The air catches in my throat. This is the moment, the one where I can tell her: I haven’t forgotten, I’m still writing something for you.
Instead of being honest, though, I deflect, because it’s second nature now and because I don’t think I can see her like I used to, even though I feel that I can all the same. How do I bridge what I think and what I feel? How do I figure out which to trust?
I say, though there is so much else to say: “Well, I mean, it was basically half dead. And those popcorn strings . . .”
She laughs, not particularly happily. “I guess it was a long time ago.”
“Well, this tree is a work of art.”
“Decorators came out, did the whole thing from top to bottom.” She flops her shoulders again, then circles the front branches. “I don’t even know where they put all the ornaments, the ones from my mom . . .” She trails off, her eyes searching. Now she’s the one to deflect: “How’s work?” Then: “Sorry, we don’t have to talk about work.”
She knows as well as I do that it’s a sticking point between us: how apparent my insecurities were, how frustrated I was—unfairly—at her success. But also, how she almost always chose her own work over me in recent years, like maybe I did with her back when we first started and she bought a half-dead plant at the grocery store and considered it a Christmas tree.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I mean, Cassidy is screwing Paxton, and they think no one knows even though their trailers are literally shaking every time we call cut.”
Tatum giggles at this, and she has never looked more beautiful. “Well, you know, two hot actors on a set, what are you gonna do?” She quiets. “I mean, not me. That was never my thing but—”
“Listen, you can always ask me about work,” I interrupt. “It never should have been otherwise.”
Her face stills. “OK.” Then more quietly: “OK.”
Something shifts between us then, a collective passing of regret, of all the mistakes we’ve each made, of all the times we scarred each other, of all the ways, too, that we loved each other for so long. Maybe still do.
“Do you miss her?” I ask.
“Who?”
“Your mom,” I say. I’m as surprised that I’m asking as she appears to be asked. Tatum and I haven’t spoken nakedly in such a long time. I almost feel as if I’m probing a stranger or a new girlfriend, pressing her for personal details that she might not be ready to divulge.
“All the time,” she replies, wide open, a map as easy to read as when she was back at Dive Inn, a million years and memories ago.
Of course she would answer me honestly. Tatum never was one for secrets. Until she was. Until I was too.
I tell myself to reach for her, to tell her of all my regrets, of all the ways I would do it differently. But then her cell rings in the kitchen, and she scurries from the room, refocusing on her other life now, and I stand there underneath the glow of the Christmas lights, and I ask myself again: What do you feel? What do you think? Whom do you see?
The last question, for so many years, was the one that mattered most.
40
TATUM
DECEMBER
I can’t sleep after Ben leaves.
I debate texting Damon, thanking him for the lovely, unexpected evening, but I’m not sure if that’s too forward, too needy after just one evening together. I’m new at the dating thing, and besides, I don’t even know if I want to be forward or needy or see him again. Luann has texted me three times, desperate to know how it went, but I don’t have the energy to tap back: He kissed me and my knees went a little weak, and then Ben was waiting for me in our kitchen when I got home. And then I discovered that I was glad to see him there, that I didn’t really want him to leave. That part of me wanted to say, Stay forever. But part of me knew that was just a line someone wrote in a romantic comedy. Not real life.
I fling off the sheets, slide my feet into the slippers some designer gifted me, and pad across my bedroom toward Joey’s room. He doesn’t like me to sleep in his bed anymore. Eight going on fifteen, I tell anyone who asks. I crouch next to his sweet face instead, running my hands over his forehead, then cheeks. He is warm, Joey is always warm—He runs hot, I also say when I have to explain why he refuses to wear long pants or a sweater—and he’s stripped off his PJs, flung them to the floor. I try to remember if my own mom would ever slip into my bed because she needed comforting or if I ever woke to find her watching me. Nothing comes, no reassuring memory to call upon.
