by Jenny Lee
Anna shook her head and said there was no point in leaving because honestly, there was probably nowhere to hide anymore. She hugged her brother and told him she was going to bed and would see him in the morning.
Murf followed Anna into her room and tried one more time to talk about Vronsky, but as soon as he brought up his name Anna just covered her ears and said, “Lalalalalalalala!” until he stopped. Before he left, Murf gave Anna his word that he knew unequivocally that Alexia had had nothing to do with the sex tape. Anna didn’t comment and just grabbed his face in her hands and said, “You saved me, Murf. I was lost and you saved me.” As Murf walked back to Beatrice’s he knew two things: one, he was not going to try LSD tomorrow as he’d planned because acid seemed stupid AF, and two, that he wasn’t going to see Anna tomorrow. In the morning, when he woke up between Daler and Rowney, the first thing he thought was, She’s gone.
Later at Coachella, Steven confirmed Murf’s suspicion and told him he woke up to a note from Anna, informing him she needed to get the fuck out of Dodge and was headed to the beach. Unable to sleep, she decided there was no point in leaving the music in the middle of the desert only to face the music in New York, albeit a very different kind. Knowing her home life would never be the same once she confessed her appearance in a sex tape to her parents, she decided she might as well take the rest of the weekend for herself. She told her brother not to worry; she wouldn’t be alone.
Her dad’s younger sister, Jules, lived in Los Angeles and worked in “the business” and on a whim Anna called her and asked if she could come there. Anna didn’t know her aunt Jules very well, because she was estranged from her mother, Anna’s grandmother, and when forced to pick sides, Anna’s dad had sided with his mom. As far as Anna knew, her dad only talked to his sister a few times a year, and Anna had only met her when she was a toddler. Anna and Steven received birthday gifts from their aunt, usually some fancy Hollywood swag or a limited-edition pair of sunglasses, but there was no other substantial contact between them.
Jules didn’t seem fazed to receive Anna’s call at 4 A.M. and texted Anna a pin with her address in Malibu. When Anna arrived, she was amazed to see her aunt had a giant brown Newfoundland that, when it stood on its hind legs at the wooden fence surrounding the house, was as tall as Anna.
“How did I not know you had Newfies, too?” Anna wondered out loud. “Why wouldn’t Dad tell me?”
Anna’s aunt said it was Anna’s father who had gifted her her first Newfoundland twelve years ago. This one was her second. She told Anna her brother had sent her the picture of Anna’s dog placing at Westminster. “You looked so happy in those pictures!”
Aunt Jules told her that her husband was still sleeping, so she put Anna in the guest room, a converted garage with a heavy sliding wooden door. When Anna crawled into the loft bed, she smiled because she could hear the ocean down the street.
Anna spent the entire next day under an umbrella on Broad Beach, sitting next to her aunt, who was reading a book and hadn’t asked her one question about why she was there, except to inquire if her father knew where she was. Anna explained her parents thought she was at Coachella, and they weren’t expecting her home until Monday night. “Okay, I’m not going to pry,” Aunt Jules told her. “When you’re ready to talk, we’ll talk.”
Anna was so grateful for her aunt’s laid-back attitude that she welled up, but before one tear fell, Kimba, her aunt’s brown Newf, sat up and licked her face. Anna had never swum with a Newfie before, but she did that day. She texted Steven and told him she was in Malibu and that she’d meet him and Lolly at LAX on Monday, so they could fly home together. She apologized for stealing off like a thief in the night, but what she wanted, no, what she needed, was some time alone. Steven was happy to hear from her and apologized for not being the best acid trip guide, but promised to help her navigate their parents’ anger, since he had plenty of experience in that department.
Anna spent the following day at the beach, from the moment she woke up until after dark. Dogs weren’t allowed on the beach, and the rangers came twice a day to ticket the rule breakers, but once they left, Kimba was welcome to come down. Anna texted Aunt Jules when the coast was clear, and she and Kimba appeared ten minutes later. There was something incredible about watching a giant dog navigate the mighty Pacific Ocean, and Anna felt like she could sit there and do this forever. After dark, Anna and her aunt walked down the beach, and Anna told her the whole story. It felt good to talk about it with an adult who wasn’t a parent, and since Aunt Jules wrote for TV and movies, Anna figured she wasn’t the type to judge her.
