Chapter Twenty

Thursday morning, Tessa left for work early, which suited Eleanor fine. After what had happened between them the night before, she didn’t have anything to say to Tessa. She took Laya hiking near Santa Barbara for most of the day, careful to hide her anger and disappointment. After all, Laya wasn’t responsible for her mother’s behavior. Back at the house that evening, Tessa tried to catch her eye as they made dinner and chatted about their days, but Eleanor pretended not to notice. She couldn’t wait to get out of L.A. A few days in Madison was just what she needed.

As soon as Tessa took Laya up to bed, Eleanor slipped out the patio doors and returned to the lonely carriage house, where she failed to sleep well for a second night in a row. The next morning, she ate breakfast alone, then said a hurried goodbye to Tessa and Laya. Tessa’s hug was short, impersonal, mostly for Laya’s benefit, Eleanor suspected. After all, they were supposed to be “very good friends.”

Good friends, however, didn’t ridicule each other, she reflected on the way to LAX. She still couldn’t believe she’d laid her cards on the table only to be so heartlessly rebuffed. Tessa had actually laughed at the idea of continuing their relationship past the summer—the reaction Eleanor had feared most. No wonder Tessa had never wanted Laya to know about their relationship. When it came down to it, Eleanor was apparently nothing more than a convenient, temporary diversion. Before the other night, she would have sworn that the real Tessa Flanagan was warm and funny and loved faded jeans and hanging out at home. And, possibly, her. Clearly she’d been wrong. Come fall, Tessa would be able to pick from a whole fleet of lipstick lesbians who were more like her, women who shopped on Rodeo Drive and wouldn’t be caught dead flying coach.

Fortunately, Madison was nothing like L.A. Wisconsin would be the perfect place to get over Tessa, she decided glumly that weekend as she explored her future home. The small city was hot and humid in mid-August, but lush and green too, with miles of lakeshore paths and a vibrant downtown built on a narrow isthmus between a pair of tree-lined lakes. A college town best known for frat parties and social activism, Madison offered a picturesque central square crowned by the state capitol building, an impressive farmers’ market with locally grown organic produce, and laidback, friendly people who, luckily, seemed ignorant of her relationship with Tessa.

On Saturday morning, she met up with a couple of students from her program, Josh and Bryn, who gave her a tour of the university and assorted neighborhoods nearby. Then, iPhone in hand, she went apartment hunting. It was grueling, but by the end of the day, she had signed a six-month lease on an upstairs unit in an old Victorian house on a residential street not far from campus. To celebrate, Josh and Bryn took her out on the town that night. As she drank beer and sampled cheese curds at a hipster restaurant with her soon-to-be fellow students, both of whom were several years her junior, Eleanor decided she could picture herself with these people in this place for the next few years. It could work—which was good, seeing as she’d just dropped fifteen hundred bucks on first and last month’s rent.

But even as she imagined herself assuming the life she’d planned for so long, she couldn’t stop thinking about the one she’d put on hold back in L.A. While she sat in an honest-to-God Western-style saloon after dinner with Josh, Bryn and some of their friends listening to a local band jam onstage, she could picture Tessa and Laya cooking dinner without her, washing up afterward and reading a few stories until Laya finally drifted off midsentence in her tree house bed. She could imagine them at breakfast the next morning, Tessa with her obligatory newspaper, Laya cutting animal shapes out of her pancakes and providing detailed descriptions of each creature’s life cycle. As Eleanor sipped her beer and smiled at the students she was bound to get to know possibly too well in coming years, she understood that this was how Madison would be at first—her mind only half present, the other half somewhere she wasn’t even wanted.

On Sunday morning, she met Bryn and a handful of her friends for brunch at a downtown restaurant that served food primarily sourced from local farms. As she waited for her eggs and hash browns to arrive, Eleanor listened to the conversation flow around her and checked out the women Bryn had invited along. Most looked the same—smart young white women who cared more about what they read than where they bought their shoes. But Reed, a music student sitting beside her at the very end of the table, set her gaydar pinging—androgynous name and figure, short dyed blond hair molded into a faux hawk, baggy shorts and a multitude of tattoos visible beneath her tank top.

