Fiction Ruined My Family (31 page)

 

 

 

 

THE MARRIAGE ENDED. Maybe because we never should have gotten married. We were nothing alike. The way I look at it, though, is that I might never have become a mother if we hadn't been together. If I don't make any mistakes, I don't live, essentially. I miss out. The things that are wrong with me, the things I struggle with, are the things that define me. I have not changed in the way that I relate to struggle more than I do ease. This is, I suppose, my beef with sunshine. With Los Angeles. Was he right to quiver when he heard that there was a time when I owned one knife, a single spoon and two plates—at age thirty? Did he think that I would prefer to spend the day writing when I had a babysitter, over going out to lunch and a movie with him? Did he feel I loved to poke around on my computer, jotting down ideas and working on plays, more than I loved him? Maybe he did. Did he feel the only person for whom I would happily sacrifice a day of working was my son? I don't know. I do know that I now get to try to figure out how to be a writer and a parent. I get to try to figure out how to put my child before writing.

I have to let my father read this book and it is terrifying to think that I will hurt him with it. Am I doing exactly what he claims Fitzgerald did to Zelda and what I suggest he did with Mom, sacrificing him for my writing? Am I saying he put writing before all of us? All my father has done has been to show me wild enthusiasm and encouragement as a writer. I would never want to hurt him. I admire his writing and know I am not half the thinker or writer he is. His support of my writing was never about the writing for me. It was the love from my dad. And therefore, I have to agree with Eleanor and Katharine and Julia that I don't care all that much about his writing. I want him to be my dad.

WRITING IS A CHOICE. Does this make it all worse, the knowledge that you have other options, or does this make it better? A lot of days I've gotten to eat lunch at home and this is a really big perk in my opinion. When you're good and ready to take a break, you stroll into your kitchen and open the refrigerator door and poke around leisurely. “What am I in the mood for?” This is not a feeling people in offices get to have much. What's fast? What's cheap? What's on the way to the pharmacy where I'm picking up my antidepressants? This is how most people have lunch. To have lunch at home is a huge luxury. To cook a little something, prepare a sandwich in your own time, with just the right amount of tomatoes and a little of that basil one of your friends brought over the night before. And then grill it. To enjoy a little chocolate ice cream in a bowl in front of the newspaper before you go back to work. This is a nice way to live. To hang around bowls of chocolate ice cream and ideas all day can be worth it. It is a way that some people will never understand. So it seems writing is what Zelda said it was in the therapy session:

“Something may be a sort of fulfillment of yourself, and it may not be great to other people, but it is just as essential to yourself as if it is a great masterpiece.”

My days so far as a small-time writer have been just that, essential to me as if they are a great masterpiece.

Did I just quote Zelda Fitzgerald?

Thank you to the following people, who fall into three categories: terrific readers, terrific friends/family, people who have ignored the loud voice of reason and taken a gamble on me: Hollywood Hudson, Caroline and Jim Hays, Henry Tenney and his terribly petite publicists, Louisa and Baird Tenney, David McCormick, Ira Glass, Julie Snyder, Sarah Koenig, Geoff Kloske, Bell Chevigny, Alexander Chee, Rosanna Bruno, Sophia Ramos, Giana Catherine Allen, Linda Labella, Tracy Martin, Phantom Theater, Lois Tryk and Kurt Bier, Tammi Cubilette, Jenna Hornstock, Leah Allen and Mike O'Neil, David Rosenthal, Orlagh Cassidy and Nico Sidoti, Anne Magruder, Sara Goodman and Mott Hupfel, all the people who've ever lent me money or let me write in their house, the town of Warren, Vermont, especially Jane and Peter Schneider, Steve Badanes and Dave Sellers, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.