“Darling, if a gay can survive a weekend visit to bumblefuck Nebraska, where, when I was in high school, a city councilman tried to tell my parents that I could get electroshock therapy to deal with my homo-ness, you can endure your little sister’s wedding.”
David’s taken me under his wing, told me I’m the best Elizabeth Bennet in the history of Elizabeth Bennets, of which there have been many. He’s protected me through the slow but ever-present bleat of tabloid coverage (rumors of sleeping with Colin Farrell on the set), the mounting tide of whispers of an Academy Award, the connection with a stylist so I’m not caught looking like a general garbage dump when I’m out in public. “Darling, I’m sorry, but this?” David once said, waving his hand at my brunch getup of Nike running pants and an Ohio University hoodie. “This will not do, not for a future star.”
Ben calls David my “gay husband,” and Daisy tells me that anyone whom he deems the next big thing reallyisthe next big thing. Of course, I dedicated myself to the shoot: British accent at all times, delicate mannerisms, headstrong attitude. Ben flew over for a month of the two-month ordeal while he was on a break between his own projects, and he said it was like dating a total stranger.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s for the part. Full method.”
“Don’t apologize,” he said before grabbing my waistband and pulling me into the bedroom of the suite I’d been put up in. “I like it.”
“So you get to cheat on me without really cheating on me?” I laughed.
“Bingo,” he said, kissing me and shutting the door with his foot.
Still, all the method preparation, all of David’s advice, hasn’t calmed my nerves, settled my butterflies about heading back for Piper’s wedding.
Now, in my childhood home, Ben flops on my childhood bed. “So this is where the magic happened.”
“Ha,” I say, thinking of Aaron Johnson, the football player, and how I’d lost my virginity to him in the back seat of his car in the deserted parking lot of the grocery store where I worked on the weekends. Then we did it exclusively in his car for a few weeks until he dumped me. “There was no magic happening here.”
I haven’t been back since my mother’s funeral, and I run my fingers over my dresser, which is covered in stickers. When I was ten, my parents were fighting about something, so I locked Piper in my room with me, and we pasted our sticker collection all over my furniture. I remember hearing my dad’s truck engine start, then my mom knocking on my door, and her exhausted face absorbing the stuck-on damage.
“Well.” She shrugged. “I hope you like it, it’s not like I can buy you new furniture. Enjoy.” Then she closed the door quietly and retreated to her room for the rest of the night. Piper and I tried to peel off our favorites, put them back in our sticker books for trading in the future, but most of them were too stubborn. Now, twenty years later, my faded Boynton collection stares back at me, a half-ripped-up memory of another life.
Ben bounces off my bed. “Want to go grab something to eat? What is there around here?”
I shrug. Denny’s. IHOP. Probably an Outback Steakhouse, which I remember seeing the last time I was here. Nothing that I’d want to take Ben to, nothing that has anything to do with who I’ve become since I left the Canton outskirts, tackled New York, wooed David Frears, and slayed Elizabeth Bennet and anointed myself the next big thing. That he is even here with me is a leap forward, an acknowledgment that I’ve let him see my insides, that he knows everything about me. But still. You can peel back an onion only so far before your eyes start to sting.
“There’s not much to eat here in the way of fine dining.”
“I don’t need fine dining,” he says. “I just need sustenance.” He grabs the keys to the rental car. “Come on, we’ll find something.”
Downstairs, my dad is circling the kitchen while Piper brews a pot of coffee.
“It feels strange,” he says. “Being back here without her. I mean, being sober back here without her.”
He steps closer to me and wraps me in a tight embrace, close enough so I can feel his stubble and his wiry gray hair against my neck. I stiffen but then remember Dr.Wallis, whom we still see from time to time at Commitments, just for check-ins, and also to celebrate two years of sobriety, and how he urged my dad (and me) to bridge the physical divide. Not to violate personal space, not to tilt anyone toward discomfort, rather to move past words and, well, reach out and touch someone. My dad has thus become a hugger. I soften and my arms link around his back, which has lost its doughiness, as he took up hiking when he met Cheryl, an age-appropriate real estate broker, who has a one-bedroom condo in Westwood, which is now more or less his second home.
“It’s strange being back here in general,” I say. “Isn’t it?”
He wipes his damp eyes, and I see Piper drying off her own cheeks with a dishrag.
“I was such a terrible father to you.”
“Dad, we’ve been over this—”
“I know, I know. You forgive me. It’s just ... being here.” He shakes his head.
I swipe my wallet from the counter. “Well, Ben and I are not going to be here. We’re heading to IHOP.”
“She’s giving me the grand tour!” Ben pipes in, averting his eyes from my dad. He is still jumpy around him, edgier than when my dad is out of the picture. I ask him about it, and he tells me it’s a work in progress, and because I trust him, I believe him.
“Ooh, take him by the high school,” Piper says. “They’ve totally redone it.”
“Why would I want to relive the worst years of my life?” I say.
My dad sighs audibly.
“Dad.” My hand finds his shoulder—reach out and touch someone!—and I let it linger there for a beat. “I wasn’t referring to you. I was referring to all those dickwads I dated and all the asshole girls who thought I was a piece of trash for working at Albertsons.”
