The Airstream door opens and out steps a forty-year-old, shoeless superstar. His jeans hang too low and his gray T-shirt is torn in two places. His hair needs a trim, and he’s way too handsome to play Ben. But then again, Naomi Sanchez is playing me. He squints up at the sky as he gets his bearings, as if he’s emerging from the dark after twenty-four hours. It’s eleven A.M. and we’re only a ninety-minute drive from New York City.
Leo Vance is the highest-paid leading man in Hollywood. I know this because I’ve been googling him for three days. He has homes in Manhattan, Bel Air, and Cap d’Antibes. He owns a share of an NBA franchise. No kids, never married. A Libra. He’s originally from New Jersey and has a brother.
I’ve seen every one of Leo’s movies, which isn’t really a credit to him. I’ve seen a lot of movies. He’s a good actor, and he’s most famous for his smoldering stare. I have to say, it’s a little over the top. In his first film, Sycamore Nights, he gave his co-star Aileen Bennett a series of white-hot smolders that got him named Sexiest Man Alive that year. I guess it became his signature move, so he kept it up film after film, even when it was entirely unnecessary. Like in Battle for the Home Front, he’s telling his newly pregnant wife that he has to go away to war, and he’s smoldering. Or in Class Action, he’s giving a commencement speech at a military academy and smoldering all over everyone’s parents and grandparents. And don’t get me started on African Rose. A refugee center with a wild malaria outbreak is no place to smolder. Leo Vance seems prone to the inappropriate oozing of sex appeal.
When the smolder is turned off, he has an impressive range of smiles that are unique to each film. They range from timid to maniacal, and I’ve always admired the way he can keep each one consistent throughout an entire film. I’m curious to see what smile he’ll invent for The Tea House. What smile would he imagine Ben having? I can’t even remember the last time I saw Ben smile.
Leo Vance is walking toward my porch, and I brace myself for an introduction. Perfection on the screen, scruffy in real life. He is going to be transformed into a man with a lot of issues who ends up walking away from the woman he built a life with. Leave it to Ben to be maddening enough to make me finally write something worthwhile. I smile at the irony of Ben actually helping out after all.
Leo brushes past me on the porch like I’m not there, then stops and takes a step back. “You’re missing a dimple,” he says.
“The other one’s inside,” I say.
He nods and walks into my house like he owns the place. Not much of a meet cute.
* * *
? ? ?
Meeting the director, Martin Cox, is as intimidating as I anticipated. Weezie’s gone in after Leo, so he finds Meredith and me on the porch. “You must be Nora.” He’s not tall but he’s big, and I can’t decide if he’s physically big or if it’s his presence that takes up a lot of space.
I shake his hand and try not to say anything else. If I start talking, I’ll tell him what I thought of the final scene in Alabaster and why I think he was robbed of an Oscar. I’ll tell him that the lighting alone in The Woman Beneath was sublime. Mainly to avoid using the word “sublime,” I keep my mouth shut.
“So, can we see it?” he asks. I lead Meredith and Martin behind my house to where the tea house sits at the entrance to the woods. There is no path to it, just lawn, so that a consequence of visiting the tea house is almost always wet shoes. I’d left the big oak door open, as is my habit, because with the door open, you can see straight through the steel windows on the back wall into the mouth of the forest. It gives me the feeling of endless possibility.
The tea house is a sacred space to me. The space in which I have been able to preserve myself by writing. And, unlike the main house, it is airtight against the elements. I imagine the Faircloths approaching the tea house as I do, anticipating a fire in the fireplace and a table laid with tea and treats. I imagine lovers meeting here for hushed conversation and first kisses. Ben had always wanted to use it for storage.
It may have come down to that, for all I know. My belief that the last thing the world needs is more storage versus Ben’s belief that he needed a third motorcycle. Among the many consolations around his leaving are that he took most of his stuff with him, and he didn’t ask for the kids.
The tea house plays prominently in the breakup of our marriage, which is what earned it the title role. Ben resented the time I spent out there; he resented the work I did. He resented the fact that I’d been paying our bills for the past ten years. Which made two of us, actually. The more competent I became at taking care of our family, the more he despised me. The more he despised me, the harder I worked to make things right. Me writing in the tea house was a mirror he didn’t want to look into. That’s how it goes in the movie. In real life, I don’t know, maybe he left because he just wanted more storage. Ben wanted more of just about everything.