Happily Ali After (6 page)

YOU WERE PUT ON THIS EARTH TO ACHIEVE YOUR
GREATEST SELF, TO LIVE OUT YOUR PURPOSE, AND
DO IT COURAGEOUSLY.

—
STEVE MARABOLI

Y
ou may have a point, Steve, but so much depends on how one defines her greatest self, no? Like, does Bernie Madoff believe he has achieved his greatest self? Sometimes I think I’m striving to achieve my greatest self, but maybe I’ve hit the ceiling—maybe my greatest self is mediocre, at best?
And that’s not just an excuse to get into bed with a box of Mallomars.

My grandmother used to say, “Well, she did the best with what she was given.” That seems a little less daunting to me. I wonder if I have done the best with what I was given. Let’s put the physical aside (cellulite doesn’t bother me and nobody believes I missed my calling as a ballerina); have I maximized all that is me? And if not, can I fit it in at this stage of the game and still get nine hours of sleep a night?

The idea of living one’s life with purpose intrigues me. I’ve wanted to be an entertainer (middle child, divorce, overweight teen) since birth. I know, little Tommy wanted to walk on the moon and Mary wanted to be president, but I yearned for nothing more than a rickety stage, a torn curtain, and a popcorn machine. In college all my friends scrambled for majors and a purpose beyond being able to guzzle a gallon of tequila upside down on the bar. I was a drama major, without hesitation. My senior year, as everyone snorted NoDoz and went through cases of Visine writing their theses, I starred in Chekhov’s
The Seagull
. I did miss out on writing a hundred-page dissertation on the history of poison ivy and its effect on socialism . . . but I received standing ovations, which, for me, was far more satisfying. But I can’t say, years later, that auditioning to be the thankless mom character in mindless sitcoms is living out my true purpose.

So what is my real purpose? Ultimately, it’s to populate the planet. It is my duty to beget offspring and keep the human race alive. Otherwise, animals will dominate the universe; can you imagine rats ruling Wall Street and snakes Hollywood? But that’s too scientific.

There is the more spiritual purpose. How do I give back, like Lauren Bush with those FEED bags? What is my mission? Well, I’m a children’s and animal rights advocate. As hard as I work to abolish puppy mills and fight for free health care for all children, however, I’m not sure that’s my full purpose. I’m not a policy-wonk purist. And my husband won’t let me have more than three dogs.

I do fantasize about becoming a Middle East peacemaker, but don’t know the difference between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. So that’s out. In truth, I believe my purpose is to entertain. Not Tony Bennett or Celine Dion type of entertaining to sell out shows in Vegas so much as a kids’ birthday party artist. I’m in my wheelhouse when I can pull a rubber chicken out of my ass.

I think to even endeavor to be a performer takes a tremendous amount of courage. Nobody goes into the entertainment industry shyly and with trepidation. You have to be either stunningly gorgeous with an ego the size of Hawaii, or so damaged that you are driven by the need to please everyone. I will never be on the cover of
Sports Illustrated
unless I focus on being a darts champion
for the next decade. I fall more into the category of need. But the need has to be so great that you are willing to walk into a room of studio executives in Armani suits and dance like a monkey for their approval (and, ultimately, a fairly small paycheck). When I think of the times I schlepped a bag of wigs out to some basement cattle call in the San Fernando Valley, well, I’m lucky to be alive and not featured in some out-of-focus porn film.

I believe courageousness takes various forms. In the beginning, it’s merely summoning up the courage to not shake and have your knees buckle while you read copy for a Burger King commercial. And, like a muscle, you build and strengthen bravery. So one day when you’re asked to audition for Warner Bros. and the entire NBC brass for a half-hour show called
Friends,
you’re composed, polished, and skilled enough to ace it. Yes, we all know the outcome.

T
here was a big-shot producer (I’ll call him Luke Levy) who my agents were desperately trying to hook me up with. I know, sounds like dating, but in Hollywood you are set up in blind-date scenarios with the hope that the outcome is a marriage of a potentially high-grossing product hopefully starring Robert Downey Jr.

I received an e-mail from Luke Levy’s assistant
informing me that Mr. Levy would be in New York and would like a meeting. He asked me for a couple of times that worked. I was very honest and admitted I was completely free all week except for school pickup in the afternoons and a teeth cleaning (which I could easily cancel). I’ve never been deft at playing hard to get; I’m grateful at meetings when they offer me bottled water. So, we confirmed Tuesday at noon at his hotel (the Ritz-Carlton). Don’t worry, this will not be a story about how I was thrown up against the wall by an oversexed, Viagra-popping Hollywood idiot. I’ve never had the pleasure.