My mom believed in taking your licks and rising back up. She didn’t tell me not to get that first job at twelve; she certainly wished that she hadn’t gotten sick, but she didn’t shy away from how working made me resourceful, independent, a caretaker too. She still called me “Deflatum Tatum,” even though she knew I hated it: she didn’t do it to mock me, she did it to arm me, so I could know myself, understand my flaws, and figure out how to best use them to my advantage. When to nurse them, when to let them go. She protected me from my father, locking him in their bedroom or throwing him into a bathtub and turning on the shower until I was old enough to understand his erraticism, his instability. She also taught me how to protect myself.
I kiss Joey’s forehead and stand. I want so very much to lie next to him, to use him as a shield from all of my thoughts from the moment—Why is Ben here, why do I want him here, why is he with Amanda if he is lingering in my kitchen, why am I not asking him about all of this, how have we made such a mess so that I can’t even ask him in the first place—but I conjure up my mom and I try to honor what’s now best for Joe. His space, his freedom, giving him an inch or two to discover who he is, while I stand in the shadows, ready with an outstretched hand for when he stumbles.
I wind my way down the spiral staircase into the kitchen, pour myself another glass from the opened bottle of merlot, flip the Elle cover so that I stare at the perfume ad on the back.
My mom didn’t leave my dad until it was bad. Truly awful. Blackout drunkenness and fired from his job and nights when he never made it home and we weren’t sure if he ever would. That was what it took to break her.
I wonder if she’d be surprised to see him now. Eleven years clean. A doting grandfather, a committed husband, a sober coach, an excellent golfer. I wonder if she’d think I gave up too easily with Ben. Then I wonder if perhaps I’m the one who actually believes that. If my dad is proof of anything, it is that anyone can remake himself if he tries hard enough. I remake myself several times a year for whichever part I’m playing. It’s easier than you’d think, really. Maybe Ben and I could have remade ourselves too.
Tonight, I could have said: You’re back with Amanda. Let’s sign the papers, be done with it. I could have said: I wish it were anyone but her. I could have said: I feel so alone in my little bubble, and I want you to permeate it. I could have said: I just met an amazing man who took me to Koreatown and surprised me in a million ways. Tell me for the last time that it shouldn’t be you instead.
But I didn’t. Because every time I think I can read him—showing up at the beach that day, sharing how much I miss my mom tonight—it turns out that maybe I read him wrong. Show me the map of who you are again, I want to say. But I haven’t. I don’t.
I open the recycling bin, drop the copy of Elle on top, flip the lights off in the kitchen, and wander to the living room.
I find Ben’s presents for Joey under the tree. I sift around for a minute, wondering if he’d left me something unexpected as well. I’d purchased a rare, signed script of Love Is in the Air, Reagan’s first film, from an antique collector online—it had been nearly impossible to track down, and I had it sitting in a drawer in my office, ready to be wrapped and gifted if I were bold enough or if I thought it could help. Help what? I shake my head. What a stupid notion. Ben was with Amanda now, and he hadn’t gotten me anything, and I was probably turning this into something it wasn’t, a fantasy that we could be what we once were. I’d always been good at that, God knows. If I was an expert in
anything, it was concocting a world of make-believe. That’s why they’ve anointed me out here, that’s why they call my name and give me awards and pay me a ludicrous amount of money for playing a part.
There is a thumping in the hallway, and Monster rounds the corner to find me. His gait is so slow now, but his tail beats in rhythm as he makes his way to rub against my leg.
“Hey buddy, hey, guy.” I nuzzle his graying nose.
He folds himself into a ball at my feet, so I flatten myself beside him on the hand-spun Egyptian rug that cost too much; my designer picked it out, and I must have approved it when she did so, but I have no memory of that now. The lights from the tree dance off the ceiling, like a starlit sky, like that wide expanse a lifetime ago in Arizona.
I narrow my eyes to slits, then peer through my fingers to shift my perspective. Maybe if I stare long enough, I can make believe that we’re still back there, that we haven’t detonated between then and now. Maybe, I can make believe about that too.
