Chapter 5
It was the morning of Thanksgiving. Bright sunlight swelled through the bay windows of Taylor’s Beverly Hills house, making the sofa and chairs glow.
Taylor had been awake since the crack of dawn, prepping the turkey, the pies, and the stuffing.
Now, she was in front of the television, smelling all the divine smells from the oven, yet doing a yoga routine, praying that her sculpted arms and legs would show her friends and other Los Angeles loved ones how good she was doing, regardless of the divorce, regardless of having lost the part in the B-movie.
This was the first week that Taylor had been back in Los Angeles since she’d left for Tokyo.
Over the previous months, she’d been almost always on the move, flying from Paris to Milan, and from Milan to Stockholm, and Stockholm to London, and London to New York, and so on, until she’d made herself dizzy and resolved to come home.
Via her lawyers, she’d learned that her beloved husband, or ex-husband, Jason was going to spend the holidays in Europe (presumably with the mistress), which meant she could return to her favorite of their shared houses.
Of course, before she’d arrived, she had a cleanup crew come through and remove all photographs and anything at all that might have reminded her of Jason.
She hadn’t reckoned for how much the place itself, the walls and the floors and the light, would remind her of her husband.
Taking a photograph off a wall was simple.
You couldn’t do the same thing with your memories.
Once her yoga routine was finished, Taylor hurried to shower and do her hair and makeup.
She’d told her LA friends to come around noon so they could day-drink a little before they dove into her feast. She couldn’t wait to hear what they said about the food.
She’d never before made an entire Thanksgiving feast by hand, and she imagined that, beyond anything, it would prove how great she was.
She even had a few fun travel stories, in which she gallivanted and flirted and learned new things and spoke new languages.
Those stories would blot out the old stories. They had to.
The first people to arrive for Thanksgiving were Steven and Lydia, a couple of screenwriters Taylor and Jason had met more than fifteen years ago.
They were the same age as Taylor and Jason, but because they weren’t on screen, they’d let their wrinkles form, and they’d gone gray.
This was a rare thing in Hollywood, and it endeared them to Taylor.
She threw her arms around them and led them to the kitchen, asking, “What can I get you to drink?”
“Just wine for me, Taylor,” Lydia said, smiling. She was watchful, as though she were searching for something amiss with Taylor. “We can’t believe you’re back in town!”
“We were going to keep it low-key today,” Steven said. “But we couldn’t say no to an invitation from Miss Taylor Charron.”
“Ha.” Taylor poured them three glasses of wine and raised hers. “To old friends.”
“To old friends! Back together again!” Lydia said.
Soon after, more of her guests arrived, all of whom worked in show business: actors and actresses, makeup artists, sound guys, directors who’d come in and out of vogue, and so on.
Taylor was overjoyed to see so many friendly faces, especially after traveling for so long.
She made sure to sit with all of them and ask them questions.
She smiled and laughed and pretended she was having a good time, praying that soon she would actually start having a good time.
As it was, all she could think about was the person missing from the party: Jason.
At one thirty, they sat for dinner. A few of her friends made speeches, thanking her for coming home and inviting them all over.
Taylor gushed with love for all of them.
She refilled her glass with wine, then passed the red to Lydia, who sat on her right.
Lydia, who was kind of a wine snob, looked at the label, then smiled. “Oh! This again!”
It was the first bottle of its kind that Taylor had opened today, so she gave Lydia a curious smile. “What do you mean? Where did you have it before?”
Lydia turned to look at Steven, clearly confused. “We’ve had this recently. But I can’t for the life of me remember…” She tilted the bottle.
It was then that a look of panic came over Steven’s face. Lydia echoed his, and the two of them said, “Oh, right. Of course.”
Taylor tried to laugh. “What’s going on?”
But Lydia and Steven wanted to cover up whatever this was.
“Oh, nothing. I think I got it from the grocery store the other week,” Lydia said hurriedly.
“You must have,” Steven said. “I remember we drank it with the steak.”
“That’s right. The steak.” Lydia smiled.
But it was so clear that they were lying.