“So, Reed, what instrument do you play?” Eleanor asked after the server had poured their coffee.

“Piano and harpsichord,” the younger woman said. “What about you? Any music lessons in your past?”

“Violin,” Eleanor admitted, “but I haven’t played in a while. I’ve always wanted to learn guitar, though. Me and every other lesbian, I guess.”

Reed’s eyebrows rose for a second, then evened out. “Totally,” she said. “Half the women I know already play the guitar, and the others all want to.”

Bingo. “What’s the women’s community like in Madison?”

“It’s actually great,” Reed said, and launched into a description of the bookstores and student groups and clubs available to women of their persuasion. But after a minute, she stopped midsentence and stared at Eleanor. “Wait, did Bryn say your name was Eleanor?”

“Yeah, why?” A thought occurred to her, but she pushed it away. She was not about to be recognized by a virtual stranger.

“And you’re here from L.A.?”

Then again… Eleanor nodded slowly.

Reed snapped her fingers. “I thought you looked familiar. You’re the woman who outed Tessa Flanagan, aren’t you?”

This was definitely a first. All at once, Eleanor felt a flash of empathy for Tessa, who rarely went anywhere without being recognized. “I’m not sure outed is the right word, exactly.”

“No way! I can’t believe I’m having brunch with Tessa Flanagan’s girlfriend!” She glanced around the table, trying to catch the eye of one of the other women.

Girlfriend wasn’t the best word choice, either. Eleanor touched Reed’s arm. “Wait,” she said, her voice low. “Please don’t say anything right now. I’d really like to get through the weekend with everyone thinking of me as just another new student, not Tessa Flanagan’s girlfriend. Or whatever,” she added, stumbling over the blatant untruth.

After a moment, Reed nodded. “I can understand that,” she said. “I just moved out here from New York last summer. It’s hard to start over, especially if people already have a certain view of you. Those articles probably didn’t get much right, did they?”

“Almost nothing,” Eleanor agreed, relieved that Reed was willing to keep her identity under wraps for now.

“Can I just say, you rock. I’m serious. Bringing a woman like her over to our side has got to be the coup of the decade.”

Eleanor sipped her coffee. “I can’t take any credit.”

“You mean she was already…?”

“Practically a gold-star lesbian.”

“I heard those rumors but I never believed them. I mean, what are the odds someone like her would dig chicks?”

“Someone like who would dig chicks?” Bryn put in, and conversation around the table paused as all eyes swiveled to Reed.

“Portia de Rossi,” she said, exchanging a significant look with Eleanor. The conversation settled briefly on Ellen DeGeneres and her gorgeous, funny girlfriend before skipping on to more pressing concerns, such as the professor in the English department who was currently cheating on his wife with a grad student. A male grad student.

As Eleanor worked on her hash browns, she reflected that Reed was going to be disappointed when she found out they weren’t a couple, after all. At least her relationship with Tessa had made her a sort-of star by association in the lesbian community. She probably wouldn’t have any problem finding women in Madison who wanted to be friends with the woman who had outed Tessa Flanagan, as Reed had put it. That had to be something, didn’t it?

On the flight back to L.A. that evening, as the airplane chased the sun westward, Eleanor counted the days until she was due to return to Madison. Twenty, she realized, that was all. Then she would pack up her car and drive through the states the jet was currently flying over. Sasha had offered to take time off and accompany her—reluctantly, because she was not a fan of Mormons (Utah) or cowboys (Colorado), and Eleanor shouldn’t even get her started on redneck states like Nebraska and Iowa. But for her best friend, she was willing to risk life and limb traversing the middle west of their great nation.

Watching the clouds darken beyond her narrow window, Eleanor wondered how she was going to get through the next few weeks. She still loved Tessa just as much as she had before Wednesday’s harsh reality check. How was she going to manage around Tessa at meals, in the evenings, between now and the end of the month? Maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she should tell her that their current arrangement no longer worked. She could move back in with Sasha and only come up to the house during the day while Tessa was down in the city, like they’d talked about before.

