Approval Junkie

by Faith Salie

  It was an ivory silk Elizabeth Fillmore “Guinevere” with ethereal gauntlet sleeves. This was 2004, so I like to think I was way ahead of the Game of Thrones fashion curve. We were getting married in Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland—a place some believe once sheltered the Holy Grail—so the romantic, vaguely medieval lines seemed to make this dress The One.

  Five years later, I was trying on dresses to wear to divorce the man who turned out not to be The One.

  By the time I was preparing to walk down another aisle, this time in the LA County Superior Court, I was done feeling sad about the end of our marriage. I felt defiant. My wasband’s refusal to sign some paperwork that would have simply ended our marriage induced us to have to stand in front of a judge to do the honors. My lawyer, who was one monocle away from looking exactly like Teddy Roosevelt, assured me that our case would be an uncomplicated affair. After all, we’d never shared any property or bank accounts—not even a phone number or mailing address. We never registered for anything except Crate and Barrel gift cards that we split as soon as we separated. I let him have the personalized porcelain bowl given to us by Lorne Michaels that was inscribed with the wrong wedding date. I also let him have the title “Petitioner” on the divorce papers, even though I was the one who finally filed the papers two years after he told me he didn’t want to be married to me anymore. It was very important to him that he be the Petitioner and I be the Respondent, which makes it all sound like a light S&M role-playing game. It kind of was, emotionally.

  As righteous and sassy as I felt, though, I still wanted to look pretty. Just because I was angry and didn’t want to be married to him anymore didn’t mean I’d stopped caring what he thought. This realization frustrated me, but ultimately I embraced it with compassion for myself: I was ready to be over him but I wasn’t quite. I welcomed the gigantic nudge I was about to get from the legal system. I knew myself well enough to anticipate that being in his presence for the first time in ten months would yank my heart and quicken my pulse. That sounds passionate, but it’s not the stuff of romance novels; it’s the stuff of corrosive karma. Despite my lawyer’s promise of no drama, I didn’t know what to expect in court—what I would say or feel, what the wasband wouldn’t say or wouldn’t feel. My literal appearance was the only thing I could control about my court appearance. It was a relief to focus on something as superficial as a dress after years of addressing deeper concerns. It felt good to dig into my closet rather than my soul.

  I was flying in from New York to get divorced—something about that sounded very sophisticated, a bit Auntie Mame meets Carrie Bradshaw, and I wanted to dress the part. I wanted to look like a New Yorker, whatever that might mean, since I usually find black too predictable. To me, looking like a New Yorker would say, “You may have known me for ten years, but look who I am now, without you, beyond you.” I further envisioned a look that said, “Yo, THIS is what you’ll be missing…even though you’ve introduced your new girlfriend to our mutual friends, and she’s a decade younger than I am and is also a fit model.” I wasn’t sure what a fit model was, so that gave me a massive excuse to google the shit out of this girl woman no, girl. After ferreting out her last name from my friend Hubert (Hubert, if you’re reading this, I’m still not sure why I didn’t get sole custody of you in the divorce), I applied myself like an Internet-age Harriet the Spy. The girlfriend was beautiful and blond and skinny—or, rather, perfectly proportioned, which is apparently what defines a fit model. She looked like someone who skipped the burn when she went in the sun and ended up with a golden tan in two hours. I could tell her hair never got frizzy in humidity. And, according to her photos online, she also enjoyed riding her bike in a bikini with no helmet. Clearly, they were having mind-blowing sex.

  Obviously I had to look phenomenally proportional, since tan is out of the question for me.

  For weeks I ran through a mental inventory of my closet. Did I want to wear something new—to christen it and forever make it The Divorce Dress? Should I hit Zara and buy something that looks good but is disposable—or was that too much of a metaphor for our marriage? I thought of choosing a reliable favorite, but I didn’t want to put any juju on it. Reiss dresses are too expensive to smudge with sage.

