Landline (19 page)

Apparently he’d been considering the job more seriously than she’d ever realized.

She tried not to draw attention to the obvious problem with this career plan—that it would mean moving to Omaha. And Georgie was
never
going to move to Omaha.

She was going to work in TV, Neal knew that. And TV meant Los Angeles.

Part of her just wanted to tell him:

This
isn’t
going to happen. We stay in California. You hate it. But you grow your own avocados. So that’s something.

You like our house. You picked it out. You said it reminded you of home—something about hills and high ceilings and only one bathroom.

And we’re close to the ocean—close enough—and you don’t hate it, not like you used to. Sometimes I think you like it. You love me by the ocean. And the girls. You say it sweetens us. Pinks our cheeks and curls our hair.

And Neal, if you don’t come back to me, you’ll never see what a good dad you are.

And it won’t be the same if you have kids with some other, better girl, because they won’t be Alice and Noomi, and even if I’m not your perfect match, they are.

God, the three of you.
The three of you.

When I wake up on Sunday mornings—late, you always let me sleep in—I come looking for you, and you’re in the backyard with dirt on your knees and two little girls spinning around you in perfect orbit. And you put their hair in pigtails, and you let them wear whatever madness they want, and Alice planted a fruit cocktail tree, and Noomi ate a butterfly, and they look like me because they’re round and golden, but they glow for you.

And you built us a picnic table.

And you learned to bake bread.

And you’ve painted a mural on every west-facing wall.

And it isn’t all bad, I promise. I swear to you.

You might not be actively, thoughtfully happy 70 to 80 percent of the time, but maybe you wouldn’t be anyway. And even when you’re sad, Neal—even when you’re falling asleep at the other side of the bed—I think you’re happy, too. About some things. About a few things.

I promise it’s not all bad.

“Georgie? Are you still there?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you fell asleep.”

“I’m awake. It’s only ten here.”

“I was saying that I’d have to wear a gun—would that bother you?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never thought about it. It’s hard to imagine you with a gun.” Neal didn’t even kill spiders. He teased them onto a piece of paper, then set them down gently on the porch. “Would it bother you?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. I’ve always hated guns.”

“I love you,” she said.

“Because I hate guns?”

“Because everything.”

“Because everything.” She could hear Neal almost smiling. She could almost see him, too.

No . . .

Georgie was picturing
her
Neal. Her almost-forty Neal. Leaner. Sharper. With longer hair and crow’s-feet and a bit of gray in the beard he grew every winter.
“What passes for winter,”
he’d say.
“My children are never going to know what it’s like to come in from the cold and feel the warmth work its way back into their fingers.”

“It sounds like you’re saying they’re never going to get frostbite.”

“I can’t have this conversation with someone who’s never built a snowman.”

“Our kids have seen snow.”

“At Disneyland, Georgie. That’s just soap bubbles.”

“They don’t know the difference.”

“What if it was Persephone who kidnapped Hades . . .”

“You’re talking fancy again.”

Her
Neal had lost his baby fat, his soft belly and hobbity hint of a double chin.

Once Alice was born, Neal took up cycling. He went everywhere by bicycle now, hauling a bright yellow trailer. Hauling two little girls, bags of groceries, stuffed animals, stacks of library books . . .

Working motherhood had made Georgie shapeless and limp, and perpetually tired-looking. She never got enough sleep anymore. And she’d never gotten her waist back—or gotten around to buying new clothes for this new (not so new anymore, really) reality. Georgie hadn’t even resized her wedding ring after it got too tight to wear during her last pregnancy. It sat in a china saucer on their dresser.

While Neal had come into focus over the years—clean-jawed, clear-eyed—Georgie had lost her own reflection in the mirror.

Sometimes, when she had a day off, they’d walk to the park, the four of them, and Georgie would see how the nannies and stay-at-home moms looked at Neal. That handsome dad with the blue eyes and stubbly dimples and the two laughing, doll-faced satellites.

“Georgie? Am I losing you?”

“No.” She pressed the phone to her ear. “I’m here.”

