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Chapter Nine

Eleanor watched Tessa over the top of her wineglass. They’d put Laya to bed a few minutes earlier—she had requested that they tandem-read one of her favorite stories, Rikki Tikki Tavi, that evening, in honor of the large snake they’d glimpsed on the Na Pali Coast trail—and returned to the living room to finish the bottle of wine from dinner. Eleanor was currently stationed on the couch, while Tessa had selected an armchair a short distance away.

All day Eleanor had thought she’d caught Tessa watching her, though the actress had been quick to look away or hide her eyes behind dark glasses. Now, with half a bottle of wine warming her belly, Eleanor worked up the courage to inquire, “Is there something you want to ask me?”

Tessa’s eyebrows rose. “Are you psychic too, in addition to your goat-like powers?”

Laya and her mother had nicknamed Eleanor “Billy” on the trail that morning as she sped up the narrow path ahead of them, kicking up red dust with her trail shoes. She kept having to force herself to slow down to match the pace of the easily distracted little girl, who wanted to use her magnifying glass, sketch a plant in her outdoor journal, or check her compass every dozen or so feet. She was a National Park Services Certified Junior Ranger, she’d announced in the car on the way to the trail, a designation that apparently carried with it certain responsibilities and obligations.

Now Eleanor tucked her stocking feet under her and smiled. “Not a good psychic or I would already know what was on your mind.”

“Valid point.” Tessa drained the rest of her wine and set the empty glass on the coffee table between them. “I guess I was thinking about a conversation we had on the flight out here. You never got a chance to tell me why you waited so long to go back to school.”

While Eleanor didn’t believe in psychic abilities (at least, not in the way the average resident of California probably did), she could read people, and she knew that this wasn’t the question on Tessa’s mind. Still, it was out there now, and she could either answer truthfully or invent some safe, alternate reality. After all, Tessa was her boss, not her friend. And yet there was something genuine about the actress, something beyond her outer beauty, distracting as it could be, drawing Eleanor in. Again, if Laya’s mother had been anyone else, Eleanor would have sworn there was an entirely mutual attraction smoldering between them. But she wasn’t anyone else.

“Well,” she said, running her finger over the rim of her glass as the quiet sounds of a Sarah McLachlan album floated down from hidden speakers, “my mom was diagnosed with cancer my junior year of college, so everything sort of got put on hold.” She remembered the phone call she’d fielded one February night in her dorm room, the double off-campus ring that usually signaled a treat but this time heralded the battle to come. For months after that call, she flinched every time she heard an off-campus ring.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Tessa said, her voice serious. “Is she okay now?”



“Not exactly.” She took a breath, bracing herself for the matter-of-fact recitation of her mother’s passing. She had arranged her life the last few months so that she hadn’t had to say the words out loud very often. “My mom died in November. That’s why I didn’t teach the whole year. I took time off to be with my family in Vermont.”

“Oh, Eleanor. I’m so sorry.” Tessa leaned forward, the usually smooth skin between her perfectly shaped eyebrows drawn into a V.

Eleanor was almost certain the empathy she read in Tessa’s gaze was real. Then again, hard to be sure with an Oscar-winning actress. “It’s also why I needed a break from Boston. That, and my ex shacked up with another woman right after the funeral.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Unfortunately not.” So far they had both avoided identifying pronouns, but now Eleanor could read the question clearly in Tessa’s eyes. Was this what she wanted to know? After fourteen years of living out and proud, coming out was not a new process for Eleanor. Normally she announced who she was right off the bat to anyone who would be in her life for any significant period of time. “It seems so long ago,” she added, “I don’t actually remember what I saw in her.”

The room was quiet, the only sounds the faint hum of the dishwasher running in the kitchen, the distant thrum of the ocean crashing against the beach, the melodic croon of Sarah McLachlan’s voice. Eleanor bit her lip. Why wasn’t Tessa saying anything?

Then she nodded. “I knew my gaydar couldn’t be that off.”

Gaydar? Did that mean…? Eleanor felt an absurd hope welling up and tried to quell it. Even if Tessa were as queer as, say, Ellen and Portia, it didn’t mean she would magically return Eleanor’s crush.

“Besides,” Tessa said, “Ama had you pegged from the start. And that little woman is rarely wrong when it comes to Sapphic sisters.”

With difficulty, Eleanor schooled her features. It was one thing for Tessa to be lesbian-friendly, but for Ama to be fluent in queer culture? Still, the smile on Tessa’s face was overly smug for Eleanor’s liking. She may have only been a kindergarten teacher, but she was also from New England, a land where sarcastic understatement and gruff rebuffs were the norm.

