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Aren't You Forgetting Someone?

Page 15

by Kari Lizer


  When I tell Gene the shrink about the hours I spend at Everlast, he’s alarmed. He says the shifting reality of the place would cause him great anxiety. I tell him it doesn’t really bother me at all. Strangely, I feel equipped to handle it.

  It even feels familiar to me. It’s like being in an interactive play or an extended improvisation, and if you follow the basic rules of “Yes and…” and stay away from “No, actually…” it can even be kind of entertaining. Like game night. Gene doesn’t like game nights. But for me, these days at Everlast are an opportunity to surrender. At Everlast there is no time or place. For Shirley it’s 1974. Reba is in Barstow, getting ready for the Fourth of July festivities. My dad is stationed at Camp Pendleton.

  The first very noticeable sign of my father’s Alzheimer’s for me was his growing inability to keep track of the seasons. I’d phone home in the summer from my vacation in Vermont, and he’d ask how much snow was on the ground. We’d talk about the twins being away at college and when they were expected to come home next, and he’d “remember” they’d just been home for Thanksgiving last week, even though we were having our discussion in June. His orientation of time was slipping away from him. My first noticeable trouble keeping track of time started when my third and final kid left for college. I decided that would also be a good time to take a six-month hiatus from work. It would be a nice chance to be alone with my thoughts, creatively regroup, and consider what this next chapter might hold for me. Big mistake. Without the kids and without work, I was adrift. All the things that gave my life structure were suddenly gone, and without them, I had no sense of time or place.

  My life used to be a pie. A pie that divided into slices—the school year and summer were one way the slices divided.

  Youth soccer seasons and Little League were other pieces of the pie that divided the year into sections. When the kids started playing club sports and the soccer became year-round fun, that didn’t have the same effect, but there were still other markers in place that let me know where I stood, timewise, and how far I had to go to get where I needed to be. I could bribe with these markers: “Don’t start slacking off now. We’re only two weeks away from winter break, and you get three weeks of vacation!” And for the bigger milestones, the years kept track of how far we had to go: “Three more and you’ll be in high school. How did that happen?” “Just one more and you get to drive.” “This time next year, you’ll be in college.” Work had seasons too. Summer was the time to pitch new ideas, fall was the time to write, spring was production, and then you start again.

  But now nothing means anything. In California, there aren’t even seasons to divide the meaningless hours, days, and months into segments to clue me in. Monday is no different from Saturday when you don’t have a student or a job. Six a.m. is the same as 6:00 p.m. or 3:00 a.m. when you have no place to be. There isn’t anyone who needs to be picked up. Or dropped off. There are no segments. It’s all one big time. One ceaseless tick without a tock. I have to think for a minute—is it spring or summer or fall? Am I supposed to be Christmas shopping or planting a garden? There is no back-to-school prep. No summer camp registration. I have gone from having an extraordinary number of things to do to having an extraordinary amount of free time. If your life is not spoken for by any calendar or clock, it’s not that hard to see how one could slip away, wondering finally if anything or anyone really exists at all.

  Happy Endings

  It was the Friday before Mother’s Day in what was a particularly brutal year for me. My marriage ended and my sister died, simultaneously. And both of their deaths were painful and slow. I was writing for Will & Grace during the worst of it, and Jhoni helped see me through with so much generosity and humor that I swear I think she saved me. She decided I needed a special treat this Mother’s Day. “I’ve booked you a massage with this outrageous Russian. His name is Vlad, and he’ll give you the best massage you’ve ever had in your life.” I protested that I couldn’t leave the kids with a babysitter—my guilt was already at a maximum. But she said, “No, he comes to you. Put the kids in front of a video and take it. You can do one thing for yourself.” Maybe she was right. I’d spent the last six months driving back and forth between San Diego and LA, commuting between failing my sister and failing my kids, coming to terms with each five-hour round trip that life is too short to tolerate unhappiness. Maybe I could use a neck rub.

  Vlad showed up fifteen minutes early wearing a white V-neck T-shirt tucked into white pants with a black belt. He was tall, with dark curly hair, a flat nose, and a broad chest. You would cast him as an orderly in a 1950s psychiatric hospital or an attendant at a sanitarium in Doctor Zhivago. I had the kids stashed in my bedroom. The twins were six, and Dayton was three. I had provided snacks, water, and entertainment.

