The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements

Chapter Fourteen

They ran back up to the house together with their T-shirts drenched in seawater clinging to their shoulders. Win’s lips were blue, and the cut on Leo’s shin was tracking blood behind them, and the cold chased them home through the trees. Leo bent at the door to untie his shoes, and when he looked up, she had paused at the foot of the stairs, considering him.

“Meet me in the kitchen in twenty minutes,” she said.

He nodded. “Okay.”

After showering he stood undecided in his doorway before he backtracked and rummaged through his bag. He came downstairs with the bottle held aloft. “I’ve got whisky.”

“Oh.” Win looked up at him from where she was holding the kettle. “I’m making hot buttered rum.”

“That wins.” Leo sat on one of the stools on the opposite side of Win, watching her carefully. She stared right back at him, and he resisted the urge to straighten up. Something had shifted, some new knot lodged out of place, but he wasn’t sure exactly what had changed, how he was supposed to be.

Win’s hair was still damp and she’d tied it up out of the way, a dark knot that left her neck bare, the line of her shoulder clean. She was wearing a soft, draping black shirt and an old pair of blue jeans. Without trying he could track every patch of bare skin, from the dip of her collarbone to the cautious curl of her fingers out of her sleeves to her long, bare feet.

“Nathan was calling about my mum,” Win said. Despite the polite tone there was a dark sheen of warning in her eyes. “She’s just finished her chemo course. He was checking in. His mum had breast cancer, a few years ago.”

“I didn’t know that,” Leo said. “That the chemo was finished, I mean. You haven’t been telling me much.”

“You haven’t asked.”

“No,” Leo agreed. He took a careful sip of his drink. “I didn’t think you’d react very well.”

“Hmm,” Win said, but didn’t fight him on it. “Well, it’s early days, but the doctors are—optimistic.” She rubbed her forehead, looking annoyed. “She already wants to go back to work.”

“A workaholic Tagore,” Leo mused. “Such a strange concept, let me have a minute to come to grips with it...”

He was worried Win would spark up again, but she was grinning reluctantly.

“Shut up,” she said, and touched his wrist, like a counterargument: No, don’t. It had been easier to touch her earlier, shoving past her as they ran or wrestling with her in the sea, when the adrenaline and the biting cold could distract him. They were being so careful with each other now. It was breaking Leo’s heart a little, the way they tried out their gibes as gently as they could, talking like it was a boardroom negotiation. He knew things couldn’t go back to normal, but suddenly he wanted Win as she used to be, the daring, laughing way she ran through his life, the fierce determination of her gaze when she came up against him.

After a moment Win said, “My dad would have convinced her to retire. She doesn’t listen to me.” She was mostly talking to herself, and Leo watched her without responding. She was staring into space, entirely separate from him, like a stranger in a dream. Then she shook her head, and refilled their drinks.

“I wish there were more people around,” she said. “For her to talk to when I’m not here. She was never very good at making friends.”

“That big falling-out didn’t help, either,” Leo said.

“What?” Win’s gaze jerked up.

“You know,” Leo said uneasily, aware he was treading delicate ground, “if she could still call your dad’s family, sometimes—”

“What big falling-out?”

Leo stared at her. “You didn’t know?”

“Leo,” Win began, her voice rising.

“You didn’t know,” Leo repeated, affirming this time, and recounted the story as concisely as he could. He almost felt a thrill—finally, something useful to tell her—until her face went ashy and shocked as though he’d slapped her. He said, voice thin, “I thought you knew.”

“No. She never told me that.” Win was still staring at him. “Did she want to go back to India?”

“She just said she thought it was better to stay. Because of your friends, and school.” Leo cleared his throat. “And the acting, maybe.”

“I don’t understand,” Win said. “How did you find out? Why did she tell you?”

“Well,” Leo said, uncomfortable, “I asked.”

Win barked a laugh, harsh and uncompromising. “That’s it?”

“Yeah.” Leo hesitated, then said, “Did you ever ask?”

