Chapter Nineteen

This was it, Eleanor decided when she woke up in Tessa’s bed the first Wednesday of August. July was over and she still hadn’t found the courage to lay her cards on the table. She didn’t have a place to live in Madison yet, either, and classes were due to start in just over a month. She and Tessa needed to talk, and not only because she had to tell Tessa about the flight to Chicago she’d booked for the coming weekend.

The itinerary had her leaving L.A. Friday afternoon and returning Sunday night, flying in and out of LAX, Tessa’s least favorite airport in the city. She would be in Madison for two days, enough time to meet some of her future classmates and (she hoped) find an apartment for the fall semester. The ticket hadn’t even put a dent in her checking account, overflowing from the most recent direct deposit from Tessa’s business manager’s account. Lately she’d had a hard time not thinking about the fact that she was in a relationship with the person whose signature was stamped on her paycheck. But whatever was happening between them, a job was a job.

As it turned out, though, Laya had her own agenda that morning. They were sitting at the kitchen island together as usual, Eleanor inhaling her coffee, Tessa reading the paper, and everything seemed normal. Laya was peppering them with questions about constellations and cancer. She and Eleanor had gone to a show at the Griffith Park Observatory the previous afternoon, where Eleanor had made the mistake of mentioning that her own mother had loved the Observatory, which had led to the mind-blowing discovery on Laya’s part that Eleanor had once had a mother too, but that she’d died recently.

Eleanor had almost finished her first cup of coffee when Laya abruptly changed the subject. “I know you’ve been having sleepovers,” she announced. “You don’t have to pretend anymore.” Then she shoved a large piece of toast in her mouth and began to chew, smiling encouragingly at them.

Tessa looked at Eleanor, who looked back at her, glad she wasn’t the actual parent in this situation. She didn’t have nearly enough caffeine in her system yet to defuse this particular conversational bomb.

Correctly interpreting the This is so you look Eleanor was sending her, Tessa folded the newspaper and leaned across the kitchen island. “What do you mean, sweetie?”

Laya kept exaggeratedly chewing the enormous bite of toast. Finally she swallowed and said, “I mean, I know Elle sleeps over. I was just wondering, could I sleep with you too?”

“No,” her mother said quickly as Eleanor hid her smile behind her coffee cup. “You’re right, Elle does sometimes stay in my room, but it’s something that’s just for adults.”

Laya tilted her head sideways, kicking the top rung of her stool as she considered this. “Does that mean you’re doing the sex?”

Tessa’s jaw literally dropped, and Eleanor nearly spewed out her mouthful of coffee. Looked like that sex ed talk was going to be happening quite a bit earlier than either of them had anticipated.

“What?” Tessa shook her head. “Why would you even ask that?”

“Rayann said that Luke’s brother told them that doing sex is how babies are made. I was just thinking maybe you and Eleanor might want to have a baby because I think I want to be a sister. But not if you’re going to have a boy. I really don’t want a brother.”

If only they could have a baby together, Eleanor thought wistfully, not for the first time. She would love to combine her and Tessa’s gene pool to produce a miniature version of Laya, despite the awkwardness of this parenting moment. Tessa was looking at her now wide-eyed, silently begging for help.

Eleanor relented. Calling up her teaching voice, she said, “No, we’re not trying to make a baby. There are some things about making babies that it sounds like Luke and Rayann don’t understand, and that’s because you’re still not old enough to learn about it yet. Remember how we talked about how some things are easier for grown-ups to understand because adults are bigger and so are their brains?”

Laya nodded.

“Well, how babies are made is one of those things. When you get a little bit bigger and your brain grows too, then it’ll be the right time to think and talk about sex and baby-making. But for now, maybe you could just set those things aside for later and think about something else.”

Laya nodded again. Apparently this made sense to her. Then she said, “If you’re not baby-making, then what are you doing at night?”

Eleanor glanced at Tessa, who stepped in again. “Eleanor and I are very good friends, and we like to be close to each other. Sometimes we like to sleep in the same bed.”

“But then why can’t I sleep with you?” Laya asked.

“You just can’t,” Tessa said, not meeting Eleanor’s eyes. “When you get bigger, like Eleanor said, I’ll explain.”

Not we, Eleanor noticed, but I. Did that mean Tessa thought she wouldn’t be around when Laya was older? Did she not want Eleanor to be around? And did she really think of her as a “very good friend”? Laya already knew that some couples were made up of a man and a woman and others of two men or two women. She lived in L.A., after all, and Tessa had purposely exposed her to a variety of different types of families. Why, then, didn’t she want to tell Laya that they were a couple? Yet another reason why it was high time they had that talk.

But Tessa had a meeting downtown with a new member of the foundation’s board, and Laya had a playdate with the infamous Luke and his brother. For now, clearly, any discussion would have to wait until after dinner.

