Everything Leads to You (29 page)

Once she’s regained her composure she asks, “How did it go with you?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But I opened up something. At least I tried to.”

“That’s good,” she says.

We sit next to each other, staring through the windshield.

“Charlotte,” I say. “We both just did huge things. We need to celebrate, don’t you think?”

“Champagne!” she says.

“Yes! But how?”

“We could just drive around to places until we find someone who’ll sell it to us,” she says, but it’s clear from her tone that that prospect is not all that enticing. And it sounds pretty miserable to me, too.

“Oh, well, fuck it,” I say. “Let’s just get apple cider.”

Charlotte double-parks outside of a store on Abbot Kinney while I run inside. I find the apple cider in a refrigerator, sadly positioned on the rack below the champagne, but I don’t let it get me down. Instead I stride up to the counter as though I’m carrying Veuve Clicquot instead of Martinelli’s, and the fatherly man behind the counter smiles approvingly at my choice.

He sets down a pen and a page of the
Times
and I glance at them expecting a crossword puzzle but instead finding the movie listings for the weekend.

He tells me what I owe him but I can’t look away from the listings. He’s circled several in red pen.

“Why are you circling movie times?” I ask him.

“I’m planning my weekend,” he answers, in an accent I can’t place.

“Are you going to see
all
of those?”

“Yes.”

I hand him my cash.

“Is it, like, some sort of special movie weekend for you?”

“No, it’s my routine. Where I’m from, we had to wait months, sometimes years for American films. Now, I see them on opening weekend.”

I give him a slow smile, studying his face. It’s lit up with the love of films. I turn slowly, taking in this store I’ve probably seen a dozen times but never actually noticed. When I started this project, I probably would have ruled it out. It’s not at all romantic. There’s nothing pretty about it. But it has good light. The produce is fresh and colorful, the aisles wide and well stocked. It’s big enough for the crew but small enough to feel intimate, and I can easily see opportunities to play up its humble charms.

“My name is Emi,” I say to him.

“Hakeem,” he says to me.

“Let me tell you about a film I’m working on,” I say, and ten minutes later I’m climbing back into Charlotte’s car with yet another reason to celebrate.

~

On Sunday morning my phone rings and it’s Ava.

“You know how you said I could call you when I needed a favor?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Does that still apply?”

“Is Jamal at work?” I joke, and I’m relieved when she laughs.

“No,” she says. “But he’s coming, too. So is this a yes? Can I pick you up at four?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Is Charlotte with you?”

“No, we both slept at our houses last night. The apartment is off limits until we’re done filming.”

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll call her next.”

I spend some time at the apartment in the middle of the day, watering the plants, rearranging some stacks of books, writing a grocery list for the refrigerator, some botany notes in notebooks that I scatter across the room. The best production designers are the ones who make the sets feel so real that if you didn’t know better, you’d think the characters lived their lives there even after the filming stopped.

Then, at four o’clock, Ava and Jamal pull up to my house and I climb into the backseat. I direct her to Charlotte’s house, and then it’s the four of us, getting onto the freeway, and I recognize the direction in which we’re heading.

“One request,” I say. “No breaking the law on the day before filming starts.”

“Granted,” Ava says. “Speaking of filming, I saw some photos of the apartment. It looks beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“If there’s time before we start shooting, will you take me through it and explain everything? I want to know what I’m looking at. Like those photographs pinned on the corkboard by the hanging plants? Who are those people meant to be? Things like that.”

“Sure,” I say. “That would be great. I’ll explain everything to you.”

When we exit the 405 and pull onto the narrow highway that leads into the desert, Ava says, “This probably won’t be very fun. But you don’t need to do anything. Just be with me.”

We all say okay, and my heart pounds so hard because I’m so worried for her.

Moments later we’re parked in front of Tracey’s house, and we get out of the car, four doors slamming shut. We don’t get very far because Tracey is outside, watering the lawn.

She sees us all and her face goes serious. She looks younger than I expected, wearing jeans and a pink sleeveless shirt with a high collar, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and a gardening glove on one hand. Water sputters out of the hose onto the grass beside her. She crosses the lawn without saying anything and shuts off the water.

