Page 27

RETURN TO THE LILY PAD , or the Hilarity of a Bologna Sandwich

I felt more normal waking up at home. So normal that I could have stayed at home forever. It was so tempting to slip into the old Celia like a costume, to go back to regularly scheduled programming: my to-do lists and color coding my bookshelf. That Celia had never thrown a pie through a glass window or let a bunch of healthy plants die on her watch. Beyond some run-of-the-mill name-calling, she’d never hurt or been hurt. Not in a way that stuck with you. Not in a way that transformed you.

But she’d also never met Oliver. She’d never split a precious last can of LaCroix with Phoebe. She’d never stayed up deliciously, deliriously late with her, spitballing ideas for a yeti costume while eating stale Twizzlers, and hid from Jacques when he was out for blood.

Back today , I texted Phoebe. Then it’s all yeti all the time.

Don’t text and drive , she said.

I won’t , I said, and I put my phone on do not disturb.

Two hours and change later, I arrived back at the Lily Pad. Broken window aside, the cabin remained in its state of chaos from the other night. Though the glass had been swept up and the dishes had been done (all credit to Jess Orlando and Ros, apparently), the furniture was still arranged to accommodate the dinner party, the table still laid with the frog blanket. The plants looked unhappy, wilting, near death; I didn’t know whether they could be saved with some aggressive watering.

In the center of it all was Touchstone, standing on a ladder in front of where the window once was, trying to rig some sort of sail across the opening—though he mostly appeared to be cursing and struggling.

“Hey,” I called. “You need a hand?”

No sooner had I spoken than Touch’s system gave out; the sailcloth dropped, leaving the back of the cabin totally exposed to the elements.

“ Yes ,” he said. He looked relieved to see me—maybe even grateful, though perhaps that was wishful thinking on my part. “Please.”

We worked quickly and efficiently. I held the ladder; with my hammer, he drove in nails and tied rope to them. One by one, we strung the sail up, like a giant curtain that fluttered in the breeze. We stepped back to admire our work. The sail looked archaic, like it wouldn’t have been out of place on a pirate ship.

“What is that?” I asked.

“I got it from the prop closet,” he said. “I asked to borrow it; don’t worry. They did The Tempest last year. There’s a shipwreck in the beginning. This was part of the staging for that. I actually managed to get it up by myself the first time, if you can believe that.”

We collapsed around the dinner table. It was strange to not see outside; the cabin was so much smaller and dimmer. Not only that, but now I didn’t know where to look. Looking at Touchstone certainly wasn’t an option, and to look at the sail was a horrible reminder of how the night had ended. I settled finally on my cuticles, worrying the skin where it met the nail.

“Was Henry mad?” I said.

“You think I’m the one who’s going to tell Henry?” Touchstone said.

“I—uh—no. No, I guess not,” I said.

Touchstone nodded, like I’d given the right answer.

“I’m never going to hear the end of this, you know. Like—you’re the one who broke the window, but I’m the one who’s going to have to live with the consequences. My family’ll never let me forget it. They already think I’m a joke. They bring up the time I got caught in the catwalk all the time. It’s, like, their favorite story to tell at Christmas. This will be a good one, too. We can all sit around and laugh. That time you destroyed your uncle’s house! ”

“But I destroyed it,” I said.

“You think it’ll make a difference who actually broke the window? It all happened on my watch,” he said. “Maybe they’re right. To think that I’m a joke.”

“Touch, you can’t possibly believe that.”

“It’s hard not to believe the story that people tell about you over and over and over.”

“She’s an orthodontist and he’s an accountant,” I said. “They wouldn’t even know a good joke if it hit them in the face. To them, a bologna sandwich is probably high comedy.”

“When we dated, you know what they said? That you were too good for me. That you’d come to your senses, eventually. You know that?”

“That’s fucked up,” I said. “You shouldn’t listen to them, Touchstone.”

“How can I not? They’re my family,” he said. He sighed heavily. “Sometimes I just feel less than. I don’t have Ros’s je ne sais quoi. I’m not good at sports, like my brothers. I’m not going to be a leading man, like Oliver Teller. I’m just me, and that doesn’t always feel like enough.”

“You are not less than,” I said as firmly as I could. “You are one of the only people in the world who make me feel normal. Look, you’ve got more talent in your little finger than all of them combined.”

“Celia,” he said finally. “I owe you an apology. I was a real shithead the other night.”

“Touch, you really don’t have to.…”

“Please let me finish. I just want to say that, like, I feel… like… really embarrassed. About how I treated you. And how I treated Oliver.”

“Evidently you were drinking cooking sherry,” I said.

“That explains my two-day hangover,” he said. “Anyway. I was seriously out of control. And I’m really sorry for that.”

“We both were,” I said. “I feel like—I mean, I’m part of the problem. The stuff you said earlier. About you being left out. I was wrong to abandon you like that.”

“The summer’s been quite a showing by both of us,” Touchstone said. “High drama between ex-spouses.”

It was our old joke, but now, after what Oliver had said to me— Do you really think he’s acting this way because of Power Jam ?— it made me sad.

