Between Me and You Page 17

  Joey, named for Tatum’s mom—Josephine—and I were supposed to go with her to Hawaii. But then he got an ear infection two days before we were set to fly, and it wasn’t like we could ask production to delay on our account. So Tatum asked our night nurse to stay around for a few hours during the day to lend a hand (Tatum had been interviewing nannies endlessly but had not yet found someone she thought was suitable, even though Joey is nearly six months by now, and even though I thought they were all mostly suitable) and left for LAX. I called my mom to see if she could fly out and pitch in, but she and Ron were headed for a cruise around Turkey and Greece. I picked up the phone to call Leo, but he’d have been no help. I’d seen him back in New York shortly before the mayhem of the baby and the Oscars, and he was working too hard, juggling crazy banking hours. He was looking too ragged and thin, and I implored him, for once, to ease up just a bit.

  He laughed and said it wasn’t work that kept him out so late.

  “You’re twenty-seven, Lee,” I said. “Aren’t you over that shit?”

  “Over beautiful women?” he howled. “God, I hope the answer to that is never.”

  “Settling down can be a good thing.” I thought of our impending arrival, how the baby would solidify Tatum and me after months of feeling like we were slipping away from each other in the whirlwind of the awards season, as the snowball of her career picked up speed, and I stood at the top of the hill and watched. “Don’t you want kids?”

  “I have time,” he said. “Who’s in a rush? Besides”—he swatted my leg, then rose with a groan to pour himself a beer—“I’m gonna live forever.”

  So mostly, with Tatum in Hawaii, it was Joey and me. And Kendra, the night nurse, while I slept. Walter and Cheryl, his girlfriend, promised to stop in and relieve me, but Cheryl’s real estate business was booming, and even three years sober, Walter wasn’t someone I was entirely comfortable leaving alone with the baby. It wasn’t fair, it was a weird grudge of distrust that I couldn’t move past, and Tatum and I argued about it whenever I was stupid enough to let my biases slip into a conversation.

  Today, I wrestle with Joey’s car seat and buckle him in. I’m due at Barneys in thirty minutes, where lithe fortysomething women resemble lithe thirtysomething women, and men in suits huddle around tables, forking their salads, discussing box office returns, summer blockbusters, under-twenty-one actresses they’d like to screw. I told Spencer I have the baby, that Kendra had another client she couldn’t cancel (I suspect she really just wanted to go home and sleep, and I didn’t blame her), and I asked to reschedule. He insisted I bring the baby because his lunches were booked for the next month. Surely he could have pushed another client, but he doesn’t. If One Day in Dallas had made the Oscar cuts, then he’d have cleared his day. If Reagan had a start date, hadn’t been delayed first by the director dropping out then by the studio hedging over the budget, then he’d have brought me breakfast in bed.

  Instead, I sling Joey’s diaper bag over my shoulder, push the stroller onto the elevator at Barneys, and pray that he doesn’t shit himself in the middle of lunch.

  Spencer greets me at the hostess station with a slap on the back and feigns delight at the baby.

  “The cutest,” he says. “That is the cutest fucking baby I have ever seen. No surprise given how hot your wife is, am I right?”

  He laughs, so I laugh, as if half of my conversations these days, after her Oscar nomination, don’t revolve around Tatum. (A percentage that surely would have skyrocketed even higher if she had won rather than Lily Marple, a victory that left Tatum nearly apoplectic and certainly contributed to her unending willpower to get back to pre-baby weight within three weeks of delivery. “I will absolutely demolish it in Shipwreck,” she announced before going out for a run that the doctors had not yet cleared her for. “I will absolutely look like a goddamn goddess on film, and Lily Marple is going to weep and wish she had my abs.”)

  “We’re going to walk the room right now,” Spencer says. “We’re going to introduce you to everyone you need to know to get this little project of yours off the ground.”

  I pushed the stroller and trailed him. “Reagan isn’t a little project. It’s my best work yet.”

  “I know, I know,” he says, like he doesn’t really know at all, doesn’t know how much it fucking means to me.

  He glides me through the tables like a prize pony, stopping every now and then to shake hands, introduce me, show me off.

  “You’ve met Ben Livingston, right?” he’ll say, slapping me on the back.

  Or:

  “If you don’t know Ben Livingston yet, you gotta know him now,” slapping the other person on the back. “Remember All the Men? Did you ever see that little indie that could, Romanticah?”

  Most times, they rise enthusiastically, their chairs shooting behind them, their napkins dropping to the floor, and they grasp my hand, gripping tight. They’ll congratulate me on Tatum’s nomination or mention that they’ve heard great things about Shipwreck. Some of them tell me how much they’re enjoying Alcatraz, Fox’s new midseason show with decent ratings; some of them raise an eyebrow at Joey and offer a bland compliment about his chubby cheeks.

  We sit and Spencer orders a Diet Coke, tells the waiter not to bring us any bread.

  “Ben, let’s relight your fire.”

  “My fire is pretty well lit, at least on my end,” I say. “Talk to the studio about green-lighting Reagan; then we won’t have to have this conversation.”

  “I’m talking to the studio every day. Every fucking day. We’re close. We’re very, very close. But you gotta do something else too, take more meetings, give me some pitches to work with if you want to stay in film. The TV gig is great, fucking fantastic, but it’s not film. And we wanted HBO. We got Fox.”

