“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know anything about him,” said Bettina.
“I know that he likes German chocolate cake.”
“You each paid for yourself, right?” said Marcie.
“Sort of.”
“Oh no. Did you pay for him?” said Marcie.
“Marcie, that Rules junk is pretty tired. Remember? The authors of that crap are both divorced.”
“But you fought with him and then you paid for dinner?”
“I did. He seemed surprised.”
“Surprised? I bet he wondered when you would beam back to Pluto,” said Bettina.
“So what. He liked the German chocolate cake.”
“You don’t get what this is all about yet, do you? He’ll never call you,” said Marcie.
“I know that and he knows that. But he’s not even single.”
“Oh, he will be. But not for long,” said Marcie.
At Group that week everyone contributed endless snotty remarks on my date-failure.
I mean they were very supportive.
Roberta seemed to be paying very careful attention.
Was she taking notes?
“No woman in L.A. eats on a date. Not like that,” said the wardrobe supervisor during Group.
“I don’t see how it would have turned out any differently. I was hungry,” I said.
“Did you have to fight with him?” said the former kiddie-actress.
“You’ve got some work to do. You seem to create situations where you’ll end up alone,” said one of the guys.
“I’m not even sure what that therapy-babble means.”
“That’s very insulting, Courtney,” said Roberta.
I tried to look very concerned. “Oh, OK. I take responsibility for it.”
I looked at Roberta. She seemed pissed.
I didn’t say anything else and went home depressed after that mandatory fake hug thing that Roberta made us do at the end of Group.
Oh God do I hate that fake hug thing.
3
Sibling Rivalry
“I love what you’ve done with your apartment,” said my mother, Julia, who had appeared at my door on a Tuesday night without advance warning.
“Uh huh,” I said. “Which part?”
“The little French doors on the bathroom,” she said.
“That was there when I got the place.”
“The sunken living room.”
“Also there.”
“The automatic faux fireplace.”
“There.”
“The three-tier halogen chandelier?”
“There.”
“The plush gray shag carpeting?”
I turned away while I put my Velveeta mushroom soup—with little canned onions—and chicken in the oven. Of course, the gray shag carpeting, a choice only an artistically suicidal individual would make, was there also.
“Why don’t you sit down and read the paper while I make dinner, Julia.”
She didn’t respond. It appeared that my mother had gotten lost in my 750-square-foot apartment.
“Ju-li-a?” I called.
On the morning of my twelfth birthday, my mother had told me that she had an unusual gift. “Now that you’re almost an adult, I’m going to allow you, no, in fact, I think I’m going to insist that you call me ‘Julia’ instead of ‘Mom.’”
“How will people know that you’re my mother?” I said.
“Do they need to know that?” she said.
“Ju-li-a?”
“I’m in here.” Here, was my rhombus shaped walk-in closet, obviously created when the genius developers who built my apartment realized that they had a leftover space between the bedroom and the living room that was too oddly shaped and too small to be called a room. I walked in.
“What are you doing in here?” I said. She was going through my dresses.
“Where is it?” she said. “Oh good. Here it is.”
She pulled out my cherry-red cocktail dress, the one with the neckline that plunged to my navel.
I loved that dress. After finding the beautiful cherry-red material in a clothing store, I had found a Vogue pattern and had it made for me.
“I need to borrow this,” she said.
“What for?”
“Your Aunt Katy’s having an event.”
“I know. I’ve been invited to it. It’s Megan’s baby shower.”
My 42-year-old cousin, Megan, from my father’s Episcopalian side of the family, had gotten pregnant by her boyfriend of eight weeks. There were rumors of a joint christening/wedding once Megan could fit into a wedding dress again. My Aunt Katy, delighted to finally have a grandchild, had chosen to forget that ten years ago she would have disowned her daughter on the spot after receiving news of her skanky behavior.
“Well, I want to make a statement,” said Julia.
