Table

We used to be kings. Not real royalty, but cultural kings. By “we,” I mean our family. By “place,” I mean the world. And by “world,” I mean New York. My dad, Pat, and his brother Mike, in the 1960s and ‘70s, owned the fucking place.

After my grandmother tired of waiting for her world-traveling UPI reporter husband to come home to Port Washington, Long Island, she upped her three good-looking, quick-witted boys to Paris, where she studied painting and took quite a lot of dancing lessons with a much younger Frenchman. A few too many, it has been said.

Pat and Mike went on to Yale (their younger brother, Seamus, attended Harvard, and has since become a creator of reading programs for kids, a host to vacationing scuba divers, and “gentleman farmer,” for the oysters that spread out in a magnificent rocky carpet on the stretch of beach where he's lived as long as I can remember, in the home my great grandparents built). What they lacked in old money they made up for in Irish charm and intellectual revelry. Dad took a Yiddish class to meet cute Jewish girls, and parlayed his Russian studies into a job as the Newsweek bureau chief for Moscow. His photo of a very sad Nikita Kruschev, head down in half-light, made the cover when John Kennedy was assassinated.

At Newsday, Mike, became, among other things, a feared and celebrated movie and food critic, and his columns on pacifism became a book, “A Dove in Vietnam.” Noticing the formulaic success of Jackie Susann and others who did well with badly written potboilers, he corralled 26 of his co-workers to each pen a chapter (if it was too good it was sent back) about a slutty housewife, which became one of the world’s greatest literary hoaxes, “Naked Came the Stranger.”

Dad turned his talent toward health and medical writing, following French doctors to the Bahamas where they pioneered radical work with placentas and chicken eggs to decode the secrets of youth. He hobnobbed with Dr. Joyce Brothers, Dear Abby and Masters & Johnson.

Pat and Mike, together and separately, loved the world and the world, and its beautiful people lusted right back after them. There were parties with movie stars, bestselling writers, diplomats, beautiful wives. There’s a picture of my cousin Sean as a baby, delighted at being tossed in the air by Jack Kerouac.

I remember sitting at their regular poker game, too young to get the jokes but laughing anyway. Cigar smoke, gin and beer. A rotating cast of broken geniuses.There was Uncle Speed, a craggy old fisherman who lived near Mike’s Northport home. Perpetually tanned, big-eyed, big-haired Stella, a chain-smoking divorcée with a perpetually tan décolletage. 

In 1978, Pat and Mike became the first two brothers in history to make the New York Times’ bestseller list. Dad had co-written “The Pritikin Program for Diet and Exercise,” which prompted America to eschew fats and sugar for high complex carbohydrates and lean meats. Mike penned porn star Linda Lovelace’s biography, “Ordeal,” hailed as a feminist tome that shed light on the particular perils of sex work.

Anything good comes with a price. Dad died in 2003, overweight and losing a battle with diabetes, after he threw a blood clot from a knee replacement he probably shouldn’t have had. Mike was rendered speechless by a series of strokes and lived his last few years in a nursing home, where he could barely feed himself. My cousins and I recount the laughing, the scandals, the ribbing that never crossed the line to being mean-spirited. On Thanksgiving, we cry and howl in the way that only Irish cousins can do when they’re together.

There is a picture of Mike and Pat that ran in People magazine when they were on the bestseller list together that I keep on my office wall, wherever I live. They are sitting, crossing arms, typing on each others’ IBM Selectrics. Twinkling, confident, sharing a private joke. It is a snapshot of our family’s invincibility. I would hope that in the event of a fire I’d remember to take the picture with me on my way out the door, but I know in reality, people take meaningless things when they panic, like a sweater or the bottle of detergent they just bought but haven’t put away.

Across the Great Divide

The first time I saw Nanci Griffith was in 1993. Jefe and I were leaving our messy, gritty, extraordinarily fun lives behind in Gallup, New Mexico, where we learned to be reporters and we'd finally gotten the hang of the two-step. I'd pretty much sabotaged the relationship, even though I was deeply, madly connected with this quirky and funny and kindhearted Yalie on a cellular level. Raised by my single dad, I didn't know how to take space or talk about what I wanted without causing major collateral damage. He held on for unknown reasons. He didn't want to marry, he didn't want to leave. I suppose he loved me, though to this day I am unsure why.

