Everything Leads to You(79)

I cross the room to the kitchen and set the tacos and juice on the counter. I see that she has bought herself a few things: Two heavy red skillets, one large and one small.

Three cookbooks: on baking bread, on making jam, on French desserts.

A deep copper pot that looks almost too beautiful to cook with.

A small yellow bowl full of peaches.

I notice the faint sound of music and voices. It’s coming from the other side of the living space, so I cross to the corner under the skylight, where Ava has laid out a colorful blanket. Sitting on the blanket is an old TV/VCR, playing The Restlessness with the volume down low. Next to that is the paperwork for her lease. I hadn’t seen her signature before. It’s simple, assured: a strong A, G, and W with flowing lines after each. The screenplay to Yes & Yes rests there, too, opened to the audition scene. Next to the line, “I threw them away,” Ava has written, “Remember: long pause.”

And then there is the photograph of Caroline out on the sunny street in her ripped jeans and flannel, neatly placed next to Clyde’s letter. I take it out of its envelope. Reading it again, now, the phrases feel different.

some kind of beginning . . .

the possibility of a change of heart . . .

I don’t know how a father is supposed to say heartfelt things, or express regret, or give a compliment . . .

It’s possible that you feel alone in the world . . .

It’s like they suddenly mean more, and I can’t even finish reading because I’m afraid I might cry.

A perfectly sharpened pencil and a pink highlighter sit next to a to-do list. Practice lines. Buy plates, cups, silverware. Decide about boxes. Find a good coffee shop. Finish letter to Jonah. Humane society?

Footsteps come from behind me. I turn around to find Ava dressed for the day, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her mouth pinker than usual, as though she put on lipstick and then changed her mind.

She says, “I always wish there was one last shot of Caroline’s face. Like, the camera would just linger on her looking out the window, waiting to see if Max comes back.”

Instead, the screen goes dark and the music for the credits begins.

“I haven’t gotten plates yet. I couldn’t find any that felt right. And since I’m starting from scratch, I want everything I buy for myself to mean something. Maybe we can find something in one of those.”

She gestures to my bag full of magazines as she heads to the kitchen.

Even though I chose them all carefully and brought only my favorites, I now realize that I don’t want to use anything in these magazines. Not Anthology with its full-page spreads of the warm and bright houses of the creative and fortunate, not Apartamento with its international flair and naturalistic feeling.

I don’t want to open any of them. I don’t want to look away from what Ava has already placed in her home.

My eyes tear up again and I don’t know why. I’m not even thinking about Clyde’s letter. I don’t even understand what’s happened.

Until Ava comes back with the bag of tacos and the aguas frescas and two gray-and-white-striped cloth napkins. She sits on the edge of her blanket, in front of the few things that she owns.

“We can pretend that it’s totally normal to eat without plates or forks, right? Picnic under the skylight,” she says.

And I understand what this is.

It’s the opposite of the collapse of the fantasy.

It’s what happens when the illusion pales in comparison to the truth. I’m seeing her for the first time. Not Ava Garden Wilder, the rags-to-riches granddaughter of Clyde Jones. Not a tragic, romantic heroine.

Just Ava.

And I am utterly in love.

~

“I always wait to see her name,” she says, looking at the screen.

I lower myself next to her, grateful that she’s looking at something other than me.

I can’t eat. I can feel how close she is to me. There is a square of sunlight on her knee. A diamond of sunlight on her face.

I force myself to look at the names as they scroll by.

It always amazes me to think about how many people work on a film, especially big studio productions, so I try to distract myself with the credits. I don’t even understand what all of the jobs are. The names roll on and on, and Caroline’s name flashes by but I don’t look away yet. The Yes & Yes credits will be so short, and my name will be there early, all by itself in the center of the screen, and I’m thinking about that as I watch the names of all these strangers and wonder what they’re doing now, if they made it to the positions they wanted, or if not what became of them, and then I see a name that leaps out at me but it’s gone in a moment and Ava says, “Okay, I’m sorry, you probably don’t have much time,” and I say, “No problem,” and try to shrug off the feeling that I may have seen something important.