“What statement would that be? That you dress inappropriately for all occasions without discrimination?” I said.
“You’re no fun.”
“Look Julia, put the dress down and let’s have dinner. I’ll go shopping with you and help you find a great dress.”
“I don’t want dinner. If you’re not going to let me have the dress, I’m leaving.”
“Then it’s time for you to go.” I opened the door.
“Bye-bye,” I said. “Drive safely.”
She walked out the door without a word.
I knew my mother.
I made a mental note to keep the doors locked, round-the-clock, for the next month.
“Okay, Abyss, Velveeta mushroom soup and chicken?”
I gave up on the mushroom soup-chicken part of the equation and cut myself a big wedge of Velveeta.
“Put the Velveeta down,” said Jennifer, whom I had speed-dialed.
“It’s only a small piece,” I said.
“I told you not to let her see the dress,” said Jennifer.
“She showed up at New Year’s just as I was getting ready for a party. I’m hoping it will be different this time,” I said.
Jennifer sighed. “It won’t be,” she said. “What did she want for New Year’s? To party with you?”
“A dress,” I said.
“Did you let her in?”
“What could I do? She said she needed to go to the bathroom. Only she made a little detour into my closet and got something.”
“What?”
I sighed. “My little black dress.”
“Noooo!” said Jennifer. “Not the black dress. You searched for months for that.”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s gone.”
“And you let her have it?”
“What could I do?” I said. “Wrestle her for it?”
Not that I hadn’t tried.
When she walked out of my closet with my little black dress, I walked over, grabbed it, and said, “No way.”
“But I need to look special,” said Julia.
“You look special every day of your life, just the way you are,” I said.
“Don’t try that psycho-babble nonsense on me,” said Julia. “Remember, I’m the wife…”
“He’s dead,” I said. “He died 28 years ago.” When I was seven.
“All right, I was the wife of a board-certified psychologist,” said Julia. “I know all those stupid, self-esteem tricks.”
“You’re not getting the dress,” I said. “Now leave. I need to finish getting ready for this New Year’s party sometime before next year.”
“Hmmm, nice dress,” said Julia, looking a little too closely at the dress I was wearing.
“Don’t even think about it,” I said.
“Red is not my color.”
“It’s time for you to go.” I opened the door. She gave me a dirty look.
“Bye-bye,” I said. “Drive safely.” I closed and locked the door and then went into my bathroom to blow-dry my hair. When I came out, the little black dress was gone. I forgot. She had used her emergency set of my keys to come back into my apartment
and steal my dress.
A Post-it note was on the hanger.
“I took it. I’ll have it cleaned.”
On January 3, I had the locks on my doors changed.
After two weeks she called. “Ah c’mon, it’s just a dress,” was left on my voice mail.
After four weeks, she attempted to break into my apartment on a Sunday morning as I was having my morning coffee with Abyss and a copy of The New York Times. I heard her fumbling with the lock. Then she started pounding. “You had the locks changed? Open the door, right now.” She gave up after five minutes.
On March 1, I received an email from her:
Dear Courtney:
I don’t know why you’re so mad. I’m your mother. Don’t we share things? If you don’t start talking to me I’m going to cut you out of my will.
Love,
Julia
Eventually, I got worn down and wanted the dress back. In June, I called her.
“Just give me the dress back, and I’ll attempt to wipe the slate clean.”
“Well,” said Julia, “I had a little accident, so I had to change the dress. But you’ll like what I did to it.”
My little black dress, size 6, was strapless and a glove-tight fit on me—I had no idea how my mother, a size 12, well that’s generous, a size 14–16, had thought she was going to squeeze into it. But somehow she packed herself in, and at her party the back seam burst open. She claimed she didn’t hear anything, but her butt felt cold. The seam had burst from the middle of her back to below her knees.
“You weren’t wearing underwear?” I said.
“I didn’t want a visible panty line.”
“No nylons with a control top?”
“Too confining.”