41
BEN
DECEMBER
“Come back east with me,” Amanda says, forking her eggs. We’d slept late and walked to a late breakfast at a bistro with a garden a few blocks from my apartment. “I have that whole week off between Christmas and New Year’s.”
I push around my own omelet, pick out the onions. Amanda had ordered for me while I took a call from Eric—our lead actress, Cassidy Rivers, was threatening not to return to the set after the holidays if we didn’t fire the lead actor, Paxton Fisher, with whom she’d been sleeping until last week—and Amanda had forgotten (or didn’t know) how much I loathed onions.
“I don’t know if I can get away.” I use my knife to point to my phone. “Cassidy is threatening mutiny.”
“Screw her. Call her bluff. Isn’t she contracted for the next decade? I think I read that in People.”
“It doesn’t really work that way,” I say. “Besides, I’m not really sure that calling people’s bluffs is the best way to cultivate a relationship that indeed needs to last the better part of the decade. Honesty might be better.” I say this but what I am really thinking is: Tatum. Why weren’t we more honest with each other when we had the chance? I recalculate. Why wasn’t I more honest with her when I had the chance? How I was threatened by her success, how I resented her blind trust in her dad, how I found a new spark with Amanda because it was easier than struggling to relight whatever had faded between us? It all seems so stupid now, trivial even, that I let these dishonesties pile up until they were too high to surmount, and now, I don’t know what she wants, what she sees, what she feels.
Amanda misses all of this. She takes another bite. “Oh, you know whom you should hire?”
I find a square on my omelet that is onion free. “Who?”
“Lily Marple. I am obsessed with her right now.”
“She doesn’t do TV. Much less a show that’s been around for years.”
“But if she did . . .” She sips her coffee too enthusiastically, and it spills on her chin. “I’m just saying. Do you know her? Can I meet her?”
“Years ago,” I say. “I worked with her years ago.” One Day in Dallas, when she shoved her hands down my pants and made it clear she was up for anything. A lifetime ago when I wouldn’t have dreamed of being unfaithful.
“I’m completely obsessed with everything she’s doing. Like, I literally googled her boots the other day.”
“This coming from a highly lauded doctor,” I say.
“I know,” she laughs. “I’m only telling you. Don’t breathe a word to any of my patients.”
“I think Tatum is friendly with her now. I can ask her if you really want.”
Amanda freezes for a flick of a beat, then catches herself and pretends that she hasn’t. I know this is a sore spot with her, that I am newly close with Tatum again, that I sometimes stop by for dinner unannounced or that I still wear the watch she gave me for my fortieth or that the lock screen on my phone is a photo of the three of us. I tell Amanda it’s because of Joey: Tatum and I are committed to providing a united front for him, and even if it’s an excuse, it’s also true. I am trying not to skirt the lines of untruths now knowing, with hindsight, how badly they can unmoor me.
“No,” Amanda says, her jaw firming. “It’s OK. I didn’t really think I could meet her or anything. It’s not like Lily Marple and I were going to be best friends. God.”
I pick out a few more onions with my fingers.
“Do you not like them?” she asks. “Since when?”
“I don’t think I ever did. It’s fine. I’m just eating around them.”
“Shit, sorry. I didn’t know. I don’t remember that at all.”
What she could actually be saying is: We don’t remember a lot of things about each other.
Though we’ve been back together only for about six weeks, Amanda practically lives at my apartment now. At first, like many firsts with her, it was exhilarating. We screwed constantly; we stayed up late eating Chinese food in bed like we had when I was twenty-five; we went to the gym together, we showered together, we did, well, everything—other than when she was at work, or when I was with Joey—together. But then the tug of the manuscript, Between Me and You, and the promises I made with that manuscript, called me back, and with that, the tug of why I was writing it—for Tatum.
