The Last Birthday Party

by Gary Goldstein

  But that was then and this was now. There was truth and there were consequences. They had become separate, self-protective units in the last years of their marriage for a reason they didn’t entirely identify until the damage was done. Meanwhile, that reason became everything to Jeremy: the source of a new self-awareness, his learning curve, the fence he continually struggled to leap. A desire to attach, to connect, to reveal. But not like this.

  As Cassie guided him onto the bed, their mouths still playing memory lane, Jeremy grabbed his will by the horns and freed himself from Cassie’s roaming hands and his own misguided instincts. He tried to be gentle yet purposeful, conscious of both her dignity and his integrity (not to sound too high-minded about, er, pulling out of a common sex act).

  Cassie gazed up at Jeremy now standing above her, his heartbeat audible, eyes wide. She didn’t look as much hurt as frustrated by their thwarted reunion, her momentary power vanquished by Jeremy’s better angels. The tables between them had turned, perhaps for the first and final time. Cassie sat up and sighed.

  “Well, isn’t this a fine how-do-you-do.” Cassie bent over, picked up a pair of simple black flats from the floor, and slid them on with finality.

  “I think it’s for the best,” said Jeremy, tucking his shirt back into his jeans.

  Cassie rose from the bed and locked eyes with him. “That’s what people say when someone dies after a long and painful illness.” She crossed to the full-length mirror to check her makeup.

  “For the record, I don’t think death is better than having sex with you,” Jeremy shot back, hoping for some levity.

  “Could have fooled me,” Cassie answered. She shook out her hair and finger-combed a few stray strands. “I thought it would have been nice, that’s all. Just forget I was ever here.”

  She was about to leave when she stopped and picked up their wedding picture that sat in an antique gold frame on the dresser.

  “That was a good day,” Jeremy recalled.

  “Yes, it was,” Cassie said. “Just a couple of crazy kids.” She turned to him with a wistful look. “Do you mind if I take this? I’ve always loved the frame.”

  Jeremy considered her request. He silently held out his hand for the picture, which she passed to him. He unclipped the frame’s velvet cardboard backing, slid the wedding photo out, and handed back the empty frame. “It’s all yours,” he said.

  As Cassie took the ornate picture holder, she glanced at the photo in Jeremy’s hand and seemed about to ask for it as well. For whatever reason, she thought better of it. There was something to be said for compromise.

  “Thanks, Jeremy. And good luck with Annabelle, I hope it all works out. I hear she’s pretty great.”

  “She is,” he confirmed. And, although it seemed like there was much more to say, Cassie exited the bedroom.

  “I just have to ask,” Jeremy said as they reached the front door. “Yesterday, at the restaurant, you said that leaving me was a mistake. Why, exactly? I mean, after all this time, what made you decide that?”

  Cassie studied her ex-husband, and looked for a second as if she might well up again. “There was a part of me that thought maybe there was something better out there. Or at least better for me,” she began. “I met a lot of men these last few months. Went on my share of dates, had some nice dinners, the occasional stayover, even a weekend away. But after a while, you know what I discovered?”

  Jeremy shook his head, couldn’t begin to guess.

  “That these guys were okay—funny, smart, hot, whatever—but, in the end, despite our problems, none of them could hold a candle to you. I’d come home and think, “This is what I left Jeremy for?”

  Jeremy was astounded. “Maybe you just didn’t meet the right guy,” he offered. He had to admit, that sounded strange coming from one’s ex-husband.

  Cassie gave him an odd look. “Anyway,” she said, moving on, “that’s why I thought we should try again.”

  “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t?” There, now that sounded like an ex-husband.

  “I think that’s my cue to leave.” Cassie gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Let’s just leave it up to the lawyers from here on. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  Jeremy watched as she opened the front door and, without a glance back, walked off into the twilight.

  CHAPTER

  37

  Jeremy liked to say that you never knew what was going to happen when you woke up every morning. Hardly the most profound thought, but it pretty much always proved true.

  Astonishment was the case that particularly bright and breezy late September day.

  Jeremy spent the morning finishing up a review for the Times on a powerful documentary about a hundred-year-old Holocaust survivor who, until just a few years before, was a tour guide at the concentration camp where she was imprisoned during World War II. (You couldn’t make that one up and, yes, he was back on the Judaic film beat.) With Lucien’s okay, Jeremy had decided to limit his reviews to one or two a week instead of the three or four he used to do. That way he’d stay active with the paper and keep his journalism muscles limber, while leaving the majority of his work time free to focus on his screenwriting career. He’d been given a second chance at success, and he wasn’t going to blow it the way he did so many years ago.

  To that end, Juliana kept her promise and set a string of meetings for Jeremy with several upper-level film and TV development execs. While he was brainstorming stories to pitch, he asked Juliana if she had any particular advice. She told him to “Think out of the box but don’t try to reinvent the wheel,” which was a lucky thing because he thought it was a damn near perfect invention (the wheel, not the box).

  “And can I tell you why?” she asked, as if anyone could stop her. “Because with most pitches, you’re either too far ahead of the curve or too far behind the curve, so you might as well avoid the whole fucking curve altogether.”

