Page 45 of Nora Goes Off Script
Arthur waits an eternity before answering. “Because I thought it would make you sad.”
“Oh, sweetie.” I run my hands over his too-long hair. I touch his too-young-for-porn face. “You don’t need to worry about me. I’m happy you got such a nice present.”
“There was a note.” He thinks before asking, “Do you want to read it?”
I think before answering, “Yes.”
Dear Arthur,
Mrs. Sasaki sent me the DVD of opening night, and I’ve watched it twice already. You nailed it, every single line, every single song. I don’t think that I could have had such command of the stage at your age. In everything you do, I hope you can own it like you did that night.
I hope you have a chance to read this book. It’ll be easy, you know all the lines already. Have a fun summer and please say hi to everybody.
Love,
Leo
What the actual fuck.
•••
The endings toSunriseare coming at me in full force. Leo is on his way back to me but gets hit by a train. Maybe it’s a slow train so it doesn’t kill him right away and he’s in agony living in a dirty third world hospital. He has lice. So much lice.
I want Leo to have lice and a bladder infection in the worst way. I google “can men get bladder infections?” They can! “...say hi to everybody.” It wasn’t even its own sentence. I shared half a sentence with my eight-year-old daughter, Mrs. Sasaki, Kate. Hell, everybody. We had a romance. Or at least we slept together. I should go back toSunriseand read it,because I swear I’m getting confused.
No, it was a romance. At night, when he was in the tea house and I was in my room, he’d text meMiss youand all of the cells in my body would start moving at triple speed. We’d text back and forth for hours some nights, until finally I’d tell him that the sun was coming up in four hours, and that maybe we should get some sleep. He’d reply,Can’t wait.
I barely slept those two weeks, except for the afternoons in the tea house. Even some of those days, I’d stay awake and watch him sleep. Isn’t this how you brainwash someone? Deprive them of sleep and feed them a lot of lies? I decide I’ve been brainwashed and wonder how many other women have fallen for this nonsense.
When I settle on an ending toSunrise, it’s because it satisfies me. He’s just come off a disastrous breakup with a starlet and three weeks in rehab (I’ve taken the liberty of ratcheting up the drinking here) and returns to my house. In my mind, his hair is infested with lice, but I don’t write this because I don’t want to freak out the moviegoers. He’s all apologies and explanations; he finally knows what he wants.
“I know what I want too,” she tells him as he holds her hand. “And it’s not you.”
I get up from my table in the tea house and sit on the daybed. “And it’s not you,” I say out loud. It feels good, this rebuke. I imagine the sting on his face. The surprise that I would have moved on, me in my little life. “And it’s not you,” I say again and start to cry, because of course it’s nottrue.
CHAPTER 17
A week before the New York opening,The Tea Househas screened in some smaller theaters, and critics seem to like it. They call it “thoughtful” and “powerful,” which is funny because I just call it “what happened.” I told Jackie I’d be at the New York premiere, after she reminds me not to let Leo steal my moment in the sun.
Weezie texts me to ask if I’ll be there.Who’s asking?I kid.
Just me, but I want to make sure you look killer.She asks if she can have her friend, a stylist, send me a few dresses to choose from, and I figure why not. I’m not going to show up looking like I just walked off the cover of theTapestryalbum. I have a second credit card with no balance that sort of feels like a loaded gun. I keep it in my wallet in case I need it, really need it. Ben used to count our unspent credit limit as an asset, as in, “Of course we can afford it, we have twelve hundred dollars left on the Visa.”
A box arrives with three dresses and two pairs of shoes. They all have price tags on them, and I try not to look. They are emerald green, silver, and black, all fitted enough to make me look young and viable, but also tailored and lined enough to make me look like a grown-up. With Bernadette’s help I choose the silver one, because she thinks it makes me look like I sparkle. The shoes are absurd and cost more than the dress. They are also silver and have the tiniest strap of leather over the toe and another around the ankle. They are nothing, weightless, yet they cost a mortgage payment. I tell Bernadette that I can just as easily wear the black shoes that I got for Granny’s funeral.
“Fine.” Bernadette storms out of the room and comes back with the phone. “I’m sorry, but here.” She shoves the phone at me like it’s medicine.
“Hello?”
“For chrissake, Nora. Just buy the shoes.”Just.
“Hey, Pen.”
“You are a big deal. You’re going to the opening of your own movie. From what Bernie tells me, you’re going to be gorgeous in that dress. Just for once, go the rest of the way. For me. I can’t bear to think of Leo seeing you in those funeral shoes.”
One thing I love about Penny is how much she cares about the stuff she cares about. The time she found white peonies for her white party. The way the new building across the street from her apartment centers perfectly in her picture window. Bernadette shares this quality, the ability to get nuclear-level excited about the smallest thing.
I try them on while we’re talking. “Pen, they’re the most ridiculously overpriced ounce of leather...” I stop talking and turn in front of the mirror.
