“You’re both nervous,” I tell her. I use a voice I didn’t even know I had. I think one day I will be a mother.
“You think he’s nervous?”
“Of course he’s nervous.”
“He doesn’t have a shirt on,” she says. That makes her laugh. She giggles uncontrollably for a few moments, shallow puffs of adrenaline on my neck. Her hands all over me, desperate for contact, grabbing my back like she wants to hold me but also wants to claw at something, to break skin, to make my skin hers.
“Okay,” she finally says, and just as quickly as she came on, her hands fall against her sides and she takes a half step back. I feel myself sucked away with her. I lose some of my skin. Dim light seeps through the doorway and I am left in the half shadow, half panting.
She is gone, on her way to Ash. She is not mine.
I don’t tell them I’m leaving.
I don’t know if they hear my car crunching over pinecones and rocks. I watch them as I back away, sitting across from each other, face-to-face, foreheads touching, whispering incantations. I do not exist in the space between them. This place from my childhood is no longer mine. Every memory becomes paper thin. Their one meeting here has more gravity than my whole life. They now own it.
It is not a long drive home along the waterfront. My mind is strangely clear, empty, like part of it is missing, left back there in the ruins.
Before I go inside, I take a minute to walk through Daddy’s vegetable garden, his perfect rows of beans and carrots and greens and squash, and I am suddenly irritated by what I have always admired about him—his determination to do things the hard way, his faith that working for something gives it more value than if it comes easy. What a waste of energy it is to create things with his hands that he could so easily buy. All his little projects, all these extensions of him. He makes things difficult so he can create the illusion that they have meaning. That doing them gives his life meaning.
I pull a couple of small weeds. He calls this his weeding meditation. He calls doing dishes his dishes meditation. And laundry his laundry meditation. He says everything is a meditation if you’re mindful. It is strangely relaxing, the repetitive action, knees down in the soil, helping to make things grow by killing the things that might crowd them out.
But is any of this really necessary? The forest grows just fine without him. Maybe it’s an illusion that the plants need him at all. Maybe he just wants something to control.
Maybe relaxing is the same as boring.
Am I one of his little projects? Am I something to control?
Am I Ivy’s?
I don’t go inside the house. I take off my shoes and walk down the gravel road. The soles of my feet are getting stronger.
Scotch broom. Flowering blackberries. Chamomile growing among the rocks on the side of the road. All half lit by moonlight.
If Ash were here, he’d say something like, “I can’t believe you used to have to walk up and down this road every day for school.”
Ivy would say, “It’s like authentic country living. People pay good money for this.” They would laugh and I wouldn’t know what’s so funny.
Now here they are, exactly where I knew they’d be. Ivy’s space-age car in the driveway. Ash, his chest now covered with something borrowed from Ivy, a cool vintage T-shirt with the neck cut out, a showcase for his collarbones. I can see them through the glass walls, on display, like a giant television. But they can’t see me out here in the darkness.
The house looks different without the dozens of guests and blazing party lights, without all the extra staff. It is empty and sterile, like what’s left after some kind of viral apocalypse, a mass extinction that happened so fast, no one even had time for looting and destruction. Everyone’s just gone, their world left shining and intact and useless.
Ivy is making him a drink at the bar in the expansive living room. Even though I am outside, I can hear the ice tinkle in the glass. “Is this still your drink?” she says, pouring something brown. He nods. They are awkward again. Whatever connection they made at the fort has to be remade here.
“It’s just you and your mom here?” Ash says, taking his drink. Ivy does not make one for herself. She is still trying to be good.
“Yep,” Ivy says. “We both finally realized LA wasn’t the best place for us. I’m ready for some stability, you know? So I can really think about what I want for my future. Make some smart decisions.”
“Smart decisions are good,” Ash says.
“But not too smart.” She looks at Ash with so much desperation in her eyes, I feel nauseated, woozy, like I’m on a boat and the sea just dropped.
Before he has the chance to say anything, Ivy says, “I want to show you something.”
The front door is unlocked. I follow them into the grand entryway with the giant front doors that probably rarely get opened. It is not hard to be invisible. I am here in the place between places, in the place between before and after, the place where ghosts are born. Daddy says there are some Buddhists who believe in a place between death and the next life, a place where a soul can get stuck if it’s not careful. But he also says Buddhists don’t really believe in a soul, not the way most people do, so who knows what to do with that.
I swear I see figures out of the corner of my eyes, remnants from Ivy’s party who never left. They are hiding behind couches, under chairs, peeking out from closets and around corners. They follow us wherever we go. They feel familiar. They are the parts of us that get left behind. Now that I know how to be a ghost, I can see the others, the people without skin, the ones like me who are stuck in the in-between place.
Lining the walls are framed movie posters, photos of Ivy with some of the most famous people in Hollywood, photos of her onstage singing, photos of her accepting awards. The whole place is a shrine to her. I hide around the corner as she leads Ash to the centerpiece—her framed platinum record, sparkling under its own spotlight.
He is speechless, his face twisted with emotion. Ivy slides next to him, their shoulders touching as they stare at the platinum record. “Remember when we talked about making music together?” Her voice is thin. It sounds as breakable as glass. “None of the songs on that album come close to what you write.”
“Can I touch it?” he says.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” Ivy says.
I feel something wet on my cheek, and Ivy wipes hers, and a tear streams down in a perfect straight line to Ash’s chin, and she is staring at him, and he is staring at the record with a look of pure want on his face, and I am watching both of them, and all of our want has nowhere to go. It is too big for even this great empty room. It is stuck here like the not-souls between after and before.
Ash could have everything on that wall if he wanted to. I’ve heard his music. I’ve heard his voice. Maybe his being a musician wouldn’t be his parents’ first choice, but all they’d have to do is make a phone call and he could have the attention of anyone in A-Corp Entertainment. All it would take would be for Ash to say this is what he wanted, that he would risk everything he has to have it. But that would require him to make a decision. It would require him to fight for it.