You Have To Kiss a Lot of Frogs
You Have to Kiss a Lot of Frogs
Laurie Graff
For my mother,
Lonnie
and for my brother,
Steve
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to…
All the family members, friends, peers and people who have inspired and encouraged me. You know who you are!
Margaret Marbury at Red Dress Ink for picking me out of the slush pile and saying “yes,” and the RDI committee in New York, Toronto and the U.K. for agreeing with her.
My editor, Melissa Jeglinski, who is a joy to work with. Who helped me create a road map for Karrie Kline. Who has great ideas, and great taste in restaurants!
The entire RDI team for their wonderful and creative work on all aspects of this book, and special thanks to Zareen Jaffery for her help.
Robert Youdelman, Danielle Forte and Dianne Jude for their terrific work, and Mark Pedowitz for pointing me in that direction.
Nancy Kelton whose class, Writing from Your Personal Experience, started something. The “Los Angeles Writer’s Bloc” and “The WorkShop Theater Company.”
Lisa Forman and Ruth Kreitzman for pushing me to write.
Jill Cohen for the serendipitous act that led to publishing this book!
Jamie Callan for oh so much, for everything!
Nancy Giles for the delicious brainstorms!
Ellen Byron, Steve Keyes and Matt Graff for support from the beginning.
Stewart Zuckerbrod, Tracy Tofte, Sandy Eisenberg, Pam Clifford and Susan Banerjee for always listening to me read. Phyllis Heller for ideas. Mary Gordon Murray for living through the rewrite process with me, and Marlene Kaplan who’s going in the white limo!
And in memory of David Stenstrom who was the first one to say, “Laurie, you should be writing this down.”
CONTENTS
You Have to Kiss a Lot of Frogs
April Fools’ Day
Hell’s Kitchen, NYC 2003
Wake Me When We Get There
Flashback—Easter Week
Brooklyn, NY 1969
Nottingham Forest
Memorial Day Weekend
The Catskills, Upstate NY 1988
David’s Dad
Rosh Hashana
Central Park West, NYC 1988
Whose Party Is This Anyway?
Daylight Saving Time Ends
Grand Central Station, NYC 1989
A Clue in Time Saves Nine
Tisha B’av
Greenwich Village, NYC 1990
Roman Holiday
My Birthday
Gramercy Park, NYC 1991
My Worst Date…Almost
New Year’s Day
Chelsea, NYC 1992
The Clan of the Cab Bears
Passover
Port Authority, NYC 1992
Wherefore Art Thou?
Valentine’s Day
Upper East Side, NYC 1994
That’s All, Folks
An Hour Later
Ten Blocks North, NYC 1994
Joy to the World
Flashback—Last Christmas
Charlottesville, VA 1993
That’s Really All
Present—Fifteen Minutes Later
Back in the Elevator, NYC 1994
The Truth About Men and Astrology
Flag Day
The Upper West Side, NYC 1994
From the Top
Election Day
The Theater District, NYC 1994
Eating out of His Hand
Veterans’ Day
Soho, NYC 1994
Feast Your Eyes
Twenty Minutes Later
Fifth Avenue, NYC 1994
The Lightbulb at the End of the Tunnel
Three Months After That
Midtown, NYC 1995
Cheesecake Delight
Labor Day
The Great Lawn, NYC 1995
Life in the Fast Lane
First Day of Autumn
Los Angeles, CA 1995
The Lion’s Share
Groundhog Day
West L.A., CA 1996
What’s the Big Deal?
Hanukkah
Studio City, CA 1996
The Call of the Wild
Mother’s Day
Beverly Hills, CA 1997
Weight-Listed
First Day of Summer
Los Feliz, CA 1997
Starry, Starry Night
Last Day of Summer
Hollywood, CA 1997
There’s No Place Like Home 250
Two Weeks Later
Hollywood, CA 1997
We Have So Much in Common 262
The Next Night
Hollywood, CA 1997
You Should Be So Lucky
Presidents’ Day
West Hollywood, CA 1998
A Eulogy for Henry
My Fortieth Birthday
West Palm Beach, FL 1998
The Wedding
Father’s Day
Brentwood, CA 1998
How Personal Do You Want to Get?
