In Twenty Years: A Novel (24 page)

25

LINDY

Lindy is clutching a beer on the steps in front of Van Pelt Library, which offers her a view of the main hub of campus: the gothic brick buildings that have stood for a century and a half; the kelly-green lawns on which she used to sunbathe; the narrow, winding pathways that lead to all the nooks and crannies where students could scamper to hide from whatever they needed to hide from.

The Road to Freedom festival booths are still thriving, pulsing in full force. The butter-churning event is just up the walk. In front of her, an ironsmith teaches a set of siblings how to put on a horseshoe. To his right, women in rocking chairs needlepoint what appears to be the colonial flag. Down from there, there’s a mock signing of the Constitution. She overhears a mom attempting to explain the Boston Tea Party to her daughters, but one of the girls just keeps screaming,
I don’t want tea, I want lemonade!
She watches as the mom’s nerves wind their way up from bemused to exasperated, and as she grabs her daughters by their wrists and marches them off toward Ben Franklin’s booth, where he’s feigning being struck by a lightning bolt.

Lindy wonders how the mother can bear it. If her brattish little kids are worth it. Would Lindy’s brattish little kid be worth it?

She raises the lager to her nose and inhales, debating guzzling it all in one chug. She tests it with her tongue, savoring it, then concedes herself a gentle, tiny sip.

She’d bought the beer with a twenty she’d found stuffed in her back pocket. But she’d given Leon her wallet to hold at that stupid fraternity party, and therefore finds herself stuck on this godforsaken campus with these godforsaken memories. She could Uber to the airport, but then what? No ID, no nowhere. She swiped a Phillies hat from the Wawa, along with the beer, and it’s tugged low, casting shadows over her always-recognizable face. Now, for once, she’s anonymous again.

There are throngs of students and families milling about now, hordes of them moving in packs down Locust Walk. The July heat has started to turn, the humidity falling and leaving a bit of breathing room in its wake. Lindy inhales, as if she can taste the oncoming sunset, and feels the freedom course through her. She could be one of them, one of those kids, wandering freely toward whatever path, party, parallel she chose. Now, without her ID, with the ball cap disguising her face, she could be anyone.

Who would she want to be?

Lindy swigs another sip—her last one, she swears to herself—and considers it.
If you could be anyone, who would you be?
She and Annie used to play this game sometimes in their New York apartment. The radiator would be clattering too loudly, steaming up their windows on a frozen city night, or the windows would be open too wide because of a sweltering heat wave and the noise from below—taxis honking, trucks screeching, happy people filling the air with happy laughter—would filter upward, keeping them awake much too late, or too late for Annie anyway. She had a job the next morning. Lindy—this was in the early years when the gigs were few and far between—usually didn’t have anywhere to be the next morning. She loved those late nights, secretly, selfishly, because she had Annie by her side. Even though she knew it wasn’t right—to keep her awake when her alarm beckoned so soon. But Annie never seemed to mind.

Lindy thinks of that unfortunate dick pic and wonders if maybe Baxter isn’t a bit like Lindy was back then—taking, taking, taking, even though she knew that with each extended palm, she drained a little more from Annie. Not on purpose. Lindy got a little drunk on Annie, and well, Annie didn’t stop her. Lindy knows now, today, it’s because Annie had no fucking idea how deep Lindy was in, but back then Lindy didn’t have this perspective, this clarity that comes from hindsight. Back then she deluded herself into thinking maybe Annie would reciprocate, and that’s why she asked so little in return from Lindy; Lindy figured that’s how Annie liked it, that’s what Annie wanted. Actually, she’d never really considered it until right then, until this very moment on the front steps of Van Pelt. Her cheeks burn, and she’s certain it’s not from the beer, though this is the first drop she’s touched in the ten weeks since she found out.

If you could be anyone, who would you be?

Their apartment was miniature, so they shared a bedroom with a sheet hung across the center to give them each their privacy. They’d lie on either side of that sheet—Lindy remembers it was sort of this putrid green, and Annie had bought them half off at TJ Maxx—and talk through the night as if the sheet were the only thing that divided them. Like Lindy couldn’t call her dad and ask for a fat check to upgrade from this hovel. Like Annie wasn’t chased by wolves that she mentioned only in passing, that she skirted around the edges of.

On those serene evenings, Lindy would fold her arms behind her head and dream of playing the Opry, of stadium tours, of
The Tonight Show
.

