the pieces of my life

Day 23 of Nanowrimo (challenge: use “Does a person make people?”):

How is it some things I remember in such vivid detail, yet others fade away. And it’s always the minor details I remember, the little facts that are so unimportant. I remember my room perfectly: it was a pantheon to gender neutrality. Both my parents were determined that I not be biased by a plethora of pink and dolls and frou frou. I had metal brackets in the walls and plain wooden boards as shelves that were painted green. My walls were a light blue with a thick yellow stripe going around the top of the entire room. Those shelves were filled with Lincoln Logs, Legos, cars and trucks. I always wonder if my girliness today—my love of high heels and pretty lingerie and, yes, the color pink—is just a natural inevitability, a genetic fact, or a reaction to my upbringing. Boy do I remember coveting that massive Barbie head that you could put makeup on and style the hair. Barbie, it goes without saying, was verboten in our house.

The shelves were lined with books—all my favorites, including Amelia Bedelia, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, and Nate the Great. But I also held, what I later called, “adoption armory,” the books that my parents and I would turn to again and again: Adoption Is Forever; I Don’t Have Your Eyes; Being Adopted; The Chosen Baby; Is That Your Sister: A True Story of Adoption.

So much of my childhood is lost to the ether, memories I just can’t hold on to that have just slipped through. But one, just one, conversation has stayed with me all those years. I think it was the one where I began to piece it all together, when all the talk of adoption suddenly began to make sense.

Jocelyn would sometimes come and linger over my bookshelf, running her fingers along the titles. She was jealous because I had more books than she did. She liked for my parents to read her my books and she’d pretend she was adopted, too. I remember this one day when she was very young—probably four, so I was five—she quizzed me on the facts of life.

“Does everyone have a mommy?” she asked me.

“I dunno,” I replied. “I guess so.” For some reason this conversation is tied in my mind to the Smurfs, so I’m guessing that while we were talking, I was coloring in a Smurfs coloring book. Or maybe I had a Smurfs doll? I can’t remember. I just remember the Smurfs figuring prominently in this memory. I know I was especially—embarrassingly—fond of Smurfette.

“What about a daddy? Does everyone have a daddy?”

“Yeah, I think everyone has a daddy.”

“Just one daddy?”

“Yeah, just one daddy.”

I’m imagining here that I was coloring the Smurfette pink. Even though they were all blue, and even though my mother did her best in insure it would not be the case, even at the ripe old age of five, I had a fondness for the pastel palette.

Jocelyn thought for a moment before asking, “But you have two daddies?”

I shook my head. “No. Just one daddy.” I colored some more and answered, probably without thought, “Or maybe two. I dunno.”

“So, does a person make people?”

This was more familiar territory. This was something I understood. “No,” I told her. “Two people make people.”

“How does that happen?”

“A special naked hug.”

Jocelyn contemplated this. “A hug? If I hug someone we can have a baby?”

“No,” I corrected. “Mom said it’s a special naked hug between and man and a woman and that they both have to be grown-ups.”

“So Mommy and Daddy had a naked hug and I was born.”

“Right.”

“But they didn’t naked hug for you,” she said.

Put in such plain terms, it kind of hit me. I sat up from my coloring or whatever it was I was doing to think. “No,” I said. “They didn’t naked hug for me.”

Jocelyn then asked the question that has rooted itself into my self-conscious, that has both been completely inconsequential and completely overwhelmed my every action in life: “Then who did?”

Day 19 of Nanowrimo (challenge: use “There’s no way I’m going to see a doctor about that”):

“Trenton, this is my mom,” I said coldly. I prayed my mom would act cool and not like a gushing idiot fan.

I’m not sure why I was worried. There was really no doubt. My mom turned into a gushing idiot fan. “Oh, my Trenton Locke! What an honor to meet you. I’m such a fan of our work. I loved you in Marlowe’s England and thought your were divine in Jack in Love.” She went rifling through her purse. “I know I’ve got a camera in here somewhere. Can I get a picture with you?”

“For Lisa’s mother?” Trenton said dramatically. “Anything!”

“God, Mom,” I muttered, half under my breath at her. “Is this really necessary?”

“Lisa, I know this is your everyday life, but this is exciting for me!” She finally snagged her camera and said, “Got it!” She handed it to me. “Do you mind?”

Trenton put his arm around her and pulled her close. My mom grinned like a silly sorority girl as I snapped the picture.

“Take a few, just in case,” my mom said.

