CHAPTER 4
I know everyone knows about Leo the second I get out of my car. Moms in lipstick and brushed hair greet me with disappointment. Kate’s the first to ask, “Where the heck is he? And I didn’t tell anybody, just so you know.”
“We saw Anita Wallingford at the Stop n’ Save, so that news is on the fast track. In a fun twist, she’s super hurt because Ben left me.”
“That sounds about right. Wait ‘we’?” We make our way onto the playground, a safe distance from where the doors will soon open and our kids will spill out.
“Yeah, he wanted to come with me. If I hadn’t snuck out, he’d probably be here too. I think he’s having some kind of a crisis where he wants to pretend to be a regular person for a while. The price of bananas really rocked his world.”
“They are oddly cheap.”
“They are.”
“So, where is he?”
“He’s in the tea house. He brought his lunch in there—lobster bisque delivered from Manhattan no less—and that was two and a half hours ago.”
“I just can’t freakin’ believe it,” she says for the hundredth time. Our boys come out first, drop their backpacks at our feet, and run to the basketball court. Bernadette and Cooper, Kate’s younger son, come out a few minutes later and head straight to us.
“Is it true that Leo Vance spent the night on your porch?” Cooper wants to know.
“It is.”
“See?” Bernadette makes a face at him.
“And he’s going to stay for another week.” I hear myself say it and for the first time realize that my kids might be uncomfortable with this. Having him around might amplify their feelings about Ben leaving. And jeez, how do I even know he’s not a pervert? “If that’s okay with you guys,” I add.
Bernadette jumps into my arms. “Oh, Mommy, this is going to be the awesomest week ever. A sleepover with a movie star.” Once the hug is spent, she turns to Cooper, makes a face, and declares that we need to get home.
When we’re all in the car, I try to explain. Yes, he has another place to live. No, he’s not having a nervous breakdown. Maybe he just wants a little quiet and privacy. Maybe he wants to try meatloaf. Bernadette punctuates each of my sentences with an “ohmigod.” Arthur is silent. He’s silent as we pull into the garage, and as he starts unloading his backpack in the kitchen.
I bite. “Honey, is this okay with you? Are you upset I told Leo he could stay?”
“It’s just weird, Mom. He’s not even . . . Forget it. It’s fine.”
“It might be kind of fun,” I say. “And it’s just a week.”
“It’s fine.” This is all I’m going to get out of Arthur.
Around five o’clock Leo knocks on the sunroom door. Bernadette races over to invite him in. “Hi! What have you been doing out there?” she wants to know.
“I ate some soup and read a little and fell asleep. Perfect afternoon. Am I invited for dinner? I was thinking about trying your weird food.” He makes a face and Bernadette gives it right back to him.
“Dinner’s included,” I say. It’s Friday, pasta night.
Arthur looks up from his papers. “Hey,” Leo says. I’ll give him this: He can read a room. He knows to come in hot with Bernadette but not with Arthur. He grabs a glass and my cheap sauvignon blanc from the refrigerator and sits on a barstool two over from Arthur. “Homework?” he asks.
Arthur barely looks up. “No, it’s a play.”
Leo asks, “One you’re reading or one you’re performing in?”
“I’m in the fifth-grade play, Oliver Twist. I’m Fagin. I only have five days to learn all this.” Arthur holds up his script to illustrate just how much material that is.
Leo looks down at his glass. “Don’t do it, dude.”
“The play?” Arthur asks.
“Any acting at all.” Leo looks straight at Arthur. “If you pretend for your job, eventually you’ll stop being anything at all. A non-person. Silly Putty that you rub on a newspaper.”
“Are you drunk?” Arthur asks, and I almost do a spit take. I am kind of wondering the same thing.
“Not yet,” says Leo.
“Are you in love with Naomi Sanchez?” Bernadette wants to know.
“Bernie!” I scold her. “That’s none of our business.”
Leo laughs. “She’s beautiful. But between you and me, she’s kinda mean.”
“The beautiful ones always are,” says Bernadette, which makes all of us laugh.
“What else do you want to know?” asks Leo, pouring himself a little more wine. “This is awful, by the way,” he says to me.
Arthur shrugs and motions to Bernadette, who certainly has more questions. “Mom says you’re not having a nervous breakdown.”
“True?” he asks me.
“I’m not sure if it’s true, but it’s true that I said it.” I start peeling carrots into the sink.
“No, I’m not,” he says. “But my mom died, and it’s made me think about a lot of things.”
I put down the scraper. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“You know what’s worse? I really need to go to the bathroom. I’ve peed in the forest a couple of times, but I mean if I’m going to stay awhile . . .”
Oh, dear God. My kids and I look at one another, neither of them matching my panic. Leo needs a bathroom. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even think of it,” I start. My house doesn’t have a bathroom on the ground floor. I can’t have him walking into my bedroom to use mine in the middle of the night. “Bernadette, take Leo up and show him the hall bathroom. And you guys can just use mine while he’s here.”
