Chapter 54 Cass

CHAPTER 54 CASS

2011

Charleston

Star, Us Weekly, Variety, In Touch, People, Vanity Fair —I had subscriptions to every celebrity magazine. Neatly formed stacks would grow on side tables and counters until the yearly purge when I tossed every issue except the ones in which Ryan appeared. Those went in a box, and every so often I’d drink too much wine—a big and bold cabernet, always—and spend the night rereading each item, reassessing every picture: Ryan walking in her LA neighborhood in a beanie and Jordans; talking on the phone outside a hot restaurant; walking with her new boyfriend—really, Ryan, really?—along the beach. I’d look closely at each image, searching for clues, pretending she’d been thinking of me the moment the photo was snapped.

But also, I worried that love just wasn’t for me. How much love do you get to run away from in this life before you’re cut off for good? First Amanda, then Ryan, and finally Sidney. Although Sidney? That was different. That was an arrangement—we’d used each other. Me, to get out of the painful limbo of Plattsburgh; Sidney, to find the perfect person to exert control over.

One afternoon, a couple months before they started filming the final installment of The Very Last trilogy, I’d just come back from a run—my latest method for quieting my brain. It was hot and muggy, per usual. I stopped by my mailbox, which was covered in jasmine. I did love how lush and exotic Charleston was compared to the austerity of the Adirondacks. I grabbed the bundle—mostly junk mail—and was shuffling through when I stopped dead.

There, staring back at me, on the cover of Vanity Fair , was Ryan. I didn’t move. She was walking away from the camera, a jean jacket tossed over her shoulder, glancing back at the lens. Her hair was pulled back, and the image seemed to capture her quality of movement, midstride, a pair of black-and-white Nike Dunks on her feet. I admired how she kept a little candle burning for the sporty kid inside her.

The headline read: “R Y C HANNING H AS S OMETHING TO T ELL Y OU .” The phrasing promised intimacy. An actual profile, not a paparazzi shot with a caption.

I hustled inside, chilled instantly by the high-powered air-conditioning. I tossed the other mail onto the entryway table and walked my sweaty self to the staircase, sitting on the third step, placing the Vanity Fair by my side. For a moment, I stared into space and wondered if reading this story was a good idea. Was it a healthy choice? Maybe the universe was sending me a sign—that now was the time to detach from Ryan, from my obsession with what could have been.

And yet, I knew with 100 percent certainty that I would read the article. But pausing made me feel in control, mature. Here I was, calm and collected, considering other options. Once enough time had passed—two to three minutes, approximately—I opened to the article.

Ry Channing Has Something to Tell You

Jake Fischer

Ry Channing is unhappy. Not in life—although we’ll get to that—but at this moment. She’s in Lawrence, Kansas, at her favorite local bakery, and they have run out of croissants. She is standing at the counter, craning to see into the kitchen as if a new batch might magical-ly appear. Her reaction is half performance, half genuine, which later Channing will say pretty much sums up her life so far. (And something she wants to change.) The cashier pitches Channing on a palmier, which the woman describes as “basically a flattened croissant crusted with sugar.”

“Say no more,” Channing responds. “A palmier and a mocha with whole milk.”

Breakfast in hand, she tucks herself into a corner seat. She’s dressed casually in FREECITY sweatpants, and nobody bothers her. One reason, she says, why she loves coming home. She takes a huge bite of her pastry and washes it down with a gulp of mocha—the food appears to ground her.

“It’s my ritual,” she says, lifting the cup. “I’m done starving myself. Who is that for, even? As best I can tell it’s…” She pauses and it seems like she’s thinking, then she continues.

“Okay, so there’s this scene in the movie Notting Hill where Alec Baldwin, who plays Julia Roberts’s boyfriend—they’re both playing movie stars—orders her like a salad or something from room service, and when she protests, he slaps her on the butt and goes, ‘I don’t want people saying, “There goes that famous actor with the big, fat girlfriend.”?’ I actually think about that scene a lot. Like, that’s who I’m starving myself for—that’s why? So that guys like Alec Baldwin can feel better about themselves? And that’s not about Hollywood, by the way. I mean that in general—that’s why women all over the world make themselves smaller, so men can feel better about themselves?”

“Yeah, no thanks,” she says before taking another bite.

After she finishes her pastry, we chat for a few minutes about The Very Last. She’s leaving soon for Charleston. Then she pauses, takes a deep breath, looks at me. She’s ready to get to the heart of the matter; the real reason she’s invited me to Kansas for this chat.

“It’s funny I brought up Notting Hill ,” she says. “Funny that it was on my mind today, I mean. It’s actually my favorite movie. For lots of reasons, but mainly because it’s while watching that movie that I realized I’m gay.”

Below is our conversation, edited for clarity.

Jake: Um, why Notting Hill ? That wasn’t a particularly gay movie.

