Nora Goes Off Script(41)

This makes me smile as she maneuvers me to the other end of the blacktop. “Gross?” I say. “That’s like the kid in school who eats his boogers.”

“Give me a break,” she says. “I’m new to this.”

“You’re a good egg,” I say.

“I have to tell you something,” she says. And she’s nervous.

“Tell me you’re pregnant,” I say.

“No. I’ve been paid off too. By Leo.”

It’s really hot on the blacktop and I am feeling hazy. “What are you talking about?”

“I got a check today for Ready Set for a hundred thousand dollars from Leo Vance’s Charitable Trust.” She gives me a second to hear it. “And I know he’s the devil and he uses money to ease his guilt for being a total creep, but that money could help me double the reach of my program over the next two years. Like, it could change everything.”

“What is wrong with him?” I say, repeating my favorite rhetorical question.

“So you want me to return it?” Kate looks like she’s about to start begging.

“Sorry. No, of course not. Keep the money, that’s amazing. I just don’t know how a guy who has the time to call his charitable trust and initiate a donation doesn’t have time to return my text and say, ‘Hey sorry, I’m out.’?”

“At least he feels guilty; like, at least he knows he’s a jerk,” she says.

“I don’t know. I didn’t think I could feel worse. But Leo feeling sorry for me is sort of next-level bad.”



* * *



? ? ?

When school’s out in June, I decide to take my kids up to my parents’ house in the Adirondacks for two weeks. When my parents moved out of Chesterville and my dad sold his pool-cleaning business, he insisted they retire on a lake. All that water to swim in, he said to anyone who would listen, and no one has to clean it.

I’ve paid this month’s mortgage and taxes, my credit cards are paid off, and I have $8,329 in the bank. I am not ready to go back into the tea house to write. Maybe I’ll be able to write something someplace else. I also hope that with my parents as a distraction for my kids, I might be able to fall apart a little.

My parents make everything seem easy. My mom told me once, “The secret to a happy marriage is that you give a hundred and ten percent to him and he gives a hundred and ten percent to you.” In spite of the maddening mathematical impossibility of this statement, I always liked the sound of it. My parents are like a couple of cartoon magpies, always offering themselves up to each other. They were high school sweethearts, and she worked as a nanny while he started his pool-cleaning business. Everything he has, he credits to her. And vice versa.

It’s possible that growing up watching the fantasy of this marriage is what makes writing romance movies so easy. My parents make me believe that some people really are made for each other and that a joyful, easy marriage is possible. Two people who love each other and are looking in the same direction can build a wonderful life. I’ve caught myself using my parents’ gestures and quirks in movies, making me wonder if they’re the prototype couple I keep tweaking over and over again.

Penny and Rick have their own high-powered version of this partnership, though I’ve never really witnessed the joy in it. They both give a hundred and ten percent, and they’re focused on the same things. They just don’t seem all that focused on each other. I got marriage half right. I gave a hundred and ten percent and Ben gave nothing, leaving us at an average of just fifty-five percent, which is a fail in pretty much anyone’s book.

At the cabin, my dad takes my kids out in the boat every morning to water-ski and ride inner tubes. Arthur doesn’t leave my dad’s side, like he thinks he’s the last man in the world. Which he may be.

In the afternoons we play cards and nap and talk about dinner. I take walks and cry, but it’s less raw here. It’s actually a Leo-free zone. No one mentions him, and I don’t have to walk through the room where he kissed me for the first time. I don’t have to see the pity in Mr. Mapleton’s eyes every time I need vacuum cleaner bags.

Or the rage in Mickey’s. Mickey has taken this whole thing personally, like he himself was seduced by Leo and then abandoned. “He said he was staying,” he says, incredulous. “He was going to buy the Big Green Egg and we were going to cook ribs.” Those ribs were Mickey’s forever. I totally get it. We were all duped.

Mom and I are in the kitchen cleaning up the dinner dishes, while my dad and the kids take their food comas to the TV room. “You’re awfully thin,” she starts.

“Am I?”

“It’s not a happy thin either. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. The same. Maybe running too much.”

“No word from Ben?”

“He’s not coming back, Mom.”

“What an asshole,” she says, and we both laugh. My mom saves her swears for special occasions.

“I don’t miss him,” I say. “I’m really much happier without him.”

“That’s good. And all the excitement with the movie and that movie star staying with you, that must have been a real pick-me-up.”

“Yeah, it was something.”

“Mom! It’s Leo!” Bernadette screams from the TV room, and I drop the glass I’m drying.