by Kari Lizer
Jen Sutherland’s message said, “Hi. You lived next door to me when I was ten. You told me Santa Claus wasn’t real.” Oh yeah. I remembered Jen. She had an impossibly thick blonde braid, like a horse, running down the middle of her back.
I was crazy jealous of her because my mom had sent me down to our neighbor Connie’s house under the false pretense of borrowing eggs, and Connie, a hairdresser, had ambushed me and given me a pixie haircut.
My mom was tired of me falling asleep with gum in my mouth and waking up with gum in my long hair the next morning—which she then had to try and extract with ice and peanut butter. When Connie was done with me, I looked like the youngest son, Bud, on the TV show Flipper. Watching Jen fly around our neighborhood on her bike, her horsey braid flapping behind her, pissed me off. So I told her Santa wasn’t real.
Jen had an older sister, Margaret, with a repaired cleft palate, whom I was also jealous of. I wanted something wrong with me that would get me extra attention. I tried in vain to break bones by jumping at odd angles and fast speeds off my skateboard so that I could have a cast for people to sign, but my bones were too strong. I bent paper clips and shaped them into retainers around my teeth so that I could talk with a lisp. My teachers made me take them out of my mouth—saying I was going to swallow them and end up in the hospital—as if I could ever be that lucky. I faked bad eyesight so I could get glasses, but the first day, I sat on them and they broke, and my mom refused to buy me new ones.
Jen had another older sister named Elizabeth, whom I was also jealous of. She was a beauty queen of some sort. I feel like she wore her crown all the time, like around the house and to school, but I can’t be remembering that right. She was beautiful, obviously. My dad couldn’t shut up about her. Which in hindsight was pretty pervy, since she was sixteen.
All three of those Sutherland girls had something I wanted—amazing hair, harelip, a crown. I didn’t care if I was super pretty, super ugly, super deformed, super whatever, I was just not thrilled with being super right down the middle. I normally wouldn’t have accepted Jen’s Facebook request, but I was feeling vulnerable after my difficult day.
I thought about asking one of the kids to drive me to my procedure, but I knew they wouldn’t want to hear about my doctor’s visit. The number of appointments for routine screenings seemed to have multiplied into an unmanageable amount in my fifties. As I was leaving for one of those appointments last summer, Dayton said to me, “Another doctor’s appointment? Maybe it’s time to just let nature take its course.” I’m not sure any of them would be the sympathetic ear I needed to share the humiliation I was suffering at the hands of Dr. Norman keeping tabs on my uterus. So I confirmed my friendship with Jen. I quickly looked at my Facebook page to see what kind of impression I would be making on Jen after all these years. Oh shit. My profile picture was the Planned Parenthood logo. Now not only did I kill Santa, Jen would think I had graduated to killing babies. She’d used the word blessed twice in her message, so I knew she wasn’t going to be on board for that. So even though I knew it was too late, I quickly swapped out the Planned Parenthood logo for a picture of me kissing a donkey in a field of lupine in Vermont. She was going to see that I changed my profile picture five minutes after becoming friends with me, but maybe if I was lucky, she wasn’t very Facebook savvy and didn’t really realize how the whole thing worked. Maybe I could convince her the Planned Parenthood thing was a pop-up of some sort—a virus that had gotten into my computer without my knowledge. I didn’t remember much about Jen, but if she still believed in Santa at age ten, how bright could she be?
I started looking at Jen’s adult life as it was represented on Facebook. She had a husband and four kids. All six of them were tan and blonde and fit. Her kids all had Jen’s enviable blonde mane of hair.
There were pictures of them on skis and paddleboards, bikes and hiking trails, on boats, in tents. They were playing sports and accepting awards. Her husband was giving a speech to people in suits. Jen was surrounded by a bunch of ladies on a cruise ship in an album called “Besties Cruise the Caribbean.” She was with a different group of women in matching T-shirts for a breast cancer awareness walk. And even more women surrounded her at the Cheesecake Factory as she blew out candles on her massive birthday cake. She had so many friends!
