Tales From A Broad

by Fran Lebowitz

  ‘Alrighty. I’m in Taipei from Tuesday until Friday,’ he says, tapping at the Xs on his daily planner and circling the word ‘Taipei’ for me. Yes, exhibit B, indeed. ‘But after that I’m clear until Sunday.’

  ‘Great, so we’ll go somewhere for a long Saturday. Let’s book the living-room sofa.’

  ‘Just until I have to go,’ he points, ‘to Bangkok.’

  There was a woman I used to see at the pool who was somewhat unfortunate-looking. Suddenly, she wasn’t there any more. Her husband sent her and the kids packing. I didn’t have a chance to get to know her but now and then I had heard snippets of conversation about her between Valerie and Tess, who were her good friends. Apparently, she discovered her husband cheating. She caught him with his pants down at home. She was supposed to have been in a clinic getting some radical new treatment (for you-know-what – cellulite – the poor thing), but she chickened out.

  Word is the husband just rolled his eyes and, somewhat bored of the game already, said to the closet, ‘Come out, Dorrie, gig’s up.’ Dorrie popped out.

  ‘Dorrie, I believe you know my wife?’ He nodded from one to the other.

  ‘Hi Ma’am. Don’t worry, I always change the sheets, Ma’am,’ Dorrie said.

  At first, he was extra careful, backed up his false alibis with sincere little scribbles in his Filofax, irrefutable testimony to his arduous travel, his dedication to home and hearth.

  ‘It’s okay, Dorrie,’ he’d whisper at some hotel in the city, ‘my datebook says I’m in Jakarta. I left it lying open.’

  ‘You left it out? Ma’am will think I don’t clean the things away.’

  I shake the image from my head. Not Frank, not us. We talk. We’re friends.

  ‘What about over Christmas? That’d be a great way to celebrate, don’t you think?’ he says. K-E-R-R-R-U-N-C-H, chomp, chomp, chomp.

  ‘Can’t. There’s the children’s party at Lisa and Roy’s and Caroline’s Christmas Eve cocktails and I’m on the planning committee for the expat Christmas Day party. It’s in the function room. It’s all sorted out.’

  ‘Sounds cosy.’

  ‘Wait, before all of that, you know, we have your birthday.’

  ‘God, you know what I want to do for my birthday?’ Frank looks off, squinting dreamily. ‘I seem to remember some sort of promise …’

  I squirm in my seat a bit. ‘Anyway, we’re having a big dinner party at our house.’

  ‘Really?’ he snaps back. ‘In fact, that is exactly what I want to do. I was just going to ask you if you’d mind inviting everyone we barely know over, doling out a fortune feeding them and getting them drunk, and spending the rest of the night cleaning up a big mess. Please, please promise me – because this is my 35th – that you’ll also get really stressed out all day long and leave me with the kids.’

  I nod and cross my heart.

  ‘You know me too well,’ Frank smirks.

  ‘Um, then,’ I continue, ‘we’re all going to Anywheres for dancing.’

  ‘You are a mind reader! I love dancing. I especially love it in a group situation.’

  ‘Yeah, the Burnses, the Markses, the Hendricks, the Landrocks, the Tildons, the Stones and Irish Kell … everyone!’

  ‘Who is anyone!’ A beat. ‘And then, Fran?’

  ‘What do you mean, Frank?’

  ‘I’m turning 35, Fran.’

  ‘Yeah, but we didn’t really think you would, did we, Frank?’

  ‘But I am, Fran. You made a promise.’ The good Cantor Donald also prophesised that if we did not keep our sacred oaths to each other, our marriage would falter.

  ‘Oh, look at the time. We gotta get home if we want to watch The Practice.’ I call to our regular waitress, ‘Tanya, we’ll settle up now.’

  At home, I eat a cheese sandwich.

  While Frank was in Jakarta, I caught up with work. While Frank was in Taipei, I shopped for his birthday, Hanukah and Christmas. He never called and he didn’t leave me his itinerary. I wanted to talk to him but even his secretary didn’t know where he was staying.

  While Frank was in Bangkok, I marinated a brisket, made three different polenta pizzas, baked five dozen chocolate chip cookies and whipped up batches of dips. In all, I swam six miles, ran 100 miles, invented recipes for fried oyster falafel, crab-stuffed hushpuppies, anchovy puffs and beer-battered popcorn (don’t bother, it’s better with mayonnaise and white bread), caught the kids off the slide 500 times, pushed them on the swings 900 times, erected a kingdom of sand castles, wiped ice-cream off small fists until my hands became forever grafted with cheap paper napkins, and took the kids to the zoo, the bird park, the science centre and to see the ‘snow’ at Tanglin mall.

