Emerging from his reverie, he caught the words of a mousy woman in her mid-thirties. The faint, decaying man beside her was apparently her husband.
“… and I just wonder when it’s going to end. I know even thinking that way is so selfish… I just worry that I’m living with too much pain — that it’s become an addiction, and that chemically, I’m becoming a different person. That I’m in this hole, and can’t climb out. Because this was almost two years ago and it feels like yesterday. Like today, it feels like today! And a lot of people say that when we’re pregnant again, that’s when I’ll be able to — that’s when we’ll be able to move on. But a lot of them say the pain never goes away too… and I don’t want it to! I don’t want it to go away! Because that would be like losing our baby a second time! They say that you… integrate it. But Calvin and I — we tried — and it’s — they said—so many doctors we went to said it was impossible for us to get pregnant… and that’s why Jarett really was a miracle baby. You always hear that, ‘miracle,’ but he was. He took eight years! So when he died… so I’m — we’re really looking at the possibility it may never happen. Again. And every time I think I’m okay with that, it brings me to my knees. But I actually felt better the other night. And this is so terrible, we were home watching Gravity and it got to the part where Sandra Bullock is telling George Clooney about how her little girl passed away. She said something like — she said it was something so stupid, like she slipped and hit her head on the curb, on the way to school. That’s what she said when she was talking about how her daughter died, she said, ‘It was the stupidest thing.’ And I actually felt better for a little while because I thought, That can never happen to Jarett. You know — he can never grow up and have something awful like that happen to him, like fall and hit his head on the way to school. And die. That cannot happen to him ever. And I just — that made me feel so small! That Sandra Bullock’s grief, even though she was just a character… that it would make me feel good to hear that, made me—”
She convulsed in tears while pathetic Calvin stroked her back.
Proletariat regurgitation of sentimental pop-cult movie moments was one of Jeremy’s bêtes noires. Watercooler snippets from the national conversation always gave him the creeps — and made him feel like a schmuck for being one of the “content providers” to the scary, useless, brain-damaged world.
—
“Well, that was a supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again,” said Jeremy.
They were back at Soho House, where he seemed to live.
“Thank you for coming. I know it bummed you out, but I really appreciated it.”
“Oh please,” he said, reversing himself. “I wanted to. It was actually kind of beautiful. Depressing but beautiful. I mean, we’re suddenly in this tribe. It’s a fucked-up tribe, but it’s ours. I guess!”
“It did make me feel better. In a way. Or maybe it’s all the crying.”
“It’s just going to take time, Leggy,” he said, reverting to the seasoned Wise Man tone he used when shutting down the dreams of showbiz strivers. “I know it’s the worst cliché, but time will heal.”
Just now it felt insanely callous that he’d spent the entire day mulling over whether he should tell her about the surrogate. At dinner, after the grief support group no less!
She felt so close to Jeremy. She would have felt the same even if he disclosed his plan; it’d have hurt but Allegra would have understood. It was hard for her to imagine getting pregnant again. Losing a baby like that really did a number on your womanhood — you were raised with all these presumptions and expectations, that you were the cradle of life and propagator of the species, your whole sexual identity was inextricably bound up with fertility. When you didn’t pass muster, everything went to shit and got thrown into question. Just who and what were you? People adapted to pretty much anything and women who couldn’t bear children were no exception; Allegra knew her fair share of contented, barren ladies; over time, surrender came, often in the form of the gloating declaration that they’d never wanted kids in the first place. All the mushrooms and brujas in the world conferring eternal motherhood couldn’t get Allegra to believe it.
“What’s going on with Bunny?” he asked innocently.
“Nothin’. Jus’ chillin’.”
“How’s she doing with the Reina thing?”
“It’s heavy.”
“Ding Dong! The Witch is dead.”
“I think heavier than she likes to put out there, but she’s doin’ okay. I think she’s actually doing very well.” She longed to blab about Aurora but knew that if she did, it would come back to seriously bite her in the ass. “Man, it’s fuckin’ complicated, Jeremy. I know there’s relief there, for sure. But I think there’s also… I think she’s really, like, sad. I mean, she’d never admit to that, but they did that dance for such a long time.”
“For real. You get used to dancing with the devil and suddenly it’s, like, ‘Hey! Where’d the devil go? Where’s my devil, I want my devil!’”
“Right?”
“Was there a funeral? Why wasn’t I invited to the funeral?” he said, in mock outrage. Half a mock, because suddenly he was in a huff about maybe having been excluded from something.
“Nope—nothing. She wanted to be scattered at sea but Dusty overruled her and put her in the ground in Santa Paula!”
“Well, good for her.”
“But can we talk about something else? What are you up to?”
“Same old. Projects, bla. I might do something else with Megan. There’s a Xavier Dolan thing, but the script’s four hundred pages. Bla.”
“Love Xavier. Love that little genius boy.”
“I’ll probably see Angelina when I’m in London.”
“When.”
“Whenever.”
“I didn’t know you knew Angelina.”
“For, like, a hundred years. And I’ve kind of been thinking of maybe directing again.”
“That is so awesome, Jeremy. A documentary?”
“Feature.”
“Oh!”
“I haven’t really figured it out yet. I’m circling. Circling the drain, probably. Hey, I read your script!”
“Oh my God.”
“It was excellent. Really, really good, Leggy.”
“Jeremy!” she squealed.
“I was kind of surprised.”
“Uhm, gee, thanks,” she harrumphed, still glowing.
“No, I mean, in the best way. Not that it was better than I thought it would be but that it definitely doesn’t read like a first-time script.”
“Jeremy, thank you. Oh my God, that is so nice. But did it make sense? I mean, could you follow it? ’Cause I made some choices — I was worried people wouldn’t be able to follow it.”