CHAPTER 2
I wake up the next morning to complete silence. The cars are gone; the trucks are empty. Leo is probably passed out in his trailer. I pour my coffee and go out to the porch to watch the sun finish rising. Leo’s trailer is an eyesore, as are the muddy tracks it’s left on my lawn, but it is not blocking my view. The sun is putting on a big show, turning the sky a bloody orange behind the outstretched arms of my oak tree. On windy mornings it looks like its widest branches are dancing the hula; today it looks like it’s offering a hug. It won’t be long, Nora. Soon you’ll be back in charge.
I hear something move behind me, and I turn to see Leo wrapped in a duvet, asleep on my porch swing. His slightly too long dark hair covers one of his eyes, and he is breathtakingly handsome. A half-empty bottle of tequila (wait, my tequila!) sits on the ground. No glass in sight. I consider going for my phone. My friends would get a kick out of a photo.
Asleep he looks younger, almost vulnerable. He has the covers pulled up over his nose. He must have been freezing last night. I want to wake him to show him the sunrise before it’s over. I want to show him something that’s not depressing because I know what he’s going to film today. It’s the breakup scene. Trevor is leaving. He never loved Ruth after all.
I feel briefly guilty that I’ve subjected him to my sad story. It’s not exactly my story the way it played out, but it’s the essence of it. Ben and I were in love at some point and found ourselves with two great kids and a life that worked as long as I kept moving. And then he just decided, meh, this isn’t for me. Like the way you stop taking milk in your coffee. And then you act like you always drank it black, like you don’t remember that creamy taste that you used to say you loved.
I should probably feel sorry for Naomi. She’s the one being left. I’m happy she won’t have to scrunch up her pretty face in an ugly cry. Instead, she’s going to have to be perfectly still when he says, “I’m sorry, this whole thing was a mistake. I need a bigger life.” Hopefully the audience will recall that Ruth has given him everything he has and that he’s added exactly zero value to the marriage. She’ll play it back in her mind like I did to make sure she heard it right. I don’t know how actresses do what they do, but she’ll need to make us see the moment she realizes that “this whole thing” is her family.
Man, is Ben an asshole. I decide to leave Leo alone and let his film crew find him when they get here. I have two kids already.
They want me on the set. I have a text from Weezie. I’m unusually excited, as I’ve been cooped up hiding in my house all morning. I’ve washed and replaced everyone’s sheets, and I’ve vacuumed every possible thing, including the dust out of my refrigerator fan. I even tried to outline the main plot points of a new TRC movie but found that my mind doesn’t bend that way inside the house. “Nora, you’re wanted on the set,” I say out loud because I like the sound of it.
I check myself in my bedroom mirror. I’m in jeans, a navy blue T-shirt, and flip-flops. My hair is still nice from yesterday and partially brushed. I decide that this will do. I know from experience that if I try to spruce up a little with better clothes and makeup, I’ll arrive at the tea house looking like it’s prom night. I do better in a come-as-you-are situation.
I walk across the lawn enjoying the bliss of slightly wet feet. My subconscious is triggered, and I kind of want to write, in that same way I kind of want a snack when I watch the Food Network. Tomorrow they’ll be gone and I can get back to it.
The door to the tea house is closed. I open it to find Leo lying facedown on the daybed, Naomi pacing, and a cameraman talking quietly with Martin. “Hi.” I give a small wave as I squeeze in. “Weezie said you wanted me?”
Naomi stops and glares. “Are you the writer?”
“Yes. Nora,” I say. She is so much prettier in person that it takes my breath away. I want to see her face without all that makeup and stare into her poreless skin. She radiates beauty even though she’s obviously ready to attack me.
“Why?” She rips a page from her copy of the script and shoves it at me. “Why doesn’t she do anything? He’s leaving. Yeah, he’s a bastard, but any normal woman would cry or something. I can’t just sit here.”
Leo sits up and runs his hands through his hair as if trying to focus. “She’s right. This is an intense scene; she should scream and yell. At least beg a little.”
There’d been no screaming and yelling when Ben stood right here and told me he was leaving. Not because the kids were asleep, not because I was scared to confront him. I wonder now at the chain of events that has led me to stand in my office with the two most famous celebrities in the country trying to explain my emotional response to abandonment. “Because he’s not taking anything,” I say. “He’s taking nothing. He never really loved her anyway.”
“What the fuck.” Good thing Naomi’s not my therapist.
“It’s the classic self-correcting problem. If someone leaves you, it’s because they didn’t want to be with you. All you lost was someone who didn’t want to be there anyway.”
Leo laughs. “Jesus. You’re not much of a romantic, are you?”
“I am not. At all. I believed in marriage at any cost until that moment. Then I just let go,” I tell him. And to Naomi, “You’re not a victim here. Or anywhere. That’s what this whole movie’s about.” Everyone’s silent until finally Naomi starts to cry, Martin hugs me, and Leo mutters, “Oh, for chrissake.”
To be clear, I didn’t set out to write some big treatise on victimhood. I really just set out to write a TV romance for my standard fee of $25,000 so that I could pay my back real estate taxes and keep my name from being listed in the local paper. Again. It irritates me to think people believe I am suffering financially without Ben. As if. Having Ben off my credit card has been like a windfall. Last month my credit card bill was $795.34, mainly food and utilities. Having full control over that number is almost my favorite part of my new life. That and being able to spread out like a starfish in my own bed.
I digress.
The story opens in a cute college town that looks a lot like Amherst. I wrote the meet cute just as it happened. Interior: lecture hall. Handsome Jay Levinthal is whispering in my ear, and I laugh. Cut to Ben seeing this interaction. Class is over and I am waiting to talk to the professor. Ben approaches.
