The house, though, is only a small piece of his character arc. The defining parts are the two rugrats, Sally and Stevie, who are currently making his abode sound like the seventh circle of hell, with the wailing in Dolby Surround.
I haven’t visited Seb anywhere near enough since he’s been a parent. Part of me never made peace with him having kids and moving on from our extended teenage years. Opting out from our arrested development. Seeing him now—one arm trying to keep his four-year-old at the table as she screams for toast and the other pushing a pram back and forth—I wonder how many times a day he questions his choices.
“Hey, buddy,” I say. “How can I help?”
He doesn’t comment on my black eye, just issues instructions on where to find the bread as Stevie, now ten months old, uses every ounce of strength to fight free from his four-wheel prison. I remove two unused but slightly charred nappies from the toaster and look over to see a giggling Sally. I replace them with bread and march over to her.
“Rooooaaaarrrrrgggggh,” I cry, making the most of my one good trick—a pretty nailed-on impression of a velociraptor. Sally’s giggles turn to full-blown belly chuckles. As I stomp around the kitchen, teeth bared, the chuckles become infectious, and Stevie joins in with such commitment he laughs himself to sleep in under thirty seconds.
“Apology accepted,” Seb says.
“Wha’ happened to you eye?” Sally asks, jabbing it with her tiny index finger.
“Ow. Please don’t do that again, Sally,” I say, rubbing my eyeball. “What happened to me eye? Erm.”
“Clean version please, Uncle Nick,” Seb instructs me.
“I didn’t eat my broccoli for a whole week and it just turned this color.”
Sally looks to her father for confirmation and is met with a shrug.
Now that the tears are dry, I manage to eke out of Seb a little of what happened before I showed up. It was the usual lack-of-sleep-induced arguments about comparative resentment and freedom. Seb feels trapped having to work a job that doesn’t fulfill him anymore. Tracy feels useless that she can’t find a job that will pay well enough to even cover the childcare costs.
“If we could just say to one another, I feel shi…” Seb stops himself and looks at his innocent daughter. “…pooey for you, instead of trying to one-up each other’s problems, we’d probably be okay.”
I nod.
“But whenever we get into it, it just feels like we’re doing our best to take the other one down. All hint of reason goes down the f…flipping pan.”
“Mummy,” Sally pipes up, and we turn in unison to see Tracy standing in the doorway, face dry and no longer blotchy.
“Can you say you feel pooey for me now?” she asks.
Seb looks at her with love, affection, and just the right amount of remorse.
“I can.”
Things are looking up, but there’s still a tension in the room I don’t fancy being in the middle of.
“Swings now,” Sally demands.
Seb and Tracy look at each other, resigned. Another job on the list of never-ending jobs appearing in front of them.
“I’ll take the kids,” I say with total commitment.
The parents of said kids stare at me like I’ve just offered to sell their offspring on eBay.
“Come on! One’s asleep and the other wants to go to the park. I’m an actual bona fide uncle now. I need the practice.”
The last line doesn’t instill confidence, but after a little cajoling from Sally, Tracy and Seb reluctantly agree to my proposal.
“If he wakes and isn’t happy, you bring them straight home,” Tracy says.
“Nappies and a change of clothes are in here. Drinks, snacks, and toys are in here.” Seb hands me two huge bags like I’m about to do a tour of Afghanistan.
“Cool,” I say, halfway out of the door. “And one last question. Which is your favorite? Just in case there’s a zombie attack and I can only save one.”
* * *
—
DESPITE THE TIME of year, the sun is out over London and the park is full of parents and their children making the most of the daylight before it’s gone for good, sucked up by the winter blues.
Stevie’s still sound asleep, so I position him next to the swings and put Sally in one. Worried that I might send her sixty feet into the air, I select the ones that are probably meant for much smaller children, the ones with the little bars across them, and am met with no resistance. I push her higher and higher, and each time she lets out a little “squee.” Her simple and pure happiness reminds me of the line in Knocked Up, where new dad Paul Rudd says something about wishing he liked anything as much as his kids like bubbles.
I don’t feel like I have that level of pleasure in me anymore. But I could see myself enjoying it secondhand through my own kids.
A random playground parent (RPP) comes and takes the swing next to me for her two-year-old. I’m scared she’s going to comment on Sally being too big for her swing, but she doesn’t. She just smiles at me and gives an upward head nod. I wonder if this is how parents interact, and so I offer one back.
“She’s adorable,” RPP says.
“Thanks,” I say, taking credit for someone else’s DNA. I point to her own daughter’s weird pig bobble hat. “I like the hat.”
She says something back about her kid being a big fan of pepper, which I don’t quite understand, but I give a little forced laugh to cover my tracks regardless.
“It’s great when one of them’s asleep, isn’t it?” she asks rhetorically.
“Better when they both are, am I right?” I throw back.
This gets a full-on chuckle from RPP and I wonder for a fleeting moment if this is flirting. Am I flirting with a mum? She’s very good-looking and has nice, soft eyes. She has hair like Ellie and for God’s sake can I please have ten minutes where I don’t think about Ellie?
