On Grace (18 page)

“I didn’t?” I’m shocked. “I just remember doing ballet all the time.”

“That was because Miss Natalya told us, told you, you had potential and that you were very graceful. You heard that and you asked to sign up for more classes. So we let you. You don’t remember crying because you thought the leotards were scratchy and you got headaches from the tight hair buns?”

“No. Really?”

“Really. I probably should have pulled you out of that ballet school and pushed you to ride horses.”

We sit for a moment, and I feel emotional. Raw. This woman knows me. Knows everything about me and all of the small moments that collectively conspired to make me the woman I am today. She was present for all the little decisions that informed the big decisions. And it makes me lightheaded (or is that the wine?) to think that my character was set so long ago. Or was it?

I realize that the character setting I put so much stock in was orchestrated by a five-year-old. And that five-year-old is still making the decisions, still telling me what I’m
supposed
to care about and what I’m
supposed
to do. I always justified my personality by saying “that’s just who I am.” But is it? If I had traded the ballet slippers and
pas de bourrées
for Levi’s and riding lessons, would I be a different person today? Is the “me” I am just a fabrication? Just a construct of a child? I know I can’t rewrite the past, but can I stop letting it inform my present and my future?

“Do you think it’s possible for someone to drastically change the way they operate?” I ask my mom as Guillaume delivers our soup with a flourish.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’ve been
this
person for so long,” I say motioning around my whole body with waving hands. “This person who hungers for praise and recognition, who cares what other people think, who venerates the obligation over the desire, who analyzes everything in the hope that the overthinking might neutralize the fear and the uncertainty of doing the ‘wrong’ thing. Do you think that I can let go of all those hang-ups? Do you think I could just turn off the goddamn switch and start trusting my instincts more than my rationalizations? That I could finally lighten up a bit and stop having such high expectations for myself?” Before I can help it, I’m crying. My mom opens her Fendi, hands me a tissue, and smiles at me gently.

“Oh, Gracie. I think you could certainly try. But why don’t you just practice it? Don’t make a firm commitment to it or else you will make yourself crazy trying to be an overachiever at that, too. My healer likes to tell me to ‘lean into things.’ Why don’t you try that, darling? I just want you to be happy.”

“I know, Mom,” I say as I shake it off, smile at her, and dive into my soup. As I suck down the velvety, tomato-y goodness, I’m struck by the thought that maybe I can stop blaming my character flaws on some set DNA. What if I go all
tabula rasa
and just start fresh? Just be comfortable in my own skin, confident with my decisions, and happy doing what feels good instead of what looks good. I am giddy with the possibility that I have just made a major breakthrough in my life, right here at Il Cielo.

We make small talk for a while about her latest interests: yogalates, labyrinth walking, wheatgrass, and then as our lunch plates are set down, again with a flourish, she asks me about Darren.

“So what’s going on?”

I take a deep breath. “I’m not really sure, to tell you the honest truth. I go back and forth with my feelings about it. Sometimes I’m ambivalent, sometimes I’m really angry. Sometimes I’m sure we’ll get past it, and sometimes I just can’t imagine how I could ever trust this man again. And what’s a marriage without trust?”

“Not a very good one,” my mom says and looks down at her plate. “I’m not telling you to forgive him, Gracie. I just think forgiveness is overrated. I think you should somehow embrace the pain and let it propel you forward. Use it as energy.”

“What exactly do you mean by that?” I’m all for spirituality, and I’m all for taking Cam’s Oprah advice, but sometimes I think my mom gets a little far-fetched.

“I mean that you shouldn’t be all high and mighty about a mistake that your husband made. Just think of it as a mistake. If he added an extra zero onto some deal at work and got fired, would you divorce him for making that mistake?”

“Mom, high and mighty? Come on, I’m not high and mighty. And I think you and I both know that’s not really a good analogy. His pencil didn’t slip. His penis did. He had sex with another woman,” I say, slowly for emphasis. “He lied to me. He made me feel like shit.”

“I know, darling.”

“No, you don’t know. You don’t really know what this feels like at all because Dad never cheated on you. Has any man ever cheated on you?” I ask, getting angry. And maybe a little high and mighty.

“No, not that I know of,” she says quietly.

