by Amy Ephron
My present husband’s daughter had brought her six-month-old, highly neurotic pedigree Italian Greyhound, which was way more skittish than any of us, and that’s saying something. We were also in escrow on a house in Los Angeles and the fax machine was working overtime. There was some legal thing about being in escrow that required some legal thing about his divorce, i.e., his first wife who he was not yet divorced from had to sign something in order for us to close escrow.
Advice to all—do not take your first vacation with your intended and his children while he and their mother are arguing with lawyers in the background about quitclaims.
As the knowledge seeped into his children that we were actually planning to move in together to the house we were in escrow with, the little house on Martha’s Vineyard was close quarters, to say the least. There were so many of us (eight to be exact) that none of our friends, except for one, invited us for dinner. In short, it was a disaster. To date, we have never tried it again.
I think families are like a spinning compass. There’s always a wind coming in from the north or a southeaster brewing or the hint of a squall from the south, and it’s like a ship heading into a storm—you know there’s trouble up ahead, but the compass is spinning so quickly that it’s difficult to tell from which direction the weather’s going to turn.
My present husband tells a story about when his first wife brought him home to Ohio to meet her mother. Her mother took one look at him and burst into tears. She didn’t come out of her bedroom for the rest of the weekend. I’m not sure I blame her—it was the early ’70s, he was a Legal Aid attorney, stick-thin, wearing an army fatigue jacket, and had the kind of hair that could only be referred to as a “Jewish ’fro”—he was probably not what she had in mind. But then they got married, had children, and spent many Christmases in Ohio.
My husband has lost his hair now and has a beard. One day, after we’d been together for about six months, unbeknownst to me, he shaved his beard, and when he walked in the door that night, I burst into tears. I’m not sure what that says about any of us.
I think when my present husband’s children met me, I was probably not what they had in mind either. Although, in fairness to me, it could have been worse—at least, I was almost old enough to be their mother. In fairness to them, though, I think it’s very difficult to accept someone new in your life if your parents have been married for 25 years and you’re very close to both of them.
But families meld, change, grow, have spats, meltdowns, blowups, periods of time when they don’t speak and periods when they’re incredibly cozy, envy morphs into support or vice versa (particularly if the siblings are close in age). One Christmas Eve, with 20 people in attendance, my daughters had a giant fight about guacamole, or the way one of them was cutting the onions or adding the salsa, that flipped in a nanosecond into a fistfight and they were 24 and 22 at the time. I’m not sure what that says about any of us either.
A couple of weeks ago, I was on the phone with my stepdaughter. She’d had a terrible day, something sad had happened, and she was missing someone she’d recently broken up with. I was being sort of helpful. I am sort of helpful in situations like this (partly because I’ve been through so many of them). And she was letting me be helpful. Her other line rang and she put me on hold for a minute and then came back and said, “That was my dad. I told him I’d call him back.”
Families (even post-modern families) also have brief (and often fleeting) periods of time where they’re incredibly close. Cherish those moments, because like I said, there’s probably a wind blowing from somewhere where you least expect it.
TIPS FOR WOMEN GETTING A DIVORCE
1. Get your hair done immediately, trimmed, blown dry, colored, whatever, but resist the impulse to chop it all off in some misguided notion of a fresh start. Short hair looks great if you look great—anticipate that for a few months after you separate from your husband, there might be a few days where you don’t look great and you might want your hair to hide behind . . .
2. Get a pedicure (no matter what season it is) and paint your toenails red.
3. Buy new pajamas (this is a no-brainer).
4. Pick someone up at a bar or a party, just to remind yourself you still can. Do not go home with him—he might be a lunatic.
5. Consider moving out of the house you shared together. (Yes, I know this will traumatize the children.) But the odds are you can’t afford it—either you were supporting it on two incomes or one, and now that same income has to support two households. And who wants to be reminded of him anyway? Or have him feel too familiar in your space? And, if you are lucky enough for him to be paying for everything (even though I don’t totally approve of that), you’ll just feel like you’re still under his thumb.
6. Under no circumstances negotiate the kind of divorce settlement where your payments stop if you remarry! Don’t let anything discourage you from moving on.
7. Save your energy for the important fight. You can always buy another box of Ritz crackers.
Twelve
Egg Cups
“Is she okay?” I hear them whisper in the corner, their heads huddled together as if they think I cannot hear them.
“I’ve never seen her do this before.”
“What’s going on?”
“Mom, are you sure you want to do that . . . ?”
Soft-boiled eggs were served in egg cups. Mommy’s saccharine was stored on the lazy Susan in a slim silver Tiffany’s box on which her initials were engraved. The milk and sugar for her coffee were similarly decanted into a pitcher and a bowl (as were the jam, the syrup, and the honey). This practice carried over to dinner, and anything that came in a jar was required to be displayed in an appropriate bowl or dish including ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and pickles.