  I wished Frank were with us then. We stood there with a meringue of bubbles on our heads, surrounded by thrill-starved Singaporeans – children, adults and even disenfranchised youths – whooping it up together in the communal lather, pushing and shoving to get closer to the 90-foot-high plaster Santa whose pipe was the source of the white stuff. If you got real near, you’d get a blast like a pie in the face. A father and two boys about ten and 13 mowed Sadie down in their rush to experience ‘snow’.

  ‘Hey, asshole,’ I shouted. I must have gotten the name right because he turned around. He looked at me innocently, curiously, his cheeks and nose inexplicably rosy. His expression turned impatient – the Santa was waiting, could I please finish my sentence? I couldn’t. I forgot what to say next. Then I thought of something. I shouted it loud and clear. ‘It’s soap, you moron! See?’ I threw a snowball at him, which just glopped on my feet. I started to show him how futile it would be to build a lather-man. Sadie tugged my arm. Tears started to flow down her cheeks. Everyone looked at me. The mall music – ‘White Christmas’, ‘Silent Night’, ‘Jingle Bells’ – came to a screeching halt. Santa stopped belching snow and fixed his plaster gaze on me.

  ’Twas two nights before Christmas,

  And all through the mall,

  Not a creature was stirring,

  Not a sound in the hall.

  There came a pop, pop, pop,

  From the bubbles of snow

  That made everyone happy,

  Till Fran let them know.

  It’s soap, you moron … It’s soap, you moron … The words echoed through the streets, into every village and every home. It’s soap, you moron. I grabbed Sadie and Huxley and slid away to the parking lot.

  After a while, once hot chocolate had been sipped and marshmallows dunked in the festive lounge of the Regency, the kids stopped crying. I tried to explain to them that in America, you call someone an asshole and they don’t pause to wonder what possibly elicited such a rude reaction in a fellow man. They just say, ‘Yeah, well, screw you.’ Right? So, Sadie, Huxley, I was out of my element, you know? Like when you find yourself in the wrong playground or something. Get it? Here, I don’t know what’s going on. They cock their head, look all perplexed, say ‘Sorry, sorry’ and continue pushing the guy in front, who’s pushing another guy in front. I mean, Sadie, Huxley, you tell me, are they really innocent or is it their strategy: to get you to feel too humiliated to continue firing away? Sadie tried so hard to keep up with me. She nodded her head and said, ‘Mommy? Is Santa from the US?’

  ‘There is no S … I mean, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Mommy?’

  ‘Yes, puddin’?’

  ‘He might not like it if you call him an asshole.’

  ‘Let’s not use the word again, okay?’

  But the very next day, we were driving down a road that suddenly became one lane due to construction. There was no warning sign. I came head to head with another car. I happened to be in the correct lane. If I backed out, I’d be moving into the cross street and major traffic. He could have just pulled into a driveway. But he refused to budge. So did I. We sat there gunning our engines. Mortal enemies, only death could choose the winner. He sat, he gunned. I put the car in park and leapt out, pointing my finger at him. ‘Hey, idiot! Get t
he hell out of your damned car, you stupid asshole.’ He rolled his windows up. I jumped onto his hood and did a little monkey dance. ‘Get the fuck out!’ I screamed. Lots of passersby were rubbernecking now, plus two outdoor restaurants full of people. A second later, someone ran out of a nearby house and entered the man’s car. My opponent rolled down his window and asked me to please get off his hood. I said, ‘Yeah, just as soon as you back up.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said pleasantly, beginning to back up, with me on the car. I hopped down.

  ‘Yeah, it better be okay!’ Walking back to my car, I threw in another ‘asshole’ just because I had one on deck. Then I got limp. I mean, what was all that? Was he just waiting for his friend and innocently, albeit stupidly, thought I wouldn’t mind waiting too? Maybe he finally realised I was too dangerous to push around. Or, maybe it was a solution – save face for him, show me for the lunatic I am and then we can all get back on the road. Whatever it was, it felt a lot like swinging hard and missing the ball. I was hungry for my next victim. I had no idea what to say to Sadie, who was searching my face for an explanation. I looked at her and then back at Huxley. ‘Come on … I’m sorry, but he was! Okay, okay. My holiday promise: Stop getting so mad. No more bad words.’

