Go Ask Ali

by Ali Wentworth

  “We have a situation,” he announced, as portentous as Harrison Ford in the movie Air Force One.

  Speaking in a hushed whisper, he filled me in. In a plotline worthy of an episode of Scandal, Peka had imploded. Apparently, Tamar had written on her Facebook page that Peka had bedbugs. Now, bedbugs aren’t high on anyone’s wish list, but to Peka such an accusation amounted to defamation of character. If you had bedbugs, then you were a dirty person. (Full disclosure: I got bedbugs once from a bed-and-breakfast in Northern California. I googled bedbugs and it suggested microwaving your clothing. So I did. But Google never said for how long. After four minutes my pajamas ignited and the microwave blew up.) Anyway, for Peka this was a declaration of war. She started taking the back stairs up to the Gaynors’ apartment to confront and chastise Tamar. This had been going on for some time: Unbeknownst to us, our super had taken Peka aside a few times over the past weeks to explain the rules of trespassing and breaking and entering.

  “I told her, she can’t just walk into an apartment and start bitch-slapping someone working there! These are all separate homes.” And as fate would have it, Mrs. Gaynor entered the elevator at the exact time Peka was taking our incontinent dachshund out to pee. (Well, out for fresh air; she only pees inside the apartment, on whichever carpet will absorb the most urine.) In that moment Peka erupted in fireworks of fury. She started yelling at Mrs. Gaynor about Tamar and bedbugs and using language that caused Mrs. Gaynor to have heart palpitations. By the time the door opened in the lobby, Peka was still inflamed, Mrs. Gaynor was experiencing cardiac arrest, and the dachshund had peed all over the elevator rug.

  All this was regaled to me as I was propping up my broken wheelie bag, operating on little sleep and a bag of Pop Chips. Mrs. Gaynor had gone to her daughter-in-law’s to recover and Peka was upstairs in the apartment. I needed a shrink, a lawyer, and a fistful of antianxiety medication.

  When I entered the apartment Peka was making tea.

  “Oh Mommy! You are back from Hollywood! Maybe you became a big star?” She giggled.

  I turned off the whistling kettle and brought Peka to the living room. “You need to immediately write a letter to Mrs. Gaynor and apologize.”

  Peka stood up. “No! She apologize to me!”

  “Peka, listen to me, she is on the board of the building and you screamed obscenities in her face and almost caused her to have a heart attack. I’m trying to save your job! Write the woman a letter and say you are very sorry. I will help you.”

  “I no write anyone a letter. She needs to write me a letter.”

  Clearly Peka did not comprehend the magnitude of the situation.

  My husband called. He had been talking to the building management company. They were filing a restraining order against Peka. Either she left or we had to.

  I pleaded with her again. But her refrain remained the same: “She say sorry to me! And Tamar say sorry on Facebook!”

  There was no reasoning with her. I was starting to understand why her mother had resorted to cutting her hair off. My mother suggested sending her to a psychiatric facility for anger management. And after the kind of stand-off I dimly recall from my American Civil War history class, we came to an impasse. Peka refused to make an apology and the building refused entry.

  It was heartbreaking for our family to say good-bye to Peka. We did manage to secure her a job with friends who have folded her into their family seamlessly. And so far no devil dancing.

  And the one thing my husband and I still repeat to each other as we’re putting on pajamas or waiting for our car in the garage: All she had to do was apologize. . . . It was a lesson that has afforded me long-lasting relationships, semiregular employment, and long hair. And by the way, at the end of Love Story when Oliver Barrett III apologizes to his son (Ryan O’Neal)? He should just have accepted it and moved on! That is what Jenny (Ali MacGraw) would have wanted him to do!

  Chapter 11

  Hot Babysitter

  I can’t believe I even have to make this point, but DO NOT HIRE A HOT BABYSITTER! I know that in voicing such an opinion I’m breaking some affirmative action law and nubile women with rock’n bods are going to sue me, but come on! I don’t care that she (in a thong bikini) taught your child to swim or makes the most incredible gluten-free carrot muffins; a hot babysitter is a distraction for every person in the family. Yes, even the dog.

