Hungry Heart

by Jennifer Weiner

  My new boyfriend, Adam, a lawyer, was smart and funny and delighted to be at my side during those months when it felt like every phone call brought some new piece of unbelievable good news. He’d celebrate every great blurb and review, he’d listen, patiently, when I bitched about the inevitable bad ones, and he was supportive when, as a prepublication treat, I decided to take my mom and Molly on a weeklong vacation.

  “Jenny, I couldn’t,” Fran demurred.

  “Come on,” I said. “There must be someplace you’ve always wanted to go.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can!”

  “It’s too much!”

  “I can afford it!”

  “Fine! Rancho la Puerta! William F. Buckley and his wife spend a month there every year!” I wasn’t sure why Fran considered their patronage a persuasive endorsement, but we went. And it was lovely.

  Best of all, the guy who’d broken my heart, who’d declined to take my calls, who’d gone off with a giggler? I saw him again, after I’d sold the book, after I’d met Adam, after everything was wonderful (except my weight: I lost twelve pounds, kept six and a half of them off, and had finally decided, for the time being, that I would try to love, or at least tolerate, my body just as it was).

  Adam and I were in New York City for a Bruce Springsteen concert. That July, Springsteen was playing at Madison Square Garden for ten nights. Madison Square Garden holds twenty thousand people. I’m not sure, mathematically speaking, what the chances were that my ex and I would end up in the exact same row, on the exact same night . . . but there he was. When I saw him sauntering down the staircase, all ponytail and patchouli stink, with his (tiny) new girlfriend in tow, I freaked out. I told Adam who he was, grabbed my cell phone, and fled.

  Locked in the handicapped stall of the ladies’ room, sweaty and hyperventilating, I called Susan and gave a whispered account of the night’s events, ending with the line “I don’t think I can spend three hours sitting next to him, and it’s going to be three hours. Four if there’s encores.”

  “Stop whining,” Susan instructed. “This is the great wheel of karma spinning around. You have a boyfriend, and you have a book deal, and you need to go back out there and face him.”

  I had a single tube of lipstick in my purse. In the Madison Square Garden ladies’ room, with excited New Jerseyites all around me, I did everything I could possibly do to myself with that one cosmetic. The lipstick was lipstick. It was rouge. It was contouring cream and it was eye shadow. I would have waxed my legs with the lipstick, had I believed it to be possible. Finally, after I’d gotten myself looking as good as I could, I pulled back my shoulders, lifted my chin, marched back into the arena, and took my seat.

  My ex-boyfriend looked at me. “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” I said back. (Sparkling dialogue!)

  I asked how he was doing and feigned sympathy when he told me that his paper had gone through a round of layoffs and that he’d been among the casualties. When he asked me how I was doing, I told him that, actually, I was doing quite well. I had written a book, and Simon & Schuster had acquired it, and foreign rights had been sold all over the world.

  My ex looked surprised, then stung. Playing what was clearly the final card in his hand, he indicated his girlfriend and said, “This is my girlfriend, Bitchface.”VIII

  I smiled. “And this,” I said, indicating my boyfriend, “is my fiancé!” Except—oops!—Adam and I were not yet engaged.

  Adam smiled manfully. My ex looked gratifyingly dismayed. The lights dimmed and Springsteen took the stage, and I sat down. On top of my left hand, in case either my ex or Bitchface thought to look for a ring, which I did not have, on account of not being engaged yet.

  Although it was several days before I regained full sensation in my fingers, my run of good fortune continued. A few months later, Adam proposed, and Good in Bed was published. It sold solidly in hardcover and took off in paperback, turning into a word-of-mouth success story, a book that’s buoyed not by an expensive ad campaign or critical consensus, but by a much more rare and gratifying force—readers, specifically female readers. Mothers were telling daughters, sisters were telling sisters, women were telling their best friends and yoga buddies and neighbors and coworkers—you need to read this book. Best of all were the letters I got. Thank you for telling this story. Thank you for not having Cannie get thin. I found this book right after a breakup, and it saved my life. My whole life, my father told me I was fat and ugly, and this book made me think that maybe I’m okay.