“Well, then, I appreciate your concern about my marriage and what I’m going to do, but I just don’t feel like it’s fair for you to be so decisive about how I’m supposed to feel when you’ve never walked in my moccasins. Not that you would ever wear moccasins.”

She laughs and reaches across the table for my hand. “You’re right. I don’t know exactly how you feel. I’m sorry for being hard on you. I just don’t want your family to be broken up like ours was. I regret that deeply, Gracie. From the bottom of my heart, I don’t want you to go through the same thing.”

“I know, Mom. But you know I don’t blame you for that. I know you always tell me not to, but I blame Dad.”

“No, Gracie. This was not your father’s decision.” She pauses. “We came to that decision together. Things just weren’t working,” her voice trails off, and she looks away. I can tell the memory of their divorce is still painful for her. She loved my father. I think she still might.

“Well, I’ve never been a single mother and you have, so you’ve got some credibility there,” I say, trying to lighten the mood. “I don’t want to get a divorce. I don’t want to be a single mother. I don’t want to have to give up the boys every other weekend and have them go to Darren’s fancy penthouse in the city where his twenty-five-year-old girlfriend named Britney who probably doesn’t own any Spanx will make them the Mickey Mouse-shaped pancakes they’re always asking for that I never have time to prepare. I don’t want that. So I guess I’m just going to have to figure out how to make this work. But I also feel, for the first time, that I could be strong enough to do this on my own. That I don’t need a man who made me feel so badly about myself around all the time to remind me of that. I don’t know. I’m so confused.”

“I know, darling. But you’ll figure it out,” she says and pats my hand.

We finish our lunch and talk about the plan for the rest of the weekend. After lunch, we’ll go back to my mom’s condo for a while. I’ll read on her terrace or nap. Tonight, we’re going to Eva’s house for dinner. I’m really looking forward to seeing my nieces and Eva’s adorable husband Sam. My mom decided not to join Eva and me tomorrow on our whirlwind day in L.A. She says she wants us to bond. It’s always been one of her life goals to have Eva and me be best friends. It will not happen in
this
lifetime, but I am always willing to let my mom think it will.

“What is your plan for tomorrow night?” she asks me, taking a sip of her cappuccino.

“Kiki and Arden are picking me up at 7:00. We’re meeting Scotty and Abigail and some other people at Koi at 7:30.”

“Who are the other people?” My mom has always prided herself on knowing all of my friends.

“I think it’s just Tommy Martin, Jake Doyle, and Sara Shaffer. I’m not sure who else. But I do know they wanted to keep this to just the old high school group. I guess there’s some official engagement party in a couple weeks with all of Scotty and Abigail’s grown-up friends.”

“Oh, I remember that Jake Doyle. You had such a crush on him. What’s he doing now?”

“I’m not really sure. I think he’s an artist. I saw him at the reunion, but I haven’t been in touch with him.”

I don’t want my mom to know about Jake. There is absolutely no reason for my mom to know about Jake.

“It sounds wonderful. Please tell Tommy to tell his mother hello from me. I see Sara once in a while. She’s always pushing a carriage along San Vicente. Always seems to have a new baby.”

“Yeah, I think she’s up to four now,” I say.

“I guess it’s easier that your father’s away this weekend,” she says.

“I agree, it would’ve been hard to fit in a visit to see him, so it works out well. He’s coming to New York next week, though, so we’re meeting for dinner in the city one night.”

My father, Reed Roseman, is a very powerful corporate attorney. He defended the Denihan case back in the 80s. When you tell anyone in L.A. that you were involved in the Denihan case, they nod deferentially. So my dad has been being deferred to for many years now. It defines him. He’s a good man, and I love him very much, but I can’t say he’s been the greatest father in the world. Both of his parents died when he was a baby, and he was raised by a distant aunt, so when it comes to being a father, he’s pretty clueless. He knows intellectually what he’s supposed to do in the dad department, so he checks in with me and tells me he loves me, but he’s never really been there emotionally. I think he’s finding it easier to connect with me now that I’m an adult. I know I’m finding it easier to connect with him.

