Stephanie Lessing

Sometimes you read a truly great book and feel compelled to talk about it with everyone you know. You need to share it so badly, you might even give your beautiful hardcover copy to a friend. Sometimes you compare yourself to the main character and wonder what they would do in situations that come up in your own life. The main character becomes your own little imaginary friend who occupies that part of your brain that you never show. The part that thinks. And then sometimes you read a truly great book, put it down, and say out loud, “What in the world just happened?” Such was the case with Mrs. March by Virginia Feito.

Mrs. March is, without question, a mind bender on all counts. It’s suspenseful, brilliant, deliciously tropey, and it’s about an uptight, unlikable heroine. What more do you need? When was the last time you were given permission not to like someone? I never get to do that. I especially never get to not like someone while laughing at her. That would be mean. But Ms. Feito encourages you to flat out hate her heroine as much as she dislikes herself. All of this is accomplished with the use of my favorite kind of writing, the kind that doesn’t pat itself on its own back with endlessly long descriptions of things like grass or the nape of some lady’s neck. Any adjectives aside from “green” or “long” should be tossed, if you ask me. Most words ruin most books, but not this one. I especially loved when Mrs. March put a question mark after the word Slut. It was such a slick move and she didn’t need a single word to do it.

I’m sure you’ll read it after reading my description of it and that’s my intention. Because, I have no idea what actually did and didn’t happen, nor how the damn thing ended. Can someone please read it and explain to me what Agatha March did? Seriously, Agatha March, what have you done?

Ahh Memorial Day, the day that truly marks the beginning of summer. So much to look forward to. The beach, the parties, the pink drinks, the unfortunate spray tans that wander off the skin. And of course the reemergence of the arms, particularly the part of the arm that’s very white and soft and just below the arm pit when your arms are hanging by your sides and above your arm pits when you lift your arms in the air. If you’re under forty you should leave the room. You don’t need to know what horror awaits you. You’re still walking around flinging your limbs to-and-fro without a care in the world. I see you there, reaching for things, saying, “hellooo!” to friends and sometimes accidentally to strangers, hailing cabs, pointing. It’s all fun and games until one day you’re looking in the mirror, happily blow drying your hair, or, in my case, dancing, and you see something so horrific, you are forced to lock the door and call your sister.

“Something terrible just happened,” you will say.

“Oh no, what did you do?” your sister will answer.

“I just lifted my arms in front of the mirror.”

“OH, I should have warned you. You shouldn’t do that.”

“You mean to say you know what I saw?”

“Of course I know.”

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

“I was hoping you still had a little more time or that you wouldn’t notice it.”

How could one not notice a whole pocket of skin that magically shrivels overnight and becomes a dangling pile of stretched out weird crumply lines.

“Who is responsible for this?!” you might hear yourself scream.

“It happens to everyone,” your sister will say right before you drop the phone so you can resume standing in front of the mirror trying a bunch of different waves. None of them will work except the salute.

From that point on, you will spend a lot of time trying to identify what your mangled underarm skin reminds you of. Sometimes it will be the underbelly of a whale, sometimes a pelican, and sometimes an old balloon. You’ll also try to sneak a peek at all of your friends’ under-upper-arm areas. You can do this by asking them questions and demanding they raise their hands before answering. At times you’ll find yourself having so much fun you’ll forget what happened to your arms. Other times you may randomly cry out, and a day will come when you try to iron yourself.

As much as you’ll want to hide that whole part of your body, you’ll also find yourself desperate to confide in people

about it. It’s that alarming.

“Did you see what happened here?” you’ll say over and over, to anyone really.

Nobody will admit they already saw it.

The good news is there are options to deal with the situation as it unfolds…and drops even further:

1) Have your arms removed. 

2)Wear long sleeves .

Or…

3)Accept yourself for how old you are and learn to love your new body. You earned every wrinkle. Think of them as lots and lots of tiny smiles all over your face and body. And the truth is you should be grateful that you even have arms. Maybe it’s time to stop worrying about every little imperfection and just be happy you’re alive, the sun is shining, and it’s Memorial Day!

I’m kidding. Wear long sleeves.

My daughter Kim is engaged! I’m trying not to make it all about me. So the first thing I did was try on my wedding dress. And then I started looking through my wedding photos. And then I estimated how many pounds I would have to lose to actually zip up the dress. Not that it matters, I’ll never wear the dress again. My guess is 12. And then I made my guest list.

