Everything Leads to You

  And I didn’t think I’d say anything that would hurt her as much as I hurt her tonight.

  Charlotte comes out of the bathroom, sees me standing here not doing the simple things I’m supposed to do. She leans against the counter next to me.

  “I barely know her,” I say. “But still.”

  “Come here,” she says, and gives me a hug. I hang out for a second, rest my chin on her shoulder.

  When I’ve had enough I say, “Okay, I’ll wash the jars out,” and she lets me go.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Almost a week passes and I don’t hear anything from Ava. As she spends her days in rehearsals, I immerse myself in the messy lives of the make-believe. Juniper and her plants and her longing. George and his coral-colored melancholy. I buy things and borrow things and mend them. I work with Charlotte and Morgan and then lose Morgan to The Agency and Charlotte to Rebecca, who needs her more and more for all the urgent, last-minute tasks.

  Then, on Saturday night at our last official tech meeting before filming begins, Charlotte calls Ava to schedule a rehearsal. I cross the room away from her so that I don’t have to listen to them talking, busy myself with sorting the day’s receipts and checking tasks off my novel-length to-do list. Aside from a couple finishing touches, Juniper’s apartment is complete, which is a good thing because we start filming the day after tomorrow. I’ve been working on our changes to George’s set now, which is much more difficult than Juniper’s because I could work at Toby’s apartment whenever I wanted to, but I need to do most of the preparation for Frank and Edie’s house without inhabiting it.

  I’m checking off “frame photographs” when Charlotte taps me on the shoulder, hands me the phone, and walks away.

  “Hello?” I ask.

  “I want to apologize,” Ava says.

  Is it possible to get over a voice like this? Someday, I’d like to be able to hear her speak a sentence on the phone without it making me want to hang up, get in my car, and drive as many miles as it takes to kiss her.

  “You don’t have to,” I manage.

  “Please accept my apology,” she says, impossibly raspy and sweet. “You were right to think I was acting crazy. And you did nothing to deserve any of the things I said that night.”

  “All right,” I say. “It’s accepted.”

  “I also want to tell you that I haven’t been at my best.”

  I nod, but she can’t see me.

  “You met me during a difficult time,” she says.

  “I think I’m partially responsible for that.”

  “Maybe,” she says. “But you’re also responsible for making it better.”

  I don’t ask her what she means by that, because I’m afraid she’ll talk about the money, or that she knows a little more about her mother, or that she’s only an announcement away from instant celebrity if she ever chooses to reveal that she’s a descendant of an actor well known for having no descendants. In other words, I’m afraid that it would have everything to do with what I wanted for her, and nothing at all to do with me.

  “I’ll see you soon,” she says. “I can’t believe we shoot on Monday.”

  “Yeah” I say. “Everyone’s really excited about you.”

  “I hope it’s still okay with you. That I’m in it.”

  “Of course.”

  Here is what I want to say: It doesn’t matter that you’re in the movie; I would be thinking about you all the time anyway. I want to say, It all leads to you. Not just the letter and the obituary, the articles and your birth date. But also this particular time in my life. The heartbreak and the art and all of the longing. I want to say, Every time I add a detail to the apartment I imagine you in it.

  Instead, I say, “You’ll make a really great Juniper.”

  And she says, “So I’ll see you Monday then?”

  And I say, “Yes. I’ll see you then.”

  And then I drag Charlotte out of house, saying, “We have so much to do, we have to go.”

  Once we’re in her car she asks, “What was that about?”

  I say, “You have to tell Toby.”

  “What?”

  “You have to tell him how you feel about him. You have to tell him right now.”

  “But he’s in England.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Every breath I take feels jagged. Anything could make me cry.

  “I reread Clyde’s letter when I was at Ava’s house. Remember how we thought he said nothing? It isn’t true. I got that wrong, too. He says so much in that letter. It’s all about the danger in leaving things unsaid. It’s about failure. How could he have sat there with Caroline and not told her all the things that he wanted to? We all get so afraid. We need to be brave.”

  I knew that heartbreak was terrible, but never knew that I could feel this way over a girl I haven’t even kissed.

  “I don’t know what I should have done,” I say. “Maybe that day at her house, after I knew for sure how I felt about her, I should have just told her.”

  I lean forward and rest my head against the glove compartment. I don’t mean to be dramatic, but I can’t help it.

  “What’s the use in waiting until the right moment if that moment never comes?” I say. “What if the moment escapes you in the split second when your focus was elsewhere?”

  I reach for her purse and find her phone nestled in a little pocket.

  “God,” I say, “you’re so organized.”

  She’s wide-eyed and staring at me. I hand her the phone.

  “Just call him,” I say, and then I get out of the car and let her do it alone.

  A minute later she knocks on the window and I go back inside.

  “I left him a message.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said no pressure, but for the record I’ve had a crush on him since sixth grade. And that now I’m no longer in high school maybe we could hang out sometime.”

