Nora Goes Off Script

“The tea house plays prominently in the breakup of our marriage, which is what earned it the title role. Ben resented the time I spent out there; he resented the work I did. He resented the fact that I’d been paying our bills for the past ten years. Which made two of us, actually. The more competent I became at taking care of our family, the more he despised me. The more he despised me, the harder I worked to make things right. Me writing in the tea house was a mirror he didn’t want to look into.”

The tea house represents a number of differences between Ben and Nora, such as their values and work ethic. Ben resents the tea house and his wife because they are reminders of his failure to support himself and his family. Nora clings to the tea house because it is the focal point of her work routine and sense of control.

“If someone leaves you, it’s because they didn’t want to be with you. All you lost was someone who didn’t want to be there anyway.”

This is Nora’s explanation to the actress playing her about why Nora’s character is not more emotional in the scripts. The question reflects Hollywood’s portrayal of the end of romantic relationships always as a loss, especially when a woman loses a man, rather than an opportunity for independence and growth.

“It irritates me to think people believe I am suffering financially without Ben. As if. Having Ben off my credit card has been like a windfall. Last month my credit card bill was $795.34, mainly food and utilities. Having full control over that number is almost my favorite part of my new life.”

Traditionally, men are assumed to support their families, but this was not the case in Nora’s situation. It bothers her that people assume her life is harder without her husband when in reality, she is having an easier time on her own. This is an example of one of the ways Nora subverts conventional gender roles.

“I try to review his whole persona to see if there’s something about him I like. He’s entitled and rude and never says thank you. I settle on the fact that I like the way he talks to Bernadette. I like the way he notices things. A noticer is a person who can never be entirely self-absorbed, though he’s pretty close.”

Here, Nora sorts through her first impressions of Leo. Her opinions are mostly negative, which shows how, at first, Leo and Nora’s affair follows the typical structure of Nora’s romance movies. The couples in these movies typically annoy one another before they fall in love. However, the fact that Nora likes the way Leo interacts with her children is also important because this is a key trait that sets Leo apart from Ben.

“I am trying to remember the last time an adult took over one of my responsibilities. Ben would sometimes run out for toilet paper or pick up the kids from school. It occurs to me now how long I’ve been doing this all on my own.”

As her feelings for Leo develop, Nora continues to occasionally compare Leo to Ben, particularly in how he interacts with Bernadette and Arthur. She starts to feel like she has a partner for the first time, someone she can count on to share her responsibilities and contribute to her family.

“I made the money but did it quietly so he could feel like his work was what mattered, like I was waiting tables while he finished medical school.”

Nora describes her relationship with Ben. For 10 years, she supported him and his poorly planned business ventures, all the while carefully avoiding upsetting his ego. She even took to agreeing with him that her movies were “silly” (172) so that he could maintain his feeling of power in their family.

“I am aware that this sparkly scene is a fantasy, but I let myself enjoy it. Smiling children and the promise of fine wine with a terrifyingly attractive man. Thursday’s going to be brutal.”

As Nora starts to fall for Leo, she remains sure that their relationship isn’t real. He is a handsome movie star, and she is a mother of two; they are two people who don’t belong together onscreen. However, Nora starts to let herself live in the fantasy for a while, even though she knows that going back to reality will be painful.

“Fact: I will probably never recover from that kiss. Fact: This is a man who dates starlets. Fact: I am a regular woman who’s nursed two babies.”

After Leo kisses Nora for the first time, she clings to facts in order to ground herself. She is a reasonable, practical woman, but falling in love with Leo unbalances her. Here, and in other moments throughout the novel, Nora tries to focus on facts to avoid slipping into what she believes is the impossible fantasy of a relationship with Leo.

“Something is happening over chicken and rice and green beans. Wisdom is being exchanged. Some might call it parenting. I marvel at the fact that this moment was created by someone besides me.”

This is another example of Nora feeling supported by Leo in a way she never felt with Ben. Leo is explaining to Arthur and Bernadette how important it is to own up and apologize if you make a mistake. Both children are paying close attention, nodding along and soaking up the lesson. This also foreshadows Arthur’s lie about Ben’s return.

“I’m a mom again. He’s leaving and I’m no longer a person who has sex all day. I’m neither beautiful nor compelling. I am Nora, and I am tumbling down a hill. Leo is going to ‘Asia,’ the mythical place where men go when they’re tired of me. I need to grab my children and move them to safety before I roll into the abyss.”

When Leo breaks the news that he is returning to LA, Nora is instantly sure he is leaving her. When Ben left, he told them vaguely that he was going to Asia, and Nora sees that pattern repeating. In contrast with Ben, who took nothing with him and left Nora feeling better than ever, Leo is taking everything that made Nora feel like a new version of herself.

“The truth is that I have no business making promises about a school play on behalf of a man who’s working on a film with a 250-million-dollar budget. Leo has reentered something that is bigger than we are. I’ve lost my chance to manage Arthur’s expectations, mainly because I don’t want to look at the possibility that Leo will break both of our hearts.”

This quote illustrates the large gap between Nora’s world and Leo’s. Nora assures Arthur that Leo will make it back in time for the play, but in reality, she isn’t so sure. Nora can’t imagine what Leo’s life is like in LA, and she has no idea how a man who works on high-budget films fits into her family life.

