Page 88 of Here We Go Again
One more day in Ocean Springs quickly turns into two, and Rosemary finds herself sprawled out on the mustard-colored couch midafternoon with her paperback copy ofEmma, feeling totally and shockingly relaxed. Logan is on the other side of the couch reading Akwaeke Emezi, her bare feet in Rosemary’s lap.
The house is quiet except for the whorl of the air conditioner and Odie’s steady breathing as he sleeps on a patch of cool floor. Remy set up two easels in the conservatory so he and Joe can paint the birch tree in the backyard side by side, and she hears the occasional low murmur of their voices, but otherwise, everything feels frozen in time.
Or maybe time doesn’t exist here at all. There is nothing to do, nowhere to be. Logan’s here, and she could stay like this forever. She woke up in Logan’s arms again this morning.
Rosemary turns the page inEmmaeven though she isn’t really reading. She knows what’s happening in the story, anyway. Knightly is scolding Emma; Emma is lashing out.
She turns another page and slowly arches her body closer to Logan’s, pressing herself against her legs.
Logan nudges her in the stomach with her toe. “What are you thinking about over there while you pretend to read?” she asks over the top of her own book.
Rosemary aches for closeness. “I’m thinking about how I like being here with you.”
Logan waggles her eyebrows. “You wanna make out?”
Rosemary tossesEmmaaside. “Very much so.”
They make out on the mustard couch for over an hour. There is really nothing else to do.
Two days in Ocean Springs turns into three. Logan and Rosemary get up early to take Odie for a walk before the heat and humidity set in. When they get back, Rosemary helps Remy prepare brunch. He teaches her the right way to prepare grits and gives her his biscuit recipe, and she learns a little bit more about his life while chopping veggies.
She learns about how his father was the one who taught him how to cook and his mother was the one who taught him how to paint. He moved back to Ocean Springs ten years ago to help take care of his parents, and they ultimately died only two days apart, because they could never stand spending more than one night away from each other.
He talks about opening his gallery five years ago, though his assistant manager is running things for the time being so he can be here.
She learns that Remy had been a true activist during the AIDS crisis. He’d been there for the protest at St. Patrick’s church. He’d used his art to raise awareness about what was happening when the world didn’t care. After brunch, they watchHow to Survive a Plagueand find Remy in the background of an Act Up meeting.
Remy takes down an old shoebox and shows them photos of Joe in leathers at Pride, Joe in drag, Joe smiling in the sunshine atConey Island, wearing a neon-pink mesh top. All Rosemary can see is the fact that Remy kept a box filled with photos of Joe for thirty years.
She learns Remy’s had many boyfriends, but only one Joe. He spent a year painting in rural Vietnam, another year hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. He briefly joined an artist commune outside Sedona before he settled in Santa Fe, where he fostered rescue dogs. He’d summited six mountains, including Kilimanjaro, and he’d traveled to Paris and Peru, Lagos and Auckland and Johannesburg, but he still looks at Joe like he’s better than the sunrise over Machu Picchu and the Eiffel Tower lit up at night combined.
“Damn, I wish I could travel like that,” Logan says that night while they’re playing Scattergories. Remy is walloping them, and the English teachers are all on the verge of revolt.
“Why did you move around so much?” Rosemary asks without Logan’s tone of jealousy.
Remy considers his answer. “Well, I wanted to seecool shit,” he answers in clear mockery of Logan. “But I think I was searching for something, too.”
“What?”
His eyes shift to Joe. “A place that felt like home.”
Rosemary looks at Logan.
On the fourth day in Ocean Springs, Remy takes Joe on another date after brunch. It’s a brief adventure, and Joe comes home exhausted but alive. Not merely with lungs that can still breathe and a heart that can still beat, but with a glowing sense of aliveness.
While they’re gone, Rosemary logs on to a virtual therapy appointment with Erin for the first time in weeks. She tells her therapist about the detours and the difficulties of the trip, but she also tells her about Logan. About what they’re doing and what it means and what it says about Rosemary’s sexuality.
“You don’t have to have all the answers right now,” Erin tries to reassure her.
But they both know there is nothing she fears more than uncertainty.
After learning more about Remy, Rosemary feels like she’s starting to learn more about this new version of Joe Delgado, too. Not just Joe the Poet and Joe the Drag Queen and Joe in the pink mesh tank top. But also, Joe who used to want to be a writer. Joe who always had ink stains on his fingers and stayed up until two in the morning writing his poems, until Remy dragged him to bed so he could teach the next morning.
The Joe who lived by the click-clack of typewriter keys and the sting of rejection letters. Joe, who gave up on that dream to become a full-time teacher. He’d been in her life for twenty years, but she had no idea they had this in common.
Rosemary thinks about the uncertainty of her job and the chaotic pages she’s written in the middle of the night at random hotels, scraps of a story about two girls who go on a magical quest with a wizard to save the world. And just like that, she starts writing again, during warm afternoons, when everyone naps, or while Joe and Remy work on a puzzle together at the kitchen table. She takes those chaotic words and types them on her laptop, then reorganizes them into something cohesive.
Suddenly, the words start coming easier than they have in years. At night, Rosemary and Logan sit cross-legged on their bed, and Rosemary reads her the new pages from the day aloud. Logan sits perfectly still, enraptured by the words, no matter how shitty they are.