“If I could be anyone, I’d be Shania Twain! Trisha Yearwood!”

Once she said Dolly Parton, and Annie laughed for a good five minutes straight.

“Because of the boobs? Are you laughing because of the boobs? I didn’t mean the boobs!” Lindy said, but pretty soon, she was howling too, tears staining both of their pillows.

Annie would always say Princess Di. Even though Lindy would poke her (literally, she’d poke the sheet because she was close enough to reach it) to choose someone else. But she never did. Once, not long before everything imploded and Lindy packed up and jetted off to Nashville, Annie said, “That girl who’s dating JFK, Jr. She has perfect hair and skinny legs, and oh my God, her wardrobe. Have you seen the way he looks at her?”

“I don’t think I’d want to be as famous as JFK, Jr.,” Lindy had said.

“But you’d want to be Dolly Parton?”

Lindy thought about it for so long that she asked Annie if she were still awake. Finally she said, “I guess it’s not the fame I want, but the acknowledgment. Of my talent, I guess. Or that I’m good. JFK, Jr. only has fame. Dolly is famous for
something.
”

From behind the putrid green sheet, Annie answered, “Maybe you want a bit of both.”

It wasn’t lost on Lindy that both of Annie’s aspirations ended up as tragedies, as brilliant, shining stars who never got to reach their potential. And sitting on the steps, remembering it all, it’s also not lost on Lindy that while she started out with acknowledgment—there was that Grammy nod and a few CMA nominations early on—mostly what she has now is the fame. The JFK, Jr. fame. Is that what she wanted all along? She insisted otherwise that night to Annie, but she didn’t put up too much of a fight when the label started sending songs written by younger scribes because they told her they’d sell more singles; she hadn’t exactly dedicated herself to mentoring her young upstarts on
Rock N Roll Dreammakers
. She has enough money to tell her label to fuck off. To make the music she wants. But she doesn’t. She hasn’t. She won’t.

Even with her Phillies cap tugged low, someone has spotted her. A camera flashes, and she squints toward the intrusion. Whoever it was is already on his way, though. Just another stranger crafting her into whatever he wants her to be for himself.

Rock goddess.

Sex bomb.

Reality judge.

Sellout.

Lindy tosses the beer bottle toward the trash at the bottom of the steps, the beer spraying a glorious arc, like a fountain, as it careens into the bin. It clangs on the metal side, shattering on impact when it hits the bottom.

If you could be anyone, who would you be?

That’s what they didn’t get back then,
Lindy thinks, pushing herself to her feet. Bea didn’t get that either.

You
can’t
be anyone.

Like life is that easy!

There’s only you.

Too bad.

She stomps down the steps, furious at herself for even entertaining a notion otherwise.

She follows the crowd south toward the river, past the food court where they used to get salads in bowls the size of wheelbarrows, past the music lab where Lindy took her first and only class in songwriting. Ironically, she got a C, frustrating her teacher at every turn, refusing to color within the metaphorical lines. She smiles now, wondering what the hell ever happened to
him
. Little prick. Though as soon as she thinks this, she can hear Bea in her ear, chiding her for the vengefulness, for her immaturity. Isn’t it enough that she’s the one who hit it big? Left that professor so far in the taillights that she can’t even remember his name? Lindy wonders if he watched her at the Grammys and felt bad for implying that she had no talent, or if not no talent, then not enough of it. Then she hears Bea again suggesting that if Lindy can’t remember the professor, who’s to say he remembers her?

She stops on a corner near the football stadium, startled by this notion.

What if he didn’t remember her?

She turns and heads back in the direction of the music lab.

It’s futile, she already knows. It’s summer break, and it’s edging toward sunset on July 4th, and she can’t even remember his name! The odds that he’s
here
right now—frankly, the odds that he even still works at Penn—are slim to none. Lindy tries to envision him. Was he young? Was he old? Is he still even alive?

Her feet stumble, and she trips over the curb. A wave of feet rush past her, but then someone extends an arm, pulling her up by the elbow. He shoves a flyer into her hand. “A battle of the bands later at the fireworks,” he says. “You should come.”

Lindy starts to protest, “Oh no, I’m here on vacation, not working,” until she realizes that he’s already walked past, pushed himself into the wave of the crowd. He wasn’t inviting her to come because she’s Lindy Armstrong; he was inviting her to come because he was inviting everyone.
Everyone. Anyone.

