Nora Goes Off Script(14)

“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.