The Comeback(105)
“To my big sister,” she starts, grinning at me and holding her glass out. “The most infuriating, bravest and probably the best person I know. Happy birthday, you cretin-buster.”
I raise my glass until it meets hers.
* * *
? ? ?
Dylan is driving me home, and we’re listening to our favorite The Cure song, the one that we nearly danced to at our wedding before someone told us it was about death not life. He’s sneaking glances at me to check that I’m okay, which is something people around me have been doing a lot since the IFAs.
I watch as the city that gave me everything and took it all away from me slips past in the window. I’m slowly taking some parts of my life back, not in the same way I was before, but steadily, carefully, in a way I sometimes think might just last.
“When I was blowing out my candles earlier, do you know what I was thinking?” I say to Dylan, and I’ve been trying to work out how to word it without worrying him or seeming like I’m being dramatic, but now I just think fuck it because it’s the truth, and for some bizarre reason, he seems to want to know this kind of thing about me.
“What?” Dylan asks, and he slows down a little because we’re nearly at my new house, a few miles up the coast from Coyote Sumac.
“So we’re there, with all my favorite people in the world, and I know that I’m feeling something that’s like . . . the most obvious, uncomplicated happiness that I can remember experiencing. I’m trying to just soak it up, and be present, but then I start thinking, isn’t it fucked that you will never know if you’re actually living the happiest moment of your life until you’ve lived them all? Isn’t that some sort of massive flaw in the human experience?”
Dylan is shaking his head and laughing at me, about to say something, but I hold up my hand to stop him.
“But, then I thought about it some more, and maybe there are some things you just don’t need to know. Maybe it’s all right that there’s always the potential to outdo your best. Plus, there is no way you’ll actually be trying to work that shit out when you’re dying.”
“You thought all of this while you were blowing out your candles.”
“Yep,” I say, shrugging. “I’m quite the existential multitasker.”
“So what was your takeaway?” Dylan asks, pulling to a stop outside my house even though I can tell he wishes we weren’t here yet.
“Takeaway was, maybe it’s okay not to be okay all of the time,” I say, smiling slightly because even though it sounds like a bland inspirational quote from a coffee mug, I still think I mean it. “Maybe it’s okay not to be perfect, or the best, or even special for a while.”
Dylan shakes his head but he’s looking at me like I’m magic, and for the first time in my life, I actually want to believe him.
“Are you going to be all right?” Dylan asks while I’m reaching for my jacket and bag from the back of the car. I understand that he still has to ask me this question because just over a year ago I drove off a cliff into a ravine at the bottom of the Santa Monica Mountains, and I have the scars to prove it. Because after I faced the source of all of my nightmares at the IFAs, I then had to endure hours of questioning at the police station about the emotional abuse, the sexual assault and, finally, the crash, so that by the time they let me go, I didn’t know if I felt weightless or drained of everything I had. The state won’t press charges against me for the accident, but are still deliberating over what to do about my claims against Able. My lawyer told me that Emilia was right, the reality of California law is that my case is unlikely to make it to court, and if it does I will have to endure weeks of attacks on my credibility by Able’s lawyers that, best-case scenario, will result in a couple of months in jail and a small fine for him. Some days, just knowing that there are names for what he did, things that at one time seemed so horrifyingly unique to just me, feels like it could be enough. Other days I want to stand up in court and testify against the man who abused me in so many ways, fire roaring in my veins. I change my mind every day. And I’m allowed to.
“I think so,” I say. The truth.
I kiss Dylan on the cheek before I climb out of the car, and he smiles because it has to be good enough for the moment, while we’re still figuring everything out.
I’m a couple of feet away when Dylan winds down his window.
“Do you think it’s an appropriate moment to . . . say the line?” he says, grinning so widely I start to laugh.
“I’m not sure that it’s ever appropriate to say the line.”
“Come on . . . it’s kind of perfect.”
I stand for a moment, hands on my hips, trying to remember what it felt like to play a homicidal sex worker in an orange jail jumpsuit, rage pounding through my veins in every scene. I think about the line that strangers still shout at me when I pass them in the humid city streets; the line that I once believed could get me an Oscar, but that I now know just means a part of me will always belong to other people, whatever happens next. The line that Able wrote just for me. I take a deep breath as I turn the words over in my mind, and then I just drop my hands back down to my sides and shrug.
“You know, I think I’ve officially earned the right to never say the line again in my life,” I say, grinning at Dylan unapologetically. Our eyes meet for a second and I feel that familiar kick, low in my belly.