Half an hour later, Eleanor buckled Laya into the backseat of the Escape and set her laptop carrier on the passenger seat. While Laya played and swam with her friends and perhaps learned additional fallacies about the human reproductive system, Eleanor intended to find a coffee shop with WiFi and browse Madison’s Craigslist apartment listings. One of the current grad students in her program had e-mailed her a concise description of where to live and where not to. Armed with that information and her new iPhone (a necessity in this day and age, she’d convinced herself), she should be able to find her way around her future hometown this coming weekend.

Despite the turmoil that overtook her whenever she thought about leaving Tessa and Laya, she was starting to get excited about going back to school. Something she’d looked forward to for so long was now finally about to happen. She still wasn’t sure she wanted to spend the next five years in plebian academic hell, but she owed it to herself to at least give the program a chance. After all, the University of Wisconsin only admitted a half dozen new students each year. Pretty cool they wanted her.

“You’re coming in with me, aren’t you?” Laya asked when Eleanor pulled up in front of the palatial Malibu house where Luke’s father, a well-known director, lived.

Eleanor cut the engine and glanced back at her. “Not this time, kiddo. I have some errands to run.”

“Oh. Well, I’ll miss you.” She leaned forward to peck Eleanor’s cheek. “Bye!” And she exploded out of the car, slamming the door on her way to meet Luke on the front steps.

Eleanor waited until the housekeeper had ushered the kids inside before guiding the Escape down the long driveway to the gate. A motion-sensor caught her approach, and by the time she reached the end of the driveway, the gate was standing open, waiting for her to pass. I’ll miss you too, she thought, watching the mansion disappear in her rearview mirror.

Eleanor was the first one to officially bring up the impending dissolution of their relationship. Not that she called it that, but that’s what it sounded like to Tessa when Eleanor informed her that evening that she needed a few days off to fly to the Midwest to look for an apartment. A place, incidentally, she would be living while Tessa and Laya continued their existence in L.A. with the black hole she’d left to keep them company.

This was apparently the day for revelations, Tessa thought, given Laya’s shocking pronouncement that morning. Tessa could only imagine the sorts of things Luke was reporting to his parents after spending the day with Laya. But tonight, instead of rehashing the bombshell Laya had dropped, Tessa had returned downstairs from putting her daughter to bed to find Eleanor pacing the family room, brow furrowed.

“We need to talk,” Eleanor had announced abruptly, and things had—predictably—gone downhill from there.

“Why didn’t you just ask me?” Tessa said now. She was curled up in the corner of the love seat, arms around her legs. “I would have given you the plane. You could have gone whenever you wanted instead of at the whim of the airlines.”

Eleanor turned from the window to stare at her. “You’re upset that I’m not taking your private jet? Seriously?”

When she put it that way... “No,” Tessa said. “Or yes. I don’t know. I have a meeting on Friday. What am I supposed to do with Laya?” Even as she said it, she knew she wasn’t upset about the airplane ticket or Laya’s babysitting schedule or even the thought of a weekend without Eleanor. This sudden jaunt to Madison to pick out an apartment was a reminder that soon Eleanor would be a permanent resident of the state of Wisconsin, while Tessa and Laya would still be here in this same house, chasing her ghost through the empty rooms.

“You’ll muddle through somehow,” Eleanor said, “like normal people do all the time.”

And there it was. Took a few months, but finally it was out there between them: Eleanor didn’t respect her. Tessa knew she’d grown overly accustomed to comfort. Giving away millions didn’t change the fact that she spent millions on herself and her daughter. Many people believed money would make them happy, and Tessa had discovered that it did, in fact, make life much easier. It was as if she thought she was owed ease and comfort after a marked lack of such things early on. But that wasn’t really the way things worked. She’d gotten lucky with acting, that was all. No more, no less.

“Damn it,” Eleanor said, and knelt before her. “I didn’t mean that.”

“I know.”

“No, I’m serious. I’m not angry with you. I’m just upset with the whole situation. I don’t want to go to Madison, and yet at the same time, I really do. I’m just afraid of what it might cost me. What it might cost us.”

Tessa looked into her eyes and saw the confusion there mirroring her own. She wanted to tell her not to go, to stay here with them instead, but she knew that wasn’t the right thing to say or do, either. Eleanor had remained in Boston for a decade while her mother fought cancer, delaying the start of her career so that she could be close to her family, even as they pushed her away for having the courage to be who she was. That was one of the things Tessa loved most about her—her strength, her refusal to compromise who she was for anyone. Love, she repeated to herself. Crap.

“I’m not sure what to say,” she heard herself venture.

Eleanor took her hands and held them between her own, eyes shadowed in the lamp-lit room. “Say you want this to work as much as I do. Say you want us to be together, to have a real relationship. Say you’ve never felt like this about anyone either.”

Tessa stared at her. “But you’re leaving.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t make this work. You own an airplane, remember?”

“I also have a daughter. I can’t just take off whenever I want and leave her. Or drag her back and forth between L.A. and Wisconsin.” Tessa had tried relationships with other actors a couple of times in her twenties, before Nadine, but they never lasted because one or the other of them was always heading out on location. In her experience, distance was rarely surmountable.

