For Valentinas, DoRaM and someWhereinRoma. Thank you so much for your constant support! And, of course, for traceit. She keeps going above and beyond, saving every single chapter.
23
As you know, I tend to repress my emotions, deny them, ignore them, push them away. I'm far better at that form of self-deception than I am at outright lying to myself, so I almost believed my life was back to normal a mere eleven months after my mother's funeral. The press had made my life very uncomfortable for the first three or four, of course, including a few weeks when I couldn't leave my house in a loose-fitting shirt without a picture ending up on the cover of some tabloid with a circle around my belly and a headline like Norah Castle: Scandalous Secret Pregnancy! Once, they declared I was "with child" when it was obvious I was merely "with sandwich", but I guess it was a slow news week. Each time that happened, I'd hope more than anything that Will wasn't paying attention; it would be too sick, too cruel if he were.
I missed him. Despite having known him for such a short time, I initially felt his absence from my life as an unvarying, intense pain. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, and this was exactly why I'd fought so hard not to care about him, but I'd lost and I assure you I paid dearly for it. I was a complete wreck, a physical personification of every heartbroken cliché you've ever heard of, and I hurt, body and soul, day and night for what felt like years but was probably only weeks. It's just, the thing about that kind of pain is you can only feel that way for so long before you finally just turn off all your emotions in self-defense. If you can't do that, the pain will literally kill you, and if there's one thing I'm good at, it's self-defense.
So I was successful for the most part, by which I mean as long as I was busy, doing something, anything, I could function. To nearly everyone around me, it must have seemed like I'd slipped back into my old life as though nothing had happened. I'd put in appearances at Fred 62 and Dresden, Spaceland and the Echo, the Rainbow Room and the Roxy and the Troubadour and Beauty Bar… Los Angeles was teeming with places to see and be seen, and I was seen at all of them at one time or another. The paparazzi caught me smiling, laughing, drinking, dancing, everything I'd done before my ill-fated trip to Lima, further perpetuating the notion that everything with me was as it should be. Only Odessa seemed skeptical, watching me as though waiting for me to break somehow, and I avoided her as much as I could because she knew me too well to believe the façade I needed to believe in myself.
That façade slipped sometimes, unexpectedly, and though it happened with something approaching regularity, I was unprepared every time. Any night I was alone, any night I couldn't sleep, any time it was quiet enough for me to really hear myself think, I'd be inundated with a sudden wash of grief, and I was always surprised. Somehow I never expected the dams I'd erected would fail, which was ridiculous because they had failed again and again. And suddenly I'd just miss him so much I was drowning in it. His laugh, his smile, the way I felt a tiny shock every time his hands touched mine, the way he said my name, my real name, the way he held me, everything. I don't know if you've noticed, but I am… not good with emotions, don't even really understand how to feel them, how to process them, and for the most part I just prefer to ignore them and hope they'll go away, or fight them until they disappear. These ones refused to do so, but I just… Couldn't handle them, didn't know what to do with them.
So I put them to music. Every emotion I wouldn't allow myself to feel, I forced my guitar to feel for me, or turned my rage on pen and paper until I had pages and pages of the most horrifically honest lyrics I'd ever written. Once again, I could hardly eat (the press alternately approved of my slimmer figure or called me anorexic, depending on the week), could hardly sleep, could only write music and lyrics and play and sing and record, constantly. And I hated it, because everything I was writing was just… It laid me bare, everything about me, all my hopes and dreams and fears and regrets. Everything that should be secret, I was compelled to reveal, and the thought of anyone actually listening to it… Was terrifying. But I couldn't stop, which was also terrifying.
Worse than anything, however, was the fact that all of this masochistic torture I was putting myself through was technically my job. All of the label reps were literally salivating at the thought of releasing a new album so quickly, and I couldn't stop providing more and more material for them to discuss, dissect, compare and contrast. It was infuriating, being forced to listen to the way they spoke about the different songs, deciding which would make a better single as though that was all they were, potential hits, catchy rhymes to sell as ringtones or something. I wondered if they'd actually heard any of it, if they'd understood everything that had gone into each one. Unfortunately, I had very little power in the whole scenario, and could make no decisions about anything for myself. The only thing I insisted upon was that the album be called Willpower (shut up), and tried to refrain from thinking about how badly I had screwed myself over.
