London Is the Best City in America (24 page)

When I look back to that moment when Josh finally spoke—silencing everything else—I think: Maybe this is what storytelling is made for. So someone can sit up front and raise their hand, showing off with an answer. Saying: This may have been uncomfortable, it may be uncomfortable for right now, but soon it will be over. Soon, I will explain the part to you where we all get to go home.

Let me tell you this. One of the strangest things to happen after the wedding that didn’t—after everyone started leaving the ballroom in droves, Josh and Meryl first, the back-rowers following—was that one guest told another how much she liked her dress. They were just standing in the aisle, and I didn’t recognize either of them. But this I remember most vividly, the holding on to the green fabric, the eye-to-eye contact of the exchange, their separation from each other. Like this was the most important thing that happened, or at least what they’d take away. The idea both stunned and comforted me.

As for me, I wasn’t sure which way to go. I had my tapes with me, in my hand. Walking up to the stained-glass window had been like approaching a locked apartment. You knew it was useless. You knew it. But you turned the knob anyway. A quick peek in the bag revealed the rest. For the most part, the tapes were gnarled and warm and ruined.

I looked around the still-panicked lobby and tried to find a place for myself. I wasn’t going back to the bridal suite for anything in the world. I could just picture the scene up there: Josh and Meryl taking the stairs to get there and then remembering halfway up that the elevator was working again. So maybe they’d get out of the staircase on floor seven or floor nine and ride the rest of the way. And once they were inside, they would do it again, exactly what they’d just done in front of everyone—tell each other it was over, end things—so they’d get to believe it.

Bess was on a courtesy phone in the lobby’s corner. I had no idea whom she was calling, but Michael was with her, the Moynihan-Richardses a few feet behind. In the corner was my father, saying good-bye to people, trying to talk them down from whatever it was they thought they’d just seen.

The whole hotel world was still moving in fast-forward: the bellhops and elevators, the now-useless towel piles. I decided to go outside and get some air. I wanted to give everything a little time to calm down. Or forever to calm down. But just as I was heading through the revolving door out onto the street, I heard someone knocking hard on the glass from the partition behind. It was my mother, motioning for me, frantically, to revolve the door right back in.

She looked down at the bag in my hand as we stepped back onto the lobby floor, but didn’t say anything. I don’t know if she hadn’t made the connection yet that the tapes were ruined, or if she just didn’t want to make it yet.

“I need you to take the Moynihan-Richardses back to the house,” she said. “You need to go there right now with them because they want to drive home tonight. All the way to Arkansas. As soon as possible.”

Her voice was all business, not that I would have argued anyway. I was glad for any excuse to get out. Even this one.

“And listen, Emmy, okay? I’m not sure if anyone else is actually planning on staying with us at this point, but if I’m the one who tries to make them go, they’ll end up staying for three days. I’ll make them all dinner. I’ll invite them to stay on for the rest of the week.”

“I’ll take care of it, Mom,” I said. “I promise.”

“Because I need the house empty, Em. By the time I get back there tonight, I want everyone gone except for the four of us. We need to be there alone for a while, don’t you think?” She paused, looking up at the ceiling as far away from the bottom of me as she could get. “And please. Soak your foot for a good half hour when you can, okay?”

I looked down at the napkin, peeking out from beneath my heel, revealing my own little injury. In all of the chaos, I’d almost forgotten.

“Just sit there and soak it,” she continued. “Put about a half-tablespoon of salt in the water.”

“I’ll put lots of salt in it,” I said. “What else do you need me to do for you?”

She shook her head, her hand tugging gently on the bottom of my hair, flipping it under. “Nothing.”

“Then where are you going to be?” I said.

“I’m going to be with your father,” she said. “Wherever he decides to take me.”

It didn’t used to be that the time right after people got married was designated for the betrothed taking a major trip together. The whole trip-taking situation grew out of a much simpler tradition in Northern Europe of drinking a certain kind of mead and honey wine post-ceremony that was supposed to bring good luck. You were supposed to keep drinking it for a month—or a moon—which was where the term
honeymoon
came from. After this wedding, though, I was certain that the only wine drinking taking place was happening in the Volvo I was driving with the Moynihan-Richardses: the two of them sitting in the back together—chauffeur-style, on either side of the car seat, either side of a buckled-in Papa Smurf—both of them taking hefty swigs from the jug they’d lifted from somewhere inside the hotel.