When we outgrew what is arguably the worst newspaper in the country, it was my turn to choose where to live, and I picked home, Washington state. My grandmother was getting older and becoming more still. My dad was in his big house, sometimes with his longtime love Holly, sometimes without. I imagined great reunions with high school friends who had stayed on the Olympic Peninsula.

We piled my 1984 Ford F-150 (with dual gas tanks) to the brim with our secondhand furniture and the Native Art we'd collected in our time in the Southwest. Me and my truck and he and his yellow VW Rabbit made our way north, stopping in Los Angeles for a few nights with his hipster aspiring director friend (who got horribly offended when I called "This Boy's Life" a "movie." "It's a film," he said, rolling his eyes and clucking his tongue). But Hipster was able to hook us up with tickets for The Tonight Show, where we saw Nanci for the first time. She sang "The Sound of Lonliness" and I was struck with inspiration and love and peace and longing and everything you want from a beautiful song.

Of course, Jefe and I didn't last out the year in Seattle. We'd imploded, crushed by past misdeeds and terrified of the uncertain future. When we broke it off for good and he decided to move back to New York, I stared at myself in the mirror and howled until my face disappeared.

If this were a movie, there would be a montage here: Me living in a cabin in the woods. A dozen different boyfriends including a rogue Irish man and a painfully urbane Irish man. Moving to Seattle to take a job as a magazine editor. Repeat appearances of some boyfriends. Leaving the job and becoming a freelance writer, playwright, producer, voice-over and commercial actress. Death of father. Moving to LA for bigger universe. Taking work at a corporation, and, shockingly, settling in.

The last scene of this montage would be me meeting Steve in the spring of 2008 at work, though we'd spoken on the phone a couple years prior when I had questions that needed answers. This ruggedly handsome, impossibly blue-eyed man would turn out to be the best man I had ever met. The most solid and trustworthy and easy and generous and fun person I could imagine. It was my profound delight to agree to marry him.

His birthday was last week, the second anniversary of our first kiss. Aside from the Bacon of the Month Club gift, I got us tickets to see Nanci. There she was, same as before, only we were close enough to hear her slap the guitar and to see the wisps of gray in her pulled-back hair. She was a queen and made it all look so easy and regal.

And when she sang "Across the Great Divide," tears rolled down my face. She sang this:

"The finest hour
I have seen
is the one
that comes between
the edge of night
and the break of day
that's when the darkness
rolls away."

That time of my life was bookended by Nanci. The first time I heard her, I was embarking on an uncertain journey, about to navigate my ballistic behavior associated with subconscious deep regret of losing and hurting the one man who I thought I should have married. Sitting there Friday night with my head resting on Steve's shoulder, I realized that my old journey is done. I don't need souvenirs or diaries or postcards from it. I am on a new path, clear and clean and pure. I am smarter and better as a human being. And this time, I am not alone.

Ghosts

The thing about 40licious, as I've likely explained before, that with all the goodness of wisdom and the puzzle pieces taking shape ("oh! this piece finishes that bit of sky and connects the umbrella to her hand ...") is that there are people who finished this earth earlier than I have.

My friend Todd, for example, who was a raucous mess of a man, who called me "Van DeKamps" and outdrank my Irish visitors and did a Payless Shoe Store commerical with Star Jones, lived in Long Beach. The last great day I remember with him was taking my friend Alexandre, then a small boy, to visit and we walked for miles along the beach, laughing, remembering college, remembering New York craziness. Besides my mother, I do feel like nobody loved me more than Todd. After Todd was gaybashed by a crowd of thugs at the wrong train station -- and then, later, by Long Beach Police when they were all hauled into the station together -- he had a hard time holding everything in check. They broke the bone around his eye. Cops raped him with a billy club. His normal excessive tendencies became exaggerated. He died on Dec. 4, 2005, after an overdose of perscription drugs he'd brought with Christmas-shopping money he'd borrowed from his roommate. His neighbors had heard the pleas for help, the scrathing on the walls, the last gasps for life. They thought it was more of the same.