On Tuesday morning I went through my routine prep for a professional appointment: I actually shower, shave my legs, and apply foundation and concealer. Then I test-drive some outfits from my college wardrobe. And if it 1) fits and 2) isn’t stained, it’s the winner. I down a cup of PG Tips strong British tea to give me a bump, throw a puppy pad over the puddle of pee on the kitchen floor, and race to the elevator. A lint brush and perfume are reserved for heads of networks and foreign dignitaries.

My taxi pulled up in front of the Ritz just as I received an e-mail from Mr. Levy’s assistant. “Ali, so sorry, but Mr. Levy has been pulled into a lunch and has to cancel the meeting. Can you maybe get together at some point late this afternoon?” I felt a rush of fury. He
was pulled into a lunch? Really? A group of Islamic extremists threw a burlap sack over his head and dragged him to a salad buffet? We had a meeting scheduled to begin at precisely that minute!

I paid the taxi and started pacing outside the hotel. My initial thought was, well, I guess I could go and buy some more Crest whitening strips before I walk home . . . but then a stronger, more defiant voice emerged: How dare he cancel? And what was I going to do now with freshly shaved legs that smelled like coconut? Just because this lionized man had produced some edgy television with a high boob quotient didn’t allow him to override a commitment with me for some overly priced Cobb salad. His time was not more precious. I refuse to believe in the hierarchy of any industry. I know plenty of wealthy and powerful people that my nine-year-old could beat at Candyland.

So with conviction (or as my dad says, pluck), I marched into the hotel. I scrutinized the woman at the concierge desk as if I had just purchased the whole chain of Ritz-Carltons and she now worked for me. Just as she was inquiring if she could assist me (or call security), it dawned on me that if Mr. Levy really was pulled into a last-minute lunch, it would be in the restaurant of the hotel. I took a deep breath (like Marlene Dietrich would inhale a Lucky Strike) and traipsed past the hostess, through the lobby, and into the belly of the formal dining room.

I had Googled Luke Levy so I knew I was patrolling for a gym rat with wispy blond hair and a year-round tan. I clocked a round table of eight men in the coveted leather banquette. There were a couple of executive types, two action stars, some entouragers, and Luke Levy. I dodged a waiter with a tray of iced Frappucinos and tapped Mr. Levy on the shoulder.

“Hi, I’m Ali Wentworth!” I exclaimed, looking down at him. Mr. Levy jumped to his feet like I had caught him measuring his own penis.

“Listen,” I continued, “I just got the message from your assistant. Just now. So I thought since I was already here, I’d come and say hi and let you know that I’m slammed for the rest of the day. Maybe we meet next time in Los Angeles?” I was still peering down at his peroxided hair plugs.

Mr. Levy excused himself from the table. The posse looked at me with respect and curiosity. If I knew how, I would have gestured “peace out” as I departed.

Mr. Levy walked with me into the hotel hallway just outside the restaurant. “Listen, Ali, I am so, so sorry about this. I have a film and we’re in danger of losing the lead—”

“Hey, Luke! Don’t even worry about it. We’re both incredibly busy people and things come up. I’ll see you in L.A.!”

Every time I tried to exit he would block me with his
overly pumped bicep, begging for a few more seconds of face time.

“What is it that we can do together? Do you want to act? Are you writing?”

“All of it, Luke, all of it.” I tipped my head.

“Let’s come up with something that we create and you star in?”

“Maybe, Luke, maybe,” I said, arms crossed. “But you’re being rude to your guests. Why don’t we set up a phone call to discuss?”

Mr. Levy looked back at the restaurant. “They’re fine. I really want to talk to you!”

“That’s great, but I’d rather not discuss projects in the hallway of a hotel.”

“Will you come join us for lunch and then after—”

“No, I wish I could, but this afternoon is crazy for me.” This was not a lie; I had to help my third-grader build her colonial shop for a school project. She was a tobacconist.

I walked toward the door. Mr. Levy followed and gave me a hug.

“Call me!” he said as I disappeared through the revolving door.

As I walked by the oversize windows of the hotel restaurant, I glanced at the A-list table as they watched me march with dignity down the street. Little did they know my socks didn’t match!