I mentally hunt for better towels. I seem to remember someone giving us really nice towels as a wedding gift that were actually too nice for me to use. I look in the makeshift linen closet. I look in the laundry room. Ben must have taken them, towels that would pair nicely with his leased Audi, which was also perfectly out of step with our income level.
I find two slightly frayed towels that used to be white and are now grayish and leave them on the toilet before I go to bed. I get up at midnight and take a couple of Clorox wipes and some Windex to the obvious spots and leave a fresh bar of soap. Around one A.M., I switch my bath mat with his, because mine is slightly newer. Why am I acting like such a lunatic? Because, I say to myself, Leo Vance is going to be naked in there.
It’s Saturday and he’s up for the sunrise. I hand him a cup of coffee and try to remember him ever using the words “thank you.” We watch in silence, and when it’s all the way up, he yawns and says he’s going back to bed. Must be nice.
Saturdays at my house kind of feel like a riddle to be solved. I’ve got to get a wolf, a sheep, and a chicken across the river, and everyone must survive. Our variables are soccer, baseball, dance, and playdates. Participants must be fed and hydrated, with multiple costume changes that take place in the car.
When Ben was around, he grumbled about Saturdays. I suspect his crankiness was twofold: the fact that Saturdays weren’t about him, and the fact that the hundreds of dollars we spent per season on the kids’ activities took away from his ability to buy more stuff for himself. “Can’t they just run around outside?” he’d ask, apparently forgetting that he was raised on a steady stream of tennis and golf lessons at a private club. This was one subject where I actually put my foot down. All the economizing with on-sale chicken and leaky gutters was so that my kids could have the chance to try things they might enjoy. This made Ben bananas.
He’d ask over breakfast, in front of the kids, which sports he had to do this time. Then he’d show up at the events, admittedly not at all interested, and go ballistic at the refs or the opposing team’s parents. Apparently, he did care a little.
This, of course, applied more to Bernadette, who has a fighting chance of making a team that’s not legally required to take her. Arthur, on the other hand, has two traits that weigh on his athletic future: He’s remarkably uncoordinated and completely disinterested in sports. These are facts, not opinions. I have seen Arthur stop running down the court in the middle of a basketball game to wind his watch. The disgust on Ben’s face every time Arthur walked off the court was impossible to ignore.
Saturdays without Ben are twice as challenging and twice as good. The three of us figure out the plan together over breakfast—how the food exchange will happen, when the change of uniforms and cleats will go down, which games I’ll get to sit through and which I’ll have to drop and run. At the end of every Saturday we order takeout and congratulate ourselves on a job well done.
We pull into the garage at about six o’clock. The kids put their equipment away in the mudroom, and I carry up the pizza. The house is dark and I can see the lights on in the tea house. I ask Arthur to go out and ask Leo if he’s hungry.
“I’m not going out there,” he says, pulling a slice from the box.
“I’ll go.” Bernadette is already out the sunroom door. She’s back in barely a minute, and her spark is gone. “It’s messy out there and he’s asleep.”
I wonder if this is a bender. Maybe he just wanted to stay here so no one would be monitoring him. Maybe he plans to spend a drunken week mourning his mom. It occurs to me, once again, what a luxury it is to be single and able to fall apart. Not to mention the luxury of being able to buy yourself a week’s break.
At midnight, I wake to the sound of the toilet in the hall bathroom flushing. I hear him amble back down the stairs and out the sunroom door. I don’t know when I’m ever going to get used to sleeping with the back door unlocked. At least I know he’s alive.
On Sunday, Leo is up for the sunrise again. For some reason being up early feels like erratic behavior for him. So I say so. “You’re up awfully early for a guy who drinks all day.”
“I do not drink all day.”
“Then what are you doing out there?”
“I look at the fire. I read. I watch the woods in the back. I drink a little.”
“Well, you’re welcome to come into the house if that gets old.”
“I’m fine,” he says. “Here, this is it. This is the best part.” We watch the purple turn to pink turn to orange, and the birds are backlit on the trees.
We both sigh a little when the show’s over. “Want some eggs?” I ask.
“Nah,” he says and goes back to bed.
Sunday afternoon is beautiful, and we have all the windows open in the sunroom, effectively making it feel like we’re outside. The door to the tea house is open, but I can only see the empty table, not the daybed, where I assume Leo is staring at the ceiling.
I have a pot roast in the Crockpot, which makes me feel like Super Me. Not only was dinner made before my nine A.M. run, but my whole house smells like someone’s cooking me dinner. I don’t ordinarily use the Crockpot on a Sunday, but I know my time is not my own today. Arthur’s first rehearsal is Wednesday after school, and today’s the day this becomes my problem. Today’s the day that all of his “I’ve got this, I’m fine” nonsense turns into a meltdown. He hasn’t got this, he isn’t fine.