Anonymity. Lindy hadn’t realized how much she missed it. If she hadn’t gotten famous, would she consider herself a failure? If she hadn’t been famous, would she be happy? Or would she be happier? Would she be a mother? A wife? Do either of these things add up to more than she is now?

She buys a Diet Coke and oversize pretzel from the hot-dog guy on the corner and thinks about Annie, about Catherine. They’re wives. They’re mothers. Lindy doesn’t think
they
necessarily add up to more than she is now. But she can’t be sure.

She wrestles the pretzel in half, downing the center knot in one mouthful. Inelegant, sure, but she blames it on the baby. She’s feeding two these days, you know. By now, she’s in front of the music lab, the battle-of-the-bands flyer crumpled in her back pocket, the brass doorknob hot in her free hand.

If she hadn’t slept with Colin, would they all have combusted anyway?

If she hadn’t slept with Colin, would she have run to Nashville, where she found her fame? If she hadn’t gotten famous, would they all still be friends? Would she have told Annie the truth? Forgiven herself for loving her, forgiven Annie for not loving her back?

Fame or acknowledgment
. Lindy can’t stop considering it.

The knob turns easily in her hand, the latch unlocked and welcoming. She’s not sure she wants to step back, almost literally but certainly metaphorically, to who she was back then: a maybe not-so-talented, definitely listless and disrespectful C student who was defiant about coloring outside the lines for the sake of being defiant. Also, she wasn’t famous then. And maybe her fame now arms her with false bravado, or maybe she just wants to see her old professor’s face and hear him say,
I was wrong about you.

Her boots echo on the marble floors of the long hallway leading to the lab. Mr. Pearson. That was his name.

She wasn’t famous back then. So maybe now she just needs the acknowledgment.

26

ANNIE

Annie is surprised about two things. Well, plenty more than two things with the way that the past twenty-four hours have gone down. She flips her hand into her back pocket for her phone but then remembers that Colin—sweet, dear, sexy Colin—refused to relinquish it. Better for her mental health, he said, which is
laughable
—
ha ha ha ha ha!
—but she knew what he meant. She understood his intention, and it was all she could do not to pin him down on the couch and strip him down to his underwear right there, while he was reading Baxter’s frantic texts aloud to her, his free hand coaxing the knots out of her shoulders.

In his series of unending texts, Baxter repents like a schoolboy in confession. As if he couldn’t wait to heave his remorse off his chest, as if repenting would somehow cleanse him of the damage he’d done. The affair was over, he said. Or it had been. He knew it was wrong! Broke it off when his dad died! He loved her. It was a mistake! They’d run into each other at the farm stand. (There had been a typo here, thus it read, “fart stand,” but Annie clarified through her sniffling. Owen giggled, but Catherine shot him a look as if to say,
One more laugh and you die,
and he subsequently got ahold of himself.) And it had happened only this one time (recently), he promised, with a particularly egregious use of exclamation marks. He didn’t know what to do, he was distraught, horrified! Please call him! Please text him! Then his final text was chock full of emojis, which Colin did his best to decipher.

(“I think that’s the one that means sobbing? And I think that’s the one that means embarrassed? And maybe this one means brokenhearted? Yes, that’s definitely a broken heart.”)

But now, without her phone and with a gut full of tequila, she’s trying to focus, trying to marginalize all of
that
, because if she doesn’t marginalize all of
that
, she’s going to have a mental breakdown. Colin wasn’t so wrong. If she sat here, on the braided rug of Lindy’s room, and pored over his texts, reading them again and again, it’s possible that her hysteria might literally implode her brain, lighting her cerebral cortex up like a nuclear explosion. It’s not like she hasn’t come close to this point before.

She crosses her legs in front of her, her hand flying to her mouth at the two surprises in front of her.

1. Lindy does not have any goddamn pills. Why does she not have any goddamn pills? Lindy always had something, Annie was sure of this. In college, it was alcohol; postcollege, Annie wasn’t naive enough not to recognize that Lindy occasionally stumbled home with dilated pupils, with chemically induced energy that practically radiated off her fingertips. She’d even offered something to Annie from time to time—little white pills or oval-shaped pink ones. Annie always declined, though later could identify each pill simply by touch.
   Ah, that’s the Xanax. There’s a Klonopin.
   The better to pop one late at night in the blackness of her bathroom. But now, Lindy does not have any of these goddamn pills, which Annie has never needed more in her life. She knows that it’s a slippery slope for her—one, then three, then five—but she rationalizes it. Tells herself this is an honest-to-God emotional
   crisis
   ; and even though those pills generally lead nowhere good for her, without them, she is surely headed to a dead end too.
   
