Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim

by Lisa Scottoline

  As she spoke, I caught sight of my face in the mirror.

  I looked like I was going to pee myself.

  This was not the face of Krav Maga.

  But then, as she described our defensive moves such as gouging his eyes, kneeing him in the “nut sack”—a technical term—ripping back his thumb, etc., I caught myself making the same pained grimace.

  Feeling sorry for your hypothetical attacker: so not Krav Maga.

  After we had learned the basic stances and practiced some defense moves on our own, we paired up for role-playing, acting out attacks and defenses in a slower, controlled way. Thank God I had a friend with me, because fighting with a total stranger would be awkward.

  Or awesome, if you asked the one instructor who cried, “This is the only time you get to choke a total stranger for fun!”

  In the first go-round, I played the choker and my friend was the chokee.

  Let me tell you, it’s extremely difficult to throttle someone, even pretending, and not make weird faces. I don’t know how serial killers do it.

  I discovered this when, instead of breaking my grip with a shoulder swing, then jabbing me in the face with her elbow, my friend was laughing at me.

  “I’m sorry, but you’re making a funny face,” she said.

  “That’s my attacker face! I’m attacking you!”

  “It’s just so funny.” She dissolved into giggles.

  After sufficiently mocking me, she pulled herself together for another try. I approached her again, this time slowly placing my hands on her throat with a forcibly relaxed expression.

  She didn’t react at all.

  I dropped my hands. “What now?”

  “Oh, did we start? I didn’t realize,” she said. “Because you didn’t make the face!”

  We both cracked up.

  Then the instructor made a general announcement, clearly pointed at us, about not talking during the exercise. It was just like high school, except this time, we obeyed.

  No need to test her stance on corporal punishment.

  The rest of our exercises went better: we were starting to get the hang of it, although we were the most polite sparring partners ever—“Shoot, I forgot to kick you in the balls that time, I’m sorry.” “Oh no worries, I’ll try to remind you next time. You’re doing great!”

  At the end of the class, our instructors asked if we had any questions. Ever the teacher’s pet, I raised my hand.

  “How do you make the judgment of when to keep fighting versus when to run away?” I asked.

  She instantly began explaining my legal rights. “If you seriously injure or even kill your attacker, you are not liable because it was done in self-defense…”

  Only in a city as litigious as New York would they explain the liability of fighting off a mugger.

  I should’ve been flattered, but the likelihood of my destroying my assailant too thoroughly was not my concern.

  “I meant, more for my own safety.”

  “Oh.” I could see her mentally readjust to the average-wimp mind-set. “Then you stop fighting when the other person is no longer a threat.” She must have seen the disbelief on my face, because she then advocated a minimum of three months’ instruction in order to master the basic skills.

  I was intimidated but also inspired. Most of the advice for women on how to protect themselves focuses on preventing an attack. While this information is valuable, it teeters dangerously on victim-blaming, implying that women have control over every random criminal who might want to hurt us. I liked that this instructor could look me in my scared saucer eyes, and tell me that, with time, I had the ability not only to avoid an assault, but to stop one.

  As my friend and I walked home, we each felt happy we’d taken the class, despite the unfortunate side effect of eyeing every man on the street with suspicion.

  We both also agreed we’d take a full course of classes.

  Because the only thing scarier than learning Krav Maga?

  Not learning it.

  Labor Day

  By Lisa

  It was the summer of our discontent.

  Where to begin?

  An earthquake, a hurricane, and a visit from Mother Mary.

  A disaster trifecta.

  The perfect storm of catastrophes.

  The Manny, Moe, and Jack of nightmares.

  Just kidding.

  She was here for two months, and now that she has gone back to Miami, I miss her. When I feel sad, I turn on Everybody Loves Raymond, really really REALLY LOUD.

  And then I don’t miss her anymore.

  She came up because a sewer main broke under her house, necessitating all manner of repair work, and I figured it would be best if she weren’t there to tell the workmen they were working too hard or they were really cute.

  But we got off to a rocky start, which is to be expected, as we met only fifty-six years ago.

  Here’s our problem. We both have our own way of doing things. Actually, to be accurate, we have the exact same way of doing things, but we still disagree.

  This is even harder than it sounds.

  Spaghetti is a case in point.

  I think it should be cooked for six minutes, or al dente. She thinks it should be cooked for thirty minutes, or al dentures.

  That’s Italian for mushy.

  She thinks my spaghetti tastes like sticks, and I think hers doesn’t taste.

  Of course, we’re both adamant about our cooking times. That’s what I mean when I say we do things the same way. We’re both adamant, all the time, about everything. Adamance runs like lifeblood in Scottoline women. If I die driving off a cliff, just know I was going the right way.

  So at our first spaghetti meal, Mother Mary and I strike a compromise. I cook the spaghetti for eighteen minutes, which is too soft for me and too chewy for her.

  The only thing we agree on is that we both hate compromise.

  The next night, I try a different take.

  Lying.

  If you can’t lie to you mother, who can you lie to?

  So I tell her I cooked the spaghetti for thirty minutes even though I didn’t, because she can’t see the clock anyway.

