Romantic comedy, p.28
Romantic Comedy, page 28
Then Viv texted just me: Don’t tell Henrietta I said this but is there ANYTHING fouler than giving birth in a tub
Viv’s first text had arrived a little after 9 a.m. central time. Six hours later, two texts arrived from Theo: first a photo of a baby gazing outward with big brown eyes, wearing a white hat, and wrapped in a striped blanket. And second a message: Caleb Elijah Elman, 7 pounds, 4 ounces. Caleb & Viv both fantastic!
* * *
—
I’d invited Charlotte Larsen onto our deck to meet Noah, and she came over after dinner, radiating jubilation and panic, clearly dressed up in a sleeveless flowered blouse, white jeans, and platform mules. When she’d climbed the steps from the yard onto the deck, I said, “Charlotte, this is Noah, and Noah, this is Charlotte,” and she said, “Oh my God, I love you so much, Noah.” Then she burst into tears.
As she wiped her eyes, she said, “I’m so sorry, but ‘Making Love in July’—and also ‘Arlington Dawn’—and ‘Sober & Thirsty’—sorry, I can’t even talk, but our first dance at our wedding was to ‘Making Love in July.’ My sister and I know all the words to the entire album.”
When Noah spoke, it was with a contained, professional kind of friendliness I hadn’t seen even during the week he’d hosted, a guarded warmth. “Thank you,” he said lightly. “I really appreciate that.”
“But what happened to your hair?”
Pleasantly, he said, “It was time for a change.”
“Would it be okay if I get a picture?” Charlotte asked. “Sally told me about not posting anything, but just to show my sister. She won’t believe it unless I have proof.”
As Charlotte passed me her phone, and Charlotte and Noah positioned themselves side by side—“I’d put my arm around you if not for the pandemic,” he said, while maintaining a few feet of space between them—I thought once again of another TNO writer telling me years before that nonfamous people wanted their interactions with famous people to end as quickly as possible so they could go tell their other nonfamous friends about them. And indeed, Charlotte was within ten minutes walking back toward her own house.
I whispered to Noah, “Fifty bucks she puts that picture on Facebook later tonight.”
He whispered back, “What will be will be.”
Charlotte disappeared from view, and I said, “Seriously, you’re very good at that.”
“I’ve had practice,” he replied.
* * *
—
I sat at my wicker desk to write the email to Nigel. Two days before, I had spoken at length to my agent, and my agent had then relayed the particulars of our conversation to the relevant people at TNO, which meant that reaching out to Nigel was an act of decorum on my part rather than a disclosure of information. If I’d had more faith in my ability to express myself in speech, I’d have called him, but of course the thing that had propelled me to TNO in the first place was my faith in my ability to write.
Dear Nigel, I typed on my laptop,
I will never be able to adequately thank you for giving me the opportunity to be a writer at TNO. When I think of the best, happiest, and funniest moments of my life, an extremely high proportion of them took place inside the TNO studio or up on the seventeenth floor. I’ve heard you say more than once that TNO isn’t a place for lone wolves or perfectionists, but it was an ideal place for me because it helped me be much less of a lone wolf and much less of a perfectionist. You have created a singular comedic community, and I’ll forever be amazed that I was part of it.
All my best,
Sally
Nigel’s reply arrived ten minutes later.
Sally, apparently “lone wolf” is something of a misnomer. A wolf who strikes out on her own tends to do so only temporarily, when moving on to the next stage, before finding a new pack. As for perfectionism, those of us who have spent time inside the TNO studio know that something so evanescent and silly comes about only through prodigiously hard work. Don’t hesitate to be in touch. N
* * *
—
We ended up staying in Kansas City for sixteen days. Jerry’s fever had broken after five, and, very slowly, he continued to regain energy. By the time we decided it was okay to leave, he wasn’t the same as before, but he was far better than he’d been when Noah and I had shown up. His sister Donna promised me that she’d check on him every day.
For a farewell dinner, we grilled shrimp out on the deck the night before our departure. The Larsens were also on their deck, and Chloe, who was the nine-year-old, asked, “Do you think Sugar knows she’s a dog?” Before I could respond, Stella, who was the eleven-year-old, eyed the Greek salad Noah had made and said, “I don’t like cucumber because the best part of a cucumber tastes like the worst part of a watermelon.”
