Thirty-Six
At almost any moment, you have the power to change your destiny.
Sunday morning, after having brunch with Drew and my family, and saying good-bye to all of them, I came home, changed into my comfy Eeyore pajamas and slippers, threw my hair into a ponytail, and opened War and Peace to page one.
I lie down on my purple couch, grab a cigarette from my pack on the coffee table, and pull out a lighter.
I stare at the cigarette. After about ten seconds’ more thought, I break my Marlboro in half and toss the two unlit halves of the unlit cigarette into an ashtray.
What the hell? So I’ll put on a few pounds. It’s not like there’s anyone to lose them for, anyway. Besides, I’ve decided I like my life. I want to live to be a hundred.
An hour later, I’ve cranked my way through twenty pages of War and Peace. It doesn’t sound like much, but already Tolstoy has mentioned a mother who falsely thinks her fourteen-year-old daughter is her best friend—as so many mothers have done before her. This guy Leo was onto something. I write in my journal:
Read classics like War and Peace once you’re out of school. They’re much better when there’s not a quiz. Don’t ever read Ethan Frome, The Sound and the Fury, or anything by Kafka. You’re wasting your time.
I forgot to include Lord Jim. God, it’s amazing what English Lit. teachers do to make us hate reading for so much of our adult lives.
My doorbell rings. I walk over to the door and look through the peephole. Shit! It’s Jordan.
Suddenly, I remember my stupid middle-of-the-night phone call.
There should be a phone service that turns off your phone between midnight and six A.M. every night. And if you want to make a call, you have to pick up the phone and talk to an operator: Put me through to AAA. My car battery’s dead.
Yes, ma’am.
Put me through to Pink Dot. I need vanilla Häagen-Dazs toute de suite!
Yes, ma’am.
Put me through to my ex-boyfriend….
I’m sorry, ma’am, the operator would say. That would be a bad idea. Now you go to bed before you do anything stupid.
And my call had been stupid, and now God was punishing me by making me see the man I have a crush on while wearing Eeyore pajamas and no makeup.
I open the door. “Hi…,” I begin, ready to shout a monologue to him about why I shouldn’t have called, because he’s scum, and I have no intentions of becoming a mistress, so he can just turn around right now, mister, because…
“I thought you might want to see this,” Jordan says, holding up an engagement ring.
I stare at him, dumbfounded.
“I’m sorry I missed your call,” he tells me as he puts the ring in his pocket. “I was in San Francisco getting it back.”
“How was it?” My voice quakes when I ask.
Jordan smiles warmly. “Brutal. I don’t want to talk about it. How was the wedding?”
I smile back. “Brutal. I don’t want to talk about it.”
I pull the ponytail holder out of my hair and fluff my hair up. “I did, however, get a fabulous wedding gift. Would you like to come in and have some champagne?”
“I’d love to.”
I let him in, and we talk all night. You know the kind of talk you have that’s half kissing and half talking? And you suddenly realize this person’s going to be in your life for a while?
It was a good night.
And the following day, I finished my journal of advice:
I was never Jennifer Aniston. I never cooked as well as Julia Child, wrote as well as Tolstoy, was as funny as Lucille Ball, or as rich as Oprah Winfrey. I was never as beautiful as Beyoncé, as famous as Princess Diana, as good of an actress as Meryl Streep, as driven to a cause as Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I’m pretty sure I never learned physics, or how to speak Chinese. And I can almost guarantee you I never figured out the new math.
But I got to go through this life, and this century, as me. And that’s a hell of a lot more than I ever dreamed.
Well, great-granddaughter, I hope reading my book has inspired you to write a book of your own, for your own great-granddaughter. I only wish I could ask you this question—because I’m dying to know: What will you write?
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Kim Whalen, my brilliant literary agent, and Rebecca Oliver for introducing us.
Thanks to Jennifer Good, my awesome film agent, who encouraged me to take a break from writing screenplays for a few years to try my hand at a novel.
Thanks to Jennifer Weis, my wonderful editor, who won me at auction (something I never thought I’d be able to say), and her assistant, Stefanie Lindskog.
Thanks to my family: Carol (Mom), Ed (Dad), Janis, Jenn, Rob, Jake, Jean, and all of my wonderful aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Thanks to the friends who got me through turning thirty: Rachel, Lauren, Cookie, Ashley, Patrick, Dave, Doug, Laurie, Jeff, Karen, and Stephanie. And, of course, Anjani. Another thanks to sister Jenn and friend Laurie, who both made me maid of honor at their weddings. When I was twenty-nine and single. Which sucked. (I’m kidding.)
And to “the wine tasters”—my female pack: Jen, Dawn, Gaylyn, Christie, Marisa, Missy, and Dorothy.
A TOTAL WASTE OF MAKEUP. Copyright © 2006 by Kim Gruenenfelder. All rights reserved. For information, address
St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
ISBN: 978-1-4299-0489-6
A Total Waste of Makeup Page 32
