My husband has been home for a couple of months. It’s always nice the first month when he’s home. We go out to dinner, we cook, we go to the movies, we watch TV, we see friends, and we have for a while, a semblance of a normal life like other people live. After that month however, well… I want some peace and quiet and not to relate during the day. I want my freaking house back. I want him to shut up!
Film people are always worried about the next job. I worry too. He doesn’t have to say it, it’s written all over him. What if no one hires me again? What if this is my last job? The same thing happens to me when I finish a project and I’m waiting to start another, will I ever write again? Will the powers that control such goings on betray me and condemn me to staring at the empty screen for the rest of my life? Since both of us have lived this way for nearly all of our marriage, doesn’t make the whole process any easier. We’ve done some version of this in New York, in Los Angeles, in East Hampton. Sometimes we’d land on one coast, when he’d get a call for an interview and turn around and be on the other coast within 10 hours of landing. The old canard about shoveling elephant shit and giving up show business is absolutely horribly true.
I believe this is one of the reasons why our son has extremely short hair, lots of beautifully tailored suits, eight zillion ties and became a republican because it was as far away as he could get from the film biz and freelance life as he knew it where one minute daddy was home. And one minute he was gone. It seems we were always standing in the street waving at the departing cab: “Is Daddy really gone again?”
Often I fantasize that I might have married some businessman with regular hours. Someone who didn’t like team sports, but had a reverence for the arts; someone like Rebecca West’s husband who financed all her forays into Eastern Europe empowering her to write Grey Falcon Black Lamb. Yes, in my fantasy, I’m married to some sterling character who wears a bespoke suit and leather shoes and loves and appreciates me for my intellect and creativity. And of course has eight zillion bucks.
No doubt my husband has his own version of this fantasy. And wishes for an arts loving lawyer or doctor who works away from home, yet manages to get a healthy dinner on the table while she’s not earning eight zillion bucks perhaps enough to finance a small art film and so forth.
If he doesn’t get a job soon, I’m going to lose it, I’ve been telling myself for about two weeks now. I’ve left notes in the doors of places where I used to rent office space. I’ve tried working in the library to get away from here. I’ve tried earplugs, white noise, I’ve tried everything.
But now as of half an hour ago, after much ringing of the cell phone and pacing up and down on the wood floor above me whilst talking on said cell phone, the house is quiet. It’s just Henry and me. After a couple of phone calls, and a loud banging shut of the front door, the Beemer drives out of the driveway and he’s gone faster than you can say, “The script’s kind of cute, not bad… I’ll text you….”
And now of course, I’m somewhat bereft. The house seems very quiet. Henry is looking around wondering, “Hey where’s the testosterone flinging ball throwing guy with the hair on his chest?”
Stockholm syndrome?
Same old, same old?
What I’ll do for a day or two is mope around, then everything will start to pick up. And by the time I get used to no company, being on my own, not making dinner and so forth and so on, he’ll be back.
You cannot win if you are married to someone in the film biz.
I remember once years ago, going to the cutting room of the moment on a Saturday night with our young son, so he could see his dad and have a bite. There was a period of time when we were doing a lot of this on Saturday night and Sunday night too. The cutting room was in a whole complex of cutting rooms in some office building. Saturday night and room after room had a tired editor in a greenish black dingy room staring at a screen.
In the room next to my husband, a tired editor got up, stretched a little. Like all editors, he was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a pair of sneakers. His T-shirt read, “Never Love An Editor.” And I’ve never forgotten that T-shirt.
But it was too late by then. And now it’s way way too late.
I love the editor. I’m glad he’s got a gig and now, I have no excuse for not getting my book done. I’m busted.
by 