  Whenever I told women—friends or acquaintances—that I had to go to divorce court, they’d invariably, without skipping a beat, ask, “What are you going to wear?” It was like instant female solidarity: of course it mattered what I was going to wear. I was even in a business meeting pitching a TV show, and the subject of marriage—and my divorce—came up. The executive became very concerned about what I was going to wear, and we launched into a solid ten minutes discussing what kind of pantsuit might say “Hot and Feminine” instead of “Running for Office.”

  I solicited suggestions.

  I heard “classic,” and “powerful,” and “sexy, but not like you’re trying too hard.” So…not slutty sexy but power sexy. I felt drawn to the Black Halo “Jackie O” dress I’d bought to appear on The O’Reilly Factor. Very tight, precisely ruched indigo denim—dark but not black, posh but tough. I’d already taken on an intractable man in that dress!

  My brothers chimed in. Doug texted me: “Not cheap LA very classy NY. Sexy but smart, like Law and Order! Step out of court often to take calls.” David’s text read: “Something fabulous, Sex and the City, maybe red! Great hair.” For my kin, television shows spawned in the ’90s were the new black.

  Divorce court seemed to inspire in my girlfriends 1940s-era fashion fantasies, not only for me, but for themselves. Jo, a producer, cast me as a noir heroine and insisted I stand in front of the judge with my face covered dramatically in a black veil. And nothing was going to stop my actor girlfriends Kathleen, Julie Ann, and April from buying enormous hats and long gloves and smoldering in the back of the courtroom…except that Kathleen and Julie Ann had to drop their kids off at school that morning, and April had to stand in for Jenna Elfman.

  The night before my flight found me trying on one outfit after another, keeping on the same pair of pumps and throwing dresses on the bed. The sight of myself balancing in heels while struggling to zip up a snug sheath called to mind one of those rom-com montages where the heroine tries on piles of clothes in front of her girlfriends to boppy music. My scene was exactly like that—if it were Opposite Day—because I was alone and without a soundtrack. I certainly had girlfriends who’d have come over and spent an evening happily opining on my divorce trousseau, but I didn’t ask. Any girly giddiness about playing dress up evaporated as I faced reality. I was packing a suitcase to dissolve a marriage I’d vowed would last all the days of my life.

  In the end—at the end—here’s what I wore: a Nanette Lepore silk dress with a black, tan, and purple pattern that simultaneously evokes leopard print and peacock feathers—an appropriate, yin-yang combination. It was classy and feminine. It had pockets that I felt lent an air of casual insouciance I didn’t possess. I’d worn this dress just once before on a fairly recent date to the gastromecca The French Laundry, so I could imagine it smelled soothingly of lavender and sinfully expensive truffles. But what was most remarkable about this dress is that I’d bought it almost a year earlier, at a sample sale on a cold fall evening in Manhattan. Just after leaving the sale, my wasband had called me and made some kind of legal threat regarding our divorce proceedings. And, walking through Times Square, laden with bags of beautiful, deeply discounted clothes, holding the phone to my ear, it occurred to me I could hang up on him. I’d never done this before. I did it. I hung up. I just hung up, and he called back repeatedly, and I never answered. And the world kept spinning, and the neon lights in Times Square didn’t even flicker.

  That was the provenance of my divorce dress. The accessories were easy to choose. I donned my mom’s gold cross as if it offered some kind of armor; Great-Grandmother Hattie’s* century-old engagement ring, because (a) she was rumored to have been a tough old broad and (b) it fit me, unlike the engagement ring from my wasband, which we’
d never gotten sized; and beige patent heels that echoed down the municipal hallway in time with my pounding heart. My toenails were painted “Modern Girl” and my fingertips “Starter Wife.”

  I wanted even more subtext. My friend Brian had strongly lobbied for my wearing “a G-string. And only a G-string.” Instead, I went with hot pink lace Hanky Pankys with purple hearts. I told my brother David about them, to which he replied, “You deserve a purple heart for surviving that relationship.” I felt triumphant that this was a pair of panties that my wasband had never seen and never would see. A pair I imagined a future man might happily remove from my person.

