The Closet of Forgotten Things is filled with handbags and failed pottery projects and expensive jewelry and jeans that are ripped in sexy places and books of poetry that are either sad or romantic but never both.
Arizona and I play a game sometimes, where we go through the closet and ask each other if the object is from the beginning or the end. If it is a symbol of manic falling in love or the spiral out of love and into despair. If it is a remnant from before they were a plastic wife or from the fizzy days where they’re changing or the always depressing endings where they see how much they’ve lost and how little it mattered.
We played after Tess left, over the phone. I sent her pictures of objects and wished she were actually there.
Diet book: I say before, Arizona says after.
Gold bracelet with tiny diamonds: we both agree it’s from the beginning.
iPod filled with sad songs: obviously it’s from the end.
Never-worn sneakers: I say after, Arizona says before.
Arizona and I don’t tell anyone about this or the betting box. They are things that make us terrible people. They are the things that make us sisters and help us survive.
And still, I tell Bernardo about it. Which must be love.
“I have never seen anything like this,” Bernardo says, watching me dig through the contents and find a sweat headband that I decide was Natasha’s.
The sweat headband is super eighties and neon and trying pretty hard to be retro-hip, so it could be from the end, but it’s also unself-conscious and, like, exuberant and for someone who doesn’t care what people think, so it could be from before or during. It’s a tough call.
I point at the shiny black leggings I’m going to put on. “After,” I say. Then at the headband. “Probably before.”
“I want to play,” he says, and picks up a stuffed giraffe. “What do you think? When’s this thing from?”
“Oh, come on,” I say. “Clearly from, like, week one. You don’t buy stuffed animals after the first few weeks.”
Bernardo nods his head like this is a research project and not a game. We head out.
It occurs to me on the subway, when I’m looking at my own Sharpied hands gripping the pole, that I have done to myself what my father did to me. “When do you think these markings will wash off completely?” I ask Bernardo. I smile with the words so that he doesn’t know how disturbed I now am by the thing we did.
“Another few days,” Bernardo says. “Unless I do it to you again.”
“No!” I say, too loudly. I want to wash my mind of the image of the photograph in my dad’s office, but it’s impossible with black markings crawling all over me.
“Are you sure you want to see her?” Bernardo says, knowing something’s wrong but not knowing what and guessing incorrectly.
“I’m fine. I sort of miss the color of my skin. I miss how it looks, like, untouched.”
“Well, I’m with you on that,” Bernardo says. He kisses my shoulder, then my neck, then my cheeks, and then we’re making out on the subway. Men in suits and women in empire-waist dresses and little kids on weird leashes avert their eyes. We stumble when the train comes to a halt, and our bodies fall against each other so that we both have to step back. I trip over a dude with a shopping cart full of blue garbage bags and cans. When I find Bernardo’s lips again, we only have one stop left to kiss and we make the most of it.
The studio’s near Lincoln Center, and everyone hanging out there looks the same. Looks like Tess.
Then there’s Tess.
She looks good. Okay, at least. She hasn’t changed except that her hair is even blonder and her body is contorted, with her legs above her head and her feet in straps and her hands gripping some medieval torture device situation.
I sit on a mat like I’m going to take a class, but there’s no class going on, so I catch her eye immediately. And Bernardo catches everyone’s eyes. He didn’t take off his shoes or his scarf or anything. He is squarely himself.
“Montana,” Tess says. Her voice goes hoarse mid-word, and I sort of know immediately this is a terrible idea. I’m not a regular girl to her anymore. I’m not me. I’m the symbol of the worst thing that ever happened to her. I’m the worst.
“I shouldn’t have come,” I say. It’s a weird way to start a conversation, and we both know it.
“Are you taking Pilates?” Tess says. It hasn’t even been six months, but I wonder if her prediction was right, if she feels bad for me instead of herself already. I blush from the idea of it. When I last saw her, she was the humiliated one. The one left behind. The pathetic pink-outfitted disaster.
I wonder if I’m now that pitiable and pink and unaware.
“Oh. No. I came to see you,” I say. “And I have a boyfriend!” Bernardo seems like as good a distraction as anything else. He has a red T-shirt and a red baseball hat with the word word on it. I do a Vanna White gesture in his direction, like he’s something to be admired and won, which he sort of is, in my opinion. Tess nods and waves, but there’s no warmth coming off of her.
The studio smells like sweat and too-sweet candles.