The Comeback by Ella Berman
Things I remember from the accident: his voice—low and gentle, despite everything else about him. The feel of his hand on my leg just before I do it. A familiar something prickling through my body, too complex to label. The full moon hanging cleanly in the sky for the first time in a while. When I finally turn to look at him, he laughs because he doesn’t think I’ll go through with it. If I really think about it, this is what makes me do it. One small jerk of the wheel and then that perfect in-between moment just after we clear the road but before we start to fall. The sound of Tom Petty’s voice as we crash down, down, tumbling to the bottom of the earth. A piercing, jagged tear, and then nothing but stillness.
Before
CHAPTER ONE
Six Weeks Earlier
They recognize me when I’m at CVS buying diet pills for my mom, the only kind that don’t make her lose her mind.
“Aren’t you Grace Turner?”
The woman is pleased with herself, a red flush climbing her neck and bursting proudly across her cheeks. Her companion is smaller, wiry, with narrow eyes, and I already understand that she’s the type who will need me to prove it somehow, as if I have anything left to prove.
“Grace Hyde,” I correct, smiling politely, humbly, before turning back to the staggering array of options in front of me. The one my mom likes has a cartoon frog standing on a set of scales on the box.
“Do you live around here now?” the first one asks hungrily. She’s already terrified that she’ll forget something when she recounts the story to her friends.
“I’m staying with my parents.” Maybe I’m in the wrong section.
“What was your last movie, anyway?” This from the smaller one, obviously. She’s scowling at me and I find myself warming to her. It’s hard to find a woman who still believes that the world owes her anything. Her friend, who has been shifting from foot to foot like she needs to take a piss, jumps into action.
“Your last film was Lights of Berlin. You were nominated for a Golden Globe but you’d already disappeared.”
“Top marks,” I say, forcing a smile before I turn around again. Then I put on a truly award-worthy performance, this one of a former child star in a supermarket, dutifully shopping for all of her mom’s health care needs.
“Were you needed back at home?” The woman puts her hand on my shoulder, and I try not to flinch at the unsolicited contact. “I’m sorry. It’s just how you . . . you disappeared one day. Was it because your parents needed you?”
Her relief is palpable, hanging off each word. And there it is. Because not only has this woman recognized me despite my badly bleached hair, ten extra pounds, and sweatpants from Target, and not only have I validated her very existence merely by being in the same shitty store in the same shitty town as she is, but also, after a year of waiting, I have restored her faith in something that she might never be able to articulate herself. This woman can leave the weight management aisle today believing once again that people are inherently good and, even more important, that people are inherently predictable. That nobody on this planet would walk out of their own perfect life one day for no discernible reason. And all this on a Monday afternoon in Anaheim no less.
“Can you do the bit? From Lights of Berlin?” she asks shyly, and the way her mouth tugs up more on one side when she smiles reminds me suddenly of my dad.
I look down at the floor. It would be so easy to say the line, but the words get stuck at the back of my throat like a mothball.
“You have pasta sauce on your T-shirt,” the smaller one says.
CHAPTER TWO
I take the long route home, walking down identical streets lined with palm trees and fifties-style suburban houses. My parents have lived here for nearly eight years now, and I still can’t believe that such a place exists outside of nostalgic teen movies and suburban nightmares. It’s the kind of town where you can never get lost no matter how hard you try, and I end up, as I always do, outside my parents’ neat, pale pink bungalow. It has a wooden porch in the front and a turquoise pool in the back, just like every other house on the street.
The smell of bubbling fat hits me as I step through the front door. My dad is cooking ham and eggs for dinner, with a couple of broccoli spears as a nod to my former lifestyle. I didn’t realize how badly they’d been eating until I came home, but it turns out there really are a lot of ways to fry a potato. I arrived back in Anaheim a vegan, but as I watched my dad carefully prepare me a salad with ranch dressing and bacon bits on my first night, I knew I couldn’t remain one for long.
My mom is watching TV on the sofa with a slight smile on her face, and I know without looking that she’ll be watching the Kardashians, or the Real Housewives of anywhere else on earth. She used to be a semi-successful model back in England, but now she’s just skinny and tired for no reason since she rarely leaves the house. Instead she lives for these shows, talking about these women as if they are her friends. I try to apologize about the diet pills, and she just shakes her head slightly, which I take to mean she doesn’t have the energy to discuss it. It’s this new thing she’s doing, rationing her energy and refusing to spend it on anything that either displeases her or causes her stress. She’s selective with her energy but she’ll watch hours of the Kardashians each day.