Then I remembered that I was firmly not twenty-five anymore, and there were concrete reasons why part of me preferred adulthood. That Chinese food at midnight leaves you with heartburn, and screwing constantly distracts you from real life. Amanda is needier now than she used to be, or at least how I remember her to have been. She’ll straddle my lap when I’m writing or she’ll pout when I tell her I’m checking in with Tatum. She’s older too—almost forty, and I know she wants kids of her own, so I get it. I get that she wants me to be all-in, but it’s impossible to be all-in when I’m not even sure if I’m all-out with Tatum. Of course there are the divorce papers, and we’ve finalized all the decisions, neatly sliced our life in half—This is yours, this is mine, thank you very much. But it doesn’t feel as final as it seems, though maybe this is just another lie I’ve convinced myself of rather than facing the stark truth: Tatum doesn’t love me anymore. This is at least half the reason I haven’t finished the script yet: I rewound our collective history and wove it into the fabric of the pages, but I have no idea where we’ll go from here, no idea how to finish it. If the characters will end up happy; if in turn, Tatum and I can end up happy.
“Listen,” I say today at breakfast. “Even without this crisis with Cassidy, I can’t come back east with you. It’s Christmas, and I have to be with Joey.”
“And Tatum,” Amanda replies flatly. “I thought they were going away? To Hawaii?” She says Hawaii like it is Siberia, an absolute punishment of a vacation.
“Not until after Christmas. Her dad comes, and her sister . . .” Be honest, be more honest, I tell myself. “It’s not just that. I want to be here. Not that I have to, but I want to.”
“Fine.”
“He’s my son, Amanda.”
“And she’s still your wife, after all.” She wipes her lips with her napkin, pours some of her coffee over her food so she won’t eat the rest, then covers the mess with her napkin. She does this whenever she thinks she’s had enough but doesn’t trust herself to stop; I remember it from back then too. Old habits can be tough to change. “God knows I can’t compete with that.”
I wish I could pour coffee over us, throw a napkin atop the two of us to stop whatever is about to come next. I don’t want to hurt her; I don’t want Tatum to hurt me. There is so much damage in this world already. Wouldn’t it be nice if we stopped bruising each other and could untangle our messes without leaving more marks?
“Amanda,” I say, but have nothing else to soothe her.
“I’m sorry about the onions,” she says. “I guess I should have known.”
42
TATUM
DECEMBER
Mon
ster collapses on the kitchen floor while I’m pouring myself coffee. I hear a loud thud, and it takes a moment to register because Joey is at school, and the house is otherwise quiet, just as I need it to be to go over the towering stack of scripts this afternoon. I’ve promised my team I’ll make a pick on my next three projects—line up my entire next year—by Christmas. Piper and Scooter and the kids are arriving in two days; I’ve left myself no time to consider the next twelve months of my life.
I race around the kitchen island and see him, helpless, shaken, in a pool of his urine.
“Monster! Oh baby boy, oh sweet boy, no, no, no, I’m here.” I sink to my knees and cradle his head.
His lost eyes find mine, his nose nuzzling my lap.
He is too big for me to carry myself. And I promised myself I wouldn’t call Ben. It’s a stupid thing: my pride, the welt that sits with me because he’s with Amanda, and I’m still alone. There’s Damon, but that isn’t much of anything yet, just a second date where he kissed me again, and I felt woozy with desire, but then I said good night and returned to my cocoon, behind my wall, figurative and literal. I can’t call Damon because my dog is dying.
I find my cell in my back pocket and dial the vet.
“My dog, Monster Connelly Livingston, he . . . he collapsed, and he’s breathing and I guess he’s alert, but he’s a hundred pounds, and I can’t get him to you, and I don’t know what to do now . . .”
I don’t even realize I’m crying until Monster licks my fallen tears off his snout.
“Ms. Connelly,” she says, because she always knows when Hollywood royalty calls—it happens this way all over town. “We’ll send someone with a van out to you immediately.”
“You can do that?” I hiccup.
“We provide the service,” the receptionist says. What she means is We provide the service to people who are special. “Our driver will be to you within fifteen minutes.”
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