I know from my own childhood that when you are ten years old, the stakes are high. You are teetering between childhood and tweendom and any single action can push you forever into the realm of the uncool. The kids around you are unconsciously planning to ditch you in middle school, so if you’re not an alpha child you need to be prepared with a backup friend group. Being in the fifth grade is sort of like trying to disable a live bomb, and if you’re Arthur, it’s like doing it blindfolded.
Arthur and I sit on the couch in the sunroom, sharing a script to run the lines one more time before I make him do it by memory. He’s nervous in the way you are when you are anticipating your own failure, and he’s decided that this failure is my fault. If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother.
“You’re the worst Oliver, Mom. I mean how am I going to do my lines when you read like a robot?”
Sigh. “Want Bernadette to do it?” Please, dear God.
“She’s worse than you. Go on.” We flip through a few more pages of his first scene and I’m pretty sure he’s about to cry.
“How about we try the music?” I suggest. “Bernie, get the soundtrack and we’ll try to sing along to Fagin’s songs.”
“Fine,” Arthur says, though nothing is.
“Oh! I like this one,” I say. I get up and start singing, “You can go but be back soon,” adding arm movements and a little side-to-side sashay. My kids are laughing at me, which is fine because, for now, no one’s crying.
When the song ends, Arthur says, “Do it again!”
From the sunroom door, I hear, “Good God, please don’t.” It’s Leo, shoeless, letting himself in. “You just . . .” He’s shaking his head at Arthur. “Dude, you’re hosed.”
“No kidding,” Arthur says. And he and Bernadette both crack up.
“Hey, I’m not that bad,” I say.
“Nora, you are exactly that bad. I think your Fagin’s more depressing than your movie,” Leo says, and now they’re all laughing.
We follow Leo into the kitchen, where he’s helping himself to another of Mickey’s beers. “Smells good in here.”
“It’s a pot roast,” says Bernadette. “It’s better than her dancing.” More laughs.
I’m entirely comfortable being the butt of the evening’s jokes. At me or with me, this laughter has swept all of the tension out of the room. What if I could just serve dinner to the sound of people laughing? What if Arthur gets so relaxed that his brain actually lets some of these lines in? Being tonight’s punch line is totally worth it.
We sit down to pot roast, carrots, rice, and salad. I open a bottle of chardonnay, which I know I’ll have to share. Arthur asks Leo, “So, do you know Fagin? Like in the play?”
“I do,” he says. “And I know it isn’t whatever that was.” He’s indicating me with his fork, and it’s all laughs again.
“Yeah, I had a feeling,” says Arthur. “Do you think he’s a villain? It’s kind of confusing, because he’s pretty nice to the boys.”
“I think he’s the best kind of villain,” Leo says. “He’s the kind of villain who does something horrible but who we still love. You can see his humanity, even though he’s taking advantage of those boys. Characters like Fagin get to the core of what it means to be a human being—we are both light and dark.” We are stunned. “What?” he asks. And we all start to laugh.
“Where’d that come from?” I ask.
“That was a lot of words,” says Bernadette.
“Well, this is sort of my wheelhouse. Oliver Twist happens to be my favorite play. And I’ve played Fagin.”
“Aw, come on,” we’re all saying in tandem. Bernadette throws her napkin on the table in disgust.
“I’m not going to help you. I will not lead you down the path to being an actor,” he says to Arthur. “It’s empty.”
Arthur smiles. “Do you seriously think I could become an actor with this woman as my mother. I’m half her!” We all laugh, and time stops for a moment where I feel the warmth of this laughter and watch the dimming light leave these three faces in shadow—my children and the most famous actor in America.
Leo pours himself another glass of wine, and I protectively fill mine. I’m learning. He takes a sip and tilts back in his chair in the infuriating manner of teenagers. “If I agree to read lines with you, just tonight, will you promise me you will never become a professional actor?”
I like to play the odds, and I’m thinking this is a pretty safe promise to make. There’s a one percent chance Arthur’s going to want to be a professional actor and less of a chance Leo will even remember who he is by then.
Arthur considers Leo. “I won’t promise that. But I do need help.” This makes Bernadette and me smile, just the moxie of it.
“Looks like you got a full set of dimples with that one,” Leo says. “How much time do we have?”
Arthur looks like he’s going to hug him but thinks better of it. “Rehearsals start Wednesday.”
“Let’s do this in the living room. We need room to move around.” And with that, they’re all business. I go into the kitchen to wash the dishes. I am trying to remember the last time an adult took over one of my responsibilities. Ben would sometimes run out for toilet paper or pick up the kids from school. It occurs to me now how long I’ve been doing this all on my own.