It wasn’t a disorder, it was Mommy’s sense of elegance and style. I don’t know where she learned it, whether from the pages of Edith Wharton or Gourmet, but certainly not from my grandmother, who played canasta much of the day with her next-door neighbor, wore what we politely called “a housedress,” and served spaghetti that had been cooked for 20 minutes with a sauce made from Campbell’s Cream of Tomato soup. My grandma was so convinced that Campbell’s Cream of Tomato soup was a miracle invention and a guaranteed staple in all of America’s kitchens that she bought stock in the company.
We had Campbell’s Cream of Tomato soup at our house, too, but it was served as a first course (not over spaghetti) in Wedgwood soup bowls with silver soup spoons. Even breakfast had courses—juice or half a grapefruit to begin with, served with Mommy’s cup of coffee and the trades. She worked full-time and didn’t apologize for the fact that she had full-time help, a wonderful black woman named Evelyn Hall, who was, also, an extraordinary cook. Evelyn had grown up on a farm that her family owned in Louisiana and, as she reminded me (every time she caught me doing something wrong), she was “one-sixth Cherokee” (which I took to mean she had eyes in the back of her head or she could see me even when I wasn’t in the room). Evelyn also had a “musician’s ear” for the kitchen and could make anything even if she’d tasted it only once.
My mother directed the events in the kitchen at arm’s length. Cookbooks were bedside reading. “Look at this,” she would say to me as I lay under the purple satin quilt that she kept as a throw in her bedroom. She would point to a lemon soufflé in The Gourmet Cookbook and say, “I think we should try it.” And somehow the ingredients for it wou
ld find their way to the kitchen, and the soufflé would find its way to the table a few days later. She would write out menus for dinner for the week and elaborate lists for the fruit and vegetable man who came every Wednesday, the milkman who came twice a week, and my father who went to the supermarket on Saturday mornings with one of us in tow. Mommy was proud of the fact that she worked for a living and that she could hire people to help her with her domestic needs (this included us, by the way). But she was also proud that she paid unemployment and social security benefits for everyone who worked for her long before it was required or fashionable.
She made guest appearances in the kitchen. Scrambled eggs on Christmas morning that were cooked for so long and at such a low temperature, still soft and a perfect pale yellow, I’m certain they wouldn’t pass a salmonella test. She made blanched almonds (she was big on TV snacks), which involved parboiling raw almonds with their skins on, enlisting any of us who were around to squeeze the almonds out of their skin, a grueling, time-consuming task up there with prepping string beans that somehow seemed fun at the time, sitting around the red Formica table in the kitchen as Mommy melted unsalted butter and then strained it through cheesecloth to clarify it. She spread the poached almonds on a cookie sheet, drizzled them with butter, sprinkled them with salt and baked them in a 350˚ oven until they were golden brown. They were delicious, by the way.
My mother also made guacamole. Its key ingredients were avocados, diced onion, sour cream, and Worcestershire sauce (at least it didn’t have mayonnaise like her famous cottage cheese dip, which also had Worcestershire sauce), but it wasn’t really like the guacamole that we make or serve today.
It was fabulous, though, because it was elegant—at least, we thought it was fabulous then.
It was smooth. Absolutely mashed to a pulp with a fork and blended with sour cream so that it was almost pistachio green. She served it in a special bowl that rested on a black ridged plate that was filled with ruffled potato chips at parties and on TV nights, when she ate it lying down on the built-in Chinese sofa in the bar as she sipped Dewar’s and soda, usually with a lit Kent cigarette in the ashtray, as she watched College Bowl or Julia Child or To Tell the Truth and later, Upstairs Downstairs, which is the first time I remember being totally addicted to a TV show and feeling smart and grown-up because I was watching Upstairs, Downstairs and eating guacamole with my mom. It’s a memory that I treasure, a rare spot of peace and contentment, moments that are always fleeting, with no subtext or drama except what was on the TV screen.
•••
My daughter is in the dining room with a friend, setting the table for dinner. We’re having hamburgers, medium rare with sliced onions and tomatoes, fresh hamburger buns that I bought at the bakery, and almost any kind of condiment you want, mustard, relish, ketchup, pickles. I hear my daughter say, with some alarm in her voice, “Oh, no! You can’t do that.” Even though I cannot see them, I can guess what happened—her friend has inadvertently set a naked bottle of ketchup, mustard, or relish directly on the table. I smile, certain that in a moment, they will come into the kitchen, as they do, searching for an appropriate bowl or dish and a small knife or spoon to accompany it. I can imagine Maia or Anna saying to their children, “It wasn’t a disorder . . .” as they reach for an appropriate bowl or dish in which to place whatever condiment they’re serving. There are some things that are passed on to you by your mother.