After Anna finished, her aunt asked whether she wanted advice or whether she had just needed to get this off her chest. Anna had never been asked that question, but when she thought about it, she said it had felt good to talk about everything openly and honestly and perhaps she still needed some more time alone with her thoughts. Her aunt agreed that sounded sensible and explained she and her husband used to live in West LA but eventually moved to Malibu because she felt the ocean helped her think things through, which for a writer was important.
That night Jules’s husband, Wilson, grilled four filet mignons and eight ears of fresh corn, and they ate together outside on the deck, with Kimba getting her own steak at the end of the meal that she ate in one hilarious bite. Anna loved hearing gossipy Hollywood stories that had nothing to do with her. She didn’t think of her own problems once that night, and when she went to bed, Kimba joined her. Anna’s dogs were never allowed to sleep on the bed, but Aunt Jules said they lived their lives by beach house rules, which meant sand was gonna get everywhere anyway so to hell with rules.
The next morning Aunt Jules drove Anna to the airport, but they didn’t talk much. Anna stared out at the Pacific Ocean to her right and fantasized about never going back East and just living at the beach forever. When they pulled up to the terminal, Anna felt her anxiety rise like the tide and said, “Okay, I’m scared. I think I need advice now.”
“Trust your gut, Anna,” her aunt said. “I know that sounds lame, but from what I’ve heard you made every right decision you could over the last few months. You fell in love, you fucked up a little, but it’s all gonna work out. Just keep your head down, and eventually you’ll make it through the shit pipe to freedom.”
“Okay…” Anna replied tentatively. “What’s that?”
“Have you seriously never seen the movie The Shawshank Redemption? Tim Robbins plays a man wrongly accused of his wife’s murder and after years and years and years of scraping at his cell wall with a tiny geology pick finally breaks out of prison and then must crawl, painstakingly crawl, through a long sewage pipe full of shit. And once he’s out you’ve never seen a happier guy. It’s one of the most satisfying endings in the history of cinema. That’s what you’re flying home to: your own personal shit pipe. So accept it and just move forward, inch by inch, and you’ll get through it. The whole sex tape thing? That’s just the bad luck on your part growing up in the age of smartphones and zero privacy. My money says Vronsky didn’t do it. That video was meant to fuck you over. It’s revenge porn.”
Revenge porn, Anna thought, were two of the ugliest words in the English language.
Anna and her aunt hugged for a long time at the curb with Kimba sticking her head out the back window, panting.
“You’re going to be okay,” Jules said one more time. “I promise. Being a teenager sucks, but it gets easier the older you get. Actually, that’s a lie. It gets easier when you don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks. Oh, be sure to tell your dad I say hello, okay?”
“Aunt Jules, can I ask you a favor?” Anna asked. “Can you call him and tell him what happened? I don’t know if I can do it. Please?”
“I guess that’s what estranged aunts are for,” she said. “‘Hey, big bro, I know we haven’t seen each other in five years, but nothing brings a family together like a sex tape!’ Kidding! Just shoot me the video and I’ll text it to him … Kidding! I
’ll call him. Now go, don’t miss your flight.”
When Anna walked through the automatic doors into LAX, she felt as prepared as she possibly could be to crawl through the sewage pipe to salvation.
XXVI
Since it was nearly the end of the year, and given the extenuating circumstances, Greenwich Academy agreed to let Anna work with a tutor and finish the semester at home. After a thorough investigation by school officials, the origin of the video could not be determined and was left to the FBI to handle, as it was a federal crime to distribute a video of minors having sex. At every private school in the tri-state area, every student who had initially received the email (and there were many) had to have their phone checked for the video. All found copies of Anna K.’s sex tape were deleted. (Of course, there were still plenty of copies floating around if you knew who to ask.)
