Chapter 15
15
Tatum
Eleanor keeps a paper calendar in her office, the space that has been acting as my bedroom. There’s a comfortable couch in here and a good amount of room for all my belongings. Searching Eleanor’s desk for something resembling a bobby pin, hoping to pin my too-long curly bangs back to keep them out of my face in this July heat, my eyes land on a Post-it beside her desktop computer. It just says Save Hannity Banks? in bold red letters.
Google tells me Hannity Banks and the Great Escape is a new Broadway musical about a young woman from the 1920s who accidentally time travels to the future through a magician’s trick. The production pictures show me simple staging that emphasizes lots of bright, eccentric costumes. When I google Eleanor’s name plus the show, it pulls up a PR website’s information link, where she’s listed as a contact. Her picture is on the website under the Team tab.
I stare at it for a long while. June showed me her picture when we first came up with the plan, and again when we were looking into her financial situation. This time, it’s just me and Eleanor locked in a battle of gazes. She wears a crisp taupe suit with her arms folded across her chest. She has long, sharp features, and the kind of smile that’s more like a searing gaze than an expression of joy. She looks like the type of person who does cold plunges for fun. If I saw her on the street, I’d guess she sleeps on ironed sheets. Yet I know, living in her apartment, what no one would ever suspect. I know that I would’ve been completely wrong about her.
According to the website, she’s been at her firm for over ten years. It even lists her as one of their most valued press agents.
To me, having a job doing publicity for Broadway shows seems glamorous and intense. It conjures up images of The Devil Wears Prada , which was about working at a magazine, but seeing as this is more of a vibe-based assessment, it still works. I see Eleanor in chic coats rushing between cabs to make meetings with important figures, battling with the powers that be to get the best coverage for her show. Seeing how wrong my impression of her picture was, it’s probably not at all what her job is actually like either.
I wonder what it is she sees when she looks at my pictures in the guest cottage. Has she met any of my family and plugged in gaps from my life through knowing them? What has she gotten wrong about me?
My phone vibrates with another message from my dad.
Dad: We really missed you today. Carson told me what you did. I wish you’d talked to us. But I hope you enjoy New York.
He sends a single sobbing emoji afterward.
It’s so comical that it staves off some of the guilt that threatens to swallow me up.
Tatum: I hope it’s going well. I just need some more time. You’re the one who said I seemed disconnected. I guess I’m trying to figure out why.
He sends another crying emoji.
On impulse, I buy three tickets to Hannity Banks , thinking of Dawn telling us she hasn’t been to a show in years. And her request that if we’re going to try finding me a date again, we do something fun beforehand. I doubt these three tickets will help save Hannity Banks , as Eleanor’s Post-it requests, but maybe I’ll learn why it’s tanking at all. I’m always better at seeing why things fall apart than I am at figuring out how to keep them together.
My credit card bears the weight of this decision, but that’s another problem for future Tatum, who will certainly be carrying the weight of so many of my choices here.
“I thought of something fun for us to do tonight!” I declare to June, who sits on the couch brushing Syrup’s long fur. “We’re going to take Dawn to see a Broadway show, and then Dawn can take us to that bar she was talking about yesterday. So I can meet someone.”
“Awesome,” June says, remaining placid. It’s the same flat affectation she’s had since yesterday afternoon, when we wandered through the park with Dawn. She’s as steady as a ruler. So unflappable it’s starting to become unsettling.
“Is everything okay?” I ask her.
“Of course!” she says, using the exact kind of cheer you use when it’s not true. I know I’ve thrown her for a loop by saying I want to date. I’ve thrown myself for a loop too. But she’s the one who needs to experience independence. Our wants don’t align.
It can’t be us.
I head across the hallway and knock on Dawn’s door.
“Who’s there?” she calls out.
“No one can get up here without the doorman’s permission,” I say. “You know who it is.”
“Go home,” she tells me. “I’m too tired.”
“I have a surprise for you.”
Dawn unlocks her bottom lock but keeps the chain lock secured, peeking at me through the sliver of doorway. “I don’t like surprises.”
A little more versed in the art of Dawn-speak, which amounts to her lying as a means of protecting herself, I trudge on, undeterred. “You asked for something fun, so I got us tickets to see a Broadway show!”
The door closes all the way.
I stand bewildered.
To my surprise, it opens up again fully. Dawn’s standing in a bathrobe, trying her best to conceal a smile. “What time do we leave?”