  I ordered them on my bed and told them in my most serious and hopefully feared mom voice, “Do not come out there. You are not to move off this bed, and I mean it. Not for toys, not for tattling, not for anything. Seriously, unless this room is on fire, you will not leave it—you got me?” They were already transfixed by the SpongeBob SquarePants video I put in for them, so I was pretty sure I could count on them to stay put for sixty minutes. I hoped so because I couldn’t imagine what their small brains would do with the sight of their mother, naked on a table, lubed up and being rubbed down by a large Russian man. I only knew the sight of my father by the pool that day, when I was ten, rubbing suntan oil into Ginger Reagan’s already brown skin, then her turning over and saying, “Aren’t you going to do the front?” has stuck with me for over forty years. She was my best friend’s mom and my mom’s best friend—my first lesson in “There’s always stuff going on you don’t want to know about.”

  When I got back to the family room, Vlad had assembled his massage table and placed two sheets on top with one pulled back. He’d also lowered the lights and lit the candle I had on the coffee table. He told me he’d go into the hall bath to wash his hands while I got undressed and slipped between the two sheets, facedown. He was quiet, respectful, and serious, like a doctor about to go into surgery. I took off my clothes, super quick—I didn’t want him coming out of the bathroom and catching me half undressed. I didn’t know where to put my bra and underwear. It would seem way too intimate if they were just lying on the couch in full view while he worked—also my bra and underwear weren’t fit for company. I was in the habit of wearing my three-year-old maternity underpants since no one was going to see them anyway and they were so damn comfortable. And my poor old bra looked like someone had used it in a drunken fraternity tug of war.

  I shoved my shameful underthings between the couch cushions and slipped my body between the sheets. Lying facedown on breasts is not ideal. In fact, I’ve considered designing a massage table equipped with cutout holes that one’s breasts could hang through. But I haven’t done it yet. I scooched around to find the best possible distribution of my flattened boobs; then I heard the bathroom door open and Vlad call out, in his thick Russian accent, “Kari? Are you ready for me?” I said I was, and Vlad came out, wearing a small apron around his waist that kept his unscented massage oil at the ready, like a holster. Vlad cracked his knuckles, took a cleansing breath, and pulled back the top sheet to reveal my neglected upper torso, with my tweaked neck and pinched scapula.

  I was regretting the twice-weekly stops at Jack in the Box at the Sand Canyon exit on my way to my sister—crispy chicken tenders, ranch dressing in the cup holder, and a supersized Diet Coke—that had become my ritual. Because now my back must look enormous. I said, “My neck and shoulders are in pretty rough shape, so maybe not too deep.”

  He said, “Vlad is like KGB—I know.”

  He poured oil into his huge, rough hands and placed them on my shoulder blades. The feel of his man hands on my bare skin made me try to think back to the last time I’d been touched and I couldn’t come up with it, and suddenly I felt so sorry for myself that giant tears dropped from my eyes to the floor, some of them hitting Vlad’s bl
ack Rockports that I was staring at through the face cradle. I took deep breaths to push the feelings away. Vlad moved his hands across my upper back, and there was a popcorn-popping sound as every vertebra in my spine cracked.

  I laughed involuntarily, which thankfully scared away my tears, and Vlad went to work. Jhoni was right. He was fucking amazing.

  He untangled my shoulders in such a pleasure/pain perfect combination of palms, fingers, and elbows that I stopped thinking about my kids in the other room, my fat back, or how I would explain to my husband why our temporary separation had to be permanent. That watching someone die young suddenly makes you ask the question, “If I knew I didn’t have time, would I still be doing this?” It makes you realize you have to quit stupid jobs, worthless friendships, and even so-so marriages. You take what time you have to seek out happiness and treat yourself to it. I moaned. I dozed off. I drooled.