  The day before Frank’s birthday party, I put my brisket in the oven. I had told Prestons I’d need a big one. Since I didn’t know the conversion from pounds to kilos, I thought ‘Australian’ a good standard of meat measure.

  ‘There will be ten Australians,’ I informed the butcher. He gave a low whistle. When I got there to pick it up, he solemnly unfurled the thing with respect and dignity, a veritable beefy flag ceremony. Then a couple of minions picked it up, hoisted it on their shoulders and paraded it down the aisle like they were carrying the Pharaoh’s palanquin.

  ‘Hey, there’s no way this is gonna fit in my oven,’ I said nervously.

  ‘No problem.’ A band of merry hatchet men arrived and chopped it into four smaller pieces. I took it home to the tune of $400.

  The trick of making a good brisket is to wrap it securely in foil, cook it on a low heat, and leave it alone.

  I steal out of Michelle’s playgroup after three hours and slip back into the apartment to check on my brisket.

  ‘Posie?’ I call.

  She appears in the kitchen. A second later, I hear a door close.

  ‘Was that our door?’ I ask her.

  ‘I was napping,’ she says.

  ‘That’s fine. I just wondered about the noise.’

  ‘I didn’t hear noise. I was asleep.’

  ‘No, just now.’

  ‘Yes, I only just got up.’

  ‘Yes, but I heard it while you were in here.’

  ‘I had to nap. I have female pains.’

  ‘Oy gvalt, okay. I’m just checking on the meat. Take some aspirin.’

  The perfect scent isn’t hovering so I reckon it isn’t done. I hike up the oven to six and take the kids to the playground. When I get home, four aluminium pans are sitting on the counter.

  ‘Posie!’ I holler. She appears from her side of things, still looking tousled and groggy. ‘Did you take this out?’

  ‘I smell a burn, Ma’am.’

  ‘It’s not your fault that you don’t understand brisket.’ I say it more as a ‘calm down, Fran’ mantra than for her sake, but nevertheless I can hear my voice take on a dangerous trill.

  ‘I think it was in too long, Ma’am.’

  ‘It’s really not your fault that you don’t understand brisket, Posie.’

  She peels back a corner of the foil.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I jump up and down, the first steps to the monkey dance. ‘You think you can uncover my brisket? Who do you think you are? You, who knows nothing about brisket!’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am. I want to show the burn.’

  ‘It’s not burned! It’s got a still-a-long-way-to-go smell. I know. You don’t know. I know!’ I cover it tightly, not even looking at it because eye contact with an unfinished brisket immediately gives it the kybosh.

  ‘Posie,’ I say, with tortured, measured calmness, ‘I’m throwing a birthday party for Frank tomorrow. This is –’

  ‘Sir was born two days before Jesus?’ Her eyes light up; she claps her hands in glee.

  ‘Yeah –’

  ‘Very blessed is he.’

  ‘Yeah, this close to being King of the Jews … anyway, I have a big dinner party tomorrow. You’ll have to work with me, okay? Right now I have to meet up with Samantha for a run. Don’t touch the brisket! Understood?’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am. Have a nice run. I’ll give Sir and the kids dinner and their bath.’

  ‘Frank won’t be home until late tonight.’ Her face falls.

  After letting Samantha talk for a few minutes, I contemplate confiding in her about something I cannot get off my mind. Her life, as usual, is full of treasured moments, little gifts and endless satisfaction. It’s terrific stuff to keep you leaping through a long, hot run. But today, my thoughts are wedged in too tightly to allow my spirits to lift. She’s talking about how her daughter, Heidi, helped a sick cat give birth to nine healthy kittens. Meanwhile, I’m remembering something that happened very recently in Manhattan, just before we came back to Singapore. I was walking down the street and heard someone behind me. ‘Yo, yo, yo, hey baby. You the one, baby …’ He went on for a while like that and I was loving it. Then I realised that any self-respecting woman shouldn’t. So I turned around to glare at him but before I could work up a scathing look, he said, ‘Oh, you old …’ Crestfallen, I faced front and continued on. He was a nice molester, though. He tried to make me feel better: ‘Dat’s not to say you don’t have a few good years left, baby. You okay. Aw, I was just teasin’.’

