Page 115 of The Unraveling

My fantasy was crumbling before my eyes. I envisioned being on my own. Free. Walking around the streets of Manhattan as late as I wanted. Never having to check in with anyone. I felt panicked, like she was suddenly telling me the NAB that had accepted me was actually just a small company in Tristesse that I’d suddenly never heard of.

Nothing about my life would change. Nothing good was coming. My misery would follow me.

“Jocelyn, stop this,” said my mom. “I thought I’d sell the house, that—”

I gave a loud laugh. “Sell the house? Are you crazy? No, this is my thing, Mom, I’m going by myself. This isn’t, like, our thing, this is my job, this is my future!”

I had salt on my fingers from the hard-shell tortillas, and I rubbed it between my fingers anxiously in my lap.

Mimi cleared her throat. “Jocelyn, you need to adjust your tone. Your mother has sacrificed everything for your ballet—”

Oh my god. Not Mimi, too. No, no, no.

“I’m the one who woke up early and worked out and ran and did yoga and Pilates and went to dance class every day for the last decade. Mom doesn’t do anything but—but”—I was seething—“fuck random dudes and try to get a free ride off someone. Well, guess what, it’s not going to be me.”

I threw my napkin down and burst outside, letting the screen door slam behind me.

Chapter Thirty-One

Alistair put me in a different cab than him. We couldn’t be seen getting in the same car. I am in the back of an Uber without him, my hands shaking, the phantom camera flashes still hovering around in my pupils.

My phone buzzes. A text from Alistair.

They should never have been allowed in. I have no idea how they got in there. Someone must have let them in a side door or something. I’m so sorry.

At first I don’t understand why he’s apologizing to me. He’s the one with the wife and the reputation. It wasn’t me they were there to photograph. It was the super-handsome, ultrarich socialite out with the girl who was not, most certainly not, his wife.

But then I realize why he’s saying that he’s sorry. It’s just like he told me all those weeks ago.

He isn’t the one with anything to lose.

I am the one who might lose my career.

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

I put a hand on my chest and grip, my fingernails digging into my flesh.

What the fuck have I done?

I worked so hard for this career. So did my mom. She made ballet her full-time job, almost as much as I did when I was a kid. Despite what I screamed at her the night we found out I’d be going to New York.

I hate that memory. It’s been threatening to resurface ever since she died. But I haven’t let it in. For some reason, as I stood there being blinded by the cameras, it spilled over in my mind. Like instead of my life flashing before my eyes, it was my regrets.

When I was accepted to the NAB, I was so happy. Scared, too, but in a way I knew I needed. I needed to break away from my old life, and my mom was part of that. But whenever I remember how I screamed at her, what I said to her, I feel sick with guilt. Nauseated with hideous shame. Embarrassed for my lack of gratitude. Compassionate for my younger self and wishing I’d had anywhere close to the ability to communicate my feelings in a way that hadn’t come with so much rejection and ingratitude.

I think everyone has memories like these. Where they were horrible. Where they were wrong. Where they were the asshole.

The difference is, I never got to say that I was sorry. I will never get to tell her that I’m sorry. I’ll never get to clarify what I meant, all those years ago.

I’ll never get to thank her for how hard she worked to make ballet happen for me. I’ll never get to thank her for how she managed to send me off to New York without punishing me for how awful I’d been, and how she never brought it up again.

I’ll never get to tell her what I’ve started to realize lately. Which is that there is no such thing as a free ride. My mom wasn’t sleeping with men to make her life easier. She was just trying to change her life, and she didn’t have a lot of tools. She was trying to change my life, and she didn’t have a lot of tools.

The life I was afraid of living, the dark fantasy I had where I worked at a restaurant in Tristesse, raising ungrateful children who didn’t see me as a human being with a past—that was my mom’s life. I was the one who couldn’t see my mother for the person she was, and only saw her as a receptacle for my blame.

I can see it all so clearly now. The good and the bad. She had made her share of mistakes. She had been mean. She had helped me develop what is obviously, now, an eating disorder. She had been inflexible about my diet and my health.

She had also been firm, and did not back down from me. She gave me discipline. A work ethic. She provided me the opportunities I could never have had without her. She had kept me on track to have the success I said that I wanted.

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