The Actor and the Housewife (39 page)

Okay, okay, you don’t have to be so snappish about it.

Would you like to open it?

I think so. I think I do. Yes, I do. Hey, whatdo-youknow, I really do.

Yeesh, it’s huge.

Only a carat. I knew you wouldn’t want anything ostentatious. May I?

Holy cow. This is really going to happen, isn’t it?

Please say it is.

It is.

It is?

It is. It really is. And I’m the craziest and maybe even the happiest woman in the world.

This will work. And we won’t have to be alone. And Polly won’t have to be sad. And Hyrum—oh, Hyrum will be thrilled!

And you?

I’m thrilled. I really am. Is that strange? Is it possible? I didn’t think it was, but now I’m—

. . . the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

You need to get out more.

You can’t tease me right now. I’m too smitten. I won’t be baited.

Oh, you’re such a charmer.

And you’re my sexy snake.

Please, I’m so not a sexy snake.

You are.

Am not. I’m more hedgehoggy.

But a very sexy hedgehog.

But did it work as a story? She was so close to it she couldn’t tell.

If I can sell the screenplay, she decided, that will be the real test.

So she went through the script again, changing the names, locations, and obvious details. The Mike part was the hardest. She’d glossed over it in her first draft, and found herself sickened by the merest idea of revisiting his death, even in fictionalized form. So she tweaked. The fictional husband, Brian, didn’t hold a candle to the real Mike. He was a paper doll of a man, eventually leaving his long-suffering wife to pursue a golfing career in the Philippines.

Her new character, Jennifer Baker, wasn’t a Mormon (seriously, who would buy a Mormon house wife as a romantic comedy heroine?). Instead she was just a conservative, poster-wielding Republican. The new Felix, Isaac Black, was a hot-fired liberal, and he wasn’t British (too specific—a studio would want more freedom in casting). Jennifer was from Idaho, and Isaac was a rock star instead of an actor. They first met in Detroit, where Jennifer was selling a song she wrote to a music producer. And then, just because it was funny, at their first meeting—instead of just insulting each other and then going to dinner—Becky had Jennifer go into early labor and Isaac take her to the hospital. But in essentials it was still the story of Becky and Felix.

As she went through the last scene, Becky realized that it was more about the author trying to figure out if she could love again. In the final draft, she scrubbed the climax clean of the uncertainty and made Jennifer fall totally and beautifully in love with Isaac.

Becky sent it to Karen with a Post-it note: “Does this work?” The next weekend, Karen made an offer on the script.

For two days, Becky couldn’t stop dancing. She danced while she washed dishes, danced while she cooked dinner, danced in the car while driving the boys hither and thither. The money would really come in handy just then—but that wasn’t why she danced.

“Thank you, Mike,” she said while getting ready for bed. “Thank you, honey.” It was a miracle, it was an against-the-odds buzzer-scoring victory. She
could
keep loving. She was not doomed after all.

Yes, the lightness in her middle, the shifting of her heart—all the signs indicated she was about to fall in love again. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Like in a movie. It wouldn’t be like Mike; it never could, no matter who it was. But she felt so different, as if she’d been in a dark room and someone just turned on the light. The palsied part of her diminished, her old confidence began to thicken in her, and she no longer questioned every decision she made as a mother. She knew when to talk to Polly, what to say to Hyrum, how to comfort Sam. And it was all due, she thought, to knowing she could have another partner, a temporary partner, someone who would be a proxy father to her children, hold her hand and walk with her through the rest of this life. It was a beautiful idea, as beautiful as a ballad. And like a ballad, there was a touch of sadness curling the final notes.

The thought that it would be Felix made her thrill and sing—but also made her want to hide and shiver. Surely her reluctance was her worry that if loving him was possible now, then it had been possible then too. That she’d betrayed Mike all along. Taking in that thought was like swallowing a handful of quarters.

But the coincidences, the perfect path—it all points to Felix, she thought. And me. It was designed by a hand greater than mine. It has to be true.

Shame and guilt tarnished the joy somewhat, but it was not ruined. The story worked. Mike had given her the okay. Becky began to believe.