“Mom, it’s digital. I can tell I got it.”

“Just humor her, luv,” Trenton said.

I took a few more pictures before handing the camera back to my mom. Trenton turned to her, took her hand, and brought it to his mouth. “A pleasure meeting you, Mrs. Friedman.”

My mother had the nerve to blush. “Oh, it’s Helen!” she said.

“Helen, then.” He kissed her hand and then to me said, “I’ll see you on set.”

As he walked away I hissed to my mom, “Do you have any idea what kind of sleaze he is? Don’t you read People or Us?”

“Actually, I don’t.”

“What about page two of the Herald? Even that has chronicled his lecherous ways.”

“I’m sure they exaggerate,” she said. “Anything to sell a paper, you know!”

“Mom, he shtuped the nanny. No ways around it. While the kid was home!”

“Oh please. And exactly what is your ‘reliable’ source? People? The National Enquirer?”

There was no point in telling my mom that my source was actually me. To my mom, the film world was this remote thing on TV and the actors and actresses these gods who deigned to entertain her. For me, the actors and actresses were the same neurotic, fucked-up people I hung out with on a daily basis. I actually knew for a fact exactly what happened between Trenton and the nanny because I was right there when his wife, well now ex, put everything together.

Cincinnati was an actress as well and she was actually working on one of Gary’s blow-‘em up films when it all came apart. I was going over her wardrobe in her trailer, taking the burnt up outfits and replacing them with ones that were still pristine.

She changed into the new outfit, but she was rubbing her thighs together uncomfortably.

“Is the material bothering you?” I asked. “Perhaps I could get the lining changed.” The pants had to be a special inflammable cloth that wouldn’t easily ignite. They were charred and blackened at the end, but not for real. Gary didn’t really set his actresses on fire, no matter how much they annoyed him.

“No, no,” she said. “Arg! I can’t help myself!” She began scratching herself between her legs.

“Um, would you like me to come back later?” I asked. Cincinnati wasn’t considered the most refined woman. Publicists were forever trying to get her to lay off the drinking or attend some etiquette classes, but her trashy roots kept resurfacing.

“I swear to God—” she yelped. “What did that motherfucker give me!”

I began to piece it all together. “Uh, would you like me to get the crew medic in here? Or find you a doctor?”

“There’s no way I’m going to see a doctor about this,” she said. “And if you tell one soul, I’ll make sure you never work again.”

An empty threat if ever there was one. When you’re sleeping with the director, there’s little you can’t do. But Cincinnati didn’t know about me and Gary. Besides, I saw no need to antagonize her.

It was only hours later when all hell broke loose. The nanny brought the kids to the set. Only she was walking a little oddly.

“What’s wrong with you?” Cincinnati asked the nanny suspiciously.

The nanny blushed. “I don’t know, really. I think I just have an evil yeast infection.”

For someone the press had pegged as proof that natural selection is a myth, she put two and two together pretty damn fast. “London, Berlin, you get inside this trailer right now!” she yelled to her kids as the first thing she found, which happened to be a fire extinguisher, went flying through the air toward the nanny’s head.

One arrest, two days delay of shooting, and a restraining order later, Cincinnati was back onset. And Trenton was out on his ass.

Day 18 of Nanowrimo (challenge: use “it was the day my heart broke into a thousand pieces and I looked over the shattered remains, stunned….”)

My mom’s day on the set was kind of boring. We had been filming the scene on the beach right at the beginning of the film. The character Sam, played by Trenton, is just walking beside the surf. It’s an MOS scene (meaning without sound), with only ambiance recorded. To get the timing right, a production assistant read the voice over. Over and over and over again.

By the end of the day, I think my mom was ready to commit hari-kari. We headed to the restaurant to wait for my dad and Jocelyn.

“Oh dear Lord, is it always so tedious?” People not in the film business are always surprised at just how much work is involved in making a film. Every time I see one of those “behind the scene” videos online or as filler on Bravo, I roll my eyes. They capture everyone laughing and teasing each other and just having a jolly good time as they make their wonderful movie. In reality it’s shot after shot of the same scene, with tons of waiting around as the director of photography orders a light moved by a fraction of an inch, as measurements are taken for focus, as film needs to be changed or sound needs to be recorded or there’s a boom in the shot or the actor flubbed the line or….

“Well, my work keeps me pretty busy so I don’t find it tedious.”

My mom eyed the basket of bread of the table. I know how desperately she wanted it but lately she’d been on a low-carb diet. I picked up a piece and began gnawing on it.

