“Where are we going?” Marilyn asks.
“I feel like doing something fun. Let’s go look at our house,” Sylvie says.
Our house is how Sylvie’s come to refer to the home in the hills they went to visit after Marilyn’s first meeting with Ellen. They’ve driven by a few times since, Marilyn silently bearing Sylvie’s wistful gaze as they pass. On their last visit, Sylvie noted that the price went down to a “very reasonable” $750,000.
“Mom, I’m really tired.”
“Oh, come on, we’ll just go by real quick.”
Marilyn can’t help the sigh that escapes her lips.
“Please?” Sylvie adds, a girlish, lilting sound in her voice. She’s already making the turn up into the hills, so Marilyn just nods.
As they ascend over the city, the sun fades and scattered displays of Christmas lights begin to come on, identifying the homes of overeager decorators. Marilyn holds the map, but Sylvie doesn’t have trouble with the complex set of turns, and Marilyn wonders how many times she’s been back there on her own.
They pull up to 5901 Hill Street to find a BMW parked in the driveway, the picture of Ron’s grinning face and the for sale sign gone. The last of the day’s sunlight glints off a second-story window. Each of the miniature David statues wears a Santa hat.
Sylvie bursts into tears.
“Mom—” Marilyn starts, but finds she doesn’t know what to say. She stares out at the house as the sun extinguishes itself from the windowpane and the little white lights strung along the rooftop appear in its place. She sees herself and her sobbing mother sitting there in the car as if she were outside of it, staring down from that window in the house her mother so desperately wanted. They look adrift in the boat of the Buick, lost in a sea of expensive homes they will never own. It’s so easy to be nothing. To be nobody, Marilyn thinks.
In an effort to stay connected to her own perspective, she raises her hands to take a mind-picture of her mother’s profile, framed against the car window, looking out at the house golden with Christmas.
As Marilyn lowers her hands, Sylvie turns to her and says through tears, “It’s the Santa hats, you know? That’s something I would have done. If the house were ours.”
“There are other houses, Mom,” Marilyn finds herself saying.
“We’ll get one that’s even better?”
Marilyn brushes the thinning, dyed-blond hair from her mother’s face, baby fine between her fingertips. “We’ll try.”
Thanksgiving morning is gray, but Woody is uncharacteristically cheerful. When Marilyn comes out of her room, rubbing sleep from her eyes, she finds him in a blue suit she’s never seen before, making coffee and whistling to himself. Commerce Casino is hosting a poker tournament today, and he’s dressed to win.
“Happy Turkey Day,” he says.
“You too,” she answers.
“Gotta be on my way; that Buick’s not gonna win itself.”
“Good luck,” Marilyn says, and moves off to find Sylvie in her bedroom, painting on lipstick. “James’s grandparents invited us down for dinner,” Marilyn tells her mom, keeping her voice low. “Do you wanna go?”
Tension draws itself around Sylvie’s eyes. “I thought we’d go out for sandwiches.” When they lived in the OC, their Thanksgiving tradition had been turkey sandwiches at Ruby Tuesday on the pier.
“You don’t want to try something different this year? Rose is a really good cook.”
“I don’t think so. I have a bit of a headache. You go if that’s what you want.”
“Are you sure?” Marilyn asks.
“I guess this will just be our first Thanksgiving apart,” Sylvie says.
But you could come! Marilyn thinks, trying to push away the guilt. She’d expected her mom to talk about next year, as she does every Thanksgiving, when they’ll host the holiday in their own grand home, with a beautiful turkey and all the trimmings. But instead Sylvie just turns away from Marilyn and changes back into her nightgown.
Once Woody’s out of the house, Marilyn kisses her mom and leaves her on the couch with the Thanksgiving Day parade on TV and a bottle of white wine by her side.
Dressed in her black velvet dress with the swingy skirt, saved for special occasions, Marilyn knocks at the Bells’, shivering under the blank white sky as a gust of wind comes up. A moment later, Justin swings the door open wide.
“Wanna play Operation?” he asks by way of welcome.
