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.