2. But while Lindy does not have any of those precious pills, she does have a copy of
   Pregnancy and You
   magazine tucked underneath her lingerie. (Why did Lindy bring lingerie for the weekend? This opens up an entire line of questions for Annie that sends her on a momentary mental tangent until she swigs the tequila bottle she toted upstairs.) Annie fingers the glossy pages of the magazine, which appears to be unread. She used to read these magazines . . . she used to read
   all
   these magazines. Like they made her a better mother! Like some stupid advice column on page fifty-five gave her any true insights on taming her insecurities, trusting her maternal instincts.
   

Ha!

That’s what the Xanax was for.

She rests the magazine back in Lindy’s bag, connecting the dots. The tequila has blunted reality, but it hasn’t blunted everything, and as she slips the pieces into place, she imagines a lightbulb illuminating above her.

“Ding!” she says aloud. Followed by, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

She’s been watching Lindy, after all. And even after all this time, Annie knows—probably better than any of them—that a leopard doesn’t change its spots. Because deep down, Annie hasn’t changed hers: she might have better highlights and a fancy Bergdorf’s wardrobe, but she’s not so far removed from that girl in sixth grade who brought Twinkies to the bake sale, who knew she was trailer trash compared to the rest of them.

The way Lindy has dodged any alcohol; the way she pulls, then pushes Leon away; the way she lied to her girlfriend and has avoided her calls. Annie knew that Lindy wasn’t a lesbian, could never be faithful to any gender, regardless. Give her a break! And to think that Lindy was pissed at her.
Her!
She knew that tabloid lesbian stuff was ridiculous. She knew it!

That poor kid of hers,
she thinks, though she hates her unkindness. When did she start being unkind?
Well, Lindy started it, put me here in the first place.
She tries to remember their early days, back in the dorm at the Quad or back in that dump of a New York apartment when she considered Lindy a sister, but it’s all so colored now; it’s all so skewed.

Annie abruptly laughs out loud—a staccato sound that echoes in Lindy’s old room, bouncing around, then evaporating. None of them gave her any credit. Baxter never gave her any credit. Maybe she never gives herself any credit either.

Screw you, Lindy. Screw you too, Baxter.

“Text my husband back and tell him to screw himself!” she shouts down to Colin, and to Leon, who’s sitting beside him, pretending that he doesn’t stick out like a square peg in the round hole of the current mess.

It dawns on her that Leon doesn’t know. Her jaw slackens. It further dawns on her that she might be the only one who does.

She giggles into both hands, like a kid at Christmas who just got exactly what she always wanted.

Yes, she knows Lindy’s secret now. She’s just not drunk enough yet to know what to do with it.

Colin coaxes Annie out of Lindy’s room by promising her phone back.

“Also, Owen is thinking of streaking again. Maybe I’ll join him. Just imagine how many ‘likes’ you’ll get if you post that to Instagram!”

She unlocks the door, and there he is, grinning and beautiful, and she knows that he’s not going to go streaking, much less let her video it, but she can’t help but smile back at him. Partially because she’s definitely tipsy now, the floorboards swaying just a touch, not enough to throw her off balance, but enough for her knees to wobble. And partially because it is Colin, rescuing her, and his smile, with a wayward dimple and two years of braces, is akin to staring at the sun. It’s golden and mesmerizing and warms you to the core.

“OK,” he says. “We’re not going streaking.”

Instead, he proposes that they break into the stadium, weave their way through the bleachers, and drink more tequila on the fifty-yard line. Get back to visiting all of Bea’s favorite places. In the mayhem of, well,
everything
, they’d forgotten.

Bea once made them break in during their junior year when the campus had shut down due to an epic snowstorm. Annie was terrified they were going to get caught; she spent the duration of the afternoon casting about for security guards while the rest of them—after Bea cut a lock on the east gate with metal shears that she naturally had stowed in her room—rolled smaller snowballs into larger ones for snowmen, flapped their arms to create beautiful snow angels, and tumbled atop one another in a snowball fight that left them giddy and breathless.

“Yes!” Annie says, the tequila as her armor. “YES! Let’s break into the stadium! There is nothing I want to do more than THAT!”

