We Fell Apart: A We Were Liars Novel(4)

Saar was an artist of a whole different kind, said my mom. He’d been to Juilliard. He’d won that Oscar. She felt his TV show was beneath him and that he was on the verge of becoming a film star of major proportions. But Saar was happy in his two-bedroom bungalow. After having so little acting work for so many years, he felt seriously lucky to have this regular show. He wasn’t aggressive or driven, like his character. He had anxiety, which he treated with medication and a weekly therapy appointment. In the mornings, he worked out for ninety minutes. In the evenings, he memorized lines. On weekends, he slept late, made vegetable omelets, played video games, and went to dinner with friends.

That was it. Saar wasn’t much caught up in the passion of creation. He was no mysterious visionary, no international sensation or enfant terrible of twentieth-century neoclassicism. He was a television actor who was happy to be settled down in sunny California with his girl and her kid.

One night, Saar left a dinner party early. He often had to wake up at five a.m. for all that exercise before work. My mother stayed.

At the party was an American sculptor who lived in Mexico City. Isadora slept over with the sculptor in his hotel that night, and a week later she was invited to follow him to Mexico and live with him there.

Same old story. The only difference was that this time, I had just turned eighteen. I was a senior in high school and a legal adult.

I refused to go with her. I had a boyfriend, Luca, and with Luca came a group of friends I really liked—bright, talkative people who had parties and played in bands. Luca dreamed of making explosive, edgy movies, like Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. His low chuckle when he thought something was funny made my stomach flip, it was so sweet. When he first asked if he could kiss me, he bit his lip and looked at the floor like he thought I’d say no. But of course I just kissed him.

After that, Luca and Matilda were in the sunny haze of

making each other laugh,

riding down the freeway in his car, and

losing track of whatever the teachers were saying in assemblies,

so intent we were on the feel

of one another’s skin,

palm against palm.

I felt like I might be in love with him. And he might be in love with me. I didn’t know for sure, but I wanted to find out.

It felt important to see what might happen between the two of us.

Also, I was applying to colleges that offered video game design programs, and I wanted to visit some of them. Going to Mexico City with Isadora would make that impossible.

Saar told me I was welcome to finish out my senior year living with him. He liked having a kid around, since he didn’t have any himself. And I liked living at Saar’s. He was kind. He had the plunge pool, a fridge full of food, and that huge game console.

So my mother left.





7


That happened in November. Once Isadora was gone, I felt a rush of anger at her. At the way we’d always lived. I buzzed with axe-throwing rage at my itinerant childhood,

at not mattering enough for Isadora to want to stay,

at patterns that kept repeating like there was no way to ever stop them.

I wasn’t surprised she wanted to move on with a different guy. When had she ever done anything else? But I was mad that she actually went, when she’d watched me begin to care about our life in California, begin to care about Saar and Venice Beach. She’d seen me fall for Luca and make all those friends. My heart had opened right in front of her. And she still forced me to choose between her and everything else that mattered to me.

Saar was a hot tangle of misery. He’d been devoted to Isadora and imagined he was a safe harbor for this untamed, magical woman. He thought the two of them would get married. When he left that dinner party, Saar had kissed Isadora good night, happy and trusting, with no inkling that she’d stop loving him by morning.

Now he brought home tall chocolate cakes and ate a large piece every day after dinner, even though he normally watched his diet very carefully. He’d sit on the couch, playing video games, unshaven and wearing a pair of very old, very unattractive Juilliard sweatpants.

Still, he didn’t drink too much. Or do any drugs. He never missed his ninety minutes of exercise. Every weekday, he went to work. He memorized his lines and asked me what groceries I’d like to have in the house.

Saar was a very responsible person.

Isadora never asked about him, though she texted me pretty often. She told me she was probably always meant to live in Mexico City. I feel truly alive for the first time! she wrote. She called me sometimes, too—but not on a regular schedule. Usually, she rang while I was in school and couldn’t pick up.

Each week she was gone, I felt I knew my mother less. She was on a boat speeding out into the ocean. Smaller and smaller, she was disappearing.

Soon I’d stop being able to see her at all.

During the winter holidays, I celebrated Hanukkah with Saar’s family in a small Oregon town. He bought my plane tickets. By the end of January, I had written all my college essays and turned my applications in.

In the evenings Saar and I ate dinner in front of his big screen. The meal was usually lean protein and salad, and the games were usually first-person and violent (though not always): Grand Theft Auto, Luigi’s Haunted Mansion, Arkham City, Red Dead Redemption. Around when we finished Luigi’s Mansion, he started dating again. First there was Nicki, a makeup artist. After her, Serena, who is a creative writing professor at UCLA.