So that's why it's hard for me to go to Long Beach. I keep looking up to the tiny turret on top of a downtown hotel where he once lived. Whatever I'm doing that's supposed to be fun -- seeing a band, riding bikes, sipping coffee with friends -- is always overshadowed by the ghost Todd.

Santa Barbara, where I am now for work, overflowing with charm and bouganvelia and Spanish architcture and funky artiness, is the same. Kim Wexler was my best friend during the last half of high school and into the beginning of college. We were club kids, up all night in our Betsey Johnson finery, bagels at 4 a.m., pretending to be European models with very vague and funny accents. Her dad, Lloyd, would take us out for matzoh ball soup in the middle of our Saturday evening carousing. He'd leave us again to our night, and then we'd make fun of his Capezio jazz shoes (three pair, "grey for work, black for night, red for dancing"). Kim, one of the most beautiful women I'd ever known, with long thick blonde hair to her waist, giant blue eyes, a smile as wide as a beach, always felt "less than," fought a sligthly thick middle, fought expectations from her father as he paid her to lose weight.

The last time I saw Kim was here in Santa Barbara, as I sidled my way up the West Coast, moving from New Mexico in the early '90s. She'd lived in a pink house (she'd wished for it and it showed up) on Bath Street with her boyfriend. She rode her bike everywhere. Her head and that big blonde hair looked disproportionate to me, on her newly skinny frame, shoulder bones popping out under her tank top. Letters went unanwered, and we faded away, like so many friends do.

The last I'd hear of her was in 2005. She'd gone back to school in New York to become a teacher. She was driving and the car in front of her hit a pole, which fell down, and the lines "tripped" her car and she died instantly.

So here in Santa Barbara, I think of Kim as I find myself in a lovely hotel (The Harbor House) on Bath Street. Lucy and I have taken long monster walks every free moment, and three blocks south, we pass Kimberly Street, which has made me well up every time.

And tonight, thinking of Todd and remembering Kim, I realize that any ghost is internal. In my head. And that's okay, because I'd like to give them a place to rest for a while. I need them more than they need me.

A Letter to the Girl in the Towel

Dear Current Occupant of My Former Residence on Rowena Street,

Busted. You realized that, as you stood at the door, hair in one towel, another wrapped around your LA-too-skinny ass.

I really tried to do this in the most civilized manner possible. I left a nice note. You didn't respond. I went again, with hopes that you would be home this time. You were.

Some advice, seeing as you're young and still living with roommates and clearly a Troglodyte and not a very nice person:

1. When the UPS delivery person brings a package that is NOT addressed to you or to anyone you live with or to anyone you know, DO NOT sign for it.
2. Said package is likely a gift from someone very dear to the intended recipient. It may be a gift, such as a silver box engraved with the intended's name on it for her 40licious birthday.
3. Because it is highly unlikely that your name is also Vanessa McGrady, this box will be of no use to you.
4. The sender will feel crappy that she went to all that trouble and wonder why recipient did not send a thank you note. At best, she will think recipient a thoughtless fool. At worst, she'll go over and over in her head all the possible reasons recipient could be mad at her. Which there have never been. We are talking about a 39-year friendship here.
5. If you must sign for packages that are not yours, at least send a thank you note.
6. When the clearly concerned intended recipient shows up at your door to explain the problem, in the nicest way possible, do not call her "babe." Especially do not call her "babe" repeatedly.
7. When you live in a major metropolitan location, do not answer the door in a towel. There are plenty of crackheads with crowbars and creepy magazine salespeople and pent-up Jehovah's Witnesses waiting for an opportunity like that.
8. You have to deal with your own karma.
9. Save up your pennies, girlie, and get a one-way ticket back to whence you came. Because being the kind of person you are, you will not make it here in LA. Or anywhere.

I hope this helps.

Love,

Vanessa

Seven Years Ago

Seven years ago I woke up to the sound of a plane zooming way too low for comfort. Then a crash. I thought it was Blue Angels, cursed them under my breath, and tried to find sleep again. But couldn't. The phone rang. I answered it -- Linda was still asleep -- and her frightened friend told me to look out the window.

The first plane had just hit. I yelled for Linda to wake up. For the next two hours, we watched all of it. Crumble. People falling. Paper everywhere. We screamed, then cried, and did both, and went back to the window. And turned away. And wandered the ashy streets, as if there were something we could do.

