The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone

“Come home to Peacedale for a while, Addy,” I’d tell her on the phone. “What’s prettier than a New England spring?”

“I don’t have the time,” she’d say. “I’ve got too much work.”

“You’re burning yourself out,” I’d argue. “Your mom wants to see you. And you need to rest. At least if you’re in Rhode Island, you know that you’re not missing anything. There’s nothing to miss.”

The problem was, she never wanted to rest.

Then, I swear it was the first truly perfect pink-and-white day of spring, Addy found that place on Front Street. She sent her mom and my mom and me all the images, with these emoji hearts and smiles and captions like “maple-stained hardwood floors” and “big shower space” and “skyline!” And suddenly she seemed very grown-up. DUMBO was exactly her neighborhood, chock-full of up-and-comers, and she’d fallen in love with it. She’d made that money off Exit Roy, and she wanted to show she was a success. Or that cool things really can come out from dead-end romances and heartbreaking breakups.

ERICKSON MCAVENA: I was the one who helped Addison get on the stick and move herself out of Lincoln’s.

“Will you come move me out, and wipe my nose when I cry?” she asked.

“I’ll even bring the hankies,” I told her.

When I arrived on her doorstep on move-in morning, instead of a U-Haul truck, there’s only a cab outside. The girl owned nothing.

“For all the crapola you like to steal, you don’t have jack squat,” I teased her. Seriously, she had a couple of suitcases, a couple of boxes. The end.

Me and Teddy actually did rent a U-Haul a day later, and we brought her everything she’d left on Court Street. From her ugly sunburst coffee mugs to her stuffed rhino and even the velvet sofa. The tub stayed. That thing was too goddamn heavy, and about as useful as a trapdoor on a canoe.

Underneath, I guess I felt all kinds of guilty. Addison wanted to move back to Court Street. She’d crashed there the first weekend after the Lincoln breakup. But by then Teddy was moved in, snug as a bug. Plus we had a Craigslist tenant, MaryKate Harrington, who wasn’t any Addison, but she was going to Fashion Institute of Technology, and she was paying us a pretty good rent. We couldn’t just dump MaryKate a month into it. Addison knew it, but she still begged pretty hard.

“Just please let me stay there for a month or two.”

“Sugar, there’s cozy. And then there’s the sardine tin,” I told her.

“I know, I know.” Then in a joking way, but kind of wistful, she said, “Maybe I could sleep on the fire escape? We could put a tin roof up. I wouldn’t bother anybody.”

She slayed me. I was real sorry I couldn’t give her that room back. I felt lower than a worm about it. So I was relieved that Addison seemed knee-deep in clover about her new digs. It had a bathroom like the Bel Air. I guess it was around that time that Addison decided to stop working at the Chelsea studio, too. She wanted to live and work in the same space. A good call, I thought.

Move-in day, early June, was my only time I ever spent at her new place on Front Street. Teddy and I were never in that apartment again. So I don’t know how she changed it up, or if she ever made it her own, the way we’d been talking about it. But that night, after we’d hauled and unpacked, the three of us ate a picnic on the floor. It was a French-style dinner, with a bottle of wine and some cheese and bread.

“Turn this space into your home, Addison,” said Teddy. “Buy some lamps and rugs. Get a fricking goldfish.”

Addison Stone in her Front Street apartment, courtesy of Lucy Lim.

“Or maybe I’ll just steal two big-ass Barcaloungers right off the showroom floor of JCPenney. Along with a flatscreen and shag carpeting,” she answered. “And heist some art from the Whitney.”

When we finally left, Addison looked as lonely as the last pea at pea-time. I was relieved Lucy Lim was coming down for a few days the next week. But it was hard to say goodbye to Addison. For a moment, I guess I experienced a sense of doom. It was so unbearable. Teddy says it was a premonition. I don’t know. I should have let her come back to Court Street. I should have been the one to sleep on the fire escape. She wasn’t ready to live all by herself. I knew it. Everyone knew it.

LUCY LIM: I’ve probably spent a thousand hours thinking back on that last time I went down to New York. Looking for the signs. Combing for any clue I might have missed. The plan began lightheartedly enough. Exam week is a joke for seniors. So that’s why I decided to spend some real time with Addy in the city, from Wednesday through Sunday. To check in on her, see how she was really doing in 3D.

“I’ll help you settle in,” I said. “We’ll paint your walls.”

“Oh, fun! Slumber party! We’ll wear pajamas and jump on my new bed.”

Even Mom wanted me to take that time off from school. What I can say for sure was that Addy was trying, but she wasn’t quite herself. And by trying, I mean that she was working to stay connected. She’d stocked up on my favorite foods. She’d bought me a fluffy robe and towels and all these sweet hotel-y guest things. She asked questions about family and friends. She listened to the answers. We went on walks and hung out in coffee shops and talked and talked.

We also went out, to all these exclusive parties, and I knew she was making a giant effort to get out of her head, but also not to talk about how much she missed Lincoln, or how paranoid she was that Zach was back-stabbing her and blacklisting her from all of New York. She’d picked up smoking, and she was a touch thin, which unsettled me, but something else going on with her. A restless energy, an impatience in the way she’d pick up a fork or swipe her Metro card. But I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

“Addy, are you off your Z?” I asked her, just once.

“What? No way,” she promised.

“Okay, but what’s up with the cigarettes?” I asked.

“It takes away my jitters,” she answered.

I still counted out of her bottle in the medicine cabinet every night. But I couldn’t depend on that as proof. Addy’d have known that I’d count the pills, and she’d have dropped one in the toilet every bit as routinely. I was also concerned about the creative output. She seemed a touch manic. Canvases everywhere, mostly sketches and studies for her new thing, Bridge Kiss, taped up.

She’d also taken to writing on the walls. Again, it seemed restless. All of these names of artists, with quotes, as well as questions to herself from herself. I remember a few, like, “Why do you use the human face?” “Do you think of your art as mainstream or outsider?” “What is your role as a painter, as a young person, as a female?” Scrawled everywhere in Sharpie. It was like she was her own preacher, asking herself the Big Questions. But no answers.