  I cut him off. “I haven’t been sleeping, Spencer.”

  This isn’t true. We have Kendra. I’ve been sleeping as well as I ever did, at least as far as Joey is concerned. Occasionally I’ll wake and watch the alarm clock tick down until it blares, wondering how to tweak Reagan, wondering when I got such a grown-up life, with a mortgage and a child. Joey is an easy baby: he gurgles and grins and though he prefers Tatum to me, he is healthy and cherubic, and my anxious, sleepless nights from Tatum’s pregnancy are gone. But mostly I sleep just fine.

  “Do you need a nanny?” He punches something into his phone. “There, I e-mailed Diana, she’ll have you seven nannies by the time I pay the bill.”

  “I can’t hire a nanny without Tatum. Why do you think the baby is with me today?”

  Joey gurgles in his stroller and starts to fidget and fuss. I gave him a bottle before we got here, so I can’t imagine what he wants. Tatum can tell these things on instinct. Like, she’ll be in our garage (newly converted to a gym) on the Pilates reformer, hear his cry, and run out and say: Diaper! Or be nose-deep in one of the half-dozen scripts she has piled high on our kitchen counter, listen to a wail over the baby monitor, and pull out her boob on the way to his room. Today, I pop a pacifier into his mouth and hope it holds.

  Spencer leans closer. “I hope your balls haven’t been cut off now that your wife is a big shot.”

  I laugh because I don’t know what else to do.

  “I assure you, I still very much have my balls, Spencer. Big balls. Huge balls.”

  I’ve been with Spencer since Romanticah, but he is oily, in his expensive suit, with his whitened teeth, with his slicked-back hair, with his pores practically oozing ambition. It occurs to me, as the waiter brings us Diet Cokes and forgets about Spencer’s no-bread missive until Spencer nearly snaps his hand off when he offers it, that I don’t particularly like the man in charge of the trajectory of my career.

  “I want Reagan to go, Spencer. I believe in it. It’s the project of a lifetime.”

  He ignores me. “Alcatraz is a hit or at least enough of one. They’re gonna give you two more seasons at least. You can count on that. For sure.”

  Joey’s pacifier has fallen o
n the floor, and a waitress with ample cleavage stoops to grab it, then cleans it with a napkin.

  “He’s adorable,” she says.

  When she heads back to the kitchen, Spencer whispers, “You should totally tap that ass.”

  “OK, I’ll get right on that.”

  “Hey,” he says louder. “This is Hollywood. What do you think your wife is doing right now?”

  “I’m pretty sure she’s not screwing the waitress.”

  This makes Spencer honest-to-God cackle, and, as if I’ve earned his respect, he says: “Fine, Ben, I’ll cut you a deal: you sign the two years to Alcatraz, and I’ll squeeze the shit out of the studio to get Reagan back on the table.”

  “I think it could win me my Oscar,” I say.

  “Got a taste of it with the wife’s nomination?”

  “No,” I say. “I mean, yes. I am proud of her, and she deserves it. She should have won.”

  “I know. I saw you there that night,” he says. “You were basically weeping with pride. I almost wondered if you still had a ball sack.”

  “Fuck you, Spencer.”

  He laughs. “I’m just messing with you, dickhead. Please? Like my wife doesn’t have me wrapped around all ten of her fingers. Good for you, seriously. Being on her arm, telling everyone how proud you were. Takes a real man.”

  “I was proud, am proud.”

  “But you want an Oscar nomination of your own.”

  “Not just a nomination. A win. I just really think Reagan can be incredible, the best thing I’ve ever done.”

  “Ambition,” Spencer says, easing back his lips into his smarmy Cheshire smile. “I can smell that from a mile away.”

  I start to apologize, just as Joey starts to cry, but Spencer waves a hand, which is covered in a ring too many. “Don’t say you’re sorry for that, man, don’t ever apologize for going after what you want. That’s the mark of winners; that’s what separates you from the rest of the pack.”

  I blink a few times to clear the thought: he sounds so much like my dad, I forget for a moment that he’s no longer here.

  18

  TATUM

  MAY 2007

  I can put it off no longer: I have to go home to Ohio for Piper’s wedding. David Frears has given me loads of advice on “going home again.” All through the media push for Pride and Prejudice leading up to the June release, he’s assured me that you just put on a face like you’re putting on a role.

  “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 really is the 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.”

  “If they could see you now!” Piper calls after me, as we head through the foyer and out to the rented Ford Explorer.

  I drive through the streets of my childhood city, my hands tight around the steering wheel, my knuckles pale. Ben’s head is turned, his eyes out the passenger window, and I can almost hear his thoughts, calculating how vast the divide is between who he thinks I am and where I once came from.

  “I know,” I say. “It’s depressing.”

  “What?” He looks toward me. “What’s depressing?”

  I slow to a stop at a red light, next to a strip of stores where two of the letters droop in the mall sign, where a liquor store abuts a ninety-nine-cent store.

  “This place. This town. It’s not like I’m exactly proud of it.”

  He shrugs. “I don’t think it’s depressing. It’s just . . . part of you. So what?”

  The light flips to green, and the car in front of us loiters, so I press the horn too firmly, and the car jolts, the driver flipping me off, and Ben jumps in his seat.

  “Jesus, calm down, Tate. Come on, we’re here for a good thing, your sister.”