Noah and I looked at each other, and I said, “I can’t disagree.”
To surprise Jerry, I’d baked pupcakes for dessert—I’d found a recipe that was indeed edible for both humans and dogs, with flour and peanut butter as the main ingredients—but after we finished dinner, Noah said, “Before you bring out the you-know-whats, there’s something I want to do. I’ll be right back.”
When he reemerged from the house, he was carrying a guitar—not the Target one he’d made do with for a few days but one of his fancier models that Leah had sent from California, along with some clothes, after it had become clear we’d be staying awhile—and I heard Charlotte Larsen gasp. Around his neck, Noah wore a metal contraption that at first glance looked like an intense form of orthodontia but in fact was a harmonica in a holder. He walked to the eastern side of the deck and stood with the railing behind him. Noah glanced at Jerry and me, then at the Larsens, then back at me, and said, “I want to dedicate a song to you, Sally.”
Addressing the five other people and one dog, he said, “Sally and I met a couple years ago, but it’s only recently that we’ve reconnected. I feel very grateful. And since the way I express my feelings is through music, I want to sing a little something tonight. Thank you all for humoring me.” Looking at me, he said, “So, Sally Milz, this goes out to you.”
Next to Jerry, sitting at the table where we’d just eaten, I experienced a sort of internal lurching. Had Noah written a song for me? Was he calling my bluff after I’d said that maybe I’d like such a thing? Could I handle this in front of Jerry and the Larsens? In a different way, could Charlotte Larsen handle this?
Then Noah glanced down and began strumming. I knew right away, just from the first few chords, even before he looked at me and sang, “I heard that you were drunk and mean / Down at the Dairy Queen…”
I didn’t need to fake-smile; I didn’t need to make an effort to express my delight or conceal my distress. It was better than if he’d written a song for me, though perhaps, as I realized he hadn’t, I did sort of hope he would in the future? It also was better than if he’d sung some happily-ever-after ballad. There was nothing about Noah Brewster standing on Jerry’s deck singing “Dairy Queen” that I didn’t love.
He sang, “Ain’t it funny how we lose one day / And a lifetime slips away,” and in the third verse, after the lines “It was good for a time / I am told,” he pressed his lips against the harmonica and closed his eyes as the instrument’s magnificently nasal, twangy sound filled the air and Charlotte Larsen whooped and clapped.
The odd part was that, although I had listened to the song hundreds of times, and seen the Indigo Girls perform it, I had always focused on what I thought of as the spectacularly devastating lines about a relationship that hadn’t lasted. I’d hardly noticed that the song ended with the lines “Hey, I love you more and more / Oh, I love you more and more”—with those lines in the present tense. Watching Noah as he sang them, as he watched me—his eyes were open again—I wondered if I’d always understood the song a little wrong, or possibly if I’d always understood life a little wrong. Wondering this was not a bad thing; it was a beautiful, unexpected relief.
He bent his head once more to blow on the harmonica while rapidly strumming the guitar strings then slowed down, ending with a last elongated flourish. Lifting his head, he said, “Sally, I do love you more and more. And this is me talking—Noah—not the Indigo Girls, though I bet the Indigo Girls would love you, too, if they knew you.”
Because there were only six of us, I can’t say the applause was deafening. But it was certainly enthusiastic as I stood, walked toward Noah, and kissed him. I whispered into his ear, “That was a perfect grand gesture.”
An hour later, as I was pulling out of the driveway to pick up a few last things from the grocery store for Jerry before we left the next morning, the neighbor on the other side of the house waved at me to stop. When I rolled down the window, she said, “Is Jerry learning to play guitar? Because he sounds wonderful.”