Good-looking RPP’s child suddenly starts bawling, and I wonder if she’s telepathically linked to my misery.
“Better get her home for a nap,” she says, and disappears before either asking me for my phone number or suggesting I help raise her daughter.
Probably for the best, I think. The Ellie hair thing would have been a constant bummer. Once I’m alone again, the strange thought that I could steal these two children enters my head. I run with it to find out what the ending would be. It involves a hail of gunfire and a very disappointed Seb.
“Horsey now,” Sally says, snapping me out of my daydream.
I lift her out of the swing and place her on a wobbly plastic horse thing. As she careens from side to side, I run around her pretending to smack two coconuts together. This provokes more hysterical laughter and I think again how much I’d enjoy having an audience like this all the time. As I pretend to fall over and collapse onto the ground, her laughter reaches its crescendo and she dismounts her horse.
She offers me help getting to my feet, although I must say it feels like I’m doing most of the heavy lifting. Once I’m upright, she cocks her head to the side and looks at me strangely.
“I like you, Uncle Nick. You make me laugh.”
I thank her for the compliment and ask if she’s seen any good films lately.
She bounces up and down with excitement. “Me and Mummy watched Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe!”
“Cartoon, animatronic, or CGI Aslan?”
She looks at me as if I’m mad, and she has a point.
“I got sad when Aslan was poorly,” she says.
“Yeah, that bit’s tough.”
“But Mummy said, ‘It’ll be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it’s not the end.’ ”
She grins a tiny-toothed grin and runs off up a slide as I am suddenly filled with a hope I haven’t felt in a long time. A feeling that maybe she’s right. Maybe it will be all right. I
t’s hard to describe, but it’s like a determination has taken hold. A determination for what, I’m still not sure.
Sally comes back and asks why I’m sad.
I give her a hug and say, “I’m not,” and then wipe my nose on my coat. “Just a little hay fever.”
“But there’s no hay.”
She’s right. There isn’t. But there is something of a plan beginning to form. I need to finish my apology tour first. I need to see someone who can give me the approval I crave to make sure I’m doing the right thing.
And I need to give Seb his kids back.
* * *
—
BACK AT CHEZ Seb, my best friend and his wife are beaming like Cheshire cats. Sally runs at her dad like a bullet train and he scoops her up, throwing her high into the air. This reminds me again how nice their house is. These wonderful high ceilings. If he tried that trick in Ronnie’s flat, he’d be calling an ambulance and a plasterer.
He puts his daughter down and she runs off to play, with a sing-song “Bye, Uncle Nick!”
Seb pats me on the back and I inspect his and Tracy’s beaming faces.
“You guys look happy.”
They take each other’s hands and say in chorus, “We reconnected.”
I smirk. “You mean you had sex.”
Without taking their eyes off each other, they repeat my line. “Yeah, we had sex.”
Stevie wakes and Tracy takes him off for a feed, but not before she kisses me on the cheek and whispers, “Thank you” in my ear. I’ll be honest, as nice a gesture as it is, I do wonder where her lips have just been.
“I feel like a million bucks,” Seb says when his wife and kids are out of earshot. “Thanks again, dude.”
“Anytime,” I reply, feeling a little on the million-bucks side myself. Seb immediately picks up on this.
“Did something happen at the park? Did you meet a random yummy mummy?”
“I did, yeah, but that’s not why I’m happy. You’ll have to thank your daughter for her wise counsel. She’s like a miniature Tom Hagen. She’s helped me make a real breakthrough with something.”
“That’s wonderfully vague.”
I shake my head. “I’ll tell you more when I know.”
* * *
—
WHEN I ARRIVE home, there are two letters on the mat. Actual letters. With stamps and everything. Neither of them is a bill or a late payment fine or a bank statement. Both of them are addressed to me by name and written in ink.
Just call me Vicomte de Valmont.
The first letter is from the Edinburgh Film Consortium, an organization I first heard about from reading this letter. After a brief opening about finding my details through a Mr. Sebastian Kendal (it takes me about twenty seconds to realize they mean Seb), they get to the crux of the missive.
It’s an invite to work—in a freelance capacity—for Scotland’s fourth largest film festival. Scotland, I later learn, has four film festivals. They need someone who can work a 35mm projector and who’d be willing to work over Christmas and New Year’s. Seb recommended me, clearly—and rightfully—assuming I’d be pretty lonely for the week between December 25 and January 1, what with my parents kayaking in Auckland, Gabby preoccupied with a small person on her boobs, and Ellie a ghost of Christmases past.
I’d even told him that my new employers had invited me around for Christmas Day and how—while the gesture was nice—if I said yes it would be the lowlight of what was already a frankly awful year. There was an awkward moment in which I think he thought I was angling for an invite to his, but I quickly put that to bed by saying I was enjoying my solitude again.
It wasn’t an outright lie. Since I’ve stopped working at the cinema, I don’t really have a lot of “me” time. My days are usually occupied by work, sleep, catching up with friends, or hanging out with Ronnie.
