Sam’s voice cracks as she pushes herself up onto her elbows,swings her legs around, and says, “This is the good part? Are you kidding me? Holy shit, Mom. If this is the good part, then what is the bad part going to be like?”
Amy considers this. “Okay, fair,” she says. “Very fair. It might look like the good part to me right now because I’m like a hundred, and you have so much collagen that I forget that it’s hard to be nineteen sometimes—but I guess what I’m saying is, these are the times when you can take risks, and do things without the consequences being enormous, and figure things out. That’s why we wanted you to go to a regular high school first. That’s one of the reasons I think college would be good for you.”
“Risks?” says Sam.
“Sure. Risks.”
“Look who’s talking,” says Sam quietly.
“Excuseme?” says Amy.
“I said, Look who’s talking.” Sam’s voice is louder this time, and clearer. “The person with the least risky life I know.”
Amy’s skin is stinging, as though Sam has actually slapped her. Softly she says, “What?”
“I mean, you’re not exactly an expert on taking chances, Mom. Uncle Timmy has told me how much promise you had as a playwright. You left New York and stopped writing before you even got started. Safer. You wanted me home from L.A. because it was safer. You teach high school because it’s safer. You’re not really an advertisement for risk-taking yourself.”
Sam may as well have kicked Amy in the ribs. She can hardly breathe.
“Mom—” says Sam, and it’s clear by her face she realizes she’s gone too far. Amy holds up her hand as if to keep any other words from coming out of Sam’s mouth. If she were to defend herself she’d say she teaches high school because she loves teaching high school. She’d say young teenagers who are lucky enough to have loving parents belong at home with them. She’d say she neverwanted to be a playwright all that badly anyway, which isn’t true, and she’d say that she’s confident in the life that she and Greg built for their family, whichistrue. But she’s hurt and she’s angry, and she’s not going to defend herself.
Amy closes the bedroom door softly behind her as she leaves. She thinks about checking in with Gertie to see if she needs anything, but she decides it’s better to let her sleep. She walks up the stairs to collect her keys and her phone. Out the front door to the Wagoneer, where she sits for a moment, engine and air-conditioning both on, to collect her thoughts and examine her feelings.
Her phone rings: Timothy.
“If you’re calling to yell at me too, please don’t,” she says. “Please just—don’t.”
“I’m not calling to yell at you. I’m calling to tell you about Amelia Rees.”
After Amy left the barn, Timothy tells her, he got a call from Alexa with some unsettling news. Then he checked his email and found a long, apologetic message from Amelia. She’d just gotten the call about the Hulu show, and she had to get out to L.A. immediately. She was taking the early ferry so she could get to Logan for a flight. She was so sorry not to have this conversation in person. She was sorry to let him down. She was sorry about everything. She was grateful for the chance to be in the play, but she couldn’t imagine turning down an opportunity like this and then looking back on it with regret, and she was... well, she was gone.
“No!” says Amy. For a moment she forgets that she’s mad at Timothy for telling Sam the L.A. thing. “No nono.What are we going to do?”
“There’s only one thing I think we can do.”
“What’s that?”
“Ask Sam to take on the role. Can you do that for me, Amy? I think she’d take it better coming from you.”
The unfairness of this request coming from Timothynowchafes Amy immediately. “No. Definitely not, Timothy. No, I can’t. As a matter of fact, I’m not exactly on good terms with my daughter right now.”
“Because of the party?”
“Well. That’s how the conversation started, me getting mad at her about the party. But we got off the subject pretty quickly because she told me thatyoutold her about our agreement to get her to come home from L.A.”
“She didn’t! Amy.”
“Why’d you do that, Timothy? Why, after all this time? Were you trying to get back at me for something? It wasn’t that long ago that we talked about you respecting my choices, and now this?”
“Oh, shit.Shit,Amy. I’m sorry. There’s a backstory to it. Let me explain.”
“Nope. No.” Amy holds up the hand not gripping the phone, although there is nobody in the car to see. “I don’t want to hear any backstory right now. I don’t have time for it, and I don’t have energy for it. I’m going to the theater to meet the curtain person, and if you have something you want to ask Sam, you’re going to have to ask her yourself.”
Timothy
“You look like you’re headed for the gallows,” Timothy says to Sam fifteen minutes later. After talking to Amy he’d texted Sam and told her he was going to pick her up and that she should be ready. He figured, after the night before, that he wouldn’t get any pushback, and he was right: he didn’t.
“I feel like I’m headed for the gallows,” Sam admits. “Am I?”
