Chapter VIII #2
“Kind of a classic he-was-married-to-his-work situation, though the real red flag was that I was starting to dread the moment he walked through the door. We’d drifted apart so much that I hardly knew who he was anymore, and honestly, I wasn’t that interested in figuring out who the new version was.
And he certainly wasn’t interested in me.
” I stop myself, caught off guard by my uncharacteristic candor.
You knew Reid, you don’t know Reid, I remind myself.
I sigh, drain the last of my wine. “He wasn’t cut out to be a husband, but he tries to be a good dad. ”
Reid tops up our glasses. “He tries?”
I hesitate for a moment, unsure how deeply I want to get into this right now.
So I just say, “James is a trauma surgeon. He has a habit of putting his work above parenting. Last weekend, there was a car crash on the LIE, and he canceled plans he’d made with Emme to see a Broadway show.
When lives are on the line, it’s hard to argue—he always has the moral high ground.
But he’s not the only trauma surgeon in New York City. ”
Reid shakes his head. “Can’t imagine bailing on Gracie.” Then he shrugs. “That said, I’m certainly not saving lives with my work.”
I nod. “Most of us aren’t. So I struggle with this push and pull with him. It feels unethical—fucked—to fault the guy for literally saving lives. But at the same time . . . there’s a bit of a god complex, and the way Emme’s face falls when her dad blows her off is seared into my brain.”
“Yeah, one of my main goals in life is to make Gracie not make that face whenever possible. I will never forget the time I wouldn’t let her get a pet goldfish and she looked at me like .
. . I don’t know. Like I’d squashed it with my bare hands in front of her.
It’s tricky. You want to make sure they’re prepared for the world without crushing their spirit. ”
“I’m still trying to figure out that dance between protection and . . . overprotection.” I look down and realize my glass is almost empty again.
“It seems like you’ve found the right balance with Emme.”
A rush of warmth floods in my chest. A compliment from Reid lands harder than most.
“Did you get her the goldfish?” I ask.
“I got her three.”
“Three goldfish!”
“Leonardo, Donatello, and Michelangelo.”
“As in the Renaissance artists?”
“As in the Ninja Turtles.”
“What about Raphael?”
He leans over the table. It’s a thrill to be this close to him, to smell the musk of his shirt, to see the deeper tan along his nose and cheeks.
“Gracie,” he drops his voice, goes serious, “did not like Raphael.”
I laugh. “And what about you? How is that nonlifesaving work going?”
I know what the answer is. I’ve skimmed the headlines about him, announcing his major deals, his even more major wins.
My experience of those moments was a rush of pride, followed quickly by regret.
I always stopped short of clicking into the links, afraid of losing my footing, getting caught in the storm of complicated, conflicting emotions.
Catching those flashes of his life had always felt illicit, like peering through a peephole.
But now, sitting with Reid himself, it feels . . . easy. I’m eager to hear him talk about his success. I’m walking right through a door, which he’s opened for me with a smile.
“Work is going well,” he says, sitting back in his chair again. It’s an understatement, and I’m happy to find that Reid’s ego has remained in check. “Somehow still a screenwriter.” He runs a hand through his hair. “All this gray? Wouldn’t exist if I’d found something else to do with my life.”
“It’s really amazing, Reid.” I let myself acknowledge that his career isn’t news to me.
“What’s amazing is that we’re both doing the things we set out to do.”
“Eh,” I shrug. “If it were up to me, I’d be shooting fewer ads and more fine art. Turns out you can’t send a kid to college off the kind of photos I took tonight.”
“Either way, you’re making a living off something you love. That doesn’t happen very often, for our generation.”
“It is very Gen Z of us, isn’t it? Actually following our dreams?” I joke. He laughs. “OK, this may be un-Hollywood of me to say, but I saw that you won an Oscar for Mask of Sin.”
He drops his head slightly, like he’s trying to deflect this confrontation with his own success.
“Get Amy Adams to play the proprietor of a gambling den and you kind of can’t lose.
” He takes a swig of his wine. “I still haven’t managed not to feel mortified when I talk about my writing, even thirty years in.
But yes, you’re right. That was un-Hollywood of you. ”
“Then teach me how to be Hollywood,” I say. There’s an unmistakable hint of flirtation in my tone.
He leans into it. He looks up at me through a crinkled brow, a devilish glint in his eyes.
“Rules are pretty simple. You would pretend you have no idea who I am, gradually befriend me, invite me to a casual dinner with other people in the industry, including people I’ve worked with previously, pretend to be surprised when the topic of awards comes up, and then, after a span of three-to-six months, ask me for a favor that you’d had planned from the beginning. ”
I look him dead in the eye. “I have never heard of you in my life.”
“You’re getting the hang of it.”
“Well, too bad, I’m proud of you. You’re really doing the thing.”
He sits back. When he smiles now, I notice something behind his eyes that I hadn’t before now. And never did, thirty years ago. It’s pain.
“I suppose I am,” Reid says. “I could never have imagined this for myself. The people I’ve gotten to work with, the movies I’ve been able to make . . . But a lot of it—work, life—is not what I thought it would be.”
Lightly, I touch his hand where it rests on the table, trying to convey to him how much I get it.
My life, too, has taken some unpredictable turns.
He looks down, as if to consider whether he wants us to be in physical contact.
I begin to pull away, to apologize for crossing the boundary, but he flips his palm up, as if to hold me in place.
“Lili,” he says. “I feel like I should tell you—”
And that’s when Emme and Gracie come back to the table. Quickly, we pull our hands away and innocently pick our forks up again.
When they sit back down, Gracie announces, “Emme’s gonna show me around the NYU campus tomorrow.”