Halloween
Columbus Avenue, NYC 1998
Putting Back the Pieces
Thanksgiving
West Palm Beach, FL 1998
In Motion
St. Patrick’s Day
Baltimore, MD 1999
Unscrambled
Liberation Day
NYC Underground 1999
I Can Do That
Martin Luther King Day
My Kitchen, NYC 2000
Modem Operandi
Columbus Day Weekend
Henry Hudson Parkway, NY 2001
Shiksa Syndrome
Counting the Omer
West End Avenue, NYC 2002
In Search of the Regular Ultimate Hold
Fourth of July
East Hampton, NY 2003
The Water in the Walls
New Year’s Eve
Brooklyn Heights, NY 2003
About the Author
Coming Next Month
1
You Have to Kiss a Lot of Frogs
April Fools’ Day
Hell’s Kitchen, NYC 2003
I like being a woman. I also like being friends with other women. I don’t, however, like feeling forced into participating in some ritual with an entire flock of them I’ve never even met. It’s like having to wear those dumb party hats, and blow on those even dumber paper things at midnight with a bunch of strangers on New Year’s Eve. You’re thrown in with people you don’t know and don’t want to be with, but you’re all going to share this intimate event with glee. If it kills you. And that’s how I feel at this bridal shower.
Here I am. Tuesday. 6:00 p.m. Right after work, if you actually have a normal job, and I’m standing in a Mexican restaurant in midtown Manhattan, holding a margarita I’m not drinking because I don’t like the salt. I’m stuck wearing gray wool slacks because I came from an audition for a soup commercial, à la Winter in Vermont, and realized way too late that the bag with my dress was at home on my bed, and not with me. The bright fluorescents highlight the brown roots on my red head, and a silver barrette is holding together a few strands of hair, attempting to disguise a bad bang trim. That time-of-the-month bloat is making my size-four pants feel tight, and my hair feels hot around my neck. I can’t help but compare myself to everyone around me. They seem perfectly coiffed, and groomed, and excited to be here. I’m one of fifty overeager women waiting for Marcy to arrive to surprise her because, finally, after twenty-five years of dating, she’s met some guy she’s going to marry. And everyone’s gabbing how they’re sooooooo happy for her. Frankly, I don’t believe it.
The married ones must be remembering their showers. The too many toaster ovens and Crock-Pots, the friction between the maid of honor and the other best friends, and now the contemplation if the marriage has lived up to the fanfare of the shower.
The single ones are standing with plastic smiles, wondering if the person getting married is really better off than they are. That’s me. I wonder, is Marcy really Happy Now? And is that to say she really never was before? After the years of angst and dates and therapy and plans for when The One arrives, when It happens, what does It feel like? What does it feel like to be with Mr. Right. Mr. It. Does it feel great? Does it? Does it feel better than it did before? Does it feel better than I feel standing in the middle of it? Watching. Comparing. Are other people unconditionally happy for this person or is it just me?
“Sssshh, she’s coming.”
“AAHHHHHH!!!”
“QUIET…QUIET…quiet…”
The lights in the restaurant are out, and there’s chatter coming up the stairs to the balcony. Everyone pushes together in the middle to see. To see how Marcy will react. She thinks her mom and aunt are taking her to see The Phantom of the Opera. Aunt Tessie’s visiting from Philadelphia and wants to see it, she’s heard “The Music of the Night” sung so much over the years. Marcy thinks they’re coming to Fajita Fajita for a bite before the show. Little does she expect that tonight, eight weeks before her wedding, years after attending God knows how many showers herself, instead of seeing Phantom, she would see every important female she knows tell her, “I’m so happy for you. I told you it would happen. It happens for everybody. It just has to be your time.”
“Watch it, Marcy,” I hear a gravelly voice say. “You stepped on my toe.”
“Oops. Sorry, Mom.”
“I can’t see,” says the other one. Obviously Tessie. “Go ahead of me, Marcy, dear. It’s dark.”
“SURPRISE!”
The lights snap on, and Marcy sees every woman she’s ever known in her entire life before her—wide-eyed, drunk from waiting and wishing her well in her new life. Marcy is heroic, because Martin has found her. Marcy is elevated to another level, because Martin has picked her. Marcy is thrown to the other side. The side that is validated. She’s no longer going to be Single. It’s happened. It’s happening now. And as a result, Marcy can’t move.
