Page 39 of Love Scenes

“Oh good lord, Kitty. Why are we trying to have this conversation at eleven o’clock on a Friday night? It’s not going to be that long before the shot’s set up.”

“Sloane here asked me if I think I dwell on the past or if I move on, and I thought that there was no one better to talk about that with than you.”

Melanie’s left eyebrow arches. “I see.”

She thinks for a long while, crossing one leg over the other. “You have to remember that in the beginning, Kitty and I were holding so tight to our own pettiness that we couldn’t even be in the same room. The PR spin was that we were all friends though,so they seated Alex and me at the same table as her for the Golden Globes one year. Kitty and I got so drunk we were ready to throw punches during commercial breaks. And then I got pregnant with Sarai, and the one thing everyone could agree on was that we wanted her to know her siblings. So Kitty and I met for lunch to come up with a game plan. Now that another kid was about to be in the picture, we had to figure out how the hell we were gonna deal with each other. I sit down, and before I can say a word, Kitty goes, ‘I don’t like you because you got everything I wanted but couldn’t have.’”

I look to Mom then, finding her nodding. She breaks into a small smile. “I went into that meeting saying, ‘Screw it, I’m going to tell her the complete truth. If all the cards are on the table, we can figure it out.’”

“When she said that, I leaned back and told her to keep going. And she said that Alex could never handle when her success seemed to be bigger than his. And he sort of supported her, but he never encouraged her. That when she got that Oscar nom, he didn’t smile right away. And when he got his the year following, he gave himself a little fist pump. Did it again when he won. Small things that don’t seem like much, but when you’re married to someone, they’re huge. I knew the two of them didn’t split because of cheating, and I knew that they could be competitive, but I’d never heard her side of it. She started explaining things to me about Alex. Things I didn’t like hearing, if I’m being honest. When she was done, I said, ‘Okay. I hear you. Now I’m going to tell you my side.’ And I said I didn’t like how she seemed to still feel entitled to Alex because she’d had his kids.”

“It got heated,” Mom adds.

“Oh. We were yelling. Whispering, but yelling. Our waiter stopped coming over. Neither of us touched our food.”

“I definitely left that meeting thinking I’d made things worse, not better,” Mom says.

“Same for me. But when Kitty and I saw each other again, it felt like, ‘All right, I know what you’re about.’ When she’d try to nose her way into Alex’s schedule or act like she knew things about him that I hadn’t learned yet, she’d look at me and get correct. And when Alex would hype me up in front of her, talking about projects studios were developing for me, I’d tell him to keep his mouth shut for a minute.”

Mom puts a hand on Melanie’s shoulder. “We grew this quiet respect for each other.”

“Sarai came, and Kitty was one of the only people outside of my own family to start checking on me. Not checking on Sarai and me, butme. Making sure Alex was letting me get enough sleep. Asking if I had enough time to get out of the house and get some air. Offering to watch Sarai anytime I needed to catch my breath. It was annoying at first, I’m not gonna lie, but then I realized that she was doing it not to prove she knew more about Alex than I did, but because she wanted to make sure I got what she didn’t. She ended up being the first person I called when I was thinking about leaving him. I knew she’d understand. Your dad is a good person and a good father, but after a while, loving him is like trying to hold on to a live wire. Kitty didn’t try to talk me into it or out of it. She listened to me. And when I ultimately decided that your dad wasn’t the man I wanted to be with for the rest of my life, it was Kitty who came with me to get the papers from the court.” Melanie laughs. “So yeah, I’d say she can move on. Past that damn lunch, we didn’t owe each other anything, and she kept showing up anyways.”

“You were stuck with me,” Mom says, pulling her into a side hug.

Melanie squeezes back hard. “We make a good team. Used to drive your dad up a wall, until one day I said to him, ‘Is there a reason you want all the women in your life to hate one another?’”

“That one cut him deep. He called every woman he knew. His aunt. His sister. One of our old nannies,” Mom tells me. “You know your father doesn’t like when people hold a mirror up to him. But he learned. He can be a little stubborn, but if you prove him wrong enough times, he does try.”

Mom and Melanie share a big laugh over that, proud members of the Alexander Ford Ex-Wives Club.

How can she not see the hypocrisy? It’s because she doesn’t like the mirror either. Here I am holding it, and she’s using it to show me something else entirely. To distract me.

Cruelly, I think of Kearns’s song.You’re just smoke in the mirror, so afraid to see the truth. Light a match and burn me down before you’ll face the proof.

It’s time for the actors to take their places. Melanie excuses herself to swap out her boots for kitten heels, leaving Mom and me standing face-to-face.

“I’m guessing you were really looking for me to tell you I never should’ve said what I did about you and Joe,” Mom says.

My lips stay squeezed shut.

“You’re right,” she adds. “I’m sorry.”

It surprises me that she folds. At this point, I expected it to happen somewhere near my fiftieth birthday. Or maybe never at all.

“Yeah. That sucked.” All the comebacks I’d planned to give her fade into nothing.

She leans closer. “No relationship is ever worth sacrificing your talent.”

Somehow this apology morphed into another veiled insult. It all feels impossible. Right when we make headway in one direction, we backpedal somewhere else. “I agree,” I say through gritted teeth. “If you haven’t heard, I’m kind of the subject of a very popular album right now. Can’t imagine I’ll make that mistake twice.”

Abruptly, Mom pulls me into a hug. It’s stiff at first. Tense. But determined, her arms gripping hard around my torso. “I told you never to get that house in the canyon with him and Tyler. All those fruit flies. My god.”

It doesn’t make sense, but I hold her tighter. What she did continues to sting. There are so many ways I want her to love me better. Yet the beat of her heart pattering against my chest still fills me with relief.

I want to acknowledge progress. I also don’t want to get hurt.

It feels like I can never win.