Page 25 of Mazywood

From instinct, Tasha reached for a half-empty wine bottle on the counter next to the stove, her hand pausing when she remembered she couldn’t drink wine. She nudged the bottle back against the wall. Johnny preferred THC gummies to wine, and he couldn’t wait to pop a couple after dinner. They still ate dinner as a family, and he didn’t like the slow elevator ride up toward outer space when he was at the table with his kids. It would ruin his buzz, stop the ride cold. Gummies didn’t ease every situation, so his chances for a good ride were already slim.

“Well… shit,” Tasha said.

“Yeah.”

Between his script fee and his director’s fee when the studio exercised its option, La Petite Mort was supposed to pay Sharise’s first year of college fees. It was supposed to pay for a lot more than that. He’d told himself for years never to rely on Hollywood when he needed money—desperation was a stench that made execs lose their hard-ons—but that was what he’d done.

“You might want to do that last polish once you’ve cooled off,” Tasha said. “Just in case?” Johnny shrugged, hiding how much the question stung. “You know what the business is, J. A dozen drafts to the finish line? This just feels like something you might regret. I try to steer you clear of regrets, that’s all.”

“Got it.”

Her cheeks were tightening, and the skin contracted against his jawbone too. Like a flash fire, this could turn into an argument. He wanted to say he’d hoped she would stand with him on principle, but he squashed the voice that said, She doesn’t understand, because once he let that voice loose, he would think, She’s living in a damn fairyland, and then grievances big and small he’d hidden from himself might explode.

Tasha nudged on, gently. “You might also think about how much stress we’ve been under since we got the results.” They both still talked about her pregnancy like an illness, which was fitting, since she spent so much time sick over the toilet. “So… maybe you’ll feel differently about the meeting next week.”

“Maybe,” he said, not believing it, still avoiding the flash fire. “I’ll think about it.”

She smiled at him and rubbed her palm against his cheek. “Thank you. All I ask, boo.”

Johnny’s chest burned, so he remembered to inhale. Tasha called him boo to signal she was in a sexy mood, but tonight she would have to be sexy by herself.

“What would you think about a weekend getaway?” Tasha said. “Get our minds off work and spend some time in the snow? The girls can take off a day from school.”

“A cabin at Big Bear?” he said. “Lake Arrowhead?” They rented cabins once a year in the mountains ninety minutes from home, and he enjoyed the change of scenery.

But Tasha’s eyes steered him closer to her thoughts: She wanted to go to his grandmother’s lodge, which was a harder trip in every way imaginable. She’d been asking so many questions about Mazelle Washington in the past few months that she probably was planning to write a book about her, but she hadn’t said so outright. “The girls keep asking about it. Imani wants to go snowboarding. Sharise wants to shoot a video for her college applications. She has a bunch due in January.”

“What kind of video?”

“On her family history, Johnny,” Tasha said. “They don’t have anyone else on your side of the family. They’re starved for it. They just want to know more about who she was.”

She’s ambushing you when she knows you’ve already been knocked down, the voice ready to fight said in Johnny’s head. That’s what she always does. But he couldn’t look into his wife’s eyes and fail to call that voice a liar. She’d been asking to see his grandmother’s old lodge near Mount Shasta upstate for years. She didn’t mention again that she was thinking about writing her own article about Mazelle Washington as an African American Studies professor, but it was true the girls had been asking. His mother had died before they were born, and his father had been in the wind since he was born; he’d been older and married when his mother got pregnant. Tasha was an only child too, so his kids didn’t have cousins either.

“That’s nine hours upstate,” Johnny said. “We’d have to fly.”

“The flights are cheap,” she said. “Then we’d rent a car for a couple days.”

“There’s no internet in that lodge,” Johnny said, sure that was his checkmate move to stay at home. “And last I heard, no cell phone coverage either.”

Tasha only smiled. “I already told them that. They said they’ll rough it, as long as we’re only there a couple nights. They’re thinking of it like an adventure. Going back in time.”

“Since when do Black people want to ‘go back in time’?” Johnny said with air quotes.

“Your grandmother opened a resort for Black celebrities during segregation with its own ski run,” Tasha said. “That was badass. That’s what they want to see—their legacy.”

Johnny was about to correct her: Resort was a generous term for a two-story wood-frame house and two remaining ramshackle cabins. His grandmother’s lodge hadn’t been in good shape the last time he’d visited as a child before 1980, and despite the caretaker and decorator he’d hired a couple years ago, he doubted it would meet the standards of his pampered daughters now.

Instead, Tasha said, “I think we should go up there this weekend… and tell them.”

About the death of my movie? Johnny thought at first, but that was wishful thinking. His nemesis stone had migrated to his belly, the size of a boulder this time. Until then, he hadn’t appreciated how much easier it was that Tasha hadn’t mentioned her pregnancy to their daughters yet. They had agreed to wait three months because of the danger of miscarriage, but that time had passed in a blink. The secret gave him emotional armor he wasn’t ready to lose.

“What are you thinking right now?” Tasha said, her voice a cloying breeze.

“I’m thinking… I can’t believe we’re doing this. I thought we were done.” She’d tricked him into telling the truth.

But no flash fire. She only nodded. “Me too.”

He thought, not for the first time, that what he really should say was: Why are we doing this? Three months in, the question felt years late. The twin pink lines on the pregnancy test had proclaimed it was too late from jump. When Tasha hugged him this time, he imagined he felt sadness radiating from her too. And why not? They deserved a moment to mourn their lost future alone together. They swayed as they hugged again, their new way of dancing.