I lift my five-foot-one-inch frame onto my toes so I can get a better look. Marcy’s leaning against the banister of the balcony. She turns to face us. Her bright auburn hair falls back, and her smile spreads so far across her face it’s inside her ears. She looks like she may faint. The banister is holding her up for dear life.
Marcy’s face is frozen in terror. No. Not terror. Happiness. Terrorized happiness. Her small body’s wobbling. Will all this happiness make her keel over?
“Ehhhhhhhh!” Marcy cries out. Her grotesque smile opens wider and wider, and her eyes bulge out. “Ehhhhhhhh!”
We are happy for Marcy. We are. But now we are worried. Our smiles are plastered to our faces as we watch her meld into the banister.
“You’re getting maaarried!!!” a cousin calls out. Her red nails wave at Marcy, and her gold-and-diamond rings catch the glimmer of the light shining above the picture of a bullfight that’s painted on red velvet.
“Look at all your guests!” shouts her sister-in-law to be.
“Everyone sit!” says her maid of honor, who’d been spending the last few minutes at the banister trying to catch Marcy if she were to fall.
Marcy is walked over to a table by her mother and aunt Tessie, each holding half of her up. They smile at everyone, as if they were in a procession. Marcy remains in shock, until she passes the pile of one hundred beautifully wrapped presents that should cover almost every item on her registry. She is suddenly composed.
“Let’s eat!” announces Marcy, taking her seat in the center.
We watch a moment. Marcy has caught her breath, and so we catch ours. We sit down to eat the guacamole. I take a seat near the gifts. I want to get a good look at what I’m missing.
Seven weeks later I wake up in the middle of the night. I have just turned forty-five and no Martin came and saved me from it. I am still in my apartment, or what I hope is still my apartment. The notice to buy me out of my rent-stabilized lease arrived the day before my birthday. My unemployment claim expired, and my acting prospects quietly disappeared in my forty-fourth year, just to make my forty-fifth as frightening as possible. I never bought that “Forty” was the “NewThirty,” and feel petrified to find out that “Fifty” is the “New Forty.” I am currently boyfriendless and in no shape to date.
Perhaps I should kill myself.
This seems like an interesting idea. I can kill myself tonight and just slip away. What am I supposed to do tomorrow anyway? Gynecologist appointment, gym, audition for a vacuum cleaner commercial… Now might be a good time. I have to slip away one day anyway. At least I’d have the say as to when and how.
I’d no longer have to worry about money. That would be a relief. I wouldn’t be afraid I’d get raped running the reservoir, hit by a car or blown up by a terrorist. I wouldn’t have to keep up with fashion trends, do laundry or search for the perfect haircut. I’d never have to overhear another ridiculous cell phone conversation on the bus, or waste my time running ridiculous errands. I wouldn’t have to wait on hold for a representative to come on the line while simultaneously waiting for AOL to get me online, only to waste more time deleting junk e-mail when I finally got there. Never again would I have to press one for more options, or watch Dubya, looking oh so presidential in jeans and cowboy boots, give another inspiring speech recited off a TelePrompTer. I’d never have to hang around and watch people I love grow sick and die, or witness my young face and body turn old. I’d never get some awful disease, shrivel up in the hospital, and lose my dignity while chin hairs grew unruly and unattended. I wouldn’t have to look for a new agent, and I could finally stop dating.
Good idea. Now. How?
Instantly every idea seems awful. No guns. No razors. No noose and no ovens. The only possibility would be pills, and who am I kidding? I don’t have a prescription and I’m not going to get one, because I’m never going to do this. I don’t want to die. I want to get a great acting job, and fall in love, and get married. I want to honeymoon in Italy, and buy a huge co-op on Central Park West. I want to go to Zabar’s, and eat cherry cheese strudel.
With the exception of the cherry cheese strudel, dying seems easier to accomplish. But if I screwed up, which I would because I don’t want to do it, it would only be interpreted as a call for help. Then I’d have to use the balance of my medical insurance to go to some kind of rehab and therapy, and for sure I would lose my apartment. By the time I got back rents would be even more expensive, even more of the good guys would be taken, and everyone would point at me as the one who tried to off herself. It would probably go on my permanent record. No. It’s easier to take two Tylenol, warm up some hot milk, read a chapter of Heartburn and a few tarot cards until I fall back to sleep.