  Good in Bed sold and sold—and not just to my family or my Weight Watchers friends. It went on to spend almost a year on the bestseller list. It was, as they say, a dream come true . . . and I was on my way.

  * * *

  I. You can imagine my dismay when, many years later, I found myself panned in that very same publication for mocking Bruce’s tiny penis. I felt like the kid in those long-ago don’t-do-drugs PSAs, shouting, “I learned it from you, Dad!” or “Salon!” You know, whichever.

  II. Years later, toward the end of his life, I did an event with Kurt Vonnegut, and he was awful to me—cruel and cutting, and basically calling me out as a hack in front of an audience that, sadly, included my mother. I was so shocked and so brokenhearted that a man who’d been my junior high favorite, a guy who could write a line like “in the water I am beautiful,” was being so awful that I promised myself that if I ever had another chance to appear with—or even meet—one of my writing heroes, I’d skip it.

  III. Note to aspiring writers: This is actually not that many rejections in the grand scheme of things. I know published writers whose rejection count is in the triple digits. Never give up. Never, never, never give up.

  IV. Note to aspiring writers: Sometimes I’d put special treats into my books, knowing that Joanna would find them and be horrified. In the short story “The Guy Not Taken,” an unhappy mother of a newborn discovers that her ex-boyfriend is getting married. I had her realize that she could access her former beloved’s wedding registry (she remembered his password) and had her sign him and his new bride up for a food scale, and then a Hitachi Magic Wand.

  I sent Joanna the story. A week later, I got it back with the note that I’d expected: What is this, with “Hitachi Magic Wand” circled. No worries! I thought. My editor will know what it means! A week later, it came back with the same passage circled and the same question inked in the margin—What is this? At which point I realized that I am a pervert.

  V. Note to aspiring writers: Back in the day, a first-time novelist could actually command a staggering sum like that. TIMES HAVE CHANGED.

  VI. Note to aspiring writers: Having your colleagues find out about your six-figure advance is not always a recipe for goodwill.

  VII. Stay tuned. It’s coming.

  VIII. Not her actual name.

  Two in a Million

  Good Housekeeping, August 2009

  There are friends who are loyal, steadfast, and supportive; friends you can call in the middle of the night or the middle of a breakup, who stay by your side no matter what.

  My friend Susan, in addition to being all these things, is also the friend who does not hesitate to send me e-mails marked “urgent” that include images of a celebrity with a lamentable amount of plastic surgery (memo line: “must discuss”) or to share her insights about why that famous author should have known her much younger husband was gay. (“His eyebrows looked better than hers did. Hello!”) The friend, in other words, who, come death or disappointment, can always make you smile.

  We met the way single girls meet in the city. I’d just moved to Philadelphia to work at the city paper and didn’t know a soul except for the editor who’d hired me. I was walking my dog, Wendell. Susan was walking her dog, Daisy. The doggies sniffed each other. Susan and I eyed each other. Finally, one of us (I’m guessing it was her) said something (I’m guessing it was sarcastic). That’s how it started. Like true love, or finding the perfect black cashmere cardigan wi
th a three-quarter sleeve: we just clicked.

  Susan was sophisticated and glamorous, with a mane of inky black hair and a string of brokenhearted ex-boyfriends. When we first met, she lived in a tiny jewel box of a row house, with an ornate wrought-iron headboard and a sleek little couch covered in buttercup-yellow leather. I had a sensible brown bob, a practical denim couch, and a collection of not-terribly-disappointed exes whom I could count on one hand and have fingers left over. Based on appearances alone, we shouldn’t have worked. But we bonded over our mutual love for roast chicken, the same sense of the absurdities of life, and, these days, by Susan’s refusal to take me, or anything else, too seriously. (While everyone else oohs and aahs if one of my books gets optioned for the big screen, Susan’s impressed only because my dealings with Hollywood may bring her one step closer to meeting longtime crush Peter Strauss.)