I went back to my page and looked again. Me with the donkey. Me with the dogs. Me with a cat. Me with a chicken. People had tagged me on my page too—sending me links to posts showing people who had knit sweaters for their poultry. Or news stories about baby alpacas who got stuck in holes. Deer who made friends with dogs. Dogs who made friends with cows. Cows who made friends with kittens. And nowhere, anywhere, was a picture of me with another human being other than my children. I wondered if this was a problem. I decided to act normal.
I sent Jen a message. “Hey, Jen, nice to hear from you. You look the same. Your family is beautiful. I have three kids, as you can see from my page… two are away at college in faraway places. My third is about to go. I’m super proud of them.”
The first thing she asks is this: “Are those all your animals?”
I quickly write back, “No! People just like to send me a lot of animal pictures because they know I like animals. I’m kind of an advocate for animals. It’s one of my causes.” (Trying to sound noble instead of weird.) “I only have three dogs, four cats, six chickens, a rabbit, and two horses.”
Jen simply writes back, “Wow.” I didn’t like her tone.
Then Jen tells me she’s moved to Los Angeles for her husband’s work and she figured I must live here since I’m in show business. Hey! That’s nice. She thinks I’m in show business! I don’t think show business even thinks I’m in show business sometimes. She says she thought she’d look me up because she doesn’t have a single friend in town. Hey! Me, either! She says maybe we could get together sometime. I ask what she’s doing on Friday. Okay. I know. I’m about to ask a person I haven’t seen in more than forty years to drive me to a highly sensitive medical appointment. But here was my problem: Of course I had other friends that I could call, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually accepted an invitation to a social engagement from one of them. Also, I’m not great at returning phone calls if I’m not in the mood to talk. There are many days when I don’t see or speak to another human. I once went for seven days in Vermont—if I hadn’t run out of hummus, who knows how long I would have gone? I’m not just an introvert; I’m actually antisocial. I had turned down so many invitations to parties and plays, dinners and hikes, birthday celebrations, and kids’ graduations that I couldn’t just pick up the phone now and ask one of those people I’d blown off for months for a favor. Especially knowing that I would probably be back to blowing them off when it was over—and might even ruin the upholstery in their car with my soggy bottom. Damn it, I finally figured out why people needed husbands!
There is one man with a crush on me that cannot seem to be deterred. He’d gladly rush to my aid, even knowing the details of the task. No matter how rude I am to him, he’ll still happily take any crumb I throw his way, but I couldn’t lead him on, letting him think he had a chance with me by letting him see me sedated and soaked in salt water. Plus, that would probably only make him fall deeper in love with me because seriously, something’s wrong with him.
Besides, I justified to myself, Jen is a people person. Look at her Facebook. She walks for breast cancer. She’ll probably be happy to help out. So I very gently tell Jen my situation and ask whether she would mind giving me a ride to my appointment and back on Friday. I say we could still catch up on the car ride over to Beverly Hills. And I’ll only be mildly sedated on the ride home, so maybe we could stop for a coffee. Unless I need to change my pants. With that I add a little red-faced emoji. I hit send, and I wait for Jen to reply. And I wait. But Jen doesn’t reply. I check to make sure my message sent. It did. I check to see if she’s still online. She is. And then, a few minutes later, I try to go back to Jen’s page, but I ca
n’t. Instead, it says, “To add Jen as a friend, send her a request.” Jen has unfriended me. Jen has blocked me. I can’t believe it. We were only friends for five minutes. Jen was the one who reached out to me! I’m in show business! Shit. I scroll back through our conversation, and my insides curl up because I suddenly realize the inappropriateness of my request, and it makes me want to unfriend myself.
I think it’s possible I’ve gotten so antisocial that I don’t know how to interact with people anymore. Not just with Jen, but as I think back over my recent exchanges, I have to consider the possibility that the reason I’m not getting my desired reaction from those I encounter in the world is because I’ve stopped knowing how to act like a human being and I’ve become off-putting. When I smiled at those people in the ultrasound waiting room, maybe I was actually sneering at them. Maybe I drooled. Maybe I spend so much time alone that I don’t even know what my own face is doing anymore.