It’s irrelevant whether I did a project with Luke Levy or not. The triumph was mustering up the courage to believe in the value of my purpose and myself. For lunch I treated myself to a Philly cheesesteak hero; after all, it was a big day for me: I had grown a pair of balls.

HERE’S ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MEN AND
WOMEN: WOMEN ARE CRAZY, MEN ARE STUPID.
AND THE MAIN REASON WOMEN ARE CRAZY IS
THAT MEN ARE STUPID.

—GEORGE CARLIN

T
here’s something I’ve never understood. You know that famous scene in
Love Story
when Ali McGraw tearfully looks up at Ryan O’Neal after a lovers’ squabble and sniffs, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry”? How did Erich Segal get away with that? I mean, how did his marriage work? “Listen, sweetheart, I think you need a face-lift, I gambled all our money and I banged your sister . . .” Then just silence? No “I’m sorry” ever? For me, love has always meant saying sorry repeatedly, even if it’s not my fault. Sometimes I’ll say I’m sorry just because I’m too exhausted, I don’t want to fight anymore, and I know he wasn’t really checking out that jogger. Hormones. I don’t think, however, that
an apology is a blanket “get out of jail free” card either. Forgiveness must be earned and forgiveness must be sincere. My daughter recently worked herself into a rageful lather because I forgot to plug in her flat iron. She called me an idiot. Granted, there may be some truth to that, but you are not allowed to call me an idiot unless you’re over twenty-one. Or you are my parents. But moments later, when she realized that her nasty remark would result in her phone being confiscated for the weekend, she threw herself upon my mercy with choruses of “I’m sorry.” She wasn’t sorry. She was terrified she wouldn’t be able to tweet duck face selfies for forty-eight hours. I call that forgiveness in sheep’s clothing. (Sheep’s clothing from Forever 21.)

Last Christmas I learned a valuable lesson in forgiveness. Even though inspirational quotes can nail it in a sentence or two, sometimes one needs to live the lesson to understand it. Okay, I just created an inspirational quote. I’m going to register it with the Writers Guild. Don’t steal it! Look for it on Pinterest! One more time: “sometimes one needs to live the lesson to understand it.”

My husband and I had planned a family vacation to Spain. Would our kids have rather gone to Atlantis or Legoland? As much as we like water slide adventures that use sixty million gallons of water, we wanted to inject a little culture in them beyond the food stand “brats and balls” (yes, sausages and meatballs). We planned a
few days in Madrid and then a couple of days in Seville. We bought a Spanish-English dictionary and began counting French fries in Castilian at dinner. Even though we would be in Spain for only a week, we were pretty confident our children would come back fluent.

The night before we departed came the tedious ritual of packing. I can put a year’s worth of clothes in a Ziploc bag. It’s like I’ve been on the lam my whole life. My daughters, however, are meticulous wardrobe connoisseurs and lay each outfit on the bed as if they are attending the Met ball every night. And the amount of stuffed animals needed to accompany us? A bulky Chihuahua that lived on the bottom of the closet was suddenly taken off death row and granted carry-on status. I had to explain that the hotel would have soap and shampoo and that the gorged duffel of every hand soap, sunscreen bottle, and dishwasher detergent in the apartment would be confiscated at security. After hours of arguing over why our eight-year-old could not bring a live guinea pig and why it wasn’t reasonable for our eleven-year-old to bring her pogo stick, we were packed and loaded.

We were taking the night flight (our favorite time to fly), which meant a sleeping pill for me and eight straight hours of
Gossip Girl
for my kids. They always awaken me midflight to ask what things like “hooking up” and “asshat” mean.

(Asshat, noun–Someone who has made so much
more than an ass of themselves, it’s as if they’re wearing their assery as a hat.

Example: “Did you hear about Joe? Jennifer turned him down and now he’s talking trash about her for no reason. What an asshat.”)

But they’re resilient girls and don’t need twelve to fourteen hours’ sleep like I do. And that’s when I’m not depressed.

We have a ritual before air travel of eating a delicious early dinner at home so we don’t get constipated on pretzels and Bloody Mary mix. And then it was off to the airport. I carried my bag (baby pouch), my husband carried his bag, and the cart bore the heap of Hello Kitty suitcases to the gate. We were jet-setters. In our sweatpants and neck pillows. Except not on a jet. We were American Airlines miles-setters.