  Also, we disagree on whether to salt the water. I never salt it, but she always does. I think if we salt it, I’ll get high blood pressure and die. She thinks if we don’t salt it, we’ll be defying centuries of Italian culinary history, so we might as well be dead.

  Either way, spaghetti is life-or-death.

  If you don’t think your dinner is a medical emergency, you’re not adamant enough.

  It occurs to me, at one point, that we should try and negotiate, so I tell her I’ll salt the water if she lets me cook the spaghetti for less time, but she won’t go for it, and we have gridlock that even Congress can’t match.

  Because they’re not adamant enough, either.

  That’s the problem with the Democrats and Republicans in Washington. They’re just too flexible. Too willing to listen to each other. To see the other side. To work together and cooperate, for the greater good.

  Mother Mary has to wait for her food to cook the way she likes it.

  Scottolines don’t make fundamental mistakes like that.

  We show no such lapses of judgment.

  Those politicians should come over to my house and take a lesson. Mother Mary and I could school those pikers. They’re adamance rookies. They might be able to shut down a government, but we can shut down a kitchen.

  Which would you miss first?

  I know.

  So the solution for our spaghetti war was simple, and we did it the rest of the summer. I boiled two pots of pasta, each time. One was salted and one wasn’t. One was cooked properly.

  And one wasn’t.

  Thus we resolved our impasse. Or our impasta.

  Sorry.

  Of course, most nights, the temperature in the kitchen hovered at three hundred degrees.

  But that had nothing to do with boiling water.

  A
nd we never got to eat at the same time, either. I ate during the first half of Seinfeld, and she ate during the second half, so it worked out fine, by Scottoline standards.

  You can’t have your spaghetti, and eat it, too.

  I Stink, Officially

  By Lisa

  One of the good things that happened this summer was that I won an award, from a magazine that gives out Best of Philly awards.

  I didn’t win one of those.

  I won Worst of Philly.

  I hate to brag, but I won for Worst Columnist.

  Yay! Thanks, magazine.

  I was hoping it came with a car, or maybe some money, or a book entitled How Not to Suck.

  But I’m not holding my breath. It’s the thought that counts.

  Why am I so happy?

  I love having haters. It means I’m getting somewhere. Someone cares enough to hate me.

  It used to bug me, but now I revel in it. This is the best attitude to have in my business, where you get your report cards from magazines, newspapers, and anybody with Internet access. I used to cry and worry, but now I just laugh. Unfortunately, Mother Mary doesn’t feel the same way, and she was here when I won.

  It wasn’t pretty.

  But it has a surprise ending.

  I found out in the morning, when I got an email from a beloved reader, who shows excellent taste in literature, except that she also reads this magazine. She wrote and told me that I had won the Worst Columnist award, and I laughed.

  Mother Mary was next to me at the time, sitting at the kitchen island, having her mug of morning coffee. A whitish hunk of powdered sugar donut floated inside, like an iceberg with saturated fats. She asked, “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing,” I answered, wisely. I was lying to protect the magazine staffers. I know what she’s capable of.

  Vendetta is an Italian word, for a reason.

  She may be eighty-seven, but she can still wield a wooden spoon.

  And she has a history of defending me that would shame a grizzly. Once, when I worked in a law firm, and she thought I was working too hard, she told me she wanted to call the principal. In elementary school, when I got yelled at for something I didn’t do, she wanted to call the governor.

  Funny, the governor also won a Worst of Philly award, for Worst Sports Column, but I didn’t tell my mother that, either.

  Personally, I don’t want my governor to be a good sports columnist.

  “No, really, what’s so funny?” Mother Mary asks. “What are you looking at on the computer?”

  “Porn.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “I know, I’m the Worst Columnist. It says so, right here.”

  “Who says that?” Her cloudy brown eyes flare behind her trifocals. She has a temper that goes from zero to explosive in sixty seconds. Nitroglycerin has a higher flashpoint.

  “A magazine says it.”

  “Where? I want to see it!” Her face flushes, and she becomes a human thermometer, with all the blood rushing to her bulb.

  “I don’t have the magazine to show you.”

  She waves me off, with an arthritic hand. “Oh, you’re only kidding. They don’t say it. You’re gonna give me a heart attack.”

  “No, I’m not kidding. They really said it.”

  “Then prove it. Show me the magazine.”

  “But I’d have to go out and buy it, and I don’t want to.”

  “GO BUY IT!” Mother Mary points to the front door, and her sugar donut sinks into her coffee. So I leave the house, get in the car, drive to the store, and buy the magazine that officially trashes me, in print.

  I bring home the magazine and show it to her.

  “I can’t read this magazine! The print is too small!”

  So I read it to her. “It says I’m the Worst Columnist, see? Here?”

  Mother Mary peers at the paragraph, red-faced. “This is terrible!”

  “Not really, Ma.”

  “Yes, it is! They didn’t mention me!”

  You’re So Vain, This Is About You

  By Francesca

  Writing memoir can get complicated, especially when you write about love. Each time I refer to a guy I’ve dated, I agonize over what they’ll think when they read it.

  I’m a writer, but I’m still a person.