In shock, I walked miles and miles uptown to find my Dad, who was also visiting New York. I didn't know what hotel he was in. I kind of circled around midtown. I couldn't reach my brother all day, but lo, he walked up to Dad's hotel right at the same time I did. The three of us sat on the bed, watching those towers fall and fall and fall and fall and fall and fall. I kept crying. They didn't quite get it, because they didn't SEE. Really SEE it. Happening.

I'll tell you the whole story sometime if you ask, because it is weird on so many many levels. And I am changed. And Linda and I have a different friendship, aside from being college roommates and friends after. I am worse and I am better.

I am worse because before that, I had no real comprehension of how awful people can be to each other. I am better because my heart breaks every day for those people who left for work, perhaps in a fight, perhaps in a French kiss, perhaps not wanting to wake the other, and never came home. I have vowed since then to let everyone I know I love them whenever we say goodbye. Because I want them to know it, if we never see each other again.

By the way, I love you. You all know who you are.

I May Move In With My Mother

Contractor shows up only sporadically these days. Still no water in kitchen, washing the few dishes I use in the bathtub. Dust is everywhere. My dog is pooping dust, I fear. Maybe it's good for her, I don't know.

Today I came home to find:

• kitchen cabinet doors on and painted the exact shade I wanted (good)
• outlets in kitchen and office blown out and not working (bad)
• workers thought enough to plug fridge into bedroom outlet with extension cord (good)
• attempted to put food back in finished cupboard but new door doesn't open right (bad)
• frozen lasagne! (good)
• outlet for microwave and oven is out, I forgot (bad)
• Kite Runner arrived on Netflix (good)
• Ate crackers and tapenade for dinner (bad)
• My Race for the Cure pledges are up to more than $1,200! (AMAZING!)
  
• Nat and SG and Connie call and force me to come out for late-night party in Los Feliz (I love my friends so much)

HOWEVER, the evening was redeemed when Angie turned me on to my new favorite time-waster, CAKE WRECKS, a blog about horrible professional cakes. This kind of blog, ladies and gents, is what makes our nation great.

Um, somebody has to cut into this, eventually. Hello? McFly?

A Dog's Life

This weekend I needed to get out of the house. It's about two weeks into chaos due to my kitchen remodeling, and at this late date, I am still insecure about my choice of countertop. I am closest to deciding on the granite that looks like early-morning television snow (if you are under 35, go ask your parents what this is), but I am still, ugh. I don't know. I had an anxiety dream about it last night.

So I packed up into the car for a vacation designed around LuLuBelle, the beagly mutt. Dog-friendly hotel. Hound-lovin' beaches. Porches for pooches. We drove up the coast to San Luis Obispo.

After looking after Lucy for 12 years or so, she still makes me laugh every day. And there are some things I learned from her in the past 72 hours.

Such as:

1. Act like you are running for mayor, all the time. Expect that everyone will love you. 99 percent of the time, people will. The remaining 1 percent, they will be a little bit afraid. That's not such a bad thing.
2. A nap is always better after a long hard run on the beach.
3. Insist on the long hard run on the beach.
4. Who's the loser? The dog who chases the ball, or the person that keeps throwing it, saying, "get it, get it, get it! Who's getting the ball? It's my ball. My ball." I'd say the latter. Especially when you decline to chase the ball.
5. There is nothing more perfect than a restaurant in Morro Bay that lets the dog hang out on the deck, listening to a folky singer warble kd lang tunes, while the people eat barbecued oysters and drink brown beer, watching the sun go down. Nothing in the world.

So Many Surprises at 40licious

Someone I work with died.

I knew her well enough that we had a mutual admiration for each other as "the other non-corporate wacky redhead."

The first couple months I got there, Charlene McComas was planning a trip to Seattle. I did a brain dump and told her all the things I'd do if I were going home. She brought me back a mug.

But I didn't know her well enough to know that she'd had a recurrence of breast cancer that spread through her body, to her spine, made her nearly blind, made her body simply stop working early last Sunday morning.

