Landline (3 page)

The whole afternoon had been a blur of noise and food and Christmas carols. For some reason—well, for alcoholic reasons—everyone had decided to sing Christmas songs from two to three thirty. Then somebody, maybe Scotty, had tried to slide a shrimp tray under her office door. Now it was six, and quiet, and Georgie was finally making progress on the script change.

“No,” she told Seth. “I’ve got it.”

“You sure?”

She didn’t look up from her screen. “Yep.”

He settled against the desk, her side of the desk, next to her keyboard. “So . . .”

“So what?”

“So,” he said, “they went to Omaha.”

Georgie shook her head, even though the answer was yes. “It made sense. We already had the plane tickets, and I’m going to be working all week anyway.”

“Yeah, but . . .” Seth nudged her arm with his leg. Georgie looked up. “What’re you gonna do on Christmas?”

“I’ll go to my mom’s.” It was only sort of a lie. She could still go. Even if her mom wasn’t home.

“You could come to
my
mom’s.”

“I would,” Georgie said. “If I didn’t have my own.”

“Maybe I’ll go to your mom’s, too.” Seth grinned. “She loves me.”

“That’s not much of a character reference.”

“You know, she called here three times this morning before you got in. She thinks you let your phone die on purpose. To avoid her.”

Georgie turned back to her screen. “I should.”

Seth stood up and slung his leather messenger bag over his shoulder. It was going to take Georgie another hour to rewrite this scene. Maybe she should just start over. . . .

“Hey. Georgie.”

She kept typing. “Yeah.”

“Georgie.”

She looked up one more time. He was standing at the door, studying her. “We’re so close,” he said. “It’s finally happening.”

Georgie nodded and tried to smile. It was another weak effort.

“Tomorrow,” Seth said, then thumped the doorframe with his palm and walked away.

Georgie was on her way home when her sister called.

“We ate without you,” Heather said.

“What?”

“It’s nine o’clock. We were hungry.”

Right. Dinner.
“That’s okay,” Georgie said. “Tell Mom I’ll call tomorrow.”

“She still wants you to come over tonight. She says your marriage is over, and you need our support.”

Georgie wanted to close her eyes, but she was driving. “My marriage isn’t over, Heather, and I don’t need your support.”

“So Neal didn’t leave you and take the kids to Nebraska?”

“He took them to see their
grandmother
,” Georgie said. “It’s not like he’s fighting me for custody.”

“Neal would totally get custody, don’t you think?”

He totally would
, Georgie thought.

“You should come over,” Heather said. “Mom made tuna mac.”

“Did she put peas in it?”

“Nope.”

Georgie thought about her empty house in Calabasas. And the empty suitcase sitting next to the closet. Her empty bed.

“Fine,” she said.

“Do you have an iPhone charger?” Georgie dropped her keys and her phone on the kitchen counter. She never carried a purse anymore; she kept her driver’s license and a credit card out in the car, shoved in the glove compartment.

“I would if you bought me an iPhone.” Heather was leaning on the counter, eating tuna mac out of a glass storage container.

“I thought you already ate,” Georgie said.

“Don’t talk to me like that. You’ll give me an eating disorder.”

Georgie rolled her eyes. “Nobody in our family gets eating disorders. Stop eating my dinner.”

Heather took another giant bite, then handed Georgie the container.

Heather was eighteen, a change-of-life baby—meaning, Georgie’s mom had decided to change her life by sleeping with the chiropractor she worked for, and accidentally got pregnant at thirty-nine. Her mom and the chiropractor were married just long enough for Heather to be born.

Georgie was already in college by then, so she and Heather only lived in the same house for a year or two. Sometimes Georgie felt more like Heather’s aunt than her big sister.

They looked enough alike to be twins.

Heather had Georgie’s wavy, browny-blond hair. And Georgie’s washed-out blue eyes. And she was built like Georgie was in high school, like a squashed hourglass. Though Heather was a little taller than Georgie. . . .

That was lucky for her. Maybe someday, when Heather got pregnant, the babies wouldn’t beat out her waist like a Caribbean steel drum.
“It’s those C-sections,”
Georgie’s mom would say. As if Georgie had chosen to have two C-sections, as if she’d ordered them off the menu out of sheer laziness.
“I had you girls the natural way, and my body bounced right back.”

