that you’re frustrated not to be making more progress. I’m only here to guide you, to suggest an opinion that may or may not be helpful.” She pauses, waiting for me to reel myself back in. “How about art?”

  “How about it?”

  “You’ve mentioned that you loved to paint, so how about art therapy? There are very conclusive studies that demonstrate how it can help in situations like yours.”

  I shake my head. “I never said that I loved to paint. I said that my father always thought I could be great, like him. There’s a difference. What I’ve been told I always loved was music.”

  She digests this, chewing on her lower lip, which must be an old habit from childhood, not one she could shed once she got her Ph.D.

  “Well, this certainly leads to a different—albeit equally important—question,” she says finally. “We’ve spoken an awful lot about your father, much more so than about Peter or your marriage or any of the issues that, per your request, we can let rest for today. But your dad—in some ways, you seem more consumed with uncovering his past than your own.”

  “Isn’t our time up yet?” I deadpan, and she just stares. “Okay, the truth is that I feel like the more I know about my dad, the more unanswered questions I have. And yes, I suppose I dwell on that. A lot. But so what? Isn’t that what you’re here for?”

  “It’s part of what I’m here for, yes,” she concedes, and I think aha because there’s something truly satisfying about proving your therapist wrong. It’s the small victories these days. “But mostly what I’m here for is to help you figure out who you are now, not just who you were then.”

  “Look,” I say flatly. “My dad left us, which must have been devastating. By all accounts it was devastating. And now, I can’t even remember that devastation. Why can’t I try to find out about it?”

  “You are welcome to find out about it,” she says, finally reaching down, taking a breath, and retrieving her scattered notes from the floor. “But this ‘devastation,’ as you put it, has defined so much of how you are. Even in the absence of it! What’s wrong with that picture?”

  “Ask my dad—he was the artist.”

  “Nell,” she says, and I can tell she’s losing her patience.

  “Fine.” I sulk. “Well, I was consumed with him once, and now I’m consumed with him all over again. Maybe this just proves that people don’t change.”

  I gesture to the couch, as if to say, I tried! I got this enormous cherry tomato couch, but here I am, right back on the gerbil wheel, my father’s absence defining me in the same way that it always did.

  “No,” she says, straightening her papers on her lap, then meeting my eyes. “People change. And you know that. It’s the not wanting to do the work involved that makes us complacent, and it’s that complacency that renders us right back where we started.”

  Sam cuts out of work early that afternoon and meets me in front of Tina Marquis’s building in midtown. I’m early, so I have the cab drop me five blocks north when we pass a boutique that looks too hip for the old me. The new me, the one that I’d just sworn to Liv is nothing more than an ephemeral fabrication, thinks, Well, screw that. If anyone can change, it’s me. So I shove ten dollars at my driver and stride into the store, scooping up a too-purple V-neck and an odd little beret that the salesgirl swears shaves five years off my age before she shyly tells me that she knows who I am and admires how I’m making myself over. I don’t dwell on her intimation that I’ve actually reached an age that needs shaving off or that I did, indeed, need a makeover. Instead I assess myself in the mirror and see that the new, fabulous me very much approves. Who the hell knows if people can change?

  Sam waves to me and laughs a little at the beret.

  “Nice,” she says, then rubs my arm.

  “Just trying something new.” I’m self-conscious. My instinct is to tug that insipid hat right off my head and fling it across Third Avenue like a Frisbee, but then she says, “No, really, it’s nice. It’s new. It’s something.” So I kind of pat it with my right hand, an acknowledgment that it’s staying put, and we step through the revolving doors, on our way to see Tina Marquis, the friend in whom I’ve placed my stock to answer my questions.

  “I just want to say,” Sam hedges, while we wait in the elevator bank. “You know, you weren’t close with her, I mean, since I’ve known you. When we ran into her at Balthazar, it was all you could do to bring yourself to make small talk.”

  “And the point being?”

  “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up, that’s all. Maybe she knows something, maybe she doesn’t. But you’re practically levitating with excitement, and I just want you to be realistic.”

  “It’s the beret,” I say, as we step into the elevator. “It conveys a sense of whimsy. I can assure you I’m not levitating.” I punch the button.

  “Nell, I’m serious.”

  “I know,” I say.
“But I called her. I called her, and no one knows why. So there must be something there. There must be something important.”

  “Just…be cautious.” She laughs almost incredulously as she says this, both of our eyes on the ascending lighted numbers overhead. “I can’t believe that of all people, I’m now saying that to you.”

  Before I can register this, the doors ding open, and we step over the precipice. I look to our left and Tina is throwing herself toward us from two cubes away. Her blond hair flies behind her, her neck wrapped in a scarf, her perfect cleavage tugged tight by a magenta cashmere tee. She is my nineties sitcom character in the flesh—beautiful, crisp, a moving image of spasmodic energy.

  “Nell!” she says breathlessly, like she’s been running down the halls to greet us, which, I consider, she may have. “I am so glad that you changed your mind and reached out to me!” She holds both hands and steps back to assess. “Nice beret! Chic, chic, chic!”

  I’m embarrassed all over again, that both of them have so obviously noticed my blatant attempts to step outside myself, but brush past it. “You know Sam, from the pizza place.”

  “So nice to see you again, Sam,” Tina says, extending her hand, offering up a firm, seemingly professional handshake. I’d pegged her for an overzealous shake, a cartoonish clutch to match her caricature of enthusiasm. I cock my head, my meter reassessing.

  “So how well did you guys know each other growing up?” Sam says, as Tina leads us back to her office. I scan the floor, surveying the cubicles, the busy worker bees with their heads tucked down, their glazed eyes on their screens, their headsets pressed into their ears, and see if any bells of recognition ring.

  “Best friends through freshman year, less so after that,” Tina says. “We…well, you know high school, we all went our own way.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I know that I changed. You don’t have to be kind to spare my feelings.”