Jamal and Charlotte and I stay on the sidewalk next to the car while Ava rounds to the trunk of the car and takes out two boxes. I recognize them as Tracey’s. They are sealed up, tied with strings of paper flowers.

She sets them on the grass and then takes a few steps toward Tracey, frozen on the path next to the little pink potted flowers. They’ve been spread out evenly now, a little farther apart than before to compensate for the one Ava smashed.

“Hi,” Ava says.

Tracey looks past her, at us.

“Who are these people?” she asks.

“My friends,” Ava says.

Tracey closes her eyes and shakes her head.

“
What?
” Ava says. I’m confused, too. We’re all wearing normal clothes. We all look perfectly fine to me.

Tracey’s head keeps shaking, shaking.

“Really, Mom?” Ava says. Tracey isn’t looking at her, so Ava steps to the right, placing herself in Tracey’s line of vision.

“You broke into the house,” Tracey says.

“I tried to use my key.”

“You went through my things. My personal things.”

“I needed something.”

“What?”

“My birth certificate.”

“But you took so much.”

“I wanted to know about Caroline.”

Tracey shakes her head again and I wish I could close my eyes so I didn’t have to see it. I thought that Tracey might feel some regret.

“I had so many questions,” Ava says, making her voice slow and even, trying to sound like someone people listen to. “You never answered them, so I tried to tell myself that they weren’t important. But, of course, it is important. Caroline loved me.
You
loved me. I read your journal. You said I was a gift.”

Even from a distance, I can see Tracey’s whole body tense.

“You had no right to go through my things.”

“You said I saved your life.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I found Lenny.”

Tracey’s hands fly to her face. When she drops them again, her eyes are wide and wild.

“You have no right,” she hisses. “You need to let the past stay in the past.”

“I do have a right. It’s my
life
,” Ava says. And I remember Frank’s tired, sad eyes and how he was the first person to tell her the truth about what happened.

“I need to let go of the past,” Tracey says softly.

“But I have a right to know where I come from,” Ava says. “I’ve been learning all of these things I never knew. One thing I wanted to do was to thank you for taking me in. I know some of what you were going through. I know it was a really big deal.”

“I don’t want to talk about this. That was my old life.”

“
Mom
,” Ava says. “
Please
. We only have one life.
This
life.”

Tracey turns away, like she’s going to walk inside.

“Mom,” Ava says. “I never had sex with Malcolm. We weren’t even in the Sunday school room. We were outside. All we were doing was talking.”

Tracey won’t look at her, but Ava keeps talking anyway. And I remember what she told me when we were picking cherries, that she gave Tracey reasons to reject her.

“I never shoplifted from CVS. That makeup you found in my bathroom? Jessica gave it to me. And the night that you went looking for me in my room? I was just hanging out with friends at the movie theater. I wasn’t doing any of the things I told you I was doing.”

“Why did you torture me like that?” Tracey asks. “You were so cruel to me.”

“I was giving you reasons,” Ava says, “to not love me. I didn’t know it then but I understand now.”

I expect Tracey to give in at this, to assure Ava of her love, but she doesn’t say anything. She just watches Ava standing there, crying and trying to explain.

The door opens and a boy appears in the doorway.

“Jonah!” Ava says, and steps toward him but Tracey turns around and shrieks, “Get back inside!”

Jonah stands, paralyzed, looking from his mother to his sister, and for a moment I think he might defy her, go show Ava that he’s her family, but instead he retreats and the door closes slowly, but not all the way.

“I wasn’t coming on to Lisa,” Ava says. “What happened between us happened because of both of us.”

Tracey shakes her head.

“Like that’s going to make anything better,” she says.

Ava says, “You aren’t going to believe this but I found out that I had a grandfather, and he left me a lot of money. So I’m doing all right. You don’t have to worry about me.” She’s struggling not to cry and it’s so painful to watch her. “And I’m in this movie. I auditioned. A lot of other people wanted my part, but you know what? They wanted me.”

Tracey is shaking her head. Shaking, shaking.

