36
TATUM
NOVEMBER
I see Ben as he leans over the white fencing that separates the path from the cliff down to the beach. He tilts over and assesses, then rights himself and starts toward the steps to the ocean. I sink lower in the driver’s seat, though I’m a block away and the SUV has tinted windows, which usually guard against the prying eyes of fans who recognize me or paparazzi who need a slice of me whenever they manage to track me down. I’ve gotten better at evading them; figured out how to leave early before they plant themselves outside my gate, or how to barter for a good shot if they agree to give me freedom for the rest of the day. So for now, I’m alone, something I rarely am anymore, an irony that isn’t lost on me now that Ben doesn’t sleep on his side of the bed.
I’d realized I’d forgiven him a few weeks ago. He’d shown up to get Joey for the weekend, and rather than abruptly stand by the door and make courteous small talk (or have Constance do it and skip it altogether), I surprised myself by inviting him in.
“Really?” His brow wrinkled and the corners of his lips curled into a smile. “Well, sure, OK!”
I poured him a coffee—all black like he always took it—and he pulled up a stool at the kitchen island, wrapping his hands around his mug like it was warming him from within.
Neither of us quite knew where to start.
“So,” Ben said.
“So,” I replied.
There were so many things I wanted to ask, mostly How are you and Do you miss me? Which I hadn’t even realized were on my mind or were something resonating within me until he was there, clutching his coffee like he’d done a thousand times in front of me before.
But before either of us could find anything important or even casual to say, Joey came rushing down the steps and threw himself on Ben’s leg.
“Daddy! You’re here in the kitchen! Does this mean you guys are getting back together?”
We both cleared our throats, and Ben set his mostly full mug in the sink, and they were gone before I could ask Ben to stay longer, which I’d found myself rehearsing in my head while he sipped his coffee, the silence hovering between us, the bubble of so much unsaid hovering too. I washed the mug afterward, staring out the window above the kitchen sink, wondering how that can happen: how in an instant you can forgive someone without consciously doing so, how you can miss someone without recognizing how lonely you were without them.
It had been well over a year since we blew up, almost two, if you start with that day when I told him about Leo, when I admitted I knew about the affair. So long that it was hard to remember who had wronged whom. There was Amanda, of course, his infidelity. But I’d wronged him in plenty of ways too: Leo, yes, but also in the smaller ways that I chose my career over him, put him second. It wasn’t that I apologized for my ambition, but I’d come to recognize that ambition and thoughtfulness are not incompatible.
A year or two is a long time to hold on to bruises that you’re partially responsible for making.
This morning, near the Santa Monica beach, I watch Ben disappear over the crest of the horizon down the steps to the sand, and then he’s gone. I adjust my sunglasses and an old Tisch hat that I used to wear when Daisy and I went power walking, when I had all that baby weight to lose.
I knew he’d be here, though we haven’t spoken in four days. But we still know each other well, or I like to think that I still know him—love him—well enough to know that he’d be here, remembering Leo on his birthday, that time when Ben told me it felt like the world stopped, and it was just the two of them and the waves on the ocean.
I glance up and down Ocean Avenue to ensure that no one has tailed me here, that I haven’t been followed by the long lens of a prying camera. But the street is empty on this sunless Sunday morning. Joey is at a school retreat for the weekend. The isolation, which I’ve grown used to, built around myself like armor, feels lonelier, cooler today, and I want to reach for Ben to warm me, like the Tin Man who was looking for a heart and needed to be loved.
I slam the car door and jog to the spot Ben just vacated, only a block or two away from our first place together, where we lived when he was something brilliant with Romanticah, and I was something less so. I squint against the glare that permeates through the heavy veil of clouds, looking for him. No, it wasn’t that I was less than he, it was just that this town told me as much, valued me as lesser. Now I’m the most valuable player. Like anything as ephemeral as fame should define you. Like it says anything real about who you are, whom you love, what you have to offer.
I thought about this more these days, called Piper—who had a new baby at home—sometimes drove down to Commitments with my dad for refresher therapy sessions, sometimes booked a therapy session just for me. But I thought about all the things we choose to let into our lives and how much of a choice that really is, how much ownership we need to take, how much responsibility. Ben made his choice with Amanda; I made mine with my loyalty to Leo, with my unwillingness to assume Ben could forgive him, like he had stubbornly refused to forgive my dad.
