Nora Goes Off Script(7)

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 that makeup 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.

“It’s the classic self-correcting problem. If someone leaves you, it’s because they didn’t want to be with you. All you lost was someone who didn’t want to be there anyway.”

Leo laughs. “Jesus. You’re not much of a romantic, are you?”

“I am not. At all. I believed in marriage at any cost until that moment. Then I just let go,” I tell him. And to Naomi, “You’re not a victim here. Or anywhere. That’s what this whole movie’s about.” Everyone’s silent until finally Naomi starts to cry, Martin hugs me, and Leo mutters, “Oh, for chrissake.”



* * *



? ? ?

    To be clear, I didn’t set out to write some big treatise on victimhood. I really just set out to write a TV romance for my standard fee of $25,000 so that I could pay my back real estate taxes and keep my name from being listed in the local paper. Again. It irritates me to think people believe I am suffering financially without Ben. As if. Having Ben off my credit card has been like a windfall. Last month my credit card bill was $795.34, mainly food and utilities. Having full control over that number is almost my favorite part of my new life. That and being able to spread out like a starfish in my own bed.

I digress.

The story opens in a cute college town that looks a lot like Amherst. I wrote the meet cute just as it happened. Interior: lecture hall. Handsome Jay Levinthal is whispering in my ear, and I laugh. Cut to Ben seeing this interaction. Class is over and I am waiting to talk to the professor. Ben approaches.

“I’ve never met you,” he says. I remember this exactly, because it’s a weird sentence structure. The idea was that the two of us had never met, yet the way he says it puts the focus on him. You never forget your first red flag.

“I bet you’ve never met lots of people,” I say.

“No, I mostly know everyone.” And as if to prove it, he adds, “I’m Ben Hamilton.” He has a way of saying his name like it means something, like it’s supposed to conjure up a set of images and expectations. Like if you said your name was Oprah Winfrey.

“Nora Larson,” I say over my shoulder. It’s my turn to talk to the professor.

Ben turned up in the library where I was studying, at the dining hall at dinner, at a bar that my friends and I went to every Friday night. He wasn’t the type of guy I’d normally go out with. He was so obvious in his confidence, so annoyingly extroverted. His energy demanded attention, as if the people around him were all worshipping at the temple of Ben. It’s hard to explain what it’s like to have a person like this focus all of his attention on you. I don’t know if it comes across right in the movie, but there’s this moment where you adopt everyone else’s belief system, and suddenly you’re worshipping too. No one could believe my good fortune, dating and then marrying Ben Hamilton. Eventually, I couldn’t believe it either.

It wasn’t until we were making the invitation list for our wedding that I discovered Jay Levinthal was Ben’s sworn enemy. Which pretty much explained everything.



* * *



? ? ?

Leo is drinking amber liquid from one of my glasses on the porch swing when I pull into the driveway with my kids after school. Two of the eighteen-wheelers are gone so there’s room to park in front of my house. Arthur walks straight past him without saying hello. Bernadette plops down next to him and offers her dimple.