Page 5 of Nora Goes Off Script

“Dear God, what are you doing?” asks Leo. Where other people get his famous smolder, I get the scrunched-up look of disgust.

“It’s meatloaf Wednesday,” Bernadette tells him.

“That can’t be right,” he says, mesmerized.

I chop an onion and add it. I throw in some bread crumbs. Leo cannot take his eyes off my bowl. “That is truly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.” And then as I begin to mix it with my hands, “I stand corrected.” My kids laugh.

Weezie comes looking for him at about five o’clock and doesn’t seem too surprised to find him tipsy. “Come on, let’s get you back into makeup. We need to reshoot a few things before dark.”

Leo makes what I can only call the agony face, the face my kids make when I tell them we’re having fish for dinner. “No. Please. Don’t tell me there’s more.”

“Of course there’s more. We have one, maybe two days left here before we wrap.”

Leo clutches his beer. “But it’s so depressing. You guys, your mom is so depressing. I just can’t take it.”

“She’s actually fun,” Arthur says. “And the rest of her movies are kinda dumb but with super-happy endings.”

“He’s right,” I admit. “Dumb and happy. This was kind of a one-off, sorry.”

He studies his empty beer bottle. “Can’t he just come back? Like have an epiphany or something and come back?”

Arthur hides his face by pretending to review his fractions. Ben having an epiphany would be a salve to Arthur’s open wound. “He’s not coming back,” I say.

CHAPTER 2

I wake up the next morning to complete silence. The cars are gone; the trucks are empty. Leo is probably passed out in his trailer. I pour my coffee and go out to the porch to watch the sun finish rising. Leo’s trailer is an eyesore, as are the muddy tracks it’s left on my lawn, but it is not blocking my view. The sun is putting on a big show, turning the sky a bloody orange behind the outstretched arms of my oak tree.On windy mornings it looks like its widest branches are dancing the hula; today it looks like it’s offering a hug.It won’t be long, Nora. Soon you’ll be back in charge.

I hear something move behind me, and I turn to see Leo wrapped in a duvet, asleep on my porch swing. His slightly too long dark hair covers one of his eyes, and he is breathtakingly handsome. A half-empty bottle of tequila (wait, my tequila!) sits on the ground. No glass in sight. I consider going for my phone. My friends would get a kick out of a photo.

Asleep he looks younger, almost vulnerable. He has the covers pulled up over his nose. He must have been freezing last night. I want to wake him to show him the sunrise before it’s over. I want to show him something that’s not depressing because I know what he’s going to film today. It’s the breakup scene. Trevor is leaving. He never loved Ruth after all.

I feel briefly guilty that I’ve subjected him to my sad story. It’s not exactly my story the way it played out, but it’s the essence of it. Ben and I were in love at some point and found ourselves with two great kids and a life that worked as long as I kept moving. And then he just decided, meh, this isn’t for me. Like the way you stop taking milk in your coffee. And then you act like you always drank it black, like you don’t remember that creamy taste that you used to say you loved.

I should probably feel sorry for Naomi. She’s the one being left. I’m happy she won’t have to scrunch up her pretty face in an ugly cry. Instead, she’s going to have to be perfectly still when he says, “I’m sorry, this whole thing was a mistake. I need a bigger life.” Hopefully the audience will recall that Ruth has given him everything he has and that he’s added exactly zero value to the marriage. She’ll play it back in her mind like I did to make sure she heard it right. I don’t know how actresses do what they do, but she’ll need to make us see the moment she realizes that “this whole thing” is her family.

Man, is Ben an asshole. I decide to leave Leo alone and let his film crew find him when they get here. I have two kids already.

•••

They want meon the set. I have a text from Weezie. I’m unusually excited, as I’ve been cooped up hiding in my house all morning. I’ve washed and replaced everyone’s sheets, and I’ve vacuumed every possible thing, including the dust out of my refrigerator fan. I even tried to outline the main plot points of a new TRC movie but found that my mind doesn’t bend that way inside the house. “Nora, you’re wanted on the set,” I say out loud because I like the sound of it.

I check myself in my bedroom mirror. I’m in jeans, a navy blue T-shirt, and flip-flops. My hair is still nice from yesterday and partially brushed. I decide that this will do. I know from experience that if I try to spruce up a little with better clothes and makeup, I’ll arrive at the tea house looking like it’s prom night. I do better in a come-as-you-are situation.

I walk across the lawn enjoying the bliss of slightly wet feet. My subconscious is triggered, and I kind of want to write, in that same way I kind of want a snack when I watch the Food Network. Tomorrow they’ll be gone and I can get back to it.

The door to the tea house is closed. I open it to find Leo lying facedown on the daybed, Naomi pacing, and a cameraman talking quietly with Martin. “Hi.” I give a small wave as I squeeze in. “Weezie said you wanted me?”

Naomi stops and glares. “Are you the writer?”

“Yes. Nora,” I say. She is so much prettier in person that it takes my breath away. I want to see her face without all thatmakeup and stare into her poreless skin. She radiates beauty even though she’s obviously ready to attack me.

“Why?” She rips a page from her copy of the script and shoves it at me. “Why doesn’t she do anything? He’s leaving. Yeah, he’s a bastard, but any normal woman would cry or something. I can’t just sit here.”

Leo sits up and runs his hands through his hair as if trying to focus. “She’s right. This is an intense scene; she should scream and yell. At least beg a little.”

There’d been no screaming and yelling when Ben stood right here and told me he was leaving. Not because the kids were asleep, not because I was scared to confront him. I wonder now at the chain of events that has led me to stand in my office with the two most famous celebrities in the country trying to explain my emotional response to abandonment. “Because he’s not taking anything,” I say. “He’s taking nothing. He never really loved her anyway.”

“What the fuck.” Good thing Naomi’s not my therapist.

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