Work Text:
*
The Oakland Park of your childhood was always beautiful in December. The clean, white veil of snow, the simple allegro of flashing Christmas lights: it's the most straightforward road to your mother's smile.
It's been an unusually warm winter. There's still a few drying leaves left on the trees. The rain's left the front lawn a pale, mottled brown. You're careful to avoid stepping on it as you walk up.
You haven't been back in years. You don't remember missing it.
*
When your dad died, it became not a statement but another excuse. (Kate was always better at the statement-making anyway.)
You don't remember when you first really started leaving, when you first left.
Not college. You were always going to go out of state where all the best film schools were, but it didn't mean anything. Your parents drove you the five hundred miles. When they left, your dad hugged you close and your mom closer. You tucked a postcard from Kate (in stilted Japanese even though she only made it as far as the West Coast) into the wall mirror frame and thought about the faded pastel yellow letter "Z" that never made it off your bathroom wall.
On the set of your second movie, you were already getting good at turning down invitations home. ("The deadline's coming up, and this film is really important for establishing my directorial breadth." "The traffic's horrible this time of year, and you know how I hate to drive." "I've been really sick, I think I'm still contagious.)
It must have been in-between.
*
After the crash, it was your mother (not T, or Alice, or even Buck) who called.
"We were fighting, and I was I driving and I-" She stopped to breathe. You waited for her to say, "I don't remember", but she didn't. Instead, she said, "I looked away for a moment, and this car just came out of nowhere. I'm so sorry Marshall."
You were in the middle of a shoot. You were due to start filming in ten minutes.
You said, "What do you need, Mom? Anything," like a good son.
Your hand trembled as you hung up the phone, but you didn't feel like crying.
*
In the end, you didn't even make it to the funeral. Your flight was snowed in after one of the worst storms of the decade hit New York.
By the time the planes were up again, your dad was already six feet underground and you didn't much see the point.
*
Your first movie did okay, your second movie did better, and your third flopped. It hurt, but you're over it you think.
You're trying to figure out a fourth. You hadn't been starring at a blinking Final Draft cursor, but the reality was not much better.
It was almost a relief when your mother called. You were putting together lunch (chicken noodle soup from scratch) and almost didn't answer. You were afraid, you hesitated, but you said "yes" anyway.
*
You're not looking for inspiration exactly, but the truth is, your apartment's nice enough but you're nowhere near an Oscar. You want to figure out where you went wrong.
*
Your mother spends most of the afternoon cooking. You offer to help like when you were little, but she waves you off. "You just got here," she says. "Go up and relax. You must be tired after your flight."
You're not, but you don't fight her. You bow your head graciously and drop a kiss on her pointed cheekbone before you head upstairs.
Your room's almost exactly how you left it. When you lie down on the bed, the sheets smell fresh and inviting instead of musty.
You trace the familiar painting on the ceiling with your eyes and feel the first pang of nostalgia. It's been a long time.
It's just, your life's almost perfect right now. The first time you remembered feeling this way, you were in this room, on this bed, Jason warm and solid beside you. A week later, you were floating in the hazy oubliette of Xanax.
It's one of those accidental life lessons that you have taken to heart: that happiness is too fragile to be exposed to the weathering of uncertainty; that the best hope for its preservation is a glass bottle close too the heart; that even when little sips (just enough to taste) mean it'll empty someday, at least it will last longer that way.
It's just, the you that you are now is not the you that you were then. You don't know what would happen if the two were to mix, if one would be destroyed, subsumed into the other, or if the synthesis would create something else entirely different.
It's just, you were trying to hold on to the little niche of contentment that you have carved out for yourself the best way you know how: by keeping it away.
*
You eat early.
The dining table looks unusually empty even though your mother has made a lot. Just you and your mother's plates and an empty one for Charmine, who's spent most of the day maybe coming over, maybe not. (Not, in the end.)
Afterwards, you dry while your mother washes the dishes by hand. There are too few to warrant running a load in the dishwasher.
You watch her fingers grip the porcelain. The skin's looser now, creating dips and shadows that make them seem even more slender.
Even gone, you've worried about her. You turn to her and ask, "How are you really doing, Mom? Any uh- transitions recently?" You don't know when you've become shy about something you've grown up discussing, but after so long, it seems too rude to draw attention to this inconformity.
"No, no. Not since...." She bends her head down over the soapy sink. Her hair, longer now than you remember, obscures her face. When she looks up again, she's smiling, wide and sad. "I guess we finally found something that works."
You don't answer but you move to stand closer to her.
*
At nine, you pile on your winter coat and say you're going out for a cup of coffee. You don't normally like being outside in the cold, but it's easier than watching the careful way your mother moves around the house.
There's a Starbucks three blocks down from your house. You didn't think you know anyone who still lived here, but there's a familiar profile lounging in a window-front armchair as you walk up.
You remember. You remembered exactly the wide planes of Jason's face on your bed this afternoon, you remembered it the first time you slept with a man (in college), and you'll remember it ten years from now when you shouldn't anymore.
You walk in. You smile at him in passing, and he smiles back. For a second, you think it'll end like that, but he looks again and stands and says "Marshall" like it's a revelation.
He walks over, and you try to keep your right arm loose in case he's going for a handshake but instead he keeps reaching, arms tight around you in a hug that you almost forget to return, not when suddenly there's a million little details assaulting your brain at once: like the gold wedding band (loose) on his fourth finger or the way he smells exactly like he smelled when you kissed him for the first and last time.
You talk. Jason tells you, "I've seen all of your movies. They're, they're absolutely brilliant."
You laugh and say, "I don't know about that, but thanks."
You tell him about what it's like to direct, what it's like to look through a lens for the first time, what it's like to see a set and know exactly how you want things to go. You can still talk to him about these things, at once easy and hard, easy because he wants to know (he's never not wanted to know) and hard because you are you and he is him.
You ask, "How are things with you?" and he says, "Good," without hesitation. He's working at an ad agency. His dad is still the pastor at their church. He has two kids.
At a quarter to nine, the barista comes to say they're closing soon. You nod.
You say your goodbyes. He hugs you again, whispers, "It's so good to see you again," low and grave against your ear.
"You too," you say back.
*
You weren't really unhappy here. After that first, sharp betrayal, after you got over it (after you didn't), there wasn't any real hurt to speak of.
Probably, it would have ended in heartbreak anyway.
You wish you hadn't let it keep you away.
*
Your boyfriend calls when you get back. There's a lot of noise in the background, the sound of too many conversations going on at once. You have to strain to hear him.
You remember when your house used to sound like that.
"How's it going?" he asks. "As weird as you thought it would be?"
You think about your mom quietly giving you your space, your dad who's not here, about Kate who called earlier and sounded genuinely excited to come back, to see you again. You think about Jason, how seeing him was only surreal instead of painful.
You think about the house and all the memories it holds, the good ones and the bad; how they're only memories now, nothing ever tangible to snatch your solace away.
"It's nice actually," you say. "You should come and visit some time."
"Really?" He sounds surprised. You understand; you've only ever been uncomfortable when he's asked about your family in the past.
"Yeah," you laugh. "Yeah, definitely."
*
It's late, but there's still a light on downstairs. You find your mother leaning against the kitchen counter, sipping hot chocolate. She offers you a cup when you walk up. You take it and let the borrowed warmth heat your palms.
"Marshmallows?" you ask.
Your mother laughs, but she shares the bag.
You're only just taller than her. Somehow, you've missed out on the height genes from both sides of your parentage.
You lean down anyway, just slightly, so that you rest your head against hers.
You whisper, "I love you, Mom," and mean it.
*