I swallow my heart down.
“And my dumb questions?”
He smiles at that. His hand is on my elbow.
“Everything,” he says. “I love everything about you.”
I let my heart settle in my chest. Where it belongs.
“I love you too,” I say. “Everything about you.”
Then I plant my face directly into the spot where his neck meets his shoulder. I get it very wet. He lets me cry, the two of us standing there in the snow and the cold.
“Stay,” Gabe says when I’m done.
“Here?”
“Wherever,” he says. “With me.”
“Okay,” I say.
I wipe my nose on my sleeve.
“How are we going to make this work?” I ask, thinking of the logistics of our lives.
“We’ll figure it out,” he says. “At least, we owe it to her to try.”
I look down at Teddy, whose mouth opens and unfurls her tongue in the perfect doggy grin. She barks and nudges my hand.
“That’s true,” I say.
Gabe puts his hand on my cheek, his thumb rubbing the drying lines of tears, flaking away the salt there. He kisses the spot, softly. Then, with his hand on my chin, he kisses me. My arms go around his neck and it’s not so cold anymore.
“Chani,” he says.
I love the way he says my name. And this time, there’s a question there. A question I finally have an answer for.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes.”
BROAD SHEETS
Bringing the Big Show to the Big Sky
[excerpt]
By Gabe Parker-Horowitz
I’ve been given this article, this space on a page, to promote the theatre I’m launching in my hometown. I know I’m supposed to talk about the season we have planned for the fall, starting with a production of Angels in America. I’m supposed to write about things coming full circle and second chances and new starts and all that. Maybe toss out a brilliant metaphor or life lesson or something.
But it’s fair to say that I’m not much of a writer. And yes, I’m aware that there are people who would argue I’m not much of an actor either.
I’m also not going to talk about my drinking or my recovery or even my latest movie and how well it was received. Okay, maybe I’m going to talk a little bit about that.
Mostly, though, I want to write about a question.
It’s a question my wife asked me when we first met. About success. How I defined it.
I didn’t have an answer for her then, but I think I do now.
It was easy, when I was younger, to think of success in terms of the roles I was getting, the money I was being paid, the perks that were being lavished on me. I was successful because I was famous. Because I was known.
It’s a funny thing when the world thinks it knows you. Or, when you think what the world knows is who you are.
Acting, for me, was an escape. When I stepped onstage or in front of a camera, I knew who I was. I was more comfortable playing pretend than I was being the person that existed when the lights were off.
I felt safer in the fantasy.
I’m sure it will surprise no one to learn that alcohol helped maintain that. When I was working or when I was drunk, I could ignore the voices in my head—and in the media—that told me that no matter what roles I got, no matter how much money I was being paid, no matter what perks were given to me, it would never be enough. I’d never be enough.
It took fucking up on a global scale, it took rehab, it took divorce, and it took losing the thing I’d used to define myself to realize I didn’t want that anymore. To paraphrase the indomitable Tracy Lord, I realized that I didn’t want to be successful. I wanted to be loved.
But when you’re focused on feeding something that can never truly be satiated, you miss what you’re actually hungry for.
Ten years ago, I wasn’t able to answer the question. I wasn’t ready.
Now, I’m ready.
Success is starting a theatre where I’m beholden to no one but my co-founder and staff. Success is being present for my family—physically and emotionally. Success is being Bond and then not being Bond.
It’s stepping off the stage and feeling like I’m still there. That I deserve to be there.
Mostly, though, it’s her. It’s us.
It’s the stories she reads me late at night, when she’s spent all day writing and isn’t sure that any of it is good （it always is）。 It’s mornings waiting for the hot water to boil so we can have tea and coffee and talk about what comes next. It’s feeling like every day is the perfect day, even if the whole day isn’t perfect, but finding the moments that are. Being so proud of her that I could burst.