  Jeremy wasn’t sure what she meant, so took her word for it and used his own common sense. (Actually, he relied on Zoë’s. She told him to just have fun and expect nothing.)

  Something must have worked, because Jeremy already had two solid pitch sessions that week: one at Amazon Studios where the VP he met, a straight-shooter in her thirties named Priyanka, admitted they should have made a bid for Offensive Measures when they heard Monolith was into it (sure, they say that now!) and asked for something new from him just like it; and a second at a new mini-major studio, Paradise Pictures, where they sparked to his Honeymoon Killers remake idea and were “running it up the flagpole.”

  Two more meetings were scheduled for next week, and he was working on a romantic comedy pitch (think: a gay-straight version of My Best Friend’s Wedding) as well as a workplace sitcom about a Mumbai office drone sent to small-town Ohio to run a call center. Have fun, expect nothing: so far, so good.

  In the meantime, Joyce was happily back at home after her three days in Encino Hospital. Doctor’s orders: three full weeks of rest, stricter diet (adios, red meat; put down that salt shaker, lady!), mild daily exercise (after said three weeks), daily doses of blood pressure and cholesterol meds, and for God’s sake—start meditating! Joyce said, without irony, that she’d rather die than meditate; Jeremy told her if it was good enough for Oprah and Deepak Chopra, it was good enough for her. She sighed and agreed to download the app.

  Jeremy had visited his mom almost every day since she returned to the condo. He offered to have her stay with him for a while, but she emphatically declined. As much as Jeremy hesitated asking for help, Joyce had an even deeper independent streak (apple, meet tree). “The day I can’t take care of myself, start digging the hole,” she had said in jest more than once.

  She made Jeremy tell her everything that had happened with Cassie and Annabelle since their unexpected visits to see her in the hospital. He got Joyce up to speed about both women,
though fudged a few of the racier details about Cassie’s desperate measure because, really, why put that embarrassing image in his little old mom’s head? (Okay, it would have been weirder for Jeremy than Joyce, who would have lapped it up. Maybe he’d save the story for another day.)

  “And, sweetheart, you’re positively sure you have no desire to get back with Cassie?” Joyce asked.

  That seemed like a strange question coming from his protective mother. And the word desire? Uh, not random. “Why?” he asked back, eyes narrowed as if she knew something he didn’t. “Would you actually want me to?”

  “Darling, this is not about what I want, it’s about what you want. I’m just asking a question,” she reasoned from her cozy perch in the old La-Z-Boy.

  “Playing devil’s advocate?” wondered Jeremy.

  “No—a mother,” Joyce volleyed back. Damn, she was good.

  Jeremy confirmed for her what he’d come to learn with increasing certainty those last few months. “No, I have no desire to get back together with Cassie. Not anymore. Our relationship has been over for a long time now.”

  “Okay, now what about Annabelle?” Joyce asked, getting down to brass tacks. “Do you think you want to marry her?” She took a sip of iced tea and peered at Jeremy over her acrylic tumbler.

  “Marry her? Mom, I told you, I don’t even know if we’re going to keep seeing each other.”

  “Well, let’s say you do. Then what?”

  “Ma, really. Don’t you think I should finish getting out of one marriage before I contemplate another?” Jeremy’s armpits went damp. He’d been having such a relaxing visit until then.

  She placed her tea glass on a side table and eyeballed her son. “You men. You’re all so damn practical. I’m not talking about getting married tomorrow. When you’re ready!” Joyce paused, thought for a moment. “Say, six months from now.”

  He had to laugh. “Wow, you really want to go to a wedding, don’t you?”

  “I’m not getting any younger, you know.” She shot him a wry look. “And neither are you.”

  “Thanks for the reminder,” he grinned, “on both counts.”

  But Joyce wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily. “Honey, listen to me. You have to decide if you want something badly enough. And if you do, you have to move heaven and earth to get it. Otherwise, one day, you’ll be sitting in a La-Z-Boy drinking iced tea and wondering why you didn’t make your life as happy as humanly possible when you had the chance.”

  His mother’s words resonated with him, but the simple fact remained that Annabelle was working her way through her issues, and there didn’t seem like anything Jeremy could do right then to get them to a mutually happy place. And that included moving heaven and earth. It still shocked him how they could have been so close to something so great and yet, at the same time, so far apart.

  He had picked up the phone to call Annabelle a few times since their in-car talk the week before but never got as far as dialing her complete number. She did, however, send him a quick text that simply read “How’s Joyce?” Jeremy had answered, “Getting better every day. How are you?” Annabelle’s lack of response was her response, and Jeremy decided to respect the space she still seemed to need. He missed her so much but hoped good things would come to those who wait—even if that was one maxim with a patchy history.

  Matty wondered if Annabelle would come around now that she knew for sure that Cassie was definitely, permanently, out of the romantic picture. Jeremy asked his son why Annabelle would know that. Matty shrugged and called it a “hunch,” as he and his dad took an hour walk around the scenic Hollywood reservoir, home to one of the city’s best views of the iconic Hollywood sign.

