Page 52 of The Rom-Commers

My kindhearted dad, who lived.

BEFORE THE ROCKFALL,my parents were both musicians. They played in the symphony together. My father was a cellist, and my mom played clarinet. At work, they were friendly and professional. At home, they teased each other and played duets all the time.

My dad survived that day, yes—but he never played cello again.

After almost ten years, and more physical and occupational therapythan any of us can fathom, there were two lasting effects he couldn’t overcome: the hemiplegia on his left side, which never resolved. He could use that side, but only with difficulty. He could walk, but only slowly and mostly with a walker. That whole side—including the fingers that used to work the frets on his cello—stayed tight and jerky and full of tremors.

But that wasn’t the condition that held us hostage. It was the Ménière’s disease that messed with his balance, and the sudden drop attacks that slammed him to the ground out of nowhere, that kept me on high alert.

When the drop attacks happened, he went down hard—sometimes hitting his head. But even just off days could put him out of commission. He had to lie on his bed all day holding on to the edges because he felt like he was on a tiny raft being tossed in a vast, stormy ocean. Some months were worse than others, and sometimes he went long stretches when he felt fine. But he never knew when it would hit, which was why he didn’t drive anymore, and he couldn’t live alone.

He needed someone looking out for him 24–7, and—until I boarded that plane and flew to LA—that someone was always me.

The plan, as you’ve already heard Logan complain about, was for me to take the first ten years, and for Sylvie to take the second—and then to figure it out from there. Sylvie was twelve when we lost our mom, and the only thing I cared about in those early years—or maybe even my reason to keep going—was to give her the best childhood I could, despite it all.

To be as mom-ish as I could in our mom’s stead.

I baked cookies. I drove her to parties. I took her for makeovers at the mall. I helped her fray her jeans. I supervised homework. I did laundry. I focused so hard on Sylvie and my dad that I almost forgot about myself. I just put my head down and kept going.

A relief, in a lot of ways.

I made my life aboutSylvie’slife.

Maybe staying so busy was a lifeline out of my own grief. But I willingly made myself a supporting character in my own story.

Sylvie was the star—and I was the dependable sister who helped her shine.

I wanted to shine, too, in my way. I didn’t give up all my dreams. I kept writing, and kept studying stories, and kept fantasizing about some distant future where I would make it all happen. But I thought—and worried—much more about my Sylvie, and my dad, too, than I did about myself. And maybe, in a way, I started wanting my fantasies about the future to stay fantasies.

Right? Because if fantasies come true, they can’t be fantasies anymore.

And then what do you have to fantasize about?

All to say, I got very comfortable living like that.

And everything that had happened since I came to LA? It was the opposite of comfortable. And it was certainly the opposite of fantasy.

Of course I should seize this opportunity. Of course I should be here and do this! Whatever “this” would turn out to be. There wasn’t another reasonable choice. When you finally get your chance, you have to take it.

But it was one thing to live your dreams in theory—and it was absolutely another thing to clumsily, awkwardly, terrifiedlydo it for real.

Thirteen

BACK AT CHARLIE’Shouse, I felt strangely elated.

I didn’t have to do this. I could quit and go home.

Charlie wanted to get started at the table—butone, Logan had said not to do any writing until we had a written contract, andtwo, I was quitting.

I hadn’t told Charlie that yet, of course.

Charlie sat down at his heavy, faux-farmhouse, designer dining room table, clearly thinking I would follow his lead.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I walked around his living room, examining knickknacks and bookends and decorative ceramic bowls like I had all the time in the world. Which I did.

“Hey,” Charlie said. “Can we focus?”

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