Whereas I’m desperate for company during the evenings—and yes, at night—I miss how being a projectionist let me be by myself during the day. It was a strange occupation to be surrounded by people but with little or no interaction with anyone.
Will I go back to it? Even for just one week?
The pay is poor, and even without family it’s still hard to be away from home at Christmas. But if I say yes, I’ll be back lacing up film in a month’s time. I’ll think on it. For now, on to the second letter.
I don’t need to open this one to know whence it came.
The Statue of Liberty stamp is a big clue.
When I do open it, out drops a USB stick. Not so late-eighteenth-century Paris after all.
But there’s a handwritten note too.
It simply reads:
WATCH ME.
NOVEMBER 5, 2008—4:44 A.M. GMT
OBAMA 338
MCCAIN 155
BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA IS PRESIDENT-ELECT
No one could talk me out of it. No one.
Except, of course, her.
I was halfway down the road, my head telling me I’d done the right thing, my heart telling me I’d never get over it.
And then I heard her call out.
“Hey!”
I didn’t have a clever line or witty retort for this moment. I genuinely thought I’d made a clean getaway.
“Can I take a photo?” she asked, holding up her camera. “Something to remember you by in case I can’t find you on Facebook. Or in case I wake up tomorrow and think, What did that jerk who ran out on me without saying a word look like?”
The happy person I’d spent the night with was melancholy and subdued, and I knew this was my doing.
Quickly, I thought, come up with an excuse.
“So sorry, I, erm, I started to get a bit of a, erm, headache…”
Me and my erms.
“You’re a terrible liar, Nick Marcet. But you really had me convinced that you were a good person.”
I couldn’t fathom whether the warm words were to make me feel better, to cool her feeling of rejection, or to persuade me to stay.
She continued, “But just so you know, what you’re doing now is not what a good person would do. Leaving someone who likes you, who’s made it clear that they like you, without a word, it makes them wonder what they did wrong. Makes them wonder what’s wrong with them.”
I felt every type of awful.
“It’s not you,” I blurted out.
“Not helping,” she replied.
Even without the benefit of hindsight, I knew the next line was a punt.
“It’s like The Phantom Menace…”
All the muscles in her face conveyed the “What?!” so her mouth didn’t have to. I persevered.
“You remember when you saw The Phantom Menace back in 1999?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t really like Star Wars films and everyone said it was a bit rubbish.”
While I’d missed the point entirely, I felt validated.
“See!” I was animated now. “There’s something we’ll already fight about.”
“What are you talking about?!” she yelled, matching my fervor but from a completely different angle.
The street was cold and I could see our breath meeting as I fashioned my master speech, the one that would make her understand.
“I had a great time tonight,” I said.
Her head nodded with a mixture of affirmation and shivering.
“I did too. That’s why I’m freezing my bits off out here with you when I could be warm inside watching history unfurl.”
“But, I mean, I had a really great time. A spectacular, once-in-a-lifetime time. You know how often I dream of going to a party and meeting someone as amazing as you? You made me smile the minute I saw you. You made me laugh within ten. You made me feel like the lead role and not just some background extra. You’re gorgeous and
clever and obviously super-talented, and you’re so cool and also really uncool in just the right amounts.”
Her cheeks, already crimson from the cold, blushed redder with each compliment.
“And you’re so, I don’t know, playful. Yeah, playful.”
She snorted at this.
“I think it’s the right word. And your eyes. I could get lost in your eyes for the rest of my life, and I know the more I get to know you, the more I’ll fall. And then one day, I’ll mess it up. I don’t know how or why, but I will. And knowing everything I know now, everything I’ve learned in just one night, I know that losing you will be awful.”
Her assessment of my conclusion was short and sweet.
“That’s all really nice, Nick. But it’s fucking nuts.”
And then she started to laugh. At me. Maybe a little with me, but mostly at me. The way she did this was fascinating. No one likes being laughed at. It’s not supposed to be a nice feeling. But once she started, I just broke out into the widest, daftest grin.
And it was all because she was still here.
I’d convinced myself she was a distant memory as I walked out of that house. I’d never been surer of anything than I was that I’d never see her again. But there she was. Looking at me like I was mucho loco. After a while, she chose a serious expression to wear.
“I like you, Nick.”
“I like you, Ellie.”
She put her hands on the sides of my head and kissed me.
“I don’t know why you’re so sure you’ll mess this up,” she said. “But I’m sort of looking forward to finding out how you do.”
She winked at me and grabbed my hand. Typical Ellie, I thought. Always taking the lead.
“It’s just what I do,” I lamented, skillfully bringing the mood down again. “I don’t think it’s possible for me not to.”
But she wasn’t having any of it.
“Maybe. But a black man with the middle name Hussein just got elected president of the United States, so I think anything’s possible.”
I waited until we were outside the house to stop her, brush my fingers through her hair, and kiss her again. I also had a pressing question I needed answering as soon as humanly possible.
Love, Unscripted Page 24