21.
There were many different ways to
perceive Tess, because she was so moody.
For example, she’d been personable and silly as Johnny Carson the night
before and now, waking up on the couch in the hotel room at the Sheraton, she
felt painfully shy of these new people.
Still, she did want to get in touch with Vivienne/Beth for Molly, not
only out of kindness but out of curiosity -- what if this interesting woman her
ex-boyfriend Tim had introduced her to had invented her identity, perhaps on
the spot, for the sake of Tess and the guests at the party? But she also craved a smoke in solitude and a
couple hours just to watch a DVD on her own television in her own bedroom.
Ah well, she would just have to try not to act
too sullen towards these people, whom she'd already formed an attachment
to. This resolution proved immaterial
once Molly awoke, because of how sullen Molly was herself. She watched Molly knock on the bathroom door
and heard a man who wasn't Richard answer, "Molly, is it you? You can come in." Then Tess overheard a snatch of their
conversation.
"I know it's mom, George. What will happen when I go with this girl Tess
to the coffeeshop and find her today?
Maybe you should go, George, what do you think? Mom really only trusts you. I don’t – I don’t know what I am, but I know
that I am not trust-inspiring."
If Yesteryou was the song that expressed
George's laments at the inevitable tide of a life, Molly's song was one she'd
first heard in a movie a few years ago; it was sung by a deep-voiced
tragedy-monger of a woman, long-dead, and it expressed Molly's regret at the
way she was letting life pass her by.
The singer in the song goes, "I went out walking, I don't do too
much talking these days. These days I
seem to think about all the things that I forgot to do, and all the times I had
the chance to." In high school,
she'd been the person whose creativity others commented on and admired, and
this had filled her with a false hope of some sort of extra reserve of magic, an
imperviousness to the mundane that other adults would lack, when she herself
became an adult. But creativity is a
word used in school; the importance behind the word, the urgency of creating,
doesn't translate well to adulthood.
Maybe Molly could be living with roommates her
own age in one of the hipster parts of Los Angeles and maybe be in a band,
designing furniture made with recycled materials. But she didn't see the point, though she
wished she could. She was already twenty
five, which felt old. She saw the point
in noticing beauty but not the point in recording it. She lived with Richard and worked at an
office she hated as much as people in sitcoms always hate their office jobs,
but she didn't see the point of changing.
She enjoyed the company of Richard and George. George saw so many movies, and read so many books,
and from his high regard for all these stories (all these other peoples'
stories) she learned what she considered a trick, of learning other lives.