Ry: Okay, so, I’ve thought about this a lot. The thing with that movie is that the story is framed from this point of view of, here is this everyday person smitten with this singularly beautiful woman. It’s a movie about fascination with a woman. It doesn’t matter that Hugh Grant was a guy, really. He was just a character I could project myself onto.

Jake: If it’s all right with you, I’m just going to ask questions that follow my interest, jump right into things—have you ever been in love?

Ry: He’s just going right for the jugular.

Jake: I serve at the pleasure of our readers. So…?

Ry: Once.

Jake: That’s all you’ll give me?

Ry: I’d rather talk about bigger-picture issues. You know, the why of it—why I’m coming out. My love life is only so interesting.

Jake: Your love life is why people will read this article.

Ry: Do you believe that, for real?

Jake: Yes, they’re thinking right now: Get to the good stuff already.

Ry: Why did I pick you again?

Jake: I was going to ask you that question.

Ry: I liked your previous work. You’ve written great stuff since coming out, getting engaged to your husband—and then also your coverage of The Very Last by Cate Kay. You could say I’m a fan.

Jake: I’m flattered. So, what happened… that “one time” you were in love?

Ry: It didn’t work out.

Jake: You or her?

Ry: I wrote her a note, professing my love, a whole big thing—but no, it was her, she wasn’t into it.

Jake: So, why—why are you going public now?

Ry: I just couldn’t be the person who surrendered the joy of openly loving someone in exchange for, like, an uptick in popularity. Seriously, think about how sick that is. It’s unsettling. The savagery of what I was doing: taking a cleaver to my own heart. I just couldn’t keep doing that. That’s not what I want for my life.

I read the whole piece, including the photo captions. Then I read it again. My heart had leapt at seeing Cate Kay mentioned, and I read the rest of the article hoping for some coded message from Ryan. But nothing. And even worse: She’d admitted to being in love with some other woman, to pouring her heart out in some love letter. I carefully placed the magazine by my side. Ryan had come out. Such a bold move. If possible, she was even sexier to me now. I was happy for her, I was. But, also, selfishly, I’d just lost something: the intimacy of being one of the only people in the world who knew the real her. She’d just gone from my personal gay icon to the world’s.

It was time, I realized. Time to save me from myself. Extinguish the torch I’d been carrying for her.

The only hat I owned was this hideous army-green safari thing with a pull cord under the chin, a necessary purchase for a hike two years prior. On the coolness scale it was a zero. But it provided two layers of protection: the hat itself was a disguise, and its ugliness provided additional motivation to keep myself hidden from Ryan while wearing it. Imagine the story we’d have to tell people: “The reeds were blowing in the breeze when I saw her across the water wearing a bucket hat…”

Not that I thought Ryan and I could still be a thing. That was done. This excursion to watch filming of the final scene in The Very Last trilogy was for closure—for the three books, Ryan, Sidney, the whole era. My goal: When I woke the following morning, the next chapter of my life would begin. I had no clue what that would look or feel like, but I told myself I felt ready for it.

They were shooting at this place called Gold Bug Island, which was not exactly an island, tucked away down a small slope just before a low bridge about twenty minutes from downtown Charleston. No houses for a mile in either direction, but thankfully the island itself was filled with palm trees that I could hide myself behind. I parked a half mile away, on the side of the road. Because they used public land, often filming on waterways, the sets couldn’t be closed to the public. They did their best to keep locations a secret, though word always got out. I had a granola bar in my pocket and a book in my hand—I was prepared.

As I walked along the side of the road, I kept my head down. Thoughts and images of Ryan, of those weeks in Los Angeles, played in my mind, and I kept ushering them out, only for them to reappear. I’d put the celebrity magazines in the attic, but I’d never really succeeded in moving on from Ryan. Eventually, to keep my brain occupied, I started counting my steps.

There was water on both sides of the two-lane road, wending itself through greenery and marsh. An egret was flying low, nearly skimming the surface. It was approaching dusk on one of those beautiful Charleston nights. Light pinks and golds blended with one another and with the sky, and the temperature was so perfectly suited to the human body that the fact of weather disappeared entirely. No doubt the director and cinematographer were in a mad rush to capitalize on such perfection.

The turnoff for the island was up ahead, and I jogged lightly toward it, eager to get lost in the trees and vegetation. Just then, a gray Mercedes Sprinter van rumbled past on my left, a little close for comfort. Instinctively, my eyes darted upward, and my heart jumped—Janie Johnson was sitting in the back window seat, a cell phone pressed to her ear. She hadn’t seen me; my lovely bucket hat had done its job. I tugged it lower and cut across the road toward the tree line.

Wherever went Janie, went Ryan—she was absolutely inside that van, which had already disappeared around the corner. I stopped and waited for a feeling to come over me. Even reached out and touched a tree to ground myself. But no feeling came. I couldn’t tell if I was pleased or disappointed, but I think the latter. I began walking the long way around the island and found a palm tree, sat beneath it, opened my book. Over the years I’d consumed a lot of Ryan Channing content—maybe I’d inoculated myself.

