After an hour or two, I’d drive us back to Jayne’s house. Her older sisters were away at college, her younger sister was at school, and her mom was at work—it was the perfect place to finish our skip day once the coast was clear. Jayne usually went up to her room to sleep, and I crashed out on the couch, sometimes watching Jerry Springer or The Price Is Right. If we did go to school, we usually went around noon, when there were only two hours left in the day.
I’d spent a lifetime trying to be a good student. In the nebulous months between applying for college and waiting to hear if any school was going to accept me, I started putting my energy into feeling more like an adult instead. I was paying for almost everything in my life—my car insurance, gas, clothes. As long as I made my own money, no one could tell me what to do with it.
* * *
—
I didn’t get into the Fashion Institute of Technology. I didn’t get into most of the schools I applied to, in the end. But I did get into Lasell University, a school so small I forgot I had even applied.
Lasell was in Newton, Massachusetts, right outside of Boston down Commonwealth Avenue. I could visit New York if I got homesick, but I’d be far enough away to feel like I was free. It was an all-girls college, just like Smith, where I’d visited my friend Heather the summer before. And the fashion department was small enough that I didn’t feel intimidated. It was the right move. It had to be.
Granddad called me “college girl” all summer long. He always said it with a smile, so I knew he was proud of me.
Grandma was proud of me, too, in her own way. She constantly laughed and asked me, “When are you getting the fuck out of my house again?”
Things became easier while I waited to leave. I babysat and worked at the convent all day, then spent time with friends at night. We were all going somewhere new, and were infused with the buzz of looming freedom. I went to a house party with a friend who was home for the summer, but I spent most of it in a corner reading a book about astrology. I didn’t drink and found these loud idiots pretty annoying. Instead, I spent most of my time at the movies, the mall, or driving around with the windows open, watching lightning bugs glow in the trees and getting soaked by moonlight.
I knew what college was supposed to look like for kids on TV, but I didn’t know what college was going to look like for me. I couldn’t imagine myself going to frat parties or even getting drunk. It didn’t appeal to me to think about who I might befriend or where I would live—the catalogs all showed dorm life, but what would it be like to put all my stuff into a new closet and lock the door behind me? I could only imagine the thrilling sense of independence, of being so far removed from my family that I could finally access some of the expansiveness that came with geographical distance. Warwick was almost behind me, but more importantly, everything that kept me rooted in place for so long was starting to become irrelevant. I didn’t spend the summer partying and bemoaning the inevitable loss of friendship; I breathed into the possibility of who I could become more and more every day, knowing that my friends would be part of my heart forever. I was right about that—I became a godmother when Alexis gave birth to her daughter almost twenty years later; I got Christmas cards from Jayne, showcasing a new child added to the brood for a few years straight.
I took the bus to Lasell for their new-student open house, navigating my way through the Port Authority and South Station in Boston. I showed up to campus with my backpack and followed the signs to registration. Cheerful upperclassmen welcomed me and showed me to the dorms. I met Jamie, a student from Connecticut, who, by the end of the weekend, asked if I wanted to room with her. I said yes, relieved to know my roommate instead of being surprised with it upon arrival in September.
Later, Jamie would tell me that she only agreed to come to Lasell because her father promised her a car and a membership to the hunt club if she completed four years of college at any school.
“What’s a hunt club?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s like, for horses,” Jamie said.
Lasell would end up being a horrible choice for many reasons. With no impetus to perform well at school, Jamie spent most of her time filling our room with beer cans and cheating on her boyfriend. I would become endlessly depressed during the spring semester and eventually have a complete emotional breakdown so intense three RAs were called into the room while Jamie looked on, stunned. I’d eventually get my degree many years later and many states away.
But that was all ahead of me. Everything, right then, was perfect. The future was a sparkling road with countless exit ramps, a choose-your-own-adventure book come to life.
