Landline (8 page)

“We already have lunch here. And half a script—it’s fucking terrible, hurry up.”

“I’m coming.” She ended the call and got on the 101.

Four missed calls, all from Seth. None from Neal.

Georgie rubbed her thumb over the phone’s touchscreen. She wasn’t thinking about last night. Last night was something Georgie was not going to think about right now.

It was a new morning. She’d call Neal and start over from here. She held the phone up over the steering wheel and thumbed through her recent calls, pressing
AN EMERGENCY CONTACT
.

It rang. . . .

“Good day, sunshine.”

“Hey, Alice. It’s Mommy.”

“I know, I heard your song. Also, there’s a picture of you when you call—from Halloween. You’re dressed like the Tin Man.”

Neal had been the Cowardly Lion. Alice was Dorothy. Noomi was Toto the cat.

“I need to talk to Daddy,” Georgie said.

“Are you in the car?”

“I’m on my way to work.”

“You promised not to talk on the phone in the car—I’m telling Daddy.”

“I promised to wait until I was done merging. Where
is
Daddy?”

“I don’t know.”

“He’s not there?”

“No.”

“Where’s Grandma?”

“I don’t know.”

“Alice.”

“Yeah?”

“Please find Grandma.”

“But we’re watching
The Rescuers
.”

“Pause it.”

“Grandma doesn’t have pause!”

“You’re only going to miss a few minutes. I’ll tell you what happens.”

“Mommy, I don’t want you to
spoil
it for me.”

“
Alice.
Listen to my voice. Do I sound like I’m in the mood to debate this?”

“No . . .” Alice sounded hurt. “You’re using your mean voice.”

“Go get Grandma.”

The phone fell. A second later someone picked it up.

“Don’t use your mean voice, Mommy.” It was Noomi. Crying. Undoubtedly fake crying. Noomi almost never truly cried; she’d start fake crying long before she arrived at actual tears.

“I’m not using my mean voice, Noomi. How are you?”

“I’m just so sad.”

“Don’t be sad.”

“But you’re using your mean voice, and I don’t like it.”

“Noomi,” Georgie said, in what probably
was
her mean voice. “I wasn’t even talking to you. Calm
down
, for Christ’s sake.”

“Georgie?”

“Margaret!”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” Georgie said. “I just . . . Is Neal around? I really, really need to talk to Neal.”

“He went to do some last-minute shopping for the girls.”

“Oh,” Georgie said. “I guess he didn’t take his phone.”

“I guess not—are you sure everything’s okay?”

“Yeah. I just miss him. Them. Everybody.” She closed her eyes, then quickly opened them. “You and . . . Paul.”

Her mother-in-law was quiet.

Georgie decided to keep going. She wasn’t sure what she was fishing for. “I’m sorry the girls didn’t get to know him like I did.”

Margaret took a breath. “Thank you, Georgie. And thank you for letting Neal bring them to Omaha. Since we lost Paul, well, this is the hardest time of year to be alone.”

“Of course,” Georgie said, wiping her eyes with the heel of her thumb. “Just tell Neal I called.”

She pressed
END
and dropped the phone on the passenger seat.

That sealed it.

Georgie had lost her mind.

“Jesus Christ,” Seth said when she walked into the room. His jaw dropped, probably just for effect. “Jesus H. Christ on a thousand bicycles.”

Scotty shot Diet Coke through his nose. “Oh fuck,” he said. “Oh God, it burns.”

“Can we just—” Georgie tried.

“What happened to you?” Seth was out of his chair and circling her. “You look like Britney Spears, back when she was dating backup dancers and walking around gas stations barefoot.”

“I borrowed some of my mom’s clothes. I didn’t think you’d want me to waste another hour going home to change.”

“Or shower,” Seth said, looking at her hair.

“Those are your
mom’s
clothes?” Scotty asked.

“She’s a free spirit,” Georgie said. “We’re working now, right? I’m here, and we’re working?”

“There’s something green on your face,” Seth said, touching her chin. “It’s sticky.” Georgie jerked away, finding her seat at the long conference table.

