Nora Goes Off Script(50)

“Pen. Seriously.” This is the last brand of crap I want to listen to right now.

“I’m dead serious. And you need to be honest. What you want is to feel the way you felt when Leo was there.”

“You want me to pay Leo to come back?” Honestly, sometimes she makes me a little violent.

“No, just replicate the feelings. Think about it, even just for a day. How do you want to feel?” We hang up after I tell her I love her even though she has no concept of reality, and she replies that we create our own reality. We end many, many conversations this way.

But I give it some thought. It might be worth thinking about how I want to feel, because I’ve really burned out on feeling the way I currently feel. My first thought is that I want to feel secure, like the future is solid, so I open college accounts for my kids. This is something I never thought I’d be able to do, and I luxuriate in it. I replace the sleepless nights that I spent worrying about the future with daydreams about how that future might be. It’s possible that I’m two inches taller standing on solid ground.

There’s another feeling though, a little harder to face. At Penny’s suggestion, I think about how it felt when Leo was here. Not the feeling of being loved—I hear you can’t buy that—but just the feeling that it’s okay to enjoy nice things. I liked the better wine and the nicer sheets. I really like those new towels. I liked letting go of my prairie woman mentality and enjoying something as frivolous as lights hanging over a picnic table. With Ben, nice things meant we were about to go without. They felt like an assault on my hard work, a punishment. With Leo, nice things weren’t so loaded. They were just nice.

So I hire a contractor to start renovations on my house. He’s not to touch the porch or the tea house, but we design a new kitchen where everything works and add a powder room on the first floor. I order new windows that look exactly like the original ones but are airtight. Suddenly my house is stronger and so am I for having taken care of it. Money, I decide, is not evil.



* * *



? ? ?

On November 22 at two A.M., I get a text. The chime wakes me up and I’m sure someone’s dead. It’s Leo: How could you write this?

My heart races. The last text I have from him is when we were still in the bubble. I love you. I miss you. Love you too. Followed by my eternally dangling Hey. And now right under it, all these months later, he’s back.

Me: Sunrise?

Leo: Yes, fucking Sunrise. You took the whole thing and packaged it and sold it. How did you think I was going to feel when I read it?

Me: Why are you reading it?

Leo: They sent it to me to see if I want the part. To play you, I guess

Me: Ha. Walk a mile in my shoes

Leo: You’re ruthless

Me: I literally don’t know what you’re talking about

Leo: It mattered and you turned it into one of your bullshit stories. I’m surprised you didn’t give yourself a cupcake shop

Me: Leo you’re the one who left

Leo: I was coming back

A thousand replies run through my mind: Have you been in traffic for seven months? Were you incarcerated? Sidetracked? Sleepy? Goofy? Before I’ve chosen one, he texts:

Leo: Forget it. I’m glad you’re happy. Go back to sleep.

I wait for another text. I have the feeling of just having woken up from a dream where I’m trying to sort disjoined fragments into a narrative.

I type: Why didn’t you come back? But erase it. I type: I am happy, and hit SEND. I say this in part because I don’t want him feeling sorry for me and also because it’s nearly true, I’m not too far from happy. I’ve gotten through the worst of this heartbreak. I’m getting a new kitchen. Arthur has friends in middle school and a part in the winter play.

I sense that he’s gone. I type: Leo? And it turns out I’m right.

The nice thing about a text exchange is that there’s an official transcript. I read the whole thing over and over again. In the morning I screenshot it and send it to Kate.

“Was there any indication while you were together that maybe he’s psychotic?”

“Seriously. I thought the same thing. ‘I was coming back.’ I mean you don’t call, you don’t text, and then in the end you don’t come back, so what does ‘I was coming back’ mean? I’ve seen him on TV and in person, actually; he hasn’t lost both of his legs.”

“I wondered about that too,” Kate says. “An Affair to Remember. But I didn’t want to say anything. Maybe he’s a narcissist.”

“Maybe,” I say. “Do you even know what that means?”

“I do not,” she consents.

“Me either.” We laugh.

“It could be that the technical term is ‘asshole,’?” she says.

“Maybe.”

“He tells you you’re the first woman he’s ever been in love with while he’s nursing a broken heart over Naomi. Then leaves you to go back to her and accuses you of being heartless. There’s a diagnosis in there somewhere.”

“Did I tell you my contractor’s kind of cute?” I say.

“Oh, here we go.”





CHAPTER 19





My kitchen is done by Christmas and everything looks beautiful. I have freshly painted cabinets, new appliances, and a shiny marble countertop. When I press the button to run my dishwasher, it runs. Every single time. When I turn the knob on one of my burners, there’s fire. No matches. I walk down my still rickety stairs each morning and gasp at my good fortune. My kids still sit in the exact same spot and eat the exact same food, but they appreciate the fact that the December chill stays outside. Even though they’re sick of people talking about me and my movie, I can tell they’re proud of me. My contractor was, in fact, cute and also single, but he had a way of over pronouncing his G’s when using the gerund tense that I just couldn’t get past. It’s possible I’m not ready to move on.