Landline

  “I’m fine,” Georgie said.

  CHAPTER 21

  There was no parking at the mall—they circled and circled before they found a spot. Then Georgie opened her glove compartment and dug out her driver’s license and credit card.

  “Don’t you have a purse?” Heather asked.

  “I’m not usually in purse-necessary situations.”

  “I thought moms were supposed to carry big purses with first-aid kits and packets of Cheerios.”

  Georgie scowled at her.

  “You’re practically homeless,” Heather said, “aren’t you? If Neal doesn’t come back, you’re gonna have to forage for food and water.”

  Georgie shoved the phone and cards into her pocket. “We’re not wasting time here,” she said. “There won’t be any hanging out at the Orange Julius, scamming for hot guys.”

  “I’m not twelve, Georgie.”

  “In and out. We get the bra, we get a new battery for my phone, then we’re out of there.”

  “Are you buying me a new phone? Because I think I’d rather have an iPad.”

  “Who said I was buying you a phone?”

  “It was implied. Besides, Mom says you’re good for it.”

  “Just hurry. I don’t want to miss Neal.”

  “Jingle Bell Rock” was playing inside the mall, and inside the store, and inside the dressing room in the Intimates Department.

  There was already a jumble of bras on the floor, and Georgie was trying on more, facing away from the mirror. She was so distracted, she kept forgetting to pay attention to which ones fit.

  Just pick one, Georgie. Or buy them all. It doesn’t matter. You’re just killing time.

  Jesus, what a weird time to kill time. The fate of her future hung in the balance, and there was nothing she could do at the moment but run out the clock. At least, not until Neal called back.

  He would call back, right?

  What if he didn’t, what if he was too angry? What if he was still angry tomorrow morning?

  Georgie had to talk to Neal, to make things right again. She had to make sure that he still got into his car tomorrow, his tomorrow, and showed up at her door on Christmas Day.

  But what if he didn’t?

  Did Georgie really believe that the last fifteen years would just unravel? Had she committed so completely to this bizarre scenario that she thought her marriage was going to start fading out, like Marty McFly in the middle of “Earth Angel”?

  What else could she think? She had to keep playing along—the stakes were too high.

  If Neal didn’t show up to propose to her in 1998 . . .

  Twenty-two-year-old Georgie would never know what she was missing. That girl thought it was already over, that she’d already lost him.

  Georgie collapsed that week after Neal left for Omaha.

  She spent the whole time in a fog. Lying in her bed, deliberately not calling him. Why should she call him? What was she supposed to say—sorry? Georgie wasn’t sorry. She wasn’t sorry that she knew what she wanted to do with her life. She wasn’t sorry that she was making it happen.

  It’s not like Neal was offering her some compelling alternate plan: “Georgie, I want to be a sheep farmer—it’s in my blood, and I can’t do it anywhere but Montana.” (Was that where sheep were farmed?) “I need you. Come with me.”

  No, Neal was just saying, “I hate it here, I hate this. I hate that you want this.”

  All he was offering Georgie were negatives.

  And then he’d taken even those off the table. He’d left without her—broken up with her on his way out of town.

  Georgie had genuinely believed they were broken up.

  For the first few days that Neal was gone, she felt it like an actual breach between her ribs, a tear at the bottom of her lungs. Georgie would wake up in a panic sure that she’d run out of air—or that she’d lost the ability to hold it inside of her.

  Then the breath would hit her like a baseball to the heart.

  The air was right there; she just had to think about it. In, out. In, out. She wondered if she was going to have to spend the rest of her life reminding herself to breathe. Maybe that would be her internal monologue from now on. In, out. In, out.

  Neal didn’t call to apologize to Georgie that week, either.

  Why should he? she thought at the time. What did he have to apologize for? For not wanting exactly what Georgie wanted? For realizing what his limitations were?

  Good for him for knowing himself so well.

  Good for him for figuring it out.

  Neal loved her, Georgie knew that. He couldn’t keep his hands off her—he couldn’t keep his ink off her; he was always doodling on her stomach or her thigh or her shoulder. He kept a set of Prismacolor markers by his bed, and when Georgie took a shower, the water ran rainbows.

  She knew Neal loved her.

  Good for him for realizing it wasn’t enough to make him happy. That was very mature of him. He was probably saving them both a lot of heartache.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God.

  In-out, in-out, in-out.

  Stay with me, stay-ay.

  By that Christmas morning, Georgie hadn’t made any emotional progress from the breakup. She wasn’t feeling any better or stronger.

  She was pretty sure that every Christmas from then on would be tainted by Neal leaving. Like Georgie would never be able to hear “Jingle Bells” again without feeling Neal drive away from her with a tow chain in her stomach.

  Seth kept calling to check on her, but she didn’t want to talk to him. She didn’t want to hear him tell her how much better off she was without Neal.

  Georgie wasn’t better off. Even if Neal was right—even if they’d never make it work together, even if they were fundamentally wrong for each other—she still wasn’t better off without him. (Even if your heart is broken and attacking you, you’re still not better off without it.)