Marilyn laughs. “Sure!” she says as she follows him into the warm home, the echoes of the cold day instantly fleeing from her bones. “But I should see if your grandma wants help first.”
She hugs James, and finds Rose in the kitchen, in the midst of pulling a turkey from the oven. It smells rich and golden, the way she imagines the kind of Thanksgiving dinners you see on television must. Rose kisses her on the cheek and shows her how to use the baster to gather the turkey juices from the bottom of the pan and squeeze them over the bird.
“It stays moist this way.”
“Let me show her,” Justin says, taking the baster from Rose’s hand.
“He loves this part.” Rose laughs.
Marilyn looks to James across the room, in front of a basketball game with Alan but, at the moment, watching her with his grandmother and brother, a smile on his face.
“Boys!” Rose calls to her husband and older grandson. “I’m about to put you to work.” She delivers a giant bowl of green beans along with a paper bag and instructs them to snap the ends off. Marilyn peels potatoes, then gets pulled into a game of Operation with Justin, who dissolves in hysterics every time she sets off the terrible buzzer. And like that, the afternoon passes in warm chaos—eager voices, stolen bites of food, laughter.
Still, Marilyn can’t help but think of her mother alone upstairs. She feels herself starting to drift away, as if on a one-person boat, and excuses herself for the bathroom, where she catches the vague scent of cologne left in the air, a smell both familiar and far off, triggering a memory stored deep within her body. Though she can’t place it, the scent is of her father’s cologne (Old Spice, also Alan’s). She splashes water on her face, trying to wash away the lingering malaise.
And when she returns, she’s pulled back into the room by James’s hand on her leg under the table, by Justin’s laughter as he gloats over beating her (again), by Rose’s careful cooking lessons as she shows her the right amounts of butter and cream (lots) to make the mashed potatoes delicious. They are keeping her afloat. And then, finally, the turkey is carved, the table set. And by the time they sit down to eat, Marilyn’s safely docked on their shore, grateful for the sense of belonging that they so readily offer to her.
* * *
I’m kissing you … Des’ree sings, as Claire Danes blinks at her Romeo, bright blue fish swimming through the tank between them, angel wings spread around her. As James kisses the back of Marilyn’s neck, fireworks explode into the on-screen sky. Marilyn feels no less in love than Juliet looks. The movie was her pick—she’d wanted to see Romeo + Juliet in the theater when it came out two years ago, but the afternoon her friends went she’d had an audition for a Neutrogena commercial. When she showed James the video box in the aisles of Blockbuster, after pie and coffee and good-nights, he groaned but agreed to watch it with her.
By the final scene—the lovers lying lifeless in each other’s arms, bathed in candlelight—tears stream down Marilyn’s face. When James leans over to wipe them away with his thumb, she sees he’s also crying. A sound of sniffling comes from behind the couch and Marilyn turns to see Justin in his pj’s, tucked into the corner of the doorway.
“What are you doing?” James whispers. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”
Justin wipes at his eyes. “Why couldn’t he have just waited another minute?” he asks. “If he’d just waited a minute more, she’d have woken up. Why didn’t he check first, to make sure she wasn’t breathing? Or listen to her heart?”
“Come here,” Marilyn says, and Justin gets
up, curls between them on the couch.
She strokes his head, the way her mother had done for her when she was a girl on the sick days she had cherished, and minutes later, Justin’s asleep with his head on her lap. Here, eyes fluttering in dream, he could be baby James.
James gets up and lifts his brother off her lap, carries him into bed.
“I should go,” Marilyn whispers when he returns.
“No. Don’t.”
Marilyn smiles. “I have to!” She knows she’s already pushing it by staying out this late. Rose and Alan have been in bed for hours—she can only hope Sylvie is too.
“Don’t go,” James insists again, and lies down on top of her, in that moment no less boyish than Justin. “I wanna sleep by you.”
“Come on, I’ll tuck you in,” Marilyn whisper-laughs.
She scoots out from under James, who grips onto her, pulling her back.
