Tales From A Broad

F
RAN
L
EBOWITZ

Pseudonyms have been used and other details altered to protect the identity of people and organisations in the book. Many incidents and characters are purely fictional.

‘Waiter, hey you there, please come.'

‘My dear, but your glass still has some.'

‘Ah, the top is quite bare,

filled with just air,

so I must summon someone.'

Dear Mrs Lebowitz
,

Fran said that she was too depressed to cut and paste today. I thought I should bring this to your attention …

Dear Mr and Mrs Lebowitz,

While we try to make our camp food as nutritious as possible, we are not able to produce the data Fran has requested on fat grams per servings …

Dear Mr and Mrs Lebowitz,

We regret to inform you that Fran has been suspended from school for initiating a small riot in the auditorium …

H. D. Rosen, Psychiatrist

File 109

Lebowitz, Fran

‘No, please, they were great … very supportive. My mom told all of us that we were special! Gorgeous! Brilliant! My brother pushed her away, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” My sister hunched down, got embarrassed, “I am not.” Me? Well, I
believed
her. “I am? You think? Yeah, I
am
!” And then, and
then
, I found out. She lied. This whole time, Mom lied. Just the other day, I was in a store with someone prettier …'

The Lancaster Herald Tribune:

Fran Lebowitz, sophomore at Franklin and Marshall College, was arrested last night for shoplifting at the 7-Eleven on Oak Street. When police questioned her about the package of bacon she had under her shirt, she responded, ‘I was born this way … weird, huh … bacon grafted to my skin … That? Oh, it's my lucky cheese … carry it with me everywhere …'

Dear Mom and Dad
,

When this gets to you, I'll already be in
Mexico.
I want to experience the real world … I have been asphyxiated by my middle-class upbringing … I promise to finish school next year
… I
have everything I need: my sleeping bag, a few clothes, pen and paper, some money I've saved, and your credit card, just in case …

Dear Bonnie,

Can you believe? He asked me to marry him! FINALLY! I mean, the guy could have buried himself a piece of coal when we met; it'd be a diamond by now … Mom nixed the idea of a white leather wedding gown and a barn dance. So it's ice carvings and pasta stations … After all the guys I've brought home, Mom and Dad don't even mind that he's not Jewish. He can read! He's a lawyer! That's sort of like being a Jew, no?

Dear Bonnie,

I thought it'd be a little different … a soulful, peaceful sort of thing. But Sadie, she just cries all the time. And I'm still fat. Tell me it gets better after the first week!

From the diary of Fran Rittman:

… Just when I needed him most, my dad died. He dropped dead on the tennis court. Two days after he retired. I had a bunch of things I needed to go over with him. The funeral was packed. People sent in the most gorgeous, abundant trays of food I've ever seen. I couldn't stop ploughing through it all: bagels, lox, cream cheese and sable, corned beef, roast beef, chicken salad and
challah
, lasagnas, casseroles, rotisserie chickens. By the time we got to the service, I could barely button my sombre but sexy miniskirt. How can I think of food? Turns out I'm pregnant!

Dear Bonnie,

The kids are fine. We miss you. I'm a little mixed up right now. (Don't say, so what's new?) Just made the biggest fuck-up to date at work and the client fired me. The insurance company is after me about the car. There's snow everywhere. I had to shovel the walk with Huxley on my back. Of course, Frank's away again. When do I get to go away … and do I have to come with me? I'm working on a plan, though … stay tuned.

We are all born with a rut radar. Mine is finely wired, a little oversensitive maybe. Perhaps just a bit hyperactive. Twenty steady boyfriends before turning 16, a new best friend 12 times a year, switched college majors every time I met someone who seemed exactly like the sort of person I really,
really
wanted to be. I'm not fickle. I'm just never
there
yet. Whenever the pond of my life becomes still, I slip into the calm I so desperately crave. I lie on the rich, green banks and feel the sun shining, hear the birds chirping; a butterfly is … well, it's bugging me. A niggling sensation creeps in. This is not the perfect location; it's a little too hot/cold/wet/ dry/quiet/noisy and what is that smell and why the hell am I sitting on the mud next to a big puddle anyway? Give me the rapids, baby! Give me Niagara … Oh my God, is that my reflection? Why didn't anyone tell me about my hair? Next thing you know, I'm stirring those waters until the froth is as thick and heady and deceptive as the top of a pint of Guinness.