  Her mom made Georgie come out to the living room Christmas morning to watch Heather open her presents. Heather was three, just old enough to understand that everything under the tree was for her. Georgie sat on the couch in flannel pajama pants and a ratty T-shirt, and ate pancakes with her fingers.

  Kendrick was there. He was still new then. He brought Georgie a movie-theater gift certificate with a bow on it. Heather got a talking Teletubby, which she was currently spazzing out over.

  He—Kendrick, not the Teletubby—kept trying to talk to Georgie, and he was trying so hard, Georgie didn’t have the heart to ignore him. (But she didn’t have any heart at all, so that made conversation difficult.) When the doorbell rang, Kendrick jumped up to answer it, probably just to get away from Georgie.

  “It’s your friend Neal,” he said when he came back to the living room.

  “You mean Seth,” she said.

  Kendrick scratched his goatee—he used to have a ridiculous goatee—“Neal’s the little one, right?”

  Georgie set down her plate and got off the couch.

  “Why didn’t you invite him in?” her mom asked Kendrick.

  “He said he’d rather wait outside.”

  Georgie didn’t believe it was Neal. She couldn’t believe it was Neal. First of all, because Neal was in Omaha—he wouldn’t have skipped Christmas in Omaha. And second, because they were broken up. And third, because if Georgie did believe it was Neal, and then it turned out that it wasn’t? That might be it. That might finish her.

  The front door was still open when she got there.

  Neal was standing on the other side of the screen, biting his lip and squinting up her block, like he was waiting for her to come from the other direction.

  Neal.

  Neal, Neal, Neal.

  Georgie’s hand trembled as she pushed the screen door open.

  Neal turned to her, and his eyes got wide. Almost like he hadn’t let himself believe it was really going to be her.

  He took a step back, so Georgie stepped out onto the front porch. She wanted to grab him. (It was pro
bably safe to grab him—Neal probably hadn’t come to her house on Christmas morning just to break up with her extra hard, right? He wouldn’t have come back just to tell her he was leaving?)

  Neal’s eyes were thin, and his face was tight. He looked like she was still hurting him. “Georgie,” he said.

  Georgie started crying instantly. From zero to eleven. “Neal.”

  Neal shook his head, and she jerked forward to hug him. Even if he had come just to make sure she knew they were really over, Georgie was going to get one more desperate embrace out of this.

  His arms came around her shoulders, and he held her so tight, they rocked back and forth. “Georgie,” Neal said, then started pulling away.

  She didn’t let him.

  “Georgie,” he said, “wait.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Wait. I need to do something.”

  She still didn’t let go; Neal had to unwind her arms and take a step back.

  As soon as he was away, he dropped to one knee. Georgie thought maybe he was going to apologize, that he was falling at her feet. “No,” she said, “you don’t have to.”

  “Shhh. Just let me do this.”

  “Neal . . .”

  “Georgie, please.”

  She folded her arms and looked miserable. She didn’t want him to say he was sorry. That would take them right back into the heart of their sorry situation.

  “Georgie,” he said. “I love you. I love you more than I hate everything else. We’ll make our own enough—will you marry me?”

  Georgie stopped, in the middle of fastening a bra behind her back, and turned to face herself in the dressing room mirror.

  Oh . . .

  CHAPTER 22

  Christmas.

  On one knee.

  Looking straight through her.

  “We’ll make our own enough,” he’d said.

  Last night on the telephone, Georgie had asked Neal if love was enough.

  And fifteen years ago, he’d answered her.

  Was that . . . could it just be a coincidence?

  Or did it mean . . .

  That it had already happened.

  That this—all of this, the phone calls, the fighting, the four-hour conversations—had already happened. For Neal. Fifteen years ago.

  What if Georgie wasn’t disrupting the timeline with these phone calls—what if this was the timeline? What if it had been the timeline all along?

  “We’ll make our own enough,” Neal had said that day at her door.

  Georgie remembered him saying it, remembered that it sounded nice—but all she was focused on at the time was the ring in his hand.

  Could it be that Neal was referring to a conversation he’d thought she was a part of?

  “What if it isn’t enough?” Georgie asked him last night.

  “We’ll make our own enough,” he promised her in 1998. “Will you marry me?”

  CHAPTER 23

  “Oh.”

  Georgie gaped at herself in the mirror. “Oh my God,” she gasped.

  “It can’t be that bad,” Heather said from outside the fitting room. “You’re not even forty.”

  “No, I . . .” Georgie walked out of the mauve cubicle, pulling her mother’s pug sweatshirt down over her head. “I need to go home now.”

  “I thought Neal was calling you at our house.”

  “Right, I need to go there. Now.”

  The attendant met them just outside the room. “Did any of those work out?”

  “This one’s fine,” Georgie said. She reached under her shirt and snapped the tags off the bra, handing them to the salesperson. “I’ll take this one.” She started walking toward the cash register.

  Neal had never told Georgie why he changed his mind—why he forgave her, why he came back to California and proposed. And Georgie had never asked. She hadn’t wanted to give him an opportunity to reconsider. . . .

  But maybe this was why. Maybe she was why. Now.