In which everything is decided at a high altitude

But then again, she didn’t even call Felix. Or send him an e-mail. Or text him. Or anything. Wimp.

And what if . . .
duh, duh, DUH!
What if he was with someone else already? No, it couldn’t be. The plan was perfect, complex and gorgeous, from Felix entering Annette’s office to now—she was sure it was a divinely woven tapestry that wouldn’t unravel randomly, not here at the end. But still she didn’t know what to do. She prayed, she talked about it with Fiona as frankly as she’d ever dared speak mother to daughter. It was an astonishing thing, admitting to a child her own fears and vulnerability, to take advice instead of give. Astonishing and lovely too.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Fiona said. “If you don’t have a really definite idea of what to do, if your, you know, prayers and stuff aren’t being answered clearly, then maybe the answer is, wait.”

“My smartest girl,” Becky said.

So she waited. She was not good at waiting.

A week after Karen made an offer on
The Rock Star and the Housewife
, Becky returned from the grocery store to find her street unusually populated—people loitering on lawns, walking around, looking at something. A pain of panic ripped through Becky and she prayed, Please let there not be a fire. Please let it not be my house. All four kids are at home.

There was no fire. Instead, when she pulled the minivan into the driveway, she spotted a helicopter in the park across the street.

Felix was standing beside it.

She jumped out of her car and almost ran to him, but stopped. She didn’t know where the story was going to go from here. Her heart was still stinging, and failed hope would make the pain worse.

She started toward him at a casual pace, channeling her nervous-ness into nonchalance. “Don’t you need a special permit to fly one of these around a neighborhood?”

“Indeed,” Felix said. “Perhaps you haven’t heard, but I’m wealthy and consequential.”

“Uh-huh.”

She tried to keep her tone light, to feel her way through a conversation with Felix as if they were as they’d always been, but there was a space between them now, drafty and chilled. He had not come for her, and the way they had parted in New York meant that he wouldn’t be coming for her again. That spot on her heart was icy.

“It’s good of you to remember Sam,” she said after an awkward pause. “He’d been asking about the helicopter.”

“To be honest, I’d forgotten until Fiona phoned.”

“She did?”

“She said he was pining. I can’t bear to hear of Sam pining. His face wasn’t made for it.”

Becky blinked. He was right. Sam had a round, happy face (like his father), and she’d always thought that his sad expressions looked out-of-place. It was the kind of thing she and Mike would have talked about, and she couldn’t recall ever making that observation to Felix. To know he noticed Sam made her feel teary.

Sam hopped out of the helicopter, startling her out of tears.

“Mom! Did you see me? Did you see me up there?”

“Oh, you already went flying?”

“Yeah, it was great. It was noisy. I didn’t know it’d be so noisy. We had to wear headphones and talk on microphones like astronauts. We were going so high I thought I would puke. But I didn’t. Felix said we couldn’t go into antigrav because a helicopter can’t carry its own weight up high where the air is thinner, so you’d need a strong force to break through the atmosphere, and I said that if he gave me a bowl of chili, I could maybe make a powerful blast.” Sam laughed.

“Oh that’s pretty language.” Becky shook her head.

“He did say that,” Felix confirmed. “Right on the microphone, right into my ear. The pilot laughed.”

“So did you, Jeeves,” Sam said, using the nickname Hyrum had given Felix. “A bowl of chili, Mom. Ha! I’m going to go call Jeff and tell him. He’ll pee his pants—”

“Samuel Michael . . .” Becky said with a warning in her voice.

“Okay, okay, I’ll watch my mouth.” He scampered off to the house, leaving Becky and Felix in an odd kind of privacy—alone with half the neighborhood looking on.

“So your debt’s paid,” Becky said.

“Yes.” His hands were in his pockets. He looked forlorn, his eyes on his shoes, glancing up briefly to take in the sight of neighbors shambling around the block. “I guess I’d better go before the police come after me.”

“You said you had a permit!”

He smiled through eyes half-lidded. She swatted him on the shoulder.

“You better.” Becky cleared her throat. “Do you want to come in for a minute at least? Have some dinner?”