Forget that. I cannot sleep. I am obsessed. Forty and single. My God, wait, I’m forty-five and single! How did this happen? Oh, so what if I am forty-five and single. So was my mother when she married Henry. No, Millie was just forty. And she was Divorced With Child Single, not Never Been Down That Aisle Single. Still, how much worse is it than when I was thirty and single? Or thirty-five and single? Or fort— Oh… Ohh…
Much worse. Much, much worse.
Decades of people’s good-intentioned sayings flash before me.
“It only takes one.”
“There’s lots of other fish in the sea.”
“When it’s right, you know.”
“You’re next.”
“Every pot has a cover.”
“When it’s your time, it will just happen.”
“Let go and it will come to you.”
“You never know what a day brings.”
“What’s yours is still out there.”
“Trust in the universe. All unfolds according to plan.”
Decades of dates flash before me. I think about those men. What were their names? Oh yeah, I remember…and then there was that completely idiotic…and, OH!!, that was truly…
Hmmm… I can think about that. Those stories. Count them like sheep. Instead of feeling mortified, maybe I can laugh. Embrace it. Rejoice. This is it. This is my life!
Well, I don’t have to go that far, but it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to simply accept it as mine. I’m still here. I’m not dead and I can still date. And maybe it’s really not so horrific. Maybe it’s not such a big deal. Maybe you just have to kiss a lot of frogs.
2
Wake Me When We Get There
Flashback—Easter Week
Brooklyn, NY 1969
My mother took me to my favorite store, The Little Princess, on Queens Boulevard to buy the dress. It was dark-blue velvet with an empire waist, and a white satin ribbon that tied under the breasts, though I didn’t have any yet. I wore it when she married Henry.
It was a nice wedding. I was the flower girl. I walked between the folding chairs, and threw rose petals on the hardwood floors of Rabbi Bernstein’s study. Millie, my mother, thought that was a goyishe thing to do, but I had insisted since they always did it that way on TV. The rabbi forgot to pour the wine into the glass, and Henry pretended to drink it during the prayers so as not to hurt his feelings. My mother laughed so hard she shook, and my grandma Rose thought she was crying.
“Now she’s finally taken care of,” my grandma told me when she tucked me into bed that night. I got to stay with my grandma while my mother and Henry went to Miami for their honeymoon. I was sleeping in Grandpa Lou’s bed. My grandparents had had single beds throughout their marriage. Grandpa Lou died three years ago. I was eight. The year before he died my mother brought me to Brooklyn for my Easter vacation to learn how to swim at the local YMCA. It was a special program that guaranteed that in just five days every child would learn how to swim. Faithfully every morning, Grandpa Lou and I walked what felt like miles to the Y. He waited in the lobby while I took my swimming lesson. The instructors called me Blue Eyes and told me I had the prettiest bathing suits. I wore a different one each day. But I hardly got them wet. I only sat on the ledge of the pool like a beauty queen or waded in the shallow end. I didn’t want to go in the water. It was cold. I was scared. After every lesson I would see Grandpa Lou and cry. He didn’t want me to go back. He and Grandma Rose had a big argument about it.
“Gants gut meshuggeh with the swimming lessons,” I heard him tell Grandma Rose in the kitchen. “She’s going to get pneumonia.”
“Sha! The kinder will hear.” Grandma Rose talked in a loud hushed voice. She talked in English and Yiddish. “Millie wants her to learn how to swim,” said my grandmother.
I didn’t want to stop going. I just wanted to stop being scared, and I didn’t know how to do that. So every day we went. Every day I cried. Every day they fought.
At the end of the week my grandmother came down with hives, and my mother came to the final class to see my progress. Every kid swam the length of the pool except me. With much coaxing I was able to do a ball float. I didn’t learn how to swim until Henry taught me.
I lay in Grandpa Lou’s bed and thought about how he would come in the locker room after each lesson. “Cover up,” he said, while he took off his coat and put it over my bathing suit. I could tell Grandma Rose was thinking about him, too, as she tucked me in.