  In what felt like a minute but was actually forty-five, Vlad leaned down and whispered in my ear, “Kari? Can you turn over, please?” I rolled over onto my back, not caring that the sheet half fell off my body—but Vlad was quick to catch it and replace it gently over my parts, protecting my modesty. Then he reached for my feet. My excruciatingly ticklish feet that have never been touched by human hands other than my own, unless you wanted to get kicked in the face. But somehow, when Vlad held them and started with exactly the right amount of pressure, it didn’t tickle—it felt like heaven. Like I could die, and it would be okay as long as Vlad kept rubbing my feet. After a while, his hands started to knead their way upward, pushing on my ankles, then my calves. The muscles released under his touch, and I thought I might fall asleep again. There wasn’t a place on my body that didn’t feel better in Vlad’s hands.

  He was past my knees, and with a giant hand on each leg, he started moving up my thighs, his thumbs pressing on the inside while his fingers worked my quads. Jesus.

  Vlad said quietly, “Are you okay, Kari?” I said yes, my voice husky and dreamy from my deep relaxation. He kept moving up my thighs, and about every two inches he would ask again, “Are you okay, Kari?” I kept saying yes. He was still moving north, and, boy, he was getting way up there. His hands were now under the sheet and still traveling. At this point a little bell went off in my brain, but I told the bell to shut up because this felt amazing. And he just kept coming until finally his thumbs were resting at the very top of my thighs, on either side of my vagina. He paused and asked again, “Are you still okay, Kari?”

  All right, yes, I was slightly alarmed. Yes, my children were fifteen yards away, watching cartoons. Yes, this man was a large, foreign stranger inside my house with his thumbs half an inch from my sex. But Jhoni knew this guy. Did she know about this? Did she pay extra? I thought about the stories from writers’ rooms, from writers who, according to most of them, had massages at some point with happy endings like it was no big deal. So maybe it was no big deal. But none of those people were mothers. Which instantly made me mad. Why shouldn’t I do what feels nice? Everybody else always does exactly what they want all the time; why do I always have to be the good one? I didn’t want to be good. I wanted to be pleasured by Vlad.

  I was starved for human contact and tired of taking care of everyone else. And that’s why I told Vlad, “I’m still fine, sir.” So he pressed on, continuing to work the area, not yet making direct contact but so dangerously close I could barely breathe and it was all I could do not to start humping his hands. It wasn’t sex. Or even foreplay. It was performed like a service, like therapy, and Vlad was clearly a professional therapist.

  His fingers started moving faster and I thought, I’m actually doing this! I can’t wait to go to work tomorrow and tell everyone.

  That’s the thing about a writers’ room that’s not just full of the same old white men—when you mix it up, with women and gay people, the dynamic changes—more tears, fewer boundaries. We shared everything in that room, and everything was fair game. Those who got hurt feelings or took themselves too seriously didn’t last long. When I tried to explain it to people who weren’t there, they’d say, “That sounds awful. And mean.” And it was. But it was also healing and hilarious. There were eating disorders and anger issues. We all started getting colonics at the same guy’s house in Marina del Rey. We drank Red Bull and vodka on show night when we got to the act break. We made bets at the Golden Globes on who could get the most movie stars to touch them. I won when Bono sat on my lap, and for the rest of the season, the white board in the bungalow proclaimed, “Kari got mono from Bono.” This was not your father’s writers’ room. I loved these people. Most of the time. And they loved me. Most of the time. They would understand what was happening with Vlad. And they would tell me it was okay.

  But then Vlad stopped before he really got down to business. His hands rested lightly on my pelvic bones for a moment, then went away. I didn’t dare open my eyes, but I immediately thought, Is he getting a knife? Taking a picture? Oh shit. Well, Kari, this is what you get for trying to be open-minded.

  Then Vlad said, “Kari, I know what you need, but I think you’ll be upset after.” What? Oh no! Goddamn it, Vlad. Of course I would be upset after. Really upset. And deeply ashamed.

  I spend three days replaying a conversation in my head where I think I said something stupid to a friend I ran into in the grocery store.

  I’m pretty sure I’m going to revisit the moment when I let a stranger get me off ten feet from where I frost my babies’ birthday cakes!

  No doubt it would have been one of those moments that caused the kind of flashbacks that sneak up on you in your car and cause you to cringe and cry out involuntarily at a stoplight, “Oh God, no!” making you blush to your knees. And Vlad knew it. He really was like the KGB.

