46
TATUM
CHRISTMAS
I make Joey wait until Ben gets here to open his presents. He’s been up since five a.m., jumping on my bed, demanding that we start, but I insist. Instead, I make him pancakes (from a mix, but it’s the best I can do on my own), let him dump out his stocking, and log him in to Petfinder, where he keeps squealing that he wants to adopt all the dogs. All of them, Mom! All of them!
Finally, at eight, Ben, holding a tray of gourmet coffees, lets himself in with his key, and Joey races through the house into the foyer to throw himself at Ben.
“You’re finally here! Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Mom was making me wait,” Joey shouts, then untangles his limbs and races into the living room.
“Latte?” Ben asks, holding out a cup.
“Necessary,” I reply. “He’s been up since five.”
“Ouch.”
Piper, Scooter, and Emily come down the steps, Piper with the new baby, Harry, on her hip.
“I’ll call Dad,” I say. “Tell him we’re starting.”
To Joey, I shout, “Hey, Joe, before you dive in full frenzied, are you packed like I asked?”
Joey doesn’t answer. Instead, he’s neck deep in gift wrap, in all sorts of toys that he certainly doesn’t need and that might go unused before Constance earmarks them for charity.
“I can check,” Ben says. “If you want to call your dad.”
“I gave him a list, told him to take everything out that he wanted to bring, and pack. Told him no allowance if he didn’t do it by this morning.” I’ve been trying to instill more responsibility in Joey. Remove him from his own bubble that we’ve inflated around him with the divorce, with the perks that are given to him because of my fame, the deference of being my kid, the special treatment.
“It’s Christmas, Tate, let’s give him a break.” He kisses my cheek. “Oh, before I forget.” He rests his coffee on the foyer table, reaches into his bag, removes a gift in silver wrapping, a white bow. “For you.”
“Ben . . .”
“I know I didn’t have to. I didn’t do it because of that. I wanted to.”
I meet his eyes and nod. “I have something for you too. It’s under the tree.”
I decided only last night to give it to him, the signed Love Is in the Air script. I’d tracked it down through three auction houses, had to place a special hold on it, spent a small fortune. I wasn’t even sure why I was doing it at the time: Hope? Forgiveness? An apology for all the ways we wronged each other? Last night, though, I knew. Absolution. Maybe even a new start.
It had been sitting in my desk drawer emitting a muted radar signal that became louder, then louder still after the night Monster died. Do it. You love him. Show him. He was with Amanda now, yes, and so maybe it would be a gesture that meant only that we could be good for each other, kind to each other, in new ways. Not as spouses, but still as partners. I loved him. I wanted him. I had shown up on the beach in November to say that, to demonstrate. That he has moved on hasn’t changed how I feel. This was the surprising discovery I made last night while I was fingering the worn pages of the script, remembering how I used to read Ben’s drafts of his Reagan screenplay, how he’d pull a blanket over my legs, how he’d pace behind me waiting for my feedback. Because my opinion mattered, because we valued each other in so many ways. I shut the leather-bound script quietly, then retrieved the wrapping paper from the hall closet, and folded the corners, taped them just so, wrote a card that I signed with love. I found a grosgrain ribbon in the closet and tied it in a perfect bow, which I’d learned years ago during a holiday season spent gift-wrapping at the mall for extra pay.
He’d been there for me when Monster died; he’d been there for me for so much more. Nearly two decades now. Just because he is with Amanda doesn’t detract from any of that. And so I padded downstairs and placed the script, wrapped in silver and gold paper, under the tree. I stared at it for a moment. It was luminous. The present, yes. But the choice I was making in giving it too.
“You got something for me?” Ben cranes his neck toward the tree and grins with such surprise that he reminds me of what he looked like when we first met, back at Dive Inn.
“It’s nothing,” I say. “I mean, not nothing. But I just saw something, and I thought of you.”
“Well, thank you. I can’t wait to see it.”
I start to undo the bow on his gift, slip my fingers under the seam of the paper.
“Wait, no, please don’t open it here.” He almost seizes it from my hands.
“What? Why?”
His cheeks turn crimson.
“I just . . . can you do it once I’m gone?”
“But you’re staying through dinner, right?” It occurs to me that I don’t want him to leave, not after we’re done unwrapping the gifts, not for a long while.
“I’m staying for dinner,” he says. “This is the only place I want to be.”
“I’ll open it on the plane.” A week in Hawaii with Joey, Piper, Scooter, Emily, Harry, my dad, and Cheryl. It should be enough, I think. All of their company, without Ben.
“That’s what I envisioned.” He smiles. “You opening it on the plane.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“You don’t have to,” he says. “Because I do.”