Page 10 of Sleeper: The Palisades Edition

We didn’t get to have a normal childhood, so it’s more important than anything to both of us to give our kids as stable an upbringing as we can. Not that there’s anything stable about the life of an actor. Not that there’s anything even remotely sane about the lives of two actors who are co-parenting five-year-old twins.

But we try.

Even when Margo fell in love with a very wealthy producer, we tried “nesting” for a few weeks after deciding to end our marriage. Margo tossed the words “conscious uncoupling” around like glittering Hollywood confetti. I lived in the guest room of our former home in the Hollywood Hills, but every time Landon Gold came over when I was there, it was awkward as fuck. A guy wants to be the king of his castle, and I needed my own castle, no matter how hard it was not seeing the twins every day when I was in town.

But it got easier, eventually. Summer and Lucky were two years old, so I don’t think they even remember what it was like before they split their time between us. It was never a question that we’d have shared custody. And the truth is, Landon is a good guy. He’s a much better match for Margo, he’s good enough with the kids, and he isn’t trying to replace me. So all I’ve had to do was focus on getting my shit together and figure out how to deal with my ex-wife as a parent.

My shit is pretty together, aside from the fact that I’ll probably never sleep or have a significant relationship with a woman again for the rest of my life. Here’s what I’ve figured out about how to deal with my ex-wife as a parent: I just have to pretend that I don’t think she’s anoverly ambitious, mildly self-centered, phony boho-hippie flake, and remind myself that she’s a nice person, a good mother, and even a pretty good friend—in her own way. But there always comes a point where I need to put my foot down, and this is one of those points. The foot’s coming down.

I find my laptop and try my luck at initiating a video call with Margo. She accepts the call after three rings. The camera of her phone is pointing up at a very high ceiling. I can hear giggling, rustling, and movement.

“I’m here! Hang on!…Owww! You stuck me with the pin that time.” The phone moves, and when Margo’s hand pulls away, I see that she’s in the middle of a costume fitting. “Hi. What’s up? We’re almost done here.” She’s wearing a Victorian-era dress and holding her arms up while getting poked with safety pins apparently.

Am I jealous that she’s doing a period film that started getting Oscar buzz before they even began shooting it? A little. I’ll never get cast in a period film because I have what’s referred to as “a modern face and manner.” Whatever. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences can suck my thoroughly modern balls.

“Do you have a minute? I need to talk to you about something.”

“What’s wrong?”

“They’re fine. I just need to talk to you.”

A middle-aged woman with measuring tape hanging around her neck comes into view for a second. “I’ll pop out for a bit,” she says. “Not to worry.”

Margo’s voice gets deeper as soon as she’s alone. The phone’s propped up against something, and she can barely move with a corset on, but she tries to lean incloser to the camera. “What’s going on? How are they? You look tired.”

“The kids are great.”

“Yeah? They’re doing okay without Paloma?”

“They’re doing just fine without Paloma. They sleep, they get up when they’re supposed to, one of them brushes his teeth all by himself while the other makes a fucking mess in the kitchen, and they magically get to class exactly on time.”

“You still aren’t sleeping?”

“Only from the hours of six thirty to seven thirty in the morning on school days, it turns out.”

“Did you try the valerian root tea?”

“It smells like sweaty socks.”

“You really need to try meditating again, and I mean, if you would just practice yoga even for ten minutes a day, it would change everything.”

“Really? Will it bring Paloma back? Will it change the location of your shoot from Poland to Vancouver, British Columbia? They have mountains there too, and it’s only a three-hour plane ride away.”

“No, but it would change your perspective and your response to these things, because that’s really the only issue here.”

“Is it, though? Is that theonlyissue?”

“We’ve been over this—it’s not like I love being on the other side of the world from my kids. There weren’t any neo-baroque castles in Vancouver, last time I checked. God, you’re grumpy. I’m going to look up which flower essences would be good for you.”

“Fantastic. While you’re doing that, I’m going to hire a temporary nanny to help me out until you get back.”

“Shane, no.”

“Margo, yes.”

“Did you talk to your housekeeper?”

“Consuelo has two grandkids to look after when she isn’t cleaning houses.”