I was given a list of things to bring with me and another list of things that were expressly forbidden, like hot pots and candles. Grandma insisted on shopping with me, and I relented. I knew I would see her at holidays; I knew I would come home. But already, I was starting to miss her.
“We’ll go to Playtogs,” Grandma said.
“I need nice stuff, Grandma—can we just go to Sears?”
“Playtogs is cheaper.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ll just buy stuff myself.”
“No,” she said sternly. “My baby is going to college, and I’m allowed to buy you some things.” She climbed into my car, which she hated. “It’s so small. And dirty.”
“I guess it’s good that I’m taking it with me.”
True to form, she was a back-seat driver the entire drive to Middletown. “Take the back road, not the highway,” she said as we cruised into Goshen.
“I know.”
“Get in that lane.”
“GRANDMA. I KNOW.”
By the time we got to Playtogs, I was so stressed out I wanted to leave. We walked down the aisles, looking for curtains and bedspreads.
“Would these work?” Grandma said, holding up a lacy yellow package. “What size are your windows?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” I said, rolling my eyes while I pushed the cart.
“Well fuck you, then, don’t have any curtains.” Grandma threw the package back on the shelf.
“What about this bedspread?” The purple, turquoise, and pink pattern was more eighties than I would have liked, but I was slowly losing my will to live.
“It’s great.”
“Okay.” She threw it in the cart. I could feel how scratchy the fabric was through the plastic bag.
“Ooooh, you’re gonna need some new drawers,” she said as we rounded into the aisle of underwear tubs, “in case you meet someone.” I was accustomed to getting my underwear in a stocking every Christmas, a package of Hanes that served me just fine. Grandma was pinching a pair of turquoise lace bikini underwear between her thumb and forefinger.
“Gross,” I said with a wince.
“What do you mean, ‘gross’? Those boys you’re going to be meeting won’t want to do anything with you once they see those old things,” she said, gesturing to my waist.
“You’re the one who bought me these old things,” I reminded her.
Grandma moved in close. “Do you need a new bra for your little titties?” She was cracking herself up before she even finished the question.
“Can we just go?”
“All right, suit yourself. You’re no fun.”
The week before I left, I went to the Grand Union for boxes. I was instructed by Grandma to take everything I owned aside from furniture and a box of magazines she lovingly let me keep on the balcony between my bedroom and the attic. “Once you leave, that’s my room,” she said. Most kids got four years before their parents started reclaiming space; I got four weeks.
The guy at the deli counter brought a stack out of the back, neatly folded and resting under his arm.
“Thank you,” I said, smiling. “I’m packing for college.”
“Oh yeah? Good for you.” He turned around to snap on some gloves and get back to work.
—
Grandma has dementia now. On her bad days, she can’t remember what happened from one minute to the next. On her good days, she leaves her appointments at the hospital loudly telling all the doctors and nurses that they are assholes for making her wait for an elevator or for doing any of the scheduled exams, punctuated by her Pillsbury Doughboy laugh. She is still herself, even in the face of a disease that threatens to erase her completely. She still knows my voice and my face, though I know the day is coming when she will not recognize either.
My granddad has been dead for almost twenty years; his lung cancer progressed quickly, and he was gone before my plane landed, before I had the chance to say goodbye. They were not one of those couples you read about on Upworthy, the ones who couldn’t live without each other, one spouse passing the week after their beloved died; she misses him, but Grandma outlived Granddad mostly out of spite. She keeps his ashes on a shelf in her bedroom behind her Saw and Hostel DVDs and says “good morning” and “goodnight” to him every day. During one visit, I called the office of her retirement community to insist that they give her a cutout for a walk-in shower immediately, while I was there, to ensure it was done properly. Grandma beamed at me while I scowled at the phone. “You always know how to get things done. Just like your grandma.”