“No, I’d better get going. I have somewhere to be.”

“Oh.” And that was it. He’d never come back again. She should say that she’d been wrong, that she’d had a dream about Mike, and Fiona had said it was okay, and that things made more sense now, and it worked in the screenplay so it might work for real. She should say all of that, and quickly before she changed her mind.

He turned away, climbing into the helicopter, and she knew she couldn’t say it. She couldn’t risk the blank look on his face, or a response like, “Don’t embarrass yourself, Becky, let’s just go our separate ways.” Or his stone face. Definitely not his stone face. She couldn’t be sure how he felt. She couldn’t even be sure that she wouldn’t change her mind, shy away and hurt him again. No, it was too dangerous. She was continually shocked to realize how much of her strength had been Mike.

“Okay,” she said. “Good-bye then.”

“Yes, good-bye.” He sat in the helicopter, then turned back to her. “That is, unless you’d like a ride as well?”

She raised an eyebrow. His expression was suspiciously innocent as he held out his hand. She looked back at the house. All four of her children were standing on the front porch. Sam was chatting on the cordless phone, but the older kids were looking at her.

“Go on, Mom,” Polly called.

Fiona was grinning.

“Felix, is something suspicious going on?” Becky asked.

“Absolutely.” He took her hand and pulled her up.

And they went up and up.

She couldn’t help it—she squealed as they zoomed over houses and veered toward the mountains. Breathless, they rose above clouds, hovering between white and blue, her stomach floating. For a moment there was only sky and sunlight melting into brilliance, and Felix too, then they dipped down over mountain slopes, skimming the tops of pine trees.

She thought it was just a scenic tour until the pi lot landed the helicopter on the rocky top of a mountain peak.

“We’ll be back,” Felix said, nodding to the pi lot as he helped Becky down from the helicopter.

“We will?”

“I certainly hope so. Unless you fancy the wilderness life and possess previously unexhibited survival skills?”

He took her hand and led her down a slope. He was holding her left hand, and his fingers briefly touched her ring finger, as if feeling for her wedding band. It was gone. She’d taken it off three days before, wrapping it in a tissue as she used to do when her kids lost a baby tooth, and put it in her jewelry box. The touch there gave her a thrill—of panic or anticipation, she wasn’t sure.

They entered a grove of pines, and Becky held her breath when she saw what was waiting for her: a plaid picnic blanket, a basket full of blueberry muffins and chocolate croissants, bouquets of sunflowers wrapped in ribbons and dangling from the trees, and even a sweater her size, which she promptly put on against the mountain breeze.

“I thought you were done wooing me,” she said, cozying into the blue sweater, smelling the sweet dryness of lamb’s wool.

“So did I. But apparently, Mrs. Jack, you’re not easy to forget.” He started up a CD player hidden behind a stone, and “A Kiss to Build a Dream On” hummed over the mountaintop.

“Wow, you must buy CD players in bulk.”

He held out his hand, she took it, and they were dancing under the sky.

She’d danced with him many times, but now she wasn’t comparing his light manner of leading with Mike’s big warmness, or worrying they were too close and careless, or even feeling befuddled and giddy as she had at the Blue Note. Now she was just dancing with Felix on top of the world. She was aware of the heat of his hand holding hers, the heat between their bodies, the subtle warmth of his breath on her neck. The touch made her skin feel warm all over, as if she’d just relaxed into a bath.

Very slowly, he pulled her in closer. Their bodies touched. Their necks touched. She found herself closing her eyes. Oh, he was such a little Don Juan, he really was. She took in his smell, and her breath thickened.

“You’re making it hard to breathe,” she said.

“I think you just complimented me.”

“It’s probably just the thin mountain air.”

“No, it’s definitely me.”

He was right.

“I don’t know why . . .” she started.

“What is it?” he asked with such tenderness, the words softened the hard edges from the world, and she melted into a Monet painting.

She had to answer. There was no hiding from anything inside the trees, dancing on pine needles and almost touching clouds. “I don’t know why you love me.”

