Go Ask Ali

by Ali Wentworth

  I was walking in downtown Manhattan looking for a subway station when I bumped into her. Jane was wearing a butter-yellow sundress and large white sunglasses and recognized me first. I might have walked right by her had she not screamed my name. We hugged and smiled and chatted about the springlike weather. And then Jane surprised me by asking if she could get my opinion on something. “Of course,” I replied, assuming it would be a Japanese salad-dressing recipe or a hotel recommendation in Chicago. Questions fitting the degree of our connection.

  Instead, Jane started sobbing. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” she repeated over and over. I quickly realized that miso and sesame oil would not be the answer.

  “I’m pregnant.” She sniffled.

  “Fantastic,” I said. “Congratulations!”

  “No, it’s not . . .” Jane looked down at the sidewalk and wiped her tears. “There’s something wrong with the fetus.”

  “Oh no, Jane . . .”

  “I’m Catholic! But . . . my doctor says the baby probably won’t make it to term.”

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

  “My doctor wants me to have a late-term abortion.” Jane started crying again. “What should I do?”

  Now, this is not the usual banter for two women who rarely see each other and when they do they discuss SoulCycle and the genius of Bed Bath & Beyond. I was both taken aback and honored. Did I just happen upon her while she was grappling with a moral dilemma? Were we simply swirling particles that had collided at that second in time? Or were we somehow meant to have this microcosmic run-in? I thought about Mona and how she made people feel heard. And loved. And I thought about what Mona would say. And then I tried to imagine myself as a rabbi. Rabbi Wentworth. Oy.

  I hugged her again. “Jane, that is the most heart-wrenching thing I’ve ever heard. Listen, I can’t tell you what to do. Nobody can. The answer is somewhere inside of you. It’s your truth.(Thank you, Oprah.) Maybe you should go somewhere to be alone and meditate. Think about what the life of this baby would/could be. And what is fair for this being and for you and for your family. Just know that no matter what path your life takes from this second on, it is the right path for whatever reasons you decide and you will be loved no matter what.”

  She hugged me tightly. In that moment she needed those words. Soothing words. And I needed chocolate cake. A very large piece.

  Jane disappeared into the sea of tourists and I didn’t set eyes on her again for months. And when I did run into her in a CVS she told me how significant colliding with me on the street that day had been. Not so much for steering her toward her ultimate decision, but for offering love and understanding as an outsider when she needed it the most. As we parted ways that day, I bowed and said, “Go with God.”

  Jane turned around. “Sorry, what?”

  I cleared my throat, “See you soon, I hope!” I had gotten a little ahead of myself with the whole rabbi, priest, guru thing.

  I remember when Mona was first diagnosed. I had extra-large sweatshirts made for both our families that said fuck cancer. She had days and weeks when she couldn’t face visitors, so I would drop off an orchid or a shell my kids had painted with the doorman. I wanted Mona to know that I thought about her every single day. And I also believed she would beat that horrid disease because people like Mona don’t deserve to be taken away.

  Mona loved desserts. And she ate them with abandon. That was one of my favorite things about her. She didn’t push the blueberry cobbler around on her plate or not order the tiramisu because she was feeling bloated. She ordered every dessert on the menu. It was not gluttonous—in truth she would only take small bites from each of them—it was more her spirited “the hell with it, let’s all enjoy some sugar!” attitude. When she was very sick, I used to bring her homemade cakes that my daughters and I would decorate with gummy fish, sprinkles, and frosting flowers. She couldn’t have any sugar because of her intense anticancer diet, but she loved to surround herself with baked goods—just looking at them made her happy. Perhaps her funeral should have been in a Parisian bakery. Maybe mine will be.

  Mona died a few years ago. To date, it’s the only funeral where I really bawled. That morning I had a nonsensical fight with my husband, which, I found out later, happened to a few couples who went to the funeral that day. We must have needed to push away any love to fully grieve for a woman who embodied nothing but love. I remember thinking during the funeral, This is a woman to emulate! This is a woman to worship! Knowing Mona had made me a better person. I wish you had gotten a chance to meet her.