  Before Samantha can tell me the name of the ninth kitten, I cut her short and blurt, ‘I promised Frank I’d bring another woman to bed when he turned 35.’

  She gives me quite a shocked look. ‘Oh, no, no, no, don’t worry. I wasn’t asking you. How funny. I mean, not that you aren’t his type. Jeez, anyway …’ And I begin to explain. Who knows how the pact came about, but, over the years, it’s loomed and hovered like my own personal cloud. I feel like if I don’t come through, the wild child he married will be forever gone, replaced by this 32-year-old frumpinstein who reminds herself that Wednesday isn’t tuna day any more and carries moist towelettes. Samantha laughs and dabs her forehead with a shmattah. I continue, ‘After ten years of promising, it’s like judgement day … am I still a ride on a Harley or a tilt on the recliner rocker?’ She offers me her second shmattah. ‘Thanks,’ I dab. We used to stay up late and spend Saturday mornings drinking Baileys and having sex. We once did it in an alley in the city. And another time in the file room at his office … On a train once! Jeez, before I met him, I had two men. At one time. Okay, I’m going to do this. I’m going to just call some service and make a memory. Yeah, and this 23-year-old, flawless, never-had-a-baby – never mind that my babies were too big to even call babies – Asian, lithe girl will knock on my door wearing better clothes and better legs. And me, the nice old lady of the house, can pay her and see her safely to a cab.

  We arrive back at home. I thank Samantha for listening and she wishes me luck, adding, ‘You know, Fran, Frank loves you.’ She says she can see it in his eyes.

  Like what I saw in Darren Wynoski’s? Darren was my sister’s boyfriend from college. He campaigned for a ménage à trois with Bonnie every time he called and I picked up and every time he visited. He was a Mack truck of a guy who led the football team to victory, an African–American adopted by a Polish family late in his youth. I don’t remember what happened to his own parents, but he took on the name Wynoski and did his best to be an African–American Pole, which is hard without many role models around. Now, if I had brought home a 600-pound, made of kryptonite, black guy, my dad would have thrown me across the room and locked me in for a fortnight. Which was why I always snuck around. But this was sweet-sweet Bonnie and no one really eve
r got mad at her. My parents thought Darren was great.

  One day he came over for dinner and we were all on the front lawn tossing a football. I fumbled and the ball hopped over a little shrub and smashed my dad’s study window. Darren scooted down and reached in to get the ball. We were called to dinner and went inside. No sooner had the corn landed on the table, but there was a knock at the door. Dad went to get it.

  ‘Sorry to disturb your dinner,’ said the sergeant, detecting Dad’s paper napkin tucked into his shirt. ‘Neighbour reported a thief at your house. A large Negro fellow in black shorts, seen breaking your window.’

  Dad explained that he was our guest and a ball had smashed the window. The officer hesitated, looked squarely into my father’s eyes to be sure he was telling the truth and hadn’t been coerced into protecting the criminal. Unconvinced, he pulled out his card. ‘Here’s my name and number if you remember anything else.’

  A few years later, without intervention, Bonnie married a Jewish boy from New Jersey.

  I still have some of tomorrow left to find my solution. I also have a bazillion things to do. I walk in, sniff. Yes, it’s done to perfection! I place the pans on the counter. I walk away. PS, you don’t view the brisket until the next day. It’s all a matter of trust.

  I wake up at 5 am, have coffee, check emails and faxes, and feel sorry for myself for being up so early, until I hear someone get into the elevator and realise I’m not so alone. I go for a run, come back to a still-sleeping household and write ‘HAPPY 35th BIRTHDAY’ in red lipstick on every mirror in the apartment. I wake Frank up with a birthday kiss under the covers and, while he showers, I make him his favourite breakfast – an onion omelette with cheese, sausage and bacon, beans on toast, and coffee with Baileys. (But forever damned be the simple hardboiled egg!) He says he has to go into the office for just a few hours, which is surprising since he claims to have never gone to school, classes or work on his birthday. I could use his help watching the kids while I work on the party.

  Still, it’s early and there’s no need to start stressing out. The brisket is done and just needs carving, the appetizers just need thawing, and other odds and ends can’t be done too far ahead anyway. We’ll need to get the beer and wine and ice and set up, but I tell myself to calm down, there’s still ten hours till showtime. Besides, I have Posie. She’s no dummy, she’s a pro, she’s dying to be busy. I don’t use her enough, in fact. So, yeah, let’s send Posie out with a shopping list. I need to unwind.