When Win’s expression didn’t budge, jaw clenched and eyes dark with shock and fury, Leo began, despite himself, to laugh. These two stubborn women, and everything was so obvious. “Win, come on, just ask her.” Something occurred to him. “Did you ever actually invite her to any of your premieres?”

Win’s jaw worked. After a moment she said, “She came to a few but she didn’t seem to enjoy them, so I just…I assumed she didn’t like them…”

“I am begging you,” Leo said, half-laughing and half-sincere, leaning over the counter to catch Win’s hand, “I am begging you to talk to her. Just ask some, like, some basic questions—”

Win was shaking her head, although she didn’t pull away. “We don’t understand each other at all, we’re different people—”

“How do you expect to understand her if you never talk?” Leo demanded. “Win, I’m on your side, but your mum is not exactly a closed book. She’s just a grumpy old lady, it won’t kill you to talk to her a little bit about your life.”

Win was still scowling at him. “You’re on my side, are you?”

Leo swallowed. “I’m always on your side. You just forget sometimes.”

“Sometimes you don’t particularly act like it,” Win said.

Her jaw was tilted up for a challenge, and they glared at each other, the weeks of ugly fighting rising, the afternoon’s peacemaking slipping back like a weird blip that could be ignored. It would be easy to fight with Win. It had always been easy.

“Sometimes I fuck up,” Leo said. Her hand was still in his, he realized, and then he was hyperaware of it, her long fingers, knuckles still pink from the cold. “But I’m still on your side.”

The air felt thick, the way it had on the beach this afternoon, the way it had in Saint-Tropez before everything shuddered apart. Leo didn’t leave. Neither did Win.

*  *  *

A few days later Marie sent them to an art gallery. There was hardly any press about, just an in-house photographer for the gallery’s website, and an exhibition by Lian Shen, who painted huge watercolors of siblings and was famously averse to showings. Leo had wanted to go to one of her exhibitions for years.

The gallery opened tall windows so clear autumn light trailed through cloister-like rooms, old stone and the sound of waves cresting beyond. “I like these,” Win said. “Why doesn’t she do more exhibitions?”

Leo shrugged. “I’ve never met her, but I read an interview where she said the work is what’s important. Everything else is vanity, apparently.”

They paused in front of a painting of three sisters on a stoop, the palest colors and sweeps of a brush, their heads bent together and glowing in a faint, radiant light. Thea had painted Leo with his siblings once, as a Christmas present for Gabrysia when Leo was fourteen. She had posed them sitting on a red velvet couch, holding whichever object was most important to them. Seventeen-year-old Hannah had her Super 8 camera in her lap, an act of pretension she had long since regretted. Sixteen-year-old Gum brandished a leather-bound copy of The Complete Works of Cato the Elder. Leo had spent hours sifting through various sketchbooks, postcards, and prints before he finally scooped up the family cat, and Thea painted it curled up asleep in his lap. Gabrysia had the portrait hung in her study, and it was still Gum’s phone screen background.

“I think that’s why I never started on the studio,” Leo said, trying to make it sound like it was just occurring to him now. “It feels too much like a vanity project.”

“I mean, obviously,” Win said. “You can do anything you want. Anything you choose is going to be a vanity project.”

Leo felt something seize in his throat, a cold hit of embarrassment and indignation.

“Just covering up how empty my life is?” he said. He couldn’t look at her. He wondered if she’d forgotten saying it.

“No. But you’re going to have to get over people calling you privileged. I think you use that as an excuse to do nothing.”

Leo kept his gaze straight ahead. “That’s a weird-sounding apology.”

“It wasn’t an apology,” Win said. She paused. “But I am sorry, for what it’s worth. For being rude. I was…angry.”

“Yes,” Leo said. “That I’d screwed up your narrative.”

“Yes,” Win echoed. “Well, you made things a lot harder for me.”

They moved into the next room, smaller and suffused with light. The gallery’s publicist had been hovering about them for a while, but now she hung back, and they were alone.

“I’m not trying to start a fight,” Win said. When he didn’t say anything, she shook her head, started again. “Really, I’m not. But you don’t see things the way I do, you don’t live the way I do. I’m one of the only Indian women to make it in Hollywood, really make it and not just be a bit part, and if I fuck up, that’s it. This industry isn’t meant to give second chances to people who look like me.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Leo argued.