Emboldened by the wine, she asked, “Are you familiar with the term gaydar because the rumors about you on After Ellen dot com are true, then?”

Tessa blinked several times before arranging her face in a casual smile that Eleanor had learned was one of her stock expressions. “Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet,” she said, and stood abruptly. “I think I’ll head up now. Sleep well.” And without waiting for a reply, she slipped from the room and made her way upstairs.

Eleanor sat where she was on the couch, suddenly alone. Overhead, she heard Tessa traverse the hallway, footsteps muffled on the thick runner, and then the door to one of the bedrooms creaked audibly. Eleanor gripped her wineglass, looking around the empty living room. What had just happened? One moment they’d been sharing deep, dark secrets, and the next Tessa was running off without warning. Or at least, Eleanor had shared secrets. Apparently she had crossed a line with her last comment, but it was a line that existed only in Tessa’s head. She was the one who had started this conversation, after all, the one who had been watching Eleanor all day as if she wanted to get inside her head and sift through what she found. Jesus. The woman was infuriating.

And also, seemingly, gay-friendly if not an actual friend of Dorothy herself. The fact that Tessa had suspected she was a lesbian when she hired her, when she invited her to Kauai with them, when she came out to the hot tub the night before, had to mean something. But why did it feel as if every time they started to get close, Tessa withdrew? Probably because that was exactly what kept happening.

Eleanor leaned her head against the back of the wicker couch. What did she know about Tessa, really? She knew that she was a devoted parent and a hard worker, had a B.A. in English with a concentration in Asian American lit, drank decaf coffee because the “hard” stuff made her jittery, was kind to nearly everyone they encountered, worried about Laya, loved to read and that Nutter Butters were her secret guilty pleasure. But these were mostly observations Eleanor had made over the past few weeks since joining the household staff. In that time, Tessa had shared little information about herself that didn’t directly impact their current plans or activities.

Meanwhile, since they’d met, Eleanor had found herself describing her childhood in Vermont, her educational experiences at Smith, her time teaching private school in Boston. The questioning had been subtle, and Eleanor had been flattered that Tessa was interested. So flattered she hadn’t really noticed when the actress dodged her own questions with vague answers or a change of subject. But she was noticing now. The only personal information she knew about Tessa was what she’d read online. And yet she suspected she knew a side of the actress that few others did.

When she’d mentioned her mother’s death, she was sure she’d glimpsed genuine emotion in Tessa’s eyes. For a moment she had even thought Tessa might come to her on the couch, take her in her arms, comfort her. But it was just a fantasy, albeit a compelling one. She wanted Tessa to hold her the way Laurie hadn’t after the funeral, wished Tessa would tell her that everything would be all right even though she knew it wouldn’t, imagined the actress kissing her eyes, her hair, her lips…

As the fantasy inevitably took on adult themes (she couldn’t seem to keep her thoughts of her employer G-rated), Eleanor shook her head. Despite the tantalizing glimpses Tessa had revealed, Eleanor was still alone in the living room of the actress’s vacation house, the sound of the ocean muted in the distance.

Upstairs, Tessa sat in a mission-style rocker in a corner of Laya’s darkened room, gazing out through the wide windows at the moonlit sea rising and falling seemingly just out of reach. Laya was asleep, the sound of her breathing audible in the otherwise quiet room. Her allergies had been acting up since they’d arrived on the island, which meant that her snoring was worse, too. It used to amuse Tessa that Laya snored. Made her wonder if this was a trait her daughter shared with the unknown, unknowable father Tessa had selected from a sperm bank catalog.

How many times had she sat in this very room watching Laya sleep, the ocean shimmering jewel-like in the background? Sometimes in L.A., she dreamed of this room, this house, this corner of the island where time seemed to both slow and quicken at the same time. In her dreams, she often found herself in the ocean swimming toward shore, where she could see the house lit up as if for a movie premiere. But no matter how hard she pulled against the saltwater waves, the current took her farther and farther out to sea, away from her daughter.

She had that sense of inevitable distance now, a result of her conversation with Eleanor, no doubt. While she’d suspected Eleanor’s sexuality might fall in the “other” category, she’d had no idea she’d lost her mother less than a year before. Wasn’t that the sort of thing the Barclay School’s background check should have included? Perhaps a death in the family was considered a private matter, not applicable for the purposes of the report. But to Tessa it seemed incredibly applicable. Like her, Eleanor was motherless in the world, only newly so.