If I could change the old metronome, inhale-exhale, inhale-exhale, I would. I'd breathe sort of spirally. I'd take the thump-thump, thump-thump and give it a new beat … until the next minute when I would question, once again, what exactly it is that I want. For some, this sort of agitation would lead to industrious results, scholarly pursuits, inventions that save the world. I am gifted only in how far I'll stretch to scratch an itch I can never reach.

One time, I made it clear across the globe and missed the forest and the trees but tripped over a surprising lesson. You're not supposed to keep scratching. I'm better now. I can see my glass is half full … but, of course, I did order a double.

When Sadie was two and Huxley nearly one, I was due my next personal crisis. I can't risk skipping one of those. (I still take great pride in having been, some 20 years ago, the first on my block to get anorexic.) So, when my father died and my biggest client stabbed me in the back, the door swung wide open.

I began passing countless evenings out on my freezing cold deck in Westchester County, in my puffy coat and hat (picture Taliban goes Gortex), chain smoking – or would have been if it wasn't such a struggle lighting up with mittens on – and drinking wine. I wanted to be a better mother. I wanted to be a luckier literary agent. I didn't want to be either. I couldn't believe I was smoking again. Thank God I could smoke again.

It wouldn't be fair to say my husband, Frank, ignored me. He'd wave now and then through the window as he walked to the kitchen to get another beer (so that'd be six waves on a weeknight and 12 on a weekend, which is more friendly than some marriages). Then, one evening, who knows why – maybe because my mitten had caught fire – Frank stepped outside and saw that I had been crying. ‘Are you sad?' he asked. He's sensitive like that.

‘Well,' I sniffed.

I'd gone too far. He got defensive. ‘What's wrong now?' he asked. ‘What'd I do?'

‘No, no …'

‘What didn't I do?'

‘Nothing. Nothing.'

‘Oh, great. This again. I do nothing.'

‘No, it's not you. Really. I'm just a mess. That's all. It's stress, everything's too hard. I never see the kids. I'm missing out on everything they do. I need to connect with them. I need something. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I'm not good at anything … I want to get away.' I cried and thought of more things I wanted, needed, hated, but left it at that.

‘Hmmm,' he said.

‘Hmmm,' I said. ‘You asked.'

‘Want a beer?' he said.

‘Nah, got some wine already.'

‘Okay, I'm going in now. It's fucking freezing out here.' He ruffled my hair and went to his study and began working on a small miracle.

Two weeks later, we are on a 22-hour flight, heading 10,000 miles away into a 12-hour time difference, with two small kids. We are heading to Frank's Singapore office on an extended business trip. We fly up the front of the plane. We give each kid a lot more than the recommended dose of cough syrup. I display it with a wink-wink, nod-nod to the other passengers so they'll know we have their comfort in mind. The meds have the desired effect on Huxley. In fact, they work so beautifully that any time we see his eyes flutter – probably just REMing but who wants to take chances – I scream, ‘
Dose him!
' We might as well club the poor kid.

Unfortunately, but predictably, the cough syrup has the opposite effect on Sadie. She never goes to sleep. She never stops talking, except when she is simply yelling. Hundreds, thousands of times a minute she barks out something like ‘I want to go on that plane!' or ‘I'm going to Thingapore!' She rattles the back of her seat, jumps in her chair, runs up and down the aisle, up and down the stairs, in and out of the bathroom, dragging the toilet paper with her. We try to settle her down but lack the wit to do anything more creative than scream at her, spank her, hiss at her, threaten her, and toss her to each other saying, ‘Your turn!'

She drives us crazy. I don't know about the other 30 people who paid $10,000 to fly themselves in style and comfort. It's entirely possible that they are a little annoyed. I don't ask. I don't want to disturb them.

All told, with the drive to the airport and the two hours waiting around, by the time we land we have been at it for about 27 hours. The very thought of fighting people in the baggage claim, juggling the kids as backpacks slide down my shoulder, elbowing my way into the taxi line, figuring it all out … I'm sure I don't have enough kick left to manage it. Frank has a serene look on his face. He's always fairly mellow, but this is something more. This is intense satisfaction; this is the look of a man in his finest moment. He is just so danged proud to be introducing us to his mistress, The Far East.

Lo and behold, our luggage practically leaps into our arms just as we get to the belt. But, of course, we still need to slog through Immigration and Customs. Slog? Wrong! In fact, Immigration and Customs wave happily to us. They give us candy. They are embarrassed to ask questions and demur about seeing our passports until Frank insists that we all want the stamp.