And when I was joking with the ultrasound technician, she wasn’t laughing at all. I might not be funny. I walk around my house talking to my animals. And I have voices for my animals so that they can talk back to me. It started as a bit I did with Dayton, but Dayton is never home these days and I’m still doing it. It’s not a bit if no one is there to see it. It’s just cuckoo.
In the movie Gravity, when Sandra Bullock was alone in space, she kept it together. She was still cute and witty and charming. That’s not me. I’m more Nell. Remember that Jodie Foster movie? She grew up alone in the woods? I can’t remember what happened to her parents, but Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson found her and brought her out of the woods. She’d never been around humans before, so she acted like a wild animal. Super inappropriate. Like me. I’m Nell. Not Sandra Bullock. Nell.
I leave Dr. Norman a message on his answering service, and he calls me back right away. I tell him I can’t have the sonohysterogram on Friday. When he asks why, it’s hard for me to get the words out because I’m afraid I’m going to sob—hard and loud. I can’t trust myself to behave in a socially acceptable way anymore—God only knows what kind of animal sounds could escape. So I whisper, “I don’t have a friend to drive me home.” There’s a long pause, then Dr. Norman tells me he’s going to be at Cedars-Sinai on Friday and he’ll be happy to drive me home after my procedure. For some reason, I’m not mortified by this. I’m happy. I love Dr. Norman. I’m comfortable with him. We’ve been through everything together—me trying not to get pregnant, me trying to get pregnant, pregnancy, childbirth, trying not to get pregnant again, now this motherfuckery called menopause—and he’s always been about eight years ahead of me on the path, warning me about the happiness and the heartbreak. I was in the stirrups, mid–gynecologic exam, when he broke down over his only child leaving for college. I had to reach down between my legs and pat the top of his head to comfort him. Truth is, my gynecologist is my longest and possibly healthiest relationship. He’s my best friend. I thank him and tell him I’d run away with him in a heartbeat. He doesn’t say anything. Awkward.
After we hang up, I resolve to get out of the house more. Connect to people more. Show up for my friends. Maybe I’ll start throwing dinner parties. Or host play readings at my house. I could build a little stage in the backyard and put twinkle lights in the trees. I won’t just be social, I’ll be artsy. And effortlessly chic. I think I’ll wear kaftans and big wooden earrings from Cost Plus. I decided to reach out to a few friends right away and get the ball rolling.
As I’m deciding who to call first, I look up at the TV. The Law and Order: SVU episode with Rob Lowe and Margot Kidder is on. Oh my God, that is such a good one. The first one with Dr. Huang. I love Dr. Huang. I tell the dogs I wish he was my psychiatrist. I speak for Canelo Alvarez, my boxer, who says, “You could use him,” in his Spanish accent. I decide it’s too late to call anyone right now, summon the dogs on the bed, and turn up the volume.
I Am the Best Person Ever
Los Angeles is a city filled with judgmental people. Everywhere I go, I can feel myself being assessed, from my car to my clothes to my skin. I’m a single mom—my car is dirty, I sometimes buy my clothes at Whole Foods, and I’ve been known to cut my own hair when the chardonnay tells me it’s a good idea. Because of that, I’m forever being misjudged. And I hate being misjudged more than just about anything. Whether it’s a stranger interpreting my bad driving as bad manners or a long-lost friend from high school telling people I’m stuck-up because I can’t get her tickets to Ellen—no one can get tickets to Ellen! I get in fake arguments all day long, making my case to my rearview mirror, defending my honor against injustice. Because it’s important to me that people know: I’m a really good person. When I realized a long time ago that I’d never be the best looking or the smartest or the richest or the classiest or the most successful or the smartest, I decided to be the most decent. I decided to be the best person ever, which honestly, isn’t that hard to do in Los Angeles.
I’m a naturally guilty person. When I was in the fourth grade, I kept a notebook by my bed, and when the trespasses of the day kept me awake at night, I’d make a list of the amends I’d make the next day to soothe myself: Tell Debbie Nunes I lied, I don’t have a palomino stallion that I keep at my grandma’s house in Spokane that won’t let anyone touch him but me because he’s a wild mustang. Don’t let Jimmy Ballard reach under your shirt again, even if he makes you give back his ID bracelet. Stop smoking cigarettes with Cheryl Liston.