But then I actually saw her, and my heart started hammering. She was walking with the director, away from the trailers of basecamp and toward a short dock. She was wearing the Tom and Jerry sweatshirt that features prominently in Persephone’s story. I knew it was Ryan for many reasons, but mostly by the way she touched the ends of her hair, with this kind of absentminded curiosity. She was doing that now as they walked, the tips of her fingers assessing her hair’s texture. A moment later she stopped, gathered it, and spun it into a messy bun. This, from afar, seemed to relax her, make her sink into herself. She was always more comfortable when casual. A second later, she and the director shared a laugh.

My body started humming, a low-level tingle. It felt good, and I tried not to think about later when I’d walk back to my car alone, drive home to an empty house—the painful comedown. For now, there she was, my magazine spread come to life. She and the director walked to the dock, pointed here and there, really took in the approaching sunset, its orange and purple, then the director glanced at his watch—it was go-time.

Less than an hour later, everything was set. A skeleton crew. The director was on the dock with one other person and the camera. Behind them was a small group, including Janie, who stood with her arms crossed, cell phone gripped in her right hand. She was chatting happily with a woman who must be makeup, a large fanny pack around her waist. A rowboat was in the water just off the dock. Right when the director must have been asking after Ryan—his assistant was lifting a walkie-talkie to his mouth—she appeared from behind a trailer and began walking toward them.

But this wasn’t Ryan; it was Persephone. The way she carried herself, the tilt of her chin—she now embodied a woman who’d faced hardship and grown stronger because of it. And that was the purpose of this final scene: to show Persephone Park, shedding the final connection to her former life, to the world that was offering her everything, yet nothing she valued.

Ryan walked to the dock without speaking to anyone. An assistant brought the boat in, and she stepped onto it, staring out at the water, hands in cargo pants.

The director was looking toward basecamp, impatient, and I wondered who else he was waiting on. Then I saw Puck. How could I have forgotten? She was trotting happily alongside a handler, and she gracefully jumped into the boat. Ryan knelt to greet her, scratching behind her ears, grabbing her muzzle, kissing her wet nose.

The interaction made my insides hurt. I wished they were my family, the two of them. I wished we could curl up on the couch together, that Ryan and I could take her on walks and watch her play and glance at each other, smiling. What a simple, perfect life the smile would say.

The director clapped, snapping me back. And then it was happening. The boat pushed from the dock, Ryan and Puck drifting together on the calm water. The sun was just kissing the horizon, and no doubt the cinematographer was in a state of anxious bliss. Everyone turned their attention toward the boat; a hush fell.

A few moments later the director said “Action,” his voice urgent.

Ryan was standing with her back to the camera, her hand resting on Puck’s head. The boat was moving slightly, a gentle turn that the cameraman was adjusting for on the dock. I was sitting against the palm tree, and I let my head tip back gently until it was resting against the trunk. The low-level tingle had escalated to goose bumps, and I closed my eyes, just for a moment, to see what else I could feel. My heart, a golden circle, throbbing inside my rib cage. I pictured Amanda, the first love of my life, saw the bold and rich colors of the mountain lake at her back, her skipping and jumping, her arm around my shoulders. And then I saw Ryan, squinting into the soft light of the West Coast, pictured her unique beauty, her lips a whisper from mine. The two of them, my heart’s electricity.

My eyes snapped open just in time to watch Ryan remove the sweatshirt. Her movements were assured but graceful, infused with melancholy. Once it was off, she lifted the fabric to her face and inhaled deeply, then she released the sweatshirt and it dropped out of sight. The sun was only embers on the horizon, and the night was ashy pink, and depending on your perspective, Persephone Park was either watching the last sunset of her old life or the first of her new one. Me, I think she was living in both, one last time.

The two of them drifted like this for a long time, long enough that I began wondering when the director would yell “cut.” When he finally did, everyone started clapping, but I stood up and turned my back, began the walk to my car.

When I got home, I fell into bed with my clothes on. I’d been right earlier: the comedown was vicious.

The next morning I woke up ravenous. Like I hadn’t eaten in days. I ate toast, then eggs, then granola; the feeling wouldn’t abate. A peppermint tea was steeping on the corner of my desk as I turned the cover on one of my cheap spiral notebooks. This emptiness, it was deeper than Ryan. I’d passed that floor and headed south, to the basement. I looked around and recognized it as the Amanda-shaped hole inside me. I’d been here before. But I couldn’t keep writing from loss, begging for forgiveness, hoping she’d sense me, wherever she was. What I needed was joy—to write us back to life, together.

I pressed the tip of my pen to the blank page and wrote “The Road Trip,” underlining it, skipping past the leg of the p . A few seconds later I crossed out what I’d written and replaced it with “The Rain Check.” I liked that none of the letters dipped below the line—their uniformity satisfied me.

What the next line would be, I wasn’t sure. I spent a few minutes staring off into space, assessing each thought as it entered my mind, escorting out the mediocre ones. Then a memory appeared, and my arm landed purposefully on the desk. The writing began.