  My eleven-year-old daughter returned from sleepaway camp a couple of weeks ago. An all-girls, predominantly Jewish, uniformed camp straight out of the 1950s. I had missed her horribly and cursed sleepaway camp all summer long. But my daughter spent the sort of summer you yearn for your kid to have—she got to lead Shabbot and took first prize in the challah baking contest.

  We were doing our annual back-to-school shopping at Staples (with the rest of America) when my daughter dropped a box of pencils that flew like pickup sticks in every direction. She looked up with a smile on her face and yelled, “Oy vey! Seriously?” I quickly turned around and for a second I thought it was Mona. . . .

  These days it’s a particularly arduous task finding mentors, heroes, people to aspire to. But if you discover a person who makes you want to be better, do better, feel better . . . then let them be the paragon. No, I don’t mean taping a photo of Molly Sims on the fridge so you’ll stop stress eating cubed cheese. Incorporate what you emulate. Mona chose fun. And so do I.

  Chapter 6

  Shh, I Love My Husband

  I am one of those women who likes to talk. About anything. Someday, riddled with dementia, I’ll just talk to myself and wear a shower cap to the grocery store, but for now I like an audience. I also like a gathering because it encompasses two of my favorite things—culinary delights and conversation. And I’ll indulge any subject! You want to hit foreign policy, I’ll give you my opinion on whether the U.S. should conduct targeted air strikes on Iran’s nuclear weapons; if you want to talk interior design, even better. I say yes to fabric walls! I can go from Star magazine to the Economist, dealer’s choice. Although with the Economist, there will be a fair amount of bullshitting on my part.

  My favorite thing is a ladies’ lunch. Not my mother’s ladies’ lunch, which is why I probably should not use the word “ladies.” I don’t wish to sit around dressed in tweed eating cucumbers on white bread and discussing storm patterns and how trendy Talbots has become. I prefer when a group of my girlfriends and I get together, more often than not at my house so that I can make Ina Garten’s infamous chocolate cake and linguine with clams (which I don’t trust at restaurants) and go deep. I don’t do chitchat; I don’t care where someone bought her suede boots or what day of the cleanse she’s on; I want us to speak honestly about the realities of being women, mothers, and wives. I want to know if you wake up covered in sweat, can have an orgasm without equipment, or are convinced you have an undiagnosed infectious disease. If you’re content with your life choices, regretful, terrified of your own mortality. Are you angered by the lack of women on corporate boards? Sure, a little “Who does your Botox?” or “Where do you buy those soft sheets?” can be sprinkled in at the beginning, but after that I want to debate deeply personal issues as if it’s a heated day in Congress. Well, Congress twenty years ago.

  I’ve never been shy about expressing my thoughts, much to the horror of my parents, who were constantly covering their ears with their hands and chanting “This too shall pass.” I’ll regale my kids’ bus driver, Otto, with my story of having to snap a chicken’s neck when I was a teenager living on a farm in Nowheresville, Spain, or say something naughty on a late-night talk show. Some of my most existential conversations have been conducted with a posse of strangers I see at the dog park every day.

  Lord knows, there’s a plethora of issues to choose from these days. Yet the most compelling topics tend to invo
lve what’s wrong, rather than what’s right, with the world: the government, the planet, health care, the economy, aging, annoying people, sexism, and the fact that marshmallow Peeps are only sold around Easter. And I’m game to chew on any of them! The Peeps, I mean.

  However, there’s one area of conversation that induces panic. When I hear words like “marriage” and “spouse,” I start to sweat. You see, I have a dirty little secret. A secret that thwarts me from diving into some of the more titillating conversational waters. A secret I wouldn’t even dare to write in a journal lest someone read it one day.

  (Deep breath) I . . . I . . . I’m happily married. I know, I know. Boring, right? I don’t know what to do! It’s just something, for the life of me, I can’t seem to change! I love my husband and he loves me. The end. Yawn. Dammit! Whenever the conversation at one of these girly soirees turns to the state of marital affairs (pun intended), I feel a wave of anxiety course through me like a first sip of bourbon. And it’s usually around this time that I take a potty break.