Since she insists on her independence, I hired a nurse for Grandma once it was clear that she needed help navigating, remembering to eat, remembering to take her medication. She constantly tells me that I shouldn’t waste the money, that she’s fine on her own. When I remind her that I’m a television writer now, she sucks in her breath and says, “Oh my GOD, Dani. Never mind—you’re a rich bitch.” I’m not, but I can afford to take care of us both, and that’s more than I ever thought I would be able to do.
She is okay on her own sometimes.
She’s still herself.
But when she wakes up every morning, she cries for her mother and grandmother, both long gone, leaning on the kitchen counter for stability while her coffee simmers, her tears soaking the neck of her shirt. “I want my mommy,” she wails in her confusion. On my last visit, when I camped out with her after her cataract surgery, I put framed pictures of Sweetie Pie and my great-great-grandmother on Grandma’s nightstand, hoping they would soothe her. She wants her mommy, but she has me instead.
She’ll never remember what I tell her now—that this is what makes me proud of who I am, proud of what I’ve been through, to get to this place where I can take care of her. Our relationship has flipped, but my family has never been good at sticking with traditional roles. We became each other’s lifelines, Grandma and me. When I was born and the nurse held me like a football, when I opened my creepy little eyes, the first person I saw was my grandmother. I opened my eyes and saw the love of my life.
When her dementia feels too heavy to carry, when I look at pictures and remember her when she was whole, when I wonder how I survived and how I escaped, I think about the morning Grandma sent me off to college.
When it was time for me to leave, my car was packed with so much stuff the back was five inches lower than usual. It was a bright morning. Grandma was standing on the porch, watching me shove a garbage bag full of clothes into the hatchback. I slammed the trunk closed.
“You have your maps? You know where you’re going?” She stood with her arms crossed while I reached into the passenger seat through the window to show her my atlas.
“I’ve got it.”
“Do you have everything you need?”
I looked at the bulging car. “You made me take everything I own, so yeah, I genuinely have everything I need.”
“Come here.” I walked up the steps. Grandma reached up and grabbed my face in her hands. “You call me the minute you get there, you hear me?”
“Yes, Grandma,” I said through squished cheeks.
“I love you so much.” She kissed my forehead, then kissed each cheek.
I gave her a hug, holding on for a little longer than I usually did. She pushed me away. “Who loves you?”
“You do, Grandma,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Okay, get going. You don’t want to be on the road after dark.”
I bounded down the steps, into my car, into my future. I clicked the seat belt into place and looked up through the windshield. Grandma blew me a kiss and waved, and I waved back.
I was too excited to cry as I backed out of the driveway. No matter what happened next, I had made the first step. I had momentum.
I put the car in drive and waved at Grandma one last time. I leaned over the seat and rolled down the passenger window. “I’ll see you at Thanksgiving!” I shouted.
“Keep your eyes on the goddamn road!” Grandma shouted back.
I turned onto Main Street, taking the familiar fork at the Mobil and veering toward Middletown. Instead of pulling off at the mall exit like usual, I kept going.
I kept going.
Acknowledgments
My friend and agent, Christopher Schelling. You are a man of astounding taste, impeccable style, and unlimited patience, but I love your horrible taste in television most of all. Thank you for every Connecticut weekend, for your unending fight to get this book in the right hands, for talking me down from the ledge, and pushing me to connect to the part of myself that could do this work.
My editors, Andrea Schulz and Emily Wunderlich, the most gifted people on planet Earth. Thank you for your patience through all 375 years it took me to write this book. There’s not a single page that wasn’t made infinitely better by your intelligence and humor. You got it, from the very beginning, and I am endlessly grateful to know you both.
Augusten Burroughs, without whom this book would not exist. Thank you for the myriad ways you told me to just write it, for responding enthusiastically to my childhood stories around the dinner table, for infusing me with hope in the beautiful example of your wild life, for the stunning depths of your friendship. There is no one else with whom I would rather watch four hours of Whitney Houston videos.