EPILOGUE
April 2023
Because TNO airs live, it comes on at 8:30 p.m. on the West Coast, around the time Noah and I are finishing dinner during a night at home. The first time we watched it together after I left the show, I felt tense and territorial, and I was pretty sure I could guess who’d written which sketches, and I had strong opinions about how they could have been improved. Viv was still on maternity leave for the 2020 season premiere, but Henrietta was back, and I wanted to text both of them right after the ceremonial goodnights and also wanted to leave them alone—to let Viv sleep, or breastfeed, or whatever else she was doing, and to let Henrietta head to the after-party and not feel her phone vibrating. I suppose I was trying to protect myself from feeling ignored. My heart swelled when, as the credits were still rolling, a text arrived from Viv to Henrietta and me: I miss you bitches
Simultaneously, Henrietta and I replied, Same!
As the weeks and months passed, my feelings of tension, territoriality, and homesickness while watching dissipated. I can’t claim to be impartial these days, but the impulse to critique has mostly been replaced by a more relaxed nostalgia. Danny, who now shares an office with his News Desk co-writer, Roy, sometimes texts me threatening to write a sketch called The Sally Milz Rule.
In the summer of 2021, Noah returned to touring in a modified way, and I’ve gone with him for some shows, including when he performed in Kansas City and also in D.C., where I met his parents. He had described them accurately—palpably affluent, not especially nice—though the good news was that he had also described his sister accurately, and Vicky and I have become close. But usually when Noah travels, I stay put in Topanga.
The first feature for which I wrote the script is now in preproduction and scheduled to be filmed in L.A. in the summer. It isn’t, after all my talk, a romantic comedy. Instead, it’s a buddy movie starring Viv and Henrietta as the ex-wives of two Silicon Valley billionaires. Though their characters were both heavily involved with the founding of the start-up that made their ex-husbands rich, they’ve received little money or credit, and they team up to correct the record and seek justice. The working title is Tech Sis, though already I’ve had several multi-hour discussions with the studio executives about why they think, and why I don’t agree, that it should be Tech Sisters, or even more preposterously, Tech Sises. Nigel is one of the producers.
After Noah and I left Kansas City in 2020, I returned two weeks later (on Delta Air Lines, not a private jet) to check on Jerry. That November, I flew again to Kansas City (on a private jet, not Delta Air Lines) and, as planned, Jerry and Sugar flew back with me to Los Angeles for Thanksgiving and stayed until March, setting up camp in the pool house. This was a pattern we repeated in 2021, and in 2022, they came and just stayed. Which is to say that whether you consider beagles to be small or medium-sized, that’s the kind of dog that Noah now lives with. Sometimes in the late afternoon, Jerry and I do chair yoga by the pool, though we also regularly do water aerobics. It turns out California agrees with him.
In July 2021, Noah and I got married. On a Friday morning, we went together to get the license, which cost eighty-five dollars, and I provided the date of the dissolution of my previous marriage. Though there are, I learned, paparazzi that lurk at various L.A. courthouses hoping to catch high-profile people on this very errand, there is also such a thing as a confidential marriage license in California—it’s not designed to accommodate celebrities but rather the convenient result of a law from the 1800s meant to allow already-cohabiting couples to marry without public shame. This was the kind of license we obtained, then we drove immediately to a hotel in Montecito, where we’d rented a private villa overlooking the coast. On the villa’s lawn, the hotel’s general manager officiated at a ceremony with no other witnesses.
I don’t know if this is the wedding Noah and I would have had if not for Covid, but of course I don’t know if we’d have had any wedding if not for Covid; I don’t know if we’d have found each other again. And I realize it’s not the wedding most people would want, but I found a deep beauty in its irreducibility. We spent that weekend ordering room service, marveling at our new circumstances, and, well, making love in July. That Monday, we returned to Topanga and called our family and friends to tell them. On Tuesday, Noah’s publicist released a statement announcing our marriage and suggesting that anyone who wanted to help us celebrate could do so by making a donation to a nonprofit working to elect Democratic women. “We need to offset my reentry into the ultimate heteropatriarchal institution,” I’d said, and he’d laughed and replied, “As newlywed wives often tell their husbands.” That, among lots of my former colleagues, both Autumn and Elliot contributed struck me as unnecessarily magnanimous of them.
The Internet had opinions about Noah marrying me, and though I’ve inferred that some people saw it as a tragedy for him while others considered it a victory for feminism and/or mousy-looking straight women everywhere (two entities that are not, in fact, interchangeable), I’ve managed to avoid reading the vast majority of the comments.