  If you are in the market for a caregiver, chances are your body has been through a raging nine-month war. Yes, you have created human life blah blah blah, but your skin has been stretched out like a rubber band—without contracting back. And there is either a C-section scar that suggests a shark attack or your vagina has gone through its own battle of Waterloo, with the scars to prove it. So already you’re at a disadvantage because you have the self-esteem of a hairless cat. Why would you employ (yes, pay money to) an improved, souped-up version of you and have her promenade around your house?

  Let’s play this out . . . there she is, let’s call her Sofia (as in Vergara, or Loren if you’re my dad). You’re wearing the Lanz nightgown your mother gave you when you were in the hospital for an appendectomy during college. It’s commodious and unrestricted, with a faded bluebell flower pattern. It’s somewhat tattered and has tiny spittle stains that even the triple-action stain remover Shout can’t get out. You’re barefoot, you haven’t had a pedicure for six months (so your toenails look like a Cambodian priest’s), and your hair is two distinct colors—your authentic dishwater brown and the remnants of blond highlights. You look like the mug shot of a meth addict.

  Good news, though—there’s still a hunk of two-day-old coffee-cake crumble on the counter, so you break off a wedge and shove it in your mouth. Enter Sofia. Sofia is wearing Daisy Duke jean shorts that don’t quite manage to contain her perfectly shaped buttocks, a tank top, and flip-flops. She has had a pedicure (Ballet Slippers is the name of the polish), which complements the baby rose tattoo on her ankle; her hair is surferlike tossed and tangled; and she looks spray-tanned, but she’s not—she just “tans easily and evenly, probably from her days as a lifeguard.” Coffee-cake crumbs spill down your front. The nightgown is now a circus tent that hides the house of horrors underneath. And she should be walking the Calvin Klein show during fashion week. You offer her a fistful of cake; she passes. She just had an acai bowl (whatever the hell that is). And slowly your self-worth, when challenged with the nubile nymph that, like a wrecking ball, has entered your life, plummets to a new low. You can just detect her lace G-string peeking out of the waistband of her low-slung (size 24) shorts. And you’re still using maxi pads from your episiotomy.

  You can’t compete, so decide to join. Another bad idea. You cannot be girlfriends with your babysitter. There’s no magical osmosis process by which through logging time with her you suddenly absorb all her physical traits and can share clothes. Even if you kill her, peel off her skin, glue it on your own face like a Hannibal Lector mask—you will never have her supple, luminescent glow.

  No, don’t try to bond by exercising together. Do you really want to go to spin class with Sofia? Sofia could teach that class, and your doctor warned you that you have the breathing capacity of a sixty-five-year-old woman. There’s no being gal pals with Sofia. Your girlfriends don’t look like her. Or at least they shouldn’t.

  Enter the husband (or wife). He (or she) is loving, devoted, oozing with integrity. (From now on I’m just going to use the masculine pronoun, but you can insert whatever pronoun works for your scenario, except for maybe “we.”) The best-case scenario: He does nothing, but maybe he brushes against her when loading the stroller into the minivan. He appreciates that she’s an attractive woman, but nothing more. Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. But in the back of your mind, lurking in that dark, anxious spot, you have to wonder if he has ever thought about her in a lascivious way. When he was alone. Or even with you! Repeatedly. He is a man, after all. And don’t kid yourself that you have a better personality—she laughs at ev
erything he says. For God’s sake, Jude Law was engaged to Sienna Miller and he cheated on her with the nanny.

  I’m not saying that all men will cheat with the babysitter! But if you were on a diet, would you hang out in a bakery? And by the way, I have two friends whose husbands slept with the babysitter. So if I know two friends, well, you can do the math. . . .

  And let me be brutally honest here—and I’m sure MIT and the Harvard psychology department can back me up on this: Children respond more favorably to a fetching female. According to an expert I saw on CNN, “Babies respond more positively to attractive, symmetrical faces.” If my daughters could have, they would have arranged babysitter cattle calls, complete with head shots. Whenever they met a pretty twentysomething woman, they would beg me to hire her.

  So you’re even more of an insomniac because not only are you tormented by the idea of your husband and the nanny, but now your child is enamored of her and her ethereal exquisiteness.