She expected an eye roll or a grimace, but he kept that calm sweetness.

“I love that you make me laugh. I love that you know me, even my grimy underside, and though you see the whole world through a strict moral lens, you still approve of me. I love that you turn words like
Rudolf
into verbs. I love that you love Mike and your kids more than anything. I love you as a mother, I love you as a friend. I love your stubbornness. Three times you’ve had a chance to have me and you walked away, and I think I’ll chase you to the ends of the earth.”

“Oh,” she said. It was a feat that she’d been able to say that much. There was no air now.

They kept dancing. She was testing out a new idea, this possibility of feeling differently about him. To feel him not just with her head and part of her heart, but with her whole body, to want him, to long for him in that way, missing him even when he was near.

I’m not ready, she thought, and her heart and stomach collided in dizzying panic.

But she wanted to be ready. All the providential evidence seemed to be shooing her in that direction. If she kissed Felix, maybe it would be clearer. Maybe she could see that she really could love him in that new way, that till-death-do-us-part way. A kiss could be Dr. Frankenstein’s lightning, Wendy’s pixie dust. A kiss might initiate one of those astonishing but oh-so-right transformations, like how a girl could start life as Rebecca Louise Hyde and end up as Becky Jack.

Her thoughts were startled away by a warm, tickly sensation—he had kissed her finger. The tip of her index finger, then her middle finger, then her palm. It took her several moments to realize that they’d stopped dancing. One arm around her waist, he was holding her body close to his, the other hand now pressing the inside of her wrist to his lips.

With a rush and a thud, there she was in the moment that meant everything. If she kept her face turned away, if she let him go, took a step back, made an off hand comment about the view, perhaps the question of Becky and Felix would stay frozen there between the trees, unanswered until it frayed and blew away. But she turned her face to his, resting her forehead against his cheek, and inside, she felt her heart turn to him too.

This is real, she thought. This is it. Isn’t it? We can do this. We won’t have to be alone.

He raised his hand from her waist to the back of her neck, his fingers stretching into her hair. His forehead touched hers. His eyes were shut, but she kept hers open, seeing this man in a new way—not the face of the actor on the screen or the friend who swept in and out of her life. His face was unrecognizable so close. A new face, a wonderful face.

“Becky,” he whispered, “Becky, may I kiss you?”

It was the same question she’d put in her screenplay, the same he’d asked over a decade ago on the patio of the state capitol. She had laughed then. She couldn’t have laughed now for all the world. Her throat was too tight to speak, her heart was jackhammering against her chest, her whole body felt loose. All she could do was nod her head just a little. She closed her eyes because she felt too terrified to see. Maybe the mountain had fallen away beneath them, nothing but sky all around, and they were sealed in the moment before the plummet.

What if ? she couldn’t help wondering, not nearly as sure as fictional Jennifer in the screenplay. What if he . . . what if I . . . what if it all ends, what if—He clutched her hand as if they were about to take a leap and he didn’t want to lose her, but for several wild, breathless moments, that’s all that happened.

She ceased to be terrified of the kiss to come and instead panicked that it wouldn’t.

Kiss me, she thought. Please, kiss me.

The waiting, the not knowing, made her entire body ache and she didn’t think she could survive another second. She moved against him, she tilted her head until she could feel his exhale on her lips.

Excitement rumbled inside her, the kind of romantic glee she got from a good movie times a hundred. She’d fallen for Felix when he was Calvin the sexy pet shop owner. Now he was real, in her arms, wanting her. She wanted to want him too and felt a surge of frustration not knowing if she was holding flesh or cardboard or lights on a screen.

He leaned a little lower. His warm lips touched hers, once, softly. After the waiting, the touch shocked her as if she’d kissed a doorknob after dragging her feet across carpet. She winced and pulled back. Her face burned, and she felt as awkward and stupid as she had kissing Trent Harker at a school dance in tenth grade.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

They tried again. A slow kiss, a warm kiss. It was sweet, like a flake of chocolate that dissolves on the tongue, but it didn’t change her. She still felt distant and harried, as if she were a kite high in a windstorm and Felix only held her string.