The remainder of the weekend was spent together as a family. That Saturday they had had breakfast together, lounged together, embarked on a rather long conversation regarding the past before New York, and Sunday was spent doing much the same. They cooked together as a family, peppering meals throughout a cascade of topics, some of which were hard to address while others were tales of the days when they were young – like things they did together, people they relied on, they shared a lot about Dana. Tina stayed at Bette’s and, in the evening, didn’t argue regarding the sleeping arrangements. What Tina had come to realize through that short 48 hour period was how similarly she and Bette had clung to various points in their on-again-off-again relationship. They really did have two entirely different perspectives on certain instances now that time had passed.

Quite content just to listen, Angelica sometimes found herself letting her mother’s talk amongst themselves. She was always present, either sitting close to one or the other, though sometimes a question she asked led to unexpected places, sometimes she’d ask something about them and discovered that their individual recollections were vastly different, and then they would discuss it. They would work through it. They didn’t always agree but, because of the rules of the conversation they, themselves, had laid down at the start, the ’safe space’ rule in particular, managed to actually create a boundary. That, and, she was sure, her presence between them caused a bit of a buffer so that they would actually need to properly think before saying something because she would be there to hear it.

Angie couldn’t be happier in those moments were it looked like all of a sudden one, or both, of them seemed to realize something which they hadn’t before. Apologies were offered and accepted, explanations to things were given and understood, and it was decided that Tina and Carrie would not be having an engagement party. At least, not one like Bette was attempting to throw.

What it boiled down to, as Tina had discovered, was that Bette had tried mightily to express that everything was fine. Her way of doing so was by investing herself in the celebration, by offering to throw them their get together, in the the most sacred venue she could: Her home. Even though in her heart of hearts, Bette wanted nothing more than to avoid the situation all together, proving to Tina her loyalty and understanding overrode the desire to run in the opposite direction at the very mention of her engagement. And in that understanding Tina felt certain that she hardly deserved that kind of attention; that careful consideration. She hadn’t done much of late to warrant it.

The early hours of morning shed light through sheer curtains. With the sun steadily rising, beams of sunlight splashed through and across Tina’s face, rousing her from a deep sleep. Groggy from not having dinner the previous night and replacing it with the liquid supplement of wine, she didn’t move. She barely remembered crawling into bed but that also might have been simply because the day before was so mentally taxing. There was a scent heavily dousing her nose with sandalwood and florals, it wasn’t common – but, then again, neither was the feeling of the heavy blanket weighing her down or the softness of the sheets.

Opening her eyes, Tina blinked away the blurriness of sleep and realized that she was alone. A panic rose in her chest as she realized she was laying and facing Bette’s side of the bed. Suddenly she was very awake and very aware of her surroundings and the faint noises elsewhere in the house. She leaned up on an elbow and looked at the alarm clock on Bette’s bedside table, noticing quickly that it was about 8:30 in the morning. Falling on her back she gazed up at the ceiling and wondered what possessed her to tell Bette that sleeping in the same bed as a perfectly fine solution. Wine, emotional exhaustion, feeling absurdly out of place, being miserable… She was miserable. Having been so detached for so long was making her feel so… Unhappy.

From the outside looking in, she had achieved exactly what she wanted; a blossoming career in film, an opportunity to be a part of story telling and a participant in projects that were so important, she had a really lovely house and she was getting married to the woman that she chose. Yet, there was still this crushing emptiness that followed where ever she went that she couldn’t describe and it reared its head whenever possible making her appear to be unreasonable, unrelenting, and insensitive, at times, while in the background she brooded over the feeling that never seemed to fade. The power of depression could subject a person to behaviors that, in their right mind, would be intolerable, or make choices without actually considering the best interest of the parties involved. She had found herself at that point. However, realizing what was happening was the issue.

Thinking something and saying it out loud were two very different things. Bette had spent more time than she would have liked to admit with her mind wandering aimless down so many avenues of thought about the how’s and why’s of it all. She looked back on the finality of the ending of their relationship, the divorce and subsequent separation, and studied it like it was a secret of the universe – why, just when she had found the thing closest to nirvana in life, why… It was like suddenly she and Tina were on different dials, different speeds entirely, as soon as she had found bliss. Releasing those moments of inner turmoil into the space between her and her daughter, casting out the destructive nature of those kinds of thoughts, had given her peace of mind for that sweet, brief, moment.

By opening the front door and letting Tina in she had disturbed that peace of mind. Now the sanctity of that precious moment was tarnished by the knowledge that Tina had heard it all. She had heard things that Bette never wanted her to hear while she was still involved with another woman. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. It was agony.