  Over the years, we’ve seen each other through major life transitions: weddings and kids’ birthdays, C-sections and biopsies, the deaths of dogs and of parents. We’ve talked each other off the ledge. When Susan wanted to drag a heavy planter in front of her ex-boyfriend’s garage so he’d run over it with his Lexus, I persuaded her that it was a bad idea and that, if she went through with it, I’d be unavailable to pay her bail. When I wanted to drive all night to convince a boy that we were meant to be together, Susan sat me down and gently but firmly explained that no, we actually weren’t. Other friends will reassure you that oh, no, that dress your cousin wore to your wedding wasn’t so bad. Susan will devise a scorecard for guests’ fashion infractions (thigh-high slit, no bra, flaming red dress) and, at the end of the reception, hand it to you as a memento.

  There are friends who tell you, “Someday you’ll laugh about this.” Susan’s my best friend because, with her, “someday” is always now.

  With Child

  Adam and I spent a year planning our wedding and got married in October 2001, at the Mutter Museum, which houses Philadelphia’s collection of medical oddities, including rows of syphilitic skulls and, that fall, an exhibit about food-borne illnesses. “Most of our brides choose to keep the exhibits closed during cocktail hour,” the museum director said. Adam and I agreed that my family was such a freak show that the museum’s offerings would struggle to compete. “Open those doors!” I said.

  Our wedding was six weeks after 9/11, which meant that some of the guests with small children were naturally reluctant to get on planes, while all of our ninety-and-over relations—the people we’d invited to be polite, without actually expecting their attendance—decided to make the life-affirming gesture of appearing in person at our nuptials, in some cases with hired attendants or the daughter they wanted there to help them to get to the bathroom and cut their food. Both of us were oldest children, the first in our families to get married, and we—I—wanted a big celebration, dinner and dancing, the rabbi and the chuppah and the big white dress.

  At thirty-one, I was six years older than the average first-time bride in America. But in the East Coast city where I lived, thirty-one seemed just right, and certainly not out of line with my friends and my peers.

  I had lured Adam out of his apartment on Rittenhouse Square and into my neighborhood, east of Broad Street, and we’d used my advance for a down payment on a three-story row house around the corner from my Monroe Street apartment. It was long and tall and narrow, with a twisty staircase, and rooms stacked up vertically instead of stretched sideways, but it had a little L-shaped bricked garden and four bedrooms, including a tiny one down the hall from our bedroom on the second floor that would be perfect for a baby. I’d had the walls painted a buttery yellow and I’d put dozens of Ikea postcards in colorful frames, tying each with a bit of ribbon, and hung them in neat rows beside the window. There was, just barely, room for a crib, and a glider, and a changing table. The one big window looked out over the garden that I’d filled with bright annuals in the springtime, round barrels full of impatiens and posies and phlox. I had a little patch set aside for zucchini and tomatoes, and I was coaxing roses to climb up the walls.

  Our plan was to wait a year, maybe two, before starting a family, enjoying each other and our lives as newlyweds. Then one day, six months after our wedding, I took a break from my writing and went downstairs to collect the mail. A new Newsweek was on top. YOUR DECLINING FERTILITY, blared the cover. SELFISH SINGLE LADIES THINK THEY CAN POSTPONE CHILDBIRTH FOREVER WHILE THEY SELFISHLY FOCUS ON THEIR CAREERS, BUT THEY ARE WRONG AND THEY ARE GOING TO DIE ALONE EXCEPT FOR THEIR WINE AND THEIR NINE CATS, the subhead added. (I might be paraphrasing, but not by much.) Worst of all, the cover was illustrated with—I kid you not—a photograph of one of my college roommates. She was a year older than me. She, too, had spent her twenties establishing her professional life, earning a PhD, building her career. She, too, had recently gotten married . . . only, unlike me, she was already trying to conceive, and was having trouble, BECAUSE FEMINISM AND MADONNA HAD SOLD HER A LIE AND TOLD HER SHE COULD WAIT AS LONG AS SHE WANTED TO WAIT EXCEPT BIOLOGY HAS OTHER IDEAS AND NOW YOU’LL DIE ALONE.