Stop taking sips of Cheryl Liston’s beer. Stop listening to Cheryl Liston’s stories about the sex stuff she does when the dad drives her home from her babysitting job. Stop hanging out with Cheryl Liston.
I still have a notebook by my bed, but since I decided to be the best person ever, I don’t need to use it as much as I used to, though I still have the occasional off day. I didn’t grow up with people servicing me, so I’m already uncomfortable sitting in the giant white leather mani-pedi chair at my semiregular nail salon, Soothe You Spa. As much as I love walking into Soothe You Spa with my dried-out, nail-bitten fingers and cracked-heel, dirt-in-the-crevices feet and walking out looking like a person who lives in an industrialized country, the act of tolerating a mostly non-English-speaking immigrant washing and scrubbing my feet, picking out the corners of crud while I’m supposed to flip through People magazine, is uncomfortable. It also seems vaguely racist. It’s why I overtip, overthank, and overexplain my reasons for being there. “Sorry,” I say to Kim-Li, “my hands are terrible. I wash a lot of dishes, and I never remember to wear gloves.” For some reason, it seems better to me if she knows I wash dishes. See? I have to do gross things too. Not remove toe lint from strangers’ feet, but I definitely have stuff. I also explain that my feet are nasty because I go barefoot when I let my chickens out in the morning. And I camp. And I’m a single mom. “I’m not here to pamper myself. I’m such a mess, this service is practically a medical necessity.”
Kim-Li is using the scraper on my big toe callus, and she doesn’t care. She starts up a lively conversation with her coworker at the next chair, who is lotioning up the calves of a young, tan, fake-boobed girl. I notice that the girl’s skin glistens, obviously waxed from stem to stern. Like a hairless Chihuahua. I forgot to shave my legs.
“I’m a single mom!” I protest in my head. “I can’t do everything!” The shiny, clean girl sits in her chair, thoroughly unbothered as she flips through US magazine and compulsively checks her iPhone for activity, even though she’s sitting right under a sign that asks you not to use your cell phone in the salon. I try to give Kim-Li a look that will communicate to her that I don’t approve of the Chihuahua’s flagrant disregard of the rules, hoping to put us on the same side against the girl, but she’s busy chatting with her friend. And I’m suddenly positive that my nail lady is asking the next-door nail lady why she always gets stuck with the gross ones, and it hurts my feelings. I could look shiny and clean too, if I had nothing to do all day but tend to myself and all I cared about was my looks. But I care about impo
rtant things, like global warming. That dumb, beautiful, hairless girl probably hasn’t thought about the planet all day. I’ll bet she drives a Range Rover, while I sit in my plug-in Prius even though the seats are so uncomfortable they leave me with a pinched nerve in my sacrum. But I do it for the earth. I also recycle. And compost. I pulled up all my grass for the drought and put rocks in my yard and scraggly “indigenous” plants that look like weeds that grow next to a freeway. And I’m a single mom! God, that awful girl is pretty. She must not have any problems.
The girl catches me staring at her, so I pretend to be interested in something just over her shoulder. I look out the large shop window at busy Ventura Boulevard and see a homeless man, pushing a broken-down bicycle, making his way up the sidewalk toward the salon. A giant black trash bag is balanced on the basket of his bike. It’s stuffed full of, I assume, all the man’s worldly possessions.
The man is so filthy, I honestly can’t tell whether his skin started out white or black or something in between. His hair is full of mats that kind of look like dreadlocks but are not a style choice. His ankles are exposed between his taped-up Converse low tops and the ragged bottoms of his… jeans? Khakis? They’re so covered in grime it isn’t possible to know what color his pants started as either. His ankles are hideously swollen, angry purple where the skin is stretched to its limits from poor circulation. Like they’re about to pop. It makes his feet look tiny and out of proportion beneath them. Kim-Li looks away from my feet and up at him, probably thinking he’s my boyfriend coming to pick me up—since it looks like he camps too.