“I think you don’t know that,” Win countered. “Because if you did, you wouldn’t have kept Lila a secret.”

Leo swallowed. “Not telling you about Lila was a mistake. The whole thing was—”

Win’s face shut down. “Don’t apologize to me about your marriage,” she said. “That’s the kind of thing that makes me feel like I’m a—a Machiavellian monster.”

“Okay,” Leo said. “But I didn’t mean to make things difficult for you.”

Win drew in a breath. “It’s not just about me. Look, I know you don’t really read my press, but it’s significant when I get cast for a role, and it’s significant when some director takes a chance on me, because that doesn’t happen often. So it’s significant when I fuck up as well—it makes them think that maybe it wasn’t worth the risk. So maybe they won’t do it again.”

And if she pointed that out, how heavily the scales were weighed against her, in the same quiet, tired way she was doing for him now, people got angry at her, too. Leo thought about Pritha’s story about the director, or he himself urging her to lash out against Nathan. It’s bullshit, Leo wanted to say, but Win already knew it was bullshit.

“I should have told you,” Leo said. “I wasn’t thinking about any of that.”

“You don’t have to,” Win said.

“No,” Leo agreed. He hesitated. “I guess I’ve always thought of it as something you could win one day. If you made the right move, or said the right thing, or…made out with me in the right exotic location.”

“I thought that for a while, too,” Win said.

They looked at each other, quiet and serious. Leo almost wanted to apologize, but that felt like another thing he would be putting on her shoulders, making her solve. He said, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“You do help.” Win sounded surprised. “You’re here right now and you…you are helping a lot. I’m grateful. I know Marie forced you, but I appreciate that you came anyway.”

Something hot and anxious fluttered in his chest.

“Marie didn’t force me,” he said.

Win blinked. “What?”

“Marie didn’t send me.” Leo wasn’t sure where to look. “I saw all the tabloid stuff and I called her and told her I was going to come out.”

Win’s face was wiped clean with shock. “But you were angry.”

“Yeah, I was furious,” Leo said, and laughed awkwardly. “But…I don’t know, everything looked awful, and I knew how it was with your mum the last time she was sick. I thought maybe I could help and I wanted—I wanted to see you.”

“Marie didn’t say—”

“I asked her not to tell you,” Leo said.

“Well,” Win said, still with that odd, unreadable voice, her eyes wide. “I’m…surprised.”

“Yeah.” Leo cleared his throat. “I just wanted you to know.”

As they were leaving, a group of fans had amassed outside to greet them. Win paused to say hello to a few of them, and Leo hung back, watching her. The cold sun seemed almost harsh, streaming over her dark hair and her high cheekbones. It was barely autumn anymore, and the orange-red leaves littering the car park were already turning brown.

“You’re such a sweetheart,” Win was saying, as she stooped down for a photo with a young girl. In the afternoon light Win’s face looked softer, dreamier, some of the hard exhaustion and worry of the last few weeks dissipating. It was as though she was backlit, the spotlight never leaving her, even out here in the middle of the day.

In the car on the way home, she dozed off leaning back against her seat, and then drifted to his shoulder. He stayed perfectly still, not daring to touch her, not even to keep her head from slipping off when they hit a bump. She jerked awake and stared at him, dazed, before she said, “Sorry,” and Leo shook his head. She scooted to the far side, out of his reach.

He wondered if Win was ever not tired. It tired him out just thinking about her, the days without end, the exhausting and never-ending professional activity of being Whitman Tagore. While their car wound through country roads, he realized he had been thinking about this—him and her, her and Pritha, all of it—as an essentially personal issue, with some demands from the outside. But Win wasn’t allowed to have purely personal issues; everything was outside, everything was on show. It was all high stakes all the time. Win fell asleep again with her face pressed against the window, and Leo thought that there would never be a moment when Win was done, when she didn’t have to care about these things anymore. It was never going to stop.

That was when he thought of it, the first quiet solid plan slotting in. He needed to call Lila.