As promised, Anna’s aunt Jules had called her father while Anna was flying home. Jules told her older brother what had happened, leaving out the bad acid trip, and finally ending with the X-rated sex tape of his daughter that had now been seen by pretty much every teenager on the East Coast. Edward listened to his sister relay his daughter’s story as he stared at the Atlantic Ocean from the porch of the Portland, Maine, house he and his wife had rented for the weekend.
“She called you?” Edward asked Jules, who he hadn’t spoken to since Christmas, and then only briefly. “Why wouldn’t she come to me?”
“You’re missing the point, Eddie. Get over your stupid pride! If you were Anna and just found out someone released a tape of you having sex, would you tell you? Be happy Anna knew she needed help and called an adult.”
“Oh, is that what you are now?” Edward said, pissed that none of their supposed friends, who had doubtless heard the news by now, had bothered to reach out.
“I saw the tape. It’s bad. You know, if she wants to come to LA and finish high school she’s always welcome.”
“I’d send her to Mars before I sent her to the land of fruits and nuts.”
“God, you’re still an asshole. It’s a miracle you managed to raise a good daughter. Look, she asked me to call. I did. But now I gotta go see my fridge about a sandwich. Later, Eddie.”
It didn’t take long for Edward to locate the video of his daughter entangled with some boy in the throes of ectasy. He hit pause on a frame of the girl’s face. It was unmistakably Anna. The grainy close-up sickened him, but that feeling was soon washed away by the sea change of his fury.
If this were Steven, he wouldn’t be surprised. But Anna? She was only seventeen. Given his recent weekend with his wife, who’d confessed to her betrayal, Edward was already in a foul mood. Back home in his study, Anna’s father stared at the Jay Strongwater picture frame, a jeweled heart in red and purple, which he kept on his desk. Two years ago, Anna had given it to him for Father’s Day. It contained a picture of the four of them sitting on the porch of their house in Maui, a rare photo where the entire family looked happy to be together. He stared down at the picture, at this seemingly perfect family. Good-looking, wealthy, a family that seemed to have everything going for it. He hurled the frame across the room, and watched it smash into an antique Korean vase that had been in his family for two hundred years, the very one he had planned to give to Anna one day.
When Anna and Steven arrived home from the airport, Edward sent Anna to her room without looking at her and requested his son’s presence in his study. Anna ran off to her room in tears, and Steven followed his father. Edward took out his anger on his son, even though he knew it was unfair. Steven shouldered his father’s blame with a stoicism he’d learned from the old man. He’d endure his father’s wrath if it meant protecting Anna. Steven waited, knowing to never say a word until he was asked a direct question.
“Should I send her away to boarding school?” his father asked.
“I don’t know,” Steven said. “Maybe you should ask Anna what she wants.”
“She’s a girl,” his father said. “She doesn’t know what’s best. She can’t possibly understand the scope of this…”
“It wasn’t her fault, Dad. It just happened,” Steven said, knowing his father was too angry to listen to reason.
“Things don’t just happen. Things happen because of other things. I failed her as a father and you failed her as a brother. Why weren’t you looking after her, or were you too busy partying with your friends and spending my money? You think I don’t know what’s going on?”
Steven swallowed hard and took note of his father not including his mother in the blame game even though he was certain she was probably topping the list.
“Maybe boarding school isn’t such a bad idea. Anna could attend Deerfield with me next year.”
“Provided they would even accept her after what happened.”
“Dad, this isn’t the nineteenth century. I know you keep saying she’s ruined, but she’s not. She’s the victim here. Someone did this to her, and sure, maybe her reputation is no longer spotless, but there are so many kids in this city who have done so many worse things than—”
“I don’t care about anyone else’s kids!” Edward yelled, slamming his fist on the desk. “I only care about mine.”
A knock at the door and Anna poked her head inside, her eyes cast to the floor and her voice trembling. “Can I talk with you, please? Can we talk?”
“I can’t look at you right now, let alone talk.…” Edward answered, averting his gaze away from his daughter, who slunk back into the hallway. Steven’s chest ached for his sister.
