The Elizas: A Novel(38)

I keep searching, but I can’t find a separate personal page for Eliza Fontaine, the Girl. So am I crazy, or is Kiki? Maybe someone took my personal page down? But how could someone remove an account I don’t even remember?

Then I pounced on my directory from my dorm at UCLA from last year. There was no one named Leonidas in it, not that that really proved anything—he could have lived somewhere else. Was he like the boyfriend I’d written in The Dots? Had I met him in art history class? But I remembered art history. I remembered the teacher with her shelf of dark hair and how she always wore saris even though she wasn’t Indian. I remembered Mariel, the girl I sat next to in each class—she told me once that if Pablo Picasso was still alive, she’d definitely give him a blow job. I don’t remember a boy in the back of the room holding court, or a boy giving astute answers about Mondrian, or a boy I became slowly obsessed with almost against my will.

So how had we met, then? Why had we broken up? Why was he talking about me and Palm Springs and the police? Who was he talking to? And then, as I was lying there in my bed, a memory struck me, a hard soccer ball kicked to the side of my head. I saw myself lying on the tiled floor in a back hallway. I smelled mozzarella and grease, and I heard loud ’90s glam rock on a tinny radio. I saw that same redhead from the hotel lobby standing over me.

Leonidas—I assumed it was him, though this memory played for me like a television show I’d never seen and I had to scramble to figure out the characters—glared at me, the blood drained from his cheeks. “You promised,” he said through clenched teeth. “I can’t believe you.”

“I’m sorry,” I heard myself saying. In the memory, I was covered in blood. Was it my blood? Was my brain just conjuring up blood for dramatic effect? I looked back at him, and he lurched toward me, and I let out a squeal. “I’m so sorry!”

And then, poof, no more. If there’s anything true about the memory, why was he so angry with me? What sort of crime had I committed? Had I had an affair? I wouldn’t put that past me—in high school, I cheated on every boyfriend I had. It was like I couldn’t help myself.

Maybe this is why I blocked Leonidas out—I’m ashamed of what I did to him. Maybe I am scared of him and what he might do in revenge. Could he have been in Palm Springs, wanting to hurt me?

It kills me that I don’t have an available answer. I think my brain knows, but it isn’t able to tell me, possibly because of a new tumorous invasion choking vital pathways. Why have I taken all those vitamins, then? Why have I eaten so many fucking blueberries? I should have been gorging on pizza and cigarettes all this time. I could have avoided the shaman in the desert and all that exercise I struggled through. Maybe this is why I drank those bottles of Stoli at the Tranquility. Maybe it’s why I’ve been groping for liquor whenever I can find it these days—I still feel buzzed, in fact, from a shot of whiskey I drank before leaving my house to come to my parents’. I’m digging my own grave instead of letting my faulty brain dig it for me. There’s comfort in what I can control.

I pull out my phone and type in the address for Dr. Forney, the neurologist I recall being somehow related to my tumor diagnosis. The office picks up when I call and ask to speak to the doctor.

“Is this an emergency?” the nurse asks.

“I’m not sure,” I whisper, but then I get myself together and say I just want to schedule an MRI. Just to check. Off the record. It’s not like anyone has to know.

“You’ll need to get a referral for that,” she says. “I can make you an appointment with Dr. Forney here in the office. He has an opening next week.”

On second thought, maybe I don’t want to talk to the doctor. Dr. Forney might be able to tell I’ve been drinking, and he’ll scold me. Dr. Forney might know about my fall into the pool and assume I did it on purpose. He might recommend I recover in a place like the Oaks. But what I want is empirical evidence only. A picture on a scan. An amorphous, ruinous blob.

“Thanks, I’ll call back,” I tell the nurse, and hang up.

I start up the walk to the house. This is the street tourists use to enter Griffith Park to hike to the Hollywood sign and today, like always, the street is jammed with parallel-parked rental vehicles. Giddy tourists armed with cameras and water bottles leisurely saunter in the middle of the road as though heading to a large outdoor concert. All of them have winsome, eager smiles of people who don’t have to stay in LA for any length of time. When I was a teenager, I used to hang out an upstairs window and throw water balloons at them. “Stop,” Gabby would hiss when she caught me. “That’s not nice.” I always rolled my eyes. She was always so obsessed with being nice.

On the porch, I stop. I suddenly smell a perfume I recognize but cannot place. It actually stuns me for a moment, rendering me stupid. I hear screeching in my head.

The door whips open. “Eliza!” Bill’s arms are outstretched in a T. “How are you? Doesn’t it smell good out here?”

I smile dazedly. “Yes. What is it?”

He gestures to a tree I’ve never noticed before. The thing has big orange fruits hanging low and breast-like from branches. “When did you plant that?” I ask.

He shrugs. “It was here when we moved in.” He looks at me curiously. “You all right?”

Part of me wants to collapse at his feet and tell him the opposite, but I’m afraid of what this will usher in. Better that I handle this myself, quietly, without panicking anyone else. “Fine,” I say in a clipped voice. “Just great.”