  I cared about the jewelry and the shoes and the nail polish and the underwear because I cared about those things on my wedding day, too. Although I had to remove my unmentionables at the last minute before heading to the chapel, since my bridesmaids agreed that visible panty lines threatened to take down the whole Guinevere look. Sharon, who photographs all my weddings, captured a shot of my flower girls looking curiously at all the ladies who are looking curiously at my crotch.

  On a meaningful day, everything you wear can have meaning. It becomes what I wore That Day, whether that day is a beginning or an end.

  My wasband and I saw each other from about fifty feet away. I was walking toward the courtroom, and he was pacing outside. There was a sudden recognition of each other. He looked strong and boyishly handsome, as he always did. I caught my breath, seeing him, the man I’d walked toward four years earlier, under a Gothic nave, during a glorious cloud break in June. The sun had streamed through the stained glass, and I remember trying to slow down—the aisle wasn’t long enough to hold the moment as we held each other’s gaze. He’d blinked his eyes so hard, as if his own tears surprised him, when he saw me for the first time in my wedding dress. My eyes were veiled in a blusher, and for once I was the less transparent one. I remember thinking, in that moment, Some day I will tell our children how their father looked at me on this day.

  But on This Day, this day in the hallway of the eighth floor of the Superior Court, under fluorescent lighting, the father of the kids we never ended up having looked at me for less than a full second. He looked at me by accident really, and then corrected himself by turning on his heels and sitting himself inside the courtroom where he studied his iPad with intense concentration until our judge arrived.

  After that momentary identification—for the next forty-five minutes—despite my turning around and pushing my chair back and conspicuously contorting myself, he never looked my way again. I wanted to give him a small, sad smile, the kind where the corners of your mouth turn down. Some kind of respectful closure for the years we’d spent failing to love each other properly. A decade-long failure deserves more ceremony than the judge matter-of-factly declaring our marriage dissolved. I wanted to tell him, with my eyes, that I’d loved him and I was sorry we didn’t make it, but I never got the chance.

  After all that time and energy I’d put into deciding how I should look, I never really wondered if he would look. Ironic, maybe. Or…inevitable.

  —

  Years later, I feel silly that I cared so much. I guess that’s the distance of age plus fulfillment. I wish I could go back and sit on the sleigh bed of the furnished apartment I rented on West End Avenue and talk to that girl woman who was standing in front of a full-length mirror trying on dress after dress. I would tell her that what seems to fit now may not suit her at all a season hence. That she will outgrow old favorites and slip effortlessly into something new…that will fit her like a love.

  I might also tell her—if she would believe me—that one night, just two years into the future, she will be lying in bed. She’ll be in bed early because she’s finally, successfully pregnant with her first child at the end of her first trimester. And she’ll be feeling gross and exhausted and will glance at the back page of a magazine she’s flipping through to put her to sleep. She’ll barely register that it’s an ad for Naked Juice featuring a fit young lady out for a run. She will sleepily think, Oh I miss running, which my fertility doctor has ixnayed…oh juice has too many calories even when you’re pregnant….Then she will do a slo-mo double take and notice that the runner is her wasband’s girlfriend. And she will feel so happy that she can’t run and she is forty years old and won’t fit into any of her dresses for a while.

  * * *

  * Great-Grandmother Hattie did things like reportedly employ a wet nurse for my grandfather until he was five. He would come home from kindergarten and announce he was thirsty. (Sorry—you totally didn’t see that coming. I’ll give you a moment to shake your brain out.)

  In the early days of dating my husband John, I went to LA to shoot a pilot. Though I’d just put my thirty-nine-year-old eggs on ice, I was playing the mother of a teenager, who was really a twenty-two-year-old with a receding hairline. I sat on my BlackBerry while filming a long dinner table exchange and kept texting John in between shots, in between my legs. The creator of the pilot was Danny, who is a mad genius, simultaneously possessing the sweetest character and the darkest sense of humor you’ll ever encounter. He also happens to have written Seinfeld’s “Festivus” episode as well as my favorite line I’ve ever gotten to utter. In this dinner scene, my “son” asks me if I have cancer. Thrilled, I respond with, “No, sweetie—why? Do I look thin?” I’d filled Danny in on my dating status, and, in describing my new boyfriend, I’d mentioned John was Jewish. All my surreptitious texting did not escape Danny’s notice. He announced to the cast and crew that I was engaged in “The Jewish Semen Acquisition Project,” or “JSAP.” At any given time during the weeklong shoot, he took to yelling, “JSAP ASAP!!!”

