Happily Ali After (9 page)

I
love crabs. Not the pubic lice or pets, but crustaceans. Hunting them, and then steaming the catch in Old Bay seasoning, cracking their shells with wooden hammers and picking out the minuscule bits of meat. People underestimate the skill involved in tossing a piece of string tied to a chicken wing with precision into the ocean or bay. And even once you perfect the hurl, interpreting the subtle tugs of a hungry sea spider and pulling it from the water is a whole other degree of difficulty. It’s a sport, yes, a sport of endurance. I can wade in the briny surf for six hours without food or water. Crabbing offers me an adrenaline rush I don’t find in any other area of my life. A primal, Darwinist mano a mano tug-of-war
with a prehistoric creature with claws—and it’s not a video game! Others get their endorphins pumped by gambling, shoplifting, or opioids. For me, it’s the thrill of my own personal
Deadliest Catch,
but without cameras or battling forty-foot waves in the Bering Sea. I crab from the shore, in a bathing suit, wading boots, a cooler stocked with barbecue-flavored potato chips and a couple of Snapple lemonades.

When my kids were babies, they would sit under a beach umbrella on a quilt, wearing floppy hats and gnawing on apple slices while watching Mommy yank crabs out of the brackish water and screaming in delight when I got two in one net.

One afternoon last summer I decided to up my game and relinquish the chicken and string, relying exclusively on my proficient eyes and my weapon (a large net used for skimming leaves off a swimming pool) to comb for crabs. The sun was at peak strength and the aquatic decapods were scrambling for shade within the crevasses of the jetty. My younger daughter was content sitting on the sand in her little bikini and humming Katy Perry songs to bits of barnacles and whelk shells.

I suddenly spotted a large blue crab trying to scuttle underneath a rock about three feet deep in the water. As he tucked in his claws, I methodically raised my net. My face was motionless, but my eyes aflame. I was as focused as a lurcher (an Irish dog used for poaching game)
to the flash of a fox’s tail. And then, as I tilted a few inches forward, I lost my balance and slipped.

My body scraped down the side of an algae-covered rock. I felt my feet hit the sandy ocean bed. I quickly inspected my arms for any collateral damage, but saw only a few scrapes on my left palm. And then I looked down. There was a bloody waterfall running down my leg. I located the source: my shin had an eight-inch gash. As I stared at the chunk of white bone sticking out like an ivory piano key, I felt nothing; therefore the leg couldn’t have been mine, right? The blood gushing from my leg began to color the water. The disgusting bay water filled with Canadian goose poop and dead quahogs. It’s amazing how sluggishly the mind works when it’s not willing to confront its own horrors. It took me thirty drowsy seconds for my leg to inform my brain that I was injured, that there was a piece of my bone floating in the bay, and that I probably needed medical assistance. It’s the same passive reaction I imagine people whose limbs have been bitten off by sharks experience. You’re numb and in shock and hope that you’re watching a PBS documentary about somebody else’s drama. And if you wait a few more delirious moments, you’ll realize it was a hallucination, your leg is fine or your arm is still there, it was just a big black shadow in the water.

I looked over at my daughter who was belting out “California Girls,” strutting on her seaweed stage. I
felt light-headed. Thank the good lord our babysitter, Cherie, had just shown up with sandwiches. I say that because I’d probably still be in the bay now, a corpse in tattered J.Crew shorts flapping in the wind like a skeleton in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride (the irony being that I’d be covered in crabs). “Cherie! Cherie!” I screamed. She was used to equating my excitement with shoe sales and the one time I fixed the garbage disposal.

“You get a big one?” she yelled back.

I simply raised my gory limb, which led her to dive into the surf. Cherie hoisted me to the shore like a superhero; I’ll never know how, she is half my size. I could hear her heaving breaths and closed my eyes against the harsh sunlight. And then everything went fuzzy and I blacked out. When I awoke, my daughter was crying and shaking, and some women from a nearby house were tying a tourniquet of checkered napkins around my leg. They raised me up like a casualty of battle and carried me to our Tahoe, which was parked nearby.

In the backseat, my daughter held my hand. And then a strong maternal rush overcame me and I focused on the emotional toll this episode would have on her and not the throbbing pain of my largest appendage. “It’s nothing but a scratch, sweetie!” I lied. “It’s nothing, I’m going to be fine. What movie should we see tonight?”

She looked at me as if to say, “You think I’m an idiot?
Don’t try to distract me; you think I want a one-legged mother?”

When we arrived at the emergency room, I was pushed, at a snail’s pace, into the building in a wheelchair. I had envisioned people flying to get out of the way as fourteen doctors and nurses ran on either side of a gurney, holding my hand and screaming, “Stat.” The staff being played by the cast of the nineties hit
ER
. But no, I was passed off at the administration desk to a woman who looked like Julianna Margulies if Julianna Margulies ate only pies and drank only lager. “Insurance card,” was all she said as she mechanically extended her hand. There was no, “I see that you’re covered in blood, in a great amount of pain, and about to vomit . . . how can we help?”