That would probably work, she thought, closing her eyes. Why, then, did she wish she hadn’t thought of it?

On Sunday evening, Tessa dropped Laya off at Margot’s house for an impromptu sleepover. Eleanor was due home in a few hours, and Tessa didn’t want her daughter distracting her from what she knew she had to do.

“You’re in rough shape,” Margot said as soon as Laya and Rayann ran off to the downstairs playroom of the Trivers’ mansion.

“What gave it away?” Tessa asked, knowing that her hair under the makeshift bandana was disheveled, her mascara-free eyes looked like someone had punched her, and her threadbare UCLA T-shirt had seen better days. Meanwhile Margot, closer to fifty these days than forty, looked well put together as usual in a stylish dress shirt and tailored pants, her makeup flawless and hair carefully coiffed.

“You know I don’t usually tell you what to do,” Margot said as they stood in the entryway to her Malibu home, the Pacific sparkling in the near distance, “but I don’t think you should let this one go. She’s different, Tess. You’re different with her, in a good way. Though I don’t suppose I have to tell you that.”

The older woman was everything Tessa liked about Hollywood—ethical, brilliant and hard-working. When Tessa told Margot she was retiring from acting, she’d expected the producer to react like everyone else. Instead, Margot had considered Tessa with her piercing hazel eyes and nodded once. “Good for you,” she’d said, cementing Tessa’s eternal admiration.

“I don’t want to let her go,” she told Margot now. “I’m just not sure how to keep her. Or if I’m even the one to do the keeping.”

For four days Tessa had sleepwalked through work, time with Laya, nights alone, wondering all the while what Eleanor was doing, thinking, feeling. For four lousy nights she’d slept by herself in a bed that suddenly felt too big. Or not slept, as the marks beneath her eyes clearly attested. Mostly she had lain in the dark missing Eleanor and trying to decide what to do. No one had ever gotten this close before. Certainly not Nadine, and not even Tory, who she had loved blindly with the ease of youth. But she and Eleanor weren’t kids. Hadn’t been for a while.

Back at home, she took a long hot shower and tracked Eleanor’s flight on her BlackBerry. When it was safely on the ground, she poured a glass of wine and headed out to the patio to watch the sky darken as the solar lights automatically lit up. She was sitting by the pool when Eleanor slipped in through the garden gate, avoiding the main house as Tessa had known she would.

She rose in the near-dark. “Elle.”

“Jesus!” Eleanor stopped suddenly, her wheeled carry-on running up the back of her leg. “Ouch! Damn it.”

Not the beginning Tessa had hoped for. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“What are you doing out here? Is Laya okay?”

“She’s with the Trivers for the night,” she said, and folded her arms across her chest. In the patio lighting, she could just make out Eleanor’s features. She didn’t look happy. “Can we talk?” She waited a long, agonizing moment as Eleanor looked out over the pool.

“Okay,” she said finally, glancing back at Tessa. “But I need to get out of these clothes first. I’ll come over in a little while, all right?”

“Of course,” Tessa said, inclining her head. “Take your time.”

Eleanor apparently took her at face value. Tessa paced the family room for twenty minutes, swallowing more wine than she’d intended as she waited for Eleanor to appear. All weekend she had pictured Eleanor falling in love with Madison, the University of Wisconsin, her new Flanagan-less existence. Maybe she hadn’t even wanted to come back to L.A. tonight. Maybe she was only back to pack up her things and leave again as soon as she possibly could.

The French doors opened and Eleanor was suddenly there, damp hair curling about her shoulders, eyes wary. She didn’t quite look at Tessa as she stood just inside the doors, hands in the front pocket of her Smith hoodie.

“Sorry,” she said. “I really needed a shower.”

“Of course.” Tessa set her empty wineglass on the coffee table and approached Eleanor, who shifted away slightly. Tessa ignored this and launched into the prepared speech that she’d memorized as if it were a script. “But I’m the one who should apologize. I know it seems like I laughed at you the other night, but it didn’t have anything to do with you or what you said. You couldn’t know this but I actually grew up in Chicago. I was born and raised there.” It was easier to say than she had imagined. Nothing changed outwardly, but inside, she felt lighter. Finally, after all these years, she wanted someone else to know her story.

