We’ll get it before then,” I assured her.
“Well, sure.” She looked away, trying to be casual. Subtle. “If you have to.”
I was ready to get in that clown car, hold my husband’s hand over the gearshift, and put a hundred miles between me and Woodstock. “Okay, guys, let’s get going!”
It’s hard to pinpoint on a long, hot family ride in creeping holiday traffic that someone is actively not talking to you, as opposed to just trying to survive, but I started to suspect, sometime around the George Washington Bridge, that Blake was not talking to me.
And we needed to talk. Had needed to talk for months. To keep our Screen Actors Guild health insurance, Blake needed to book $30,000 worth of union jobs each calendar year. His theater work didn’t count toward it, and neither did all the nonunion film stuff he did for friends, but between residuals and Something Always Coming Through, we had squeaked by. I should clarify that none of this would have been possible without The Apartment.
Blake had inherited the rent-controlled lease to the classic six on West Fifty-Sixth Street where Val had decamped with him after the divorce. It was supposed to be transitional, but after Rudy Giuliani came into office and the city went from being a place families fled to to a place you donated sperm, blood, organs, anything! to stay—a rent-controlled apartment just blocks from gentrifying Columbus Circle was something no one would give up.
So with our low rent, our union health coverage, our ability to jointly cover child care until our kids started public pre-K, we had just made it, without any financial cushion, from month to month. For ten years. One hundred and twenty months. With any injury, strike, or root canal threatening to submerge us.
So when this year started and he failed to book a single pilot, I began suggesting that we might want to have The Talk. What was the plan? Would we keep doing this until the kids left for the college we couldn’t help pay for? Zeroing out our bank account every month? Waiting for the euphoria when he got a job? The euphoria that was feeling more and more like we were just junkies living from fix to fix.
But then he went up for this new Netflix series. It was a leading part, the game changer, his Don Draper. The closer Blake got to forty, Jon Hamm, who was still waiting tables when he auditioned for Mad Men , was referenced in our house with the frequency some families talk about Jesus.
The studio flew Blake to LA, put him on camera, tested him with Maria Bello, tested him with Katherine Delaney, although he couldn’t get a handle from the dialogue if they were supposed to be his wife—or his mother. Back and forth through the spring and into the summer. He didn’t want to take another job in case he had to “jump.” I took as much freelance work as I could scrounge up, but things were getting very, very scary. I leaped for the mail every day like a teenager, looking for the residual checks that were getting us through.
“Blake, I’m so sorry,” I said as we pulled up at our building. “But as soon as the kids are down, we really need to start to figure this out.” He was dropping us off with all the gear before going to return the car.
“Sure,” he said, without looking at me as he left.
While he was gone the kids and I unpacked, then started laundry and had dinner. Then went to the park to enjoy one of the last summer evenings. I was laying out their school clothes for the next day when a text finally came from Blake: “Ran into Jack. Grabbing a drink.”
It seemed that I’d been asleep for hours when I felt him slide in next to me. I didn’t want to fight. I wanted to curl into him, feel his fingers in my hair, his heartbeat under my cheek that told me I wasn’t alone, that we would figure this out. Team Turner.
But he didn’t move any closer. He was sweating whiskey.
“Did you have fun?” I whispered.
“Got a call from Pete. Someone dropped out of
“Well, sure.” She looked away, trying to be casual. Subtle. “If you have to.”
I was ready to get in that clown car, hold my husband’s hand over the gearshift, and put a hundred miles between me and Woodstock. “Okay, guys, let’s get going!”
It’s hard to pinpoint on a long, hot family ride in creeping holiday traffic that someone is actively not talking to you, as opposed to just trying to survive, but I started to suspect, sometime around the George Washington Bridge, that Blake was not talking to me.
And we needed to talk. Had needed to talk for months. To keep our Screen Actors Guild health insurance, Blake needed to book $30,000 worth of union jobs each calendar year. His theater work didn’t count toward it, and neither did all the nonunion film stuff he did for friends, but between residuals and Something Always Coming Through, we had squeaked by. I should clarify that none of this would have been possible without The Apartment.
Blake had inherited the rent-controlled lease to the classic six on West Fifty-Sixth Street where Val had decamped with him after the divorce. It was supposed to be transitional, but after Rudy Giuliani came into office and the city went from being a place families fled to to a place you donated sperm, blood, organs, anything! to stay—a rent-controlled apartment just blocks from gentrifying Columbus Circle was something no one would give up.
So with our low rent, our union health coverage, our ability to jointly cover child care until our kids started public pre-K, we had just made it, without any financial cushion, from month to month. For ten years. One hundred and twenty months. With any injury, strike, or root canal threatening to submerge us.
So when this year started and he failed to book a single pilot, I began suggesting that we might want to have The Talk. What was the plan? Would we keep doing this until the kids left for the college we couldn’t help pay for? Zeroing out our bank account every month? Waiting for the euphoria when he got a job? The euphoria that was feeling more and more like we were just junkies living from fix to fix.
But then he went up for this new Netflix series. It was a leading part, the game changer, his Don Draper. The closer Blake got to forty, Jon Hamm, who was still waiting tables when he auditioned for Mad Men , was referenced in our house with the frequency some families talk about Jesus.
The studio flew Blake to LA, put him on camera, tested him with Maria Bello, tested him with Katherine Delaney, although he couldn’t get a handle from the dialogue if they were supposed to be his wife—or his mother. Back and forth through the spring and into the summer. He didn’t want to take another job in case he had to “jump.” I took as much freelance work as I could scrounge up, but things were getting very, very scary. I leaped for the mail every day like a teenager, looking for the residual checks that were getting us through.
“Blake, I’m so sorry,” I said as we pulled up at our building. “But as soon as the kids are down, we really need to start to figure this out.” He was dropping us off with all the gear before going to return the car.
“Sure,” he said, without looking at me as he left.
While he was gone the kids and I unpacked, then started laundry and had dinner. Then went to the park to enjoy one of the last summer evenings. I was laying out their school clothes for the next day when a text finally came from Blake: “Ran into Jack. Grabbing a drink.”
It seemed that I’d been asleep for hours when I felt him slide in next to me. I didn’t want to fight. I wanted to curl into him, feel his fingers in my hair, his heartbeat under my cheek that told me I wasn’t alone, that we would figure this out. Team Turner.
But he didn’t move any closer. He was sweating whiskey.
“Did you have fun?” I whispered.
“Got a call from Pete. Someone dropped out of
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