I filled out a clipboard of forms. Did I have to enter the hospital carrying my own leg to rouse any concern? At that point I was so delirious, I think I may have charged my hospital stay to an old boyfriend.

I was told to wait. Okay, fine. I sat in the sterile waiting room with
Better Homes and Gardens
magazines from 2001, blood-soaked napkins knotted around my leg, and a hysterical eight-year-old. Good plan. At one point a very bored woman (whose daughter had a sprained ankle and was getting X-rays) turned to me and said, “I think you’re so funny! What are you working on now?” On what planet, looking at the state I was in, was that
question appropriate? Of course, I not only answered her but also launched into my top-ten favorite movies and why, in my opinion, Sly Stallone’s comedic chops are always overlooked.

A nurse came over—with a painkiller, I prayed—and asked if someone could please remove my daughter. I suppose a shrieking little girl in a blood-spattered bikini was unsettling for people doing crossword puzzles and sipping cold coffee. Cherie covered her in an old sweatshirt and drove her home.

I was taken into the heart of the ER with its stretch of beds divided only by sheets. As I lay on my cot, I counted the pockmarks on the stucco ceiling and listened to the groaning woman next to me. I shuddered to think what her diagnosis was. All I knew was that it involved salad tongs.

And like a game show host, the sheet was whisked open and a young doctor appeared. “Hi! I’m Dr. Cole!” Dr. Cole looked like one of my kids’ camp counselors. His hair was a little long and unkempt and he was too tan to be an ER doc. He inspected my slash and swiftly responded, “Okay, well, I’m going to inject a Novocain-type substance into the wound and after about thirty minutes stitch it up!”

I sat straight up. “You’re going to stick a needle in my leg?”

He nodded.

I blacked out again.

An hour later, once again, the sheet was wrenched open in a swift and terrifying manner. My friend Holly, who lived nearby, had come to the hospital to check on the severity of things after I texted her a photo of my wound. “Jesus Christ!” she shrieked when she saw it in the flesh (yes, pun intended).

I reiterated the plan as relayed to me by Dr. Dude. “No!” she said emphatically. “You need a plastic surgeon.”

I smiled. “Oh, I don’t care what the scar looks like. I just want them to sew it up so I can get out of here!”

Holly threw down her tangerine Hermès bag. “You’re not going anywhere until we’ve seen a plastic surgeon!”

I was relieved to have someone take charge. At that point, if someone had suggested euthanasia, I would have agreed.

The plastic surgeon was a hearty man who had just pulled an all-nighter stitching up a chain saw accident. He took one glance at my leg and gasped. “Damn, this ain’t no sew-it-up job. I’m putting you under general anesthesia, power-washing the wound, and then stapling it up.” I didn’t care to know what power washing was, but the words “general anesthesia” made me so elated. Put me under, knock me out, and so long, suckers!

The plastic surgeon told me later that as they wheeled
me into the OR I looked up at him in my purple haze and shower cap and said, “Since I’m already going to be under, how about you do the boobs too?”

I
woke up with a calm and harmonious outlook. My leg was bandaged up and my IV was still dripping with joy juice. It was all over. Holly was tapping away on her BlackBerry and talking on her earphone about the size of pizza ovens. I realized I loved general anesthesia. And wondered why I’m not put under for more things, like parents’ night at middle school or anything that involves camping outdoors.

I was also relieved to see that my leg was still attached to my torso. I think I had a twilight night-terror that I had gangrene and Alan Alda had to amputate it.

I don’t recall the logistics, but I ended up in the guest room at Holly’s house. My leg was propped up on pillows and a slew of prescription vials were spilling over the bedside table. The curtains were drawn. It was quiet but for the distant giggles of children jumping in the pool. I hoped my daughter had washed the blood and visuals out of her memory. Judging from the trash can full of string cheese and candy wrappers, she seemed to be healing fast.

She later checked on me, her hand over her eyes on the off chance the laceration was still open. “I’m fine,
sweetie,” I purred. “See? It’s all bandaged up!” She kept her distance in case it was contagious. Just before her long wispy braids disappeared out the door, she whispered, “Well, Mommy, you probably got a chapter for your book out of this!”

“If nothing else, a low-budget horror film, sweetie.”

As I lay back on my pillow, relieved my child would not be scarred from the aquatic ordeal, I realized an unexpected perk: I had been treated to a mini vacation. Suddenly, there were people gathering around to make me sandwiches and entertain my girls. I no longer had to drive kids to camp, recycle cans, or even return phone calls. Now, I’m not promoting a self-inflicted injury and trip to the ER, but how many of you can say that you got to watch all five seasons of
Breaking Bad
, uninterrupted, on Percocet?