“So the entire party saw your naked butt?”
“It wasn’t all bad,” said Julia. “I got a new boyfriend. Roy.”
“Congratulations.”
Roy lasted three weeks and then stole her George Forman Grill. The dress was irreparably ripped. So Julia, who for as long as I can remember had two seamstresses around to “take in things”—“I might as well show off my best assets”—took it to the German one, Greta, and asked her to repair it. She returned my little black dress with a 12-inch by 36-inch bright pink satin panel in the back where the back seam used to be and a big white ruffle over the butt.
“I see Greta has worked her magic,” I said. “It’s ruined.”
“All the girls are wearing this,” said Julia.
“Not the girls under 65,” I said. “Take it. I won’t wear it. It looks horrible.”
“Why are you such a bitch?” she said. “Do you have your period?”
“Just like a sister, she’s going to want what looks good on you,” said Jennifer.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“Sorry,” said Jennifer.
“I’m sure she’d be delighted.” I said. “At 57, you’d think she’d stop wearing my clothes. Or at least know what’s appropriate.”
“Ha,” said Jennifer. “Why stop now? Remember Graduation?”
I wish I could forget.
“Don’t come. I’ll be fine,” I had said. “I’m sure that you’re busy with other things—you don’t even like ceremonies.”
“No, I want to come,” said Julia. “I’ve been planning for it.”
This was surprising. Julia had been furious when I told her I was going to law school. She felt that I was throwing away the 18 years of expensive violin lessons for which she had paid.
“I won’t pay for a damn thing,” she said. And she didn’t. As I backed out of the driveway to head to law school, car loaded up, she knocked on my window.
“You’re making the biggest mistake of your life. You’re going to be a terrible attorney—you don’t have the brains. You’ll end up in some place like Fresno doing tax law. And your thighs will get fat.”
The day before graduation from law school, I went to the airport to pick her up. Someone who is almost Julia, only 45 pounds less, with a button for a nose, eyebrows where her forehead would be, kinky hair relaxed, with extensions, and lips—HUGE LIPS—arrived at San Francisco Airport.
Like she had told someone, “Make me into Naomi Judd.”
And he did the best he could with her German-Hungarian parts.
And she looked like Naomi Judd—if Naomi Judd played the Borscht Belt and specialized in the beautiful music of Klezmer.
Ashkenazy Naomi Judd—with her 50,000 mile tune-up—waves at me.
She had never, ever had anything but little thin lips. But she has huge lips. And she had ponderous gravity defying breasts, which I can see because she’s wearing a lime-green halter top and what I guess to be something close to Size 8 black jeans with three-inch mounds of flesh poking out between the top of her pants and the bottom of her halter top—and heels with four-inch spikes on them. Hair long, to the middle of her back, with a high-red gloss to it.
“Good bye, Fritz,” she said to some guy who is carrying her bag for her. “Once I get settled, I’ll give you a call.”
“Hey. Who’s this?” said Fritz, gesturing to me—rolling my eyes for the last three minutes.
“This is Courtney,” said Julia.
“Cool,” said Fritz. “You two gals come on over to my place in Marin. We can go hot tubbing together.”
“Ohhh, that sounds like fun,” said Julia. “Bye.” Fritz walks away.
I’m staring at Julia, trying to decide if this woman really is my mother.
“I don’t know what you’ve done to yourself,” I said, “and I’m not going to ask.”
Five years later I discovered that she had taken the contents of her IRA—$37,000—and spent it on a remodel of herself.
“But I beg of you, please, please, please, Mom, I’m graduating from law school. Please.”
It was the first time in thirteen years that I had called her Mom.
“Ok,” said Julia, “if little Miss Priss wants me to be good, I’ll be good.”
Good meant wearing the halter top (no bra) and Size 8 jeans to dinner with my boyfriend, Andre, his mother, Sylvia, and his father, Carl, and endlessly flirting with the militantly gay waiter—“this town has cute men.” Good meant wearing my sheer blouse and no bra to graduation—after a 20-minute fight with me.
