I hate dating even more.
There’s no traffic as I merge onto the freeway. Everyone’s already somewhere preparing to eat turkey. This is the first year in five years I’ve had a proper Thanksgiving as I usually host specials or attend parades around the country.
To keep from thinking, I drive with the stereo blasting, the songs from the CD player on shuffle, and it’s a hodgepodge of Aretha, Coldplay, Snow Patrol, and the original cast album from Rent. It takes only one song, the song “Without You” from Rent, to bring me to my knees.
“Without You.”
I reach out to push skip but can’t make myself. My song. How many times did I play this after Keith died? How many times did I cry trying to understand how life can just go on without him?
I lower my window and let the wind rush through the car. And then the song comes to an end and I hit repeat.
I drive crying. I drive letting the music unbury the grief, letting the music dust off my love.
This album is my Keith album. This is the one that reaches into my chest and rips my heart out. I shouldn’t be playing it today, not now, not on my way for turkey and cranberries. But in a way I’m glad to be here, in this place, in this deep, aching grief where it’s real and honest and true. Where I am real and honest and true. So much in my life isn’t real, or true.
But love and loss are.
And Keith was.
Although Keith would be disgusted that I call Rent my Keith album.
I crack a small, watery smile.
We saw the show together in New York in September, a month before his final trip to Afghanistan. He hated it. I loved it. Loved it.
I was on my feet during the curtain call, applauding like mad, and Keith, my Mr. Nonemotional, looked at me as though I were an alien, which made me laugh, and I have never been so full of emotions as I was that night. I was laughing and crying, singing, clapping, dancing, and I remember thinking, This is what life is. Messy and huge and brutal and beautiful.
Keith died seven weeks later.
I stop at a McDonald’s ten minutes from Christie’s and go inside to repair my makeup. My eyes are still pink despite the new mascara and eyeliner. And looking into my reflection in the McDonald’s ladies’ room, I still see Keith in my eyes.
The bathroom door opens and a little girl runs in. I turn from the mirror and smile. I will only ever show the world my happy face.
I arrive at Christie and Simon’s just after two. One of the garage bays is open and Simon’s red convertible is missing, so I park on the far side of the drive to give him access when he returns.
Their two-story concrete block of a house looks severe from the outside, but the interior frames the spectacular view perfectly. The house sits high above the ocean and every window on the west side overlooks the water, revealing cocoa cliffs, sapphire waves, and the sandy cove below.
Christie opens the door and greets me with a hug, mindful of my bags and platters. “Happy Thanksgiving!” She’s wearing a brown-and-white animal-print tunic with a chunky bead necklace, and her necklace crunches against my collarbone in her quick hug. “How was the drive?”
“Easy. Fast.”
She looks at me closely. “You okay?”
“Yes. Wonderful.”
She’s not entirely convinced, but she doesn’t press. “Let me take some of that,” she offers, reaching for the three ceramic platters and flowers.
I’m happy to share some of my burden, and I follow her into the house, closing the door behind me with my foot. “Where’s Simon?”
“He got called in to the hospital. But we’re hoping he’ll be back by dinner.”
The girls come rushing down the staircase, screaming and feet pounding. “Tiana! Tiana’s here!”
I set down the bags and hug each of them in turn. Christie’s girls, just like Marta’s Eva, always make me feel like a rock star.
“Hey, girls.” Hands on my hips, I grin and take them all in. They’ve grown again, and at eleven, nine, and seven they’re as opposite as opposite can be. Melanie’s a little Simon, brown hair and brown eyes. Melissa’s the spitting image of her mom, blonde hair and blue eyes. And Kari with her red curls, well, she must be the milkman’s daughter. No one knows where her dark red curls came from.
“We’re setting up Disney Princess Monopoly,” Melissa tells me. “Come play!”
“You have to play, Tiana,” Kari adds.
Disney Princess Monopoly. If that doesn’t get the heart pumping, I don’t know what would. “Maybe later?” I say, catching Christie’s smirk. She finds it very funny that I can’t say no to her girls. “But first I need to help your mom in the kitchen. She’s got a lot to do today.”
“But we already counted out your money,” replies Melanie, the youngest.
“And it’ll be boring without you,” Kari, the eleven-year-old, adds. She’s in a phase where everything is now boring and babyish for her.
“I will play,” I promise them, “but first let me put together the appetizers I brought and lend your mom some help in the kitchen.” When the girls protest again, I hold up a hand. “Unless you all want to help your mom in the kitchen instead?”
They scream and run back up the stairs, feet pounding once again, and Christie makes a face and reaches for one of my grocery bags. “Something tells me I’m not raising them right,” she says.
We head to the kitchen with the flowers and groceries. I slip the bottle of white wine into the fridge to chill and start unpacking the bags, placing platters on the counter along with the ingredients for my fruit-and-cheese tray.
“That’s all right,” I console her, unpacking the Tupperware containers with my ingredients for the baked mushroom caps and stuffed Brie. “You’ve got me.”
“Gr
eat. The girl that doesn’t know how to cook.”
“I know how to cook.” I see her expression. “Appetizers.”
She laughs and returns to the preparation of her stuffing. “So what’s the latest at America Tonight? Are they serious about making Shelby a co-anchor?”
I open the package of thawed puff pastry for my baked Brie. “All the big network bosses were there Monday, for one hour.” I exhale and begin unwrapping the wheel of Brie. “The one hour I wasn’t there on Monday.”
“Was Shelby there?”
I look at her, nod grimly. “I’m trying to keep my cool, but it’s hard when it feels like I suddenly have no control.”
“So why all the Shelby fanfare now?”
“I’m skewing older and the bosses are worried that I’ve forever lost the younger audience.”
Christie grimaces. “Which is key.”
I nod again.
“So it really is about age,” she concludes.
“The one thing we can’t fight,” I answer, reaching for a baking sheet.
“I can’t imagine they really want to replace you. You’re so good, Tiana. You’re skilled, talented, professional. Experience does count.” She gives me a hard look. “Would you consider plastic surgery?”
No. But I shrug philosophically, far more philosophically than I feel. “I think I have to.”
But Christie doesn’t buy it for a moment. “You wouldn’t. You don’t even like Botox. You freaked the time they asked you to try collagen in your lips— ”
“It hurt.”
“Face-lifts hurt.”
“I’ve heard, and to be honest, the idea of being cut freaks me. Having my skin cut, stretched, lifted, and restitched? That’s a Freddy Krueger movie.”
“Thank God not everyone’s so squeamish, huh?”
I laugh weakly. But she’s right. I wouldn’t go under the knife, not unless I had no other choice, and I’m not out of options, not by a long shot.
“I’m not against cosmetic surgery, though,” I add, and tell her about the feature I’m researching and all the books with the before-and-after photos. “The after photos look great, but there is still something sad about the body being treated like a lump of clay. I’m not judging those who do it, I’m just saying I don’t understand it.”