  I said, “Yeah. You’re probably right. It’s not a great idea.” Vlad tenderly placed the sheet back over me and moved to my head, where he began massaging my scalp without saying a word. The tears came again. I didn’t want to be divorced. Or sad. Or left alone with my parents.

  Vlad reached down and massaged my breasts. I think he felt sorry for me, so he decided to throw me a bone. Then the hour was over, and Vlad disappeared back into the bathroom so I could get dressed. He left me oily, stuffed up, and totally exposed—I was still under the sheet, but, you know, emotionally. When Vlad left, I went into my bedroom, where my kids had fallen asleep in my bed. Instead of waking them up, I crawled in beside them and fell asleep myself.

  My cell phone started ringing at about ten—the caller ID said Vladimir Shernov. I didn’t answer. He tried back three times, never leaving a message. Probably worried that I was going to report him to the police. Or Jhoni. Or maybe he was just checking on me.

  The next day at work, I told Jhoni what happened, and she was pissed. “He’s never once fucking tried that with me, and I would totally go for it.” Then, “Honey, that’s a good Mother’s Day.”

  I asked her please not to make this a “room story” because, you know, you bring things to the room when you’re ready to laugh about it. And I didn’t have a happy ending yet.

  Kate Middleton’s Bangs

  All day I’ve been resisting the impulse to click the headline on my AOL newspaper, “What Has the Duchess Done to Her Do?” I call my homepage the newspaper sarcastically, of course, because AOL doesn’t really provide any news. If I wanted to know what was happening with the conflict in Syria or the fallout on the economy from Brexit, for example, I’d have to scroll past larger, more important issues like “Blake Lively Seen Shopping Sans Wedding Band” and “Jennifer Aniston Glows in Mexico—Have Her Baby Dreams Finally Come True?”

  People make fun of me for continuing to subscribe to AOL. What those people don’t realize is that if you try to ridicule me in an effort to convince me to make choices that you deem “hipper,” I will dig in. So now enough people have raised eyebrows at my AOL email address that I predict I will die with it. But when this morning’s headline tried to entice me into reading about Kate Middleton’
s apparent hair debacle, I decided to ignore it. And then two screens later, when it shouted to me, “The Duchess Goes Goth in Scotland!” I didn’t bite. But finally, when I was reading a story about home remedies for heartburn, and a banner appeared beneath it that simply said, “BANGS” in bold capital letters with a mysterious picture of the back of Kate Middleton’s head, I was pissed. Pissed because, first of all, who gives a shit? And second of all, I did. I hated myself for wanting so desperately to see how Kate looked in bangs. Bangs are always a mistake.

  They’re good for about a day, and then you have three months of growing them out, vowing never to bang again. But that wasn’t the point. The point was Kate Middleton is a highly educated woman, graduating from the same university that my own daughter proudly attended. Kate Middleton performs charity work, championing causes from children’s mental health to animal conservation to AIDS research. She’s the mother of three children under seven years old and keeps an exhausting travel and social schedule as a goodwill ambassador for the Crown, but the only newsworthy attribute worth mentioning today is her “shocking” new hairdo.

  Her husband, Prince William, was in Scotland with her. Not to be unkind, but I assume there were some shocking things to report about his hair as well. The wind on the coast of Scotland is not ideal for a man in his hair-challenged position. If one has only a thin flap covering their royal scalp, the Scottish winds have a tendency to lift that flap in one solid piece, making it appear as if it’s about to become airborne—not a good look. Were there reports or headlines about what was going on with the prince’s locks? No. When we hear about the prince, it’s usually about his heroic helicopter exploits, prowess on the polo field, diplomatic trips abroad. Because those things matter. We don’t care about the inch taken off above his collar by the royal barber. We also don’t care if he wore the same tie to two events four weeks apart. Is he supposed to get a new tie every time he leaves the house? Of course not. We don’t track his weight. We don’t zoom in on his skin to inspect the size of his pores and theorize about his skin care routine. We don’t assume or inquire if he has snits with celebrities. We’ve never heard of him “flying into a jealous rage” over Brad Pitt.

 

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