My mother sighed. “That was rude of me. I didn’t mean to imply your work isn’t interesting. I actually find it all rather fascinating.”

“No offense taken,” I said as took another bite of a delicious Italian roll.

My mother was practically salivating at it. She and Jocelyn shared the tendency toward roundness if they weren’t careful. I had no such problems.

“I just think if I heard that guy intoning that line in such a dead pan one more time…”

“You mean,” I teased, “’She was gone. Just like that she was gone. Lying there in that bed, she looked like she was just sleeping, but her hand slipped from mine, never to return.’”

My mother joined in with me and we recited together, “’It was the day my heart broke into a thousand pieces and I looked over the shattered remains, stunned….’”

Mom laughed. “Not exactly Oscar-winning writing, is it?”

“You never know. ‘I figure life’s a gift and I don’t intend on wasting it. You don’t know what hand you’re gonna get dealt next. You learn to take life as it comes at you… to make each day count.’”

“What’s that from?”

“From Oscar-winning Titanic, a masterpiece of stunning dialogue, if ever there was one.”

Day 17 of Nanowrimo (challenge: use “”Ok, ok, don’t get upset. It’s just a little broken.”):

“Jon’s kisses are tiny, like little pecks. But Danny’s kisses… well, they’re the kisses you feel down in your toes.”

“Ah, the infamous toe kiss. I seem to recall having one or two of those myself. Toe kisses are worth breaking up over.”

“Believe me, I would have, if Danny would have deigned to date me. But Danny’s not really the dating type. So I just conveniently forgot about the whole thing and stuck with Jon.”

“Until Jon was outside the window and heard everything you had to say,” I added helpfully. I spread the applesauce in a thin layer and waited a moment until Delores brought over a small plastic tub of sour cream. I think layered the sour cream on top of the applesauce, took my fork, and cut off a huge bite. I had to maneuver with my mouth to get it all in.

“Exactly!! So you can see how this might have, sort of, kind of created a little bit of a mess for me. Jon won’t even let me explain. He’s just refused to speak with me since that morning.”

I looked at my plate trying to figure out what to eat next. I had to have the perfect ratio of potato pancake to corned beef sandwich to coleslaw.

“Oh God, you’re doing it again,” Jocelyn said, a disgusted look on her face.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, taking a nibble from my sandwich before spooning up a mound of coleslaw.

“That thing. That thing you do with the food. Why can’t you just eat like a normal person? You eat the sandwich. Lots of bites of the sandwich. Take a break. Then have some coleslaw. Or the potato pancake. It doesn’t have to all be in an nice neat one-two-three order.”

“Easy for you say,” I mumbled as I stuffed a piece of potato pancake in my mouth, one with the perfect proportion of applesauce to sour cream. “If I don’t eat it just right, this table will burst into flames and we’ll die a terrible and cruel death and it’ll all be my fault.”

Jocelyn stared at me a moment. “Have you thought of having the OCD medicated?”

“It’s not OCD,” I said, as I moved on to the slaw. “And it’s how I make earn my livelihood.”

Slurping her soup, Jocelyn said, “Listen. It’s my life that’s broken.” Her voice went up a couple of octaves and took on the quivering tone it always did when she was about to break into tears. “Fix it!!”

“Ok, ok,” I said, eyeing the pickles in the bucket. How should I fit them into this delicate dinner arrangement? “Don’t get upset. It’s just a little broken. We can make this all better.”

“How?” Jocelyn asked.

“Well, for starters, tell me do you actually want to get back with Jon?”

“We are so the perfect couple,” she told me.

“Yes, but that didn’t answer my question.”

She sighed and picked at her matzoh ball with her spoon. “Well, as I said, he does kind of peck with his kisses.”

“So then go for Danny.”

“Danny is totally unattainable.”

“Nobody is totally unattainable. After all, you attained him once.”

Day 16 of Nanowrimo (challenge: use “”We began the day in the sunflower room”):

Jocelyn, though, was always temperamental. Hers was a life filled with daily dramas. She’d storm in and flounce upon the couch, regaling me with stories from school in which she was always the wronged heroine. I’m sure her traumas were real, but they were always out of proportion to the actual mishaps. I remember the tale of one disastrous slumber party her junior year of high school for which I’m sure I never got the true story. I was home during my freshman year at Tulane, and the two of us were sitting at Wolfie’s at 21st and Collins at a table in the back at 2 a.m. I was gnawing on an oversized pickle and picking at a pepper.