We handed the representative our passports and heaved the girls’ luggage onto the belt. I gazed at my husband with an enamored expression as if to say, “Here we are! Our little family setting out on an adventure that will eventually become a Shutterfly album that we will force upon our friends.”

The representative eyed me like I had farted on her shoes. “You’re not going anywhere tonight!”

“Excuse me?” my husband politely inquired.

“The children’s passports are expired,” she said, throwing them down on the counter in disgust.

In the movie version, the camera would have zoomed in on my pupils, widened in sheer panic. I never checked their passports! They were kids. Their passports were as real as their American Girl ones. Oh God, it was my fault. It was my responsibility. I screwed up. My head started spinning and, like a drowning victim, I splashed around trying to grab any excuse to pull myself out of the mess. “I did, I thought . . . wait, was I supposed to . . . I never got an e-mail? They should be responsible for their own . . .” I let myself sink down into the shame of my stupidity. And then, like any mature adult, I turned and ran away.

My eight-year-old found me seated amidst an Indian family who were fastidiously plastic wrapping their trunks.

“Are you in trouble, Mommy?”

“Big time, sweetie . . . What is Daddy doing?”

“He keeps taking really deep breaths, like when he’s doing yoga. The lady said she couldn’t put us on a flight for at least three days ’cause they’re all full. Then she asked why his wife didn’t check the passports.” That was sisterhood for you. I couldn’t believe that the sixty-year-old woman with caked coral lipstick and the body of a Boston terrier was trying to destroy my marriage. I mean, I’m sure if I took a poll, there would be a high percentage of people who at one point in their lives forgot to check the expiration of a passport. I moved my
safe place to a row of dingy black chairs by the taxi stand. My daughter kept running back and forth between my husband and me like a ball girl at Wimbledon.

“What’s happening now?” I asked the tiny person who had suddenly taken over the maternal role.

“He’s calling the passport office and trying to get all the bags back on the cart.”

I grabbed her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “Is that vein on the side of his temple bulging?” The vein was like an anger thermometer. When a taxi driver takes the wrong route on a rainy Friday night from downtown, the vein bulges so intensely it’s like he grew a finger out of the side of his head.

I wanted to roll on my back, offering my belly like our corgi mix rescue dog Charlie does when he senses danger. I would surrender, I would transform myself into the role of indentured servant. I tiptoed over to my husband and pushed the cart and its heavy load like an Egyptian slave pushing clay bricks up a pyramid. If he thought I was self-punishing, perhaps he wouldn’t feel compelled to tell me what a dumbass I was.

We stood in the subzero taxi line for over an hour. I kept myself occupied by eating frozen crow. In the taxi, which had the pungent smell of McDonald’s fries and sour milk, the four of us sat in stewed silence. Finally our youngest blurted out, “Are you guys getting divorced?”

There was a beat. (Too long a beat if you ask me.)

“No, of course not,” my master answered.

Like all children, my daughters knew shit was going down, and escaped into their headphones. Images of life as an aging cocktail waitress and single mother flashed before my eyes.

B
ack at the apartment, my children knew that I was still in the doghouse. They were at once elated and befuddled that it wasn’t either one of them for a change, but they also felt sorry for me. My youngest slipped me a Starburst like it was a knife snuck into prison. I didn’t absorb the extent of their concern until I witnessed them brushing their teeth and flushing the toilet, unprompted.

And then came the moment of reckoning. I put on my blue monkey pajamas (I don’t own silk lingerie). I was just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to forgive her.

We crawled into bed. Well, not really crawled, but folded in to our own respective sides of the bed. My mind raced. Should I go with hysterical tears? Light the Diptyque candle next to the bed and burn my forearm? Do that thing in bed women never want to do but save for emergencies?

My husband pulled me toward him, wrapped his
arms around me, and kissed my cheek. I closed my eyes. “I’m so so so sorry.” He kissed my cheek again. “I know you are. I love you.”

And that, my friends, was true forgiveness. He didn’t yell once or swear or call me a fool (well, that is my family nickname) . . . He dealt with the situation rationally and maturely. He didn’t rub my face in it like an untrained puppy. He didn’t punish me. And like that, it was over. And thus the lesson for both of us: “If we really want to love, we must learn to forgive.”

In conclusion, we were able to get to the passport office the following morning and get new ones issued. The trip was delayed a day, but still chockful of paella, El Greco paintings, and basilicas. And I did do that thing in bed women hate to do . . . #HeDeservedIt.