This irritates me for no reason at all. Rather, it irritates me because of course she is right. Icouldsimply wash it, which I’d just told myself five seconds earlier. But coming from her, it feels like proselytizing, not wise counsel, like she’s saying it justto beright. For fuck’s sake, why is Tatum always right? Of course I can wash the stupid doormat.
“You don’t have to point out my shitty doormat,” I say. My eyes twitch when I realize that, in fact, I was the one who pointed out my shitty doormat in the first place. God, when am I going to stop being such an asshole just for the sake of it?
“I wasn’t ... I just ...” She stops, shakes her head. “I don’t want todothis, Ben.” She checks the time on her phone. “Is he ready? I have a meeting in an hour.”
Of course she has a meeting in an hour. Tatum’s time is no longer her own, hasn’t been for years now.
“So let him stay longer; I’ll watch him.”
“It’s my day.”
I soften. “But you have a meeting, and Constance is out sick. Come on, Tate. We’re having fun.”
“Ben.” She uses that impatient voice that I sometimes heard her use on set (when I used to visit) when someone would have the misfortune of suggesting a creative tidbit that was totally beneath her. For the most part, Tatum was accommodating, as far as A-listers go. No temper tantrums, no outrageous diva demands. But it wasn’t as if she couldn’t skewer you with a raised eyebrow, couldn’t decimate your ego with one word.Ben.
Also, it wasn’t as if she didn’t make plans without considering anyone else’s schedule, wasn’t as if she hadn’t grown used to everyone around her saying yes. Except for me. (But I now live in a two-bedroom apartment two miles away from the new house in Brentwood, so it’s not working out so well on my end either.)
“Tate, come on.”
“The therapist said that consistency was key,” she says. And it’s true, the therapist we found for Joey to help him through the divorcehadsaid that constancy—a united front—from us was imperative. Joey had been moodier since we told him the news: explosive mood swings from a previously docile child, crying jags that felt unending, whereas he barely cried before, even back when he’d broken his arm.Consistency, Dr.Cohn kept reiterating.
“OK,” I say as she waits expectantly for a fight.
“OK.” She nods.
I start to ask her who will be watching Joey—he’s only seven and can’t stay by himself—but I realize the answer will only spark another fight: Tatum’s father. To whom I have been unkind, shamefully unkind, until it grew too late. Until Tatum and I each held our own scorecards, and he was one of the chits she was able to hold against me. Rightfully so. I chew my lip. I could apologize now, I could say:God, I was such a stubborn dick for reasons that were all about me,but she has never apologized for her own sins, so I’m not about to fall on my sword. Besides, attorneys have been consulted, retainers have been paid. Apologies are too long in coming and won’t amount to much anyway.
“Joe!” I call over my shoulder. “Hurry up, Mom’s here!”
“Two minutes, Daddy,” he calls back.
“Sorry,” I say. “We were knee-deep inMaddenon the Xbox.” Back over my shoulder, I shout: “You’d better not be cheating, kiddo!”
Tatum presses her mouth into a thin line, then removes her sunglasses and squeezes the bridge of her nose. This is her exasperated face. The one I usually see now. Even when it’s simply because Joey is playingMaddenfor an extra two minutes.
“I’ll get him,” I say. Mostly as an escape from the unbearable discomfort between us, not because I want him to leave me a second sooner than he has to. I’m alone so often now, too often.
“All set.” I reemerge with Joey and his bag that is filled with his dirty laundry from the past two nights.Shit.Am I going to get a passive-aggressive text about how I should have washed it?
I hold my breath, and I can feel Tatum holding hers too; we’re both waiting for an explosion of Joey’s tears or a kick to my shin or a fist to my side. Yelled protests that he doesn’t want to go or he doesn’t want us to divorce or just that he doesn’t want something. Anything. It doesn’t have to be specific these days with him. Instead, he stands on his tiptoes and pecks my check, then wraps his arms around my neck. I loft him off his feet, and he giggles. I feel myself soften and glance at Tatum, who seems to uncoil too.
“Be good for your mom, kiddo,” I say before I set him down, and he reaches for Tatum’s hand.
“I’m always good for Mommy,” he laughs, giggling like he used to, like he wasn’t now being split in two.
I watch them go and know that I can’t say the same.
With Joey gone, the apartment is so quiet, so empty, I’m not sure what to do with myself. I playMaddento kill some time, but it’s just pathetic to get worked up over fake football without your seven-year-old son there. I should work. I know that. Eric and I are back on set, managing the writers’ room, breaking the story arcs for the next season ofCode Emergency. But what I should really do is write. Like I used to, like I know I can. Not managing a staff of exhausted thirtysomethings, not crafting some bullshit hospital drama that I could outline while I sit on the can.
I mill about my apartment, running my hands over the empty walls, pausing in corners, turning, starting again. Seeing her today, here, has rattled me. It’s easier to pretend she doesn’t still inhabit part of me when we go days or even weeks now without stepping close enough to touch. I might see her face on a magazine cover or flip past one of her movies on late-night cable, but it’s not the same as breathing in the same air, smelling her faint perfume, the same custom scent from Barneys she’s worn for years, wanting to reach out and brush her arm when I think of something clever to say.
I can hear her in my ear, telling me, like she always used to say: “If you can dream it, you can be it,” but I’ve been in hibernation for so long, screwed things up so deeply, that I’m not even sure what I dream. But slowly I’m awakening; slowly I feel myself melting into something like my old self, someone who once dreamed the same things as she did. Who promised to write something for her but then lost himself to other people’s visions of what they wanted from him.
I should write it now, today, even if she doesn’t need me any longer. Maybe that’s the best time—when she doesn’t need me. Prove to her that I understood why she asked me all those years ago—because we were better together.
But instead I keep walking from room to room in the apartment and staring at the vacancy—not that it’s all that big, certainly nothing compared to the house in Brentwood with its high fences and higher ceilings where Tatum now lives alone with Joey, the house that was meant to be our enclave, to protect her from the outside world, protect us from ... everything else. I let Joey pick out all the new furniture, decorate his room any which way he pleased, so his walls are a jarring bright green and his rug a shocking electric blue, but still, even with his bed unmade from the weekend, it feels barren.
I haven’t lived alone in fifteen, almost sixteen years.