  “I’m sorry,” the salesperson said. “I can’t let you wear that out. Store policy.”

  Georgie stared at her. She was a thin, white woman, a little younger than Georgie, with taupe-colored lipstick. She’d kept trying to come into the dressing room with Georgie to make sure the bras were fitting correctly. “But I’m buying it,” Georgie said.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. Store policy.”

  “Fine,” Georgie said, “I need to go—I’ll just take it off and do all this some other day.”

  “But you already removed the tags. You have to purchase it.”

  “Right.” Georgie nodded. “Fine.”

  She reached up behind her to unclasp the bra, then after a few seconds of maneuvering, pulled it out one of her sleeves and dropped it on the counter.

  “Ring it up twice,” Heather said. “She’ll take two.”

  The salesperson went to get another bra.

  “You are such a badass,” Heather said, grinning at her. “Have I mentioned that I want to be you when I grow up?”

  “I don’t have time for this. We need to leave. Now.”

  “But we were going to the Apple Store. Georgie, please. I want an iPad, I’ve already named it.”

  “You can order it online. We need to leave.”

  “Seriously? You’re really buying me an iPad? Can I also order a pony?”

  When Neal left California that Christmas, he and Georgie were as good as broken up, and when he came back, he wanted to marry her. And in between, in between . . .

  Maybe this. Maybe her.

  Maybe this week, these phone calls—everything—had already happened. Somehow, sometime . . .

  And Georgie just had to make sure that it happened again.

  “Georgie? Hey.”

  Heather shoved the bag of bras into Georgie’s chest. Georgie caught them.

  “Sorry to interrupt your aneurysm,” Heather said, “but you said that time was of the essence here.”

  “Right,” Georgie said, “right.” She followed Heather to the car, then handed her the key fob. “You drive.”

  “Why?” Heather asked.

  “I need to think.”

  Georgie climbed into the passenger seat and tapped her dead phone against her chin. She didn’t even bother plugging it in.

  CHAPTER 24

  Georgie set the yellow rotary phone in front of her on the bed and stared at it. She resisted the urge to check the dial tone, just in case Neal called at that exact second.

  This changed everything.

  Didn’t it?

  If Neal had already proposed to her in the past, then Georgie must have already convinced him in the future. It didn’t matter what happened now. What she said. Whether he called her back.

  Whatever Georgie did next had already happened. She was walking in her own footsteps—there was nothing she could mess up.

  She leaned close to the phone and lifted the receiver to her ear, slamming it down again as soon as she heard a dial tone.

  Is that what this whole week was about, preserving the status quo? Maybe she should be grateful for that. . . .

  But Georgie had thought—she’d hoped—that this wrinkle in time was offering her a shot at something better.

  God, what good is a magic phone, anyway? It isn’t a time machine.

  Georgie couldn’t change the past—she could only talk at it. If Georgie had a proper time machine, maybe she could actually fix her marriage. She could go back to the moment that everything started to go bad, and change course.

  Except . . .

  There hadn’t really been a moment like that.

  Things didn’t go bad between Georgie and Neal. Things were always bad—and always good. Their marriage was like a set of scales constantly balancing itself. And then, at some point, when neither of them was paying attention, they’d tipped so far over into bad, they’d settled there. Now only an enormous amount of good would shift them back. An impossible amount of good.

  The good that was left between them didn’t c
arry enough weight. . . .

  The kisses that still felt like kisses. The notes Neal stuck to the refrigerator when Georgie got home late. (A sleepy cartoon tortoise with a word bubble telling her there were leftover enchiladas on the bottom shelf.) Shared glances when one of the girls said something silly. The way Neal still put his arm around her when they all went to the movies. (He was probably just more comfortable that way.)

  So much of what was still good between them was through Alice and Noomi—but Alice and Noomi were so solidly between them.

  Georgie was pretty sure that having kids was the worst thing you could do to a marriage. Sure, you could survive it. You could survive a giant boulder falling on your head—that didn’t mean it was good for you.

  Kids took a fathomless amount of time and energy. . . . And they took it first. They had right of first refusal on everything you had to offer.

  At the end of the day—after work, after trying to spend some sort of meaningful time with Alice and Noomi—Georgie was usually too tired to make things right with Neal before they fell asleep. So things stayed wrong. And the girls just kept giving them something else to talk about, something else to focus on. . . .

  Something else to love.

  When Georgie and Neal were smiling at each other, it was almost always over Alice and Noomi’s heads.

  And Georgie wasn’t sure she’d risk changing that . . . even if she could.

  Having kids sent a tornado through your marriage, then made you happy for the devastation. Even if you could rebuild everything just the way it was before, you’d never want to.

  If Georgie could talk to herself in the past, before the scales tipped, what would she say? What could she say?

  Love him.

  Love him more.

  Would that make a difference?

  When Georgie was eight months pregnant with Alice, she and Neal still hadn’t settled on a day care.

  Georgie thought maybe they should get a nanny. They could almost afford one. She and Seth had just started working on their third show, a CBS sitcom about four mismatched roommates who hung out in a coffee shop. Neal called it Store-Brand Friends.