I think we’d both choose differently if we could do it all over, and I tell my therapist this, I talk about my regret, I talk about my responsibility. That it was easier to dive into my work than come home and confront him about his affair; that it was easier to lose myself in a role than ask Ben why he lost himself with Amanda. That over the years, life got so very, very difficult, with my mom and his dad and my dad and Leo, and we lost so much, and that when we could have chosen to duck down in a foxhole together, we chose otherwise. It didn’t happen with one fell swoop, and it was so gradual that neither of us realized it had happened until we found ourselves here, dividing a lifetime. Maybe it would be easier to pinpoint a moment and say: If only we could go back there and choose differently. But it’s like a plane crash: a series of critical but small things all went wrong, and suddenly you’re in a million pieces on the ground.
I have never been one not to do the work, not to roll up my sleeves, but I suppose now I can see that the one place that it mattered most—with Ben—we simply didn’t.
I chose this.
I just didn’t realize I was choosing it at the time.
I love Ben in ways that are still unexpected, still surprising. It wasn’t what I felt on New Year’s Eve, and it wasn’t what I felt when we fell asleep under the vast Arizona sky in the back of our Jeep because I’d been stubborn and run out of gas, and he’d forgiven me. It’s hard-earned, it’s complicated, it’s also probably indelible.
Though I am fraught with nerves and also the terror of heartbreak, I have told myself that I would show up today and tell him. Lay myself bare; let it all ride on this.
I still love you. I am showing up for you. Please, I don’t want to sign the divorce papers. Please, can we try again?
I head halfway down the stairway, scanning the dull sands of the beach until I see him. He is staring out at the horizon, just as I’m staring at him. Lost. I found him here, and yet we’re just as lost as ever. He removes something from his pocket—cigarettes—and taps the pack against the butt of his hand, then pulls one to his mouth.
Ben’s smoking? When did Ben start smoking? I knew he dabbled after Leo died, but as a habit, no, I had no idea.
I narrow my eyes into slits. How have we gotten so far apart that I don’t know that my husband has taken up smoking?
I know how, of course, but that doesn’t mean I want to remember.
“Write something for me,” I used to say, like it was all I ever wanted in the world.
He never did.
He checks his phone with his free hand, then shoves the phone back in his pocket. Is he hoping it’s me? I reach for my own phone and consider, fleetingly, typing . . . I don’t know what.
I put my phone back into my own pocket. I don’t want to text him, I don’t want to communicate in parsed words like that anymore. I want to go to him, down the rest of the steps, tell him that I’m here, that we should start over. But I find that I can’t move. Not yet. What if he doesn’t want me? What if he says no? What if he doesn’t see in me what I see in him now?
A blond surfer washes up next to him, then tucks her board beneath her arm and turns left down the beach toward the empty lifeguard station. It’s dangerous out there in the surf with no one watching. Doesn’t she know this? I want to run down there and tell her to be careful, to protect herself. I wouldn’t, not just because it would seem paranoid, pushy. But because I’ve stopped enjoying the casual company of strangers, of small talk or chitchat with the Gelson’s cashier, because everyone watches me now, and nothing can truly ever be casual. It’s all documented and photographed, and even if someone isn’t holding his phone aloft with the camera app open, someone is tweeting about it.
All a choice, my therapist reminds me. Move to Montana, she’ll say. You could. I could, but I choose not to. Instead, I’ve constructed this protective bubble around me and allowed that to convince me that I am safe.
Ben turns, heads back toward me, and I duck, like this stair railing can conceal me. I right myself. No. I’m here, I’m here because I wanted him to see me, to know that I showed up to honor him and Leo and us. I inhale, exhale, steady myself and start down the remaining steps, still watching him, still wondering if maybe he’ll see me first.
He slides on his flip-flops, then freezes, peering at a runner pointed toward him.
I recognize the swoosh of her red hair—I’d spent enough time googling her—even from here.
She stops right in front of him, the surprise on his face morphing to happiness.
Amanda.
Heat rushes to my cheeks at the embarrassment of witnessing this. He’d told me it was over between them; I’d chosen to believe him.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
I spin and race up the steps, race back to the Escalade, fat tears startling me in the reflection in the window before I pull the door open and slink inside. I thought I’d prepared myself for heartbreak. Yet even after everything, I hadn’t realized that Ben and I would really split in two.