Nora Goes Off Script

by Annabel Monaghan

When you emerge onto the main road it feels like you’ve been transported from one world to another, like a bride leaving the church.

I distinctly remember hearing Ben use the word “shed” when we walked into it, and I ignored him the way you do when you’re trying to stay married.

The sun rises behind it differently every day. Some days it’s a solid bar of sherbet that rolls up like movie credits and fills the sky. Some days the light dapples through the leaves in a muted gray.

My superpower is methodically placing a man and woman in the same shiny town, populated by unusually happy people with maddeningly small problems.

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.

“It’s the classic self-correcting problem. If someone leaves you, it’s because they didn’t want to be with you. All you lost was someone who didn’t want to be there anyway.”

He’d belittle the life I’d chosen and worked so hard to build like it was less than.

At the corner of arrogance and cluelessness, you find the worst kind of person.

A noticer is a person who can never be entirely self-absorbed, though he’s pretty close.

The rain has stopped and everything has a just-washed look to it, like green peppers that have just been misted in the produce section.

“Have you ever felt like you’re disappearing?” he asks. “Like you’re sure one day you’re going to wake up and find that the truest parts of yourself have been replaced by someone else’s plans?”

How many times did I wake up next to Ben and wonder, Where did I go? His face would reflect either indifference or mild distaste, and I’d try to remember back when I was a person who deserved to be loved. I didn’t know what Ben was looking at, but it wasn’t me. I was gone.

The magnolia trees that line my driveway are particularly flirtatious this morning, exploding with giant blossoms.

It occurs to me, once again, what a luxury it is to be single and able to fall apart. Not to mention the luxury of being able to buy yourself a week’s break.

I sort of became taken by the ease of it all. His quiet expectation that the world would arrange itself around his whims. His confidence that he would never be called out or punished for any wrongdoing.

“You’ve just got to own up,” Leo says at dinner, gnawing on a chicken bone. “If you do it enough, it’s not even that hard. ‘I blew it, I’m sorry.’ It’s not such a big deal.”

“This is my dad’s favorite thing to talk about—personal responsibility. If you own up to not being perfect, life gets easier.

Don’t be an entrepreneur if you don’t want to work at it. Don’t belittle your kids if you want them to love you.

I am so comfortable with Leo that I sometimes think I’ve lost the ability to pause between thinking something and saying something.

“Well, this is new,” I say. “It is,” he says and takes my sweaty hand. “I mean, it’s a nice change from my old loop.” “I mean, you’re the first person I’ve ever been in love with,” he says. Just like that. It’s a Wednesday, I think, but I’m not even sure. In a meadow dotted with trees, covered in sweat with birds chirping around us, Leo Vance is in love with me. In that second, my life is like the tea house—I can see all the way through to the other side where there’s an entirely different reality.

The basic truth of parenting fills my heart: If your kids are okay, you don’t really have any problems. I will relish this feeling.

I feel uniquely powerless, as if the entirety of my happiness lies in someone else’s hands.

“The secret to a happy marriage is that you give a hundred and ten percent to him and he gives a hundred and ten percent to you.”

He treats Penny like a business partner, like they’re board members of their family unit.

While this part of their marriage doesn’t exactly sweep this romance writer off her feet, I know that at the core of their marriage is an unshakable mutual respect. No eye rolling, no sarcasm.

“This is what I’m saying. Go big or go home. For once in your life, just buy the shoes.”

My mom knows this and fills the room with words. This is one of the best parts of my mom, her ability to fill a space with words that will take things in a new direction.

Maybe there are moments where people come together and you can just seal them in their own space while you move on with your life. Maybe what we had was a secret you keep hidden in a book to take out and ponder on your birthday.

enough. I was in so much pain for so long that I wasn’t willing to make room for what was so obvious. There’s nothing more shameful than this retrospective knowing, because it reminds you how blind you can be to things that don’t jibe with the reality you’re trying to believe in.

He loves you and Bernie, but he just doesn’t know how to love his own life. You’re good enough, Arthur. The problem is your dad doesn’t think he is.”

the best things come back. Sometimes it’s right after the commercial, sometimes it takes longer. But time and sunshine bring growth, and life unfolds just the way it’s supposed to.