···
Heading into Times Square feels obvious in its tourism. At the same time, everyone here has something to do that matters to them, whether it’s taking a great picture or getting home from their job. I don’t know if I’ve ever consciously wanted to have it, but being in New York, I recognize a sense of purpose as something I could want. It’s fun to look around and wonder, What if this was my life? What if every morning I woke up needing to be somewhere important?
This part of the city is so overstimulating it actually helps to dull the nagging ache at the back of my mind, thinking of Trove Hills and my family navigating this unfamiliar time without me. I’m only one person, I remind myself. One person in an unfathomably large sea.
I can’t always be my family’s glue. I am allowed to have a life away from them.
“This is a lot,” June whispers softly.
It’s quick, but it’s enough to know she’s struggling with the overload of sights and smells and people everywhere.
I grab her hand, squeezing tight. “I’ve got you,” I say. “We can find somewhere quiet.”
“That’s okay,” she says, small.
“Remember, you’re proving the doubters wrong. Pettiness is powerful.” I give her the look , just to try to make her smile.
“Don’t you dare do that.” She offers me a weak version of the smile I’d hoped to get. “I might go getting ideas.”
“Don’t you dare do that ,” I counter, echoing her tone.
“Just keep holding my hand,” she whispers, her breaths short and sharp.
“Of course. Anything for you.”
There’s no need to overthink the intensity of what I’ve said, because her safety is the priority. We continue weaving through the endless throng with Dawn leading the charge. The whole way, our hands never break apart.
When we get inside the theater, the lobby is quiet and deliciously cool, pumping with high-quality air conditioning. There’s a cushioned bench along the wall, and I guide June over to it, with Dawn right behind us.
“What do you need?” I ask June.
“Water would be good,” she says softly.
Dawn takes the cue, heading to the concession stand.
I press a hand to June’s cheek. She’s warm, but so are we all, thanks to the mid-July humidity. “Anything else?”
She gives me another small smile as she takes long, intentional breaths. “I just need a few more minutes.”
Dawn comes back with two waters. “One for your neck,” she says. She sits on the other side so we are bookending June, who continues taking stretched-out breaths. I hold the other water bottle along the back collar of her shirt as Dawn fans her face with a piece of old mail she’s extracted from her purse.
“Thank you,” June says after a while, most of the color now returned to her cheeks.
I give her hand one more quick squeeze. “Anytime.”
···
The show itself is bizarre. It’s not a problem of the performers or even the production itself. The actors are very good, and their voices are great, but the actual music is brassy and chaotic, and the plot is incoherent. It’s like watching someone reenact a dream they had without trying to fill in any of the logic gaps that have sprung up.
At intermission, June, Dawn, and I put our heads together to discuss what we just watched. June’s all the way recovered now, back to her usual self, and the relief I feel barely overrides the concern that nearly consumed me earlier.
“This show reminds me of when I took acid,” Dawn says.
“I’ve never done drugs, but I can imagine it’s similar to this,” I confirm. “The story makes no sense.”
“I like it,” June says.
Dawn and I both gasp. It’s the first time we’ve been united against her, and it’s a surprise for all of us.
“I have no idea what’s going on,” June continues, “but the costumes are fun, and everyone seems to be giving it their all.”
“What a nice way to see it,” I say honestly.
“You’re making us look like assholes,” Dawn tells her. With me sitting between them, she reaches across me to nudge June’s arm. “Assholes who are right, though.” She nudges my arm next.
“I wonder if Eleanor liked the show,” I say. The whole experience is not giving me the glossy-stilettoed Devil Wears Prada energy I expected.
The theater itself has fewer than a thousand seats. In fact it’s so close that for a lot of the first act, June’s foot stayed pressed against my shin, her leg crossed toward me and her elbow leaned onto the arm rest closest to my side.
I liked that part, comforted by being able to feel her stay relaxed and engaged.
While the show is chaos personified, it’s also not an easily identified disaster either. There are a lot of good individual elements. They just fail to make something cohesive.
“How would one go about saving something like this? Especially from a promotional perspective. Eleanor can’t exactly rewrite the show,” I say, thinking again of her Post-it.
“I could text her and ask,” June tells me.
“Do it,” I say.
“I need to stretch my legs.” Dawn gets up to walk around, leaving June and me alone again.
June angles herself my way, crossing her leg in my direction again as her foot grazes my shin once more. These small touches are starting to build, all the emotional ground I spent so long leveling between us rising so much faster that I can control.