“Honey, I don’t want to wear a jacket. Right at this University, at Sproul Plaza, the Free Speech Movement was invented.”
“Julia,” I said. “You’re going to get arrested.”
“Well,” she said, “I’m exercising my First Amendment right.”
“To do what?” I said. “Ruin everyone’s graduation?”
We fought right up to the moment of graduation.
“God, you’re a square,” she screamed at me.
“You promised,” I yelled at her.
“I already told you, I’ll be good,” she said.
We found a compromise—jacket for the ceremony, bra at the dinner, daisy-shaped nude pasties at the party. But to Julia, good meant, “Umm Courtney, Julia, is dancing in the living room and uh, well… everyone, I mean well, ahh those pasties have moved, and well, I can clearly see her breasts, and how old is she?” said Jennifer.
Age 7.
There is this guy hanging around the house who is not my dad. His name is Big Mike. I’m not sure, but I think that Big Mike starts coming to our house when my daddy is still in the hospital. My mom tells me that Big Mike is a doctor. I think he is a doctor in the hospital where my dad was.
Big Mike doesn’t like to wear a lot of clothes. He likes to walk around our house wearing a little swimsuit—he calls it “a Speedo”—and a knit fisherman’s cap. Big Mike comes over a lot when I am asleep.
My mommy is laughing. She is writing down lots of things and making lots of phone calls. She has been like this for days. I ask her, “What are you doing, Mom?”
She giggles. “I’m sooo good at this,” she says. She whispers, “I’m a divorce engineer. I engineer divorces.”
; “What’s that?”
“Oh, I’m getting you a new daddy.”
Not long after that, we have one of those “Jobs Our Daddies Do” assignments where we stand in front of class and tell a little story about what our daddy does. I tell my first grade teacher, Mrs. Emerson, that I don’t have a daddy anymore. Mrs. Emerson tells me, “OK, Courtney, why don’t you tell us what your mommy does?” She gives me a few minutes to think about it.
Five minutes later I raise my hand and tell Mrs. Emerson that I am ready.
“Go ahead, Courtney,” said Mrs. Emerson.
“My mommy is a dee-vorce engineer.”
“She’s a divorce attorney?” said Mrs. Emerson.
“My mommy says that Big Mike, her boyfriend, is married. She says she’s helping Big Mike get this dee-vorce. My mommy and Big Mike work on that dee-vorce all the time, so even though he’s not my daddy, he sleeps at our house a lot. My mommy said that when the dee-vorce is over, Big Mike will be my new daddy.”
There is complete silence in the room. I don’t understand.
“Oh… The End,” I said.
“Thank you, Courtney,” said Mrs. Emerson. “Please be seated.”
Big Julia is summoned to Mrs. Emerson’s office, pronto.
Julia glosses over it by telling Mrs. Emerson that I have a good imagination.
One night, I hear Big Mike and Mommy talking when they think I’m asleep. Big Mike is talking very loudly.
It sounds like Mommy is crying.
Big Mike does not become my new daddy.
Big Mike stops coming over.
Age 10.
My mom is sad. She has a lot of boyfriends, but they don’t stay around for long. I don’t think that they like me. My mom starts going to church to meet people. I go to Sunday school. Sometimes, she goes away with a boyfriend from Friday evening to Sunday night. I ask my mom, “What about church?” My mom tells me to go to church on my own. On Sunday, I walk to Sunday school on my own.
On Easter, I put on my pink dress and walk to Sunday school. I hunt for Easter eggs at the church with the other kids and their parents. My mother is away with the new boyfriend. When she gets home that night, I tell her that I miss her. She is angry. She tells me, “Can’t you leave me alone? I need my own social life.”
The new boyfriend does not last long. She is sad again.
Almost Royalty: A Romantic Comedy...of Sorts Page 5
