I felt conspicuous in that world, all those eyes on us and me nobody notable, but Stewart soaked it up. It made him a nuclear reactor. He didn’t bother babysitting me; in fact, he barely spoke to me. Instead, he made the rounds, patting people’s backs and spreading that snarky smile like herpes. I sat on the wooden bench at our upscale picnic table and drank cucumber sake mojitos with his female costars. They were friendly and inclusive, minus the birdlike one he had briefly dated; she must have been confused about the nature of our relationship. They regaled me with outrageous audition stories, funny now that they’d transcended, and asked me for beauty tips, because of my job, and to describe Stewart as a kid. I told them about his rare penny collection, a small act of revenge for his neglect. After a couple of hours, I approached Stewart and stood at his side like an idiot for several minutes until he finally took a break from his conversation with some young agent. Then I pecked him on the cheek and said goodbye. He didn’t ask me how long I’d be in town. When I looked back from the doorway, he was standing below the fairy lights talking to an Olsen twin. I left, feeling that it would be a long time before I visited him again.
My hotel room had one wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. Later, I stood before them in a thin gray tank top and underwear, goosebumps raised on my skin, knowing I could be seen but no one was looking. I watched the city twinkle and sprawl, unconcerned about encroachment. My neighbor on the plane ride over—with a boyish face but receding hairline—had a similar attitude, his elbows jutting further across the border of our shared armrest each time he attacked his laptop keyboard.
I had opted to book a room instead of staying at Stewart’s, which, with hindsight, I saw as an act of self-preservation. Now hoping for sleep, I slipped in between the bed’s crisp sheets, the oversized furniture casting cartoon shadows across the floor. All around me, it seemed, the city vibrated, like bass from cruising cars on Sunset Boulevard, and reminded me that I had retreated, no real place to go. They say New York is a solitary place, but no place makes more aliens of people than Los Angeles.
I waited for a text from Stewart, thanking me for coming or pretending we’d had a nice time. It never came.
I can’t remember the next time we spoke after that. I’m sure he let me know he was coming to New York, and I went to meet him, never acknowledging my hurt feelings. I know we never talked about that visit. For me, that evening was the moment of our greatest divide, the time we strayed farthest from each other. There was the Stewart he wanted people to see, and there was my Stewart—the complicated person with the penny collection and some questionable past haircuts.
I was so sure about his motivation in those days: bad values and a need for attention, insecurity and a fragile ego. Now, I felt less sure. What had he been looking for in all those handshakes? What was it about me that he’d wanted to avoid? Was it really that I was too regular? Or was it something more? I had been so sure that I understood the real Stewart, but had I been looking at him with open eyes?
Now, gazing at George across the room, I reminded myself that he came from that strange LA planet too. He understood its blunt rules. Something about its desert landscape attracted him. Yet he seemed like such a different breed. He and Stewart shared a kind of good-natured openness maybe, but George had standards and limits. Stewart collected these foul types; George seemed to look for the best in people, but when they demonstrated otherwise, he wasn’t interested in keeping them around. In fact, considering the way he was acting toward me tonight, I wondered if he’d somehow deemed me unworthy of his time.
“So! What’s it going to be?” I jumped at the sound of Blair’s voice. She appeared in front of me as if from nowhere.
“Be?”
“What are you going to take? There are first edition books you might like. Some beautiful scarves. Some of his old notebooks. Not journals or anything private, but acting notes. A couple of cool skateboards. Maybe you remember him riding them? Some lovely Alessi vases.”
I felt like she was offering me parting gifts on some horrible game show where we all competed to prove our closeness to Stewart: Whose Grief Is This Anyway? Like she was playing both Vanna and the winning contestant, somehow in a position to decide who deserved what and dole it out too. How had this happened? Stewart had asked for my help.
In that moment, I decided that I wanted nothing. Not now that Blair had touched it all. “I’m good,” I said.