My TV team: Lindsay Perraud, Laura Gordon, Robby Koch, Belva Anakwanze, and Jonathan Drubner. Thank you for making sure I get paid like a white man, and for believing in my talent when I absolutely did not.
Marie Andreakos, Amelia Gray, Caroline Williams, Ann Friedman, Jason Butler Harner, Rebecca Woolf, Corina Maritescu, Laura Krafft, Ramou Sarr, Eden Kennedy, Emily Tyra, Adam Santucci, Isabelle Dimang, Patrick Somerville, Neal Brennan, Steven Avalos, Nick and Faryl Amadeus, and Dan Steinbacher: I will never forgive you for your tremendous efforts at making Los Angeles somewhat bearable and fun for me. I’m absolutely disgusted that I like it here so much, and you are all 100 percent to blame.
Reyhan Harmanci, Patrick Hoffman, Jason Schwartz, Tavi Gevinson, Jennifer Abbots, Marlena Bittner, Maggie Serota, Alexis Coe, Julie Klausner, Estelle Tang, Taffy Akner, Lourdes Uribe, Heather Hall, Bekah Havens, Alison Benson, Nick Hughes, Kurt Schlachter, and Emma Straub: Don’t read that part about how much I like Los Angeles. We know where my true heart belongs—in New York City, buried somewhere in a sidewalk trash heap crawling with rats on a beautiful, hot summer day. Here’s to getting drunk in Queens and waking up in Brooklyn, to adding another chair at Café Loup, to coffee at Buvette that turns into dinner, to bookstores, to dancing, to Mets games, to the , to costumes pulled out of the middle of the street, to half of Manhattan, to all of Harlem.
Deneen Vines, Chandler Stanley, Ben Wright, Diane Pell, and Helen, Ryan, Jeremy, Jansen, and C. J. Truitt: Thank you for always giving me a soft place to land, then and now. Ryan Scafuro, Brendan McManus, Garrett Talbot, Timothy Hull, Amy Baglione, and Jayne Fruh, for helping me see the good side of that little farm town that raised us.
Tally Abecassis, Amy Elz, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Susie Gharemani, Taryn Mazza, Monica Heisey, Antonia Cornwell, Jessica Hopper, Maile Knight: a greater support system has never existed. Tha
nk you for the Emotional Voltron that is your continued love, intelligence, and humor.
Millie DeChirico, my friend, my business partner, and my consigliere. You are a little secret knife come to life, and mine would be infinitely worse without you.
Thandie Newton, my dearest sis, for your epic generosity, strength, and persistence. I’m grateful for the very miracle of you.
Rainbow Rowell, thank you for fielding the tears, for creating so much of the laughter. I’m down for an entire meal served on a garbage can lid, anytime.
Dr. Donna Gable, I am eternally grateful for all the ways you put me on this path to healing, and continue to be my guide.
Dr. Elizabeth Richards, thank you for reminding me that while I am a person who experiences depression, that does not mean it is a bomb waiting to blow up inside of me. I would not have started this book without your support.
Lorraine Redmon—for being part of Team Dementia, and helping me care for my grandma from so far away. I don’t know what we would do without you.
Sarah Brown, why aren’t we buying cheap cocktail rings at Accessorize right now? You are every support beam of the shaky span bridge that is my life, and without you I would crumble. Thank you for your grace, your wisdom, and your heart. In the words of a true hero . . . Moooobb Deep Eep Meep Beep Creep Seep Leep, always.
Sarah Jackson, for the “Fuck! Everything!” energy you’ve carried from the halls of Warwick Valley High School to now. I hope we still call each other at 3:00 a.m. when we are covered in gray hair. Yours is the voice I hear in my head whenever I am starting something new, the laugh whenever I do something ridiculous. Thank you for all of these lessons over all of these years.
Sandra Pieloch, the scaffolding of my heart. Every adventure, in every state, on every continent has been guided by the expansiveness of your spirit. Thank you for building your life on love, for making all the hard decisions first so I had a map to follow, for being my family.
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