Déjà vu is supposed to be something kind of mysterious, but this is a pretty literal mirror of the last conversation I had with Tess. More like one of those paintings. The infinite ones—a painting of a person holding a painting of a person holding a painting, and on and on forever. Inescapable and repetitive and strange.
“I know a ton about you,” I say, and I believe it too. “I know how long it takes for you to do your hair and what you sound like when you’re yelling at your kids and what you like for breakfast and what time you go to bed, and I’ve seen you cry. If you see someone cry, you know them.”
“That’s not knowing someone,” Janie says. “You have no idea what you’re doing. And it’s not your fault. But if you think those things matter, if you think anything you know about me makes me family to you, you are deeply confused. And you’re seventeen. And your father is a weenie who won’t stand up to anyone aside from some huffing and puffing. So he’ll probably tell you this is fine, that you’re getting engaged or whatever, or he’ll give you the silent treatment or some other terrible parenting decision. But he won’t tell you what you really need to hear. So I’m going to say it. You cannot be engaged. You cannot get married. And that? Me saying that? That’s family. That’s what that looks like.” She waits, like maybe I’ll have a response to that, but I can’t even get in a full breath.
I look for the Janie I used to feel I knew under all the plastic surgery she’s gotten. Her eyebrows hike up to her hairline. I can’t read what emotion she’s feeling—they’re all convoluted and wrong on the tight expanse of her skin.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be telling me all this, honey,” Janie says. “Maybe you should be telling your mom. But if I’m the best you’ve got right now, that’s the biggest favor I can do you.”
“I’d like that lobster bacon roll,” I say at last, since she’s waiting for me to respond and I don’t know anything except that that will be delicious.
Everything else is too complicated to tackle.
Janie brings the lobster roll with bacon piled on high and says it’s on the house.
“You should tell your real family,” she says before leaving me with the food perfection.
“I have no idea who that is,” I say.
The lobster roll with bacon is fucking delicious. It’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten. Dripping with mayonnaise and loaded with fresh lobster.
thirty-nine
“We don’t have to get our rings today,” Bernardo says when he sees my face. He’s bought me a graphic novel about love and religion called Blankets, and we look at it from the floor of the store for a while until I start to cry. “I thought you wanted me to be into comics.”
Love is really sad, when you get right down to it.
“I need to walk,” I say.
“You want to tell me about it?” he asks.
“I want to tell Arizona about it,” I say. But I know I won’t.
Bernardo nods and I can see the thing on his face again—the heartbreak and pinch—but he lets me have it.
“You are one great fiancé,” I say.
We wander Williamsburg, and it’s never as pretty as I think it’s going to be. It’s gray and half-run-down and half-industrial and doesn’t quite live up to the promise of coolness that it makes when you’re riding the L train toward it.
“We should get the rings,” I say.
Bernardo walks me to a tattoo shop.
“I can’t do that,” I say. It’s the cool, clean kind of tattoo parlor. But still.
“My cousin works here. It’s cool, you’re eighteen-ish. He won’t tell,” Bernardo says. It is the most beside the point he’s ever been.
“I don’t have tattoos,” I say.
“Well, yeah. Me neither,” Bernardo says. “But it seems like something we’d do, doesn’t it?”
“No!” I say, because my reflexes tell me to. But I think back on the weeks we’ve been together. Weeks that could be years for how enormous and life-changing and real they’ve been. This does seem like something we’d do. This is sort of who I am now. Who we are together.
“We don’t have to. I thought it’d be cool. Maybe put each other’s initials on our ring fingers? Or something? I don’t know. You came up with the hair and the piercing, so I guess I thought you’d like this.” Bernardo is rubbing my ring finger with his thumb.
“Yeah,” I say.
The Arizona in my head tells me this is a terrible idea. But I like the idea of permanence. It’s something Sean Varren would never do. For all the women he’s changed and done surgery on and married, he’s never once done something permanent to himself. Only Botox, which doesn’t stick. He makes little changes, becomes variations of a different person, but doesn’t make a real leap. He marries them, knowing he can get out. He can slip the ring off. He can leave them behind.
I won’t be able to leave Bernardo behind if I do this. It will be a real kind of forever. That’s the kind of forever I’m looking for.
“So I guess we’ll be telling people tonight,” I say. “We won’t be able to hide anything.”
“I’m ready,” Bernardo says.