Scotty went back to his lunch. “Is this what happens when Neal’s out of town? No wonder he keeps you on such a short leash.”

“I’m not on a leash,” Georgie said. “I’m
married
.”

Seth shoved a foam container in front of her. Georgie opened it. Soggy Korean tacos. She waited a second to figure out whether she was more sick or more hungry. . . . More hungry.

Seth handed her a fork. “You okay?”

“Fine. Just show me what you have so far.”

Not fine. Completely not fine.

“I should have told you? I did tell you. I said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ I said ‘I love you, but I’m not sure it’s enough, I’m not sure it will ever be enough.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to live like this, Georgie’—remember?”

It made sense, really. If Georgie was going to have a delusional, paranoid nervous breakdown about her husband leaving her, it made sense that she’d flash back to the one time Neal actually
had
left her.

Sort of left her.

Before they were married.

It was Christmas break, their senior year. And they’d gone to some party, some TV party that seemed really important at the time. Seth was already working on a Fox sitcom, and he wanted Georgie to meet all the other writers on the show—the star was even supposed to be there. It was just a party in somebody’s backyard, with a pool and beer and Christmas lights threaded through the lemon trees.

Neal spent the whole night standing next to the fence and refusing to talk to anybody. Refusing on principle. As if making small talk—as if being
polite
—would be too much of a concession. (A concession to Seth. To California. To the fact that Georgie was going to get a job like
this
with
these
sorts of people, and Neal would be along for the ride.)

So he stood by the fence with the cheapest beer available and dead-bolted his jaw into place.

Georgie was so infuriated by this little sit-in, she made sure she and Neal were some of the last people to leave. She met and talked to all of Seth’s new work friends. She played her part in the Seth-and-Georgie show. (It was a good part; Georgie got most of the punch lines.) She made everyone there love her.

And then she got into Neal’s worn-out Saturn, and he drove her to her mom’s house. And he told her he was done.

“I can’t do this anymore,”
he said.

“I love you,”
he said,
“but I’m not sure it’s enough, I’m not sure it’ll ever be enough.”

He said,
“I don’t want to live like this, Georgie.”

And the next morning, he’d left for Omaha without her.

Georgie didn’t hear from Neal that whole week. She thought they were over.

She thought that maybe he was right, that they
should
be over.

And then, on Christmas morning, in 1998, Neal was there at her front door—down on one knee on the green indoor-outdoor carpeting, holding his great aunt’s wedding ring.

He asked Georgie to marry him.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you more than I hate everything else.”

And Georgie had laughed because only Neal would think that was a romantic thing to say.

Then she said yes.

Georgie plugged her cell phone into her laptop and made sure the ringer volume was turned all the way up.

“What are you doing?” Seth asked. “No cell phones in the writers’ room, remember? That’s
your
rule.”

“We’re not even officially here,” Georgie said.

“You’re not even
un
officially here,” he snapped back at her.

“I’m sorry. I have a lot on my mind.”

“Right. Me, too. Four scripts, remember?”

She rubbed her eyes. It was just a dream. Last night. Even though it hadn’t felt like a dream—that’s all it could have been. An episode.

That was something people had. Normal people.
Episodes.
And then they laid cool cloths over their eyes and made plans to spend time near the sea.

Neal had been on her mind, Neal’s
dad
had been on her mind—and her brain had done the rest. That’s what Georgie’s brain was good at. Episodic storytelling.

“Probably the most important week of our career,” Seth was mumbling, “and you decide to check out.”

“I haven’t checked out,” Scotty said.

“I’m not talking about you,” Seth said to him. “I’m never talking about you.”

Scotty folded his arms. “You know, I don’t like being the butt of all your mean jokes when no one else is around. I’m not the Cliff Clavin here.”

“Oh my God”—Seth pointed at him—“you’re totally the Cliff Clavin. I’ll never stop seeing you like that now. Did you ever watch
Family Ties
? You’re kind of our Skippy, too.”

“I’m too young for
Family Ties
,” Scotty said.