“I think she needs some food,” Catherine calls from downstairs.

“She is such a downer,” Colin whispers.

“Seriously.” Annie burps into her hand.

The fresh air on Walnut Street feels good against Annie’s skin. She has stripped down to a tank top, her bra straps askew, her hair knotted into a messy bun. She never looked so unkempt for Baxter. Well, unless he caught her just after the gym, but she usually scampered into the shower immediately, so she’d have time to blush her cheeks, perfume her collarbone. Not that he ever appreciated her perfumed collarbone!

The five of them (Catherine had nudged Leon into coming) point themselves south, toward the stadium, wandering past the fraternities that Annie so diligently avoided her freshman year so she wouldn’t be taken advantage of by a predatory senior, past the bagel shop where Lindy’s bike was once stolen, past the bench where “Quarter Joe” resided (he sat there day and night and simply asked for quarters). Bea always stuffed her pockets with extra quarters, just for him. He died a few years back, and the college paper wrote a kind obituary. Annie read it online and thought about how the last vestiges of their friendships really were gone. She sent a hundred dollars in for the memorial fund.

She runs her hand over her delicate collarbone, sweaty and exposed now, wondering when the last time was that Baxter noticed it, when the last time was that he kissed Cici’s collarbone. Or all of the other collarbones that came before hers.

xo

How long?

Why?

How many?

Why?

How could this happen?

“I think I need to call Baxter. Ask him exactly how many collarbones he’s rubbed up against lately.” She jabs Colin. “My phone, please.”

“Annie, let’s let this settle in,” Catherine says before Colin can retrieve her phone from his pocket. “It’s hard, I know.”

“You don’t know at all!” Annie gestures toward Owen. “You’ve never had to know.”

“I’m sorry? I’m just trying to help.”

“Stop helfing,” Owen manages, through his gauze.

“Spit that out!” Catherine holds out her palm. “You’re done bleeding by now, for God’s sake.”

Owen spits the bloody gauze into her palm like Gus would spit a wad of gum into Annie’s.
Spit that out, Gussy! You have to be proper! Don’t look like disgusting trash by chomping on that gum!

“No! You don’t get it! You wouldn’t get it!” Annie’s voice is rising like a whistle on a slow-moving locomotive. “You two . . . my God . . .” Tears crest again with no fanfare. “Like either of you has ever had to fight for someone, like either of you would ever feel betrayed like this! Please! You’ve been together forever!”

Annie strides ahead, wishing so much that she hadn’t listened to stupid Catherine, who insisted she leave the tequila at home. Not that it hasn’t done its damage. Her feet are weighted, her hands tingly, her brain an endless buzz of static like the black-and-white fuzz that would fill the TV screen late at night in their tract house in Texas, her mom out too late, Annie home keeping watch, drowsy but hopeful, illuminated by the glow of the screen.

“This is my mother’s fault!” Annie shouts. She pumps a fist into the air, a non sequitur, but she does it all the same.
Yes! Her goddamn mother!
How was Annie expected to hold on to a man when her mother ran through them like water? How was she expected to know what a happy marriage looked like when she never had an example from which to learn?

“This isn’t anyone’s fault,” Leon offers.

“This is Baxter’s fault,” Colin states, speaking over him. He reaches for Annie, protectively, instinctively.

“Yes!” Annie’s fist has morphed into a pointed finger. She pokes the air, then Colin’s chest. “Yes! This is Baxter’s fault!
And
my mom’s fault!”

Two guys in Penn Crew T-shirts loiter in their path, just in front of the Road to Freedom tents, as a few of the proprietors pack up for the early evening. Each crew guy has a buzz cut and scraggly facial hair. The towering blond one, whose muscles swell through his shirt, offers them a flyer. “Battle of the bands later. Yo, you should come.”

“I would very much like to come!” Annie replies, still too loud.

“You should!” He grins. “Totally.”

Back in college, the crew guys would never have invited Annie to a battle of the bands. Unless she was with Lindy or Bea, then maybe. It’s not that she wasn’t attractive; she was. It’s just that they wouldn’t have noticed her to invite her in the first place. She was so busy trying to blend in that she became like every other face in the crowd.

“I totally will!” Annie says. “I will
totally
come! I’ve never
been
to a battle of the bands! What bands?”

The crew guy shrugs. “Not sure. Some dudes on campus.”