“I’ve never met you,” he says. I remember this exactly, because it’s a weird sentence structure. The idea was that the two of us had never met, yet the way he says it puts the focus on him. You never forget your first red flag.
“I bet you’ve never met lots of people,” I say.
“No, I mostly know everyone.” And as if to prove it, he adds, “I’m Ben Hamilton.” He has a way of saying his name like it means something, like it’s supposed to conjure up a set of images and expectations. Like if you said your name was Oprah Winfrey.
“Nora Larson,” I say over my shoulder. It’s my turn to talk to the professor.
Ben turned up in the library where I was studying, at the dining hall at dinner, at a bar that my friends and I went to every Friday night. He wasn’t the type of guy I’d normally go out with. He was so obvious in his confidence, so annoyingly extroverted. His energy demanded attention, as if the people around him were all worshipping at the temple of Ben. It’s hard to explain what it’s like to have a person like this focus all of his attention on you. I don’t know if it comes across right in the movie, but there’s this moment where you adopt everyone else’s belief system, and suddenly you’re worshipping too. No one could believe my good fortune, dating and then marrying Ben Hamilton. Eventually, I couldn’t believe it either.
It wasn’t until we were making the invitation list for our wedding that I discovered Jay Levinthal was Ben’s sworn enemy. Which pretty much explained everything.
Leo is drinking amber liquid from one of my glasses on the porch swing when I pull into the driveway with my kids after school. Two of the eighteen-wheelers are gone so there’s room to park in front of my house. Arthur walks straight past him without saying hello. Bernadette plops down next to him and offers her dimple.
“You smell like my dad.” She means it as a compliment and has confirmed my suspicion that it’s scotch in that glass. Ben’s, I’m guessing. I nearly lost my mind when he spent eighty-six dollars on that stupid bottle. I was glad when he forgot to take it with him, but I’m maybe more glad to see Leo drinking it unceremoniously from a juice glass. Ben would be so pissed.
“Lucky me,” he says, raising his glass in a toast. He doesn’t strike me as particularly drunk, more as a person who stays mildly buzzed all day.
“I like this spot,” he says.
“Me too. The sun rises here,” Bernadette confides.
“Right here?”
“Yep.”
“Wow.”
“If you stay, you can see it tomorrow.”
“Happens every day?”
“I think so.” The two of them look out over the trees, and I have the odd sensation that I’m the third wheel here.
“So, is everything wrapping up back there?” I ask.
“I think. They’re reviewing just to see if there’s anything we need to reshoot. I’ll be back in civilization by bedtime.”
Trigger alert: That’s the kind of thing Ben might have said. He’d belittle the life I’d chosen and worked so hard to build like it was less than. At the corner of arrogance and cluelessness, you find the worst kind of person. I suddenly can’t wait to have this guy off my porch, out of my space, and away from my family.
“Well, enjoy that. Come on, Bernie, let’s get going with the homework.”
By five o’clock I have a chicken roasting in the oven and a bottle of sauvignon blanc in the fridge. Per our contract, they have to be out of here by six or they have to pay me for a third day. All I need to do is say my gracious good-byes and watch them leave. It was fun to play Hollywood for two days, but now I know that two days maxes me out. We need to get back on track, three people operating as a well-oiled machine. I need to start writing something new. Arthur needs to start learning his lines. Bernadette needs to get the stars out of her eyes. Plus, the tires on my lawn are making me twitch.
I relax thinking about the simplicity of writing for TRC. I’ll get back to that tomorrow. I’ll write a low-stakes romance with the happiest possible ending, with dogs and adorable children, chance meetings and homemade desserts. And I’ll do it at no personal cost. This last thing was just some kind of silent scream.
At five-thirty I go outside, as if my “thanks for comings” will remind them all to leave. My kids insist on coming with me. We walk hand in hand to the tea house and see two cameramen carrying lighting equipment away. “All wrapped up,” one of them tells us.
Inside, Weezie is pulling the linens off the daybed. “Hey, guys, we’ll be out of your hair shortly.” She replaces them with my faded sunflower sheets, the ones that were inadequate for Hollywood, and just like that the tea house is mine again. The stone floor is too clean and the fire is raging too aggressively, but it’s close enough.
We all make our way out front and say our good-byes. Naomi stops to give me a hug. “This film really wore me out. But I get it. And I hope other people do too. It’s important what you wrote.” Bernadette just about faints.
I look up at Naomi because for some reason she’s changed into three-inch heels for the drive back to the city. “That feels really good to hear, thank you.”
She changes her voice for my kids, higher and louder. “Bye, cuties!” They say good-bye in their most grown-up voices, in self-defense.
Martin thanks me. He wants to know if he can come back to the tea house for a press event. I say no, and he laughs. We’re on even footing. Weezie’s corralling everyone into their vehicles as Leo steps out of his trailer to give a wave. So freakin’ rude, I think. He’s been trespassing in my house and drinking my booze for two days, you’d think he could walk twenty feet and say good-bye.
Arthur and I give him a wave just as Bernadette is running over to give him a hug. Either the fact of it or the force of it takes Leo by surprise, and he hugs her back. They exchange a few words, and he touches her dimple. He climbs back into the trailer.
“What’d he say?” Arthur asks when she’s made her way back to us.
“He wanted to know if the sun was coming up tomorrow. I told him I think so and that he smells like Uncle Rick now.”
“That’s gin,” I tell her. And we go inside to listen to Hollywood drive away.