Eleanor was watching her more closely now, mouth still unsmiling but eyes no longer quite as flat. “I thought you were from New York?”

“No, and my parents weren’t killed in a car accident, either. My mother’s gone, but my father is very much alive and still in Illinois, last I heard.”

“I don’t understand,” Eleanor said. “What do you mean, last you heard?”

She didn’t have to tell her. She could still back out. But as she saw Eleanor frowning, shoulders hunched forward in her faded sweatshirt, Tessa realized she wanted Eleanor to know all of her, not just the film star with the house in the Hills and more money than she knew what to do with. She wanted Eleanor to know the scared kid who had possibly never fully recovered from the moment that had changed her life into a before and an after.

“We’re not in touch anymore because my father is in prison,” she said. “When I was nine, he killed my mother during an argument. I ended up in foster care and went through half a dozen placements. I left Chicago as soon as I turned eighteen. I’ve never gone back. I don’t even like to fly through O’Hare.” All these years later, saying what her father had done felt impersonal, as if she were relating something that had happened to another person. Which, in a way, it had.

“My God,” Eleanor said, her face pale. “I had no idea.” She pulled Tessa into her arms, into a warm, solid embrace. “I’m so sorry, Tess.”

Tessa hid her face in Eleanor’s neck. Thank God, she didn’t hate her or, apparently, feel repulsed by her family history. Tessa’s throat tightened, and she breathed in deeply. Eleanor smelled familiar—of soap and minty shampoo and a scent that was all hers. And now she was kissing Tessa’s hair, her cheek, her lips. Tessa was drowning, dizzy from red wine, exhaustion, relief.

“I missed you so much,” she murmured.

Eleanor leaned her forehead against Tessa’s. “Tell me about it.”

“How was Madison?”

“Good, but lonely. How’s Laya?”

“Mad at me for not letting her be here when you got home. She missed you too.” Tessa tightened her grip on Eleanor’s waist. “You’re not still angry with me?”

“Does it look like I’m angry?”

“No. But can you understand why I reacted like that when you brought up Chicago?”

Eleanor hesitated. “I think so. Going back might feel like returning to who you were then.”

“That’s exactly it. I wasn’t laughing at you. I just couldn’t believe you were suggesting I go to the one place I promised myself never to set foot in again. I’m so sorry. I should have told you I wanted to be with you because I do. So much, Elle. I don’t want to lose you.”

“That’s all I wanted to hear,” Eleanor said, pulling her close again.

Later, upstairs in Tessa’s bedroom, they lay together in the dark under the sheets, holding onto each other as Eleanor asked questions that Tessa, for once, answered candidly: what her foster families were like, how she survived, where she went to junior high and high school. Tessa asked questions too: what was Madison like, did she find an apartment, what did she think of the people she’d met? When Eleanor told her about Reed’s comments at brunch, Tessa felt herself bristle.

“Coup of the decade, my ass. I hope you corrected her.”

“Maybe,” Eleanor responded, a teasing glint in her eyes.

“You better have,” Tessa said, but a massive yawn ruined the tough tone she was aiming for.

She was almost asleep when she heard Eleanor ask, “How did your mother die?”

Tessa had been at school when it happened, but she knew the basics, and that was what she shared with Eleanor now: Her mother was angry with her father because two of her friends had called to say they’d seen him out with a woman from the neighborhood. She waited up all night at the kitchen table, smoking cigarettes (which she usually didn’t do inside the apartment) and drinking Tessa’s father’s favorite bottle of whiskey, reserved for special occasions. He still hadn’t come home the next morning, so Tessa got herself ready and off to school. The last time she saw her mother alive, she held a cigarette in one hand, a half-full glass of whiskey in the other. She looked like a stranger. Tessa wasn’t sure her mother even saw her leave.

