She means the three-footer we plopped in the corner of the bungalow on Ocean Avenue our first year out here. I was working too much on,what, I jigger my brain to remember now.All the MenorOne Dayin Dallas? MaybeReagan. All those hours and years spent obsessing, as if I were chasing the crown to please my dad. Amanda had been the one to point this out to me recently, but I wonder if Tatum didn’t understand that too; maybe she just wanted me to figure it out on my own. Anyway, whatever it was that I was working on, it felt so important then, important enough that I didn’t have time to properly shop for a tree with her, despite her nudging me three, four, five times. Instead, I dragged myself home one night and found a pitiful little tree in the corner of the living room. Tatum had bought it at the grocery store and stuffed it in the back of the Prius. She’d spiraled swirls of popcorn around it from the bottom to the top and found an illuminated star to place atop; it flashed on and off every other second so our living room looked like it was constantly on the verge of losing its electricity.
I laugh now. “I’m not even sure that could be defined as a tree. It was more of a plant.”
She stretches back her neck, takes in the span of the tree. “God, you know, my mom always said, ‘If you can dream it, you can be it.’” She rights herself. “I’m not sure that this tree was part of that plan. I mean, I liked thatplantthat we had back on Ocean Avenue. It’s hard, now, to see exactly what was wrong with it.”
The air catches in my throat. This is the moment, the one where I can tell her:I haven’t forgotten, I’m still writing something for you.
Instead of being honest, though, I deflect, because it’s second nature now and because I don’t think I canseeher like I used to, even though I feel that I can all the same. How do I bridge what I think and what I feel? How do I figure out which to trust?
I say, though there is so much else to say: “Well, I mean, it was basically half dead. And those popcorn strings ...”
She laughs, not particularly happily. “I guess it was a long time ago.”
“Well, this tree is a work of art.”
“Decorators came out, did the whole thing from top to bottom.” She flops her shoulders again, then circles the front branches. “I don’t even know where they put all the ornaments, the ones from my mom ...” She trails off, her eyes searching. Now she’s the one to deflect: “How’s work?” Then: “Sorry, we don’t have to talk about work.”
She knows as well as I do that it’s a sticking point between us: how apparent my insecurities were, how frustrated I was—unfairly—at her success. But also, how she almost always chose her own work over me in recent years, like maybe I did with her back when we first started and she bought a half-dead plant at the grocery store and considered it a Christmas tree.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I mean, Cassidy is screwing Paxton, and they think no one knows even though their trailers are literally shaking every time we call cut.”
Tatum giggles at this, and she has never looked more beautiful. “Well, you know, two hot actors on a set, what are you gonna do?” She quiets. “I mean, not me. That was never my thing but—”
“Listen, you can always ask me about work,” I interrupt. “It never should have been otherwise.”
Her face stills. “OK.” Then more quietly: “OK.”
Something shifts between us then, a collective passing of regret, of all the mistakes we’ve each made, of all the times we scarred each other, of all the ways, too, that we loved each other for so long. Maybe still do.
“Do you miss her?” I ask.
“Who?”
“Your mom,” I say. I’m as surprised that I’m asking as she appears to be asked. Tatum and I haven’t spoken nakedly in such a long time. I almost feel as if I’m probing a stranger or a new girlfriend, pressing her for personal details that she might not be ready to divulge.
“All the time,” she replies, wide open, a map as easy to read as when she was back at Dive Inn, a million years and memories ago.
Of course she would answer me honestly. Tatum never was one for secrets. Until she was. Until I was too.
I tell myself to reach for her, to tell her of all my regrets, of all the ways I would do it differently. But then her cell rings in the kitchen, and she scurries from the room, refocusing on her other life now, and I stand there underneath the glow of the Christmas lights, and I ask myself again:What do you feel? What do you think? Whom do you see?
The last question, for so many years, was the one that mattered most.
40
TATUM
DECEMBER
I can’t sleep after Ben leaves.
I debate texting Damon, thanking him for the lovely, unexpected evening, but I’m not sure if that’s too forward, too needy after just one evening together. I’m new at the dating thing, and besides, I don’t even know if I want to be forward or needy or see him again. Luann has texted me three times, desperate to know how it went, but I don’t have the energy to tap back:He kissed me and my knees went a little weak, and then Ben was waiting for me in our kitchen when I got home. And then I discovered that I was glad to see him there, that I didn’t really want him to leave. That part of me wanted to say,Stay forever.But part of me knew that was just a line someone wrote in a romantic comedy. Not real life.
I fling off the sheets, slide my feet into the slippers some designer gifted me, and pad across my bedroom toward Joey’s room. He doesn’t like me to sleep in his bed anymore.Eight going on fifteen,I tell anyone who asks. I crouch next to his sweet face instead, running my hands over his forehead, then cheeks. He is warm, Joey is always warm—He runs hot,I also say when I have to explain why he refuses to wear long pants or a sweater—and he’s stripped off his PJs, flung them to the floor. I try to remember if my own mom would ever slip into my bed because she needed comforting or if I ever woke to find her watching me. Nothing comes, no reassuring memory to call upon.
My mom believed in taking your licks and rising back up. She didn’t tell me not to get that first job at twelve; she certainly wished that she hadn’t gotten sick, but she didn’t shy away from how working made me resourceful, independent, a caretaker too. She still called me “Deflatum Tatum,” even though she knew I hated it: she didn’t do it to mock me, she did it to arm me, so I could know myself, understand my flaws, and figure out how to best use them to my advantage. When to nurse them, when to let them go. She protected me from my father, locking him in their bedroom or throwing him into a bathtub and turning on the shower until I was old enough to understand his erraticism, his instability. She also taught me how to protect myself.
I kiss Joey’s forehead and stand. I want so very much to lie next to him, to use him as a shield from all of my thoughts from the moment—Why is Ben here, why do I want him here, why is he with Amanda if he is lingering in my kitchen, why am I not asking him about all of this, how have we made such a mess so that I can’t even ask him in the first place—but I conjure up my mom and I try to honor what’s now best for Joe. His space, his freedom, giving him an inch or two to discover who he is, while I stand in the shadows, ready with an outstretched hand for when he stumbles.