She furrowed her brow, as much as was possible with the Botox. “Good?”
“Yeah. I don’t need anything.”
“But you have to take something!” She leaned in, lowering her voice and pointing her thumb over her shoulder toward Mallory and Brian. “Otherwise these guys will take everything and start some creepy fan club, charging for tickets to see it—if they haven’t already.” She scrunched up her nose, as if she smelled something foul. “Can you believe them? Terrible. No sense of propriety.”
I wanted to say, “Isn’t Mallory one of your best friends?” Instead, I said, “That’s okay.” Suddenly, I felt like it really was. I didn’t need the stuff; I didn’t want to be part of divvying it up. I just wanted to walk away clean and remember Stewart how I could in my head. My Stewart. The boy I knew—or thought I knew—and loved. “I’ll just take that picture of us from after Robin Hood once the tribute gallery display is over and they’re done with it, and I’ll be good.”
“Wait, actually, there was one thing I really thought you should have!” What was with the hard sell? It’s like I had sapped her of power and she wanted it back. Blair crossed to a shelf and began rearranging objects toward the back: a conch shell, a tofu man figurine, a picture of the Manic Mondays cast. “Ah, here!” She swiveled around and tried to shove a giant chunk of glass into my arms.
I just looked at it. “What is this?”
“It’s Stu’s People’s Choice Award!” she said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I’m sure Mallory and Brian would die for it, but I know he would have wanted you to keep it. Here! Take it!”
I looked down at the thing. I reached out to take it because I didn’t know what else to do and I thought it might drop. That’s when I saw it; just as she transferred that award into my hands. On her finger. A reflection of light that drew my eye—a sparkle. My mouth dropped open.
Stewart was not a jewelry guy. That wasn’t his vibe. But he wore one item every single day: a diamond and platinum pinkie ring that had belonged to his grandfather. His mother’s father had died young, but Stewart had enjoyed eight good years with him, during which he was more like an actual dad than Ted had ever been. Stewart wore it to remember his “G-pa.”
Blair was wearing that ring. My stomach dropped, as rage boiled up inside me, my body recalibrating in every direction at once.
“What. Is. That?” But I knew. Of course I knew.
Blair smiled, feigning ambivalence. She could barely contain her glee. “Oh, this? This is just that ring that Stewart liked to wear.”
“No, I know. But did Helen get it back from the coroner?” How did you get it? That’s what I wanted to ask.
“Nope. I found it when I came back the other day to finish organizing. It was in the back of his bedside table drawer. Thank goodness I found it.”
“That’s weird.” I never knew him to take that thing off. Not ever. He showered in it.
“Not really,” she shrugged. “I think he kept it there when he slept. Anyway, I returned it to Helen’s when I went there for lunch.”
’Cause Blair and Helen have lunch all the time. What a lovely girl. I felt it like a punch to the gut.
“And she said I should just keep it! As a thank-you for all the work I’ve put into packing up Stu’s apartment. Isn’t that so sweet? So I’ve just been wearing it. I think it’s pretty cool actually.” She splayed her hand in front of her and eyed it like a new engagement ring—one that was notably missing from her life. She had no idea w
hat it meant to Stewart. I doubted if she even knew its origin. She just knew it was the winning item in the Stewart’s stuff contest—and a cool accessory to boot.
I looked at that ring—the closest thing to a Stewart talisman that might exist—on her veiny hands. I looked down at the People’s Choice Award cradled in my own arms: What she had decided that I deserved. And it took everything in my power not to pick it up and bring it down over her head.
The force of my anger scared me, so I backed away from her, murmuring something about going to the bathroom, again. She turned on her heal and went off to ruin someone else’s day. The room was spinning. It felt like a head rush from a first cigarette: Was this from the alcohol or the world tipping off its axis?
I felt, for the first time, like I might cry for real. Not from sadness, but from frustration and rage. I needed a moment of quiet. I rushed down the narrow hall toward Stewart’s bedroom, almost slamming into George as he left the bathroom.
