“It does,” he says. “People will see it, and they will know that it is me. They’ll think I had something to do with this.”
“I love you,” I tell him. “I would never want to hurt you.”
This is a fight, and it has every sound of a fight—the sharp shards bookended by concrete-thick silences. Teddy glares at me. The expression renders him unrecognizable. And for the first time since I’ve known him, I see it. I see Honus Caudill in his face, behind the eyes, in the slope of his forehead. It is the worst possible time to spot this, but I can’t help it. I feel myself shrink under my wool coat.
The moment breaks when he turns to the side and rubs his eyes. When he looks up, they’re pink, watery. He’s crying. Oh fuck. I made him cry. “It bothers me that you could even consider this,” he says. “Let alone execute it. You spent hundreds of man-hours carrying this out. What would make you think I didn’t need to know about this?”
“If I didn’t care what you think, you never would have seen this.”
“That’s your best defense? Sharon.” His shoulders slump. He shakes his head miserably. “I never would have imagined that you could be this deceptive. Never.”
“I did not deceive you.” And this is where I lose it. A sob gasps out of my chest. I bend over, trying to cover it up. He does not move toward me.
“What do you call keeping something from me for months, then springing it on me without warning? That is nothing if not deception.”
His voice breaks. I stay down. I don’t want to see his face at that moment. I would never be able to wipe it from the inside of my eyes.
When I straighten, he has composed himself. Hands are back on hips. “You made a movie about Mel’s mother. Who was stabbed in prison shortly thereafter. Correct? What did she think about Nashville Combat? How do you think that made her feel?”
I am silent.
“There’s a lot of stuff about you and Mel out there, by the way. And a lot of it’s not good.” He goes to rub his face again, knocks his glasses askew. “You know, I’d be inclined to blame Mel for this if it wasn’t so obviously your story in there. Mel’s a jackass. She’s a horrible influence on you. But you played just as big a hand in this.”
“Don’t talk about her like that.”
“She inserts me as the star in her pathetic movie? I should be calling her a lot worse. To do this constitutes theft, Sharon. It makes you both thieves.” He points to the door. He knows they’re listening, too. “Are you admitting that you agree with Mel that I have no stake in this? That you and she are in accord in this decision?”
And the way he says this squirms under my skin so much—that big, sanctimonious are you in accord—that I snap. Scream, “Yes. This is what I do and you know it. We don’t need your consent. Now or ever. This is not yours. It is not goddamned yours.”
A light in the upstairs of a neighboring house flicks on. We both fall silent.
Teddy says quietly, “I wish you could hear yourself right now, so you could listen to the absolute bullshit you are trotting out.” He points to the door again. Says louder, “All this proves is that that is the only kind of partnership you can do.”
We stand there gazing at each other, our faces half in shadow in the January air, that heavy Southern wet that sinks the sinuses. Teddy is more right than he knows. I will push as far as I need to, to make this project get up and live. The damage was done the moment we watched the first scenes for ourselves. What’s been the source of my happiness here? Teddy? Or was it really, truly getting back to work, getting lost in the work again, its gorgeous forward momentum?
We’re finished. We both know it. We’re just dancing now.
“I’m leaving,” he says. He strides onto the porch, yanks open the door. “Car’s leaving right now unless you want to walk,” he calls inside, then jumps down off the porch and moves away.
Mel sticks her head out the door. “Teddy. Come on.”
“Fuck you, Mel.”
She looks at me. “Well. Fuck me, then.”
A LITTLE STRANGE
One week later, we close up the carriage house and leave Louisville.
“We could rent a house in Faulkner,” I say as we drive east on I-64. “We could do it cheap. Like three hundred bucks a month.”
“Huh.” Mel’s drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, reading signs to gas stations aloud: Love’s, Fast Track Waddy Peytona, Shell. “Do you really want to do that, though? I mean, we’re more or less done down here. Those guys moved out on the fifteenth. The studio’s empty. We could get more subletters, I guess, but it doesn’t make much sense now. Do you not want to go back to New York?”
I can’t go back. I can’t do New York like I am, wounded, still limping. I can’t do the dodging and weaving, the constant intimidation. I can’t do the specific kind of loneliness that comes with being there. I think about the crowds of people pushing at each other as they climb from a busy subway station, all blank faces and swinging hands. My stomach burns.