Fade In

by Mabie, M.

  The last week of the season for the show was turbulent to say the least. Chel-Ro was a no-show, which fucked with our whole lineup. Luckily, Winnie, Wes, and I were still able to wrangle up a few old friends and rising stars to make appearances. It worked, but it felt a little half-assed.

  The Devons’ skits were funny and they did amazing. They did one of the planned Chel-Ro skits with a cardboard cutout of her likeness and it was funnier than if she would have been there. After wrapping that Thursday, I skipped the after-show party that was hosted by our network, saying I didn't feel that well, and went home.

  I just felt so tired, and my mind and heart were at odds with everything.

  I couldn't stop thinking about Ben and thinking that he deserves more than what I can offer. Seriously, I'm a pain in the ass as is. Add in my hectic life and crazier-by-the-day ex-boyfriend and then, for good measure, top it off with a good old-fashioned case of vision impairment. Peaches.

  Since the night after the show when Kurt lost his shit in the ABN lobby, he’s called so much that I had to change my number. He’s sent flowers with rambling apologies. He’s even started calling Winnie to find out how I am doing.

  I did get a formal order of protection, and Cooper went a step further and spoke to his family. They assured him that they'd do whatever they could to help. I tried to keep as much of it played down in front of Ben, but I was glad when finally ended. He sent one flower arrangement and it just said “Goodbye.”

  Then there's the whole sight thing. I hate to admit it, but it's making me depressed. I can tell that my moods have been all over the place. Nothing is funny. I'm having a hard time writing anything for next season, which has never happened. I don't want to go anywhere unless I have to. I know that I have the wedding coming up, and I've mentally prepared myself for most of it. But I'm just laying low until I get out of this funk.

  I've avoided Ben to the point of getting up early and going down into our building’s gym and walking on the treadmill in the mornings when he arrives and then sometimes I go sit in the coffee shop when I know he's dropping things off.

  It seems unfair to have all these feelings for him. I can't figure out a way to make it work out for either of us in my mind. If I give in to what I want, then he's stuck with me. Good for him.

  Then what happens when I'm completely blind? What happens to our relationship, if there is one then? He'd be stuck taking care of me like a child. He could do so much better.

  What if he wants marriage and children? How does that work out for a blind chick? You use your cane to smack all of the ankles of the guests as you walk down the aisle?

  Our working relationship continues to be totally beneficial to me, but the week after the show closed for the season, I told him that he could just work Mondays and Thursdays, thinking that I'd be a lot less busy. And I am.

  Mostly my time is spent editing and reading projects for other people I know. I'm actually really into one by a screenwriter in L.A. that I met while working on Up Late.

  It's about a band that breaks up and reunites after the loss of a member years later. I love the story, and I've been asked in to add some ideas where comedic scenes were concerned.

  They are quite good already, so I'm basically just making notes for timing and delivery. Mostly, I am wrapped up in the love story within it. And it makes me want one of my own.

  Ben asked me to go out with him the Friday after the last show, but I used the same excuse as I had to get out of the wrap party. It wasn't a total lie. I'm having more frequent headaches and I'm too nervous—or scared—to admit that there is a major deficit in my sight. My vision's peripheral now blurs into where it, just weeks ago, was clear and unclouded.

  Even though I'm staying clear of Ben and cooling it with the flirting, he consistently asks me out all the time. I make up excuses, but the last time I just smiled and shook my head.

  He simply replied, “You will.”

  Today, I’m sitting in Dr. Meade's office, where he's telling me that my condition is more rapidly sliding into a territory that we both knew was coming.

  “What do I do, Dr. Meade? Are you sure that there isn't anything available? Treatments that are in trial? Anything?” The quicker this is happening, the more I am desperate to find a fucking loophole.

  There has to be some experimental monkey piss treatment or a treatment where I only eat raisins and goat's milk. A treatment where I have to sleep in one of those hyperbaric oxygen chambers and listen to The Cure for six hours each day. Something.