  I laugh and swat away the tears that have traitorously been dripping down my face.

  “Emi,” she says. “I’m sorry. I think I gave you bad advice.”

  I can’t even respond. I’ve never known Charlotte to be wrong, but I do think she might have been wrong about this.

  “It seemed too fast for you, after everything with Morgan. And it seemed like Ava really needed friends,” Charlotte says. “But you can still be her friend, even if you’re more than that. And you were right. She is great. She’s fun and interesting and smart and nice. And beautiful. And talented. I was watching her rehearsal footage the other night. She’s really talented.”

  “And she’s a good baker,” I say, these fucking tears still streaming down my face. “And I really think she liked me.”

  “So go after her,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be over yet.”

  “It’s already so complicated now,” I say. “And on the phone it was like she was trying to resolve everything so we could move on, work on the movie together. So things wouldn’t be too awkward. There were all these things I wanted to say but didn’t.”

  “So call her back and say them.”

  “No,” I say. “It would be too much.”

  “Then just call her back and say something. Something that opens things up between you. You can move slowly, but you should move.”

  She opens her car door.

  “Okay?”

  I nod and she shuts it.

  I dial Ava’s number.

  “Hey,” she says, and she sounds surprised but glad to hear from me.

  “Hey. There was something else that I wanted to say.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I mean, there are a lot of things. So hopefully we’ll have time, you know, to talk when the filming is over and we’re all back to normal.”

  “I hope so,” she says.

 
“But for now, I wanted to say this: I want to know who you are. I mean, apart from all of this we’ve been dealing with. Without the mystery and the Chateau Marmont. I thought that everyone would want that kind of huge, romantic story if it became available to them. But it wasn’t a story, it was your life. And when I got to your apartment the day we found Lenny, and I saw you and how you lived, that’s when I really understood that even without all the clues we’d pieced together and the new identity we’d made for you, you would have already been someone I’d want to know. It’s like the couch! The best things aren’t perfectly constructed. They aren’t illusions. They aren’t larger than life. They are life. Part of me knew that all along, but I got it wrong anyway. What I’m trying to say is that I just want to know you. You don’t have to be at your best. We can’t all be at our best all the time. But,” I say again, “I just want to know you.”

  I can hear her breathing on the other end, reminding me that she is there, that she’s been listening. I hope that I’ve just rambled in a way that’s romantic and not a way that sounds insane. It would break my heart if she didn’t think I made sense, so I don’t give her time to react.

  “I have to go now,” I tell her, and then I hang up.

  I take a moment to breathe, and then I knock on the windshield but Charlotte doesn’t turn around.

  I knock again, harder, and she raises a hand to tell me one minute and I see that her other hand is pressing her phone to her ear. And when she turns around a minute later and hangs up, she’s smiling.

  “Was it him?” I ask her.

  She nods.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he’d been waiting all through high school for me to graduate.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No,” she says, and then she’s leaning against the car door in a hysterical fit of laughter comparable only to that at Clyde Jones’s estate sale.

  “Wow,” I say. “You and Toby. Fantastic.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic,” she says between breaths. “You’re the one who made me do it.”

  Once she’s regained her composure she asks, “How did it go with you?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “But I opened up something. At least I tried to.”

  “That’s good,” she says.

  We sit next to each other, staring through the windshield.

  “Charlotte,” I say. “We both just did huge things. We need to celebrate, don’t you think?”

  “Champagne!” she says.

  “Yes! But how?”

  “We could just drive around to places until we find someone who’ll sell it to us,” she says, but it’s clear from her tone that that prospect is not all that enticing. And it sounds pretty miserable to me, too.

  “Oh, well, fuck it,” I say. “Let’s just get apple cider.”

  Charlotte double-parks outside of a store on Abbot Kinney while I run inside. I find the apple cider in a refrigerator, sadly positioned on the rack below the champagne, but I don’t let it get me down. Instead I stride up to the counter as though I’m carrying Veuve Clicquot instead of Martinelli’s, and the fatherly man behind the counter smiles approvingly at my choice.

  He sets down a pen and a page of the Times and I glance at them expecting a crossword puzzle but instead finding the movie listings for the weekend.

  He tells me what I owe him but I can’t look away from the listings. He’s circled several in red pen.

  “Why are you circling movie times?” I ask him.

  “I’m planning my weekend,” he answers, in an accent I can’t place.

  “Are you going to see all of those?”

  “Yes.”

  I hand him my cash.

  “Is it, like, some sort of special movie weekend for you?”

  “No, it’s my routine. Where I’m from, we had to wait months, sometimes years for American films. Now, I see them on opening weekend.”

