Landline

“I can’t do this anymore,” he said.

“I love you,” he said, “but I’m not sure it’s enough, I’m not sure it’ll ever be enough.”

He said, “I don’t want to live like this, Georgie.”

And the next morning, he’d left for Omaha without her.

Georgie didn’t hear from Neal that whole week. She thought they were over.

She thought that maybe he was right, that they should be over.

And then, on Christmas morning, in 1998, Neal was there at her front door—down on one knee on the green indoor-outdoor carpeting, holding his great aunt’s wedding ring.

He asked Georgie to marry him.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you more than I hate everything else.”

And Georgie had laughed because only Neal would think that was a romantic thing to say.

Then she said yes.

Georgie plugged her cell phone into her laptop and made sure the ringer volume was turned all the way up.

“What are you doing?” Seth asked. “No cell phones in the writers’ room, remember? That’s your rule.”

“We’re not even officially here,” Georgie said.

“You’re not even unofficially here,” he snapped back at her.

“I’m sorry. I have a lot on my mind.”

“Right. Me, too. Four scripts, remember?”

She rubbed her eyes. It was just a dream. Last night. Even though it hadn’t felt like a dream—that’s all it could have been. An episode.

That was something people had. Normal people. Episodes. And then they laid cool cloths over their eyes and made plans to spend time near the sea.

Neal had been on her mind, Neal’s dad had been on her mind—and her brain had done the rest. That’s what Georgie’s brain was good at. Episodic storytelling.

“Probably the most important week of our career,” Seth was mumbling, “and you decide to check out.”

“I haven’t checked out,” Scotty said.

“I’m not talking about you,” Seth said to him. “I’m never talking about you.”

Scotty folded his arms. “You know, I don’t like being the butt of all your mean jokes when no one else is around. I’m not the Cliff Clavin here.”

“Oh my God”—Seth pointed at him—“you’re totally the Cliff Clavin. I’ll never stop seeing you like that now. Did you ever watch Family Ties? You’re kind of our Skippy, too.”

“I’m too young for Family Ties,” Scotty said.

“You’re too young for Cheers.”

“I watched it on Netflix.”

“You even look like Skippy—Georgie, is Scotty our Skippy? Or our Cliff?”

Georgie’d never had an episode before.

Though it felt like she might be having another one now. She stuck her glasses in her hair and pinched the top of her nose

“Georgie.” Seth poked her arm with the eraser end of his pencil. “Are you listening? Scotty—Skippy or Cliff?”

She put her glasses back on. “He’s our Radar O’Reilly.”

“Aw, Georgie.” Scotty grinned. “Stop, you’ll make me cry.”

“You’re too young for M*A*S*H,” Seth grumbled.

Scotty shrugged. “So are you.”

They worked on their show.

It was easier when they were working. Easier for Georgie to pretend that nothing was wrong.

Nothing was wrong. She’d just talked to Alice and Noomi, just a few hours ago—they were fine. And Neal was just out Christmas shopping.

So he wasn’t in any hurry to talk to her—that wasn’t unusual. What did they need to talk about? Georgie and Neal had talked every day since they’d met. (Nearly.) It’s not like they needed to catch up.

Georgie worked on her show. Their show. She and Seth got in a groove and wrote dialogue for an hour, batting the conversation back and forth between them like a Ping-Pong ball. (This was how they usually got things done. Competitive collaboration.)

Seth blinked first. Georgie caught him with an especially silly “your mom” joke, and he fell back in his chair, giggling.

“I can’t believe you guys have been doing this for twenty years,” Scotty said, sincerely, when he was done applauding.

“It hasn’t been quite that long,” Georgie said.

Seth lifted his head. “Nineteen.”

She looked at him. “Really?”

“You graduated from high school in ’94, right?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s 2013. That’s nineteen years.”

“God.”

God. Had it really been that long?

It had.

Nineteen years since Georgie stumbled across Seth in The Spoon offices.

Seventeen years since she first noticed Neal.

Fourteen since she married him, standing beside a row of lilac trees in his parents’ backyard.

Georgie never thought she’d be old enough to talk about life in big decade-long chunks like this.

It’s not that she’d thought she was going to die before now—she just never imagined it would feel this way. The heaviness of the proportions. Twenty years with the same dream. Seventeen with the same man.

Pretty soon she’d have been with Neal longer than she’d been without him. She’d know herself as his wife better than she’d ever known herself as anyone else.

It felt like too much. Not too much to have, just too much to contemplate. Commitments like boulders that were too heavy to carry.

Fourteen years since their wedding.

Fifteen years since Neal tried to drive away from her. Fifteen since he drove back.

Seventeen since she first saw him, saw something in him that she couldn’t look away from.

Seth was still watching Georgie, one eyebrow raised.

What would he say if she tried to tell him about the last thirty-six hours?

“Jesus, Georgie, you can go crazy next week. Everything can happen next week. Sleep. Christmas. Nervous breakdowns. This week we’re making our dreams come true.”

“I’m gonna make some coffee,” Georgie said.

CHAPTER 9

The three of them kept working through dinner. They started moving even faster, making even more progress. . . .

And then they all realized they were moving so fast because they were turning their script into an episode of Jeff’d Up.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” Seth said. “We’re corrupted. We’re completely corrupted.”

“This suuuuuuucks,” Scotty said.