Chapter Twenty-One

Over the days that followed, Eleanor vacillated between joy—she loves me!—and unease. What did it mean that Tessa had kept hidden such a big part of her life? Was it only habit, or did she really not trust Eleanor? Faced with losing her, Tessa had, in fact, trusted her enough to reveal the details of her nightmarish childhood, and Eleanor now felt the pieces of the Tessa puzzle falling into place. No wonder she was so careful all the time. It wasn’t just that the press and her fans had followed her every move since she’d become famous. She’d lived for years with the fear of being found out, and not just as a lesbian.

Whenever Eleanor remembered her own exhortations for Tessa to bare all on behalf of foster children everywhere, she had to acknowledge that her timing could have been better. She still believed Tessa should open up and share her story. In a psych class at Smith she’d learned that people who carried secrets for long periods of time suffered ill health effects, both physically and psychologically. Her professor had noted that the state motto of nearby New Hampshire, “Live Free or Die,” was surprisingly accurate when applied to the human psyche. Still, she probably wasn’t going to convince Tessa overnight that it was in her own best interests to reveal to the world that her father had murdered her mother, and that she herself had endured almost a decade in Chicago’s foster system.

September wasn’t far off now, and Eleanor had other things to worry about as the days followed one after another. The middle of her last month in California passed in a blur of day trips with Laya and, increasingly, Tessa; poignant moments in the darkness of Tessa’s bedroom; the inevitable arrangements that preceded Eleanor’s move to Madison. She found herself spending hours on the phone and online, when she would rather have been with Tessa and Laya—classes had to be registered for, tuition paid, a portable steel storage container with all of her possessions shipped from Boston to Madison. In her new apartment, she would once again have her insanely cushy couch from (of all places) Sears, her many books, her favorite art prints picked up for cheap at assorted Boston street fairs, her framed family photos. She had plenty of digitized reminders on her laptop, but it would be different to be in a home of her own again and see images of her parents and Julia arrayed about her, silent witnesses to her everyday life.

She’d missed that sensation these last months, just as she would miss others in the months to come. She and Tessa had decided almost by default to do the long-distance thing, but Eleanor still wasn’t certain how often they would see each other. Thanksgiving and Christmas for sure, they’d agreed. But other than the holidays, visits were still TBD. And what about Laya? Eleanor knew how much a six-year-old could change in the space of a month, let alone a semester. In grad school half a continent away, she would miss so much of Laya’s life, with no resolution in sight.

For her part, Laya was considerably more stoic than the adults in her life. They’d known all along that Eleanor was leaving, she pointed out whenever they broached the topic, and it wouldn’t be forever. They could talk on the phone and e-mail and even Skype on the new webcam-equipped laptop Eleanor had purchased for just that purpose. Besides, taking chances was a good thing, Laya reminded them—like in one of her favorite books from Eleanor’s class, Chipo’s Gift, in which Chipo the mopane worm from South Africa learns that new places help you grow. Eleanor just shook her head, impressed as ever by Laya’s ability to remember uncommon worm species and where they hailed from.

As the days and nights dwindled away, Tessa took a break from work on the foundation to spend time with her “two favorite females,” as she now referred to Eleanor and Laya. They swam in the pool and hung out with Sasha and Allen, Will and Scott, Margot and Rayann. They went school shopping in town and screened new movies in the den and read aloud from Harry Potter on the patio, and it was just like the first days after they returned from Kauai only with the specter of fall hanging over them all. Eleanor fell asleep each night next to Tessa wishing summer could last a few more weeks, another month. But each morning she awakened knowing she had one fewer day in California.

And then, as it was always going to do, the countdown dropped below a week.

The last Friday of August, they were sitting on the patio playing a seemingly never-ending round of Uno when Tessa announced, “Laya, I was thinking of borrowing Eleanor tonight. Is that okay with you?”

“Maybe,” Laya said. “What for?”

“I thought I would take her out to dinner at a nice restaurant. You know, as a thank you for everything she’s done for us this summer.” She smiled at Eleanor, her eyes glowing with the bittersweet look Eleanor had grown accustomed to in recent days.

“Can I come?” Laya asked.

“Sorry, sweetie, but this restaurant is for grown-ups. You wouldn’t have any fun. Besides, they don’t have french fries.”

Laya frowned. “Which restaurant?”

“It’s a surprise,” Tessa said. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Duh, Mom.”

Tessa leaned over and whispered in her ear, and Eleanor hummed softly to herself so she wouldn’t accidentally overhear. She liked surprises. At least, the L.A. her liked surprises. The Boston Eleanor not so much.

Apparently the restaurant passed muster. Laya nodded and said, “Okay. But I get to help pick out your clothes, right?”

“Of course,” Eleanor put in, and held up her hand for a high five. As Laya slapped her palm, she wondered where Tessa was taking her. They had spent so much time avoiding camera phones, gossip bloggers and paparazzi that they’d never been on an actual, real-world date.

Upstairs, they opened the side of the walk-in closet that contained Tessa’s movie premiere and award show outfits. For Eleanor, Laya selected a V-neck silk dress that brought out the green in her eyes, while for Tessa she suggested a deep red backless dress. In addition to flora and fauna, the kid knew fashion, Eleanor thought. But then she was the daughter of a movie star. She’d been weaned on Dolce and Gabbana.

Before they left the house, Tessa helped Eleanor with her hair and makeup, managing to hide her freckles without the appearance of anything but the barest of foundations. Eleanor surveyed her up-swept hairdo and flawless skin in the mirror, slightly shocked to realize that she was, in fact, the seemingly sophisticated woman staring out of the glass.

“You learn things when you spend half your life on a movie set,” Tessa said, pursing her lips as she applied a shade of lipstick that matched her dress perfectly.

“You look fabulous,” Laya said, winking at them in the mirror. Only she couldn’t quite get the hang of the single eyelash dip and ended up blinking owlishly instead. Eleanor was careful not to laugh, and not only because she was afraid it might ruin her makeup.

Nancy, Ama and Dani’s oldest daughter, showed up at five thirty to babysit. She whistled appreciatively when she saw them and took a picture on her camera phone to send to her parents. Laya had her snap a few shots on the family digital camera too. Then the limo arrived and Eleanor and Tessa climbed into the backseat, waving at Laya and Nancy as the driver closed the door behind them.

“I’ve owed you a real date for a while now,” Tessa said as the limo glided down the canyon toward Beverly Hills. “We’ve spent so much time hiding out at home that I haven’t even wooed you properly.”

“I’m not really the wooing type,” Eleanor said, clasping Tessa’s hand in hers. They were seated at the back of the long car, both dressed like movie stars (which, of course, Tessa was), privacy shield in place. While they could see out the tinted windows, no one could see in, not even the driver, and she liked the sense of opulent anonymity the limo afforded.

“Neither am I,” Tessa admitted. “But we have to show the world we’re a happy couple. As soon as you leave, the headlines will announce the tormented end to our relationship. No matter who Perez Hilton claims I’m rebounding with, just remember it’s all lies.”

“I wouldn’t buy it anyway. I’ve seen how slow you are on the uptake.”

“Hey, now,” Tessa said, laughing. Then her smile dimmed. “I was slow, wasn’t I? I can’t believe how much time we wasted.”

“I wouldn’t say wasted, necessarily,” Eleanor said, though similar thoughts had occurred to her.

They looked out the window at the shiny storefronts rolling past, at the tourists and locals alike out on the streets enjoying a warm Friday night in late summer.

“We’re almost there,” Tessa said, squeezing her hand.

When the limo stopped on the narrow street behind Spago, Eleanor almost clapped her hands. She had hoped the swanky restaurant might be Tessa’s intended destination. They entered through the back door to avoid oglers—their table was reserved under her agent’s name, Tessa said, but you never knew who might be out front hoping for a lucky sighting—and were escorted immediately to a well-placed table in the restaurant’s interior far from the front windows. As they wound through the seating area, Tessa nodded and said hello to various patrons, and even stopped once to introduce Eleanor to a sharp-faced woman and her husband, both higher-ups at some studio or another. Eleanor was having a hard time focusing due to the tenor of her thoughts—I’m at SPAGO! With TESSA FLANAGAN! She wished her mother were still alive. Sarah Chapin would have been impressed by this date. But if her mother had been alive, Eleanor probably wouldn’t have come to L.A., which meant she would never have met Tessa. Not a syllogism she wanted to spend much time analyzing.

Dinner was wonderful—the food was strikingly named and presented, and Eleanor happily devoured the delicious seafood and vegetarian concoctions placed before her. Soon she would be subsisting on bagels and soup, though not ramen, trusty student fare that it was. She had sworn after Smith never to touch the stuff again. Spago’s chef had likely never sampled ramen noodles, judging from the rich inventions the waiter kept bringing.

After an initial hesitation, Eleanor drank deeply of the four hundred dollar bottle of wine Tessa ordered, telling herself that it was okay to dine like this once in her life. Besides being unimaginably flavorful, the wine was quite effective at dulling the guilt eating away at her. New Englanders were typically spendthrifts. Blowing cash on such transitory items as food and alcohol was not a family value where she came from. But she had to admit, the food and the wine and the ambience easily surpassed any and all of her previous (and likely future) dining experiences.

As did the company—for once in public, Tessa wasn’t hiding behind an impersonal mask. They were barely seated when she reached across the table and took Eleanor’s hand, holding it lightly in her own, thumb rubbing her wrist gently. Throughout the meal, she gazed deeply into Eleanor’s eyes, laughed unrestrainedly at her jokes, fed her bites of salad and halibut and crab cakes, appearing to ignore the surreptitious looks Eleanor caught nearby diners casting their way. This was how their life together could be, she seemed to be saying—open, honest, affectionate. At least, here at Spago where the clientele was of a certain class and the paparazzi couldn’t reach.

Distracted by this uncustomary attention, Eleanor drank too much, and when they exited through the rear of the restaurant a full two hours after they’d arrived, she nearly stumbled as flashbulbs exploded in her face. Tessa gripped her arm tightly and gave the gathered photographers a tight-lipped smile as she hustled Eleanor to the limo.

“Give us a kiss!” someone shouted.

“Come on, show us your teeth!” another called.

Eleanor thought this last comment was particularly strange, as the one making it was the piranha, after all. Giggling at the thought, she waved over Tessa’s shoulder as the limo door closed on the amassed photographers.

“Did you just wave at them?” Tessa asked as the car pulled out onto the quiet Beverly Hills street.

“Maybe,” Eleanor said, and hiccupped.

“You’re a lightweight, Miss Chapin, you know that?”

“You can call me Eleanor.”

“Thanks.” Tessa smiled indulgently. “So what did you think of Spago? Or do I even need to ask?”

“Scrumptious and delectable and lip-smacking.” Her tongue felt heavy, due no doubt to the half bottle of wine she’d consumed.

“Really. Is that your official review?”

“No, it’s your Facebook status,” Eleanor said, giggling some more. That reminded her—should she change her relationship details on Facebook? Was she officially no longer single? “Hey, what am I supposed to call you when people ask me about you?”

“Tessa. No one’s called me Mary Therese in decades.”

“No, I mean, are you like my girlfriend, or what? Because I really don’t like the word lover. Did you ever see that skit they used to do on Saturday Night Live? Oh my God, it was so painful.”

“I remember,” Tessa said. “Why? Do you want to be my girlfriend?”

“Dude, heck yeah,” Eleanor said, craning her neck to look at her. “I love you, babe.”

“All right, then, we’re officially girlfriends.”

“Score,” Eleanor said, and kissed her. Tessa’s tongue flicked lazily against hers, and Eleanor felt her body begin to hum expectantly. She didn’t think she’d ever get tired of making out with Tessa.

The delicious wine haze presented a problem when they got home. They’d said goodnight to Nancy and turned on the alarm and checked on the sleeping Laya, and were headed down the hall to the master suite when Tessa’s BlackBerry pinged. She quickly set it to mute, then frowned as she held up the glowing screen in the dimly lit hallway.

“Don’t answer,” Eleanor said, hands on Tessa’s hips ushering her forward. She’d passed the ride home picturing everything she would do to Tessa in the confines of their bedroom.

“I won’t,” Tessa said, turning to her. Phone still in hand, she pushed Eleanor back against the wall and kissed her deeply, her tongue sliding into her mouth as the sleek material of their dresses rubbed together. God, Eleanor thought dimly, she was going to miss this.

Before things could get out of control, they took the last few steps to the bedroom and closed the door behind them. But just as Eleanor was pushing Tessa toward the bed, the BlackBerry vibrated. And then the land line on the bedside table rang, soft but insistent.

“You should probably answer,” Eleanor said reluctantly. No one would call Tessa this late without good reason.

“Yeah, okay,” Tessa said absently, reaching for the cordless phone.

Eleanor stripped out of the dress Laya had picked for her and hung it back in the closet, only half-listening to her girlfriend’s—ha!—end of the conversation. It was Melody, her publicist, and from the sound of Tessa’s voice, the news was not good. As Eleanor returned to the bedroom in only a lacy bra and a thong Tessa had ordered for her (surprisingly comfortable, she’d discovered, and good for outfits where a panty line was undesirable), she thought about sneaking up on Tessa and planting a kiss on her free ear. But at that moment, Tessa turned away from the curtained window and looked at her so bleakly that Eleanor froze.

What had happened? Ama and Dani, she thought immediately, but that didn’t make any sense. Nancy would have said something, and besides, Melody wouldn’t know anything about them. Which left a PR calamity of some kind. Everyone already knew they were together. What else was there?

“Did they say where the story came from?” Tessa asked, her eyes on Eleanor. “No? Well, try to find out.” She turned away, pacing toward the window again.

Goose bumps rose on Eleanor’s skin. It couldn’t be, could it? She racked her mind. Had she told anyone about Tessa’s past? Somehow let even part of the story slip in front of someone she shouldn’t have? But there was no one. She hadn’t told or e-mailed or texted a soul, not even Sasha.

“I can’t,” Tessa said after a minute, her back to Eleanor. “There is no plausible deniability here, Mel. If they’ve got my birth certificate and school photos, they have everything.” She listened, then made a fist with her free hand. “No! Absolutely not! I am not going on the record with this. Tell them no comment… I don’t care. Just do it.” And she hit the off button on the phone.

For a moment, neither of them moved. Then Eleanor swallowed past the knot in her throat and asked, “Are you okay?”

“No,” Tessa said. “I’m not okay.”

Suddenly sober, Eleanor folded her arms across her chest. She was starting to shiver. But maybe she was wrong. Please God, let her be wrong. “What happened?”

“What happened?” Tessa spun around to face her. “What happened is that Katie Evans from Entertainment Tonight called Melody for a comment on the story they’re about to run. Seems someone found my birth certificate in Chicago.”

Eleanor was trembling now, hands rubbing her upper arms. “But how?”

“I don’t know, Elle. Why don’t you tell me?”

She stared at Tessa. “You don’t think I have anything to do with this, do you?” But even as she delivered the line, she knew it was unnecessary. Of course Tessa thought she was at the root of the leak. For nearly two decades she’d kept her past secret, and then suddenly it came out only a matter of weeks after she told someone for the first time? She’d be crazy not to wonder.

Tessa’s eyes were glowing in the lamplight, and it took Eleanor a second to realize she was crying. “I don’t know what to think,” she said, and sat down on the bed, head in her hands.

Eleanor wanted to go to her but couldn’t stand her own nakedness another second. She went into the closet where she’d left her clothes what felt like ages before, dressed silently, and returned to the bedroom, trying to figure out how she might bridge the impossibly wide gulf that had somehow opened between them.

Tessa was lying on her side of the bed in her red dress, face buried in a pillow. Eleanor hesitated, then went to sit beside her. “I’m so sorry,” she said, touching Tessa’s hair. She had never seen her cry before.

Quickly Tessa looked up, mascara running everywhere, and Eleanor added, “Not because—I don’t have anything to be sorry for. But I know how it looks and I know how devastated you must be. I can only tell you that I would never, ever, do anything like this. You have to know that. I love you.”

“I know you do,” Tessa said. Then she closed her eyes and turned her face toward the pillow again. “I just don’t know what to think.”

Think the best of me, she wanted to say. Believe me. Love me. But in the brief moment Tessa had looked back at her, Eleanor had read the doubt in her eyes, shuttered in a way that reminded Eleanor of her mother. It was obvious—Tessa didn’t trust her. Probably, she didn’t trust anyone. But the distinction didn’t make the reality any easier to accept. The way they felt about each other didn’t matter, not if Tessa believed she was capable of something like this. And all at once the loss was too much—her mother, Tessa, Laya too, sleeping soundly just down the hall unaware of what was happening.

“I’m sorry,” Eleanor said again as her own tears spilled over. Then she stood and headed for the hallway.

She moved slowly down the stairs and through the house, waiting for Tessa’s tread behind her. She would come after her, wouldn’t she? Tell her she knew it couldn’t possibly have been her? But Eleanor made it out of the house and across the patio alone, and then she was in the carriage house, still keeping an ear out as she undressed, brushed her teeth, washed off the makeup Tessa had so carefully applied only hours before.

Spago seemed like a dream now, an impossible fantasy as Eleanor lay in bed, waiting for a sound that didn’t come.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 646