  I just can’t accept that this is it. And at the rate that the fog framing my sight is swallowing up my vision, Dr. Meade and I both estimate that it will be only months until it is mostly gone.

  My heart is breaking. I feel isolated and scared. I'm angry and irrational. Not only is my sight fading away, but the glimmer of hope that I'll have anything normal in my future is vanishing too.

  “I'm sorry, Tatum. I think you need to see a psychiatrist. For real. Someone you can talk to about this. Someone who is educated about the stress and anxiety you are and, most likely, will continue to feel for a while until this stabilizes. I can't say if you'll be totally blind when it does, but that is usually the way this disease works.” He sighs and offers me a kind smile. “On a hopeful yet atypical note, it could slow down again. It could stop getting worse altogether and remain like it is. There just is no way of knowing, but at the rate it's deteriorating now, the chances of that aren't all that good.”

  I bite my bottom lip to not start crying right here in Dr. Meade's office, releasing it only when the taste of blood is potent enough to distract me from my bigger problems.

  What am I going to do? How am I going to work? Function? Anything? This feels like a death sentence.

  Dr. Meade recommends—again—that I start using a walking cane. I told him that I'd at least get one and see how fucking stupid I feel using it. He is winning.

  I am definitely losing.

  I dial Ben from the car on my way home since I need some blind girl supplies and figure I might as well go big or go home. Remembering that he knows some people who are vision impaired, I assume he can offer guidance and insight here. If I'm succumbing to the idea of trying the cane, I might as well try out whatever else is in my future and attempt to get used to it.

  “Hey, Tatum.” Ben answered quickly, probably because I was leaving the doctor's and curious to see how it went. “What did Dr. Meade say?”

  “He said I'm going to need help going fucking blind, Ben.” I can’t help sounding so bitchy. If I am trying to hide my emotions from him, I am doing a piss-poor job.

  And the Academy Award for worst-ever acting goes to that bitch, Tatum Elliot.

  “What can I do?” This is where I never know if he's saying that because he cares or because I pay him to.

  “Nothing. Why don't you take the rest of the day off? I'm just going to lie around and I don't want to see you buzzing around my place being productive.” What's worse when you're feeling awful than watching someone else be perfectly fine? I wouldn't fucking know. “But Dr. Dickhead gave me a list of things I might find useful. So I'll need to either go get them or have you find them for me if that's okay. But I can worry about that tomorrow, and if I don't, then you can worry about them next time you come over.” My words taste bitter, but I can't stop.

  “If that's what you want. I have to be back down in your area this evening. Do you want me to bring over some food? I can be there around six?” Here we go again.

  “Ben, I said you could have the rest of the day off. I'm an asshole today. I think I'd rather just be alone.” And that is the biggest lie of all. Here it is—my biggest fear—and I keep on asking for it. I'm sure there is a far more intellectual name for that condition other than being a fucking idiot, but I’m at a loss for the words among everything else.

  “I wasn't asking if you needed anything like that. I meant it as in, would you like some terrible Chinese food and a side of company? I'd like to come over t
o see you. Not work for you.”

  “Not tonight, Ben. I don't think that is a good idea. Why don't you go have fun?” I wanted to say that he should go find a girl who isn’t his boss, isn’t a batshit crazy freak, isn’t going blind, and isn’t so complicated.

  I'm about to bother him with all this today, feebly attempting to follow through with the decision I made after the wedding shower. It isn't fair to be telling him one thing and then putting signals off for another. It's not fair to him to give him some false sense of relationship, that, no matter how bad I want it, would only make me feel like a pity fuck.

  That and I still can't get the things Kurt said out of my head. I still can't shake the fact that I don't know where the hell Ben even came from and that he has no problem dodging the answer at every pass.

  It's too much. Everything is too much.

  I feel empty. A new low.

  But when he says, “I'd rather have fun with you,” I want to take back the abuse I caused my lip earlier. Then I could resort to using the same lip-biting method to prevent the tears that fall after hearing his words. I want the girl he has fun with, too.