“Come on!” She grins and puts her arms around his shoulders, trying to pull him up, but he lets his body go heavy, and she’s hardly a match for all six feet, one hundred and eighty pounds of him. They play like this—her trying to pull him up, him letting her get halfway there before he tugs her back onto the couch—until James finally gives in and lets her pull him to his feet. She follows him to the end of the hallway, where there’s a sign on the door marked JAMES in wooden block letters.
“Don’t make fun of me,” he says. “My mom got it for me when I was a kid, so.”
Marilyn smiles, eager to see the bedroom she’s imagined him in so many times while listening to his music drifting up to her.
It’s small like her own, with a single bed pushed against the window, neatly made with a checkered quilt. White Christmas lights strung along the ceiling illuminate the space. The desk, holding a stack of schoolbooks, is made from old wood, sanded smooth to show its grain. On the opposite wall, there’s a huge, perfectly painted black rectangle, and beside it a tiny shelf installed for chalk (two half-worn pieces rest there). He’s written, “Through every dark night, there’s a bright day after that.”—2Pac. And, below it: “I am still committed to the idea that the ability to think for one’s self depends on the mastery of the language.”—Joan Didion. A small bedside table with an incense holder, a half-finished glass of water. She wants to run her fingers over the mouth of the cup. When she looks up, she sees constellations of tiny black stars painted against the white ceiling.
Inside of the space where he lives with himself, it feels as if she’s thwarted the reality of their separateness, or at least as if she’s taken one step closer to him than she’s ever been allowed before. He kicks off his shoes, lies down. She raises her hands, takes a mind-photo of his body filling the whole of the perfectly made single bed.
“Come here,” he asks her, and she lies beside him, propped on her elbow, engulfed at once by his scent worn gently into the sheets, the years of dreams that won’t come out in the wash. James rests his head on her chest and she leans back against his pillow, comforted by the weight of him. The look on his face reminds her of the photograph of him as a boy, resting on his mother’s shoulder. She strokes his head, forcing her eyes to stay open as his breathing slows, deepens. When he lets out a little snore, she has to stop herself from laughing. As his eyes move below closed lids, she studies the delicate skin that darkens nearest to his lashes, the eyebrow hairs that grow together in a soft shadow, the way his muscles clench as if holding on tightly to what’s hidden beneath. She traces the tattoos on his arm, the cursive of Angela, his mother’s name.
When she’s sure he is deep within a dream, she carefully moves her body from under him, scoots a pillow beneath his head where it had been resting on her chest, buries her face in his neck, taking in his smell before she tiptoes away. He moans softly, shifts his weight. She closes the door behind her, lets herself out.
She shivers in the night air and climbs to the apartment upstairs. She unlocks the door, to find Sylvie sitting alone in the dark, staring out the window at the moon, a glass of wine resting in her hand. She turns to Marilyn.
“You had a nice Thanksgiving, then.” The question is not a question. It is an accusation.
“I didn’t know you were up,” Marilyn says quietly.
“I’m not,” Sylvie answers. “I’m somewhere else. Not even in this room at all.”
At a loss, Marilyn kisses her mother’s forehead. When she gets no response, she goes, washes up, and falls so deeply into her own dreams that she will not remember them on waking, locked as they are into the unconsciousness of the night.
Marilyn wakes to the sound of rain. She tiptoes out of bed, checks the house. Empty. Woody must still be at the casino, and Sylvie’s at work all day for Black Friday. She hurries into the kitchen and starts coffee, dials James’s number. It’s Rose who answers, in her girlish lilt.
“Hi, Rose, it’s Marilyn. Is James home?” When he comes to the phone, she says in an urgent whisper, “It’s me, come upstairs, come get in bed, I’m alone.”
Moments later, as she’s pouring two cups of coffee (cream for both, lots of sugar for his), she hears the knock on the door, rushes to answer. James is there in his basketball shorts, T-shirt stained with beads of rain, tiny droplets in his hair.
“Morning, Miss Mack,” he says, his voice low and gravelly, cutting against his boyish smile. At once, he picks her up—sweeps her off her feet, literally!
