The Elizas: A Novel(96)

“Uh, no.” I look at her like she’s crazy. “I had no idea she poisoned me. Do you think I would have seen her when she came back if I knew? Do you think I would have asked you all those questions about where she was if I knew?”

“Yes, I realize that now.” Her mouth puckers. She stares out the window. “I wish I’d made the connection about Thomas. His situation was so different, and he was a strange boy. I wish there was something I could have done to help him. I feel like I let it happen—all of this happen.” She bites down hard on her fist.

“I wish you would have told me the truth about her,” I say quietly, plunged once again into a particular brand of despair I’ve felt so many times since coming to the hospital. Betrayal and anger, sadness and disappointment all rolled into a sour, heavy feeling that stalls the rest of my thoughts. “Everything about her.”

My mother smiled sadly. “You would have never believed me.”

I pause a moment, thinking this over. “I guess you’re right. I wouldn’t have.”





ELIZA


A FIGURE LOOMS in my doorway a few days later. It’s a woman with a beehive hairdo and slapped-on makeup and hips that could birth several babies at once. I like high heels, but I could never walk in the shoes she’s got on, and by her unsteady gait, she can’t really, either. Her bag is a waxy Chanel knockoff with two huge interlocking Cs across the front. I blink at her blearily. I wonder, with a start, if she’s my new roommate.

“Eliza, yoo-hoo,” she says. “It’s me. Laura.”

I cock my head.

“Your agent?”

I stare at her as I might an artifact in a museum, astonished that such a creature could exist. Here I had been expecting a polished, fingernail-thin suggestion of a woman, all flash and fragrance and white teeth. Laura has a million bobby pins in her hair, and most of them jut haphazardly. When she sits down across from me, I see she’s wearing nylons with a run on the left calf. Her eyes have the cross-hatchings of a woman in her forties, and there’s a plain gold wedding band on her chubby finger.

“I suppose this is one way to get me out to LA,” Laura grumbles, plopping her monster of a purse in her lap. “But oh well. I could use some sun right now. As for you. How’re you doing, kiddo? Hanging in there?”

I stare down at myself. At least my hospital gown isn’t gaping open, but I’m sure my hair is slicked with grease. I haven’t shaved my legs in a week. My breath probably stinks from the weird drugs they’ve got me on. None of that has me that embarrassed, though. Laura knows what happened to me at Dr. Roxanne. Everyone does. It’s a morsel of gossip that’s been kept from me since I’ve been here, but I’m cognizant enough to recall the harsh, mortifying details. The cameras had been rolling, and I’d been standing there on that stage, losing my shit.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” Laura says, perhaps sensing my feelings. “All the good authors go bananas here and there. You’re just keeping with your milieu.”

“I’m not an author anymore,” I say quickly.

Laura gives me a circumspect look, then reaches into the bowels of her purse and pulls out a huge container of Tic Tacs. “You allowed to have one of these?” she asks. I nod, and she shakes one into my palm. “Of course you’re still an author,” she says as she pops a few in her mouth. She bites into them like candy. “Your book’s out, darling. And it’s doing great.”

I sit up. “It’s out? You let them publish it? My parents let you publish it?”

Laura chuckles. “I have to say, your mother called quite a few times saying we should pull the plug. But I told her it was too late. And anyway, I don’t know what they’re so worried about. Posey’s thrilled. The critics are thrilled. Everyone has enjoyed it thoroughly.”

My head starts to feel like it’s been plunged under six feet of water. “It can’t be out there. My mother was right. It says too much. People are going to assume . . .”

Laura cuts me off with a wave of her hand and gives me a hard look. “It’s fiction.”

“But it’s not.” Clearly Laura understands this. Clearly she gets that it’s the reason I’m stuck in here, ironing out the differences between reality and imagination. “Most of it isn’t. I didn’t understand that before, but now I do.” I stare into my lap. “I’m sorry. I gave you the novel under false pretenses. It’s not a novel at all.”

Laura shrugs. “So what if it’s kind of real? Most novels have some truth to them. But this is the big secret: nothing is one hundred percent real. This is just your version. It’s real to you, but you’re also—pardon me for saying this—delusional.”

“Thanks a lot,” I grumble.

“It’s a good thing!” Laura cries. “Think of how Eleanor would have written this book had it been from her perspective. Completely differently, right? Think of how your mother would have written it, or a nurse at the hospital. Or even that guy who always shepherded you into the steak house—what was his name?”

“Bernie.”

“Right. Him. They’d all have their own versions. This is your version. It’s not like you’ve written a biography where people are going to dispute the facts. And to be honest? This book has helped Eleanor Reitman’s sales, too.”