Until last September when it was my daughter’s birthday and we’d been too ambitious—too many flower arrangements, too many sides. Alan insisted on making brownies as well as ginger cake. I kept augmenting the flower arrangements with tropicals from the backyard. Oh, wait, what about the amazing ginger flowers that just bloomed . . . What about the vegans? I guess we’d better make zucchini without cheese, too. Twenty people instead of fourteen, Sunday night, and there was no help in sight. We’d hung Japanese lanterns on the rafters of the deck. I’d put on makeup and dressed for the occasion, white, since it was officially the last night of summer. And, as the hamburgers were coming off the grill and the chili was bubbling over and there were 20 buns warming in the oven, I opened the refrigerator, thought about it for a second and put the ketchup and the relish, still in their store-bought containers, directly on the table.
“Is she okay?” I hear them whisper in the corner, their heads huddled together as if they think I cannot hear them.
“I’ve never seen her do this before.”
“What’s going on?”
“Mom, are you sure you want to do that?” I shrug and, as a concession, open the cabinet and take out two small plates that I place underneath the ketchup bottle and the jar of relish on the table.
They still look puzzled, perplexed, certain that something’s wrong.
I nod my head just to let them know that I’m okay. “I’m sure.”
And I think to myself, just this one time, my mother wouldn’t mind.
Thirteen
My Filofax
Four people asked me what I wanted for my birthday last week and I gave each of them the same answer, “A new Filofax.”
All four of them said the same thing. “No, you don’t. Nobody wants a Filofax anymore. It’s so old-fashioned. Don’t be ridiculous. iPhone.” My daughter Maia was the harshest. She simply said, “Oh, Mom! iPhone.” It made me feel something I rarely feel, old-fashioned and distinctly unhip and, since it was my birthday we were discussing, it made me feel old.
For the record, I have an iPhone. It doesn’t work very well, but I have one. Sometimes it’s cranky about email, I can’t read attachments, and it’s impossible to surf the web. I can, however, tweet from it (I’m not really that old-fashioned.) Don’t tell me to get a new iPhone, it’s my fourth one, and despite the fact that two assistants and two of my children over the last three years have religiously promised to transfer all my names and phone numbers into my iPhone (and my computer), it hasn’t happened yet and I never seem to have the time.
I like my Filofax (even though it does sort of look like a truck ran over it.) It feels like a friend. I like that it has my friends’ and acquaintances’ names, addresses, and phone numbers hand-printed into it. Arguably, a few of them are dead, but I’ve learned not to notice. And I can’t quite bring myself to cross the names out. That would seem too final. (If I had a new Filofax, I wouldn’t feel disloyal if I didn’t transfer those names.)
I like it that I have my Filofax with me in my purse or on the passenger seat of my car, so that if I need to reach someone, I know how. It makes me feel rooted somehow.
I once left my Filofax on the roof of my car and drove off. It was gone and I felt lost. I wondered if I’d done it on purpose—someone I’d been dating hadn’t called me in days and I didn’t want to call him and his number was unlisted. Someone told me they’d seen him out with someone else and I wondered if some sort of self-protective device kicked in and I wanted to save myself the embarrassment of not having my phone call returned or, if it was, of having a conversation I didn’t want to have. He did call a few weeks later and I did manage to be terribly sweet about the fact that we wouldn’t be speaking again.
I realized when I lost my Filofax that I hadn’t printed my contact information onto the front page (that would be too revealing somehow) as if someone would find my “black book” and discover secrets about me, and by not inputting my info, I was somehow spared, anonymous, so that even if someone read it, sort of like reading
your diary, they wouldn’t know that it was me. So there was no chance that I was going to get it back. It was gone forever. Nonetheless, my present Filofax has the same quirk.
Losing the first one was a wake-up call—had I really turned into a person who could leave their Filofax on the roof of their car and drive off? Was it a precursor of what was to come? I immediately bought a new Filofax. This was before computer databases, and I re-created the phone-book pages from my cell-phone records, not an easy task, and an old invitation list. Carefully copying the names and addresses and phone numbers into a new Filofax (the one that’s so old now I think I need to replace it).
I have a friend who once got so frustrated on a phone call that he threw his cell phone out the window onto Sunset Boulevard and had to send everyone an email asking for their number. This was before BlackBerrys, when a cell phone was just a cell phone and there wasn’t that magic synch feature from a phone to a computer. I also know a young woman who changes her phone number every time she has a breakup—just to make the point to whoever she’s breaking up with that “it really is final.” That seems like a lot of work somehow, but it seems to work for her. There was a time when I had an entire page in my Filofax devoted to her phone numbers but I, finally, replaced the page.
Sometimes, I use my Filofax in meetings to take notes, or I’ll have a thought in the car, come up with a random sentence for something I’m working on, and pull over to jot it down. Sometimes I take it to the beach where the sand isn’t friendly to a computer and write in it by hand. There are a few haiku that will probably never be printed anywhere else. I can gauge from them how sad I was on a given day. (Haiku are often sad. The more comedic ones have found their way into my computer.) Some of them aren’t even properly haiku, they’re just short poems. I guess I could print a couple of them now: