Page 37 of Love Scenes

All the while, I keep thinking of that final day of Dad in the living room. How when I woke up that morning he was packing up the last of his belongings. He looked me in the eye and said, “Sloane. Listen to me. Don’t ever let your pride get in the way of your happiness.”

I was eight. I had no idea what he meant. What stuck with me was the way he said it, like I was his equal. It made me feel important in the exact way I’d always wanted to be. I pressed my hands onto his cheeks and told him I’d never forget.

Every morning on my drive to set, I ask myself if this is the day I pack up the boxes, so to speak. Put pride aside and go for my own happiness. Then my phone goes off and I’m disabling another delicate land mine over the Haven firing, telling PR people how to handle the press. Ignoring the questions over whether any of this will be addressed at my annual foundation gala, which is getting closer and closer.

I’ve also been working to figure out how to rearrange our shooting schedule to accommodate a recasting without tacking extra days onto production, which is actually impossible, and we’re definitely going to need an extra week, but we’re trying anyways, because that’s like seventy percent of what Mom’s job is. Pulling off impossible things for the sake of saving money.

The solution to a lot of this is obvious. It’s downright glaring. But no one has offered it up, and I can’t bring myself to say it.

Was this how it felt on day five or six for my dad, trying to read scripts on the couch while Mom made us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the kitchen? How many times did she ignore his presence before he realized she’d done her part, and she wasn’t going to give him any attention until he did his? I hated my mom then, for deciding that we were all better apart than together.

I understand her now. How she held her ground while her entire world crumbled. She kept her chin up and kept moving. And I understand Dad too, refusing to give up. The both of them stubborn as mules.

No wonder I am the way I am.

When we break for lunch, Tyler sits beside me, tossing me a bag of salt and vinegar chips while she eats a veggie burrito.

“Dude. Mom is really good,” she says, whispering through her chews. “Everyone always talks about Dad. But if this ever actually gets released, they’re going to be talking about her.”

“Hopefully it’s not just to say that she should have let the part go to an actually queer actor.” I can’t help but dig. For all the extra work I’ve taken on, Mom has barely uttered more than a cursory thank-you to me.

Tyler hasn’t said anything at all, moving out of her awkward stage and into treating all of this like it’s completely normal. Likewe’renormal, she and I, instead of near strangers to each other.

“You do know that Mom is bi,” she says casually.

“Stop it.”

Powell plops down on the other side of me with the same burrito Tyler has. “She dated that French actress,” he tells me. “Pauline Carteaux. Before she met Guy.”

“I think I’d know if that were true.” I shove a chip into my mouth. The vinegar is so tart my eyes water. “Pauline was her best friend.”

“That she brought to Christmas and took on a Hawaiianvacation?” Powell flips up the lip of his water bottle and hands it to me. “Trust me. I’m her favorite. I know all.”

“Oh stop. She doesn’t have favorites,” Tyler says. “Just children that she likes better.”

She types something into her phone and then shows me the screen. A flood of photos of Mom and Pauline Carteaux from the early 2000s pop up. Pauline is tall and slender, the kind of long-fingered French ingenue that used to make cigarette smoking look chic. The pictures show Mom and Pauline holding hands while walking out of a restaurant. One is a shot of Mom whispering in Pauline’s ear, her hand holding Pauline’s neck just so.

My childhood memories of Pauline begin to take new shapes. The delicate gold-and-sapphire necklace Pauline got me that Christmas, far too sophisticated for a ten-year-old, which made it a perfect gift for me. I wore it for years. Even had the chain fixed more than once. That Christmas morning, when I opened the box and squealed in delight at what was inside, Mom had squeezed Pauline’s leg. They shared this private look I always assumed was about me. But it wasn’t.

It was about them.

“I really thought Pauline was just her best friend,” I repeat.

Pauline was around so much and suddenly disappeared. I never gave it a second thought. In grade school, I brought a different friend along for our family vacations every year. By about the eighth grade, I realized that my only real friends were my family anyways, so I stopped trying to squeeze someone else into the equation. The same seemed to be true for everyone else.

Year by year, the family social circle grew smaller and smaller until only blood or marriage remained. After a life of people making assumptions about us, it became easier to only be around the people who’d lived it all beside us.

“Well, Mara is my best friendandmy girlfriend. People can be both,” Tyler says.

“Second-best friend,” I correct, taking a bite of her burrito. “After me.” It sounds so hollow. If Tyler dared to push back, even a little, the statement would collapse.

She doesn’t. She keeps chewing, staring at her burrito like she can’t miss a single bite, ignoring the fact that I’ve already stolen one.

Powell dabs at the corners of his mouth. “Have you never googled Mom before? It’s pretty common knowledge. And also part of the reason people got so pissed at her after the divorce. They thought she was gay and the marriage to Dad was a sham, and since it was the nineties, he was a hero for getting out of it. And because Mom wouldn’t publicly deny it, the projects she had lined up all magicallywent in a different direction.”

White-hot rage washes over me. For Dad in the living room. For Mom’s career. For Mom shaming me for supposedly wanting to sleep with Joseph. For her firing Haven without considering how hypocritical she is for doing it.

For me wearing that necklace long after Mom and Pauline had split, no one clueing me in that it might be upsetting to her to see a daily reminder of a failed relationship proudly worn by her oblivious child.