Dr. Moynihan-Richards kept offering me some, in an attempt, I think, to let me know he didn’t blame me for what happened back in the ballroom. For the mess this weekend had become.

“We blame your brother, not you,” he came right out and said at one point. “And your parents. But them only a little bit.”

I smiled at him in the rearview. “Thank you,” I said.

It didn’t seem like the appropriate time to point out that he could have been justified in blaming me too. Especially because I had pretended to be their daughter’s friend when, clearly, being a true friend to her hadn’t turned out to be what mattered most to me. I thought about what was going on with her back at the hotel. With both of them. Who was where now? How was anyone trying to help each other? I had this image of the two of them sitting in opposite corners of the living room in that huge suite, talking to each other in starts and stops—both of them wanting to leave, but knowing they couldn’t. Knowing that when they did, that would be it.

I flipped on the radio, searching for an AM station not playing a commercial. “How about we listen to a traffic report? See what the highways are going to be like for your trip home?”

But Mrs. Moynihan-Richards leaned forward over the front seat, flipping the radio back off and wrapping her fingers around my seat’s edges.

“We’re going either way,” she said. “What’s the difference what they tell us about it?”

“I guess that’s one way to look at it,” I said, not excited about having Mrs. M-R right in my personal space. This was the first time I was even having anything approaching a real conversation with her. It was also, considering the extreme circumstances of today, probably going to be the last.

And still, I just wanted her to sit back, something she seemed determined not to do.

“So here’s a question for you,” she said, staying where she was. “Were those your videos I saw you put in the back? Videos of the documentary Meryl has told us you’ve been working on in Rhode Island? About fishermen?”

“About their wives,” I corrected. “Yes, those were my tapes,” I said. Because they were my tapes. They
were,
in the absolutely painful past tense of the word. I imagined I could salvage a few of them—but there was very little I could do to get most of them back, most of the stories that would die with them. Still, it was possible some of the tapes could be saved. It was possible that this wasn’t over yet.

“I don’t know much about videos, but they looked kind of . . . troubled,” Dr. Moynihan-Richards said.

Thanks, genius,
I wanted to say. But I ignored him, or I tried to. He was leaning forward now too, his arms locked around the empty passenger seat.

Mrs. M-R shot him a look. “Meryl was saying you try to make movies that end well? That that’s your overall movie-making goal?”

I nodded, even though it made me cringe a little to hear someone say it out loud. It just sounded so hokey, and also it reminded me how far I’d been from finding this film’s ending, how I had been just about equally far from one with my endless tapes of footage as I was now that my footage was ruined.

He caught my eye in the rearview, squinting at me, apparently entirely unsatisfied with my nod-as-response answer. “But don’t you think that’s a bit of a sad enterprise?” he said. “Trying to make movies in that way?”

“Which way?” I asked him.

“Happy,” he said.

“Well, not to be the bearer of bad news here,” Mrs. Moynihan-Richards said, “but I think we’re missing the larger issue, which is why you’d choose to put your footage in a garbage bag in the first place. On the subconscious level, at least, there is no question that disposal had to be your main intention. The placement of the tapes in the garbage bag alone makes that much clear.”

Dr. Moynihan-Richards nodded at his wife in agreement. I had forgotten for a minute that they were sociology professors, but I remembered it again in how they were looking at each other, how they were looking at me, like a case study. A case study of a girl who put everything she thought mattered most right into the garbage. The only problem with their theory was that, in my experience, my subconscious worked in trickier ways. Considering how I’d been living the last few years, I thought I could make a fairly compelling argument that if I were really trying to get rid of the tapes, a garbage bag would be the last place I’d put them.

Dr. M-R leaned closer to me. “So did you really think that you’d finish the film eventually? That you’d find the ending you were looking for?”

I turned my eyes back to the road. “I think I was hoping something else would happen.”

“Which was what?”

