39
BEN
DECEMBER
“Jesus Christ!” Tatum screams when she finds me sitting at the kitchen island, nursing a glass of merlot from a bottle I’d found open in the wine fridge and flipping through the December issue of Elle, for which she’s the cover model. Her hand flies to her heart, and her heels click against the bare wood floor as she skitters in surprise.
“Sorry, shit, sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“What are you doing here? Is everything OK?” She exhales, regaining her breath, drops her purse on the island, and reaches for an empty wineglass of her own in the cabinet.
“I brought over Joey’s gifts to put under the tree. Figured I’d stay. Sent Constance home.”
Her brow furrows, then relaxes. “Oh, OK. I mean, sure, that’s fine.”
I was doing this from time to time now: stopping by unannounced, with the honest intention of spending time with Joey—our custody agreement was fluid, and Tatum never minded—but then often loitering for longer, inviting myself to stay for dinner, suggesting we all watch a movie.
Tatum pours the merlot, swirls the wine, sips deeply. I know she’s been on a date. I can tell by the cut of her dress, by the hint of her makeup. Not the piled-on stuff she wears for work when a professional comes and fluffs her, not the uncomfortable heels and dress she’d wear for a junket or a dinner where she has to be on all the time.
“What?” she asks now, catching my stare.
“You look nice,” I say. “That’s all.”
“I was just . . .” She waves her hand while holding the glass, and the wine tumbles over the lip, onto the white counter. “Shit, shit, shit, shit.”
I scramble off my stool and grab the cleaning solution from underneath the kitchen sink, then pass her the paper towels too. It’s as if nothing has changed, even though everything has. Or maybe it’s as if I wish nothing had changed, but really, it’s all gone to complete shit. I’m jealous, of course. I’m fucking jealous that she was on a date, spent an evening sizing up a guy who could occupy the space in her life that I once did. Amanda is working tonight; otherwise surely she’d be at my apartment, on my couch, in my bed. It’s happened so quickly, how we picked up like years hadn’t passed, like I hadn’t burned my old life to the ground and we were just, like, who we were back at NYU. It’s nothing like that: Leo is gone, and my dad is gone, and I’ve lived a whole life between then and now, a life with Tatum, but it’s easier to pretend that this isn’t true. Amanda hasn’t spent time with Joey yet; I haven’t mentioned her to my mom (and Ron) yet. It’s been only a month since we reconnected that afternoon on the beach, five weeks if we’re being specific, and to make those introductions feels too permanent, too real.
I know this is what Amanda wants. Permanence. She tells me she finally feels complete, like she always knew we’d find our way back to each other. I refrain from reminding her that she left me for a residency in Palo Alto, regardless of who officially broke up with whom. I refrain, also, from telling her that when she tumbles into sleep after a long shift in the ER and after we’ve slept together in ways that were akin to how we used to sleep together when we were twenty-five, I slip out of the bedroom and retreat to my computer, where I hone the manuscript I am writing for Tatum. Finally. I want to give it to her for Christmas, which leaves me ten days to get it right, prove to her that I didn’t overlook that promise I made to her for years on end.
It’s as if losing Tatum—even though we lost each other so slowly for so many years now—losing her for good has finally made me realize, stupidly, romantically, what I wanted all along. Amanda keeps me company; Tatum has my heart. It’s like a ridiculous romantic comedy that years ago, I’d never have even entertained, never deemed good enough to watch, much less embody. But we have detonated what we had, and in the rubble, I’ve seen the beauty of it too. Maybe the fact that I can finally uncover a silver lining in all that has gone wrong means that I’m growing, growing up. At forty-fucking-two. But finally. If I can’t, if all I can do is get mired down in the shitty ways that life has failed me, or I’ve failed life, I’ll never point myself back toward happiness. Not quick-sex happiness with Amanda. That high lasts only until I make it into the shower. Real, resonant happiness with Tatum that can’t be washed off in the shower because its grit and its depth has sunk into my pores.
Tatum cleans the mess on the counter, then winds her way into the living room, where the white lights on the Christmas tree bounce off the walls and make the whole room sparkle. The three of us had gone together, driving north toward Santa Barbara, to find it. Joey had run from tree to tree, screaming each time: “This one is perfect!” but Tatum wouldn’t settle until she found one that actually was. It was a rare afternoon when no one hassled her, when we could tromp through the tree farm and not encounter another soul for swaths of time that led us all to feel a little normal.
“This really was the perfect tree,” she says, staring up at the lights. Then: “Remember that tiny one we had years ago?”
She means the three-footer we plopped in the corner of the bungalow on Ocean Avenue our first year out here. I was working too much on, what, I jigger my brain to remember now. All the Men or One Day in Dallas? Maybe Reagan. All those hours and years spent obsessing, as if I were chasing the crown to please my dad. Amanda had been the one to point this out to me recently, but I wonder if Tatum didn’t understand that too; maybe she just wanted me to figure it out on my own. Anyway, whatever it was that I was working on, it felt so important then, important enough that I didn’t have time to properly shop for a tree with her, despite her nudging me three, four, five times. Instead, I dragged myself home one night and found a pitiful little tree in the corner of the living room. Tatum had bought it at the grocery store and stuffed it in the back of the Prius. She’d spiraled swirls of popcorn around it from the bottom to the top and found an illuminated star to place atop; it flashed on and off every other second so our living room looked like it was constantly on the verge of losing its electricity.
I laugh now. “I’m not even sure that could be defined as a tree. It was more of a plant.”
She stretches back her neck, takes in the span of the tree. “God, you know, my mom always said, ‘If you can dream it, you can be it.’” She rights herself. “I’m not sure that this tree was part of that plan. I mean, I liked that plant that we had back on Ocean Avenue. It’s hard, now, to see exactly what was wrong with it.”
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.