After a long time, you get up. You hold out your hand to help Sheila to her feet—she is, after all, wearing a catsuit, and that shit’s hard to navigate. Her face is dripping mascara from crying, but underneath that, she’s smiling.
It’s wonderful to see her smile.
It’s the most wonderful thing in the universe.
You go back to the Jeep, except it’s not a jeep anymore; it’s something more practical, but still edgy. Maybe an Element? or a RAV4? In the backseat, your infant son is strapped in his car seat, laughing in his sleep. You and Sheila change into comfy clothes because couture and catsuits are, sadly, not for R&R, and you drive back down the mountain, still with your arms out the windows, but now the wind pushes the backs of your hands instead of the palms. After a while, you pass a little cafe with outdoor seating. You order wine. You watch the sun set over those snowcapped peaks, color exploding over the sky: yellow to red to midnight blue. That’s when you tell her how sorry you are, how your thoughts are with her and her family. You tell her it sucks, sucks, sucks, and nothing is fair and that sucks. You say words like strength and time, even though you know how many others have told her those same words, told her anything and everything in the hope it’s the right thing to say.
But it’s not.
There isn’t any right thing to say.
So you just stop talking. You hand her your son. He wraps his tiny fists around her thumbs, and the three of you watch the stars. Out here, they’re for real, not like in the city where you can only see one or two but thousands, millions, millions of millions, and they’re all so goddamn beautiful.
I BOP
I’M NINE YEARS OLD, my jeans are pegged so tightly at the ankles that I can’t feel my feet, and a single ponytail—well ratted with Aquanet and a pick comb—juts out over my ear like a handle to my head. I have a pink plastic boom box, a cassette tape of Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual, and I’m standing in front of the bathroom mirror, dancing side-to-side and singing “She Bop” into a whisk.
This was before Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center and the Filthy Fifteen—a list of songs with questionable content including Prince, AC/DC, and “She Bop,” because apparently it taught adolescent girls how to masturbate and I’m like, Tipper, let’s get real, okay? I did not learn how to masturbate from Cyndi Lauper. I learned to masturbate from a female stagehand in a community player’s production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I was playing Violet Beauregard’s mother, minding my own business while my daughter turned into a blueberry night after night, while over at the University of Michigan, that stagehand was getting liberated in some Womyn-with-a-Y Studies class and on closing night, she gave me book called Sex For One. To educate me. To guide me. To help me get in touch with my inner Venus, which I most certainly did not want to do. What I wanted to do was stand in front of the bathroom mirror and sing along with Cyndi.
“She bop—he bop—a—we bop, I bop—you bop—a—they bop, Be bop—be bop—a—lu—bop, I hope he will understand, She bop—”
“She what?” my mother asked. She was in the next room, grading fourth grade spelling tests.
“Bop,” I told her, squinting at my reflection just like Cyndi did in the “Time After Time” video. “She bop.”
“She can’t bop,” my mother said. “Bop is not a verb.”
Grammar was an important thing in our family. While my friend Becky and I were welcome to ride our bikes to the library, me and Becky most certainly could not.
“It is so a verb,” I said, irritated that my performance had been interrupted. I put down the whisk, hit stop on my boom box, and stood in the doorway so she could see my indignation. “Bop is totally an action word.”
My mother looked at me over her glasses. “Try it out in a sentence—” I always had to try stuff out in sentences— “We bop, I bop, they bop,” she demonstrated, oblivious that she was reciting lyrics. “You bop, he bop—”
“See, that’s grammar!” I said.
“It is not grammar,” she said.
And I said, “Cyndi Lauper says it’s grammar!”
I’d recently watched that episode of the Cosby show where Vanessa wants to wear makeup and her mother says no. Vanessa’s thirteen and snotty and says, “Rebecca’s mother lets her wear makeup!” And Claire says, “I am not Rebecca’s mother! If you want to live by her rules, go live in her house. But under my roof, you will do as I say!” I think I imagined a similar exchange between me and my own mother—I mean, my mother and I— but it didn’t happen. She wasn’t some sitcom character with scripted dialogue; she was a very real woman trying to juggle a marriage and a career and a kid. And sometimes I made her crazy, and sometimes worried, and often, proud. But the thing with Cyndi Lauper and the grammar? That just made her tired. I remember she took off her glasses and looked up at the ceiling as though the rules of parenting might be stenciled in the paint. “Someday,” she said, “if you decide to have children of your own, you’ll understand.”
Memory is a tricky thing. I can generally remember the scene, and usually, the tenor of voices and general subject matter—but exact dialogue is a rarity. Not in this scenario. “If you decide to have children of your own,” she said, “you’ll understand.” I remember it so clearly, every word. “If you decide,” she said. “If you decide.”
Every month or so, I come across an article telling me what a woman or a girl should or should not do. How she should and should not act. What she can and cannot say. Can she have a job and a family? Can she have a family and go to college? Can she go to college, period? Can she be a rock singer or a CEO or a writer? Can she write if she has a child? If she has a second child? When are you going to have your second child? When are you going to get married? When are you going to get a 401K? Did you bake the baked goods for the bake sale or buy the baked goods for the bake sale? Did you stop calling yourself a feminist because Susan Sarandon stopped calling herself a feminist? Did you opt in or opt out, nevermind any mention of the financial position a woman would need to be in to make that choice in the first damn place and please, please please please, can we stop? Can we find a way to tell our stories, weigh our options, get advice and/or back-up and/or support when and if we need it without being told, every month, what we should or should not do, can or cannot say?
