Nora Goes Off Script

The time comes for the New York premiere of The Tea House. Nora wants to avoid seeing Leo and skip the premiere, but everyone else in her life talks her out of it. Weezie sends Nora some glamorous dresses, and Penny offers to go as her plus one. From the start, Nora feels like she is making a mistake. She feels out of place in her shimmering silver gown and strappy heels, no matter how much she tries to convince herself they are “a confidence costume” (186).

When Leo and Naomi arrive, Nora starts to panic. She has no idea what she will say to Leo and can’t stop thinking about what a big mistake she made agreeing to sell Sunrise. She hides in the back row of the theater, but even that is too much, and she ends up crying in the lobby with Weezie and Penny.

As the reviews for The Tea House start to come in, the movie is celebrated for its themes of empowerment, which Nora finds slightly ironic because she is still dreaming about being rescued by Leo. Meanwhile, she is still struggling to develop a suitable ending for Sunrise. Finally, she decides to switch up the power dynamics. She makes the visiting celebrity a woman, a pop star who falls in love with a widower while filming a music video on his property. This change allows the female character to leave the man, and Nora feels like she is back in charge.

The script sells for $750,000, more than Nora ever imagined making. She opens up college funds for her children and renovates her beloved house. One night, she is shocked to receive a text from Leo. He has read Sunrise and says what Nora has written is “ruthless” (197). He asks if she thought about how he would feel reading it, saying she took something real and “turned it into one of [her] bullshit stories” (197). When he insists that he was coming back, Nora is utterly confused. Before she can get her thoughts together, though, he tells her to forget it and go back to sleep.

The next day, Nora sends the perplexing exchange to Kate, who asks if there’s any chance Leo could be “psychotic.”

Come Christmas, Nora has a beautifully remodeled kitchen. Her parents come for the holidays, and the mood is only slightly threatened when Arthur asks what his dad and Leo are doing for Christmas. Nora’s mom saves the evening by telling amusing stories about what the two men might be doing. After dinner, Nora shows her parents Leo’s text thread, and both agree that “there’s a missing link” (203); something happened that Nora doesn’t know about.

In January, Nora gets a phone call from her agent. The Tea House has been nominated for four Oscars, including the award for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor. Nora immediately texts Leo to congratulate him and goes on to admonish him for paying her off. Leo tells her that he sent the money because he was “covering for [her]” (207), hoping the payment would make it seem like he had been her tenant. Nora has no idea what this means or why he felt the need to cover for her, and the thought of seeing him at the ceremony threatens to overshadow the excitement of the Oscar nomination.

Nora is soon sucked into a whirlwind of preparations. There are dresses to choose from, questions to answer, and speeches to prepare. Nora will attend the ceremony as the director’s date, and her parents will accompany her to LA. Naomi and Leo are going together.

Nora and her parents fly to LA for the Academy Awards. That day, Nora wakes up in her Beverly Hills hotel room feeling immensely grateful for her life. She has always been thankful for her work and her ability to support her family, but The Tea House is something different; the story is an intimate part of herself that was celebrated in a significant way. She is nervous about seeing Leo at the ceremony but feels more prepared than the last time, convinced their relationship wasn’t meant to be.

A team comes to Nora’s room to help her prepare for her big night. In her lavender dress and silver shoes, Nora feels beautiful but also still feels like herself. She keeps reminding herself that she is nominated and that she belongs at the celebration. On the red carpet, Nora has her first interaction with Leo, who is with Naomi. He tells her that she looks beautiful and tells Martin that Nora will break his heart if he’s not careful. Then, he is swept away for an interview, leaving Nora seething.

Nora wins the award for best screenplay, and everything is a blur of smiles, tears, and congratulations. The Tea House sweeps the ceremony; Martin wins for best director, and Leo wins best actor.

Nora attends the Vanity Fair afterparty with her parents, where she “sort of float[s] around” (221), drinking champagne, accepting congratulations, and chatting with celebrities. She feels “comfortable in a way [she] couldn’t have imagined” (221) as she celebrates her big win. Leo’s family is also in attendance, and Nora thinks for a moment that she has had too much to drink when she comes face to face with Luke Vance, Leo’s brother. Their resemblance is striking, but Nora decides that Luke has “more of an ordinariness” (222) to him. She meets Leo’s father and Luke’s wife, all of whom seem to have heard a lot about Nora. Luke admits that Leo got drunk at Thanksgiving and told them everything.

