The Comeback(49)

I note the slight rush I feel at the thought of Able having any sort of crisis in confidence, even though I know it won’t last long. I try to memorize Emilia’s words anyway, storing them up to devour later like scraps of food.

As she talks, Emilia takes out a carton of eggs, a pint of cream, butter and some salt and pepper in deep blue grinders, and she lays them out on the surface next to the oven. She finds a frying pan in a drawer that I didn’t know existed and she washes it in the sink, using her fingers to pull off the flakes of old grease stuck to it. When she’s finished, she wipes her hands on her jeans and turns to me.

“Is your boiler working? The water’s cold.”

“I had a hot shower earlier . . .” I say, remembering the water burning my shoulders as I curled up on the shower floor. I make a note to locate the boiler once Emilia has left, even though I don’t know what I’m looking for.

“It should last longer than that. Let me send my guy around to look at it,” she says, then laughs. “Listen to me—‘my guy.’ It’s a plumber, for God’s sake. I’ve been in this city too long.”

She puts the frying pan on the stove and lights one of the rings, after a couple of attempts.

“I didn’t realize how close you were. We’re practically neighbors,” she says, dropping a peel of butter into the pan.

“I can see your house from here,” I say, but she’s not really listening to me.

“When you buy eggs at the grocery store, you have to open the carton to see if any of them are broken, okay?” she says, then glances at me to check whether it’s okay that she’s doing this. After that she carries on more confidently. “Some people use milk instead of cream when they make eggs, but the increase in calories is negligible when you take into account how much of a difference it makes to the taste. I’m from the East Coast, and we just don’t buy into all that crap. If you go into a coffee shop in Connecticut and ask for anything other than full-fat cow’s milk, they’ll just think you’re a millennial snowflake.”

She turns back around and starts to stir the mixture with a fork. I pretend not to watch as I lean against the fridge. A strange, adrenaline-fueled disappointment sets in, and I have to force myself not to say anything that will lead back to Able. I forgot how familiar picking at the scab feels, and the realization that this might be what sustains me causes me to burn with shame.

“Did your mom teach you to cook anything?”

“I left home before she really had the chance,” I say, and I think Emilia winces slightly. I decide not to mention that when I was back there I didn’t want to let on just how incapable I was to either of them, how poor a job I’d done growing up without them.

“You know, I remember that dinner at Nobu as if it were yesterday. It’s funny how the mind works, isn’t it?” Emilia muses as she stirs with the same baby-blue spatula she used at her place. “Your mom is such a character and so beautiful.”

“Yeah, I guess she is.”

“You look like her, you know.”

I try not to think of my mother now—the empty look on her face as she watches TV all day, the bones jutting out of her tiny frame.

“We’ve had some problems,” I say, before I know I’m going to, and I’m annoyed once I’ve said it. Emilia looks over her shoulder in concern. She drops the spatula onto the countertop and turns around to face me.

“Well, I’m sure it will work out just fine. She’s very lucky to have you as a daughter,” she says, as confident in her assessment of my abilities as a daughter as she is about everything else.

“I don’t think she’s lucky at all,” I say, shrugging. “She’d say I was the lucky one.”

“Sometimes these things can be complicated,” she says kindly, and then she steps toward me and pulls me into a hug. My eyes fill with involuntary tears, even as I’m thinking how ironic it is that Emilia is the one to try to help me, after everything that’s happened. As she hugs me, I realize how horrified Able would be to know that she was even here, let alone that we had been talking about him. Maybe they will even argue about it on the phone later, and Able will become cold and withdrawn when the fight doesn’t unfold exactly how he wants it to. Maybe, without even meaning to, I have somehow started to infect his family the same way he’s infected mine. And that’s when the thought that has been fluttering in my chest since I arrived back in LA breaks through the darkness, soaring high above me before settling back inside my skin, reborn.

    I am the only one in this situation with nothing to lose.



I pull away from the hug under the pretense of checking on the eggs, which are now hard at the edges, curling and brown. I watch the smoke start to pour off the pan, and then I turn back to Emilia, finally meeting her eyes with my own.

“I think you’re right,” I say slowly. “By the way, next time you speak to Able, please tell him I said hi.”



* * *



? ? ?

Once Emilia has left, I turn my phone back on to call Nathan. Unexpectedly his assistant patches me straight through and he answers, albeit begrudgingly and sounding just one breath away from telling me he’s in a meeting.

“Look—John Hamilton called a couple of weeks ago about a space movie—could we see what that’s about?” I ask quickly, trying to lace my voice with the perfect mix of gratitude and authority, always a delicate balance when dealing with an egomaniac.