Landline (4 page)

“Yeah . . .”

“How’s your mom?” she asked.

“She’s fine—they’re both fine, everybody’s fine. Look, Georgie, it’s late.”

“Right. Neal, I’m sorry—I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“You will?”

“Yeah. I mean, I’ll call
earlier
tomorrow. I just, um . . .”

He huffed again. “Fine.” And then he hung up.

Georgie sat there for a second, holding the dead receiver against her ear.

Neal had hung up on her.

She hadn’t even had a chance to ask about the girls.

And she hadn’t gotten to say “I love you”—Georgie always said “I love you,” and Neal always said it back, no matter how perfunctory it was. It was a safety check, proof that they were both still in this thing.

Maybe Neal was upset with her.

Obviously
he was upset with her, he was always upset with her—but maybe he was more upset than she thought.

Maybe.

Or maybe he was just tired. He’d been up since four.

Georgie had been up since four thirty. Suddenly she felt tired, too. She thought about getting back in the car and driving out to Calabasas, to an empty house where nobody was waiting up for her. . . .

Then kicked off her shoes and climbed under her old bedspread, clapping twice to turn off the light. She could still see fifty pairs of mournful pug eyes flashing in the dark.

She’d call Neal tomorrow.

She’d start with “I love you.”

T
here was a Post-it note from Pamela (the front-desk girl) on Georgie’s office door. She must have missed it when she left last night.

Your husband called while you were talking to Mr. German. He said to tell you they landed and to call when you can.

Georgie’d already tried to call Neal twice that morning on the way to work—she wanted something to replace their last stilted conversation in her head—but he hadn’t picked up.

Which wasn’t that unusual. Neal often left his phone downstairs or in the car, or he forgot to turn his ringer on. He never
purposely
ignored Georgie’s calls. Never so far.

She hadn’t left him a message—she kept freezing up. But at least Neal would see that she’d called. That was something.

He’d sounded so off last night. . . .

Clearly Georgie had woken him up. But it was more than that. The way that he’d said his mom was fine—
“they’re both fine”
—for a second, Georgie thought maybe he was talking about his dad.

Neal’s dad had died three years ago. He was a railroad yardman, and he had a heart attack at work. When the call came that day from his mom, Neal had gone into their bedroom without saying a word. It was only the second time Georgie had seen him cry.

Maybe Neal was disoriented last night, waking up in his parents’ house, sleeping in his old room. All the memories of his dad . . .

Or maybe he’d just meant Alice and Noomi.
“She’s fine. They’re both fine. Everybody’s fine.”

Georgie set her coffee on her desk and plugged in her phone.

Seth was watching her. “Are you about to start your period?”

That should probably be an offensive workplace question, but it wasn’t. You can’t work with someone every day of your adult life and never talk to him about your PMS.

Or maybe you could, but Georgie was glad she didn’t have to. “No.” She shook her head at Seth. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” he said. “Are those your clothes from yesterday?”

Jeans. One of Neal’s old Metallica concert T-shirts. A cardigan.

“We should work in the big room,” she said, “with the whiteboards.”

“Those
are
your clothes from yesterday,” Seth said, “and they were sad enough yesterday.”

Georgie exhaled. “I spent the night at my mom’s house, okay? You’re lucky I showered.” She’d used Heather’s shower, and Heather’s shampoo. And now she smelled like frosting.

“You spent the night at your mom’s house? Were you too drunk to drive?”

“Too tired,” she said.

He narrowed his eyes. “You still look tired.”

Georgie frowned back at him; Seth looked pristine, of course. Gingham shirt, tan pants cuffed high over his bare ankles, suede saddle shoes. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a Banana Republic. Or what Georgie imagined that might look like—it’d been years since she was actually inside a Banana Republic. She did all her shopping online now, and only when things got desperate.

Seth, however, had never let himself go. If anything, he’d tightened his grip. He looked like he hadn’t aged a day since 1994, since the first day he and Georgie met.

The first time she’d seen Seth, he was sitting on a pretty girl’s desk, playing with her hair. Georgie had been excited just to see another girl in
The Spoon
offices.

She found out later that the girl only came in on Wednesdays to sell ads.
“Girls aren’t usually into comedy,”
Seth explained. Which was better than what a lot of the other guys on staff said: “Girls aren’t funny.” (After working at the college humor magazine for four years, Georgie eventually convinced a few of them to add, “Present company excluded.”)

She’d chosen the University of Los Angeles because of
The Spoon
. Well, and also because of the theater program, and because ULA was close enough to her mom’s house that Georgie could still live at home.

But
The Spoon
was the main thing. It was Georgie’s thing.

She’d started reading it in the ninth grade; she used to save back issues and stick the front pages up on her bedroom wall. Everyone said
The Spoon
was
The Harvard Lampoon
of the West Coast—lighter, better-looking. Some of her favorite comedy writers had gotten their start there.

Georgie had shown up at
The Spoon
offices, a rumpus room/computer lab in the basement of the student union, the first week of her freshman year, willing to do anything—willing to make coffee or proofread the personal ads—but
wanting
, so badly, to write.

Seth was the first person she met there. He was a sophomore and already an editor, and initially he was the only guy on staff who’d make eye contact with Georgie at editorial meetings.

But that was because he was Seth, and because she was a girl.

Seth’s chief pastime back then was paying attention to girls. (Another thing that hadn’t changed.) Lucky for him, then and now, girls usually paid attention back.

Seth was shiny and handsome—tall, with brown eyes and thick auburn hair—and he dressed like he belonged on the cover of an early Beach Boys album.

Georgie got used to Seth’s madras shirts and khaki pants.

She got used to
Seth
. Always sitting on her desk or falling onto the couch next to her. She got used to always having his attention at
The Spoon
—because she was almost always the only girl in the room.

And because they were a good team.

That was pretty obvious, almost immediately. Georgie and Seth laughed at all the same jokes, and they were funnier together—as soon as one of them walked into a room, the other started putting on a show.

That’s when Seth had started calling Georgie his secret weapon. The other guys on staff at
The Spoon
were so busy ignoring her, they mostly missed how funny she was.

“Nobody cares who writes their favorite sitcoms,”
Seth would say.
“Nobody cares if it’s a cool guy with little wire-rimmed glasses.”
(It was the ’90s.)
“Or a cute girl with yellow hair.”
(That was Georgie.)
“Stick with me, Georgie, and nobody’ll see us coming.”

She did.

After graduation, she’d stuck with Seth through five half-hour sitcoms, each one a little less terrible than the last.

And now they finally had a hit, a huge hit—
Jeff’d Up
—and who cared if it was terrible? (Who cared, besides Georgie. And Seth. And the rest of the bitter, disillusioned writing staff.) Because it was a
hit
, and it was theirs.

And it would all be worth it if this deal went through.

Seth had been ecstatic ever since they got the call from Maher Jafari’s office. They’d thought, even after their triumphant pitch meeting, that Jafari was going to pass on
Passing Time
. On them. He’d sent them a weird note that seemed like a rejection. But then, two days ago, he’d called to say that the network needed a midseason replacement. Something they could turn pretty quickly. And pretty cheap. “I’ve got a feeling about this one,” Jafari had said. “Can you make it happen in a week?”

Seth had promised to make
everything
happen in a week. “We can make it happen by
last
week,” he said.

Then he’d climbed up on his desk chair to dance again. “This is our
Sopranos
, Georgie, it’s our
Mad Men.
”

“Get down,” she’d said. “Everyone’s going to think you’re drunk.”

“I may as well be,” he said, “because I’m
about
to get drunk. And time is an illusion.”

“You’re a
de
lusion. We can’t write four scripts before Christmas.”

Seth didn’t stop dancing. He pumped his chin and did a little lasso move over his head. “We’ve got till the twenty-seventh. That’s ten whole days.”

“Ten days during which I’ll be in Omaha, Nebraska, celebrating Christmas.”

“Fuck Omaha. Christmas came early.”

“Stop dancing, Seth. Talk to me.”

He’d stopped dancing and frowned at her. “Are you hearing me?
Maher Jafari wants our show.
Our show, remember? The one we were put on this earth to write?”

“Do you think anybody actually gets put on earth to write TV comedy?”

“Yes,” Seth said. “Us.”

He’d been irrepressible ever since—even when Georgie was arguing with him, even when she was ignoring him. Seth wouldn’t stop smiling. He wouldn’t stop
humming
, which should probably annoy her. But Georgie was used to that, too.

She looked back up at him now to ask about a
Jeff’d Up
deadline. . . .

And ended up just looking at him.

He was grinning to himself and typing an e-mail with his index fingers, just to be silly. His eyebrows were dancing.

She sighed.

They were supposed to end up together, Seth and Georgie.

Well, technically, they
had
ended up together. They’d talked every day since that first day they met.

But they were supposed to end up
together
-together. Everyone thought it would happen—Georgie had thought it would happen.

Just as soon as Seth exhausted his other possibilities, as soon as he worked through his queue of admirers. He hadn’t been in any hurry, and Georgie didn’t have a say in the matter. She’d taken a number. She was waiting patiently.

And then, one day, she wasn’t.

After Seth headed down to the writers’ room, Georgie decided to try calling Neal again.

He picked up after three rings. “Hello?”

No. It wasn’t Neal. “Alice? Is that you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Mommy.”

“I know. Your song played when the phone rang.”

“What’s my song?”

Alice started singing “Good Day Sunshine.”

Georgie bit her lip. “That’s my song?”

“Yep.”

“That’s a good song.”

“Yep.”

“Hey,” Georgie said, “where’s Daddy?”

“Outside.”

“Outside?”

“He’s shoveling the snow,” Alice said. “There’s
snow
here. We’re gonna have a white Christmas.”

“That’s lucky. Did you have a good plane trip?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What was the best part? . . . Alice?” The girls liked answering the phone—and they loved calling people—but they always lost interest once they were on the line. “
Alice
. Are you watching TV?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Pause it and talk to Mommy.”

“I can’t. Grandma doesn’t have pause.”

“Then turn it off for a minute.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Okay, just . . .” Georgie tried not to sound irritated. “I really miss you.”

“I miss you, too.”

“I love you guys . . . Alice?”

“Yeah?”

“Let me talk to Noomi.”

There was some shuffling, then a thump like somebody had dropped the phone—then finally, “Meow?”

“Noomi? It’s Mommy.”

“Meow.”

“Meow. What are you doing?”

“We’re watching Chip ’n’ Dale.”

“Was Grandma happy to see you?”

“She said we could watch Chip ’n’ Dale.”

“Okay. I love you.”

“You’re the best mommy in the world!”

“Thanks. Hey, Noomi, tell Daddy I called. Okay?”

“Meow.”

“Meow. Tell Daddy, okay?”

“Meow!”

“Meow.” Georgie ended the call, then fidgeted with her phone for a minute, flipping through a few photos of the girls. She hated talking to them on the phone; it made them feel farther away. And it made her feel helpless. Like, even if she heard something bad happening, there’d be nothing she could do to stop it. One time Georgie had called home from the freeway, and all she could do was listen while Alice dropped the phone in her cereal bowl, then tried to decide whether to pick it up.

Plus . . . the girls’ voices were higher on the phone. They sounded younger, and Georgie could hear their every breath. It just always made her realize that she was missing them. Actually missing them. That they kept on growing and changing when she wasn’t there.

If Georgie didn’t talk to her kids all day, it was easier to pretend like their whole world froze in place while she was at work.

She called them every day. Usually twice.

Georgie and Seth and Scotty worked on
Passing Time
long after dark. They worked until Scotty fell asleep with his head tipped back over the edge of his chair, his mouth hanging open. Seth wanted to leave him like that. “At least we know he’ll be here on time tomorrow.”