  Shrug or not, Jeremy guessed that Cassie mentioned her and Jeremy’s failed tryst to Matty, who then told a little birdie named Gabe who likely whispered it to Aunt Annabelle. Though he didn’t press Matty about it, it made Jeremy rethink if he’d ever given Annabelle any lingering reason to believe he still carried a torch for his ex-wife. He could now easily extinguish that thought for her once and for all.

  More instantly newsworthy was that Matty and Gabe were talking about getting a place together. Maybe someone in the family could make a go of it. Jeremy should be taking notes.

  “Maybe it’s easier between two guys,” Matty conjectured. “I mean men and women: Whoever thought that one up?” He may have been joking and it made them both laugh, but sometimes Jeremy wondered the exact same thing. In the end, how any two people made it work was a goddamn miracle.

  All of which leads back to that bright and breezy September day and Jeremy’s amazement over a single turn of events, one that had never crossed his mind as a possibility yet would make all the difference in the rest of his life. If that sounds like a big fucking deal, it was.

  Jeremy had just emailed his film review to Lucien when his phone rang. It was Marjan, who Jeremy hadn’t spoken to since she and the buyers had hightailed it out of the house after walking in on the naked Cassie. He’d never forget the looks on their faces.

  “Are you sitting down?” asked Marjan with an ominous tone.

  “As a matter of fact, I am,” said Jeremy from the comfort of his desk chair. Now what?

  “A bit of bad news, I’m afraid.”

  He took a breath and listened for more. Her pause was hyper-dramatic.

  “The house fell out of escrow,” Marjan said with the gravity of a death notice.

  There was only one reasonable response to that. “Are you fucking kidding me?” yelled Jeremy, leaping out of his chair.

  “Oh, I know! Corey and Tasha are absolutely beside themselves,” Marjan reported. “You have no idea.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m ‘absolutely’ right beside them!” Jeremy took a breath, counted to five. “Marjan, what happened?”

  Unbeknownst to Jeremy, because he hadn’t read the fine print (Who does?), the buyers had to sell their Denver home before they could close on Chez Lerner. They’d left Colorado with their valuable old house on the market; their realtor said it would go quickly. But a buyer’s inspection revealed major structural damage that tanked the deal and, well, the place wouldn’t be selling any time soon.

  “Now what?” asked Jeremy. He gazed out his office window at a pair of squirrels racing around an old black walnut tree. Imagine your entire life’s work was to gather nuts and fuck other squirrels. It seemed pretty cushy right then.

  “We find another buyer!” Marjan said merrily, like it was the easiest thing ever. “Could you just do me one tiny favor?”

  Jeremy sighed. “What’s that?”

  “Remove the little ‘Sold’ sign from out front? It’ll save me a trip.”

  “Anything for you, Marjan,” Jeremy said with faux sweetness, knowing it would go right over her head.

  “Aw, thank you, Jeremy,” she answered on cue. See?

  Jeremy hung up, shocked and defeated. He was supposed to be moving out in less than a month. And now, who knows? Despite continued searching, he still hadn’t found a new place to live, so it may not hurt to have more time to look around. (That apartment he liked in Cassie’s vicinity? Gone. He snoozed, he lost.) On the downside, he’d seen houses in the neighborhood sit on the market for a year or more, driving down prices, patience, and personal momentum. For as beautiful and peaceful as Laurel Canyon could be, it wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

  “Maybe now’s your chance to stay after all,” said a hopeful Crash, who walked by as Jeremy was removing the Sold sign.

  “I wish, but I still can’t afford to.” Jeremy reminded him about his deal with Cassie: either he bought out her half or they sold and shared the proceeds.

  “People buy shit they can’t afford all the time,” Crash reasoned. “Especially in this city. You think Katie and I could afford our house when we bought it? We still can’t—we’re totally house poor. It’s a miracle we got the
loan altogether.”

  Jeremy posed the question he and Cassie had wanted to ask since their young neighbors moved in: “How did you swing it?”

  “Borrowed the down from our parents, which we’re paying back a little at a time, and our jobs cover the mortgage. Everything else, we figure it out as we go. Long as we have enough to keep Lola in kibble, we’re good.” Crash looked resigned. “But hey, don’t listen to me, you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do. We’ll miss you, dude, that’s all.”

  It got Jeremy thinking: What if there was a way to keep the house and he’d just been taking the easy way out?

  CHAPTER

  38

  Jeremy jumped on the phone with his lawyer to update him on the escrow fallout. “So let’s say I did want to stay here and buy out Cassie,” Jeremy began with a renewed sense of wonder and vigor. He was already picturing some upgrades he might make: A new paint job? New garage door? Whoa, slow down! “I know you didn’t recommend me doing it,” Jeremy added, “but you also said it wasn’t impossible.”

  “Have your personal finances dramatically changed these last weeks?” asked Arvin Box.

  “No. I mean, well, not exactly. But I made that nice chunk of money for my script and there are some rewrite payments still due. Oh, and a production bonus if it gets made, which, fingers crossed, it’s going to …” Jeremy was on his second half hour walking the backyard. The Santa Ana winds were whipping up the sycamore leaves.