“Whoa. No running in the halls, kids.”
“Excuse me,” I mumbled, moving to pass him.
His brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?”
“Can I just get past?”
He tilted his head and took a more intent look at my face. A line etched its way across his forehead when he was worried; one day, it would leave a crease and make him look wise. Must be nice. “Wren, are you okay?”
I couldn’t speak. I looked at the floor, then, when I had gathered enough courage, up into his handsome face. I shook my head.
He took me by the hand and walked me into the bedroom, closing the door behind us. Despite my current state, I felt a stir of something besides anger and sadness.
We sat down next to each other at the foot of the Design Within Reach platform bed with its pricey Hästens mattress. These were the items Stewart had carried from place to place. I hadn’t spent as much time in here as I had in Stewart’s previous bedrooms—or even apartments. Neither had he. He moved in after a couple seasons of the show and was in LA a lot. The Egyptian-cotton sheets and duvet and the space itself—with its high ceilings, large windows, and dark Venetian blinds—didn’t elicit a visceral reaction from me. They weren’t familiar. But it still smelled like Stewart’s aftershave or hair product, something artisanal that I always loved with fig and basil notes. Or was that George’s? The two scents had intermingled and fused in a complicated way in my mind. I couldn’t tell one from the other anymore, but I craved them both.
I looked around the room. The art had been taken off the walls and most of the objects had been removed so that Stewart’s friends and loved ones could pick through them. Only a faded globe still sat on his wide windowsill.
“I love Earth; way more manageable than outer space,” he told me the day he bought it. We were browsing at the Smithsonian gift shop on a high school trip to Washington, DC. Stewart was in one of his grandiose moods. “All over this giant world, people are experiencing moments of tragedy, brutality, triumph, joy, and boredom,” he raved, rotating the globe with his thumb.
I pulled myself away from the quartz jewelry display I’d been examining with my mother’s birthday in mind and crossed to him. “That seems more manageable to you? It seems more overwhelming to me.”
“It’s a reminder that my problems aren’t that big.” He shrugged, tipping the brim of his Yankees cap up with his pointer finger. “Also, globes are fun to spin. I’m getting it!”
“What is that?” George said now, referencing the award in my hands—not the globe. It took me a moment to realize what he meant.
“This? My consolation prize.”
“You don’t even get the Emmy?”
“Apparently not.”
“Lame.” George sighed. “So tell me why you’re upset? Because Jimmy isn’t here?” He rubbed his cheek. I’d never noticed how defined his jaw was before.
“Jimmy? No. I mean, maybe it would have been helpful to have him here to deflect.”
“But you’re not upset that he didn’t show up for you?”
I shook my head. “I mean, I’ve sort of given up. I don’t really expect that from him. I love him, but Jimmy does what’s good for Jimmy.”
George cringed. “And you don’t mind dating someone like that? ’Cause, based on what you said about your other ex-boyfriend, maybe that’s a pattern for you. Just because a guy says the right thing, doesn’t mean he’s a good person.”
“Wait, what?” My brain was not operating at full capacity. “Are you saying you think Jimmy is my boyfriend?”
“Well, I don’t know about boyfriend,” he shrugged, “but whatever the kids are calling it these days.”
“I think the kids would call us ‘friends.’ Jimmy spent Stewart’s funeral reception locked in a bathroom with Gretchen.”
“Wait, seriously?” George opened his eyes wide, and I could see the constellation of specks in them—speaking of outer space. A galaxy far, far away.
I tried to focus back on the conversation. “Yup. Not their classiest moment.”
“Huh.” George scratched his head, absorbed that information. “Wow. I really misjudged this whole situation. But then why are you so upset? If it’s not about Jimmy, what is it about? Is it being in Stewart’s apartment?”
