Chapter 34 Maren
The call about golden globe nominations came early in the morning. The household's response was a matter of permanent record, because Damian had been recording the livestream from three redundant sources since before dawn.
"You don't need three sources," I'd told him the night before.
"You record history once or you record it correctly," he'd said, and set up a third laptop.
My name was read fifth. Brady screamed. It was a real scream, full-throated, the kind of sound a man makes at a sporting event, and from somewhere down the hall Keith barked twice in formal complaint and then sulked off to the armchair to file his grievance with management.
Thomas, who had been awake since before five with the strong coffee already made because he believes in preparing for good outcomes the way he prepares for bad ones, handed me a mug.
It had my name on it. The shortlist, printed and taped to a mug, which meant he had made it before the announcement, which meant he had been sure.
His hand was not quite steady when he gave it to me.
"You made the mug before they read it," I said.
"I made two mugs," he said. "I was going to throw the other one out."
Eleanor and Aileen called within the hour, one after the other, both of them already emotional. Polly let herself in with a key I do not remember giving her and a bottle I had not asked for. She put it in the refrigerator like she lived there.
Awards season unspooled after that like our life at higher volume.
The men became the most photographed plus-threes in the industry, and the internet sorted them into archetypes I had not authorized.
Brady befriended every red-carpet photographer by name within two events.
He learned their kids' names. He brought them coffee.
He was twice mistaken for a presenter and leaned into it both times.
There was footage of him giving a fake acceptance speech on a step-and-repeat to a crowd that did not know who he was and loved him anyway.
"They thought I was somebody," he reported in the car.
"You told them you were somebody."
"I implied it. There's a difference. It's called acting. Maren does it for a living."
Damian developed a cold war with a particular entertainment journalist who had misquoted me. He won it through sheer archival force, producing time-stamped transcripts until the man issued a correction and, eventually, a quiet apology.
"You're not supposed to read the coverage," I said.
"I don't read the coverage," Damian said. "I audit the it."
"It says here you replied to him."
"That's a different account."
"It's the same account, Damian. It has your name in it."
"There are several of us," Damian said, with great dignity, and would not be moved.
Thomas, gloriously, could not be photographed at all. The internet's complete failure to find a single clear image of him became its own running joke, the ghost, the mystery one, the man who was technically present in every photo and identifiable in none.
"You're standing behind a plant again," Brady accused, scrolling.
"It's a nice plant."
"You're in every shot and you're a smudge. People think Maren has two boyfriends and a rumor."
"I like being a rumor," Thomas said, and adjusted his cuff, and somewhere on the internet a forum dedicated itself to proving he was real.
A daytime host asked me, on camera, the question the whole country was circling.
"So how does it actually work?" she said, kind-eyed. "The three of them. Day to day."
"It works like any family," I said, with a shrug and the timing I forgot I had. "Except the dishes get done."
It became a sound bite. Then, somehow, a throw pillow, which Polly made without authorization and gave me for no occasion. It now lived on the couch in the film room.
The award ceremony itself was staged like a redemption of the premiere, because that is exactly what it was.
Same city. Same wall of flashbulbs. The same kind of carpet where, weeks earlier, there had been a net and an earpiece and a man with an orchid on his lapel.
And this time there was nothing in my ear at all.
Just a pair of Eleanor's earrings, borrowed, heavy and old and warm, where the comms unit used to sit.
"Comms check," Brady said in the limo, deadpan, holding his fist to his mouth.
"There's no comms tonight," Damian said.
"Comms check, comms check, confirm you read."
"We're sitting next to each other."
"Then we have redundancy," Brady said, and Thomas laughed, which Brady counted as a successful transmission.
Inez had built me a gown that was the masterpiece of her career, and she knew it. She'd said so at the final fitting with pins in her mouth.
"This is the best thing I've ever made," she'd told me. "And this time there's no flat shoe hidden in the hem, and no slit cut for running. You don't need to run anymore. I checked."
The category came late in the evening.
I held Thomas's hand on one side and Damian's on the other, with Brady's arm stretched along the seatback behind all three of us, and when they read my name the whole room stood up. I walked to the stage through the standing ovation on legs that held me the entire way.
"I'm going to do this without the cards," I said, "because the people I want to thank deserve eye contact."
I thanked the director, who was already crying in the third row, visibly, into his sleeve. I thanked the crew. I thanked Inez, who designs the armor I get to be brave in.
"I want to thank my father," I said, "who taught me that love is a thing you write down. There's a recipe book in my kitchen with his notes in the margins, and every one of them is a small act of devotion in disguise. I’ve been reading them out loud all year to people who needed to hear them."
I took a breath.
"And I want to thank three people who were hired to keep me safe," I said, "and instead handed me back my whole life. Thomas, Brady and Damian. I know exactly how lucky I am. I get to go home to it."
The broadcast cut to three men in matching tuxedos.
One of them was weeping openly into his program.
One of them was perfectly still with his jaw set against the exact same fate, losing the fight in his eyes if not his face.
And one of them was mouthing a single word at me, slowly, so I'd be sure to catch it, which the internet would spend a week lip-reading and get right on the first try.
The word was home.
The after-party blessed us, because the industry loves a winner and adores a love story.
That night I was both. People who had never returned my calls returned my hugs.
Two studios pitched me projects between courses.
Somebody offered Brady a development deal as a joke and then, an hour later, not as a joke.
We left late, ending the night in a vinyl booth at a twenty-four-hour diner… four people in formalwear under fluorescent light, the statuette standing on the table between two milkshakes and a basket of fries.
"One each," Damian said, distributing the fries. "We're doing this fairly."
"Give me the statuette," Brady said. "I want a photo. I have to. It's a compulsion, I've made peace with it."
He photographed all of us. The statuette, the milkshakes, Thomas mid-yawn, Damian guarding the fry basket, me in a gown with ketchup on the table.
"This is the best set I've ever been on," I said, and meant it, and Brady got that photo too, before I'd finished the sentence, because he was always faster than the moment.