“What would you change about the story?” she asks me.
Taking a beat, I comb through the first act again, gathering up the loose threads and examining them for the biggest fixable flaw.
“For one, I wouldn’t make the future so vague,” I say. “Hannity doesn’t know where she is, and neither do we as the audience. That works in the very beginning, because we get to experience the disorientation alongside her. But by the end of this act, we should have a sense of what this future place is supposed to represent. I’m guessing they want it to be a stand-in for all her unfulfilled hopes and dreams, but they haven’t quite accomplished that. Everything she’s encountered has been great so far, so it doesn’t make sense to end this act with her getting really emotional over believing she’s stuck in the future forever. They needed to do more to make us believe that’s a bad thing. We don’t know what she left behind.”
June nods along, following my every word with careful attention. When I finish, she grins, like she’s figured out something herself.
“What?” I say, reddening. “Do I have something on my face?”
She stops me from reaching for my mouth, grabbing my forearm as she lets out one of her gentlest laughs, a lullaby to my nerves. “No. It’s just funny that you don’t think you’re a writer. I didn’t notice any of that. I was looking at their costumes and thinking about how I should wear more monochromatic outfits.”
“And I didn’t notice the monochrome,” I tell her, attempting to turn this into a compliment for her instead of a revelation about me. “You could pull off head-to-toe orange.”
Dawn returns, flopping back into her seat with her usual weariness. “Doesn’t look like this showing is sold out. The balcony is pretty empty.”
I tell her about Eleanor’s Post-it, which requires further explanation, because Dawn knows so little of her neighbor, she didn’t even realize Eleanor was a press agent. In return, Dawn plugs in some details about Eleanor that we haven’t yet learned. Mostly that she has occasional late-night visitors , as Dawn calls it, all different ages and genders.
“And I mean, good for her,” Dawn concludes. “At least someone on our floor is getting laid.”
We all laugh. It’s a perfect segue to reminding Dawn of our next step after Hannity ends. “Don’t forget,” I say. “You need to find me a place to pick up women.”
“I can’t make promises,” she says. “I haven’t dated anyone in a long time, much less a woman. But I know a few places that should be good.”
“Dawn, you’ve dated women?” June asks, slapping her lightly on the arm.
“Honey, of course I have. I may not get out much anymore, but I still know about the finer things in life.” She looks to me. “Which gives me an idea. What if you tell me about the women you’ve already dated, and we can figure out what to avoid?”
“Yeah,” June says, eyes glinting with mischief. “Tell us about your exes.”
I get that squirming sensation again, struggling under the pressure of the spotlight. I’m wishing for some of June’s water from earlier. “They’ve all been great.”
Dawn rolls her eyes.
“I’m serious,” I say.
June leans forward, cupping her face in her palm. “Then what happened?”
“Me,” I tell her. “I happened. I cut things off before they could get too serious. It was better that way.”
“Why was it better?” she asks.
“Because it would only hurt worse the longer we let things go on.”
“Forgive me if this comes off a little harsh, but I’m begging you to just say all of what you mean at once,” Dawn interjects. “Listening to you talk is like reading a poem. And I like poems, but sometimes, you just gotta say it.”
“Tough but fair,” I tell her, my neck starting to itch. If I get a stress rash right now, I’m going to fist-fight myself. “I mean that I have this fear…that I will do to someone else what my dad did to my mom. Not exactly like him. I know I’d never cheat on someone. But that I’d betray them somehow, even when it goes against what I know of myself, or even what I actually want. My dad loves his family. He’s so proud of us, so proud of being married to my mom. And he’s always been that way. But he still did it. He still cheated. And I get scared that kind of betrayal is in my DNA somehow. Or that it’s the only way I know how to love at all.”
June reaches out her hand. Grabs mine the same way I held hers when we walked over here, squeezing tight.
Just then, the house lights flicker, a sign for everyone to return to their seats for the second act to begin.
Dawn just nods, finally understanding me enough to stop pressing.
And June, soft, whispers, with her breath on my cheek, “It’s not in your DNA, I promise.”
It’s simple. Probably obvious. Something anyone would say to me. But it matters more to hear it from her. To know that she believes in me.
I find myself wishing it could be her. That she wasn’t trying to be single right when I’m ready to open up. It’s a terrible kind of luck, that the ways we need to grow work against each other.
When the show starts again, I don’t let go of her hand.
At least we have this.