Nora Goes Off Script(4)
I call my sister, and her nanny, Leonora, answers. “She’s out with her friends,” she says. Penny and her husband, Rick, live in Manhattan and East Hampton and are frequently featured in Town & Country wearing the right things with the right people. This is the first time in my life I’m doing something cooler than Penny, so I leave a message. “Please tell her I called and that Naomi Sanchez and Leo Vance are in my driveway.” Leonora squeals, and I am satisfied.
Once my kitchen is clean, I try to think of what I’d normally be doing. It’s Wednesday, and on Wednesdays we eat meatloaf. Of course! I take a pound of ground turkey out of the freezer and place it on the counter. This doesn’t take as long as I’d hoped.
* * *
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I watch through the corner window in the sunroom. They’re filming the scene where I tell Ben that it might help if we both had a steady paycheck. It was the day he lumped me in with all the other people who don’t have the vision to believe in his dreams. I was a drone, a robot, a slave to convention. I’m pretty sure it was the last straw. I imagine my words coming out of Naomi’s perfect mouth, and I start to think maybe this film was cast all wrong. How is Leo Vance going to be able to be as dismissive as Ben was when he’s looking at a woman like that? It seems like people as beautiful as the two of them might have been able to work things out. No man’s going to walk away from Naomi Sanchez.
I’ve been watching the filming for an hour when I realize it’s time to go get my kids. I open my garage to find three guys smoking in my driveway. They drop their cigarettes and extinguish them with their shoes and move to the side and wave me out, like I’m in some kind of valet-parking situation. I have no choice but to drive up onto my own grass to get around the trucks and onto the dirt portion of my driveway that takes me to the main road.
It feels good to put the chaos behind me and drive out into Laurel Ridge where nothing ever changes. Ben bought into this town because he was literally out of choices. He wanted a big life in the city—Penny’s life, to be exact. But when that proved to be too expensive, he wanted a big house in a commutable suburb. That was impossible too. As I got more and more pregnant with Arthur and it became clear that our walk-up studio apartment would never contain us, we were in a race against the clock. We had twenty thousand dollars to put down on a three-hundred-thousand-dollar house, and a three-hundred-thousand-dollar house was a lot farther from the city than Ben had imagined.
Ben told his friends that we bought a teardown in the sticks as an investment. It’s an up-and-coming town, he told them, which I always thought was funny because this town’s motto should be: We Are Neither Up Nor Coming. It’s a town that agonizes over progress of any kind, secretly fantasizing that it was the model for Main Street at Disneyland. There’s an architectural review board and a planning commission whose sole purpose is to keep people like Ben from making Laurel Ridge less quaint.
We have six or seven shops that have been in Laurel Ridge since the beginning of time. These shop owners enjoy a cultlike loyalty from their patrons. Laurel Ridge is a place where you’ll always be able to buy a hammer from a guy you know and a bowl of homemade ice cream scooped by a teenager. A handful of other businesses pop up and collapse as people come from Manhattan to sell us designer vitamins and personalized dog cookies. They rarely last a year.
At the end of town is Laurel Ridge Elementary. I park and find my friends among a group of parents on the playground, like this is just some normal day.
“OMG spill it,” says Jenna. She’s standing under the basketball hoop with Kate.
“What?” I say, trying to be casual. “Just hanging with Leo and Naomi, whatever.”
“Is he cute? Does he give you that look?” Kate asks.
“Yes and no. Absolutely cute and he’s barely looked at me.”
“So, the hair’s a waste?” Jenna’s referring to the fact that I’ve blown out my hair.
“Yeah, that was a little overboard,” I admit. “If you saw Naomi Sanchez in person you’d understand why he wasn’t so focused on me.”
“Hey, Nora.” Molly Richter approaches us. “Looking good, nice hair.” Molly’s that classic bitch you knew in middle school who never snapped out of it. We have to be nice to her because she’s head of the PTA and seems to have the authority to randomly assign volunteer positions. We steer clear of Molly Richter like people used to steer clear of the draft.
“I hear you’re playing Hollywood this week,” she goes on.
“I am.” It’s important when talking to Molly that you don’t offer any additional information or ask any follow-up questions.
“Well, cute. Don’t forget that Oliver Twist rehearsals are next Wednesday after school and you’ve signed up to watch the kids backstage.”
“How could I forget? It’s all Arthur talks about.” And I’ve shown my hand. I should never have blown out my hair. Kate gasps, like I’m sinking into quicksand and she has no rope to throw me.
“Oh, is Arthur interested in a big part?” Molly doesn’t give me a chance to respond. “That’s great! Because I was going to name you play chairman, and if he’s going to be so involved, you’ll be there anyway. Perfect.” She jots something down in her Columbo-style notebook as she turns on her heel and walks away.