  I give him a slow smile, studying his face. It’s lit up with the love of films. I turn slowly, taking in this store I’ve probably seen a dozen times but never actually noticed. When I started this project, I probably would have ruled it out. It’s not at all romantic. There’s nothing pretty about it. But it has good light. The produce is fresh and colorful, the aisles wide and well stocked. It’s big enough for the crew but small enough to feel intimate, and I can easily see opportunities to play up its humble charms.

  “My name is Emi,” I say to him.

  “Hakeem,” he says to me.

  “Let me tell you about a film I’m working on,” I say, and ten minutes later I’m climbing back into Charlotte’s car with yet another reason to celebrate.

  ~

  On Sunday morning my phone rings and it’s Ava.

  “You know how you said I could call you when I needed a favor?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Does that still apply?”

  “Is Jamal at work?” I joke, and I’m relieved when she laughs.

  “No,” she says. “But he’s coming, too. So is this a yes? Can I pick you up at four?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Is Charlotte with you?”

  “No, we both slept at our houses last night. The apartment is off limits until we’re done filming.”

  “Okay,” she says. “I’ll call her next.”

  I spend some time at the apartment in the middle of the day, watering the plants, rearranging some stacks of books, writing a grocery list for the refrigerator, some botany notes in notebooks that I scatter across the room. The best production designers are the ones who make the sets feel so real that if you didn’t know better, you’d think the characters lived their lives there even after the filming stopped.

  Then, at four o’clock, Ava and Jamal pull up to my house and I climb into the backseat. I direct her to Charlotte’s house, and then it’s the four of us, getting onto the freeway, and I recognize the direction in which we’re heading.

  “One request,” I say. “No breaking the law on the day before filming starts.”

  “Granted,” Ava says. “Speaking of filming, I saw some photos of the apartment. It looks beautiful.”

  “Thank you.”

  “If there’s time before we start shooting, will you take me through it and explain everything? I want to know what I’m looking at. Like those photographs pinned on the corkboard by the hanging plants? Who are those people meant to be? Things like that.”

  “Sure,” I say. “That would be great. I’ll explain everything to you.”

  When we exit the 405 and pull onto the narrow highway that leads into the desert, Ava says, “This probably won’t be very fun. But you don’t need to do anything. Just be with me.”

  We all say okay, and my heart pounds so hard because I’m so worried for her.

  Moments later we’re parked in front of Tracey’s house, and we get out of the car, four doors slamming shut. We don’t get very far because Tracey is outside, watering the lawn.

  She sees us all and her face goes serious. She looks younger than I expected, wearing jeans and a pink sleeveless shirt with a high collar, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and a gardening glove on one hand. Water sputters out of the hose onto the grass beside her. She crosses the lawn without saying anything and shuts off the water.

  Jamal and Charlotte and I stay on the sidewalk next to the car while Ava rounds to the trunk of the car and takes out two boxes. I recognize them as Tracey’s. They are sealed up, tied with strings of paper flowers.

  She sets them on the grass and then takes a few steps toward Tracey, frozen on the path next to the little pink potted flowers. They’ve been spread out evenly now, a little farther apart than before to compensate for the one Ava smashed.

  “Hi,” Ava says.

  Tracey looks past her, at us.

  “Who are these
people?” she asks.

  “My friends,” Ava says.

  Tracey closes her eyes and shakes her head.

  “What?” Ava says. I’m confused, too. We’re all wearing normal clothes. We all look perfectly fine to me.

  Tracey’s head keeps shaking, shaking.

  “Really, Mom?” Ava says. Tracey isn’t looking at her, so Ava steps to the right, placing herself in Tracey’s line of vision.

  “You broke into the house,” Tracey says.

  “I tried to use my key.”

  “You went through my things. My personal things.”

  “I needed something.”

  “What?”

  “My birth certificate.”

  “But you took so much.”

  “I wanted to know about Caroline.”

  Tracey shakes her head again and I wish I could close my eyes so I didn’t have to see it. I thought that Tracey might feel some regret.

  “I had so many questions,” Ava says, making her voice slow and even, trying to sound like someone people listen to. “You never answered them, so I tried to tell myself that they weren’t important. But, of course, it is important. Caroline loved me. You loved me. I read your journal. You said I was a gift.”

  Even from a distance, I can see Tracey’s whole body tense.

  “You had no right to go through my things.”

  “You said I saved your life.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I found Lenny.”

  Tracey’s hands fly to her face. When she drops them again, her eyes are wide and wild.

  “You have no right,” she hisses. “You need to let the past stay in the past.”

  “I do have a right. It’s my life,” Ava says. And I remember Frank’s tired, sad eyes and how he was the first person to tell her the truth about what happened.

  “I need to let go of the past,” Tracey says softly.

  “But I have a right to know where I come from,” Ava says. “I’ve been learning all of these things I never knew. One thing I wanted to do was to thank you for taking me in. I know some of what you were going through. I know it was a really big deal.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this. That was my old life.”