She had let Tina go from the embrace in the kitchen many minutes before. Managing to compose herself, they silently sat down at the dinner table with their glasses of wine, neither knowing what to say next or how to move forward. Tina didn’t want to go first or be the first person to shatter the quiet when she already felt like a bull in a china shop, Angie’s statement floating to the surface of her mind, led Tina to believe that the space she suddenly had the power to command was a power too great. All the while, Bette couldn’t imagine what was running through Tina’s head at the revelation of how Bette really felt. She was embarrassed and filled with numerous doubts. It was such an inconvenient truth to be fed that this pale skinned, blonde woman, the mother of her child, could bring her to her knees in an instant without ever recognizing that was the case.

“I’m sorry that we… That I appeared to want control over your engagement party,” Bette stated with an apologetic glance. She toyed with the stem of her wine glass to give her hand something to do rather than repeatedly drink from it. “I just… I felt like I had something to prove, to make sure you knew that I’m here for you, and I support your decision.”

Tina sat in the driveway parked behind Bette’s car for a long time. Her heart was beating, her palms were sweating, she couldn’t make sense of anything. She stared at the back of Bette’s car and asked herself over and over again, what did she hope to gain? What was she doing there?

There was a lot of truth to what had been said. Some more truths, also, that Tina couldn’t really remember being put so bluntly into words. Bette was guarded sometimes, it felt like she almost asked without asking to assume that she felt one way or another. In the beginning, Bette’s feelings felt so loud at times that Tina could hardly think about her own over the sound. Then a shift occurred, once they had chosen to settle down, and that loudness diminished and became a low frequency hum. It was peaceful. It almost made Tina grow questioning. Tina questioned Bette’s…. Everything. All the while, she had been so busy trying to make her own way to realize the peace was really just… Peace. In the moment Tina was beginning to realize how tranquil it was in New York, the only thing that wasn’t serene was her. She was so focused on playing catch up that she tuned in to the chaos like it was a late night talk-show that never ends. She discovered Carrie in that chaos and then Carrie was the only thing that made sense. Carrie…

Like a lightbulb bursting over her head, the blond woman cursed and grabbed her phone, plugging it in and furiously trying to press the top button to turn it on. She had no idea what she was doing but she knew for sure, at least, that what she was doing was not at all what she was supposed to have been doing. Turning on her phone, she saw a few missed texts and a phone call from work, one from Bette, and Carrie. Tapping into her messages app, she began to quickly compose a text to Carrie to let her know that there had been a change of plans, but not to worry. Beginning to write I love you at the end, she paused. She stared at the start of the new message line ’I love…’ for a few seconds. She bit down on her lower lip and concluded the sentence with ’you’ then sent it off before leaving her phone in the cup holder and opening up her car door to step outside of the vehicle.

A silver hatchback turned off the freeway and into a gas station parking lot. The blond behind the wheel pulled into a parking spot as she listened to her ex-wife comfort their daughter. She knew that she should have hung up the phone like Bette obviously intended her to, but the sound of her daughter’s distress and angst made her worriedly curious.

As Tina listened, she was nothing but shocked when she heard the truth unravel.

“When she came back I thought… Maybe… Maybe she would realize how amazing everything is here, how amazing you are and we are… and maybe…”

Wow, she thought, as she turned off the ignition and sat in her lifeless vehicle. She didn’t know what to think. Angelica never mentioned anything like what she was feeling, or, at least, not the truth of what she was feeling – like Bette, their daughter was very capable of wearing a mask that hid her honesty well. Tina reached for her phone with every intention of ending the call and sitting there for a while to think, even though she could hear Angelica weeping on the other end, her voice sounded like it was right next to her. Her thumb hovered over the red button at the bottom of her screen as the sound continued to infiltrate her ear through the Bluetooth earpiece she was wearing, but suddenly Bette’s voice rang clear.

“Listen… I know it’s bullshit,” Tina stared at her phone and the seconds ticking away on the call timer, a mixture of disbelief and hurt washing over her pale features. “I know it’s… fucking hard to see your mother getting married to someone else, I can barely stand it, but… She’s happy. And we need to make space for your mother and the woman she chose.”

Her thumb diverted from the button on the screen that would end the call and hit the mute on her end, her mic would no longer be picked up on Bette’s cellphone. Afterwards, she sat in stunned silence. Listening to the back and forth, she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The words Bette chose to use in the defence of Tina’s personal happiness: We need to make space for your mother… And the woman she chose. It was a direct callback to those months ago when they talked in Bette’s kitchen, well before she and Carrie settled down in Los Angeles to be closer to Angie and everyone else, and those words clearly had a deep and lasting impact on the woman who spoke them.