Instead of going to Eleanor as she’d longed to, instead of offering her a shoulder or, at the least, a consoling touch, she’d run off as soon as the spotlight had shifted her way. She couldn’t help it. The wine had lowered her defenses, as had the company, and she hadn’t been able to pretend that the idea of Eleanor reading celebrity gossip sites to glean information about her wasn’t somehow unsettling. Tessa, who had won two Best Actress Golden Globes in addition to the coveted Oscar, had been unable to hide her discomfort at the notion that Eleanor might know things she’d rather not be known.

Which was ridiculous. The material on the Web was public property, and wasn’t even accurate in most cases. She’d never dated Tom Cruise (as if) or Jude Law (though they had gone for drinks a few times), and she certainly hadn’t spent her teen years in Brooklyn with her father’s nonexistent great-aunt. Anyway, so what if Eleanor had read up on her? Hadn’t she thoroughly researched the Byerly sisters before partnering with them? It was the same idea. And yet, somehow, it wasn’t.

But that wasn’t the real reason she’d turned tail and run. Sometimes she had a hard time letting people in. Women in particular, as her longtime friend Will liked to either gently point out or harass her about, depending on his mood. Since Laya’s birth, he claimed, she’d used her daughter as an excuse to keep any romantic encounters casual, brief. Perhaps, but as a single mother, she’d reminded him more than once, she had to look out for her child. She couldn’t very well parade people in and out of Laya’s life willy-nilly. Even she knew this was a joke. Other than the occasional hook-up, she hadn’t gotten involved with another woman in years, not since Nadine.

Looking back, she still couldn’t believe she’d opened her life to a woman who, it turned out, had been willing to sell the intimate details of their relationship to the highest bidder. At least she’d escaped the affair without permanent damage—Nadine had skeletons of her own, ones that would land her in jail on a probation violation should they be revealed, and that threat had been enough to ensure her silence. That plus the buy-off Michael, her agent, had tried to talk Tessa out of offering. But she’d known that more than anything, Nadine craved attention, which was why she’d been such an easy mark. Money could buy all the attention anyone needed, for a while anyway.

She still felt an odd sense of dislocation when she thought about Nadine, who, though not an actor, had managed to create a persona Tessa hadn’t thought to question. She’d known nothing about the younger woman’s drunk driving or rehab history until Michael brought it to her attention. Part of it was that Nadine had been clean for more than a year when they met at a release party, and managed to remain so through nearly the entirety of their relationship. Nadine’s father, Bradley Simmons, was a powerful producer known for taking big risks that nearly always paid off. Tessa had worked with him before, and initially refused Nadine’s advances because of who her father was. But Nadine was charming and persistent, and enough of a Hollywood insider that Tessa thought she was safe.

Until she came home early one day to find Nadine hooking up a camera in the bedroom of the Malibu beach house. A hidden camera. Nadine had sobbed dramatically, begging forgiveness, but for Tessa it had been simple. She’d kicked Nadine out, changed the locks, and never spoken to her again. Michael dangled the open threat of probation violation and slipped her an envelope of cash, and that was that.

Tessa knew that Eleanor was nothing like Nadine. A teacher committed to helping kids reach their potential, she hadn’t grown up a stereotypical poor little rich girl in a city known for glitz and glamour, she hadn’t partied her way through her twenties and landed in rehab, and best of all, she didn’t know a thing about the business of making movies. Was that why Tessa was attracted to her? Maybe a little. But she was more interested in who Eleanor was than who she wasn’t. By now, Tessa had watched her closely enough to know that she was generous and open, smart and funny, lovely despite some occasionally klutzy tendencies. And, maybe, a little bit lost since her mother’s death. Tessa knew what that felt like.

She rocked the chair slowly as a cloud passed before the moon, momentarily casting a shadow over the island. She liked Eleanor, enjoyed her dry sense of humor, loved the fact that she reread the work of Jane Austen, arguably one of England’s earliest feminists, every few years. Admired her cool confidence, her dedication to helping kids, the obvious intelligence in her eyes. Found her incredibly sexy too, but it was more than just physical attraction drawing her to her daughter’s nanny. Ultimately, that sense of something more was what had sent her skittering upstairs to Laya’s room. Because if she and Eleanor were to give in to the heat between them, what would happen at the end of the summer?

As the cloud passed from in front of the moon, Laya rolled over and sighed, clutching Gerri the giraffe closer. Safe in her rocking chair in the corner of the dark room, Tessa clamped down on temptation and listened to her daughter breathe as moonlight spilled across the island and reflected off the sleeping ocean.


Date: 2015-02-28; view: 602


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