“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 me on 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.