“Do we have a bad connection?”

This person on the other end of the line was Neal as he
was
. Before he was quite hers. When he was still circling the possibility of Georgie. This Neal was harsher. Paler. Had a shorter temper. But this Neal hadn’t given up on her yet. This Neal still looked at Georgie like she was something brand-new and supernatural. He was still surprised by her, delighted with her.

Even now, as frustrated as he was.

Even now, ten states away and half done with her, this Neal still thought she was better than he deserved. More than he’d ever expected life would give him.

“I love you,” she said.

“Georgie, are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.” Her voice broke. “I love you.”

“Sunshine.” Neal sounded soft, concerned. “I love you, too.”

“But not enough,” she said, “is that what you’re thinking?”

“What? No. That’s
not
what I’m thinking.”

“It’s what you’ve
been
thinking,” she said. “It’s what you thought from California to Colorado.”

“That’s not fair. . . .”

“What if you were right, Neal?”

“Georgie, please don’t cry.”

“It’s what you said, and you said that you meant it. And nothing’s changed, has it? Why aren’t we
talking
about this? Why are we pretending that everything’s fine? It’s not fine. You’re in Nebraska, and I’m here, and it’s Christmas, and we’re supposed to be together. You love me. But maybe it isn’t enough. That’s what you’re thinking.”

“No.” Neal cleared his throat and said it again: “
No
. Maybe I was thinking that. From California to Colorado. But then . . . I got tired. Literally tired—
dangerously
tired, and there was the thing with the aliens. And then sunrise. And the rainbows. I told you about the rainbows, right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “But I don’t understand the significance.”

“There is no significance. I just got
tired
. Tired of being angry. Tired of thinking about dead ends, and everything that isn’t or might not be enough.”

“So not breaking up with me seemed like a better idea after you’d been awake for twenty-four hours?”

“Don’t.”

“What if you were right? What if it isn’t enough?”

He sighed. “Lately I’ve been thinking that it’s impossible to know.”

“To know what?” she pushed.

“Whether it’s enough. How does anyone ever know whether love is enough? It’s an idiotic question. Like, if you fall in love, if you’re that lucky, who are you to even ask whether it’s enough to make you happy?”

“But it happens all the time,” she said. “Love
isn’t
always enough.”

“When?” Neal demanded. “When is that true?”

All Georgie could think of was the end of
Casablanca
, and Madonna and Sean Penn. “Just because you love someone,” she said, “that doesn’t mean your lives will fit together.”

“Nobody’s lives just fit together,” Neal said. “Fitting together is something you work at. It’s something you make happen—because you love each other.”

“But . . .” Georgie stopped herself. She didn’t want to talk Neal out of this, even if he was wrong. Even if she was the only one who knew how wrong he was.

He sounded exasperated. “I’m not saying that everything will magically work out if people love each other enough. . . .”

If
we
love each other enough, Georgie heard.

“I’m just saying,” he went on, “maybe there’s no such thing as enough.”

Georgie was quiet. She wiped her eyes with Neal’s T-shirt.

“Georgie? Do you think I’m wrong?”

“No,” she said. “I think—oh God,
I know
—that I love you. I love you so much. Too much. I feel like it’s going to spin me off my axis.”

Neal was quiet for a second. “That’s good,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“God. Yeah.”

“Do you want to get off the phone now?”

He huffed a laugh into the receiver.
“No.”

But maybe he did. Neal was always good about talking to her on the phone, but he wasn’t a fifteen-year-old girl.

“Not even a little bit,” he said. “Do you?”

“No.”

“I wouldn’t mind getting ready for bed. Can I call you back?”

“No,” she said, too quickly. Then lied, “I don’t want to wake up my mom.”

“Okay. Then you call me. Give me twenty minutes. I want to take a quick shower.”

“Okay,” she said.

“I’ll try to pick up on the first ring.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” He blew a quick kiss into the phone, and Georgie laughed, because Neal seemed like the last guy on earth who would kiss into a phone. But he wasn’t.