  I need out of this funk. I need a good cry. And judging by the number of times I've either almost cried today and the times I actually cried, I need a massive fucking blubber-fest.

  I do what any normal girl would—plan a day of drinking and watching sad movies. Ray stops at the store so I can get needed supplies. I need a box of wine, a few pints of ice cream, a bag of peanut M&Ms, and Kleenex. Too bad they were all out of maturity pills. I would have bought a case. It doesn't matter though. I am determined on beating my shitty mood to death, giving myself an emotional cleanse.

  The thought of calling Winnie springs into my head, but I can't. Same with Neil. I just can't put them through it. And Ben is off-limits. Even if Ben is the one I want, but I can't risk confusing him. Staying professional for both of our sakes is the right thing to do. The strange of it is that he's my assistant and knows everything about my life right now, down to putting away my laundry and buying me tampons.

  Yeah, he does that. When I questioned why I had a ridiculous supply in my bathroom cabinet, he just shrugged and said that I’d been low. Awkward.

  So really my problem lies in keeping my personal thoughts and feelings to myself. Because he is all up in my life. He does all of my shopping now, too. He runs every errand I can think of. He hired the cleaning service himself and I've run into the lady once. I still have a hard time remembering her name. I know it ends with an ‘andy.’ Sandy? Brandy? Mandy? Candy? Fuck. It's something like that.

  He basically does it all. Which is helpful, I have to say, but it's also smothering at times. I can in one moment feel like it is badass having someone doing all of my shit work and in the next feel a little sad because now that I know it will be nearly impossible for me to do any of those things soon. I desperately want nothing more than to do them more myself.

  I know. I'm a Goddamned conundrum. Typical female, right? Wanting only what she can't have. Maybe that isn't just females. Look at Kurt’s fucked-up ass. If he would have shown even a tenth of interest that he showed after our relationship during it, then we'd probably still be together.

  Wait. Scratch that. That's bullshit.

  But here I am now, with a man who seems to be interested in me—flaws and all—and I revert back to this mentality of: This is my space. I'm the boss. I won't let you in so quit trying.

  I can't tell who I'm really trying to project. Him or me? But hey. That's Tatum fucking Elliot, the emotionally constipated.

  So tonight I've showered and put on my prettiest pajamas. Pretty things probably make me feel so much better because they remind me that I don't mess everything up. I have some things going for me. I have pretty fucking pajamas.

  With the first movie in, a box of Kleenex beside me on the table, and a full glass of wine, I start the Great Feeling Purge of 2012. The first movie gets me, but only at the end when she reads all of his letters in her car. There was too much love and it only served as a reminder that I'm no Allie and Ben's not Noah. I'll probably go to hell for thinking it, but I'd take some Alzheimer's right now.

  The second one has me crying from just about start to finish since I know that Julia Roberts is going to die the whole time. And the third just about fucking kills me. If there is a woman out there who hasn't lost three pounds of water weight watching Beaches, I'll shake her hand. That movie rips my heart out every time.

  It's still pretty early considering that I started watching chick flicks at one in the afternoon. I take the chipped polish off my toes. Even the best pedicurist can't paint these babies Tatum-proof. Brooding, I choose to repaint them black like my mood, but I can't find the damn polish. I know I have some somewhere, and I'll lay money that it's in my closet where I store all things dated and unused.

  That's where I still am a few hours later—sitting on the floor in my closet. I'm piss drunk, I have big ugly scarf wrapped loosely around my neck, and there are dozens of shoes scattered everywhere.

  Not a single one remains in its box. I take them out and study each one. I look at every stitch and color. I look inside them, and yeah, I smell them too, filing each one in my mind under ‘My Gorgeous Shoe Collection That I Won’t Get to See Anymore.’

  I feel like everything is disappearing. My brother and Winnie are more wrapped up in each other than ever before. Don't get me wrong. That is what's supposed to happen. I'm over-the-moon happy for them, but maybe I wasn't thinking clearly when I hooked them up.