“We are thirty minutes till curtain and I am scanning the crowd, because deep down, I am still a romance writer. I know this scene, I’ve written it thirty-four times. The commercial break is over. This is the community event, and just after it’s gotten started and the heroine has moved on and found a way to manage alone, he appears as if by magic. He’s had an epiphany and this is the life he wants. Chaste kiss and on with the town fair, soup kitchen opening, ballet performance. Fifth-grade play.”

Nora starts to fall for the tricks of her own genre. If her affair with Leo were one of her movies, he would make it back in time for the opening curtain. No matter how many times Nora tells herself that her Leo is a fantasy and that her movies are silly, she harbors a secret hope that the dream will come true.

“It’s all so clear to me now that I don’t know how I twisted my mind to avoid it. I must have been having a post-divorce psychotic break. I’ve let myself slip into one of my idiotic fantasy stories.”

After several days of not hearing from Leo, Nora receives the package of cash as payment for his stay. This signifies to her that their relationship was never real, a fact confirmed when she learns that he was sleeping with Naomi Sanchez. Here, Nora berates herself for falling for the trick, one she should have known to avoid because her job revolves around romance narratives.

“I know that I need to build my world back up around me. My schedule was my armor and I need to reconstruct it. I need new routines so that I don’t see Leo every time I roast a chicken. Plenty of people don’t roast chickens, and I will be one of them.”

Nora’s routines help her feel in control of her world. They give the days a sense of predictability that allows her to feel safe and sure of herself. When Leo arrives, he works himself into Nora’s routine in such a way that she continues to see him everywhere once he leaves. Nora rebuilding her routines equates with her rebuilding herself after Leo’s departure.

“To write is to re-create something as you’d like it to be. I can filter my heartbreak through the giddy weightlessness of an afternoon romance movie, and suddenly it’s silly. It’s practically trite. My big love affair is an eighty-minute vehicle for selling tampons and life insurance.”

Nora finds a significant amount of comfort in writing the story of her affair with Leo. In order to get over him, she needs to trivialize their relationship, so she sets out to write it as one of her formulaic romance movies. Imagining their story on The Romance Channel helps Nora believe that it doesn’t deserve any more of her time and attention.

“You’re the reason all these people are here tonight; you wrote the thing. You’re the star. He’s only there because of what you created.”

When Nora goes to the premiere, she still hasn’t accepted that she deserves to be there regardless of Leo’s involvement in her life. Worried about seeing him, she tries to convince herself of her worthiness, but it doesn’t sink in until she is nominated for the Oscar.

“I imagine that my beautiful dress and magic shoes are a confidence costume. They are the cloak of self-assuredness, and I try to walk down the red carpet with a gait and an expression to match them.”

Nora attends the premiere in a shimmering silver dress in which she feels immensely uncomfortable. She thinks the outfit calls too much attention to herself when she would rather go unnoticed. She tries to draw strength from the outfit, but it is so much at odds with how she feels inside that she cannot muster her bravery.

“That scene is sort of an insult to both of them. Like all that’s happening there is that he remembers she’s pretty so he loves her again. It’s not like he sees her run into a burning building to rescue an old guy. It’s not like anything’s changed. It’s like he just got distracted by something shiny.”

Nora responds to Weezie and Penny, who wanted Nora and Leo to have the classic romantic moment where he saw her across the room and immediately remembered what he was missing. She argues that there’s really nothing romantic about the idea. He still wouldn’t love her as a person; he’d just be reminded that he once thought she was beautiful.

“One day I wake up and I’m a feminist hero. Which is funny because I’m still fantasizing about the really cute guy showing up and rescuing me from myself.”

The Tea House is very well-received by critics, who celebrate Nora’s story for its themes of independence and triumph over victimhood. However, Nora remarks on the irony of the moment because she feels like she is still pathetically waiting for Leo. After Ben, Nora was able to recover quickly because she didn’t love him, not because she was particularly brave or strong. She is no longer sure if she truly embodies her movie’s own themes.

“Suddenly my house is stronger and so am I for having taken care of it.”

Nora loves her old farmhouse in upstate New York. It is an important symbol of her independence, her sense of self, and her ability to support her family. When she receives the check from Sunrise, Nora uses some of the money to invest in her home, which makes her feel safer and more capable.

“To have written a screenplay that is essentially my truth, or at least represents my feelings about my truth, and to have it produced and then appreciated. It’s almost too much for me to contain at this moment.”

Nora finds The Tea House’s success validating on a number of different levels. It means that she is capable of writing a real movie that deserves to be taken seriously. However, it also validates her experience in her marriage. It confirms that Ben was worthless, and that Nora is better off without him.

“I wander around with Martin, meeting everyone he wants me to meet. I feel comfortable in a way I couldn’t have imagined; winning has emboldened me. There is nothing I can do to wipe the smile off of my face as people congratulate me and I sip champagne.”

Compared with her experience at The Tea House premiere, Nora is completely changed when she arrives at the Oscars. She appears more confident than she has at any other point in the novel. Leo is still on her mind, but she isn’t afraid of him anymore. Her success has finally shown Nora that she is okay on her own.

“My butler is removing my plate and is replacing it with a plate of the most exquisite fresh fruit I have ever seen. I can have this and a backyard wedding, I think. I wonder at the possibility of having it all.”

Visiting Leo on his film set in New Zealand, Nora thinks for the first time that their lives are compatible after all. She can have her quiet life in Laurel Ridge and experience the glamor of Hollywood. She doesn’t have to choose one or the other.