“Why are you staring at my stomach?” Heather asked.

“Still trying to give you an eating disorder,” Georgie said.

“Georgie!” Her mom walked into the room, holding a small but very pregnant pug up to her chest. Georgie’s stepdad, Kendrick—a tall African-American guy, still in his dusty construction clothes—wasn’t far behind. “I didn’t hear you come in,” her mom said.

“I just got here.”

“Let me heat that up for you.” Her mom took the tuna casserole and handed Georgie the dog. Georgie held it away from her body; she hated touching it—and she didn’t care if that made her the villain in a romantic comedy.

Kendrick leaned over and took the dog from her. “How’re you doing, Georgie?” His face was entirely too gentle. It made her want to shout,
“My husband didn’t leave me!”

But Kendrick didn’t deserve that. He was the best shockingly young stepdad a girl could ask for. (Kendrick was forty, only three years older than Georgie. Her mom met him when he came to clean their pathetic excuse for a pool.) (These things actually happen.) (In the Valley.)

“I’m fine, Kendrick. Thanks.”

Her mom shook her head sadly at the microwave.

“Really,” Georgie said to the whole room. “I’m better than fine. I’m staying in town for Christmas because our show is really, really close to getting a green light.”

“Your show?” her mom asked. “Is your show in trouble?”

“No. Not
Jeff’d Up. Our
show—
Passing Time.
”

“I can’t watch your show,” her mom said. “That boy is so disrespectful.”

“Trev?” Heather asked. “Everybody loves Trev.”

Trev was the middle son on
Jeff’d Up.
He was Georgie’s special creation—a slack-faced, twelve-year-old misanthrope, a character who didn’t like anything and never did anything likable.

Trev was where Georgie buried all her resentment. For Jeff German, for the network, for Trev himself. For the fact that she was working on a show that was basically
Home Improvement
without anything good—without Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Wilson.

Trev was also the breakout star of the show.

Georgie narrowed her eyes at her sister. “You love Trev?”

“God, not me,” Heather said. “But everybody. The thugs at school all wear ‘This sucks’ T-shirts. Like, not the intimidating, cool thugs—the depressing, homely thugs who listen to Insane Clown Posse.”

“It’s not ‘This sucks,’” Kendrick said helpfully. “It’s more like
‘This suuuuuuucks.’
”

Heather laughed. “Oh my God, Dad, you sound just like him.”

“This suuuuuucks,” Kendrick said again.

“This sucks” was Trev’s catchphrase. Georgie took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.

Her mom shook her head and set a plate of tuna mac on the table, then took the dog back from Kendrick, rubbing her face into its damp gray muzzle.
“Did you think I forgot about you?”
she cooed.
“I didn’t forget about you, little mama.”

“Thanks,” Georgie said, sitting down at the table and pulling the plate of tuna mac toward her.

Kendrick patted her shoulder. “I like Trev. Is your new show going to be more like that?”

“Not exactly,” she said, frowning.

It still made her uncomfortable when Kendrick tried to be fatherly with her. He was only three years older.
“You’re not my dad,”
she sometimes wanted to say. Like she was twelve years old. (When Georgie was twelve, Kendrick was fifteen. She might have flirted with him at the mall.)

“
Passing Time
,” Heather said in a smooth voice, pulling a pizza box out of the refrigerator, “is an hour-long dramedy. It’s something plus something plus something else.”

Georgie threw her sister an appreciative smile. At least someone listened to her.

“It’s
Square Pegs
,” Georgie said, “plus
My So-Called Life
, plus
Arrested Development.
”

If Seth were here, he’d add,
“Plus some show that people actually watched.”

And then Scotty would say,
“Plus
The Cosby Show
!”

And then Georgie would say,
“Minus the Cosbys,”
and feel bad that their pilot didn’t have more diversity. (She’d bring that up with Seth tomorrow. . . . )

Passing Time
was a show that captured all the angst of high school life—all the highs and lows, all the absurdities—and then made them higher and lower and more absurd.

That’s how they’d pitched it, anyway. That’s how Georgie had pitched it to Maher Jafari last month. She’d been on fire in that meeting. She’d hit every note.

She and Seth had gone straight from Jafari’s office to the bar across the street, and Seth had stood on his barstool to toast Georgie, flicking Canadian Club down on her head like holy water.

“You are fucking magic, Georgie McCool. That was a Streisandic performance in there. You had him laughing through his fucking tears, did you see that?”

Then Seth had started stomping his feet on the barstool, and Georgie’d grabbed on to his bare ankles—
“Stop, you’ll fall.”

“You,”
he’d said, craning his head down and holding his drink up,
“are my secret weapon.”

Heather leaned against Georgie’s chair now, gesturing with a piece of cold pizza. “
Passing Time
is already my favorite show,” she said, “and I’m part of a very desirable demographic.”

Georgie swallowed the bite of tuna mac that was sitting at the back of her throat. “Thanks, kid.”

“Have you talked to the girls today?” her mom asked. She was holding the pug right up against her face, scratching between its ears with her chin. The pug’s watery eyes bulged with every pull.

Georgie grimaced and looked away. “No,” she said. “I was just about to call.”

“What’s the time difference?” Kendrick asked. “Isn’t it almost midnight there?”

“Oh God.” Georgie dropped her fork. “You’re right.” Her cell phone was dead, so she walked over to the brown Trimline that was still stuck to the kitchen wall.

Heather and Kendrick and her mom and the dog were all watching her. Another dog shuffled into the kitchen, its toenails clicking against the tile, and looked up.

“Is there still a phone in my room?” Georgie asked.

“I think so,” her mom said. “Check the closet.”

“Great. I’ll just . . .” Georgie rushed out of the kitchen and down the hall.

Her mom had turned Georgie’s childhood bedroom into the pug trophy room as soon as she graduated from high school—which was irritating because Georgie didn’t actually move out of the house until she graduated from college.

“Where else am I supposed to display their ribbons?”
her mom had said when Georgie objected.
“They’re award-winning dogs. You’ve got one foot out the door anyway.”

“Not currently. Currently, I have both feet on my bed.”

“Take off your shoes, Georgie. This isn’t a barn.”

Georgie’s old bed was still in the room. So was her night table, a lamp, and some books she’d never gotten around to packing up. She opened the closet and dug through a pile of leftover junk until she found an antique, yellow rotary phone; she’d bought it herself at a garage sale back in high school—because she’d been exactly that kind of pretentious.

Christ
, it was heavy. She untangled the cord and crawled halfway under the bed to plug it in. (She’d forgotten the way that felt—the way the outlet bit down on the end of the cord with a
click
.) Then she climbed up on the bed and settled the phone in her lap, taking a deep breath before she picked up the receiver.

She tried Neal’s cell phone first, but the call didn’t go through—their network sucked in Omaha. So she dialed his mom’s home number from memory. . . .

Georgie and Neal had spent one summer apart—junior year, right after they started dating. She’d called him in Omaha every night that summer. From this room, actually, on this yellow telephone.

There were fewer dog portraits on the walls back then, but still enough to make Georgie feel like she needed to hide under the blankets when she stayed up late talking dirty to Neal. (You wouldn’t expect Neal to be filthy on the phone; normally he didn’t even swear. But it’d been a long summer.)

His mom answered after four rings. “Hello?”

“Hey, Margaret, hi. I know it’s late, sorry, I always forget about time zones—is Neal still up?”

“Georgie?”

“Oh, sorry. Yeah, it’s me—Georgie.”

Neal’s mom paused. “Just a minute, I’ll see.”

Georgie waited, feeling nervous for some reason. Like she was calling some guy she liked when she was fourteen. Not the guy she’d been married to for fourteen years.

“Hello?” Neal sounded like he’d been asleep. His voice was rough.

She sat up straighter. “Hey.”

“Georgie.”

“Yeah . . .
Hey.
”

“It’s really late here.”

“I know, I always forget, I’m sorry. Time zones.”

“I—” He made a frustrated huffing noise. “—I guess I didn’t expect you to call.”

“Oh. Well. I just wanted to make sure you got in okay.”

“I got in fine,” he said.

“Good.”