“I think you’re afraid for me. Like, maybe you think I’m going to make the same mistakes you made. But I’m not. I’m doing really well. I just miss having a family.”

The door swings open again and Jonah walks out, tears streaking his face, and he walks over to Ava, close but not touching her. For a moment, he stands between Tracey and Ava as if he wants to be a bridge. Then he hugs Ava quickly but hard, and walks back into the house, shutting the door all the way this time.

“Mom,” Ava says when she can speak again, “you had a tough time when you were young. That’s okay. You did a lot of good, too. You took me in. You had Jonah. And look at us all. We’re fine. Things are fine.”

“You’re wrong,” Tracey tells her. “Things are not fine.” She lets out a sob and covers her face. “Maybe I’m being punished.”

“I try my best to be a good person,” Ava says. “I wish that could be enough for you.”

But Tracey turns and walks into her house, without even looking back, without saying good-bye.

Ava turns and steps numbly toward us. She walks past us all standing here and climbs into the front seat. When she starts the ignition, we get in, too. She drives down the block, turns the corner, and then Jamal breaks our silence.

“Look,” he says. “I don’t like talking shit about people’s families, but I have to get this off my chest. Your mom is seriously fucked up. You know that? So you don’t believe in God in the same way that she does. So what? So you’re into girls. So fucking what. She needs to wake up and figure out that she doesn’t get to decide every single thing about you. It’s her fucking loss, man,” he says. “I’m sorry but I just had to say that. It’s her fucking loss.”

Without warning, Ava pulls onto the side of the road. She pulls up the emergency brake and leans into Jamal, buries her face in his shoulder, her body quaking. She trembles and trembles and when she finally cries it doesn’t even sound like crying. Nothing like that night in our living room with Clyde Jones on the screen looking out at her. Not like a few minutes ago, on Tracey’s front lawn. Not even close to that. It’s this gasping that makes Charlotte and me lock hands, makes me have to struggle against crying myself. It isn’t
my
tragedy. It isn’t me who knows for certain in this moment that I’m alone in the world. She has us, I know, but for all people talk about friends as being the same as family, I know that, really, they aren’t. At least not when you’re eighteen. Not when sometimes you need your mother.

I don’t know what to do, but she brought us to be with her in this moment, so without overthinking the action, without wondering if it will be welcome, I reach through the seats and put my hand on her back as she cries. And then, right after me, Charlotte puts hers on her shoulder.

I know it’s only a gesture, but I hope that it’s something.

And after a little while, I say, “Let me drive us home. We can get delivery from Garlic Flower.”

Ava sniffles. “I don’t even have enough plates,” she says. “And your apartment is a film set.”

“We can go back to my parents’ house,” I say. “Let’s go there.”

She nods and opens her door and we switch places.

~

Charlotte calls the restaurant as I drive us out of the desert and back into the city, and we arrive at home just as Eric does.

“Perfect timing,” he says. I hand him money and he hands me a bag full of warm food, egg flower soup and mu shu and noodles. It makes me hopeful.

My parents aren’t home so I let us in and we carry everything to the den.

“Let’s watch TV shows,” Jamal says. “Some kind of series. Something cheesy.”

So we eat our takeout and watch
Melrose Place
, lose ourselves in the early nineties hideous fashion, the day-to-day trials of the newly adult characters as they swim and work and spy on the neighbors. Ava isn’t laughing, but she’s eating. All things considered, she seems okay.

I watch the screen but all I can think about is us. We were on the verge of being together, and then on the verge of being strangers again. But what are we now?

I guess I was hoping for a cinematic love story. Like Clyde on his horse galloping toward the girl through dust clouds and brambles. “Well, hello you.” His cocky smirk. The girl squinting into the sun after having waited for so long to be discovered.

But our film would have been more modern noir than Western: Two girls in Los Angeles solving a mystery. A late, enigmatic star. A beautiful woman, drugs, and sex. We’d be swimming in the Marmont pool, driving down Sunset Boulevard, our hair wild in the wind from passing cars. A secret love affair, kissing in Ava’s trailer between shooting scenes, dodging paparazzi. All of it sounded amazing and so little of it was real.