Nora Goes Off Script(42)
Mom and I run over, and there he is on TMZ, walking out of a club with Naomi, his arm around her shoulders. I can’t look away, but I can feel my mom watching me. “Oh dear,” she says.
The next day she wants to hike. “Tell me,” she says before we’re even out of the driveway.
“Long version or short version?”
“I’ve got all the time in the world,” she says.
“I think I only have the energy for the short version. We had this big romance, like really big. He got called away to film a movie, and I haven’t heard from him since. And clearly, he’s not dead.”
“That sounds like some kind of a fantasy, like something Penny would have cooked up.”
“If you’re trying to say it doesn’t sound like me, I couldn’t agree more. It’s like I suffered temporary insanity.”
“Sometimes that’s what love is,” she says.
* * *
? ? ?
Penny arrives the next day with her family, and as I watch them file out of her square of a Mercedes G-Wagon, two adults followed by two matching children, another square, I am acutely aware that my family is a triangle.
My kids appear out of nowhere and throw themselves into the twins. Ethan and Maxwell are nine and slide in perfectly between Arthur and Bernadette. Whenever he’s with his cousins, Arthur becomes almost manly. He concocts feats of strength as games, and I suspect it’s because they’re the only kids he’s ever known who are less athletic than he. As a result, Penny thinks Arthur’s kind of rough, which cracks me up.
“Hey, Pen. Hey, Rick,” I say, hugging them both. Penny holds me for an extra few beats to convey her love and support and sympathy for how pathetic my life is. I am grateful to receive the sentiment without having to hear the words. Rick points to his AirPods indicating that he’s on a call. Rick’s pretty much always on a call.
“You’re thin,” Penny says, putting her arm around me and leading me away from Rick.
“I’ve heard.”
“So no word?”
“Not a one,” I say.
“If you want, you can let this go,” she says. “Because I hate him enough for both of us.” Penny is fierce, and my whole life I have loved having her on my side. I want to borrow her hatred and inject it into my heart. Anger would feel better than what I’m feeling.
The kids are all going to bunk up in the loft, and they’ve run up there to negotiate beds. I grab some beers and we settle in on the deck, watching the boats go by. Just two summers ago, during this week, Ben was with us. My family was a square too. He was slightly hostile to Rick the whole time, for no reason that I could discern, except for the fact that Rick is rich and pays when we go out to dinner. That’s actually my favorite thing about Rick.
Penny’s initial enthusiasm about Ben and his family faded as she got to know him. Ben was never shy about belittling my work in front of other people, almost as if he was hoping to build a consensus about how pointless it was. She and Rick got excited hearing about his first couple of business ventures, but then just got sort of quiet over the next dozen. The last time the four of us had dinner, Ben droned on about an app he was going to develop with a Chinese guy he met online. “You’re sure lucky you have Nora,” Rick said as he signed the check.
Besides that moment, I’ve never really liked Rick, or more accurately, I’ve never been able to see his humanity. Like he’s formal with his kids, polite to my parents and me. He treats Penny like a business partner, like they’re board members of their family unit. While this part of their marriage doesn’t exactly sweep this romance writer off her feet, I know that at the core of their marriage is an unshakable mutual respect. No eye rolling, no sarcasm. Still, I’ve always had the feeling I’d like Rick more if I saw him cry or throw up.
Rick finishes sending an email and surveys us all, as if remembering where he is. “So, Nora, how’s Hollywood treating you? Big time, right?”
“Yeah, well we’ll see. The movie comes out in October; I hope people like it.”
“So’d you get a two-movie deal or anything? What’s next?”
“Nope. But I was thinking about a second beer,” I say, looking to my mom to change the subject.
Penny gets excited. “You know what you should do now?” Oh brother. “You should write an epically romantic, big-screen love story. Like a fantasy romance, with scenes like those two paddling through the rain in The Notebook. Like the kind we’d cry all the way through.”
“I’m not sure I’m cut out for that,” I say.
“Just think of the most romantic moment of your life and build a story around it. This is what you do. It doesn’t need to be formulaic, just make it real.”
There’s something about Penny’s use of the word “just” that always reminds me how much easier her life is than mine. It’s not only her money and her supportive husband. Penny is prone to doing without overthinking. Just hire a cleaning lady. Just meet someone else. Just whip up another movie. But in this instance, she’s onto something. I can feel it tingling on the top of my head. What if I could write the story of Leo and me? What if by writing it, I could be rid of it, stop ruminating on it? What if I could write my way out of this hole?