“Bye,” she said, waiting for the click.

G
eorgie decided to take a shower, too. Her mom said she could borrow some pajamas. All her mom’s pajamas came in sets—matching tops and bottoms, or peignoirs with flirty, useless robes.

“Just give me a T-shirt!” Georgie was standing in her mom’s bathroom in a towel, shouting through the door.

“I don’t have any sleeping T-shirts. Do you want one of Kendrick’s?”

“Gross. No.”

“Then you’ll just have to deal.” Her mom opened the door and threw something in. Georgie unfolded a pair of aqua-colored pajama shorts—polyester satin, with cream-colored bows and a matching, low-cut lace-trimmed top. She groaned.

“Have you been talking to Neal all this time?” her mom asked.

“Yeah,” Georgie said, wishing she had clean underwear. Not willing to borrow any.

“How is he?”

“Good.” She realized she was smiling. “Really good.”

“How’re the girls?”

“Fine.”

“Are you working things through?”

“There’s nothing to work through,” Georgie said.
Yes
, she thought.
I think so.
She peeked out of the bathroom. “Where’s Kendrick?”

“In the living room, watching TV.”

Georgie walked out.

“Look at you,” her mom said. “You look so nice. You should let me go shopping with you sometime.”

“I have to call Neal back,” Georgie said. “Thanks, um, for the pajamas. And everything.” She stooped to kiss her mom on the cheek. Georgie tried to do stuff like that more now that she had kids of her own. Alice and Noomi couldn’t get enough of Georgie; they practically crawled on her when she was home. It made Georgie feel physically ill to think of them shying away from her—or bristling when she tried to kiss them. What if they went a whole year without calling her “Mom”?

So Georgie tried to be more affectionate with her own mother. When she could.

As soon as she kissed her mom on the cheek, her mom turned her face to catch Georgie on the lips. Georgie frowned and pulled away. “Why do you always
do
that?”

“Because I love you.”

“I love you, too. I’m going to call Neal.” Georgie tugged at the satin shorts; there was no tugging them to a reasonable length. “Thank you.”

She looked both ways before walking out into the hall. She stopped at Heather’s room—Heather was lying on her bed. She had her laptop out and was wearing headphones.

She took them off when she saw Georgie. “Hello, Victoria, did you come to tell me a secret?”

“Do me a favor.”

“What?”

“I’m starving, but I don’t want to walk through the living room like this.”

“I think if Dad sees you in Mom’s lingerie, it might scar him for life.”

Heather called Kendrick “Dad.” Which made sense because he’d raised her. And because he wasn’t three years older than Heather. “It might scar
me
for life,” Georgie said. “Why are all her pajamas lingerie?”

“She’s a very sensual woman. I know this because she likes to tell me.” Heather got off the bed. “What do you want to eat? I ate all the ziti. And the puppy chow—there wasn’t that much left. Hey, do you want me to order you a pizza?”

“No,” Georgie said. “I’ll take whatever’s in the kitchen.”

“You could have borrowed some of my pajamas, you know.”

“That’s very sweet of you,” Georgie said. “Why don’t you give me as many as you can spare, and I’ll fashion something comfy and tentlike out of them.”

“I’m sure I have
something
that would fit you.”

“Oh my God, stop. Just get me some food. I’m gonna go hide in my room.”

“Have you been talking to Neal?”

Georgie grinned. “Yeah.”

“That’s good, right?”

Georgie nodded. “Go. I’m hungry.”

Heather brought back an apple, three prewrapped slices of cheese, and a giant bottle of Mexican Coke. Georgie would have been better off sending Alice.

“Call Neal,” Heather said. “I want to say hi to the girls.”

“It’s after one in the morning there,” Georgie said. “They’re asleep.”

“Oh, right. Time zones.”

Georgie unwrapped a slice of cheese and started eating it. “Thank you. Now go.”

“You’re supposed to wrap the cheese around the apple; it’s like a caramel apple.”

“That doesn’t sound anything like a caramel apple.”

“Call him now,” Heather said. “I want to say hi.”