“I don’t see what choice we have. I mean, either we do the long-distance thing or we break up,” Eleanor said matter-of-factly.

Tessa closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. She didn’t want to lose Eleanor. Even if she hadn’t admitted it aloud, she didn’t think she ever had felt this way about anyone. But everyone thought that at the beginning, didn’t they?

“There might be a third option,” Eleanor said.

“What’s that?”

“You and Laya wouldn’t have to stay here, necessarily. You’re always saying how you wish you could raise her outside the Hollywood fishbowl.”

“Are you suggesting we move to Madison?” Tessa pictured Laya walking along safe, tree-lined streets with her friends to a school building not far from their comfortable but less than extravagant home. Then she stopped herself. It was a nice fantasy, but their lives could never be that simple. Anyway, she and Eleanor had only known each other a few months. Moving cross-country together would hardly be wise. Bad enough that they were basically living together now. Although really not bad at all. Quite nice in fact.

“Not necessarily Madison,” Eleanor said, still kneeling before her. “But what about Chicago? It’s only a couple of hours away and it has everything a city that size has to offer—museums, art, private schools, other famous people. Michael Jordan lives there, and so does Oprah.”

“Chicago?” Tessa echoed. She stared at Eleanor disbelievingly for a moment, and then she snickered. She couldn’t help it. Laughter just bubbled up inside of her and fell into the space Eleanor’s suggestion had created between them. Immediately Eleanor started to pull away, eyes shuttered, but Tessa reached out and grabbed her hands. “Wait, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh. It’s just, well, there’s something you don’t know about me.” She stopped. Should she tell her?

Eleanor wrenched her hands away and stood up, towering over her. “You think I don’t know that? You know everything there is to know about me, but you, Tess, you’re a fucking mystery. I don’t even know your real name, do I?”

Tessa stared up at her, stunned by the vehemence in Eleanor’s voice. She’d never seen her angry before. The hair rose at the back of her neck. After all these years, anger still possessed the power to scare the bejesus out of her. “No,” she admitted.

“Great. Just great. I don’t need this,” Eleanor said, turning away. “I didn’t ask for any of this. I was doing fine before you.” And she stormed out through the patio doors, headed for the carriage house.

“It’s O’Neil,” Tessa said. But by then, Eleanor was halfway across the patio.

Shit. She slouched down on the couch and covered her eyes. That had gone incredibly badly. She should have been overjoyed that Eleanor wanted to try to make things work even after the summer ended, but instead, all she could do was laugh at the idea of returning to Chicago. How had she managed to fall in love with a woman whose destiny led to the part of the world she had worked so hard to escape? For all she knew, if she returned to Chicago, she could very well run into ghosts from her past. Ghosts, unfortunately, who were all too real.

Eleanor was right about one thing. She did fantasize about leaving L.A. In an ideal world, she would raise Laya someplace where surface appearances weren’t a central concern, where who you were mattered as much as, if not more than, what you looked like.

She was tired of people, tired of crowded streets and the constant white noise of urban life. There was a reason 9/11 had happened in New York, a reason L.A. was considered a likely West Coast site for terrorist activity. Few paparazzi lived in the Midwest because stars rarely lived in the fly-over states. But she wasn’t a star anymore. And despite her fears, part of her longed to go home, to revisit where she had come from. Possibly, even, who.

Instead of acknowledging all of those difficult things, she’d rejected Eleanor, laughed in her face seemingly at the idea of continuing their relationship beyond the boundaries of the summer. Instead of meeting her halfway and saying yes, she wanted this to work too, yes, she loved her too, she’d turned away, stonewalled her, even appeared to deride Eleanor’s bravery in taking the first step. All because she was afraid that if Eleanor knew who and what she came from, she might not love her after all.

“Coward,” she muttered to herself as she walked through the house checking doors and windows, a nightly ritual she’d let slide since the Hawaii trip. At the patio doors, she hesitated, then turned the bolt. She could see lights on in the carriage house. She pictured Eleanor settling alone into Ama and Dani’s old bed, and then imagined herself crawling in beside her, begging her not to leave. But she couldn’t do that. Couldn’t ask Eleanor to give up her dream; didn’t, if she thought about it, even want to. Which left the three options Eleanor had outlined: a clean break now, a long-distance relationship, or a move back to the Midwest. But Tessa couldn’t go back to Chicago, either. She wouldn’t.

She rubbed her bare arms, suddenly chilled despite the August heat. The house was cooler than usual because Eleanor, pale-skinned Vermonter that she was, liked it cold at night. This would be their first night apart since they’d returned from Kauai. She would miss Eleanor’s warmth.

Might as well get used to the feeling, she thought, and turned away from the carriage house lights. Soon enough Eleanor’s absence, and her own regret for what might have been, would be permanent.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 617