Later she was told by her brother that their father had decided she was to remain in the city, grounded indefinitely. Her dogs were sent for and she would miss her horses, but she was happy to be living in the same house with Steven again. And at least her dogs treated her exactly the same, even though she wasn’t allowed to walk them. The day after they got back, their mother called Steven and Anna into her bedroom and told them she and her father had decided to take some time apart. For now she’d be living in Greenwich while he stayed in the city with them. When Anna inquired if this was because of her, her mother said that hers wasn’t the only life imploding. All she would say was Maine had not gone well. Their trial separation was decided before they learned of their daughter’s downfall. “Obviously,” she pointed out, “your bullshit isn’t helping.”
“Are you getting divorced?” Steven asked.
“I don’t know,” was her response.
Dustin was now paid double to tutor both Steven and Anna with their schoolwork, but Lolly was no longer allowed to come over and sit with them. She didn’t take it personally, as she was busy after school every day with rehearsals. Each private school in the city had been asked to select one musical number from their school play to be performed at a large end-of-year concert at Lincoln Center. The proceeds from ticket sales would go to charity. Lolly was the student chosen to represent Spence, as she had played Eliza in her school’s all-female production of Hamilton. She would soon be making her Lincoln Center debut in front of a thousand people who’d paid five hundred dollars a ticket to fund arts education for the city’s underprivileged youth.
The month passed faster than Anna thought it would. She didn’t know the extent of the fallout from her sex tape, because she hadn’t seen anyone from the outside world to discuss it. She spent her days reading books, playing lots of sad songs on the violin, and learning how to paint dogs and horses by watching YouTube videos. She was happy to see Dustin and had noticed the change in him immediately. There was a lightness about him, the glow of newfound love, which she recognized as the same look she’d had when she looked in a mirror during her affair with Vronsky. Her time of happiness was all too brief, but at least she knew such a grand feeling was possible. Dustin and Kimmie were a couple now, and though Dustin was too polite to talk about it in front of her, Anna was happy for him and made a point of telling him as much. She took comfort in knowing that at least some people, Dustin and Kimmie, and her brother and Lolly, could
have a chance at finding happiness together, even if it hadn’t worked out for her.
XXVII
The night of Lolly’s concert performance at Lincoln Center, Anna got dressed and was standing in the foyer when her dad and Steven came out of their bedrooms dressed for the show. “I’m going, too,” Anna said. “Or am I still a prisoner in my own home?”
Before he could answer, their mother entered, her high heels clicking softly on the marble floor. Anna and Steven’s parents had not told anyone of their marital problems and were still keeping up appearances at social events, with most people assuming their sparse attendance was due to the trouble with Anna.
The four of them stood awkwardly for a moment, before Anna’s father opened the door and the four of them took a car south in silence.
Anna had no idea what her first public appearance in New York since the sex tape would be like. Surely all the fuss would have died down by now. Steven had told her that every school in Manhattan had worked together to delete as many of the videos as possible, thanks to their father calling in a few favors in Washington and offering up donations like Halloween candy to trick-or-treaters. Vronsky’s mother’s fixer had done what he could as well, but the culprit was still at large, and everyone speculated about the person who’d taken down the great Anna K. Many assumed it was the Greenwich OG, as he had the greatest motive for revenge in the situation. Anna had heard from Steven about the many rumors, but she didn’t believe it was Alexander’s doing. Sure, he was a likely suspect, but it didn’t seem like his style, and so she accepted the mystery of her downfall as just that, a mystery. Because what did it matter anyway?
When Anna’s family arrived at Lincoln Center, a hush fell over the lively crowd. Polite hellos were offered to the parents, but as Anna stood there, she couldn’t help noticing no one would look at her. She and Steven sat up front with the other students in attendance, and Anna was glad, thinking her own peers would be easier on her than their disappointed parents who didn’t want to be reminded that if a girl like Anna could get caught in a sex tape scandal, then God knows what could befall their own progeny.