  I stood by my front door, feeling faint. Oh, God. I had been selfish. I’d been blind. I’d been ignoring the biological realities, blithely living my self-centered, single-lady life, taking it on faith that I’d get married in my late twenties or early thirties and pop out a few kids at some point in the ensuing decade and that everything would be fine. I’d been worrying about the wrong things—terrorism, or a repeat of September 11’s horror, or a president whose response was to put in place menacing and barely constitutional measures designed to protect “homeland security.” Clearly, the real threat was much closer, and had nothing to do with bombs or planes or racial profiling . . . and no, things would not be fine. I was probably already too late, and if I didn’t start trying to conceive at that exact moment I was going to spend my declining years dressing up my cat in baby booties after my husband had left me for a nubile nineteen-year-old who’d be able to give him an heir.

  I called Adam at the office. “Can you come home for lunch?” I asked. He came home. There was no lunch. (“Not even a sandwich?” he asked sadly, trudging back down the second-story hall with Wendell, who’d never quite made peace with his presence, barking smartly at his heels.) Approximately fifteen minutes later, I was pregnant. Thanks, Newsweek!

  The timing was not great. The magazine came out in the summertime. I was supposed to go on a book tour for In Her Shoes, my second book, that fall. In August, a few days after a home pregnancy test revealed why my breasts were swollen and achy and AT&T commercials were making me cry, I drove myself to Connecticut, where the book tour was beginning. My mother, who’d been swimming, wrapped herself in an ancient beach towel and came to greet me. She looked me up and down as I rolled my suitcase into the hallway.

  “Jenny, are you pregnant?” she demanded.

  Standing in the laundry room, feeling the heat of the house pressing down on me (my mother did not believe in using air conditioners, preferring to cool the house with fans), I started to cry. Or maybe I’d been crying already. I cried a lot over those nine months. “I thought it would take longer than it did! I thought I had declining fertility!”

  Fran just stared. “I had four kids,” she said slowly. “My sister had four kids. Why would you think you’d have any problems getting pregnant?”

  “It’s Newsweek’s fault!” I blubbered. “They said it would take at least six months and that I needed to start trying right away!”

  Fran shook her head. I went to the bathroom to barf. For the next two weeks, I was queasy and achy and permanently exhausted as I made my way across the country, from Boston to Atlanta to Minneapolis to Nashville to Denver to Los Angeles, and points in between, reading every how-to-be-pregnant book that I could find along the way. (Alas, I bought What to Expect When You’re Expecting at the same time that I purchased a copy of Best Fetish Erotica from Amazon. BFE had the same cover image as In Her Shoes—two pairs of sexy stilettos, pretty feet side by side—and I wanted to check
out the competition, which made sense to me but was undoubtedly perplexing to the Amazon algorithms. “Based on your previous purchases, we have recommendations for you!” the banner on my home page would read. Half of the recommended books would be erotica of the S&M variety. Half would be pregnancy books. I wondered whether anyone from Amazon’s headquarters thought it was weird.)

  Back home after the tour, I planned for my pregnancy and delivery the way I’d readied myself for every other major event in my life—by overpreparing, committing reams of facts to memory, and reading everything I could find.

  In 2002, there was a lot to read. Pregnancy and childbirth, especially as experienced by a privileged white lady such as myself, had become a kind of blank screen, where shifting attitudes and neuroses and double standards and conflicts and attitudes about gender and knowledge and power were projected . . . and many contemporary feminist thinkers who were having their own children were writing about the experience, making me reevaluate my own expectations.

  There were articles about the rise in the C-section rate, and whether doctors were doing them unnecessarily, to avoid the risks, and attendant lawsuits, of vaginal births going bad. There were stories about whether the medication doctors gave laboring women affected babies, or kept mothers from being sufficiently in touch with their bodies to give birth naturally. The message I got was that a good mother threw off the shackles of Western medicine, and the chemical bondage of epidurals and Pitocin, and labored the way God and Nature intended, without medical intervention or a ticking clock or chemicals that would speed up the process for a doctor’s convenience or an insurance company’s bottom line.