Nora Goes Off Script

by Annabel Monaghan

“The sun comes up here, Nora.” A normal person, or frankly my ten-year-old, would tell him that the sun comes up everywhere. That’s how the sun works, genius. But I know exactly what he means. There is something about the way the sun comes up right here that seems to wash the whole world clean. It touches every single leaf as it rises, leaving me both grounded and inspired. It was here that I started to find my lost self again.

I imagined tomorrow’s sunrise and how that would be the last sunrise I’d ever watch with him in the house. The remaining sunrises would all be mine. I felt a profound relief that the struggle was over, like if you stopped treading water and then found yourself effortlessly floating to the surface. Go, Ben. Go find your big life.

“I’ve been thinking about that for a long time,” he says. “You only met me two weeks ago.” Leo laughs and kisses my shoulder. “You really aren’t very romantic, are you?” “I might be an overthinker.” “I’ll fix you,” he says, and I turn around to face him. He’s joking, but I love the idea of being on the other side of the fixing equation. I love the idea that he thinks I’m worth the trouble. I love that buried deep in that sentence is a hint of the future tense.

We are in the middle of a days-long conversation that winds around the most inconsequential and most monumental details of our lives.

Leo and I sit facing the tea house and the forest behind it, and he says to no one, “It’s so beautiful here. It’s like every day something new has bloomed.” “Wait till July when the hydrangea come in,” Kate says. “They’ll blow your mind.” The word “July” hangs in the air. Kate and I lock eyes and I look away. Mickey is leaning back in his chair watching Leo. Leo doesn’t miss a beat. “Can’t wait,” he says. He squeezes my hand, and I know in that moment that I want Leo and those hydrangea blooms to be in the same place at the same time more than anything else. It scares me how much I want him to stay.

“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 trickiest part of being a mom, especially a single mom, is knowing when it’s okay to fall apart. Today they will wake up to a familiar feeling of loss, the light scab they’ve formed over the wound Ben left will be dislodged. I invited this in. Arthur will have to go to rehearsals and perform. I will too.

There’s no need to add color—the forest behind the tea house is a curtain of all shades of green. Above it is a clear summer sky. On either side of the tea house’s open door is the annual explosion of blue hydrangea. They welcome me down the aisle, perfectly framing Leo in my line of sight. Leo’s here in July. And he’s staying for all of the Julys after this. Something blue, indeed.