Chapter 22
ALL PUBLICITY IS GOOD publicity,” Stella reiterated to Nora, as the two of them sat inside Gramercy Tavern sharing lunch on a Thursday in the middle of February.
Outside it had started snowing, and Nora glanced out the large window to her left, watching the way the white flakes looked peaceful, even beautiful, from here.
When she had to go back out on the street and walk to the train after lunch, it would be a different story.
She had forgone boots for impractical pretty heels for this lunch meeting.
Just thinking about the trip back to Brooklyn made her toes feel cold.
“Nora,” Stella said. “Are you listening to me?”
Nora nodded, turned away from the window, and smiled.
Though she had truthfully only half heard what Stella was saying.
Blah-blah-blah. She’d been saying it for months, ever since Leo’s hit piece on her and Dev had gone viral and their low-budget movie musical had sold wildly beyond anyone’s expectations at the box office.
Six months later, Stella was still trying to get Nora to do yet another movie.
Nora had at first listened and spent most of November filming a straight-to-video Hallmark rom-com in Toronto.
But Nora had been begging Stella to turn this name recognition, her fifteen minutes of fame, or whatever it was, into a bona fide Broadway role instead.
“So look,” Stella said now. “Leo called me this week.”
Nora made a face. She refused to talk to Leo.
It didn’t matter how much Stella proclaimed what he had done as brilliant, the space inside Nora’s chest where her heart once was had felt strangely numb since Dev had left her standing on Ocean Boulevard last May.
Then he’d rejected all of her calls, blocked her on social media, and circulated a counter piece to the press saying that all the rumors of their relationship had always been false.
That they had met on set and briefly become acquaintances, nothing more. Nothing more.
“I don’t want anything to do with Leo,” Nora insisted.
Stella raised her eyebrows. “Not even for a role in this crazy amazing new musical based on Greek mythology, where you could play the lead opposite Brett Booker?”
Nora opened her mouth, then closed it again without saying anything.
Brett Booker had been one of her idols since she saw him in Hamlet in the Park the first summer after she’d moved to New York City.
And then, last year, he’d won a Tony for his role in a smash-hit Sondheim revival. “Are you serious?” Nora finally said.
“As a heart attack,” Stella replied. “They want you to come in and read, but Leo has already talked you up and they all watched Bright Spaces and were super impressed with ‘Rosie’s Song’ so they already love your voice.
This one is yours for the taking, Nora. All you have to do is reach out and grab it. ”
Nora nodded. “Tell me all the details.”
“Hera is slated for a two-month tryout up in Boston this summer. If all goes well, they’re hoping for Broadway by next spring.” Stella paused and took a slow sip of her dirty martini. “I told Leo you would do anything he wanted to make this work. Was I wrong?”
Nora slowly shook her head. “No,” she said. “You were right.” She would, in fact, do anything, anything. Even if it was going to have to mean ingratiating herself with Leo again.
Outside the streets were slick from the snow, and Nora’s toes were almost instantly numb as she trudged toward Union Square. She pulled her phone out of her purse, and she called the person she wanted to tell the most in the world about this new, exciting opportunity.
“Daddy,” she said as soon as he picked up. “I think it’s finally happening.”
He was newly in remission, after enduring a second round of chemo last fall, and when Nora and Emily had both gone to Julia’s house for Christmas to spend the holiday with him there, he’d told them all the good news.
He’d looked weak, thin, bald at Christmas, but he’d assured them he was feeling strong.
That he was ready to get back to normal. Cancer was in the rearview mirror.
“Nora,” he said now. “I see on the Weather Channel it’s snowing in New York. You’re supposed to get twelve inches in the city.”
“Daddy,” she repeated. “I think I’m about to get everything I ever wanted.” Well, maybe not everything. But all she had to do was just lock up all thoughts of Dev, hide them in the far corners of her mind, and never, ever again take them out.
“Do you have boots that fit you?” Dad asked. “I can order you some new ones. I just got the L.L.Bean catalog in the mail.”
Nora laughed. “Daddy, I haven’t ordered from that catalog since high school.
And my feet are warm!” Her feet were definitely not warm as she trudged through a pile of gray slush crossing Park at Eighteenth.