If you decide, my mom said to me when I was nine.
She said it when I was fifteen, too. And twenty-six. And thirty-three. And yesterday.
If you decide.
In the moment, of course, I missed all of this nuance. All I heard was Someday You’ll Understand. When you’re nine, nothing is as infuriating as being told you can’t understand something until later. I flounced back into the bathroom, turned the pink boom box up as loud as it would go, and faced my reflection: the ridiculous ponytail, an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt a la Flashdance. Never, I told myself. Never, ever, ever are you going to grow up and get stupid about important things the way grown-ups sometimes are.
82 DEGREES
IT WAS TWENTY BELOW, one of those horrible Chicago winter nights with a blizzard advisory, and even with three layers of gortex, your fingers are still ice in your mittens and every breath freezes your insides. If you’re smart, you stay home, wrapped under afghans with hot chocolate and thermal socks—but me? I was out there, midnight on a Wednesday, trying to dig my car from its parking spot, which was totally futile ‘cause every shovelful of snow was immediately replaced with more snow. An easy eight inches on the ground already, and did I mention I was wearing heels? And a dress? And two coats of mascara, frozen in black icicles. My entire everything was like ten seconds away from hypothermia, and right about now you’re thinking, “Were you insane? Why were you out there?”
Because of a guy.
“Who is that?” said Ellie, one of the waitresses I worked with. It was a particularly slow morning, and the entire staff was packed behind the coffee bar, watching Christopher eat pancakes on the other side of the
restaurant.
“He’s cute!” said Sharon.
“He’s tall!” said Beth.
“He visits Megan all the time,” said Molly. “And—” They leaned forward. “—he tips 25%.”
“Ohhhhhhh,” they all said, because 25% is totally hot.
“Come on,” I said. “We’re just friends.”
They laughed.
“No, really,” I said. “We’re not dating.”
“How come?” they asked. “Is he weird/is he an addict/is he gay?” These were characteristics of my previous boyfriends. Christopher was none of those things. He was smart, and funny, and one time, I’d had a few too many, and he gave me a piggyback ride from his car to my front door. Then he set me down and I looked up at him—he’s six-five, so you’ve really got to bend your neck—and I know this’ll sound crazy, but it was like a giant you are here sign hung above us, as though my whole life had been leading up to this. single. moment.
“It’s worse than weird,” I told the waitresses. “He has a girlfriend.”
Beckie.
With an ie.
And let me tell you, this girl? She was… I mean, I can’t even… I met her one time, at a dinner party, and she was…
Fine.
Perfectly nice and pretty and fine.
It would’ve been easier if she’d been horrible, if I had a reason to hate her beside the fact that she had him and I didn’t, but—nothing. Christopher and I were friends. We went to the movies—friends. We met up for drinks—friends. We read each other’s writing—still friends! And for nearly a year I ignored the fact that I was so in love with him I could barely breathe.
Right up until that frozen, twenty-below night.
I was in my apartment with the heat blasting, buried under the covers with Kafka’s collected short stories. That summer, I’d be moving to Prague for a year to teach a study abroad program, and I was working my way through all Kafka’s novels, diaries, biographies—FYI: if you’re going to read as much Kafka as I was reading, please have plenty of Prozac on hand ‘cause that shit can mess with your psyche. I must have jumped ten feet when the phone rang.
“Hello? What? Hi!”
It was Christopher, asking me to meet him for a drink.
“Now?” I said. “It’s nearly midnight, and like a million below zero. Have you seen outside? My window is a solid sheet of white, and you know I hate snow—”
“Beckie and I broke up,” he said.
i love snow! it’s fluffy! you can make ice cream out of it, just add milk and sugar and—
“Meet you in a half hour?” he said.
And I knew my entire life was about to change.
I’d like to talk, just for moment, about the act of Getting Ready. Christopher and I met for drinks all the time, and usually I’d run out the door in jeans and sneakers, but this was different. This wasn’t just going out to meet Christopher. It was going out to meet christopher. It required an outfit. a hair style. evening makeup, which is significantly more time-consuming than day makeup, but nevertheless an absolute necessity because this was the night I convinced my future husband that he couldn’t live without me.
Hence the high heels in eight inches of snow.
We met at Ezuli, this late night place on Milwaukee Avenue. It’s not around anymore, but you’ve been somewhere like it: dark, candles on every table, a glow coming off the bar where backlights caught the colored bottles. The place was dead when I got there, and I positioned myself at the bar, trying to find my most attractive angle: face left, face right; legs crossed, not crossed; do I lean forward on my elbows, looking contemplative or sit straight, back arched, chest out, stomach sucked in, look thin, look thin, don’t breath, look thin—
“Are you okay?” Christopher asked, appearing suddenly behind me and peeling out of his coat, hat, gloves, scarf, and sweater. He looked great. It was the first time I’d ever seen him single.
