***
The rain on the night of Sheila’s party was near blinding.
“Stop it!” Rachel shouted, snapping away the jacket I tried to hold over her head. “I want to get wet, that’s why I came into the rain. To get wet!”
I tossed the jacket to the side. “You came out here because I’m taking you home.”
“You’re crazy!”
Drunk as I’d been that night, I took in the conversation as a cold, sober observer. On the night it actually happened, alcohol had blacked me out. I remembered nothing after Rachel saw my face and stood up. My memory of the events of that night ended there, and were retold to me by the media and my parents. The hypnosis was like watching a movie in my own point of view.
“I am sick of this,” she shouted. “I’m sick of you wanting to know where I am all the time. Sick of it. You’re a control freak. You’re worse than my stepdad, do you know that?”
I knew I was getting hypnotized. I knew Franz Mesmer’s great grandson had counted from ten and my body was at my engagement party, and I also knew the movie was about to play the part where I lost someone I cared about.
“What the hell did you think you were doing in there?” I growled. Though I felt all the panic and fear I felt that night, I was also my older self, who knew how it all ended.
Calm down. Get control. My older self spoke to my younger self urgently, as if it could change anything.
“What’s going to happen when I go to college? You going to tell me who to talk to from here? Should I keep a log of what I wear? Well I won’t. Nothing. No more.” Rachel’s brown hair was soaked. She’d run out in a light sweater, leaving her jacket and purse behind.
“What were you saying to him?” I yelled.
“You really want to know?”
I stepped forward. I was already six feet tall, an intimidating presence in the class, and in front of a young woman in the rain.
She stepped back. “I’m not going to get enough to go to Penn, so he’s coughing it up. Every f**king dime, or I’m telling everyone what a sick bunch of f**ks you are.”
She and I were open about what a sick bunch of f**ks we were. We even laughed about it sometimes, but I’d always felt like she was talking about my parents. This time, it sounded like I was included. It sounded like she’d be more than happy to take me down as just another sick f**k who bedded her. What had I thought I meant to her? Did she think I’d used her? Or was it the other way around?
“Don’t play with him, Rachel. You can’t win.”
“I’m not playing.” She looked more like a grown woman when she uttered those words than ever before. She really meant to tangle with my father.
I took my car keys out. “I’m taking you home.”
She stepped back, under the edge of the eave, where the water dripped in fatter, condensed streams. One splashed on her shoulder, but she didn’t notice or didn’t care.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice cracked. “Don’t look at me like that. I love you Jay.”
“And I’m just one of the sick f**ks? Did I ever treat you with anything but respect?”
“There’s too much baggage, Jonathan. I want a regular boyfriend.”
I froze. What did she mean? Instead of asking her, in my immaturity and drunkenness, I stepped forward again.
You’re being menacing. She’s going to run...she’s going to—
She snapped the car keys from my hand.
“Give me those.” I grabbed for them, but my balance was off, and I was slow.
She ran.
I ran after her, but the images got foggy and indistinct.
I was in the driveway, looking for my car.
I was in the house, searching through coat pockets.
I was driving in a shitstorm of rain.
How? What did I miss?
I felt a pain in my shoulder.
I was in the driver’s side of the car. It was too dark to make out much more than the outline of the keys. They seemed to stand up sideways in the ignition, defying gravity. My vision swam. Then the keys rotated on the ring, pointing toward the ceiling. Odd.
Creak.
Crunch.
I was on the ground. I heard the beep of the warning signal and saw the beam of a single headlight, but all I saw was a car on its side, ready to fall into the whirling floods of the Pacific Ocean.
It rolled and fell. There was no splash. When I scrambled up to the edge of the cliff, a car was floated in the foaming waters.
I heard her scream.
Rachel.
It had to be. She must have been belted into the passenger side?
But how?
“Rachel!” I yelled. What a ridiculous thing to do. I could barely hear myself.
I dove into the water.
Cold.
I became aware of the viola again, just as I gulped water and felt a stabbing pain in my lungs. The real me, the me at my engagement party, the twenty three-year old who had control of his life, gasped real air and felt water. I was coming out of it.
But the sixteen year-old me woke up to grass tickling my nose. The world swam as if I was riding the teacups at Disney. I opened my eyes. Just in front of me, so close I had no context but a few blades of grass, the dark of the rainy night, and my own nausea, was Rachel’s face. She, too had her cheek to the grass. Her eyes glazed over. Her mouth hung open. Her hair stuck to her face in the rain. She blinked, and a tear fell over the bridge of her nose.
Rachel, Rachel, I am sorry.
***
The sound of the full quartet sounded like a philharmonic, and I knew I was out of the hypnosis a second before I bolted straight in my chair. Jessica sat on the edge of the chaise in an ecru dress. The orchid in her hand matched the one in her blonde hair. She must have gotten it for my lapel on the way back from the manicurist. She always thought of everything.
“Jon,” she said, taking my hand. “What happened?”
“You have to meet me halfway,” grumbled David Mesmer.
“Jonathan,” Theresa said. “Let me get you a drink, my God.”
The other sister’s voices broke into my consciousness. Jessica and I just looked at each other, barely hearing.
“You look worse.”
“We really need to try the crystal cleansing lady.”
“Have the guy with the wine come this way.”
“Christ, I think half of Stanford just showed up.”
Jessica slipped her hand between mine and tugged. I got up. I pulled her away to a quiet corner between two chest-high planters.
“Are you all right?” she whispered.
“I don’t believe in hypnosis,” I said.