Page 43 of Nora Goes Off Script
There’s something about Penny’s use of the word “just” that always reminds me how much easier her life is than mine. It’s not only her money and her supportive husband. Penny isprone to doing without overthinking. Just hire a cleaning lady. Just meet someone else. Just whip up another movie. But in this instance, she’s onto something. I can feel it tingling on the top of my head. What if I could write the story of Leo and me? What if by writing it, I could be rid of it, stop ruminating on it? What if I could write my way out of this hole?
•••
After the Fourthof July we are back in Laurel Ridge and settled into the slow soupy routine of summer. Arthur has turned eleven and is sleeping later, leaving Bernadette and me to our morning routines. Bernadette has an all-day soccer camp that starts at nine. Arthur has an acting camp that starts at noon. I have time for my run between drop-offs, but there is no real time to settle in and write.
I decide not to fight the situation, to give myself a real summer vacation from work. I’ll be broke by the end of September, and I’ll probably have to run up a little debt before I sell another TRC movie. The thought of going back into any debt at all makes me feel like my hair has been set on fire, but the thought of going back into the tea house is worse.
Even just standing at the sunroom window and seeing those gorgeous hydrangea at either side of the tea house door, the ones that Leo is not, in fact, here in July to see, is too much for me. It’s ridiculous but I look at them and see a lie: He did not wait around to see what would bloom in July; he did not stay. Bernadette likes to cut them and bring them intothe house, which is normally the joy of our summer, open windows and giant blue hydrangea covering every surface. This year I suggest she put them all in her room.
I consider trying to write at the library, but the truth is I’m not ready to write at all. I’m not ready to make light of love affairs and heartbreak. I certainly can’t see myself moving toward a happy ending. I know that I need to build my world back up around me. My schedule was my armor and I need to reconstruct it. I need new routines so that I don’t see Leo every time I roast a chicken. Plenty of people don’t roast chickens, and I will be one of them.
I’m not entirely focused on self-improvement. During the quiet hours when both of my kids are gone, I curl up on the couch and watch Dr. Phil or reality shows about people who have it worse than me. The idea here, I tell myself, is that it will help me feel better about my life. At least I didn’t send my life savings to a fake online boyfriend. At least I don’t have a compulsion to eat my own hair. In the end, I don’t feel better about my life. I just feel depressed that these people have it so bad.
At night I get in bed and scroll through his Instagram account. I know he doesn’t post his own stuff; I don’t even think he has Instagram on his phone. But whoever his agent hired to entertain Leo’s thirty million followers has to be getting his photos from somewhere. There are photos from the set ofMega Man, a few from around his house in L.A.Leo’s hair is longer. Leo’s wearing pastels now.There’s a happy birthday post to Naomi, a candid shot of the two of them on the setofThe Tea House. I zoom in on Leo for clues as to who he is. One of these nights there will be a photo of him that reveals a trace of malice or, better, heartache on his face, and it will all make sense to me.
There’s one photo of the sunset that I swear he didn’t take. I don’t know how I know this, but I just know it isn’t how he would have captured it. This thought sets me back. It bothers me that I knew him so well. It bothers me that I can jump right back into his head and know what he’d think, when I actually have no idea who he is now.Maybe he did take that photo,I think.Maybe that’s how he sees things now. I vow to delete Instagram from my phone in the morning. I don’t delete Instagram.
My kids and I are careful with one another. They don’t know how to talk about this situation with Leo, and I suspect it’s because they don’t know what it was. All they know is that everything feels different without him, especially me. I try to bring Leo up in passing to keep him from being such a loaded topic. I try to talk about him as a thing that happened, a little excitement, but not a thing that we are bringing into the future.
Arthur’s camp is putting on a production ofWest Side Storyto be performed for the whole town in mid-August. He can’t stand the director. “It’s like he doesn’t know anything about acting. He’s a gym teacher the rest of the year. All he ever does is tell us where to stand.” The main problem with this guy, I suspect, is that he’s not Leo.
I decide to take the opening. “That’s disappointing. But itwas pretty unusual that you had a real movie star directing your last play.”
“I guess.” Arthur looks out the car window.
I try again. “Good thing you didn’t promise Leo you’d never pursue acting. Seems like it’s starting to be your thing.”
“Yeah, like Leo’s so big onpromises.”
CHAPTER 16
It’s September, and I’m back. This is what I tell myself. I’d allotted myself a lazy period of mourning, and now it’s over. I am almost completely out of money so, effectively, I have constructed a situation where I will be forced to write to survive. I even spent two hundred dollars I probably shouldn’t have hosting a big Labor Day barbecue in the backyard. It was worth it. I set up the bar on the table in the tea house, and people wandered in and out, cleansing it. Someone spilled a margarita on the floor, and I almost said,Thank you. The best antidote to old memories is new ones.
At sunrise on the first day of school, I vow to stay snapped out of it. Today I will return to my pre–The Tea Houseself, and I will write. I’m a little tan; I’m my normal weight. I’m even doing some of the runs Leo and I did together, though I haven’t been to the bird sanctuary. I’m not insane.
When I walk out to the tea house, the door is closed. Thishas to work today, so I open the door, just the way I like it, and go back into my house to start again. I make a fresh mug of tea and re-sharpen my pencils. I approach the tea house and that old feeling is there. It’s a combination of inspiration and motivation. It’s magic, and I’m about to enter another world. I set my things down just so and build the fire.
Hair in a knot, I open my laptop and begin to type. I promised Jackie I’d have a complete script for TRC by October 1, which really shouldn’t be a problem. I write the story of a male actor from Manhattan who goes out to an old country house to film a movie and falls in love with the woman who lives there. They butt heads for a while, but then he steps in and helps with the school play. On the day of the play he’s sucked back into his own world, but has a change of heart and returns as the curtain rises. There’s a chaste kiss as the camera pulls back.
I’m light while I write it, and as I do so, I understand why I write. To write is to re-create something as you’d like it to be. I can filter my heartbreak through the giddy weightlessness of an afternoon romance movie, and suddenly it’s silly. It’s practically trite. My big love affair is an eighty-minute vehicle for selling tampons and life insurance.
He finds her schedules adorable. She shows him the simple pleasure of the sunrise. He shares that his cold penthouse apartment has no view at all, even being so close to the park. The first kiss is interrupted, per normal. They both change for the better.
Telling myself this story in this way confirms that it wasn’t real. It was a fantasy, something I should recognize becauseI’m in the fantasy business. All of that intensity and love nonsense was new to me, but to Leo it was just the drama that he brings to a part. And I’ll hand it to him, he’s a pro. In reality, I was living a boilerplate movie, as simple as Mad Libs. I decide I’ll probably finish this one in three days, because so much of it is written for me. Easy money, I think as I lie down for my nap.
I wait until September 20 to send it to Jackie, mainly because I don’t want her to know how fast I wrote it. I always think she’ll negotiate for more money if she thinks it was a whole month’s work. I don’t wait until October 1, mainly because I don’t want to put an entire mortgage payment on my credit card.
She calls me during dinner three days later. “So you fell in love with him?”
“Who?” I’m just buying time as I take my phone out to the front porch so I can have this conversation in private.
“Leo! Nora, I’m not an idiot.”
“That’s funny, because I am.”
“Just wow. Is it all true?”
“Sort of. But in real life there was a lot of sex, and he didn’t come back.” I regret not bringing my wineglass outside with me.