  Here’s a typical scenario. Delia confides that her affair is now circling the third year. She’s been meeting up with her lover at his apartment, in hotels, and once, while her husband was away, in her apartment. She has such a disastrous marriage and such a tantalizing affair that she gets to do most of the talking when we’re all sucking down spaghetti pomodoro. She practically owns the event! I can’t even slip in some faux advice. I haven’t so much as looked at another man in sixteen years. So I sit there in silence. What is wrong with me—I can’t even muster up a crush on Idris Elba (Google him)! Or Megan Fox!

  Lydia’s husband left her with two small children. She’s lost twenty pounds and (for reasons I don’t understand) also her adult acne. We talk for hours about her ex-husband’s new, much younger girlfriend and how much he’ll regret choosing boobs over substance. How he is a despicable, un-Christian fool and she should have known that when she met him in college and he was the head of a fraternity. Lydia’s situation is endlessly captivating and sympathetic; her ex-husband’s girlfriend’s Facebook affords us hours of speculation. We can devote an entire meal to a dissection of “that woman’s” makeup blog, her forty followers, and the fact that her lips are so inflated they’ve taken up half her face.

  And then every once in a while someone in the group will turn to me and inquire about my husband and my marriage. “Well,” I answer sheepishly. I riffle through my list of grievances—he won’t do dishes, sometimes he uses my toothbrush—but these sound so amateur next to Lydia’s husband blindsiding her for a much younger woman he’s been dating for almost as long as they were married. It renders me silent. A state I find most uncomfortable.

  Even married Alison can hold the podium for a while because her husband is infuriating. She had the foresight to marry a narcissistic prick. So Alison gets to tell stories about how Gregory never expresses love, is sexually shut down, and thinks Alison needs to “lose the turkey fat around her neck.” And then we go for thirty minutes on how reprehensible that is and how he’s a misogynist. I’m telling you right now, if Gregory doesn’t take it down a notch, I can’t hang out with Alison anymore. That’s it. I can’t compete on such a high level. Besides the hand holding and hugs, she also never has to pay the check.

  The absolute lowest moment for me is when the time arrives for the fateful question: “How often do you and your husband have sex?” I have lost friends with this question. I don’t want to. I could plead the Fifth. I mean, why should I have to answer? This is the reality of my life and nothing to be ashamed of. I take a deep breath to summon the strength and spit it out. And then the women gasp and scream like I’ve confessed that I shot my dog. One of them always slams her fist down on the table; a woman’s wineglass once smashed in her hand. I’m sorry! We’re hot for each other. Jesus!

  I wish there was a way to conjure up some drama without someone getting hurt or procuring an STD. I guess it’s just an area of discussion I will have to concede to others. I have to think of myself as the therapist who listens and offers advice but doesn’t divulge anything about her own personal life. And I won’t get two hundred dollars an hour or remind my friends that I don’t take insurance.

  Now don’t let me mislead you here. I said I love my husband, not that our marriage is perfect. There’s a huge difference. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were passionate for each other but unable to sustain a functional marriage. We have a utilitarian marriage and manage to still maintain the veil of romance. But we fight (which is nonsensical because I am the one who’s always right).

  The question has to be asked: When did a happy marriage become so taboo? Sitcoms depict married life as a bickering couple; he’s usually heavy and not very attractive and she’s usually too smart and beautiful for him. There’s a lot of eye rolling. The couple begrudgingly puts up with each other and a laugh track. Switch to a cable drama: one of them has murdered the other. The bestselling books and music are always slanted toward heartbreak and relationships gone bad. And how would daytime talk shows survive if we couldn’t troll for signs of infidelity or enforce paternity tests?

  It’s embedded in our culture.

  The few couples with good marriages I know keep their happiness on the down low. We meet after dusk at nondescript, out-of-the-way joints. Sometimes Brooklyn, sometimes one of our own homes. We close the shades. We make sure nobody sees us holding hands, giggling, or, God forbid, embracing. Otherwise, we gather at one of our homes, where we have the freedom to express our love for our respective companion without ridicule or envy.

