Everything was going so well that it wasn’t until Thursday that Wendy thought about her screenplay again.
Guilt pricked her. Sam had better creative work habits than she did. Why? She loved writing.
She just didn’t like writingthisthing.
That evening, as Sam and Oriane insisted on Alejo watching an anime that he’d never heard of—and Wendy had watched over and over with Sam—she firmly put butt in chair and opened her laptop.
Now, with so many days away from the screenplay she’d worked so hard on, she could take a look with fresh eyes. That should suggest the direction to take it in, right?
She tabbed up to the beginning, and began reading.
Halfway through the first act, she discovered her mind wandering. She forced her attention back to the page. She was going to getsomethingaccomplished before she closed her eyes that night. But the more she read, the more her mind wanted to jump to the laundry, to what the kids were laughing over. To Alejo. Oh, always to him, but also anywhere else but the screen in front of her. She wanted to be with the others sitting so companionably in the living room.
She looked back at her screen. The truth? Except for about three genuinely witty lines, the thing waslifeless. She hated the characters, she hated her upscale, “clever” office setting, she hated everything about it. What made her think she could write for a type of show that she didn’t even watch?
With a spurt of frustration, she hit SELECT ALL, and then DELETE.
There. All gone. All that work—she could imagine Linette’s cry of protest—but all she felt was a sneaking sense of relief.
Her agent had said that that sort of script was being looked for, and she’d always tried to show willingness to adapt—be a team player—but that had been months ago. Things changed so fast in Hollywood, who knew what was hot now? What did she really want to write? Why not just start typing, and see what happened?
“Act One, Scene One,” she muttered to herself. “What makesmehappy?”
She looked at the TV screen, and the kids’ faces. She looked at Alejo, who laughed with them.Thatwas what excited her. That was what she wanted to get on paper, this feeling of the four of them, a family. Unconventional it might be, but the basic emotions were universal: the urge to protect the young, to see them happy, which in turn sparked one’s own happiness. And likewise, watching the young ones being themselves, and enjoying each other. When she was small, and she’d pretended she had a sister—sometimes older, sometimes younger—this was what she’d pictured.
Where could she set such a story? With a sudden rush of relief, she decided she was done with sophisticated offices, and all their hidden stresses. It was now, when for the first time nearly since childhood that she found herself living full days without worrying, that she understood how much of her life in Hollywood had been a constant state of anxiety-driven competition. Some people thrived on that. She never had.
She looked at her screen, and made herself a promise: she was not only going to write what she wanted to write, but if her agent hated it, or production companies held their noses, who cared? If she didn’t sell it, she didn’t sell it. It wasn’t as if rejection was anything new. What nobody could take away was the fun of writing, but that meant she had to let herself have fun first.
So, what would be the most fun location she could invent? What did she want to do with a new setting? That was easy to answer: she wanted to try to capture that exhilarating sense of wonder she’d felt when she looked up at Alejo’s beautiful, powerful serpent for the first time.
Yes, this was the right track. She wanted a setting that conveyed that breathtaking sense that the world was bigger, and stranger, and far more interesting then Wendy had ever dared let herself think.
Typing slowly, then more rapidly, she began to invent another world altogether. As the setting painted itself, characters popped up, busy doing things. In the center, a family centering around a little squirrel. Maybe she should change that? It was silly to think that anyone might put a fantasy of hers together with Sam’s garden friends, but she decided that this would be a flying squirrel. And he lived with a hawk—that would be Alejo—and what should she herself be? How about a deer—a blue one? And, oh, how about opening the story when they suddenly find themselves taking in a...an otter? Yes. Otters were sleek and lovely and very different from the others. They lived in the shadow of a mighty tree, their home half cave, and half water...
She was just getting a grip on the world when an e-mail popped up in the upper corner of her screen: from WCHAMPLAINII.
Bill was supposed to have Sam this coming weekend, but his usual pattern on bailing was to wait until the very last minute. Wendy was sure he did this in order to mess up any plans she’d made, a petty move that was typical Bill.
Sure enough.
She opened the e-mail.Business trip … vitally important…She didn’t need to read it all. She wrote back a single sentence, thanking him for letting her know, copied the letter to her “Lawyer” file, then deleted it from her regular e-mail list so she wouldn’t have to see his name.
She closed the laptop and went into the living room. “It’s a school night, Sam. You know the rules.”
Sam’s face fell.
Wendy said, “By the way, your father e-mailed me tonight to say that he has an important business trip, so this weekend you’ll be staying here with us.”
Sam shrugged a shoulder. For him this was Business As Usual. And Wendy had seen how Sam was steadily turning more to Alejo to fill that “dad” hole.
He hopped up to get ready for bed, and Wendy’s eyes met Alejo’s. She recognized that rueful smile: he was glad he had a promising relationship with Sam, but it was not unalloyed joy. He, too, had to be thinking how sad it was that Bill was unaware of what he was missing.
NINETEEN
ALEJO
Wendy was suddenly writing.