But what could I say? I couldn’t tell Touchstone what he wanted to hear. I didn’t want to bring up anything that he didn’t want to share with me of his own volition—to force him to tell me something that we both already knew. I couldn’t tell him that, any more than Ros could tell me what I wanted to hear. In that moment, it seemed a miracle to me that anyone got together with anyone. And Ros and Jess—as harebrained and senseless as they were, as reckless as I thought it was, as destined for heartbreak—there was a part of me that softened toward them as I was there, sitting with Touchstone. It was nothing short of a miracle: that they were both in the right place at the right time, and they both wanted the same thing, and that thing was each other. That mutual desire alone seemed to me to be miraculous.

The fairy tale that I wanted was someone else’s. Ros had gotten a fairy tale; I had gotten a broken window and a bunch of dead plants.

And Phoebe. I had gotten Phoebe. And Oliver. And Touchstone.

“You know you’re more to me than a kindergarten ex-spouse, right?”

“Celia. I’m kidding .”

“I know you’re kidding. But I just—I want you to know that you’re my oldest friend. And I feel really lucky to have you in my life. Touch, I’m so sorry—”

“You don’t have to prostrate yourself on my behalf.”

“I’m so sorry,” I kept on, “about the way I treated you this summer. I totally abandoned you. You were right that day at the Dropped Acorn. And I thought I was fixing it with the dinner party, but I just made everything worse. We should have hung out, just the three of us.”

He looked a little abashed at the intensity of my apology. “Thanks,” he said finally. “I know you’re sorry. It’s okay. We’ll be okay.” There was a long pause. “Have you talked to Ros?”

“We don’t have to talk about Ros,” I said.

“They came by looking for you. Well, they came by first to talk to me—to tell me they, too, were sorry for having ditched me this summer. But they seemed… well, I don’t know how they seemed. They seemed like they just wanted to talk.”

“They sent me a text,” I admitted. Hey , they’d said. I’d had no idea how to respond.

The sail shifted in the breeze; for a moment, the house seemed to tip, like we were really on a boat.

“Do you really think they’re going to stay?” Touchstone asked.

“I think they would stay if they could,” I said. “Though I don’t know what their mom’s going to say about their plan.”

“I hope they come back,” said Touchstone. “It wouldn’t be the same without them.”

“I hope they come back, too,” I said, and I felt a sudden sense of urgency then: to see them, to apologize, to have us put everything back together again. There was some part of me that still believed we were fixable, that we could still be the Triumvirate, if all parties agreed.

“So what’s your plan?” said Touch.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean? I can’t believe you haven’t gone full Celia Gilbert on this already. I mean, like, what’s the plan for Ros? They obviously can’t stay here. What are you going to do to convince them to come home with us?”

It was the question I’d been asking myself over and over on the drive home, and then again on the drive back. When I couldn’t sleep last night, I wondered—how could I get them back there? What could I say, what could I do , that would make them change their mind?

Patience , my mother had said.

I took a deep breath.

“Well,” I said, and I said the thing that I’d been dreading. “I think the first thing to do is call Henry.”

“Do you want me to sit with you?”

“Oh my God,” I said. “Please.”

Henry was British. He was also on a beach in Croatia, where, he said, it was difficult to be too bent out of shape about anything.

I wouldn’t say he was thrilled that I’d destroyed the Lily Pad, though I wouldn’t say he was expressly mad, either. He was more upset about his plants than he was the window, and he gave a little cry of “ My beauties ” when I told him about the ones we’d let die. He told me he’d send me the name of some construction guys he liked; told me to call them, get them out to the house; and keep him in the loop. I told him I wanted to pay for the repairs, and he said the damage was probably out of my price range, but he was sure I’d find a way to make it up to him.

“I stayed at Audrey’s last night,” Touch said, when I hung up with Henry. “She’s got plenty of room. I’m sure you’re welcome there, too.”

“I kind of want to be here,” I said.

“By yourself?” he said. “Are you sure it’s safe ?”

“I mean, I think I was the biggest threat to our safety.”

“I know, but what about bats or bears or pumas or—”

“I’ll sleep with a tennis racket by my bed,” I said.

“Maybe a pie tin would be better,” he said.

As it was, I couldn’t sleep anyway. Or maybe I might’ve been able to sleep if I tried, but I couldn’t go into the room that Ros and I had once shared.

At great risk to injuring my back, I moved all the furniture back to where it had been before the dinner party, pulled the sailcloth back, and watched the rain. The sound was really nice, and every so often a breeze sent a cloud of mist into the living room, which felt like being by the seaside.

I looked at the sailcloth we’d jerry-rigged. It was a really good, if ridiculous, effort. It reminded me of the Halloween costumes I’d made for Touch and Ros, concoctions out of poster board and staples and hot glue that’d completely fallen apart by the end of the evening. But the homemade-ness—the falling apart–ness—was part of the charm. There was a looseness about them that I liked—even in their imperfection, you could tell that they had been loved. They were lumpy and ragtag, but that was part of what made them good, I thought. There was something about them that was so clearly human.

I looked out into the rain and called Phoebe.

“Bonjour,” she said. “How you doing?”

“Okay,” I said. “We can talk about it—I want to tell you about it—but I called because I had some yeti thoughts.”

“Hit me,” she said.