Nobody at work talked about her all week. Then tonight, at the "Celebration of Life," we talked about vacations, food, art. I could only really talk about Charlene when I met her siblings and her sweet, Irish ma. We held hands.

I never know where they go when they die. But I'm sure they're somewhere close. They'd fucking better be.

Artifact: Of Writing and Forgetting

When you've worked as a writer, by the time you hit 40licious, you've likely stopped and started about 100 projects. Thirty years ago they would have been written longhand on yellow paper, dissolved or crumpled and tossed. Now they sit, forgotten and perfect as they day they were created, on my external hard drive. I found this by accident and can't for the life of me remember writing it. What was it for? The only thing I can tell you is that it's all true. And that I have no idea what to do with it now, though I kind of like it.

Look at them, their faces pressed up against the glass. Four minutes. They can’t wait four fucking minutes. There’s Frank, woozy old Yalie. That guy hasn’t done a thing in 30 years except tell everyone he went to Yale. And drink. He can still do the puzzle, though, like it was nothing. All downs or all across, he switches every day. That kills me. How the hell does he know that Clytemnestra’s sister was Helen? The longest I’ve ever seen him take was 12 minutes, and that was because he was distracted. The day his son died.

I’m not opening up. I’ve still got two minutes. Two minutes, people, and I still need to program all the songs in the jukebox. So if you don’t like Earth Wind and Fire, put your own goddamn quarters in there. That’s what it’s for. I’ve got plenty of change. I don’t see you. I don’t see you, Laura, pretending to rummage around for something in your purse. A lipstick. A lottery ticket. Papers and that roll-your-own tobacco.

And Doug. Sweet Doug. He’s the last real hippie in New York. For real, those are actually clothes he still has from the 70s. Uh oh, he’s got a brown bag with him again. Yesterday he brought me a sandwich made with hummus. He ground the garbanzos himself. He hasn’t cut his hair since 1982, but they made him, when he went to work for the city, fixing boilers in public schools. That job lasted exactly 72 hours. All that hair, gone, what a waste. Doug, you’re going to have to wait until I line up all the chairs. Like that.

30 seconds. Last wipe down the bar. It’s good, these clean towels, white, bleach. Mmm. In 11 hours, this whole stack will be gray, stinking like beer and pineapple juice and melted ice cubes coated with cheap scotch. Cheap scotch is like Listerine. I will never understand that. At least drink rum. That tastes good.

A big ring of keys and a turn of the lock. Happy hour has officially begun.

They take their regular places, backs to the window, front to me, like waiting puppies. Would it kill you to come in at 5:02 some day? Just for once? To sit at a different chair? To maybe go to Bahama Mama’s across the street? They have happy hour too, you know. No, not these people. They like their bars straight up. Old. Irish. Plain. Booze and wood and a big mirror. I guess you really don’t need much more than that for drinking.

It could be worse. I could have to work Arnie’s shift every night. He’s got the yuppie crowd. Somehow it became cool to hang out in old man dive bars. The men in dark suits, women with frosted blond hair, French nails, leather briefcases. All laughing so hard in their little circle of friends, desperately ignoring each other. The money’s better at night, that’s for sure. But the shit you have to put up with. I helped Arnie on st. Patrick’s day, all these drunk firefighters. An inch of beer on the floor. When I gave the tab to one guy he told me he’d pay it only if I let him feel me up. Fucker. He was drunk enough that I could throw him out before he knew what hit him, they started calling me Terminator after that. I guess it’s all shit, just a different brand.

Laura and Doug and Frank all sit at their regular seats. They face away from the window, maybe they wither up if they get too much sun. Rum and Coke for Laura. Well scotch and splash of water for Frank. Tequila and orange juice for Doug. In a year, it hasn’t changed, except for the time when Laura won a judgment against her landlord. She ordered champagne cocktails for all of them. Frank drank his scotch anyway.

These three are the most regular. There are others, maybe they come in a couple times a week, a couple times a month. Like Brad, the Heat Seeker, we named him. He used to play lead guitar. Now he’s a music tutor for prep school kids. Amstel Light, “to keep his girlish figure,” he says. Sometimes he’ll leave with a woman, but he’ll never come in with anybody. He works it. Makes sure they know that he knows Dick Clark. He’s a little bit orange from tanning.