“But listen to what I’m saying right now.
I just had lunch with my agent and there’s this role.
A dream role. It’ll be in a tryout in Boston in the summer and if all goes well, on Broadway next spring.
” She repeated what Stella said, noticing now as she spoke how far away that all must sound to her father’s untrained and suspecting ears.
But this was it. She felt it in her bones, and that feeling alone was keeping her warm even as she walked through this wintery slush.
“That’s wonderful, Nora,” Dad finally said.
“I mean, it really is. I’ll be playing opposite one of my Broadway idols. Brett freaking Booker, Daddy.”
“I liked that movie you were in with Dev,” Dad said quietly. “He was such a nice young man, that time I met him in Chicago with you.”
She suddenly remembered the way Dad had binged all of The Wizards of Central Park before they’d shown up, and how Dev had so kindly sat across from Dad on the couch and patiently answered all his plot questions.
“I told you we’re not together anymore,” Nora said, her voice sharper than she meant it to be.
“I know,” Dad said. “It’s just… a shame, that’s all. I liked the way he treated you.”
They were both quiet for a moment, and Nora wanted to ask if he liked the way Dev had dumped her in May.
Or how he had publicly lied and privately blocked her.
But she swallowed back those feelings. She didn’t want to talk about Dev.
If she didn’t talk about him, didn’t think about him, then she would be okay.
And besides, she wanted to focus on the happy news from Stella.
Forget Dev. She was finally, finally going to have her big break.
She wasn’t quite at the train yet but she told Dad she was, that she was about to walk down the steps, about to lose him underground.
“Okay, call me later, honey. Be careful in this snow.”
As soon as they hung up, she texted her sisters about Hera, before getting to the train.
You’re going to rock this and get the part, superstar! Julia replied immediately.
Omg, you’re for real going to be too famous for us now, Emily texted a few seconds later.
And then, Nora was suddenly smiling again.
The night before Emily left for Coronado, her phone rang around midnight.
She had booked an early flight and had gone to bed at nine, but at the sound of the ring, she suddenly jumped up, wide awake, instantly worrying something had happened to Dad. But then she remembered again: remission. He was okay now.
Her heart still thudded in her chest as she grabbed the phone from her nightstand. Cecile?
“I didn’t wake you, did I?” Cecile’s gentle voice came through the line, soothing Emily’s racing heart like a lullaby.
“Not at all,” Emily lied, trying as hard as she could to sound wide awake. “What’s up?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Cecile said. She paused for a moment, and Emily just listened to the soft sound of her breath on the other end of the line.
“It’s not the orcas still, is it?” Emily asked, referring to the new exhibit that had been the bane of both of their existences all year long as one thing after another had gone wrong, from the marketing mishaps that called them killer whales to one of them developing a stomach ulcer.
Cecile didn’t answer for another moment. And then she said, “What if I told you I didn’t want to be married anymore. That I might… love someone else.”
“What?” Emily asked, confused. What exactly was Cecile trying to tell her?
Was it what she thought, or was that ridiculous?
She loved someone else. Maybe she was talking about Marty, who did the books for the museum and often brought them Starbucks when he stopped by once a month.
But Emily vaguely remembered him mentioning a girlfriend last month…
“What would you think of that?” Cecile pushed.
“Why do you care what I think?” Emily said.
“You know why,” Cecile said. Emily suddenly understood she wasn’t talking about Marty.
“I think… I think…” she stammered, uncertain. What did she think? She knew what she felt, but she was too terrified to commit her thoughts to actual words. “What about Mikey and Jim?” she finally said.
“What about them?”
“Divorce is really hard for kids. Wouldn’t they be better off growing up in a house with both their parents?” Emily said.
“Even if their mother loves someone else?” Cecile asked softly.
Emily didn’t say anything for a moment or two and time felt suspended, weirdly frozen.
“I should go to sleep,” she finally said, which she understood was no kind of answer.
Cecile sighed on the other end of the line, which prompted Emily to keep talking, even though words suddenly didn’t seem to make sense.
“I have an early flight in the morning,” she heard herself saying.
“Okay,” Cecile said after another moment of silence. “Travel safe.”