The Elizas: A Novel(100)
I consider what he said. The ending of The Dots is the only thing that hadn’t happened to me. “I’m not doing that.”
“But maybe you want to. Maybe it’s why you wrote it. It might give you closure. You’d be free. Just like Dot is. You could admit what Eleanor did to you and why you had to take action.” Here he pauses, and I realize for sure, just like I realized with Desmond, that he understands my book is an autobiography. “You could let someone decide your punishment.”
“. . . And go to jail. I can’t take that chance.”
The chair creaks as he sits back. “And yet you let Dot take that chance.”
“She’s a fictional character.”
“She is?”
I let out a snort, stand, and start toward the door. Albert glances at the clock—we have ten minutes left, but he doesn’t move to reel me back in when I walk out. “I understand your reaction, Eliza,” he calls out. “But maybe, with reflection, you’ll see I’m not so crazy for suggesting it.”
“I’m sick of reflection,” I grumble over my shoulder. “All I’ve done is reflect.” I bump into the coffee table in the waiting room and knock off a stack of Yoga Journals.
I walk down the cold hall with the ugly lighting, past Jim and Pablo playing chess again. Maybe they’re more fucked-up than I think—they’re at that chessboard day and night, starting a new game the moment they’ve finished the first. I never see them in Group or at meals. What a stroke of fate that they’d found each other here. Maybe it’s not like that for them, and there’s probably no romance to their kinship, but it’s comforting to think so. And suddenly, I feel a longing for Eleanor again. Kinship is what I thought I’d had with her. Understanding. Connection. Could I get that with someone else? Desmond, maybe? Or was what she and I had unique? Or was it all bullshit, because it had been built on lies?
Desmond knows no lies, though. But maybe that isn’t such a good thing, either. He might love me unconditionally, but I’ll always be this person to him—not the girl in the facility, after a time, but the girl who got away with something. How will that affect our relationship going forward? Every time he holds back, every time he steps away from me as though flinching, every time I think he’s walking on eggshells, I’ll be afraid that he’s seeing the murderer in me. What if he resents me for walking free? What if he thinks I should pay for what I did? Because I did do it. Whether Eleanor died, whether she’s still out there, I’m almost positive I used my hands to push.
And then it hits me. It’s not just Desmond who knows that I did it. It’s everyone. Yes, wink wink, the novel is fiction. But I’ve peeked at some of the reviews. People are pointing at the factual similarities between Dot and myself and Dorothy and Aunt Eleanor. They are taking pictures of the M&F Chop House and posting them on Amazon as an additional picture for the book. Bernie, the waiter, has been interviewed, saying that yes, there’s a back entrance to the restaurant for high-profile clients, and he remembers Eleanor and me there, though he had absolutely no idea she was in trouble with the law. That Los Angeles cover has been dug up and posted. If the meat of the book is the truth, why then would the ending be a lie? I’d made Dorothy die exactly the same way. I didn’t change a fucking thing—because I hadn’t realized, at the time, that it had happened. Had I known, I would have altered some details. I would have had her fall into a canyon, or into an alligator’s mouth at the zoo.
Had I known, I wouldn’t have written the book at all.
The police haven’t come storming the hospital, an investigation hasn’t been started, no one has come out and said what I’ve done, but they’ve got to be thinking it. It’s only natural. So can I go on living my life after committing such a crime? Dorothy did, after harming Dot. Eleanor did, after harming me. But I don’t want to be like either of them. On the other hand, can I bite the bullet and come clean? What was the right thing to do?
I open the door to my little room and let myself in. Books are piled on my nightstand. I’ve ripped off the blinds, so light streams onto the floor. The staff finally let me have more blankets, and my mother brought an afghan from home. I pick it up and press it to my nose, smelling bergamot oranges. A pang so overwhelming rises in me, and I think of Eleanor yet again. I think of her splashing perfume on her pulse points. I think of her spritzing an atomizer toward me and saying, “Now, walk into the spray. There you go. Now you’ll smell delicious.”
Sighing, I reach toward the books on the nightstand and pull mine from the bottom of the stack. The binding cracks as I open it for the first time. I flip all the way to the last chapter, and I read.
Afterward, I sit very still until the light from the window wanes and turns gray. I ignore the knocks on my door for dinner, I ignore the soft footsteps that pass down the hall. I ignore the lights flicking off, another nurse popping in with a plastic cup of meds. She knows I’ll take them, so she leaves it on the bedside table without a word. I sit still until the room is filled with inky blackness. I turn the words I’d written over and over in my head. I am giving myself a great power, choosing to heed my author self’s instructions or take another path. Whichever I choose, it is all my decision, though. I’m the one in control now. I’m the one forging the path that will become the truth.