Taylor set down her glass and swallowed the lump in her throat.
She could see that everyone else at the table was uncomfortable, as though they knew something she didn’t.
She had the sensation of tipping forward, of nearly falling.
She glanced again at the label of the wine bottle, reading it more closely. It was from Spain.
“Spanish red wine,” Taylor said quietly. “You said you bought it here? Here in LA?”
“We did,” Lydia said. But her voice shook in a way that told Taylor everything she needed to know. She was lying.
It wasn’t till after dinner, before pie, that Taylor got the story out of Lydia.
In the kitchen, Lydia cried quietly as she explained that she and Steven had been in Europe for a job.
Jason had reached out to invite them to Spain, and they’d gone without thinking much of it.
“Well, I mean. We were sad you wouldn’t be there, but we saw no reason to say no.
” There, they’d spent a weekend with Jason and his new girlfriend, his mistress, the woman he’d cheated on Taylor with.
Taylor was breathless, watching her friend’s face.
“I felt like I betrayed you,” Lydia said, pressing her hands against her chest. “I hated myself for it. But Steven said Jason’s just as much our friend as you are. We don’t want to abandon him, just because…”
Taylor leaned back, waiting. But it seemed that Lydia was too frightened to say it aloud.
“Come on,” she said. “Say it. Say you don’t want to abandon him just because he fell out of love with me.”
Lydia sucked in her cheeks. Her eyes looked dangerous. “I don’t want you to think we don’t love you,” Lydia said finally. “We love you, and we hate that this happened. You and Jason were our favorite couple. This tears us apart.”
Taylor squeezed her arms over her chest and reminded herself to breathe.
She had to make it through the rest of dinner. It felt like a marathon now.
“Please, don’t let me ruin the day,” she said now to Lydia, baring her teeth.
“You didn’t ruin it. I did, with my stupid memory, and my stupid mouth,” Lydia said, blinking away tears. “I never should have mentioned it. I saw that wine, and thought it was a memory we’d all shared.”
“Well,” Taylor said, “we did not.”
But soon enough, it was time for pie. At this point, Taylor was alone in the kitchen, slicing through pumpkin and apple and pecan and listening to her so-called friends in the next room, talking about the movies they were going to work on and the celebrities they’d seen at various parties.
Taylor had heard these same kinds of conversations for years and years.
Previously, she’d been a part of those conversations, talking about on-set drama, about scripts she’d read and passed on, and about ridiculous costumes she’d had to wear.
Jason had always loved when she’d transformed into a storyteller at one of their parties.
He’d always said, “You captivate them! They eat out of your hand!”
“It’s time for pie!” she called into the living room.
And soon, her friends were back at the dining room table, piling their plates with at least two different flavors, plus vanilla ice cream.
They looked greedy and happy. They refilled their wine and again complimented Taylor on all she’d done.
Taylor felt about five seconds from a nervous breakdown.
“Thank you,” she said each time. “You’re too kind.
” Could they tell how mentally far away she was?
Over the next half hour, Taylor sat cross-legged on the floor in the living room, trying to get herself to eat a bite of pumpkin pie.
It had always been her favorite, so much so that sometimes, Jason had had one made for her birthday rather than a cake.
She adored that cinnamony, nutmegy, gooey flavoring.
But she simply couldn’t pick up her fork.
Rather, she found herself thinking constantly about Lydia and Steven’s trip to Spain.
She needed to know more. What had they eaten together?
Had it been that steak, or had that been make-believe?
What had Jason’s new girlfriend talked to them about?
Did she seem smart? Or stupid? What had she worn when they’d gone to dinner?
Taylor had read (accidentally) that the young Spanish woman had come from no money at all, like Taylor and Jason themselves, and she imagined the Spanish woman was green in all the ways she and Jason had been a million years ago.
Maybe that made Jason feel nostalgic for the times when he and Taylor had been coming up.
And weren’t men always looking to be reminded of a past when they were stronger and had better hair?
Weren’t they always looking for the past, when their girlfriends or wives were younger and slightly thinner and more optimistic?