“Are you in tight, mamala?” she asked. She brushed a few wisps of hair off my face and stuck them behind my ear. “You’ll see, Karrie, one day you’ll be a bride. You’ll marry a rich man. He’ll buy you a big diamond ring, and he’ll take care of you. And you’ll do it right the first time. Not like your mother. Okay. That’s finished. Henry’s a good man. A mensch. Not like your father, that clown.”
She wasn’t joking. My real father had run off to join the circus when I was four. At least that’s what I thought. For a few years we received postcards from around the country saying, “Hi, Cookie! What’s doin’ tips and all? The circus has come to town. Love, Mel.”
My mother said he wasn’t really at the circus, he just wrote that. And I wasn’t sure if writing to “Cookie” meant writing to me or my mom. But I always pictured him eating fire and jumping through hoops. Traveling across the country, and putting up circus tents. After a while the cards stopped, and I forgot about him.
Then about a year after the swimming lessons, my mom told me one night that Maggie McGraw from the apartment upstairs would be watching me because she had to pay a shiva call. She told me that Henry Eisenberg’s wife had died. I knew Henry Eisenberg from the neighborhood and he was always nice to me. He lived in the apartment building around the corner.
My mother went to his building that night and took the elevator to the sixth floor. When she got off the elevator she saw an open door. She looked at the name on the door and walked in. Millie said it was raining and she left her wet umbrella in the hall.
My mother went in the living room and sat down. A lit memorial candle burned on the end table. The only person there was an old man. He was sitting on a cardboard box that was supposed to look like a wood crate. That’s what people sat on when they had to sit shiva.
“Where is everybody?” Millie asked. “Where’s Henry?”
“Who’s Henry?” the old man asked. He had an Eastern European accent.
“Who are you?” asked Millie.
“I’m Bernard Aisenberg. I just lost my wife. Who are you?”
“I’m Millie Klein. I was looking for Henry Eisenberg. He just lost his wife.”
Bernard looked at my mother. Then he looked disappointed.
“Does this mean you’re not staying?”
My mother collected her wet umbrella and went across the hall to pay the right shiva call. Apparently her story won a piece of Henry’s heart. It happened slowly, but three years later they wed.
“You’re a whole family now. A mother. A father. You have a stepbrother, Lenny. He’s all grown up and away at college, but still…” said Grandma Rose as she slipped into the bed next to mine. “Better at that age he’s away. The long hair and who knows what else.”
She took out her teeth at night. It made her whole face sag, and her voice sound funny. Grandma Rose looked much, much older. I used to be scared when I was little, but now I was used to it.
“You have a brand-new apartment with your own bedroom,” she said, turning off the night-light. The room was quiet. I heard her breathing and rearranging her blankets. “You have a normal life now. It’s what I always wanted for your mother, and what I want for you.”
A light from the street shone in through the cracks of the venetian blinds. I heard the sound of a car driving by. Brooklyn seemed different to me than Queens. Older. They were both okay, but nothing like Manhattan.
Grandma Rose called Manhattan New York. My mother and I called it The City. I think that had something to do with being from Brooklyn or Queens, but I wasn’t sure. Grandma Rose said when my mother and Henry got married, she would take me to New York to see Radio City and the Rockettes.
“You’ll have to wear sunglasses,” she had told me, “because there are so many bright lights in Radio City it hurts your eyes. Chandeliers there. And colored lights on the stage. Everything glistens. And all the girls are dancing, and wearing sequins, and everybody applauds when they kick their legs in the air. It’s a whole line of girls, but when they kick it goes up like one leg.”
We would be going tomorrow. Tomorrow. I couldn’t wait. I would watch everything the girls did, because when I grew up I would be a Rockette and live in The City.
“A nice normal life for all my girls,” Grandma Rose repeated. I heard her reach for a tissue and blow her nose. “Wouldn’t you like that?”
I didn’t want to lie, and I didn’t want to tell her I was going to be a Rockette, so I didn’t say anything.
“Are you sleeping mamala? She must be asleep. Gai shlofn,” I heard her say, and in the half-lit dark saw her put the tissue under her pillow.
I felt private and secretive as I drifted off to sleep, thinking of everything but a normal life in Queens.
3
Nottingham Forest
Memorial Day Weekend
The Catskills, Upstate NY 1988
“I bought extra just for you,” said Henry, taking a slab of lox and tucking it into an onion-and-garlic bagel. “You know you can have another one. You’re thin. You can afford it.”