We had just left Heather Cohen’s Hanukkah party and I was getting the story of why she and Jon Blisker weren’t on speaking terms anymore.

“So Jennifer Pollock had her annual start of school slumber party. I don’t know why I even went—it’s been lame for years. Her mother treats us like we’re still at North Beach Elementary. You know, we began the day with chocolate chip cookies in the sunflower room.”

I waved my pickle in a bad Groucho imitation and attempted to mimic his voice as I said, “They got a sunflower room? Do you like sunflowers?”

Jocelyn looked at me like I was crazy. “What are you doing?”

I shook my pickle up and down. “You’re supposed to say ‘I adore them. How did you know’? Although it was supposed to be a gardenia.”

“What are you talking you about?” Jocelyn looked exasperated. I had just completed an elective in Jewish American Humor in Film and for it had written a paper entitled To Jew or Not to Jew: Comedy of the Marx Brothers. Got an A minus on it. I was pretty pleased and that was the point I began to complete an actual career in filmmaking.

“It’s from A Day at the Races. You’re supposed to say, ‘I adore them. How did you know?’ and I—as Dr. Hackenbush—would reply ‘I didn’t, so I got you forget-me-nots. One whiff of this and you’ll forget everything.’”

Jocelyn stared at me for about five beats before saying, “Am I telling a story here or not?”

“Yes, yes,” I said contrite, taking a bite of my pickle to show I had been sufficiently chastened. “You were in the sunflower room. What is up with that? A grown woman with a sunflower room?”

“Mrs. Pollock names all of her rooms based on the motif in which she’s decorated them. She thinks it sounds more sophisticated to say ‘the sunflower room’ as opposed to the sun room. The living room is the beach room. The dining room is the Provence room and the eat-in part of the kitchen is the Tuscany room.”

“Oh dear God,” I said.

Day 15 of Nanowrimo (challenge: use the phrase “It was the first time I have met someone who could oscillate so quickly between insecurity and magalomania….”):

“So,” Mazo asked me, “what exactly is wrong?”
The label began to come off in one long peel. I was wondering if I could get the whole thing. “What makes you think something’s wrong?”
After another puff on the cigarette, he said, “Bukowski. You only quote Bukowski when something’s wrong. If you want to keep it to yourself, then don’t quote Bukowski around someone who knows all his work.”

I smiled. “’He made some mistakes but when He created you lying in bed
He came all over His Blessed Universe.’”

“I’d like to think so.” He picked up a glass of amber liquid—a tequila on the rocks.

“How can you drink that stuff?”

“I like it. But what I really like is to pretend its scotch. Now that’s something I can’t stomach.” He took another slug. “So now that you’ve unsuccessfully changed the subject…”

I picked up the Red Stripe and brought to my mouth, but put it down without taking a swallow. “How do you know who you are?”

“Are you looking for a little Descartes here?”

“No.” This time I did take a swallow of the beer. “I mean what makes you you?”

“Me. I make me me.”

I drank some more.

Mazo looked at me curiously. “Who do you think you are?”

“That’s just it. I have no fucking idea. I mean, I know who I am. I’m Lisa Friedman, 31 years old, script supervisor extraordinaire. I am the daughter of Helen and Robert Friedman, sister to Jocelyn Friedman. Girlfriend of Gary Smerling. I have fabulous tits, I’m the most organized person I ever met, and if you gave me enough Post-It notes and an Excel spreadsheet, I’m could rule the world with finesse.”

Mazo laughed. “I have never met someone who could oscillate so quickly between insecurity and magalomania like you do.”

“You mean megalomania,” I pointed out.

“No. I mean magalomania. Megalomania is for small potato folks, like Napoleon. You take it to the next magnitude. Hence magalomania.”

“Very fucking clever,” I said. “Did you know that there’s an actual syndrome called Adopted Child’s Syndrome? People with it have issues with authority, an excessive fantasy life, difficulty learning. They are often pathological liars or steal. Running away from home, fire setting, and acting out, often sexually, are also symptoms.”

Thanks to Zippy, Jennifer, and MTB for the Nanowrimo words suggestions (Zippy, I’m still working on Gordon Lightfoot). Now how about the rest of you? According to my logs, there are at least 500 of you looking at my blog each week. 500 words would be one percent of my novel! Toss me some words/ideas/phrases and I’ll work them in. I have a plot now, which makes this more fun. Help me Nano, people!