Exactly.

M
y childhood was spent taking National Gallery tours, day trips to Monticello, and summers at the re-created seventeenth-century farming village in Plymouth Harbor. We never took a family trip to Disneyland, Disney World, Busch Gardens, or any of the massive complexes that offer sausages the size of Buicks and rides with names like the Terminator and Tower of Terror. I missed integral childhood experiences like watching my vomit fly backward on a ride that swoops in upside-down loops. That said, I do know how to churn butter and am a skilled farrier (a person specializing in the preparation and fitting of a metal horseshoe). I was too busy climbing Mayan temples in 100-degree
heat while my friends snapped photos at faux safari game parks, sucking on cherry snow cones. And, as with most things, when you’re deprived of them as a child, you yearn for them even more as an adult. My personal list of forbidden fruit includes Disneyland, TV, and prom (I went to an all-girls school). Secretly I hope that every time we go to a bar mitzvah my husband will hand me a corsage.

Then I became a mother. Maybe it was the food I consumed while I was pregnant, but my daughters were born with Princess Barbie blood. They would scamper through the aisles of Target in a frenzy, clutching all the princess paraphernalia they could carry to the oversize red cart. All I wanted was several hundred gallons of laundry detergent and a few bras. I would explain to them that by next week the Ariel doll’s head would be another casualty to a mysterious toilet accident, and that we already had four Cinderella dresses. They didn’t care; they wanted to consume every Jasmine multivitamin; pair of plastic Sleeping Beauty slippers; and 100 percent polyester, highly flammable Belle nightgown they could get their sticky little hands on. I completely indulged it because I didn’t want to raise them Amish and the closest I ever got to dressing up as a Disney princess was when my grandma sewed me a Little Bo Peep costume for Halloween. I looked like a German beer wench during Oktoberfest. I even let my younger daughter wear
a Tinkerbell nightshirt to school so often the material finally disintegrated into a ball of neon green lint.

W
hen my elder daughter was turning six, I had the ingenious idea of throwing a
Little Mermaid
birthday party. Having patted myself on the back all the way to the mall party store, I was shocked upon my arrival to discover an entire room dedicated to Ariel gizmos. I was dumbfounded to learn that other people had thought of a
Little Mermaid
party before me! (I was a naive mom, I also believed I invented breastfeeding.) I was obsessed with my under-the-sea-themed celebration; in my dreams I fantasized about blue and teal streamers and gummy fish and dried starfish glue-gunned to the wall. My daughter pleaded for a sheet cake from Costco, but I prefer butter cream made from butter and not lard. No offense, Costco, you know you are my go-to for chicken nuggets and Q-tips. And catch me on a particularly hormonal day and I’ll be facedown in a Costco mango cheesecake.

I constructed an enormous three-tiered cake from scratch, and by scratch I mean six boxes of Duncan Hines yellow cake mix. It was a masterpiece of white-and-turquoise wavy frosting, green licorice seaweed, and red Swedish fish and Haribo sour octopi. It should have been preserved in the Smithsonian instead of ravaged by a pack of six-year-olds.

I was hell-bent on throwing a blowout that the kids would remember well, at least until they were seven. I had witnessed a magician a few weeks earlier at another kid’s birthday party. The illusionist didn’t wear a tuxedo or a black top hat, just jeans and a Jim Morrison T-shirt. I had never met a cocky magician before. He told me Liev Schreiber was considering playing him in a movie about his life. Yeah, me too, buddy, Julianne Moore is chomping at the bit for her start date on the Ali Wentworth biopic. Chaos ensued when the magician made the mommy of the birthday boy disappear, which resulted in uncontrollable panic and a real-life rendition of
Lord of the Flies
. I found the mommy hiding in the coat closet and forced her to dump her glass of Diet Coke and bourbon and prove to the children she was alive and safe.

I considered dressing up as a mermaid. Look, I’m no Daryl Hannah, but I had a few old bikini tops, and how arduous would it be to sew on a shimmery fishtail to a pair of maternity jeans (yes, I wore them for a while after giving birth)? But kids always cringe when parents dress up; do you know how many of my mom friends are “sexy cats” every Halloween? A headband with ears and black lace lingerie is not a costume unless you’re really turning tricks for treats. I perused all two of the celebrity look-alike party companies in Washington, D.C. It wasn’t Hollywood, so the choices were
a little rough. I’ll put it to you this way: the Marilyn Monroe was Algerian. I finally settled on a Dora the Explorer, real name Sandra Schlemmer, who claimed she had some mermaid gear.