  Here’s another: you’re in your jersey stretch pants and one of your husband’s button-downs sanitizing the house with organic melon-scented spray, when the baby wakes from its nap and starts crying. You rush in to hold that little dumpling that personifies every cell of love you possess . . . and the baby keeps crying. And crying. Sofia comes in with her blinding-white teeth, smelling like St. Bart’s, and caresses the baby’s cheek. The baby stops crying and starts cooing. Sofia sings Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” and the baby smiles. And you secretly hope Sofia won’t attempt to breastfeed while you’re at CVS buying stool softeners and People magazine.

  You, your husband, the baby, and Sofia are all parading around the park. You’re a little sweaty and your yoga pants, although soft, can’t muffle the chafing sound your thighs make as you walk. You stop at the water fountain. Next to you are two skeletal women in workout gear. They clock Sofia pushing the stroller alongside your dashing husband.

  “What a gorgeous family,” one says.

  “She looks amazing,” says the other.

  “I can see why he fell in love with her!”

  You race back to the group and grab your husband’s hand tightly, seriously entertaining the idea of pulling down your pants and peeing in a circle around his feet.

  You have become an insecure mess. And nothing turns a spouse off more than a clingy, accusatory female who has traded in self-maintenance for Carvel Cookie Puss ice cream cakes. It’s like you’re pushing him into Sofia’s ample bosom. Daddy and baby are drawn to Sofia. And the final straw: Your mangy mutt with one eye you rescued from a kill shelter who is terrified of everyone? Will now only eat if Sofia lies down next to him on the floor. In a sexy pose. You have become a ghost in your own home.

  It’s Sofia’s day off, and your husband has taken the child to Baby Einstein class. You’ve decided, inspired by an old issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, to take your life in your hands. You are going to be your best you! You peruse the computer for a nearby Pilates class. Or a pottery class. Whatever works with your schedule. And suddenly you spot an untitled file. The other files have names—Taxes, Vacation, fantasy football, Résumé, Birth Video—but this one is blank. Now, if at this point you log off and go for a ten-mile run, you are not a human being. But if you’re like me, you click on the file icon. Let curiosity kill the cat. The cat would probably only love Sofia anyway.

  Time stops. As does your pulse for a moment. A series of nude photos. Not Man Ray, avant-garde-type nudes. Porn nude. Amateur cell-phone snapshots. Ugh, you exhale with the thought, boys will be boys. It’s an accepted but repulsive fact that the pornography industry makes about fourteen billion dollars a year, and your husband is a contributor. And didn’t one of your friends tell you that porn keeps men from cheating? Silver lining? But then something catches your eye. Even though the photos are focused on the honeypot, there are hands wrapped around the ankles. And on one of the ankles is a tiny rose tattoo. Bingo!

  You try therapy, going away to Key West for the weekend, but nothing can bandage the damage that has been done. Your lovemaking is tiresome and bumbling; every time his cell phone rings you worry, is it her? Even your favorite conch-shell salad just tastes like salty mush. There’s the infidelity (which is bad enough), but it wasn’t off location, outside the sacredness of the family cocoon, it was an invasion of the whole spirit of the house. And you can never erase the images of Sofia’s (perfectly manicured) hoo-ha from your mind. Eventually and inevitably, you separate.

  Thanks to social media and a Facebook page sent to you by a “concerned” acquaintance, you discover that your ex and Sofia have moved into an all-white, modern condo with one of those Miele espresso makers built into the wall. And adopted a terrier mix they named Fred Flintstone. It may last, it may not. Sofia has cost you your marriage and your home. The only thing you have is your baby. The reason Sofia invaded your world in the first place. And if they end up in a long-lasting relationship, Sofia will become another parent in your child’s life. She will have a vote on whether your child will spend Thanksgiving with you or her. Co-opt the college tours, help decorate the new apartment, wrest control over the plans of the wedding . . . she is a terrorist who has taken your life hostage! And a constant reminder that she’s just superior in every way.

  I’m not saying this will definitely happen if you hire a breathtaking caregiver . . . but a gambler would put a stack of chips on it. I’ll never really know because I hired a sixty-year-old woman who bore an uncanny resemblance to Wallace Shawn with no teeth. There’s an old real estate saying that applies here: “You always want to be the most attractive house on the block.”