  Refilling my glass from the classy boxed beverage I packed with me into the closet after three trips to the refrigerator, I look at the clothes and mementos lying around me with rapt attention.

  As shallow and materialistic as it sounds, I'm going to miss my stuff. That is a tough pill to swallow. I've never counted myself a person who sets such value on possessions, but I have. I don't have very many things, and what I do have, I love. They're mine.

  There's the dress I wore to my first award show, the hat I wore to the polo match when Wes was dating the equestrian chick, the Jimmy Choo that's missing a heel from the night Coop and Winnie got engaged, my college graduation gown. What good is all of this shit if I won't be able to see it all in a few months?

  The only thing I get out of them now is looking at them.

  I'm so fucked.

  What a boring world this will be when I can't see someone’s expression or smile. I'm going to lose smiles?! How fucking crazy depressing is that?

  I take the lid off the next shoe box and I know that the contents aren't shoes. This is the someday box. Some girls have hope chests where they keep a bunch of shit for their future. They harbor old hand-me-down wedding dresses and dead ladies’ jewelry.

  Not me.

  I have trips and random things I want to do. It isn't exactly a bucket list, because I never intended on the box being that or my time to do them so short. I thought that my sight would just stay the same sucky way it was.

  I was wrong. So, with the rush that my life has been in up until recently, instead of pulling from the box every so often, I added to it another rain check to myself.

  Some of these are funny. I'm trying to read them, but my drunken state has added a convenient extra haze to my already crappy view.

  I cry harder. I cry for my beautiful things. I cry for all of the things I'll never get to see firsthand. I just cry.

  Through my sobs, I hear the board in my bedroom floor creak and know it's him. I can feel him before I can see him. Maybe my super-blind powers are kicking in.

  “Tatum, are you in here?” Ben asks in a knowing voice. He probably sees the light on in my walk-in and heads this way.

  “Please go away, Ben.” I can't stand for him to see me so pathetic. As I try to hide the tears in my voice and wipe at them the best I can, I learn that my request isn't taken seriously.

  “Hey, are you all right?” He's standing next to my closet door and isn't looking in. Maybe he thinks
I'm naked or something. It makes me smile a little to think that he's being a gentleman by not invading my space.

  Then another realization hits. In a few months, I won't know the difference. And the tears are back in full force.

  “Mmmm hmmm. I'm just looking at some old things. I'm fine.” I hiccup from crying.

  “Can I come in there? Are you, you know, decent?”

  “I've never been accused of being decent with or without my clothes. You can come in here if you want to, but I'm warning you. I am a hot mess.” I inhale through my nose most unattractively to clear the snot that's accumulated through my hours of sobbing.

  Slowly, his head peeks around, and I immediately see the worry on his face. The normally calm and rational Ben is gone. I'm looking right into pity and I hate it.

  “Don't look at me like that,” I tell him. Bowing my head, I turn so he isn't able to look me straight in the eyes.

  “What is all this? Did you fall or something? Your things are everywhere. What are you looking for? I can help,” he rattles off. Maybe it isn't pity. Maybe it is something else.

  Ben comes and sits cross-legged like a fifth-grader ready to read me a book. He seems to be approaching me like I'm a child and he's mirroring that in his body language.

  “No. I just wanted to look at my things. With wine.” I look up into his face to see understanding there.

  “A box of wine?” his voice cajoles.

  I nod my head up and down, signaling that his observation is truly as unrefined as it looks.

  “Okay, and you wanted to see them all at the same time?” he smiles, trying to make a little joke at my expense. I allow it because I'm looking like a poster child for mental instability right now.

  “I'm safer with cardboard. And I don't know. I just sort of started pulling things out and one thing led to another. You know? I guess I'm just...” And I can't finish. The words choke me. I'm about to emotionally barf all over this beautiful man and he won't ever look at me the same again.