Reid and I raise our eyebrows at each other. Clearly, he is just as in the dark as I am about whatever is going on between these two.
I look over at Emme, who’s now sporting a slick of shimmering chocolate-brown lip gloss. It’s the same one Gracie is wearing. Such is the magic of the girls’ bathroom.
Emme throws up her hands. “I’ve lived on Waverly my entire life.”
“Well, I think that’s a great idea,” Reid says. “You can show her the insider spots.”
“Don’t say insider spots,” Gracie says.
Emme claps her hands together. “Yeah! I’ll come up with an itinerary. But, like, a cool one.” Then she shoots a look between Reid and me. “Why don’t you guys go do something too?”
“Oh,” I say. After that moment of hesitation, whatever Reid felt the need to caution me about .
. . I’m not so sure he wants to see me again.
And depending on whatever it is he wanted to share, I’m not entirely sure it would be a good thing to see him again either.
It’s clear that he’s no longer with Gracie’s mother, but that doesn’t mean he’s not in a relationship.
Actually, I find it hard to believe he’s not.
How couldn’t he be, with that face and that voice and that kindness?
My cheeks heat as it hits me: I still have a giant crush on this man.
“Dad, do not use the work excuse,” Gracie says. “You need to learn how to have fun.” She offers me the barest glance. “And Lili seems fun.”
“Lili is fun,” Reid says. “I can confirm.”
I can’t quite read the expression on his face then. Is it an apology? A warning?
“Are you free tomorrow?” he asks me. He looks . . . like someone who wasn’t just put up to this by his kid.
Technically, I’m not really free. I have to review and edit the images from tonight to send to the client, call the plumber about the terminally low water pressure in my bathroom sink, take Emme’s dress to the tailor, schedule her dentist appointment . . .
But it’s been a really long time since I’ve had a crush.
“I’m wide open,” I say.
“OK, let’s talk about this,” I say. Emme and I are walking home from the restaurant, where we left Reid and Gracie to grab an Uber back to their hotel uptown. In a shocking twist, Gracie and Emme hugged goodbye.
“Talk about what?” Emme responds.
I gesture behind me, conveying the very recent past. “Dinner. Reid. All of it. How do you feel about it?”
Emme hikes her canvas bag up her shoulder. I don’t know what she has in there, but it looks heavy. “Should I feel some type of way about it?”
So she’s playing coy. She does this when she wants to skirt an issue, or she wants me to admit I’m skirting an issue.
I have to be more direct. That’s the rule of the game.
“I’m guessing you gathered that Reid and I dated. It was right before my junior year of college. I don’t even know if you could call it a relationship—we knew each other for about a week. It was short, but I had very strong feelings for him.”
“A situationship,” Emme offers.
“Yes, that. I know it’s probably weird to see me . . . interact with a man who’s not your dad.”
I’ve only gone on a handful of dates since the divorce, mainly at the urging of Nisha and my therapist, who hold eerily similar opinions about how I need to push past my romantic comfort zone.
How I need to stop putting my own needs and desires on hold until Emme leaves home.
The ways in which I’ve supplanted those needs and desires entirely with things that require little emotional risk.
None of my previous dates were terrible, but none of them felt worth making things more complicated for Emme. James was already a pro at that.
Now Emme shrugs. “I mean, OK, fine, it’s a little weird.” We pause at the carts of bargain books outside the Strand. Emme thumbs through a row of travel books, all of them at least fifteen years out of date. “Do you still like him?”
“I liked him thirty years ago. But people change. I don’t really know who he is now.”
“But you’re looking forward to spending more time with him. Tomorrow, I mean.”
Before we left the restaurant, Reid and I made a plan to meet for lunch at a bistro in the West Village, a decision that pleased all four of us.
It was far enough away from where the girls would be that we wouldn’t risk running into them but close enough to make Reid feel comfortable. A break-in-case-of-emergency thing.
Emme is flipping through the books more quickly now, distracted or anxious. I put a hand on her arm, nudging her to look at me. “Emme. If you don’t feel comfortable with me seeing Reid again, I won’t do it, and I won’t have any regrets about it. You will always come first. OK?”
Emme releases a labored sigh, like I’m not getting something.
“I like Reid, Mom. He paid attention to you when you talked. He actually asked you questions, and then he listened when you answered.” My heart fractures.
“I like Gracie too. She wants people to think she’s a bitch, but she’s actually a very thoughtful person.
You know, she only supports cruelty-free beauty brands. And she really cares about her dad.”
“I also like Gracie. And I like that Reid asked you questions too.”
“Yeah, he didn’t treat me like a seen-and-not-heard kind of kid.” She looks at me earnestly. “You have to go,” she says, but then pauses, like she’s cutting herself off. I pluck the book from her hand—a brick-sized, age-softened anthology of vampire literature.
“I’ll get this for you if you tell me what else is on your mind,” I say. One thing it took me too long to learn about parenting is the power of a well-timed bribe.
She ruminates for a moment. “Can I get a hardcover too?”
“Absolutely.”
“I want you to be careful.”
Alarm bells. “Careful how?”
“Careful like, I don’t want your heart to get stomped on again.” She waves a hand toward me. “The postdivorce-sad-mom thing sucked. I honestly don’t want either of us to go through that again.”
It never ceases to be surprising, the labor of creating a person, followed by the miracle of watching them morph, slowly and also all at once, into someone you have never met. And the delicious pain of your heart expanding beyond its known borders each time you encounter a new iteration.
This is an Emme I haven’t yet known, protective and wise. But I still need to guard her feelings more than she needs to guard mine.
“That won’t happen,” I say. “I can promise you that.”
Another thing I’ve learned about parenting: the power of a white lie.