By the time we got married, Noah and I were both, with effort, in the habit of leaving our phones in a drawer in the kitchen overnight. When I awaken in the morning, I sometimes go to that other far bathroom even now, but I always return. Noah is usually asleep when I do, and his unguarded face is startlingly handsome; the truth is that I still can’t believe a hot, smart, kind man loves me back. Often when I climb into bed, he reaches for me, opening his eyes as he does, smiling because he’s glad to see me. There are, presumably, texts and tweets and news articles I’m missing, but in these moments none seem all that urgent.
For beloved and funny C
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For facts, anecdotes, and analysis, I’m indebted to many sources. These include the books Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests, edited by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales; A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost; Gasping for Airtime: Two Years in the Trenches of Saturday Night Live by Jay Mohr; Bossypants by Tina Fey; Yes Please by Amy Poehler; Girl Walks into a Bar…: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle by Rachel Dratch; I Am the New Black by Tracy Morgan with Anthony Bozza; Hello, Molly! by Molly Shannon with Sean Wilsey; and The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee by Sarah Silverman. I also benefited from reading the New York Times article “Lives of the After-Party” by Paul Brownfield; the New York article “Comedy Isn’t Funny” by Chris Smith; and the New Yorker article “Leslie Jones: Always Funny, Finally Famous” by Andrew Marantz. I listened to the podcasts WTF with Marc Maron; Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out; Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend; and Fly on the Wall with Dana Carvey and David Spade. And I watched the documentary Saturday Night, directed by James Franco, as well as Saturday Night Live’s YouTube channel and its “Creating Saturday Night Live” videos. Finally, though I hope this is already clear, I was inspired by almost five decades of episodes of Saturday Night Live and am grateful to their creators, producers, writers, cast members, hosts, and crew.
Articles on other topics that helped guide my writing include “I’m Not Ready to Perform” by Will Butler and “The Day the Live Concert Returns” by Dave Grohl, both in The Atlantic; and “Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis” by Linda Villarosa in The New York Times.
I’m incredibly lucky to work with people in publishing who are very smart and very kind. Among them are my editor, Jennifer Hershey; my agent, Claudia Ballard; and my publicist, Maria Braeckel. Also at Random House, I am supported by Gina Centrello, Andy Ward, Susan Corcoran, Rachel Rokicki, Windy Dorresteyn, Madison Dettlinger, Jordan Pace, Wendy Wong, Marni Folkman, Paolo Pepe, Cassie Gonzales, Robbin Schiff, Kelly Chian, Theresa Zoro, Leigh Marchant, Benjamin Dreyer, and Elizabeth Eno. At WME, I am supported by Anna DeRoy, Tracy Fisher, Suzanne Gluck, Fiona Baird, Oma Naraine, and Stephanie Shipman. And over at Transworld, I am extremely thankful for Jane Lawson, Larry Finlay, Patsy Irwin, Vicky Palmer, and Richard Ogle.
My first reader for this book was my brother, P. G. Sittenfeld, whose wit and intelligence made writing more fun and whose strength, optimism, and big heart make him my role model. Other early readers were Ellen Battistelli, Tiernan Sittenfeld, Matt Carlson, Essie Chambers, Dessa, Julius Ramsay, Lewis Robinson, Aminatou Sow, Erin White, Bryan Miller, and Rebecca Hollander-Blumoff. I especially appreciated nuanced insights from Essie Chambers and Dessa. Celeste Ballard and Claire Mulaney showed me great generosity and patience. I am so glad to be part of a larger community of writers who include Susanna Daniel, Emily Jeanne Miller, Sheena MJ Cook, Cammie McGovern, Sugi Ganeshananthan, Sally Franson, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Will McGrath, Frank Bures, Jennifer Weiner, Elin Hilderbrand, Sarah Dessen, and Jodi Picoult. Stephanie Park Zwicker will forever be my Indigo Girls authority; Kari Forde-Thielen is a friend to beagles and Curtises. And my family members, both human and canine, are just such a delight to sit on the couch and watch TV with. Thank you all.