Nora is not sure what Luke means, but she tries to keep the mood light, telling the Vances that she showed Leo how to grocery shop. Later, Nora runs into Naomi in the bathroom. She asks Naomi what she and Leo will do now and is shocked to learn that they aren’t a couple; they dated for a short time but then kept up the charade to bring The Tea House more publicity. This development doesn’t reassure Nora. Leo leaving her for the clearly more desirable Naomi at least made sense, but now she believes he just didn’t want to be with her anymore.

Leo finally finds Nora outside on the terrace. He congratulates her, but as they talk, she can tell that something is wrong. Leo is emotional; he tells her that their relationship mattered to him and was “the most important thing” (229) he’d experienced. Nora takes this as the breakup speech he’d failed to deliver the year before and decides to end the night with this, however small, reconciliation.

The next morning, Nora FaceTimes with her kids and shows them her award. Bernadette is ecstatic, but Arthur is more reserved and interested in knowing if Nora spoke with Leo. Nora can tell he is thinking about something, but she isn’t sure what it is.

Nora returns to Laurel Ridge, and the next day, she gets a call from the school asking why Arthur is absent. Nora, who dropped her son off at school that morning, has no idea where he could be. Starting to panic, she traces his phone and sees he is in Harlem, taking the train to Grand Central Terminal. Not knowing what else to do, Nora calls Leo while she heads to the city. Leo promises that he and Weezie will look for Arthur and tells Nora to wait at his apartment. They find Arthur in Grand Central and are already back in Leo’s apartment when Nora arrives.

Arthur says he came to the city to confess something to Leo. He tells Leo and Nora how sad he felt when Ben left and how hard it was to not “have a dad anymore” (237). When Leo left, Arthur felt like the same thing was happening again. He was so mad at Leo for leaving that he texted him to say that Ben had returned on the opening night of Oliver Twist. Nora had taken him back, and their family was together again.

Nora is shocked, and Leo is angry. He tells Arthur that he “broke [his] heart” (238) and that it would be best for Nora and Arthur to leave.

Nora and Arthur talk a lot on the way back to Laurel Ridge. Nora realizes that maybe she didn’t do the best job helping Arthur process his feelings when his father left and tries to make up for it. She assures Arthur that Ben didn’t leave because of anything Arthur did. Inside, Nora is careful not to think too much about the reality that Leo didn’t leave her, that his heart was broken too. That night, in a brief text exchange, Leo tells her he is going to New Zealand, but maybe they will talk when he returns.

The following day, Nora makes her way downstairs and finds Leo on her porch, watching the sunrise. She cautiously sits next to him. He tells her how angry he was, imagining her there with Ben every morning, and she tells him she can’t believe he would think she’d take Ben back. They finally kiss, and Leo tells Nora he wants to come back to live in Laurel Ridge when he finishes filming in New Zealand. To be sure that Nora believes him this time, he puts a ring on her finger and tells her they are getting married.

Bernadette and Arthur come downstairs, and the whole family cries and celebrates this new development.

Nora spreads the news that she and Leo got back together to her family and friends, and everyone is delighted. Weezie is in tears, Mickey rushes off to call Leo, and Penny needs to hear the story twice.

In March, Nora and the kids fly to New Zealand to visit Leo on set. There are pictures of Nora and Leo in the tabloids, and Nora wonders if Ben has seen the news of their engagement. She has a butler who refills her iced tea and brings her plates of fresh fruit while Leo and Bernadette discuss wedding plans. She is in awe of her life, “at the possibility of having it all” (253).

Nora and Leo are married in July in their backyard, in front of the tea house. The hydrangeas are in bloom, and the yard has been covered in white fairy lights. Everyone celebrates and reminisces about how The Tea House brought Nora and Leo together. That night, in bed together, Leo tells Nora that Arthur could play his son in his next film, which will shoot in England. Nora finds herself looking into a future she could never have imagined, and she tells Leo they’ll discuss it over the next morning’s sunrise.