Landline

“You’re looking at them wrong.”

“How is that possible?”

Neal almost always let Georgie win; their house in Silver Lake looked like Rainbow Brite lived there—and you could tell which walls Georgie had painted, because she was lousy at edges and corners.

They both had jobs then. Neal worked weekends. So there were plenty of days and nights when Georgie had their old house to herself. She’d watch TV shows that Neal would never watch with her. (Everything on The WB.) And then, when he got home, he’d climb over her on the couch and bother her until it was time to make di

That was back when Georgie still pretended to help. When she’d hang out in the kitchen with him and drink wine while she watched him slice vegetables.

“You could do this for a living,” she’d say. “You could cut tomatoes in a tomato-cutting commercial, that’s how good you are.”

Then Neal would chop extra loudly and wave the knife over the tomato slices with a flourish.

“I’m serious. You could be an Iron Chef.”

“That or work at Applebee’s.”

Georgie had a regular spot on the kitchen counter, and Neal worked around it. He’d pour her too much wine—and feed her pieces of things before the rest of di

How many years ago was that? Eight? Ten?

Georgie dropped her phone and keys onto the coffee table, on a stack of Noomi’s picture books, and wandered into the kitchen. The plate of salmon stir-fry that Neal had made two nights ago was still in the refrigerator. She hadn’t felt like eating it then, even though she’d been starving. She didn’t bother to heat it up now, just grabbed a fork and brought it out to the living room, sitting on the couch and turning on the TV for light. There were two new episodes of Jeff’d Up on the DVR, a rerun and an hour-long Christmas special.

The Christmas special had been a pain in the ass to film. The script had Jeff and Trev both secretly bonding with a stray dog they were pretending to hate. Jeff would kick the dog out of the house, then Trev would let the dog in, then Jeff would go looking for it, trying to sneak it in himself, then he’d get caught and kick it out again. The laugh track had more “aw”s than laughs, and Georgie could tell the sound guy had just used the same “aw” over and over.

The dog was a mistake.

Jeff German had insisted they use his dog, an ancient beagle that couldn’t take direction and that nobody else was allowed to touch. Then it turned out that the kid who played Trev was allergic to dogs, and his mom followed him around with an epinephrine pen the whole day. He didn’t end up needing it, thank God, but his eyes got all ru

“It’s fine,” Seth said. “It looks like he’s been crying.”

“Let’s get rid of the dog,” Georgie said. “Let’s make it something else.”

“You just don’t like dogs. What do you want? A cat?”

“I was thinking an orphan.”

“Fuck no, Georgie. The network will make us keep it.”

Normally, Georgie would text back and forth with Seth while they watched Jeff’d Up. But her phone was plugged in on the other side of the room, and she didn’t feel like getting up.

She’d get up if Neal called.

Which wasn’t likely, not this late—Neal hadn’t called her back all day.

Georgie had tried him half a dozen times since lunch, and every time, the call went to voice mail. She’d tried his mom’s house, too, but got a busy signal. (It’d been so long since Georgie had heard an actual busy signal, it kind of confused her.)

She set her empty plate on the coffee table and pulled the afghan up over her shoulders.

“Awwwww . . . ,” the TV audience said.

Georgie looked up at the ceiling. Neal had painted a spray of flowers there. They started at one corner, then wound down onto the wall. Blue with white starbursts—she forgot what they were called.

Neal had picked out this house. In Calabasas. He liked the porch and the yard. The wide-open kitchen. The fact that it had a real second floor and an attic. (Their house in Silver Lake was one and a half stories, with the bedroom up in the half. Neal hated the way you could hear the rain hitting the roof at night.)

Georgie was five months pregnant when they moved in, so she couldn’t help paint. (Fumes.) Also, she and Seth were working as showru

She felt like garbage that whole pregnancy. She gained more weight with Noomi. She had more pain. Her fingers got so swollen and purple that she’d stare at them while she typed, imagining she was Violet Beauregarde—imagining that Seth was going to have to roll her out of the writers’ room when she went into labor.

(She didn’t end up going into labor. Georgie was really good at getting pregnant, but not so good at getting the babies out. She never had a real contraction with either of the girls.)

Georgie had been relieved when Neal started painting the walls without her. At first he chose colors from the bottom of the paint strip—there were a few Georgie-bright rooms. But mostly this house was white. Or pale yellow. Or watery blue.

He’d started painting murals a few years ago, when Noomi grew out of her baby sling and was okay playing with Alice on the floor. Georgie came home one night and found a willow tree curling out of her closet.

Neal painted landscapes and seascapes. Skyscapes. (Was there such a thing?) He painted murals all over the house, never finishing one before starting another. Georgie didn’t ask why.

Neal didn’t like to be asked things. It made his jaw tense. He’d give you a flippant answer. Like, whatever you were asking, it wasn’t any of your business.

Like nothing was anyone’s business.

Like nobody should ask questions that didn’t absolutely need to be answered.

Georgie had gotten really good over the years at not asking questions. Sometimes she didn’t even realize she wasn’t doing it.

This house really was much nicer than their old house. . . .

Neal was better at picking out paint and arranging furniture than Georgie had ever been. Plus their laundry actually got done now that he did it.

“It never ends,” he’d say.

“We could hire someone,” Georgie would offer.

“We don’t need to hire someone.”

Their neighbors had a na

“Like the Malfoys,” Alice said. “With house elves.”

Neal was reading her the Harry Potter books.

Neal mowed their lawn. In worn-out cargo pants and T-shirts that he’d had since high school. He always smelled like sunblock, because without it, he’d immediately burn. Even with the sunblock, the back of his neck was stained red.

Neal trimmed the trees. Neal kept tulip bulbs in the refrigerator and sketched garden plans on the back of Whole Foods receipts. He’d pore over seed catalogs in bed and make Georgie choose which plants she liked best.

“Purple eggplant or white eggplant?” he’d asked her last summer.

“How can you have a white eggplant? That’s like . . . purple green beans.”

“There are purple green beans. And yellow oranges.”

“Stop. You’re blowing my mind.”

“Oh, I’ll blow your mind. Girlie.”

“Are you flirting with me?”

He’d turned to her then, pen cap in mouth, and cocked his head. “Yeah. I think so.”

Georgie looked down at her old sweatshirt. At her threadbare yoga pants. “This is what does it for you?”

Neal smiled most of a smile, and the cap fell out of his mouth. “So far.”