  Chapter 12

  There Once Was a Man Who Flew to Nantucket

  When I give talks, some people seem to mistake me for Dr. Ruth and ask if I really think men and women are that different. Are you kidding me? Aside from the fact that one gender has to haul a couple of testicles around, let’s start with the glaringly obvious: If you put a man in a cage for a week and a woman in a separate cage for a week and filmed both, the results would be: her cage—a designer showcase on HGTV; and his—a stomach-churning den from The Silence of the Lambs.

  Look, I can state the even more obvious: just look at a toilet bowl or hang out in a prison yard. But even putting hygiene and sexual deviancy to the side, I find men’s average behavior incomprehensible.

  We have friends who celebrate every Fourth of July in Nantucket. And when I say celebrate, I’m talking a tribal worship of everything red, white, and blue: face paint, flags, striped clothing, sparklers, and blue food. Nantucket becomes a vomitorium of Americana. And the most fun the Fourth of July could ever possibly be. So when they invited us to join the festivities one summer, I ecstatically bought American-flag bikinis, bandannas, and nail polish. My decision was based on my newfound outlook of embracing life after hitting the middle-age benchmark. I would say yes to things even if they were out of my comfort zone. Yes to fun! And yes, always yes, to lobster rolls!

  My husband, older daughter, and I were set to fly on a tiny plane from White Plains, New York, to Nantucket. When we got to Westchester County Airport with our monogrammed tote bags and Stan Smith Adidas, we were told there was “weather” and we had to wait. Indefinitely. So my husband got busy answering the hundreds of emails he had amassed during the drive to the airport, and my daughter discovered there was free Sprite.

  I stared out the window and tried to figure out what “there’s weather” meant exactly. I’m not afraid of flying. The idea of being spilled out of the air doesn’t worry me, so long as I don’t land in water. Where there is water, there are sharks. Man- and woman-eating sharks. If given the choice, I would rather make a resounding splat onto a desert highway to be pecked apart by vultures.

  Finally, hours later, we boarded what resembled a toy airplane (I mean this vessel was so minuscule, it’s what a 747 eats for a snack) with about eight other strangers. My husband sat up front and we sat toward the back. They said it was a weight issue. I refused to take it person
ally.

  I did notice a particularly dark and ominous sky. But I chalked it up to the aforementioned weather leaving the area. Even though it never actually hit the area. And up into the air we sailed. On a two-propeller plane into the oppressive horizon.

  We were about ten minutes into the flight when a bolt of lightning cracked against the sky and lit up the plane like a Miami nightclub strobe. I felt my pancreas leap into my throat, closely followed by the rest of my internal organs. Everyone on the plane let out unedited screams. And the vessel plunged sixty feet before gaining its course again. Don’t accuse me of exaggerating—yes, I realize it could have been six feet, but it felt like sixty. And I started to smell that pungent stink under my arms—the stench of adrenaline and hormones and fear. The odor one gets before public speaking.

  I can count my near-death experiences on one hand. I’m not a thrill seeker. 1) I did hitchhike on the Mass Turnpike in my nightgown, got picked up by a drunk serial killer, and crawled out of the car after it flipped on a bridge. 2) I had an allergic reaction to smallpox. Yes, the horrible disease Pocahontas died from. I didn’t die from it (obvi) but spent a summer immersed in Epsom salt baths. 3) There was that break-in in Los Angeles (my mother thinks I dreamt it, but there was a grizzly man in my bedroom—I’m not sure if he meant to harm me or use the bathroom, but he was definitely there!). And then this plane ride.

  There was a shockingly loud clap of thunder; the plane seemed to stop moving. It was surreal, like being on a movie set in mock plane seats with a group of production assistants pushing us back and forth, one with a giant fan and another using wooden spoons and copper pots to create the thunder.

  It’s a hypnagogic feeling to actually contemplate one’s demise. I assumed mine would be via a handful of pills and pastries in London’s Claridge’s hotel. My life didn’t flash before my eyes, which I took as a positive sign. But I had a devastating thought about my younger daughter being the only survivor, and who would raise her? Not my mother, my daughter couldn’t survive on boiled eggs and PBS. My sisters would fight over her and would choke at the price of her sleepaway camp in New Hampshire. And my girlfriends, well, knowing them, they’d favor their own children, and I’d be damned if my baby was going to clean their chimney and miss out on the ball!