“What? Hi! Yes?—wait, what was the question?”
“Are you okay?” he repeated. “You’re twitching.”
We ordered hot, steaming whiskey and settled in for The Talk; you know, the one where he tells me—his friend—all about the break up, and at opportune times I say to him—my friend—“Oh my god,” or “No way!” or “I know,” except I was having a really hard time listening to him because 1) The music was really loud, so we had to sort of lean into each other to talk, and 2) He smelled really great, like chocolate and amber and OMG sex right now and I’m sorry, but 3) It’s really hard to be a good friend when all you want to do is climb someone like a tree.
Tell him, I thought. Just tell him.
“We were together for so long,” he was saying, and I reached across the table for his hand. “I don’t remember the last time I was single,” he said.
I opened my mouth to say it: “Christopher—”
“I just need to be single,” he said.
And I said, “I—wait. What?”
“I need to be single for a while,” he repeated.
I pulled back my hands.
“I’m not going to date ’til it’s 82 degrees,” he said, and I looked out the front window: the screaming wind, the solid white wall of blizzard, the mountain of snow burying my car.
It was a really long winter.
Gray and frozen and stopping and starting a hundred times over, so one day, it’s like Sunshine! Chirping birds! and the next, it’s Blizzard! Icy, dead things! and all us poor Chicagoans can do is take it one day at a time. And complain, loudly, with very colorful language. But mostly, it’s getting through the day, which for me, meant mornings at the brunch restaurant, afternoons teaching, and nights getting ready for Prague. Who cares about men, I’d think. I’m going to Europe. I’ll meet a Lord. With a … manor. And enough money to buy my own damn summer, ‘cause I’m over this cold, brittle darkness; this cabin-fever lockdown in my living room; this four separate layers before I leave the house. But then!—I had That Day, that glorious day when you rush out the door in your four separate layers and immediately start sweating. The sun is high in the sky, you’re blinded without sunglasses, and—Oh my god! It’s … warm! There’s like, grass! What’s that?—a bird! You go back inside, dropping fleece at the door, and get a stool to go to that top shelf in your closet with the shorts and the sandals. And of course, you haven’t shaved your legs, and you’re horribly pasty white, like you’ve been rolled in flour, but who cares! You’re saved! You’re rescued from the tower, a steak in front of a starving populace. And what do you do on such an amazing day, Chicago?
You go to brunch!
The restaurant was packed, people waiting three hours or more for a table. They lined the sidewalk, baking in the brand-new sunshine, and crowded inside to get at the bar; sorbet mimosas, Peppar bloody marys, iced lattes with Kahlua—I couldn’t keep up.
“Okay, okay, okay!” I yelled, lining glassware down the bar and pouring champagne from bottles in both hands. “I’m going as fast as I can!” That’s when I looked up and saw Christopher.
Just his head at first, high above the rest of the crowd. But he shoved closer to the bar, closer to me. It had been a while since I’d seen him, steadily saying no to his invitations to drinks or movies. I’d told myself it was because I was leaving the country, but the truth was: I couldn’t keep doing it. That you are here sign hanging above him hadn’t gone away, and seeing him was salt on the wound.
It was easier when he had a girlfriend.
A girlfriend I could at least kill.
(in my mind).
(repeatedly).
“Hey,” he said, once he got to the bar. “It’s good to see you.”
“Can I get you something to drink?” I said—‘cause that’s what I would say to a friend.
He paused—to this day I don’t know what he was thinking—and then shook his head. “I’m waiting outside for a table,” he said. And he turned and walked away.
“Are you crazy?” sa
id Ellie, appearing at my elbow.
“He came here for you!” said Sharon, at my other elbow.
“And he’s so cute!” said Beth.
“And tall!” said Molly.
I slammed the champagne bottles down on the bar. “Don’t you all have tables?” I said, storming off towards the dish station for more glassware. The racks were empty and the washer steamed, meaning it needed a couple minutes to finish the cycle, so all I could do was stand there, listening to the bodies packing the bar, imagining the pile of drink orders growing, staring at the window in front of my face.
On that window was a thermometer, one of those outdoor digital jobs with the suction cup. It was 82 degrees.
Before, when I was single, I’d ask my friends in relationships how they knew. “What was it?” I’d say, wanting to hear some mathematical equation, some John Hughes character arc, some self-help step-by-step of finding my perfect person. If there were steps, I could execute them. I could work towards something. I could be an active participant in not only finding love but finding it now.
But it doesn’t work that way. It works like this:
How do you know?
You just…do.
So what I did was walk out into the restaurant, pushing through the bodies to the door. Outside, the sun was blinding, the air warm against my too-white skin, and I looked up and down Milwaukee Avenue: everyone in their new summer clothes, waiting for pancakes, loving this new perfect day. And there, sitting on the sidewalk with a newspaper, was Christopher. I had no idea then that within the week, I’d move in with him. Within the month, he’d follow me to Prague. Within the year, we’d elope on Lake Michigan. And two years after that, our son would be born.
All I knew was in that moment, standing there in the 82 degrees?
I just…knew.
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