The Comeback(57)

“It’s like they forget that I’m a human. Or that they are. This whole generation is screwed.”

I want to tell her that she’s lucky she has a generation and that she isn’t just some weird outlier who can’t relate to anyone, but I know it won’t work out well for me. Instead, I swirl my straw around in my drink to buy myself some time. I was never exposed to any of the things she’s talking about, and I have no idea how different my life would be if I had. Maybe I would feel less alone, but more likely it would have been just one more way to ruin everything.

“You have access to billions of people, though, right? Can’t you just connect with the good ones?”

Esme frowns, concentrating as she tears off a corner of the white paper tablecloth. I hope she doesn’t start to cry. “It doesn’t work like that,” she says. “I’m at school with them. You have to play by their rules, but the rules change every day. You can’t win.”

“Do you want me to talk to Mom about transferring schools?”

“She’s never going to listen to you,” Esme says, rolling her eyes. It’s a little harsh for her to put it like that, even if it’s true.

“Does she know that we hang out . . . sometimes?” I ask.

Esme shrugs, and then shakes her head.

“I think it would hurt her feelings,” she says, and I don’t ask anything else.

The waitress arrives with our seafood platter. She places it on the table between us, and we both just stare as the dry ice steams off it like a cheap special effect.

“I just shouldn’t have sent that photo,” Esme says miserably. “I wish I could go back in time.”

I watch her, trying to figure out how to word what I say next, even though I’m losing confidence in the idea that felt so perfect when I thought of it last week. The right words feel just out of reach, and I feel stupid for thinking I’d be able to find them.

“I think I wanted you to have the camera so you could use it to tell your side of the story. I thought maybe it could help,” I say slowly.

“You know I can just film stuff on my phone.”

“I don’t know, I thought it could help to keep something separate from what’s happening in your phone. Is that na?ve?” I ask, realizing that this could be the equivalent of when I sliced the tip of my finger off during a shoot and my homeopathic on-set guardian gave me a cup of cinnamon powder to manage the pain. When Able found out, he fired her on the spot and called a doctor to come straight to the set. He waited with his arm wrapped tightly around my shoulders while the doctor gave me stitches, and he had such a gentle, fatherly expression on his face that I thought maybe everything would be okay after that.

“Kind of,” Esme says, and I pull my attention back to her because the memories of him being kind to me are always the worst ones.

“I’m just saying, I understand that sometimes the worst part of it all is that you lose control of your own story.”

Esme frowns and then holds the camera up to me. The red light is blinking.

“How do you know so much about this?” she asks, and I put my hand out to cover the lens. “Seriously, sister, tell all.”

“Come on, Esme.”

She wriggles away from me but flips the camera shut and puts it back on the table next to her plate.

“I’m just saying you seem to know a lot about this shit.”

I pick up a ring of calamari while I decide what to do. I put it in my mouth and chew it quickly, the hot oil inside the batter burning my tongue. Esme folds her arms across her chest, waiting for me.

“Do you remember back home in England when we used to lie on the grass and look up at the sky on Hampstead Heath?” I ask suddenly.

“I guess so, kind of,” Esme says, watching me strangely.

“Didn’t everything seem just so possible back then? Like we could do anything we ever wanted?”

“I guess?” Esme says, humoring me, and then she shrugs. “Remember I was just a kid, Grace.”

“Okay. Well, I remember, and the world felt pretty fucking big back then. But what if every time something bad happens, it just makes your world a little smaller.” I take a deep breath in because the words are tumbling out now, racing to catch up with each other. “Until some days, you can’t even see the sky anymore.”

“No, Grace. That’s not possible,” Esme says, looking at me as if I’m losing my mind. “Do you mean figuratively? What are you saying?”

I tear off a corner of the tablecloth, balling it up until it’s just a damp shred of paper in my palm. A silence stretches between us while I wonder whether we’ll ever understand each other implicitly again, or whether too much time has passed.

“Is this because of Able?” Esme asks quietly, and the air stops dead around me.

“What are you talking about?” I ask, each word a sliver of glass. I watch them float in between us for a moment before Esme meets my eyes defiantly. The shards fall onto the table.

“I heard you and Mom the night before you left,” she says, her voice soft. “You know you never say his name, Grace.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, and as Esme’s face crumples, I understand that I’m letting her down, and that I have a chance to fix something in her that is already broken in me. My heart climbs into my throat at the thought that I might actually be about to say the words out loud for the first time. I know that I’ll never be able to explain it all to Esme, but I take a deep breath anyway, trying to harness the quiet fury or the fear or anything else he left in place of everything he took from me.