“You’re too young for
Cheers.
”

“I watched it on Netflix.”

“You even
look
like Skippy—Georgie, is Scotty our Skippy? Or our Cliff?”

Georgie’d never had an episode before.

Though it felt like she might be having another one now. She stuck her glasses in her hair and pinched the top of her nose

“Georgie.”
Seth poked her arm with the eraser end of his pencil. “Are you listening? Scotty—Skippy or Cliff?”

She put her glasses back on. “He’s our Radar O’Reilly.”

“Aw, Georgie.” Scotty grinned. “Stop, you’ll make me cry.”

“You’re too young for
M*A*S*H
,” Seth grumbled.

Scotty shrugged. “So are you.”

They worked on their show.

It was easier when they were working. Easier for Georgie to pretend that nothing was wrong.

Nothing
was
wrong. She’d just talked to Alice and Noomi, just a few hours ago—they were fine. And Neal was just out Christmas shopping.

So he wasn’t in any hurry to talk to her—that wasn’t unusual. What did they need to talk about? Georgie and Neal had talked every day since they’d met. (Nearly.) It’s not like they needed to catch up.

Georgie worked on her show. Their show. She and Seth got in a groove and wrote dialogue for an hour, batting the conversation back and forth between them like a Ping-Pong ball. (This was how they usually got things done. Competitive collaboration.)

Seth blinked first. Georgie caught him with an especially silly “your mom” joke, and he fell back in his chair, giggling.

“I can’t believe you guys have been doing this for twenty years,” Scotty said, sincerely, when he was done applauding.

“It hasn’t been quite that long,” Georgie said.

Seth lifted his head. “Nineteen.”

She looked at him. “Really?”

“You graduated from high school in ’94, right?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s 2013. That’s nineteen years.”

“God.”

God.
Had it really been that long?

It had.

Nineteen years since Georgie stumbled across Seth in
The Spoon
offices.

Seventeen years since she first noticed Neal.

Fourteen since she married him, standing beside a row of lilac trees in his parents’ backyard.

Georgie never thought she’d be old enough to talk about life in big decade-long chunks like this.

It’s not that she’d thought she was going to die before now—she just never imagined it would feel this way. The heaviness of the proportions. Twenty years with the same dream. Seventeen with the same man.

Pretty soon she’d have been with Neal longer than she’d been without him. She’d know herself as his wife better than she’d ever known herself as anyone else.

It felt like too much. Not too much to
have
, just too much to contemplate. Commitments like boulders that were too heavy to carry.

Fourteen years since their wedding.

Fifteen years since Neal tried to drive away from her. Fifteen since he drove back.

Seventeen since she first saw him, saw something in him that she couldn’t look away from.

Seth was still watching Georgie, one eyebrow raised.

What would he say if she tried to tell him about the last thirty-six hours?

“Jesus, Georgie, you can go crazy next week. Everything can happen next week. Sleep. Christmas. Nervous breakdowns. This week we’re making our dreams come true.”

“I’m gonna make some coffee,” Georgie said.

T
he three of them kept working through dinner. They started moving even faster, making even more progress. . . .

And then they all realized they were moving so fast because they were turning their script into an episode of
Jeff’d Up.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” Seth said. “We’re corrupted. We’re completely corrupted.”

“This suuuuuuucks,” Scotty said.

Seth started erasing the whiteboard with both forearms—he’d regret that later when he saw the state of his checked shirt.

They decided to watch a few episodes of
Barney Miller
to wash out their brains. Seth kept the complete series on VHS in their office. They had a VCR in there, too, crammed into the corner with an old TV.

“We could just watch this online,” Scotty said, climbing into the IKEA hammock.

Seth knelt in front of the VCR and popped in a tape. “Not the same. The voodoo won’t work.”

Georgie brought her laptop with her, with her phone plugged into the side, and tried calling Neal from the doorway. (No answer.)

Seth sighed as soon as the
Barney Miller
bass line started. He flashed Georgie a wide white smile. “We’re going to get past this,” he said.