  It was a long, Gentile-strewn road that led me to the JSAP. Here are a few stops along the way during the year leading up to the Project’s initiation.

  I Joined Al-Anon

  Sort of. I don’t know how you “officially” join, but I did go to a couple of meetings in two different church basements. I brought my own decaf, because I assumed there would only be regular coffee served. I figured that people who want to remain anonymous are not people who feel like adding caffeine withdrawal to their challenges. I never shared anything, never stood up and said my name so I could hear a chorus of “Hi Faith!”s. I sat in the back and listened.

  Going to Al-Anon seemed like the right thing to do, or at least the “it couldn’t hurt” thing to do, since I was in love with an alcoholic. My girlfriend who’s an AA devotee kept encouraging me to help the man I’d been seeing—and seeing get drunker and drunker—for going on two years. A large part of me hated being told I could fix this. I was figuring out my own stuff—the direction of my career after my radio show was canceled, how I was going to become a mother, whether I would ever stop subletting other women’s apartments and living among their things, like old scrunchies, expired diaphragms, and a box with wigs in it, labeled “Dead Girl.” Committing myself to helping someone who didn’t want to be helped seemed like an awful lot to take on. And perhaps a foolish endeavor, too.

  He was a good person. Funny and generous. Self-loathing and self-medicating. He stuck by me during my separation and divorce. He cared about my family. I was grateful to him for his patience, for making me laugh, for introducing me to the nooks of New York, like the hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Chinatown where they let you bring your own wine. We kissed at midnight on top of the Empire State Building. Holding hands in Central Park, he taught me to notice the little numbers painted on lampposts that tell you what cross street you’re near. I loved him when he wasn’t drunk. I was disappointed when he was, which ended up being every night we were together. He was quick to leave apology notes on mornings after passing out on the sofa long after I went to bed. “Your boyfriend’s an asshole who loves you—sorry I never made it to bed last night.” I persuaded myself his Post-its were a kind of taking responsibility for his actions.

  Our relationship was like the negative image of my marriage. Instead of being the one always coming up short,
the apologizer, I was now the one with my shit together, the apologized to. For a short time, I confess it felt refreshing; then, for a long time, it felt burdensome. I was in a position of power I didn’t really want, but I really wanted to use it for good.

  It took me a long time to deem him an alcoholic. We didn’t live together, for one thing, so I could pretend it wasn’t always that bad. Plus, I wanted to be wrong, so when he told me I was wrong, I wanted him to be right. I’d never been close to anyone with a substance abuse problem before, unless I count myself with Crystal Light. I’d invested so much and didn’t want another relationship to fail. But he started to turn belligerent when drunk. He got angry with me for not ordering a glass of wine when we went out to dinner. I took a swig of his coffee one morning, and it tasted like Bailey’s with a splash of caffeine.

  This is my story and not his, so I’ll abstain from any more details except to say that a real turning point came when, gin martini in hand, he yelled at me in a hotel lobby about how unfair Jersey Shore was to the beach-dwelling denizens of the Garden State.

  As is my wont, I tried to approach the situation with a checklist of Things I Should Do, so that’s when I called my AA girlfriend. She suggested I race-walk over to my local Al-Anon meeting.

  I learned a huge lesson from my two Al-Anon meetings. I learned that I didn’t want to earn an Al-Anon token for attendance. Because the meetings made me sad. Sad for the people who were there—daughters, sisters, husbands of alcoholics, who felt stuck in relationships that caused them despair. Being in those relationships was not their fault. But I realized that I was not stuck in a relationship. I would be if I married my boyfriend. If I married him, I’d be signing up for his addiction, and I’d have only myself to blame.

  I left with my own Serenity Prayer: