“I’m certain he would be.”
He lets out his breath and mutters: “Fuck.”
“Fuck what?”
“Fuck everything,” he says, though there is so much to celebrate. “Fuck that he’s not here; fuck that I want him to see my success; fuck that I care about his approval when now, I can’t have it anyway.”
“He would have been proud, Ben.He would have.”
He shrugs, blinks quickly.
“Don’t be angry today, B. Not when today is a celebration.” I’ve seen this recently: the start of his dark spiral. He tries to keep me out of it, steer me away from his moodiness, but I am trained—literally trained at Tisch—to read people, to know them. I have my own dark spirals, of course—my mom’s childhood nickname for me, “Deflatum Tatum,” granted because she claimed she could see the air sucked out of me along with my mood, nipping on all parts of me.
Today he seems to hear me, which he doesn’t always.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s just a lot.”
“I know,” I say, because I do. “Hey, I got you.”
He blinks faster, then stares up at the sky and yells: “FUUUUUUUCK!” Then shakes his head and manages a smile.
I brush the snow off my pants, rise, and stretch out my hand, pulling him up, though he is weightier than I. But I am stronger in some ways, the ways that have proven important recently. We stumble back to the ski condo that his mom has paid for, because Ben’s day job as a literary agent’s assistant pays only enough to cover his rent, and my job at the bar pays even less. We peel our damp, freezing clothes off each other and step into the steaming shower until we are skin to skin with nothing in between. Afterward, Ben puts on a tie, and I slide into my customary black tight jeans and black fitted top, and he tells me that he couldn’t have done this without me.
“Really,” he says. “This film, this award, it’s because of you.”
“I can’t take all the credit.” I bat my eyelashes demurely.
He laughs. “Now, Tatum Connelly, don’t you go and deflect when someone gives you praise.”
I puff up my chest and slip into my role, the spitfire actress, the confident companion, and take a bow. “You’re right. I’d like to thank the Academy, I’d like to thank my director Ben, but mostly, I’d like to thank myself because I’m really such a fucking genius.”
He laughs harder, and so do I, both of us relieved to find a sliver of normalcy in a world that feels so upended.
Then quieter, more shyly, I say: “Don’t forget to thank me up there. Please?” I elbow him, hoping I can play it off as a joke, that I’m not needy, that I don’t really care. Though I do.
We’d watched the Oscars together last weekend and shrieked (in horror) when Suzanna Memphis (her real name) forgot to thank her husband. We then spent the next thirty minutes wondering if they were about to split, if the rumors were true.
It wasn’t that it really mattered if Ben thanked me publicly, but what if it did? What if you had to proclaim your love aloud, onstage, to make it real?
“You’ll be the first name I say.” Ben kisses my neck, seeing through me.
When we get to the theater on Main Street, Ben is swarmed with executives and agents and important people who want to sign him as a client, who want to set up meetings in Los Angeles and New York about future projects. He grips my hand and holds on tight, but eventually, like we’re caught in the undertow of the ocean, he’s tugged away from me, even when we try our best to hold on.
I’ll find you,he mouths over his shoulder as he goes.
I nod and think:I hope so. Please don’t forget me.
The lights flicker at the awards ceremony, so I find a seat in the middle of the theater with a pulse of anxiety coursing through me, that minutes-earlier bravado already fading. I gaze at these unfamiliar faces, strangers who had suddenly seen the genius in my boyfriend, and something twitches deep inside, and I wonder if he’ll want me as much as he always has, now that maybe he’ll recognize how special he is, and that maybe I don’t deserve to stand alongside his brightness. Just as I felt back when we buried my mother, just as I feel on my worst days when I can’t beat back the throb of ever-present insecurity by disguising myself as someone else.Please don’t see me for what I really am. And if you do, please love me anyway.
I glance around, wondering where he is in the auditorium, wishing I could see his face, find him, and beckon him to sit beside me. But it’s just a swarm of Hollywood types and a few others like me: fazed, stunned, trying to pretend otherwise. I curl my fingers into a fist and press my nails into my palms, an old habit from middle school after my mom was first diagnosed, before her remission, when I’d feel myself start to cry and wouldn’t want to come undone in the middle of Algebra or PE or the cafeteria at lunch. I remind myself that I’m an actress, a good one, and I can put on any face that I want to.
Someone is waving from the side of the aisle, and I turn to see Ben, flagging me over.
I excuse myself as I press past tilted knees and annoyed faces until I reach him.
“What are you doing? You have to be up there any second!”
“I know, I know. But I realized something ...” he whispers.