S
andra was forty-five minutes late to the party. I had already repurposed the piñata with duct tape twice to occupy the little darlings, who were anticipating the surprise guest. She arrived in a fluorescent orange wig, which was slightly askew, exposing a chunk of ratty auburn hair on one side. She had on no makeup and carried her tail (a tail that had seen a lot of storms and shipwrecks). As she changed in my bedroom, I continued escorting Sleeping Beauties, who weren’t completely potty trained, to the bathroom and helping a little boy with a bloody nose from the way too bouncy inflatable castle.

When Sandra finally entered the garden, she was barefoot with chipped black nail polish, and a tattoo of a skull with a snake coming out of its mouth was clearly visible on her lower back. I handed her some water; I figured that being half fish, she’d be parched. And then I became Maria from
Sesame Street,
clapping my hands and in a singsongy voice calling, “Can all the children please gather round!” They plopped on the grass holding melted string cheese
and with fruit-punch-stained mouths and waited. We all waited. Sandra just kept saying hi and cocking her head from side to side repeatedly. Why wasn’t she singing? Twirling her hair with a fork? Didn’t she have a little puppet friend who was a mackerel? Sandra did answer questions like where she went to college and if she was a boy or a girl. And then I did something more typically associated with a menopausal meltdown or an antidepressant cocktail gone wrong: I ran upstairs and started to cry. And not because I was concerned that the mermaid did not meet my daughter’s expectations, but that she didn’t meet mine! I wanted Ariel to come to my birthday party. I wanted Ariel to sing while animated crabs in a mariachi band played around her head.

My daughter didn’t care. Kids are more simplistic than we and the whole consumer world; give them credit for that. The children at the party would have been happy running around in circles looking for a hidden stick. But I had projected this stunted fantasy from my own childhood. I had believed it was satisfied years earlier at our wedding, which also featured an ocean-themed cake with blue frosting (just without the gummy octopi). But I guess it had not.

Before Sandra left, I gave her a huge tip, a ziplock bag of leftovers, and hugged her in a way that said, “Dear God, girl, get some help!”

A
couple of years later, we took our daughters to Orlando during spring break to see killer whales do flips, eat nachos at the NASCAR café, and meet a real-live princess. Really, a gift for all of us. And when we told them we were having lunch in Cinderella’s castle? They screamed so ecstatically the younger one projectile-vomited all over the minivan.

It was 100 degrees in the shade and the all-you-can-eat castle special was meat loaf and gravy. Our busboy was dressed as Prince Charming (his name tag read
DIRK
) and he was about as charming as ringworm. His only communication was not about an invitation to the ball, but “We ain’t got no Sprite, machine’s broke.” Still, I felt it was important my daughters knew that they didn’t need to rely on a guy to liberate them from an evil spell and that even Prince Charming gets acne.

We made our way through the sea of fanny packs and denim culottes to the Snow White ride. All of us climbed into a wooden boat that was electronically towed through a dark tunnel that smelled like a mildewed basement. There were the adorable mechanical dwarves hi ho hi hoing off to work carrying mallets and pickaxes, but when we turned a corner things became less than fairy tale. Suddenly, a papier-mâché wicked queen holding an apple bolted out of the wall. My children shrieked. Yes, everyone screams at that moment
of the ride, but my daughters reacted the way they do when the nurse informs them that she has to take blood. “Get me out of here! Mommy, GET ME OUT OF HERE!” My younger daughter stood up and started rocking the boat until we nearly capsized. I grabbed her and held her tightly on my lap using both arms and legs, trying to distract her by pointing out the more soothing elements of the ride, like the wooden owls and stuffed fawns with red eyes. Her screams echoed so loud, I’m sure they could hear it over at the Alice in Wonderland spinning cups. I succumbed to the fact that we would quite literally have to ride it out.

And then we saw the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. The boat hadn’t come to a complete stop before my children leaped into the arms of the Disney guides. Mind you, not our guides, just the closest people to safety. Maybe we should have taken the Sleeping Beauty ride—I assume you just climb onto a Posturepedic bed and nap? Perhaps in my infantile haste I jumped the gun a little by taking my kids when they were too young. Although my elder daughter does remember the squirrel we met in the parking lot with gum stuck to his ear.

F
ive years later, my dream came true again! We took another trip to Disney World! My kids were older and my legs were in better shape. I had my picture taken
with all the princesses at the character breakfast, rode Splash Mountain three times, scored high on the Buzz Lightyear ride, and kept my eyes open the whole time in the Haunted House. I have to admit, Space Mountain made me nauseated and my upper arms tingled, but Avalanche was awesome and you can never do the Peter Pan ride enough times. I purchased some adult Mulan slippers, a giant Mickey Mouse head made out of Rice Krispie treats, and the whole set of
Frozen
dinnerware. Oh, my kids? They were off playing golf . . .