“No, really,” I insist, no, I beg. “I don’t need to see it again. I was there. I remember.” The pitch of my voice crests in direct proportion to the position of the AP, who is in front of me now, proffering the travel-sized C300 camera, a freeze-frame of the dramatic cloud formations that hung low in Morocco’s blue skies that day. Jesse has suggested I review the clip of the accident, to refresh my memory before we discuss it. It reminds me of something Brett warned me about before she died—something the producers do to the women during their confessional interviews. Like a confessional, we’re filming this interview last but speaking about the accident in the present, to weave together the narrative the producers have constructed in the editing room. Brett told me that sometimes, production will show you a clip of your “friend” throwing shade at you, to make you angry enough to throw shade at her, even though you promised to have her back. But I’ve never heard of anyone having to review footage of a woman trying to kill herself and changing her mind, going after an innocent child instead. I’m confident this is a first for all involved.
I have come to conclude that the “accident”—as it was reported in the press at the time it occurred and as we are continuing to refer to it now—was Stephanie’s first attempt at suicide that turned, only somewhat successfully, homicidal. My suspicions were raised when we got home and I found out that the collision occurred on the same day The Smoking Gun report was published. Always the diligent student, I spent hours researching suicide by driving and family history suicide. I knew from Stephanie’s memoir—the part that was true—that her biological mother committed suicide, and I turned up a rash of studies that suggest a person is more likely to complete suicide if a family member has taken his or her own life. I then came across a figure that put the percentage of vehicular fatalities that are actually suicides between 1.6 and 5 percent. The number is impossible to calculate because it is impossible to determine intent, which is the reason people choose this method. They would rather their friends and family believe their deaths were accidental.
That suspicion cemented into certainty after Brett died. What Stephanie did in Morocco was merely a test run. Can I really go through with this? she must have asked herself right before she took aim at Kweller, who she mistook for Layla, something I can’t prove but am sure of. The girls are the same age and height and build, were wearing identical orange headscarves, and Stephanie had acted so strangely, so aggressively, toward Layla the night before.
And what the viewers don’t know, will never know, is that on the ride to the hospital, Stephanie had asked repeatedly if Layla was okay. Her clavicle had been slick with sweat, but her face was dry, her immaculate makeup preserved somehow. It was a bright summer day, too sunny for her pupils to be that dilated. God knows what she was on. “You hit Kweller,” we had to keep reminding her. “Layla’s friend. The pottery girl.”
The AP has hit play without my consent, and because Jesse is watching me, and because I am under her thumb until I no longer draw an audience, I pretend to relive the horror of that day. Really, though, my eyes are focused on the black plastic corner of the camera, the same way I pretend to look when the technician sticks a mirror between my legs after a bikini wax—Yup, looks great! I always told her, without looking, before heading out on my bimonthly Tinder date while Brett babysat Layla. I discovered long ago that I have needs, and bad things happen when they are not met. Still, no matter how hard up, I never would have turned to Vince for a reprieve. The suggestion is unbelievably offensive.
“God.” Jesse sucks in a sharp breath next to me, watching, I assume, Stephanie scoop Kweller onto the handlebars. I mutter something indeterminable, but similar in feeling.
“Thanks, Sam.” Jesse smiles at the AP, which is his cue to exit the set.
“Jesse,” I say, “I really want to address one of the interview questions in this segment. About Vince and me.”
Jesse sets her lips together.
“I don’t want to answer any questions about us.”
“But we’re giving you the opportunity to dispel the rumor that something happened between you two.”
“I don’t even want the suggestion out there that something happened, though.”
Jesse doesn’t say anything, pointedly.
“Because it didn’t.”
Jesse half smiles. She might not believe me, I realize.
“We don’t have to use it,” she says. “Let’s just get through this set of questions and we can reassess from there. Okay?”
No. “Okay.”
PART III
* * *
Tequila Shot???August 2017
CHAPTER 17
* * *
Brett
A pink boob sways from a branch of the Japanese maple on Jen and Yvette’s front lawn. Kelly cuts the engine and squints. It’s eight o’clock in Amagansett in August, roads steaming, sky the color of shark skin. “Is that . . . a pi?ata?” She releases her seat belt and puts on her Dad-joke voice, “Or is it a tit?ata?”
I groan at the bad joke, but it’s a loving groan, an oh my God you’re so corny but I love you anyway groan. I’m making an effort to be nice to my sister this weekend. Things haven’t been easy for her since we got back from Morocco last month, and they’re about to get so much worse.
We climb out of the car, our feet sliding around our wet sandals as we make our way to the trunk. We both make a stab at chivalry by trying to pass the other her weekend bag. Kelly ordered the same duffel as mine—an army print from Herschel—but at least her outfit doesn’t irritate me to my core. Net-a-Porter, she told me proudly when I asked her where she got her cute white romper, pronouncing it like a person who carries your bags at a hotel.
“Por-tay,” I corrected her, which was me, still being nice! The not-nice thing to do would have been to let her make a fool of herself on camera. Oh shit, she said, covering her eyes, cringing too much. It wasn’t that embarrassing, but I’m not the only one making an effort to be nice. Kelly is scared, and that chinks my resolve a little, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it mostly feels like standing on a mountain of cocaine with a machine gun slung over my shoulder and two hot bitches on either side of me. Being right is a hell of a drug. And it’s for that reason that I’ve held off having the conversation with Kelly that I need to have. Because what if my judgment is clouded by these being right goggles?
My sister and I climb the three steps to the front porch, wobbly with the weight of our weekend bags. Jen has strung a banner across two tall topiaries: “Welcome, BrideS!” It’s curling at the corners and wrinkled by the humidity, making it look weathered and forgotten, like it’s been there for months, like my bachelorette party already happened and this is some sort of weird coma dream in a Sopranos episode. Am I already married? Did I really go through with it?
Kelly ducks beneath the banner and pauses before the red door. “Is this . . . ?”
“She says it’s Rectory Red.”
Kelly peers closer. “Looks a lot like Blazer.”
Blazer is the shade of Farrow & Ball paint used in all my studios. I can barely bother to shrug. That I am an object of imitation for some women is old news. “She says it’s Rectory Red.”
“Well, I mean,” Kelly says, knocking, “we should take it as a compliment.”
We. It’s like a guy you are very obviously blowing off, very obviously getting ready to break up with, who sends you flowers in a last desperate attempt to rekindle the flame. We.