He’s currently vacationing at his house in Kona, Hawaii, with his wife, Amanda. My dad and Amanda got married when I was ten. At that time, Amanda was a nubile twenty-six, twelve years younger than my dad. She had moved to L.A. from Nebraska a few years earlier to become an actress, but the furthest she got was holding a sandwich board in hot pants in front of the exotic car wash where my dad met her. Now she’s fifty-five and a plastic-surgery addict because she’s worried my dad will leave
her
for a younger woman. I think she’s a vapid gold digger mostly because, well, she
is
a vapid gold digger. Eva tolerates Amanda better than I do. In fact, they go for mani pedis every few weeks because Amanda pays for them. And for the cappuccinos afterward.

The rest of the day is nice and relaxing. And dinner at my sister’s is wonderful, though predictable. Eva only cooks from Ina Garten’s
Barefoot Contessa
cookbooks because she believes they’re the only recipes that turn out perfectly delicious time after time. And she’s right. But Eva’s menus don’t vary much. It doesn’t bother me because I am at her house so rarely, but her husband Sam calls her the Unfairfoot Opressa because he feels deprived of variety. I thoroughly enjoy our dinner of grilled tequila lime chicken, fresh corn salad, and herbed basmati rice, and it’s nice to have someone else cook and clean for a change.

But I spend the entire night distracted. Jake Doyle is on my mind, in my mind, everywhere. It’s something about being in L.A., about being back in the place where my childhood crushes and dreams blossomed. So, unfortunately, while my adorable nieces tell me about what they are going to be for Halloween (Hermione Granger and a ladybug), I imagine what Jake’s expression will be when our eyes meet at Koi. While my sister is going over our plan for tomorrow, I am thinking about what it would be like to kiss him. My sweet brother-in-law busts out his guitar and starts playing Van Morrison—music we bonded over when he and Eva met because, like her cooking repertoire, her music repertoire is based upon one somewhat zaftig but extremely talented woman: Mariah Carey. But while I sit listening, trying to focus on his playing, I wonder if I
could
ever go where Darren went. If I could allow Jake to take me back to his place in Venice, to undress me, to caress me while we listen to the waves crash along the beach outside his window. To let the butterflies fly.

I wake up confused and jet-lagged on Saturday morning. It takes me a second to figure out where I am and another second to figure out how I feel. I remember that today’s the day I’m seeing Jake, the culmination of all the interaction we’ve had over the last two weeks that I would be mortified if Darren ever knew about. I don’t feel like I’ve been cheating on Darren, but I’ve been hiding stuff from him and that’s the same as lying, and how far from cheating is that? I’ve gotten very good at justifying it all away, so that’s what I do again right now. Plus, it’s his fault I ever engaged with Jake in the first place.

Something changed in my brain at lunch yesterday. I feel a renewed strength, like maybe I can do this alone. Like how a toddler must feel the first time she takes a step and realizes her mother is not holding her up anymore. That feeling of pride and independence that she can do it on her own. Sure, the toddler usually falls. But if she keeps getting up and trying it, keeps standing on her own two feet, eventually she succeeds. And it’s only a matter of time before she realizes she can run away.

My mom is still asleep, so I go for a jog. It’s still cool, but the air feels perfect. As I run through the UCLA campus, I practice just being, not thinking. I pay attention to the feeling of my body as my heart beats faster and my legs work to keep the pace of the music on my “running” playlist. I look at the trees and marvel at the basic yet extraordinarily irrational concept of a thick piece of wood growing out of the ground and sprouting green. I observe the cloudless blue sky, scattered with acrobatic birds, and think about the force (I alternate between calling it God and The Universe) that has already decided what my future holds.

After my run, I stop at a cafe in Westwood Village and pick up breakfast for my mom and me: Greek yogurt parfaits, fruit salad, and two large cappuccinos. When I get back to the condo, my mom is on the terrace reading the paper.

“Did you get my note?” I ask, handing her a cappuccino.

“I did, thank you. And thank you for this fabulous breakfast,” she says, clapping her hands, as I lay out the contents of the bag on the outside table. We eat quietly, lost in our own thoughts, staring at the trees, the sky, The Universe.

After breakfast, I get ready for my day with my sister and rejoin my mom outside.

“Anyone home?” Eva sings as she unlocks the door with her own key.