Nora Goes Off Script(49)

People want to interview me, but I’m pretending to be reclusive and hard to get. God knows I’m not the latter. I’m afraid that if they really press me on it, I’ll burst this movie’s bubble. I’ll have to admit that it wasn’t that I refused to be a victim. It’s just that I didn’t care for Ben all that much.

Naomi doesn’t seem to be as camera shy. She’s on the daytime shows and the evening shows talking about what the film has meant to her. She looks radiant every single time. “This film was really important to me from the beginning,” she tells Ellen. “I feel like if someone leaves you it’s a self-correcting problem. Why would you want to be with someone who didn’t want to stay?” The audience erupts with applause. Sure, take my line, because it’s stupid. You’d want him to stay if you loved him. You’d want him to start loving you again so you can stop hurting. Duh, Naomi.

I have $0 in the bank and a balance of $3,463 on my credit card, and it’s a week before Jackie wants to start marketing Sunrise. I seem to have backed myself into a bit of a corner. I need to sell this movie, but I cannot send the true story of how Leo broke my heart into the world. I also can’t show the world my fantasy version, the one where Leo comes back. Nothing would make me more vulnerable than that. I’m running out of time so I start brainstorming several choppy, sentimental endings. Bernadette finds me on the porch swing with my notebook and sharp pencils after dinner. “What’re you doing?”

“Trying to figure out how to end my movie.”

“End it happy.”

“I’m not sure this story has the ingredients for a happy ending. It’s a love story, and the people aren’t meant to be together.”

“Can you change the ingredients?” Bernadette pulls her legs into her chest and lets me put my arm around her. She’s turning nine this month and I try to imagine her as a teenager, raging against me. It doesn’t seem like she has it in her.

“How do I do that?”

“Switch them up. Make them different. So that they’ll end up in a different place.”

“I kind of want one of them dead. Too dark?”

“Jeez, Mom. Yes. Too dark.”



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? ? ?

Bernadette has a point, though it’s not until I’m in the tea house the next morning that I see it. Something needs to be switched up, and I decide to change the power structure. She’s a pop star who comes to the country from Manhattan to film a music video on the property of a widowed father of two. They butt heads a bit but get to know each other over the duration of the shoot and fall in love. She even offers to help with his daughter’s school chorus concert.

I leave in all the feelings. She tells him, in a clearing full of birds, that he’s the first man she’s ever been in love with. He believes her and thinks it’s forever. In the end, he’s the one who’s abandoned. I’m going to ghost him.

And then it can have a happy ending. She’ll write a song for him, and he’ll hear it on the radio driving down a country road, and he’ll know that she really loves him. She’ll win a Grammy for it and mention him in her acceptance speech. Then the next day he comes home from whatever he does all day and finds her strumming her guitar on his front porch. Big moment, big kiss. It seems to work when I’m in charge.



* * *



? ? ?

It’s November and I’ve sold Sunrise to Purview Pictures for $750,000. Martin has signed on as director, and they’re starting casting soon. I ask Jackie if I can cash my check and not have anything more to do with the film. I have the right to be on set, which they tell me will be in Mississippi, but I have no intention of going.

I have money now, and I like it. I can’t get over the fact that I actually made that much money, like I made it out of nothing but words and heartbreak. I want having that money to be worth it, so after paying my credit card bill I let the rest of it sit in my account for a while and try to decide what to do with it.

On a Thursday night, after Wheel of Fortune, I scroll through Leo’s Instagram feed one last time. Movie promotion, fancy-looking cheeseburger, a sideline shot of a football player I don’t recognize. When I’m done, I ceremonially delete the Instagram app and move my banking app to the exact spot where it used to sit. I get in bed and scroll through my account. The big deposit, the interest. It’s infinitely satisfying, and I wish there was a LIKE button to press.

My parents aren’t necessarily frugal people. And Penny certainly isn’t. I came by my spartan ways out of necessity. Every time I would get ahead financially, Ben would go on some kind of bender. I never knew when it was going to happen, so I learned to live in a state of preparedness. Buy the chicken on sale because Ben might decide he needs flying lessons. Let the hem out of Bernadette’s Easter dress because Ben might decide he wants office space. I am not covering for Ben anymore, I remind myself. It’s my own money. When I wake up in the morning, it’s right there where I left it.

I call Penny to discuss this, because she’s the only person I know with this kind of money. “Money’s energy,” she tells me. I roll my eyes because I know this is going to be like the time she told me to move my bed to another wall to improve my sex life. I should probably tell her that the real fix was moving Ben to another continent. “You sent your heartbreak out into the world, and it brought you money. Now before you send the money back out, try to imagine the feelings you want it to bring.” Oh brother.