Jesus.
I haven’t thought much about Amanda since Tatum and I married. Sometimes, yes. I mean, in the way that anyone remembers an ex and tries to reconcile how they spent years with someone who is now a stranger. Like maybe it happened to someone else. Like maybe her fiery red hair and her fiery self-determination were something I created like a dream, because now that I’m with Tatum it feels so very far away. But seeing her name in my in-box reminds me that she wasn’t a mirage, wasn’t a memory that happened to someone else, like my images of her are a movie that someone showed me once.
I loved her once,I think.Now she’s just a minefield in my in-box.
She writes:
B—I know it’s been a few years, and I should have been in touch sooner. I mean, not sooner. I know you’re married. I know you’re the toast of Hollywood. (I’m not stalking you, I swear. You just hear things, you know?) Anyway, I never worked up the nerve to call you after your dad, and I should have. So when I woke up today and remembered that it was your birthday, I wanted to write and say how sorry I am. How sorry I was. I think of you often and wish you only good things. Happy birthday, Ben.—A
I reread the e-mail, then delete it. Then go into my deleted files folder and trash it forever.It is so typical,I think,offering condolences three years later, offering them when only convenient for her.I shut my laptop quickly and stand so abruptly that Monster’s head, still in my lap, jolts back with surprise.
“You OK?” Leo asks.
“Fine, yeah, fine. Let’s take this dog out before he craps on the floor.”
“Do I really have to leave here on Sunday?” Leo whines, as I clip on Monster’s leash.
“It’s my birthday, Leo, do me a favor and don’t give me a hard time for one day. Besides, surfing and hanging out at the beach all day are not exactly résumé building.”
“Noted.” He swings the front door open and eyes me, reviewing me in the way that only a sibling can. “You sure you’re OK? You don’t look right.”
“I’m fine,” I say, stepping out into the California sun. “It must be my old age. Maybe it’s just how you look when you’re thirty.”
He laughs, and Monster wags his tail at Leo’s glee.
“But you’re living the dream,” he says, slugging my shoulder.
I think of my dad and how this is what he’d want: me pushing my brother into responsibility, me ascending the ladder of Hollywood, ready to reach for everything this town has to offer.
“I am,” I say, and we point ourselves toward the sea and the horizon that lies behind it.
26
TATUM
MARCH 2011
Leo dies four days after I win the Academy Award.
We linger by his hospital bed, where he is unable to be revived, and then finally Helen agrees to remove the ventilator, and his chest rises almost undetectably until it rises no more. I’m supposed to be in Panama; I was scheduled to start principal photography onArmy Women: 2.0just after the awards season ended, but they rejigger the schedule and give me an extra week to allow me another handful of days off for the funeral. A handful of days feels unbearably unjust, though I understand the overtime and the budget and the payroll and the crew; this movie isn’t just about me, though I’m its star. A handful of days to grieve with my husband feels like a bomb that could explode between us—among everything else, I’d forgotten to thank him in my acceptance speech.
It was a humiliating oversight. I literally blanked out; I was so stunned to be onstage that I forgot my speech nearly entirely. But it shouldn’t have been hard to remember to thank the one person who mattered the most. The gossip blogs have been all over it, the tabloids too. Rumors about what it means, rumors that we are coming undone. I don’t want to think that it means anything, though if I pay close enough attention, maybe it does: maybe it was my way of letting Ben know that I’ve felt him pull away, that we no longer see each other, that he could be more supportive, even when dealing with his own shit. None of this was conscious that night, at least not that I contemplated anyway, and I’d give just about anything to go back and do it over.
I’ve apologized to Ben relentlessly, but he waves me off. Not because he doesn’t forgive me but because, with Leo in the ICU, it feels inconsequential. That I am so caught up in my Academy Awards mistake feels even more shameful; that I worry about my Panama scheduling too only piles on. I could drop out. They’d recast and move on without me, but Ben insists that I don’t. He practically pushes me to stick with it, as if sticking with it will ensure normalcy, and normalcy might mean that Leo hasn’t died.
It was an overdose. Of course it was. I’d tried to keep tabs since I’d run into him at Harbor five months back; I’d check in once a week, at least through the new year, and he always assured me, promised me, that he was going to meetings, walking the straight line. He’d say, “Tater-tot, don’t worry. I’m as clean as a whistle. And ... nothing’s been said to Ben, right?”
“Nothing,” I’d say, half-listening for the intonation in his voice, a sign of a lie. But I was admittedly distracted, with the awards rush, with Joey’s occupational therapy (evidently he did not hold a pencil correctly for a three-year-old, and this set off all sorts of alarm bells with his preschool teachers), with training forArmy Women: 2.0.
Of course I thought about telling Ben. Of course I didn’t want to bear the weight of a secret between us. But Ben was finally finding new footing: he and Eric were moving into preproduction onCode Emergency, which had been picked up for the fall season, and he seemed encouraged about its potential. Why drag him down with Leo’s drama when Leo was assuring me he was fine? At least, that was what I told myself; that’s how I rationalized it. Now, though, those are the what-ifs you live with. What if I’d told Ben, and he’d kept better track of Leo’s sobriety? What if I’d told Ben and he’d found a way to keep him alive?
I fidget with my dress, readjust Joey’s tie in the town car on the way to the funeral, consider telling Ben today.
“Hey,” I say and rest my hand atop his. He doesn’t move, doesn’t intertwine his fingers with mine.If he turns to look at me, I will tell him. If I can make him see me, make him understand that my mountain of regret is enormous, I will tell him.
“Ben,” I say again. He blinks quickly, his gaze out to the dreary grayness of the Long Island Expressway.
“Daddy,” Joey says, and finally Ben refocuses, sliding his hand from under mine, and tousles Joe’s hair.Look at me, Ben, look at me!