I held up the People’s Choice Award, then resettled it on my lap. I was starting to get attached to it like a really sharp, heavy security blanket.
“Ah. Yeah, that’s not the memento I would have expected you to pick.”
“Oh no? You didn’t think I’d want to spend every day for the rest of my life staring at proof that random strangers thought famous Stewart seemed dreamy?”
“So, how did you—?”
“Queen Vulture bestowed it upon me.” I regarded it sadly.
“That woman is a nightmare.” George tipped his head to the ceiling for commiseration—maybe from God? Maybe from the universe? Maybe from Stewart’s ghost? He leveled his gaze back at me. “You don’t have to accept this. You have a right to whatever you want.”
I shook my head. “It’s not that.” I was drunk, I was delirious, I was tired, George’s toned and tanned forearms were distracting me. I missed my best friend. “This is just a symbol, you know? A really, really ugly one.”
“Okay. So what is it a symbol of?”
It was hard to explain. I couldn’t totally connect to the feeling. What was it? Sadness? Anger? Envy, even? I thought about Stewart’s ring. If I closed my eyes against this reality, I could see him wearing it, his hands wildly gesticulating while he told some hilarious story. How could I put my feelings into words? “I feel like . . . they’re stealing him from me.”
George’s face fell. He closed his eyes for an almost imperceptible moment, then took my hand. When he looked at me, his eyes were watery. “Not them, Wren. They didn’t steal him. It was his own body. His own brain.”
The truth hit me like a ton of bricks, heavy and real. Death. Stewart. Gone. Forever.
Just gone? Forever? Abandoned? Forever?
“I’m so sorry, Wren. I hate that you’re in so much pain. I wish I could—” George exhaled. “Look, they can’t take what you had with Stewart away. They can’t erase your memories and replace them with their own. They can’t disappear him. It was his own body that did that. Just dumb, tragic, unfortunate bad luck. A glitch in his code. A mechanical malfunction.”
A glitch in his code. The wrong sequence of zeros and ones. I dropped my face into my hands. Was I malfunctioning too? Life seemed so tenuous. What separates one of us from the other? Why was I alive and Stewart dead? Why one person and not another? George slipped his arm around my shoulders and rocked me. I wanted to crawl onto his lap and stay there forever; bury my face in his neck and smell that delightful cologne.
But then, abruptly, I remembered his behavior all evening—his dry welcome, his flat affect, the way he’d been avoiding my eyes when we were suppos
ed to be partners in opposition to the vultures. The way he’d dropped my hand during Willow’s circle.
I pulled away, far enough to look up into his face which was only inches from my own. I smelled honey on his breath. “Why have you been so weird all night?”
“Weird?”
“Unfriendly.”
“Oh, that.” He looked hangdog, as he bit his lip. “I kinda thought you were dating Jimmy.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So I was disappointed and confused. I guess I was sort of pissed. I realize that’s not the most evolved reaction.”
I was starting to get the picture, one in whose outcome I’d been too invested to look closely. I’d been too afraid of a letdown, too conflicted about having a crush in the midst of all this loss. “Because?”
He cocked his head. “Wren. Because I like you. Despite your terrible attitude and bad taste in bagels. I like you a lot. I thought that was clear.”
I allowed myself the smallest smile; he scowled at me playfully. I felt a rush of nerves. I wasn’t used to taking leaps like this. I wasn’t used to men like George. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Open book. Sort of. Unless it’s privileged information.”
“Why did you become an entertainment lawyer? You don’t find that world gross?”
“Oh! Because I love movies. My dad is a total film nerd. I spent my whole childhood obsessed. Why?”
How had I not allowed for a simple explanation like that? Why did I assume that George had some pernicious motivation, all evidence to the contrary? Why did I always imagine the worst?
I raised a hand to his chest, toying with a shirt button. I could feel his body rise and fall with each breath, warm beneath the thin fabric. Finally, I said, “I have another question.”
Competitive Grieving Page 23