In his deposition, her father claimed he acted in self-defense. As soon as he entered the apartment that morning, she’d flown at him, he said, shrieking and striking him about the head and chest. When he pushed her away, she fell and her head slammed into the hall table. He’d called 911 and waited for the ambulance with her, but she never regained consciousness. She was pronounced dead at the hospital. An immigrant with no family support and little financial resources, he couldn’t afford a lawyer. The public defender assigned to his case convinced him to accept a murder plea, and the judge sentenced him to thirty years in prison. Tessa, already in foster care, officially became a ward of the state.

“Pretty incredible you’ve kept a secret like that all these years,” Eleanor said. She was lying on her back now, one arm under Tessa’s neck, stroking her hair gently, rhythmically.

“It is,” Tessa agreed. “I always thought someday I would get a call from Melody, that a reporter would be asking for a comment on a story they were writing about my real name, my real family. Apparently there were a couple of close calls, I don’t know, maybe more. Michael and Melody have done an impressive job keeping everything under wraps.”

“I’d say so.” Eleanor’s hand stilled. “What I don’t understand, I guess, is why you decided to keep everything hidden. What would be so terrible about people knowing the truth?”

Tessa propped herself up one elbow. She’d almost been expecting the question. Eleanor had never had to hide anything about herself. Not a surprise, then, that she wouldn’t understand why someone else might. “I’d rather not be the star of my own made-for-TV movie, thanks very much.”

“It wouldn’t have to be like that. Think of all the kids going through the same kinds of things you went through, the foster kids feeling alone and scared and totally hopeless. You could go on TV and share your story, and think of what it would mean to those kids to know it’s possible to start over again.”

But was it possible? Tessa wasn’t so sure. Despite her success, despite her career and the money and the years of therapy, she’d never quite been able to outrun the pain of losing both of her parents in a single moment of violence.

“That’s a sweet idea, Elle, and if I thought that was what my coming out, so to speak, would accomplish, I’d do it.” Would she really? She ignored the flicker of self-doubt. “But it wouldn’t be like that. And anyway, talk about false hopes—the odds of any of those kids coming to L.A. and making it big are pretty slim. Plenty of well-adjusted people never achieve their dreams here, let alone the ones hauling around overwhelming emotional baggage.”

“The point isn’t that they’ll think they can make it in Hollywood,” Eleanor insisted, “although I did hear a story on NPR recently about how the American Dream has shifted from owning a house and raising a family to becoming rich and famous. But the point is that you could give throwaway kids the hope that someday their lives will change. I mean, look how much yours has.”

She had a valid point, but Tessa didn’t want to hear it. As an A-list star, she hadn’t enjoyed privacy in more than a decade. One of the things about being famous was that you didn’t get to control the conclusions people drew about you. Each bit of information that leaked out was used by a hundred different people in a hundred different ways, but all for the same motives: profit and publicity, which, when you came down to it, were basically the same thing. If she revealed her family history publicly, she would then have to watch as the media dug deeper and probed painful memories and twisted things to make a better, more dramatic story. Because drama sold, whether it was true or not.

“I’m not going to tell the world about poor little Mary Therese and her dead mother and abusive father,” Tessa said. “It’s my family, not some script that can be tied up neatly and packaged to the masses. You have no idea what it’s like. It’s my decision, and I would hope you would respect that.” She rolled away from Eleanor and hugged a pillow to her body, closing her eyes against the tears threatening. She was so tired. It had taken so much energy to tell Eleanor the truth, and now all she wanted was sleep.

Behind her, she felt Eleanor shift until they were spooning. “I’m sorry,” Eleanor whispered, her arms tight around Tessa. “Of course it’s your decision. And you’re right, I can’t possibly know what it’s like. I can just tell you that I love you and I want to be with you. I’ll keep your secret, Tess. You don’t have to worry.”

Tessa opened her eyes to the dark room, aware of Eleanor’s body pressed against hers from behind, Eleanor’s breath stirring her hair. “Did you just say you love me?”

“Among other things.”

She turned over to face her again. “Even though you don’t know my real name?”

“Even so.”

“It’s O’Neil,” Tessa said for the second time that week. “And I love you too.”

They fell asleep in each other’s arms a little while later, the house shifting quietly around them.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 698