  So I take great pains to disguise their identities. I consider it my duty to protect them this way—unlike fiction, I don’t own their characters, and my perspective is a subjective one. By the time my story goes to print, their own mothers wouldn’t recognize them.

  But while they may be anonymous to other readers, it’s possible that they could recognize themselves.

  And that kept me up at night. Until I realized one important fact:

  The men in my life don’t read me.

  Well, my father does, but that’s what dads are for—making your boyfriends look inadequate.

  I’m talking about the men I date. And I’ve dated wonderful, supportive, intelligent guys. They seem interested in a lot of things about me, except my job. I try not to let it bother me.

  But it does.

  One time, a reader wrote my mom, saying that she thought I would be a great match for her son. Her son was supersmart, very successful, and a bona fide nice guy, so my mom passed along my info. We ended up going out a handful of times, and by all accounts everything in the description was 100% true. But I did have a funny conversation with him:

  “I have a confession to make,” he said. “I’ve never read your column.”

  I was surprised. Not because I expect guys in their early thirties to be reading the column, but this was a blind date, a setup based on my easily-Google-able, 700-word column. What if he disagreed with his mother and thought I sounded awful? Wasn’t he curious?

  “Then what made you want to meet me?” I asked.

  “I liked your picture.”

  There’s a reason no one ever wrote a book called The Masculine Mystique.

  But his apathy is not unique. Even boyfriends I’ve dated seriously, men I have loved, don’t read my writing.

  I wrote a short novel as my senior thesis in college, and in it, I gave the love interest the same name as my ex-boyfriend. The character wasn’t based on him, but I found using his name in the first draft helped trigger some of the emotions I needed to express for the story. I always intended to change it. My ex went to my college, and I didn’t think my new boyfriend, also a classmate, would appreciate the homage.

  But then my thesis advisor thought the new name I suggested sounded too much like another character’s, and somehow in the haste of editing on a deadline, it remained. My thesis went on to win an award, and as part of the honor, the university produced bound copies to be displayed on a front shelf in the library.

  I should have been celebrating, but instead I felt sick. What would happen when they read it? I braced myself for the awkward conversations and hurt feelings sure to be coming my way.

  Any minute now.

  Luckily I didn’t hold my breath. Neither of them cracked the cover.

  Maybe it’s a gender thing. There are different expectations for men and women in relationships. In high school, even in the 2000’s, I remember boys would ask their girlfriends to watch their sport’s practice. As if watching a bunch of sweaty, pimply adolescent boys run drills could possibly be entertaining. But girls would do it!

  Thank God my first boyfriend was a band geek, so I didn’t have to endure this tedium.

  See, I can call him that because he’ll never know.

  Women are trained to show interest in every aspect of men’s lives, and men are trained to believe they are fascinating. Meanwhile, women are mocked in movies and sitcoms for wishing their boyfriends or husbands would ask about their day.

  The nerve!

  I’m not against supporting your partner, I’d just love to see some sixteen-year-old boys watching field hockey practice.

  And it’s not that I want my ex-boyfriends to be obsessed wit
h me. On the contrary, I want them to move on (slowly), date other people (after I start seeing someone first), and be (almost as) happy (as I am).

  Ex-boyfriends should have a greater stake in their former flames’ creative output, because they might show up in it.

  Think of Carly Simon’s famous lyric, “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you.” For the last forty years, fans have tried to guess which famous ex-lover she’s addressing. Is it Mick Jagger? Warren Beatty?

  The mystery was fun, but it didn’t really matter. What made the song awesome was the idea of an old boyfriend pining away, deluding himself that he still matters, while his ex, once jilted, now rocks out at his expense.

  If living well is the best revenge, the second best is a hit record.

  But last year, Simon released a new edition of the song, promising it would answer the riddle of the man’s identity, and sure enough, if you play the song backwards, you can hear her whisper: “David.”

  David? Bowie? Cassidy?

  David Geffen, according to The Sun and Us Weekly. Not an ex-lover at all, but the gay record executive who headed her then-label Elektra. Supposedly, Simon blamed Geffen for favoring rival singer Joni Mitchell over her.

  Boring.

  But typical. I’m sure Jagger and Beatty were vain, too, but they were probably also too self-absorbed to be poring over the lyrics to their old girlfriend’s song.

  Adele’s infamous ex might be the only person on earth who hasn’t heard her album.

  If my ex-boyfriend wrote a hit album after we broke up, I would hold a stethoscope to the stereo speakers and replay it for a panel of my girlfriends.

  In fact, my last boyfriend was a singer-songwriter, and although he had many delectable traits, this one excited me most. The way I saw it, it was win-win—whether our relationship became a true-love affair or a fiery train wreck, I could end up in a song!

  One day, I asked him if he ever wrote songs about women from his past or present (wink wink, nudge nudge).

  He said no, not really, he just made them up.

  Even the girls’ names in his songs?

  Whatever rhymes.

  A cleverly diplomatic answer, I thought, but I didn’t believe it. Instead I cursed my mother for giving me such an un-rhymeable first name. I can’t even work my name into a limerick:

  There once was a girl named Francesca …