Chapter 56 Amanda

CHAPTER 56 AMANDA

2012

Bolton Landing

What surprised me about Mr. Riley—I’m sorry, Richard —is how earnest he was. I didn’t have much experience with earnestness. Our first few months working together, I tried to read second and third meanings into everything he said, only to realize none existed. If he invited me for coffee the following morning, I’d immediately respond, “Is everything all right?” And when he looked at me curiously, I’d say, “Rehearsals not going well enough?” He’d chuckle, put a hand on my shoulder, say, “I’d just really love to buy you a coffee.”

When he asked to take me to a Broadway play, I resisted the urge to ask if what he meant was let me show you how “real actors” do things . Instead, I said, “Yes, please,” and I was even more enthusiastic when he told me that we were seeing the play he had picked for us this coming spring: Twelve Angry Men . I was relieved because Annie and I had never done that one. (I tended to compare everyone in a role to my memory of Annie’s performance. It was exhausting—for the kids especially.)

“Mind if I DJ?” I asked when he settled behind the wheel of my van. I was already opening my iTunes app.

“Please do,” he said. “Teach me the ways.”

I scrolled through my iPhone and felt the old gravitational pull toward my “Merry Go Freedom” mixtape, which over the years I’d re-created, first on CD, then on MP3, and now in a playlist. Something about those songs—in that order—was pure magic. I surrendered to it, hit Play, and tucked my phone into the cup holder.

As always happened, I tumbled back through time to that spring night, to 1998. Annie rescuing me from the floor of Tommy’s bathroom, driving us home, the songs she selected filling the cab of my dad’s truck. That night, I was trapped inside the fuzzy bubble of too much alcohol, but still listening intently. I knew the third song was the one that mattered, because I knew Annie. And when that one began, Sarah McLachlan’s voice, sexy and smooth like wet paint, my body began tingling, the lyrics stinging me—little electric shocks. When the song ended, I resurfaced briefly—a struggle to do so—and said, “It’s about us.”

I wanted her to know she wasn’t alone in her feelings.

“You remember when you did Twelfth Night ?” Richard asked when we were an hour outside the city. I found the question odd, as it was the play that he’d first asked me to help him with and also one I’d performed in, so, not one I’d ever forget. But when he brought it up, I felt that familiar pang. I never understood why he had chosen that play, a play I blamed for driving a wedge between me and Annie. The choice never made sense—I thought he loved watching us together onstage.

“Why did you do that?”

He could sense something in my tone and glanced over. “Do what?” he asked, squinting, drawing out both words.

“Pick that play,” I said. “I never understood it.”

He looked bewildered. Like we were having two different conversations. And then a moment later, a realization dawned, and his expression softened. “Oh,” he said. “You didn’t know?”

“Didn’t know what?”

“That Annie asked me to pick Twelfth Night . Came into my office one afternoon certain it was just the thing.”

Wait… what? I tested the potential veracity of that, laid it next to what I knew about Annie back then. Gut reaction—it was true. I started to respond a few times but couldn’t produce words. What could I possibly say to this? Admit that I didn’t know, laugh it off like no big deal? Or maybe lie to him, say I had known, that I’d just forgotten for a sec? Nothing seemed right.

And while I sputtered, this revelation was speeding back through time, a virus threatening to corrupt all my favorite memories. Shutting it down was paramount; suddenly nothing else mattered. Which is how, far too quickly, I found myself saying, “Did you know Cate Kay is Annie? I mean, Annie, she’s Cate Kay. The author—Annie wrote those books.”

Mr. Riley reached his other hand to the wheel and gripped both tightly. “Wow,” he said. He stared out at the road for a moment. “We just covered a lot of ground.” He shook his head once, quickly, added another “Wow.”

“Yeah,” was all I managed.

“Aren’t you worried I’ll tell someone?”

Was I worried? I searched my body for concern, found none.

“No,” I said finally. “I mean, it’s not my secret.”

“So why have you kept it?”

Huh. Odd that it had never crossed my mind to not keep it for her. We were in this thing together, she and I. Even though we weren’t, we still were. That will make sense if you’ve had a friend who could look at you from across the room and make you laugh.

“Because I love her,” I said, then looked at him, and we held eye contact for a second. Then I shrugged like, Maybe that makes me a fool, I don’t care .

We talked for the next hour about everything: how I realized it was her, how I felt about it, what it was like in the years after the accident, how I was doing now.

It’s a strange feeling when you break old alliances and form new ones. The only word I can find for it is, ironically, dystopian . High school me would be baffled by the social order, the rules of this future society in which I found myself. But, like everything in life, you’d be amazed at what you can get used to.

A few hours later, on the drive back home, Richard was listening to Bruce Springsteen and trying to sing, but mostly stumbling over the lyrics. (Springsteen sing-alongs aren’t for the faint of heart.) My eyes were closed, had been for a while, but I wasn’t sleeping. I was listening to him hit every third word, mumbling through the others. Then suddenly, a memory—how he’d once, when Annie and I were seniors, messed up an idiom so badly that we used his wrong version for the rest of the school year. I pried the memory open and stepped inside with Annie, smiled into the night.

When he dropped me off a short time later, I went right to the kitchen drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote what I knew would be my final letter. I gave it everything I had. Left it all on the field. As I licked the envelope, I wondered if Annie read her fan mail, or if someone did that for her. Either way, if what I’d just written didn’t bring her back to me, no words ever could.