“Which way?” he asks through her giggles, and carries her down the hall to her bedroom, which is just above his own. He plops her on the mattress, climbs on top of her. He kisses her stomach. He takes off her shirt. She shivers. The rain patters. His hands on her breasts, then his mouth. Her body’s so wildly awake, she wonders if she will burst out of herself. She pulls his shirt off, runs her hands over the muscles of his back, nails gently dragging. As she kisses his neck, he lets out a soft moan. His hands move inside of her, do what her own fingers did when she lay in bed and thought of him. And then, a release.
He brushes the hair from her forehead, kisses her temple. She reaches out for him.
“How do I make you feel like that?” she asks in a whisper.
James laughs. “I’ll show you if you want.”
He does, and it nearly undoes her all over again, witnessing his pleasure, knowing she has caused it.
When they are quiet, her head resting on his chest, his hands in her hair, the rain steady in its rhythm, the sweet heat of his skin against her own, she falls asleep; never has she felt so completely contained in a moment.
* * *
She wakes in the early afternoon, eyes blinking open to find James beside her, still sleeping. She gets up, reheats the forgotten mugs of coffee on the stove, fries grilled cheese sandwiches, and brings them back to bed. She nudges him awake, kissing his eyelids, his forehead, his cheekbones, and they picnic together in bed.
“I like your pictures,” he says, examining the black-and-white copies on her wall. “Especially that one.”
He points to a photo by Gordon Parks, of Eartha Kitt emerging from a bank of low trees caught by sun, hands raised in a dancer pose over her head.
“I love that one too,” Marilyn says.
“Now I see where you are, when I hear you at night. I’ll be able to picture you.”
“You hear me?”
“Your footsteps.” He smiles. “When you first moved in, to be honest it annoyed me.”
She punches his shoulder.
“I wasn’t used to it,” he says. “The room’s been empty I guess for as long as we’ve lived here, and my bedroom is where I go when I need things to be quiet. So at first, when I’d hear you moving around, it threw me off. But then…”
She looks back at him, waiting.
“Then it started to be comforting. Knowing you were just above me, hearing the little sounds of you. I started waiting for your movements, loving them.”
“You know I listen to your music? Through the window. It was so lonely when we moved here, that was the one thing that made it bet
ter…”
James smiles. “At first I didn’t think of it, but I admit, the night after we first kissed when I put on ‘Ready or Not,’ I turned it up, I wondered if you could hear it…”
Marilyn blushes at the memory. “I did.”
James sits up and kisses the tip of her nose. He wraps her up in his arms, squeezes tight.
“I can’t breathe.” She laughs, and squeezes him back.
“Harder!” he says. “Squeeze me like a bear!”
She tightens her grip, using all the strength in her arms to pull him against her body. When she releases him, he buries himself under the blankets. She follows him into the cave of covers, and they become children, playing together. He wrestles her, pinning her down. She wriggles free, tries to pin him.
“Grrr,” he growls at her.
“Grrr,” she growls back through laughter. She comes up for air, pats for his body under the blankets.
“Grrr,” she growls again, and pounces onto him, only he doesn’t move.
She lifts the sheets and finds him frozen, curled into himself.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing—I—nothing.”
But his playful sense, his smile, is lost.
He rolls over and closes his eyes.
After a moment, she gently rolls up behind him and puts her arm across his chest, spooning him from behind. At first he doesn’t move, but eventually he reaches up and takes her hand in his own. They breathe together like that for what feels like hours, though maybe it’s only minutes later when James says, “When I was a boy I used to get in bed with my mom in the morning. I’d crawl under the covers and wait for her to be like, ‘Where’s James?’ She’d start feeling around on top of the blanket, and when I felt her hand on me I’d move away real quick, and then she’d get under the covers and chase.”
Marilyn smiles, kisses the spot on his neck where his hair stops. She traces the outline of his back, but his body tenses below her hand.
“My favorite part of the game was being caught. I loved the feeling of her weight on me—it felt safe. I loved her voice when she’d say, ‘I found you. You know you can’t get away from your momma.’”