“I’ll open it on the plane.” A week in Hawaii with Joey, Piper, Scooter, Emily, Harry, my dad, and Cheryl.It should be enough,I think.All of their company, without Ben.
“That’s what I envisioned.” He smiles. “You opening it on the plane.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“You don’t have to,” he says. “Because I do.”
47
BEN
CHRISTMAS
I kiss all of them good night and wish them a safe flight. Tatum promises to call when they land.
“And after I open this mysterious gift of yours,” she says.
“Take your time with it,” I reply. “It’s OK. There’s no rush.”
She wrinkles her brow. “OK.”
“OK,” I say, and then kiss the top of her head.
Dinner had been perfect, like we were a family again. Daisy had started it, broken the tension. Told the story of how Tatum and I first met, over a bet, and Joey’s eyes got wide and then he laughed until apple cider came out of his nose.
“Mom, you bet Aunt Daisy that you could get three numbers?” He looked at her cockeyed. “No offense, Mom, but really?”
“I know you think I am over-the-hill,” Tate said, laughing. “And embarrassing and horrifying, but let me tell you, I could put on an act and pour a beer with the best of them.”
“She could,” I concurred. Tatum and I locked eyes, and we both remembered that this was the truth.
“And then I got the chicken pox,” Daisy said. “And maybe if I hadn’t, I’d be the Oscar winner and not on my gajillionth season ofNew York Cops.”
“But then you’d have had to marry my dad,” Joey said, rolling his eyes.
And I said: “Yeah, no offense, Daisy, but that wasn’t happening.”
And Tatum said: “Yeah, now that I think about it, whyweren’tyou into Ben back then, Dais?”
And Daisy laughed and said: “Uh, no offense, Ben, but nice guys were never my thing.” But she raised her eyebrows at the irony.
And Tatum snorted but in a funny way, and I laughed because we’d all gotten it wrong, and we raised our glasses to Daisy’s chicken pox.
I’d waited to open Tatum’s present to me until I was home. She’d asked me to. I sink into my couch and place it on my lap, then slide my fingers under the immaculately folded corners. I tug it from the paper and stare at it for a moment, then a moment longer, aware of the rise and fall of my chest, of how my hand has moved to cover my mouth in my astonishment: a signed script ofLove Is in the Air, Reagan’s first film. It must have been nearly impossible to track down.
After so long, after all the scars we have inflicted, Tatum still knows me best. That even if I hadn’t penned the script about Reagan I’d hoped for, part of me would always be connected to that dream—of who I wanted to be when I first stepped foot out here, of who I hoped to be to make my father proud and, concretely, to make myself proud too. And Tatum. She’d never asked for me to win an Oscar; she’d never cared. She simply wanted me to keep dreaming. I’d stopped for a bit. I’d stopped a lot of things along with it.
My phone buzzes in my back pocket. The screen tells me that it’s Amanda, maybe regretting how perfunctorily we’d ended; maybe regretting we’d ended at all. I decline the call. I’ll try her back later, tell her the truth, even though the simple e-mail was easier. I’ll tell her that I wrote something for someone else, that I am dreaming now of something different, that I am dreaming now of Tatum.
Now, in my empty apartment, I ease my head against the back of the couch and squeeze my eyes closed. I’ve done everything else I can. There is nothing to do but wait.
48
TATUM
NEW YEAR’S EVE DAY
The beach is deserted now. It’s nearly sunset, and the families with little kids have taken them inside to tend to sunburns or to stave off full meltdowns; the retirees have returned to their condos for early dinners or, in my dad’s case, a nap. There are a few stragglers, a young couple who keep chasing each other into the water, a father and his teenage son still tossing a football. But mostly I’m alone. Something I’d grown used to, even if I resented the isolation I’d brought on myself.
