48
TATUM
NEW YEAR’S EVE DAY
The beach is deserted now. It’s nearly sunset, and the families with little kids have taken them inside to tend to sunburns or to stave off full meltdowns; the retirees have returned to their condos for early dinners or, in my dad’s case, a nap. There are a few stragglers, a young couple who keep chasing each other into the water, a father and his teenage son still tossing a football. But mostly I’m alone. Something I’d grown used to, even if I resented the isolation I’d brought on myself.
I tug my Tisch baseball hat lower, hug my tunic closer as the wind kicks up. I reach for my straw bag and rest the script inside.
I’d opened it on the flight over. Everyone had fallen asleep, so it was just me, in a darkened cabin, with the overhead light aglow. He’d written a note on top:
For you, just for you, Tate. I should have done it years ago but maybe now was the only time I was ready. Take your time. Don’t rush. Be sure. But now you know how I feel, now you know, I hope, that I can still keep my promises.
I’m not sure if I breathed from the first page to the last. I must have, of course, but my heart was so tight, my pulse so quick, that I wouldn’t be surprised if I hadn’t. I closed the last page and stared out the window for I don’t know how long. The darkness of the night passing by, the ocean so far below us that it was impossible to see.
“Mom?” Joey poked me.
“Sweetheart, I didn’t realize you were awake,” I said.
“Are you OK? You’re crying.”
I pressed my fingers against my cheek. I was. Unlike so many times in scripts, in rehearsals, on screen, when I wedge myself into an emotion and play it out, this time I hadn’t even realized how deeply it had cut.
“I’m fine, love. Just thinking about something.”
“Monster?” he asked.
“Him. Lots of other stuff too.” I squeezed his hand, and he nodded, then closed his eyes and tumbled back to sleep. I turned back to the window and the vastness of the world we were cutting through.
Now, on the white beach in Hawaii, I’ve sat with it for five, nearly six, days now. It’s a masterpiece, of course, and it’s his masterpiece that he wrote for me. Or for himself. That’s not for me to say. But I know what he’s trying to say in these pages, and I understand that it is now up to me. He made his plea, he wrote down his version of us—all the ways we hurt each other, all the ways we loved each other too—and he got a lot of it right. The beginning when we couldn’t get enough of each other, the middle when we began to splinter, when we faced loss and triumph and should have used each other as both shelter and foundation but instead lost our way, and then the end, of course. The end was messy with his infidelities and regrettable with my own untruths.
He wrote it all down, and he showed me his nakedness.
He told me to be sure. So I’ve waited to call, waited, just as Tatum does in his script, to know that I’m certain, ready to be what we once were.
I watch that young couple fall on themselves as a wave crashes over them.
No, not what we once were. Because we were foolish and selfish and shortsighted. Can I believe that we can put all of this aside and evolve into something better? How can you ever be certain of that?
The couple emerges from the waves, and he says something that delights her. She throws her head back and laughs, and he reaches for her hand before they set off down the beach.
Maybe you can never be certain. Maybe all you can do is reach for the other’s hand and go.
I inch up from the chaise, let my feet sink into the warm sand, then stride to the water’s edge. I haven’t gone in this whole trip. The ocean has always scared me for reasons that I never really probed or even wanted to understand. Leo was always jumping in, diving under. Ben too. But I usually just sat and watched, called out to them if I thought they were swimming out too far. It was the unknown, of course. How the blue turned black, how it was shallow and then suddenly you couldn’t find your footing. How it is something bigger than you, and it always will be, no matter how big you get on your own.
I stare out to the horizon, the sky now a blistering shade of pink and fuchsia and orange and blue. I think of my mom, of how she told me I could be anything I dreamed of. I always thought she meant with my life; it only now occurs to me that she also meant with my heart, that there has to be room for forgiveness and second chances, along with everything else. If I dream of loving Ben that much, we can become whatever we imagine our dreams to be.
I have room in my heart for Ben. If I am brave enough to open up that sliver that remained there through everything, I can peel it back and find him.
I wade deeper into the water, up to my knees now, then to my chest. I push myself into discomfort; I push myself into my fear.
It’s a shame, I realize, that everyone has gone inside for the sunset.
They’ve given up, turned their backs right before they got to the best part.
I dry off in the open air.
I reach for my cell at the bottom of my bag. I’ve missed seven calls from my team but it’s my holiday, and I’m giving myself this.
Instead, I punch in Ben’s number, just as he wanted me to.
He answers on the first ring.
“We’re an ocean apart, but I can see you clearly, all the way from here,” I say, staring out to the horizon, then up at the darkening sky, the stars beginning their nightly dance.
“I see you too,” he says. “All the way from here.”
“It feels like it took us forever to get this right,” I reply. “Get here as fast as you can.”
“Not forever, just a few more hours,” he says. “I’m already on my way.”