Lisa is wearing a tight red T-shirt emblazoned with yellow sequin sunglasses and the sayingThe Bitch Is Back!It reads like an Elton John motivational speech for my evening, which I have been close to shutting down, particularly after getting Chap’s latest text.
3:00 p.m. (Chap)
Reservation is at 7:45 PM at The Firehouse Restaurant. Can’t wait.
I don’t know which alarmed me more, Chap’s declaration that he couldn’t wait, the fact that he is taking me someplace unexpectedly upscale, or that I was going to have to be fully dressed and not in my schlumpy pajamas at 7:45 p.m.
“Have you decided which pieces you are sending to Elizabeth and Leslie?” Quinn yells through my phone as I peel out of what Lisa referred to as a “don’t-fuck-me frock” before she marched into my closet to find something else she prefers. While Quinn cares about my date, she cares more about my coming to New York, getting a job offer from the lespondents, and the two of us returning to the way we lived our best years: as roommates.
“I have,” I report to Quinn, hiking up my SPANX.
Lisa returns triumphant, holding a hanger with a sleeveless chocolate-brown shift. “Put this on,” she directs, pressing a dress I haven’t worn in a decade into my chest. The hanger pokes my tit.
“I am not exposing my upper arms in the thick of winter and the thick of middle age!” I insist while backing up, leaving Lisa holding the dress.
Lisa fondles my right tricep, and diagnoses, “Nope. Nope. I think you’re okay.” I open my mouth to sling some witty retort and fight my way back into the nun uniform, but I realize I need to save my energy for staying up past 10:00 p.m. I relent and unzip the shift, convinced that even if I get it over my hips, the back zipper will refuse to cooperate.
“Well, look who just went from homely to hot,” Lisa declares, patting my rear end. Quinn howls loudly from her East Coast couch.
I transfer my weight from my left to my right leg in my muted-gold heels, looking over one shoulder and then the other. I also give my arms, abs, and ass a critical stare. The reflection is not half bad. It’s actually half good.
I start to sit down on my bed next to my laptop. “No, no, no!” both Lisa and Quinn bellow at me, Quinn’s arms waving frantically from the phone screen.
“Why?” I ask. I have fifteen minutes before I need to leave, and I want to read them the essay I feel the least confident about sending to Elizabeth and Leslie. Not, not confident because it’s possibly notgood—I know it is. Not confident because my personal brand of crazy might be off brand for the lespondents.
“The fewer wrinkles in this evening, the better,” Quinn says as Lisa starts brushing her hands down the front of my dress to wipe away the creases I haven’t yet made.
“Fine,” I agree, but kick off my heels to save my feet if I have to stand for the fifteen more minutes before I leave. “Can I read you the piece I’m struggling with right now?”
“Is this a ploy to distract us from the mission at hand: getting you out the door and on your date?” Lisa asks.
Quinn doesn’t say anything because she already knows that issosomething I would do.
“I promise. I will be at the Firehouse a cool six minutes late. The right amount of time to be respectful of the reservation but not arrive before Chap does.”
“That’s right. You want to make the entrance, not the other way around.” Lisa wags her finger at me like I am onto one of the foundational tricks to the trade of dating.
“I can’t believe I have to do this all over again,” I sigh, sounding tired before the night has even started.
“I know,” Quinn says, the heavy tone of her own voice matching mine. She puts her hand up to the screen and waves at me with her other, indicating for me to touch, palm to palm, with hers. Lisa isn’t in on the private gesture, but she knows enough that this is not the time to make a quippy remark.
After our pause, Lisa shifts the solemn moment back to our two tasks at hand, hearing my essay and then getting me out the door for my date. “Okay, then, fire away.”
“Can’t wait to hear what you have to say.” Quinn drops her hand, giving me the go-ahead. Lisa lies down on my carpeted floor, ready to take in my words. I pick up my laptop off my bed and begin to read.
The Holiday Letter You Really Wish You Could Write
To Our Beloved Friends and Family,
Well, almost all of our family. At Easter brunch, my mother, who has been living in a memory-care facility near my home (that’s the polite way of sharing she has dementia and is now a few bricks short of a house), grinded up on my almost ex-brother-in-law (this particular instance of forced family fun happened before the “ex” part; that riveting tale comes in the next paragraph). He dismissively kicked my mother off him, much like you would a dog humping your leg at a cocktail party. You don’t want to make a scene, but you hope the dog will skulk off into the corner, having learned her lesson not to mistake you for a masculine Maltipoo. I had to explain to him, while dialing 911 to take my mother to the ER to check for a broken hip, that since moving to anything-goes California, and now at a loss of nearly all her marbles, my mother has developed a late-in-life porn addiction. I suspect she was simply acting out one of the “greatest hits” moves from a scene she plays on repeat at her Catholic-based senior housing. I haven’t heard from said brother- and sister-in-law since they stormed out of our backyard that early-April morning, but not before packing about ten of the $5.50 almond croissants I was serving, along with a pilfered, large solid Cadbury dark-chocolate bunny, into their carry-ons. That said, my side of the family has offended them before, and they always came back. But maybe not this time, since his brother, meaning my husband, hasn’t come back yet either.
In celebration of May Day, Memorial Day, or Juneteenth—I can’t quite remember now—my husband decided that I had grown too fat and too slothlike for his fancy. That his mistress in London who was carrying his baby (and, I found out swiping through my son’s photos on his phone, looked like an anaconda who had swallowed a basketball) needed him more than his partner of a quarter century. Another quick aside: I am happy to report that my middle-aged brain is still open to soaking up knowledge. My West Coast–raised, UC Berkeley–educated sons tell me I have to say “partner” now; “wife” is pejorative. Yes, a couple of twentysomething, knucklehead boys do know more than the millennia-old tradition of marriage. I mean, it is really saying something about my parenting prowess that my sons have turned out that brilliant, though between the two of them, they have only had about one and three quarters of a relationship since puberty hit. Sorry, one and three quarters of a situationship (“relationship” is so Gen X). I won the parenting contest, for sure. The marriage one, not so much.
Like I was saying, after a thirty-minute conversation at the dining room table, for which I was not even fully dressed, my husband packed up our life together in sunny California, which, who knew, fit into two suitcases, so he could travel across the pond to dreary London to raise a whole new family. I traveled to bed, alone. For a whole month.
Upon waking up from my slapped-in-the-face-of-life slumber, I came to find out that my heart rate was high, my cholesterol was high, my blood glucose was high, my weight was much higher than the number on my license,and, well, I was about to die, according to my doctor, who does not deserve to be on my Christmas-letter list. Unfortunately, the only thing that wasn’t high when I got that wellness wake-up call was me. A woe-is-me handful of trips to In-N-Out Burger and a half case of chardonnay later, I whined and groaned and capitulated and then purchased the first pair of legit running shoes I have ever owned. I forgot to buy a sports bra to go with the shoes, and after the first run of my life, I experienced a nasty case of underboob burn.I do notrecommend it. The rub from running without a sports bra is a lesson you only need to learn once.
Chafe be damned, and damn if I didn’t surprise myself, I kept running. I asked my sons to check in on me at least twice a week to hold me accountable to hitting the pavement every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And shockingly for all three of us, their prefrontal cortexes had, in fact, developed enough to remember the woman who birthed them and remember to give me a call.
