1
BEN
NOVEMBER 2016 (NOW)
I told myself that if she showed, that would be the sign I needed.
If she showed, maybe we could find a way to rewind, rewrite, do it all over. Do it all better. Do it all again, only differently.
It’s silly; it’s something out of a Hollywood ending, and I’d know that better than most. It’s not how I’d write it, but it’s how the studio would want it, what would appeal to the demographic they were courting:Men will want to go home and screw their wives, call their girlfriends; women will weep and know that love conquers all.
I snort to myself, though it’s lost in the bluster of the wind, the squeal of a motorcycle racing too quickly down Ocean Avenue, empty on this overcast Sunday morning.
Did I ever believe that? Did I ever pin my hopes that love could conquer all? It feels like so long ago: when we met each other, when we loved each other without conditions.
A familiar tornado of grief spins inside me. Though it’s not just grief for her. It’s for both of us. For me too. How naive we were, how we lost ourselves to so many things—her career, mine for a while, Joey, our mourning, everything that piled up to be the weight of too much. Me more than her, I suppose, though I never admitted this aloud. It was easier to point fingers, make her feel responsible, even though I know, if I peel back enough layers to my core, that I was equally so. More than equal. She was always sturdier than I was, elusive in the way that an actress needs to be: permeable, which also made her more adaptable to all the shit that came our way. I was who I was, always had been, and hadn’t been able to adapt, to duck right when a left punch was thrown, to duck left when the right one came at me too.
But still, maybe today we can right ourselves.
We can. We have to.
I say this aloud, against the wind, as if putting it out into the universe, here where the earth dives into the sea, makes it true.We can right ourselves.
It’s so romantic, so unlike who I’ve become, that I’m surprised to discover how much I believe it, how much I mean it. How much Ineedit. I need her. I want her; my stomach turns at the notion of just how badly I do. I’ve staked our future on her showing. Which is presumptuous and also dumb, since I have conveyed none of this to her.
But she knows where to find me, knows exactly where I’ll be.
I check the time on my phone. Not that I’ve told her I’d be here. Like a stupid script, some dumb chick flick, I’m throwing it to fate:If she shows, we’ll give it another go.Call off the lawyers, which she said she didn’t really want anyway. Did I want them? A year ago I was certain, but bruises fade until you can’t detect them across your healed skin, and now, even when I search for those welts, I find I’m unable to see them. Feel them, yes, sometimes if I press myself in the right places I can stillfeelthem, but that’s probably the point. That you can still detect the pain but don’t have a constant reminder. That’s the only way to fix us:This is where you hurt me; please don’t do it again.
So here I am, casting about, looking for the familiar bounce of her step, the way her hair fans back and forth as she walks, the way her spine points exactly north with perfect posture thanks to endless years of Pilates and yoga and whatever else the studio pays for and implores her to do.
I lean over the white picket fence that lines the park’s running path, tilt toward the ledge below, the drop-off that crescents into the beach, then the vast expanse of ocean. When we first moved here, we lived just around the corner in a one-bedroom bungalow that felt made for us. We’d stumble down this same path on the weekend mornings, hands linked, toward the farmers market or for a beckoning cup of coffee. She’d be exhausted from her late shift at the bar; I’d be wired from a night of writing too late.
I press my palms against the fence, straighten out, then head down the sun-bleached steps toward the water, the air swirling and smelling of salt and nostalgia.
She’ll know to find me down here, where I always am on his birthday, where something beckons me year after year, as if this ritual brings me peace.She’ll come,I tell myself.She has to. I need her to.
The beach is mostly deserted. It’s too cold to swim, and the sun is battling a swath of thick clouds that won’t dissipate until late afternoon, just before sunset, when it’s too late to enjoy the beach anyway. There are a few lone surfers, bundled in their rubber wetsuits, a determined jogger every now and then. I kick off my flip-flops by the concrete path’s edge, then step onto the sand, my arches and heels leaving imprints, tracks, as I go. We also used to do this, take morning beach walks in those heady early days of our marriage. We never had a destination or an end point in mind. We simply walked to keep each other company, talking for hours. Sometimes my calves would be sore the next day. I shake my head: I haven’t thought about all of this for ages, years.
Jesus.
Somehow between those days when the sunrises melted into the sunsets and now, we got here.Here.I blow out my breath, remembering New Year’s, remembering Sundance, remembering Joey’s birth, remembering the lot of it. We weren’t always split in two; we weren’t always beyond repair.
My feet are in the chilly seawater now, sending a jolt up through my ankles, to my calves, my thighs, nearly to my heart. I stretch my arms upward, like I’m offering myself to the gods of the ocean. It’s not the first time I’ve considered it: swimming as far out as possible, seeing what happens from there. But I’m not brave like Leo. I reconsider: I’m notrecklesslike Leo either.
I find a pack of old cigarettes in my pocket. I’ve never enjoyed smoking, how it makes me light-headed, its disgusting aftertaste. That it will slowly kill me. For a while there, I didn’t care, though. Now, I’m wiser. Now, maybe I’m more hopeful. So I raise an unlit cigarette to my mouth, let it linger because I like its heft, but not its consequences. Like so many things in my life, I’ve learned to straddle the middle and just try to get out alive.
A lithe, blond surfer swims in, just a hiccup down from me, shaking the water off, then offering a little wave. I drop the cigarette back into the pack, then smile back, wondering if she means to wave atme, if this lithe, blond surfer has mistaken me for someone else. Not that I’m so bad, not for forty-two, which is midlife in theory but here in Los Angeles could really be an extension of prolonged adolescence. Hell, some of my friends still haven’t married; a few still run around with starlets in their lower twenties, especially those who have done well for themselves: drive the Porsche, have a spread with a view in the Hills. Sometimes they’ll ping me and say, “Come out dude, let’s roll, let’s score.” But none of that feels important like it used to: the Porsche, the house made of glass in the Hills. Initially, in those first few early months of being single, sure, well, who wouldn’t find that liberating? Now I just want her. Our old life.
“Hey,” I say to the surfer. “Nice morning for the waves?” I self-consciously run my fingers over my dark stubble that is peppered with a tiny bit of gray.
“Killer,” she says. “The best.” And then lofts her board under her arm and glides away toward the parking lot. “See ya.”
I peer around. The beach is deserted again.
She’s not coming.
I lose my breath for a beat, punched in the gut with the realization. I actuallybelievedthat she was as hopeful as I was, that she was willing to forget how broken we’d become.