I looked right at them. “That someone would tell me,” I said.

“Tell you what?” Mrs. M-R said.

“What to do next,” I said.

She looked at me for another second before sitting back again, holding her wine jug closer to herself, looking back out the window. Dr. M-R followed suit.

“Well,” she said. “That’s even sadder.”

Then she was quiet. So was he. But I could still feel them sneaking looks at me, even when they thought I couldn’t anymore: not mean looks, but looks of pity, which were worse as far as I was concerned. I could feel their looks, and I could feel my heart beating, and the tapes—in the back—I swear: I could feel them weighing the wagon completely down.

And before I could think about it anymore—because I really couldn’t think about it anymore—I pulled the car off the highway, onto the shoulder, and halted the ignition. And with the Moynihan-Richardses of the Ozark Mountains as my only witnesses, I took the bag of tapes out of the back and threw it. I threw it as far as my hands and injured foot would let me—as far as I could throw it away from me. They almost looked like seagulls, the tapes did, flying out of the top of the bag into the distance. Sick seagulls, more like, dying seagulls. Because they landed in the grass, no more than ten feet from where they started.

I wouldn’t say I was happy looking out at them—the defeated remains of the last three years of my life—but I did have a feeling of relief. I was deeply relieved that, if nothing else, I wasn’t dying out there with them.

I got back in the station wagon and, without a word, turned on the ignition and headed back out onto the highway, back in the direction of home. It was only when we were moving again that Mrs. Moynihan-Richards spoke.

She kept her voice down low. “Can I go ahead and assume that you have other copies?”

“Only,” I said, “if you want to assume wrong.”

I don’t remember all that clearly saying good-bye to the Moynihan-Richardses, and getting myself into the house. Getting the M-Rs into their RV, getting them gone. When I was inside, though, the entire place was empty, and incredibly quiet. Almost eerily so. I still wasn’t quite sure what to take from that car ride with them yet, how to digest exactly what I’d left on the roadside. I didn’t feel any relief that the tapes were gone from me now—that my never-ending project had found an ending. I didn’t feel a great sadness either though. If I had to name it, what I did feel was a space opening up inside me—a larger space than I could remember being there in a long time. I felt longing.

I went into the kitchen and wrote a quick note on my mom’s panda-bear pad and taped it to the front door.

This is what it said: “Go away now. Thanks!”

Then I headed up to my room, slowly. I didn’t turn any lights on as I felt my way toward the familiar staircase, crawling up the stairs to my bedroom, and opened the door half-expecting to find anything except what I found.

Berringer.

He was lying there, just lying on my bed, like it was his right. On top of the blanket. Fully dressed, except for his shoes. I was going to ask him how he got back here before me, but I didn’t really care. I didn’t really care how he got here, or what exactly had happened first. It didn’t seem to matter so much.

Instead, I sat on the edge of my bed and didn’t say anything for a while. I didn’t move at all. Neither did he. He kept his hand on my back though, the entire time I sat there, his fingers pressing in softly. My heart was beating so fast, I was worried he could feel it through his fingertips. I was worried that this was why he was keeping his hands there: to steady me.

Eventually, I took off my shoes and put them right by Berringer’s, and I took down my hair. Then I stood up again and locked the door. I lay down next to him. Berringer watched me do all of this, not saying a word. At least I think he was watching me. In the dark, I could see him blinking. My whole left side was touching his whole right side—side arm to side arm, hip to hip, side leg to side leg. Foot to bad foot.

“You hurting?” he said.

“I’ve been better.”

He didn’t say anything. But he turned toward me, leaning on his elbow, waiting for me to continue.

“I made things worse today,” I said.

He shook his head. “You don’t have that much power.”

I kept lying there on my back, but I turned my head to face him too. I started to ask why Celia hadn’t been at the wedding earlier. But then I realized I didn’t have to, not right then. Even if I didn’t know why yet—if he hadn’t actually said out loud that after the rehearsal dinner they’d had a discussion, that he told her he didn’t think he could see her anymore—I knew that it was over with her. I just knew it. Berringer didn’t work any other way. It was nice, among these boys whom I loved, that someone didn’t.