  So until things in our country change, I will have to become masterful at changing the subject and, in some cases, flat-out lying about the state of my union.

  And after one of my girlfriend lunches, I will do my usual—weep (with joy) in the back of the subway about the tenacity and fortitude of my marriage. We’ll have family dinner, my husband and I will play Scrabble while the kids do their homework, later we’ll make love and fall asleep in each other’s arms. And swear to never tell another living soul.

  Well, except you the reader.

  So if you do have a happy marriage or even an adequate one—KEEP IT TO YOURSELF!

  Chapter 7

  Hold on to Your Summer

  I am having a melancholy summer. Which is not usually the case. Out of all the seasons, I’ve always loved summer the best.

  Summer has come to represent a reprieve from real life. A free pass to be carefree, unkempt, and remiss in returning calls. As my friend Isabel says, “It’s making dinner in your bathing suit.”

  But this summer, something is off. This summer is not unfolding in the predictable, jaunty way. This is the summer of my discontent.

  The house is quiet. One daughter is at an all-girls camp in New Hampshire for seven weeks (her letters say nothing about homesickness or missing us) and the other daughter is living on a boat learning to scuba dive (very homesick and threatening to get herself kicked out of the program). And I am eating a bowl of cereal over the sink and watching Mark Wahlberg movies. My husband has been working around the clock monitoring North Korea as they threaten imminent nuclear attacks. You would think that would be what’s making me heavyhearted—end of the world and the decline of human existence. But no, it’s not a global apocalypse that has me under the covers; it’s more personal. It’s about my own apocalypse.

  I am on the other side of life. And what is prompting this despondent feeling and holding me back from taking my dog to the beach and collecting scallop shells is the wistful realization that my girls are growing up and I am scrambling to find purpose.

  People used to constantly tell me, “Oh, enjoy your children, they grow up so fast.” I would roll my eyes. Stupid clichéd musings tossed at me as I pushed my Bugaboo through the park. But it is so true! I know I’m getting older; my one chin hair is completely white now. But my children? They are supposed to run around in retro Strawberry Shortcake bikinis building sandcastles forever!

  When I wa
s a little girl, we spent the summer on Cape Cod. There was no television, no computers, and, of course, no social media. We had one rotary phone in the kitchen that almost never rang, and if it did, we knew it was a wrong number and so nobody would ever answer it.

  We lived on the gray, splintery wraparound porch. We lay on beach towels and watched my mother snap beans into a ceramic bowl with peace signs on it. Occasionally we would walk down to the Eel River Beach Club for a firecracker Popsicle. Once a week we got to pile into our Woody station wagon and go to Tastee-Freez for some soft-serve ice cream. Summers were playing dress up with a musty trunk of old dresses that belonged to my grandmother. Her hats were always infested with spiders. And corn. Lots of corn. Not the hats, the summers. And thoughts. Lots of thoughts.

  It’s amazing what the brain is capable of when not under siege by Twitter, CNN, Instagram, and Snapchat. It’s so difficult now for an original thought to squeeze through all the noise. But I can remember lying in a hammock at dusk, pondering what my life would be like. And where my future husband was at that precise moment. At that time it was Lee Majors, and he was shooting The Six Million Dollar Man at Universal Studios in Hollywood. I can still conjure the sensation of looking up at the huge elm tree and counting its limbs while gently swinging back and forth. When Lee Majors married Farrah Fawcett I was shocked! Not because they didn’t make the perfect couple (made-from-a-factory perfect!), but because she was my doppelgänger! If I were just a few years older it could have been me! We were practically interchangeable, I just needed to sprout boobs. And sparking white teeth. And long tan legs. And a mane of butter-blonde hair. And sex appeal. That’s just bad timing. Years later when he and Farrah divorced, I was over him and had moved on to Warren Beatty. I’m sure it still stings Lee Majors, but I didn’t want a man with bionic parts anymore. And with Warren Beatty, it would be just one bionic part.