And then there was me, Sally, who tried so hard not to question anything. But she was failing, obviously. You can only hold these things in for so long. Stable Sally, broken down to basic character traits once again; for thou is come from dust, and to dust thou shall return. At one point, I called Veronica.
“Mom?”
“Who is this? Sally?”
“Yeah.”
“You can’t just call here!”
“I just wanted to see how you were, relax.”
“Why? What do you care? I’m still rotting in this place.”
“What did you say when they asked for me?”
“That you moved to Norway.”
“Why? That is so out of character for me.”
“I don’t know why, Sally. I’m gonna hang up, because if they trace this call, you can get in trouble.”
“And here I thought you’d be happy to hear from me.”
Jill’s mom loves Jill, but she thought there wouldn’t be any scars on me after spending so long in someone else’s head. Now, I can’t be just Jill. I can be Jill who was herself but then turned into Sally and back into Jill, but I can’t fold my mind into that “just Jill” mode again. Sally is here too, and it is not her that Jill’s mother loves. Sally’s mother had children and grandchildren of her own and no time for her fake child now.
Meanwhile, Jill went to her brother’s wedding. Her brother—who’d grown stout and stiff and gained a hunchback and a bald head—looked defeated. His bride looked even more broken then he did, so Jill thought they might be suited for one another. Jill’s mother had been acting passive aggressive throughout the whole thing when Sally finally flipped and told her to shut it. “What even happened to you? You haven’t been as fun since you saw that girl get shot.”
Was she trying to make me/Jill feel guilty for witnessing a murder? If so, she succeeded:
“You know, Jill, I was so happy you were coming back. We all were. I spent five years without seeing you, without knowing if you were safe. It was hell for me! Did you ever stop to think about me? And now, you come back pissed. Do we deserve this?”
“No, mom, I just—”
“You spent too long outside of your life and don’t want to be reminded of who you are now and how hard it is to be a real person, not some alias or fantasy you came up with.”
“That’s a very superficial analysis of the situation.”
“Well, you’re not that deep. Get over it. Stop wallowing on your pain. You got lucky. You witnessed a murder, and that landed you a five-year-long vacation. Am I supposed to be sad that your escapist dream is over? I’m not even telling you to deal with your problems. You have virtually no problems, apart from the fact that you make a problem out of everything.”
“Sally’s mom never talked to me like that,” I answered. Thank God that made her laugh.
“You know, baby, most things really are superficial. You think there’s something underneath, but every time, it’s just a hole they threw a sheet over, hoping no one would see. Simplest explanation is always the right one.”
“Thanks for calling me a hole, Ma.”
“Why haven’t you gotten your hair back to normal yet? This is unsettling. This is not how I pictured you in the photos of Tyler’s wedding. I don’t like it this way. Step one in getting out of this alternate reality they put you in is changing that hair. God, the way you are, you’d think you were actually being trained by the CIA. Like they brainwashed you and turned you into a spy.”
“Because my hair is different?”
“You don’t just look different; you’re looking at me different.”
“Well, what can I say? Because, you know, if I were in the CIA, I wouldn’t be able to tell you.”
And with that said, I left, hoping my mother had fallen for it at least a little bit.
~~~
I went to have lunch with Jill’s best friend, Jane, whose new best friend was called Cristina, and for some reason had shown up for lunch, as well, presumably because she thought I/Jill might want her friend back. I/she did have dibs on Jane, after all.
Because Jill didn’t live here in this hollow head anymore, nonetheless, she did not intend to take action regarding the Friendship Dibs issue. She had, in fact, been back for a couple of months already when her mother called up Jane’s mother and set up this appointment. Did Jane know I’d been postponing our meeting? Or did she think Jill’s mom had called the day she got back from Nepal?
Regardless of how it had come together, there was an inevitable aura of awkwardness when we met each other again.
“You’re so different, Jill.”
“Yeah, I’m a different person.”
“Ha…” she said with a smile. Her teeth were stained with lipstick. “I missed you.”
“Yeah,” I said—or I, as Jill, said; whatever you prefer.
Jane told me she was making money working for an advertising firm. I told her I got really into ice-skating on my vacation. She gave her friend Cristina a look, as if I’d gone absolutely haywire. Cristina worked at the advertising company, too. I told them about Ariel’s murder and why I was AWOL for five years. Neither of them really believed me. Jill was a bit problematic before she left, you see, so they probably thought I was hiding some crazy girl-on-a-spiral story, or been to rehab, or joined a cult for five years. Five years ago, I remember Jane crying on my shoulder, telling me/Jill she didn’t want to lose me; but I/she made it very difficult to be friends with me/her, because I never wanted to go out and be with people. Then I did, to that stupid party.
“My mom told me you got married.”
“I did, yeah!” She showed me her wedding ring. “His name is Trent, and he’s very handsome; and we are trying to have a baby.”
“That’s great.”
She showed me a picture of the both of them. Trent looked like a small-town minister, who believed in sorcery and the Devil and stuff. Or maybe he pretended to believe in all of this so he could off the people who were rude to him; although I suspect this is where my imagination went, mostly because I really wanted to imagine a scenario where a person could possibly say “Bitches be witches.”
It turned out, however, that he was not involved in the business of detecting satanic followings, but in that of creating them: he was an administrator at some big company. A bland job for a bland face; very well.
“Do you still talk to anyone from back then?” I asked Jane.
“Oh, no… I didn’t have the best taste in friends back then… Apart from you, of course. But I was at a bad place and didn’t even realize it. There wasn’t much direction. Just too many bad parties. I’m kind of ashamed of that phase.”
“Yeah, me too. It’s such a blur for me, though.”
Her smile was affected. I had steak, and she had a salad. When the bill came, I paid for my part and left as soon as I could. I don’t really like sharing a table with people I don’t know. Yes, I just said that last sentence in order to create a dramatic effect (oh my God! Jill and Jane are strangers now! We lose friends as we grow older!), but it’s still true. I was sure we would never speak again.
About Beatriz Seelaender