When I couldn't avoid the thought, the obvious answer was worse than ever before. I knew these songs were the best work I'd ever done, better than anything even I had thought myself capable of, which meant I'd be performing them for the rest of my life, reliving that one week in Lima over and over and over as thousands of strangers danced and sang along. I would never, ever be free of him, I would never, ever be able to forget, and it would be Summerview all over again. A place I just did not want to go, not again, not ever, and yet would be forced to visit repeatedly.
Or at least once, in the non-metaphorical sense.
"Look, I tried to talk them out of it," Odessa said after delivering the bad news. We were in my back yard, dangling our legs in the pool despite the fact that it was early evening and early November. A cigarette dangled from her fingers, unlit due to my strict no smoking policy. "But they're worried about how this album will sell in the Midwest."
"Why?" I demanded. "My last album sold twice as well after the whole mess in Lima." Apparently, the phrase all publicity is good publicity is a cliché for a reason.
She looked at me and sighed. "I know. But your numbers in the Midwest went down and stayed that way. It's just a more conservative part of the country, and it has a long memory. The label wants this album to break records, and it can't if it doesn't sell in a major market like that."
"I still don't see how playing a charity concert and debuting all my new material in fucking Lima is going to change that. No one even lives there! What about Cleveland or Dayton?" Anywhere but Lima. Anywhere.
"Norah, it's done," Dess said gently. "They've decided you have to return to the scene of the crime, as it were. The charity concert will raise money for arts programs in local schools, which ties in nicely with the whole educational angle on the scandal… It will win people over."
"And if I don't want to win people over?" I asked, despite already knowing the answer.
Odessa gave me an Oh, please kind of look. "Doesn't matter. It's booked for the first week of December.
"I don't want to do this," I whispered. "I don't know if I can do this." For a brief moment, I allowed myself to indulge in a little self-pity, which was a constant temptation that I normally fought. I hated feeling this way, hated feeling anything, but one of the only things that helped me keep it all together, at least in public, was the knowledge that there was no chance I'd see him, or god forbid him and Emma, anywhere I went. Sometimes I felt that even the 2,200 miles separating us weren't enough. The thought of being in the same 10 mile radius filled me with a deep sense of foreboding. Because the real question was whether I was strong enough to be so close to him without doing something incredibly stupid, and I rather doubted I had that much willpower.
"You can, because you have to." She ran a hand through her hair, looked at me helplessly. "I'd fix this for you if I could. You smile for everyone, smile for the camera, but I know your heart is still broken. I can hear it in every note and every word of this album, and honestly I wish I couldn't."
I shrugged. "Couldn't help it, Dess. No matter what I tried to write… All of this wrote itself. But that's not the point."
"I know it's not." She splashed in the water a bit, cold droplets sprinkling us like rain, and I glared at her. "Do you want to know what I think?"
"No," I muttered.
She laughed. "Tough. I think this could be good for you. It will help your image, and you need to go back, if only to prove to yourself that you can. Make peace with everything, your mother, Will… Everything. Because if you don't, I'm afraid you'll be like this forever."
"Like what? I'm fine." I tried to hold her gaze as I said this, tried to make her believe it, but she just gave me a skeptical look, eyebrows raised. "Maybe not now," I amended, "but I will be. I can fight this, Dess. I can win, I know it." Her look didn't change, and I sighed. She was right, probably, which irritated me to no end. "Okay, fine, I do this thing, my reputation is restored to its former glory, Willpower breaks every record known to man, and I leave Lima fully self-actualized, ta da! Fine. Who's opening?"
Odessa avoided my eyes. "Not really sure yet, there are several possibilities… Lots of interested parties…"
"Don't lie to me," I commanded. "You're just not good at it."
Accepting the truth of this, she confessed. "Edrington. We owe their label a favor."
"Of course we do," I sighed.
"It will be fine." Her tone was soothing, or trying to be, but it didn't work of course. Nothing could soothe me in the face of a few days spent in Lima avoiding my mother's ghost and Elliott Edrington and Will and Emma and she knew it. She stood, slipped her shoes on, patted me on the head as though I were a child. "I have to go, dinner meeting at Katsuya. Do you have any plans for later?"
"I don't think so," I responded vaguely. "Maybe work on the liner notes, check the album art… Not that they'll let me change anything."
"Jesus, Norah," Dess chided, "don't wallow, please for the love of god. Go out, or have some friends over, anything. You'll make yourself crazy. Crazier."
"Bye, Dess," I said, emphasizing the farewell.
"Ciao!" And then she was gone, and I was alone, and unfortunately I could hear myself think again.
I missed him.
TBC