I’m trying to keep it small, but how do you not invite everyone you know? What if I run into someone who wasn’t invited? I’ll have to lie and say we had to keep the wedding small and then I’ll have to photoshop all the photos, take all the people and food out and blacken out the faces of people who were invited who are close to the people we didn’t invite. I don’t know what I’m going to do. About my wedding.

And then there’s the issue of where to have the wedding. We could do it here at my house but then I’d have to build an addition in case it rains and people want to come inside. I’m just not sure that’s the best use of the wedding budget. Of course we could have it at a hotel but do I really want that kind of a wedding? Gosh, I don’t know. And what to do about my neck? It’s falling off again.

The real question here is do I have enough time to have plastic surgery and plan a wedding. It just seems like a lot.  I could ask Kim to elope but that seems cold. Maybe just a few nips and tucks and a diet. Or we could all elope! That might be fun. Dan and me on a beach somewhere, renewing our vows, me in my zipped up dress! It’s all coming together. But enough about Kim.

Years ago I had a neighbor who tried to convince me that human beings are plants. She was heavily into her vegan lifestyle and did yoga all the time. Even when she was just standing there talking to you about the weather, she was on one foot. She referred to everyone as either a tree, a flower, a weed or some other type of growth. When people saw her coming, they would typically run the other way.

I felt sorry for her, but I bumped into her years later and she seemed to be doing fine. Great actually.

“Still a plant?” I asked her.

“Oh yes,” she said. “I won’t be feeding for another few hours so I’m getting all of my energy from the sun until then.”

When my good friend Cindy recently suggested we try an all plant diet, naturally I was a little skeptical at first. The last thing I wanted was to turn into a plant person like my old neighbor, but I gave it some thought and decided it was probably the right way to eat. And the truth is I consider myself a vegetarian anyway, aside from all the chicken.

“What are the rules of the diet?” I asked her.

What followed was a very helpful list of what vegetables to buy, how to prepare them in mason jars so your fridge becomes a salad bar and how to make soups and sauces in a Vitamix. I ordered the blender and studied the diet food list. It seemed there were two food groups:

1)Vegetables 2)Hummus.

“How much hummus are we allowed?” I asked her.

“¼ cup,” she said.

“So you’re saying the diet is vegetables and ¼ cup hummus?”

“Yes, but you can have as many vegetables as you can eat and you can also have a cup of vegetable soup every day and a vegetable smoothie!” she explained.

“In addition to the vegetables and ¼ cup of hummus, we can have a cup of vegetable soup?” I confirmed.

“Correct. And a little fruit. But no oil. And no salt. The recipes that come with the diet plan are the best part.”

She was right. The recipes are the best part: There are recipes for vegetable sauces that can be poured onto vegetables, recipes for vegetable smoothies, recipes for vegetable dips and dressings, and of course you can always have raw, steamed, baked or roasted vegetables. Some of the recipes even have nuts and seeds.

After the second day, I didn’t feel any better. It may have been all the cups of nutritional yeast I consumed the day before when I ran out of things I was allowed to eat that day. I’d already had my cup of soup and salad with the ¼ cup of hummus and the smoothie that was mostly kale, and it was only 2pm. I had nowhere else to go but the yeast.

On the third day, I made a big pot of soup that I’d planned to portion out for the rest of the week, seeing as how you can only have a cup of soup a day and my pot is so big. What happened though was that I accidentally poured a tiny bit more than a cup into my bowl and thought that two cups was probably what she meant because that amount looked like an actual bowl of soup as opposed to what someone might leave over after eating a bowl of soup. And then it occurred to me that Cindy may have read the diet wrong and that it was more likely that unlimited soup was allowed with both lunch and dinner because vegetable soup is just vegetables and vegetable broth so technically I could have all the soup I could possibly eat.

I was amazed at how good and surprisingly confident I felt knowing I could do the diet if I was allowed unlimited soup. All I ever needed in life was something I could eat too much of. I didn’t think it would be vegetable soup, but I was still grateful. I boiled a big pot of vegetables in vegetable broth and blended and ate them. I did this three times in a row, trying to convince myself I was eating the way nature intended, hoping to get full. Three blenders filled with vegetable soup must have been the magic number.

As a side note: I don’t recommend doing this. Afterwards there were some issues.

On the fourth day, I was craving any kind of flavor other than dirt and started looking around the house for things to eat. I thought chewable Vitamins might be a good snack but the Sugar Bear gummies everyone eats to make their hair grow to the floor make my heart race and how much Vitamin D and Biotin can a person really chew. And then I realized that I could eat as much seasoning as I wanted! Another one of those moments when I knew I could do the diet without failing. I found a bottle of the Kirkland no salt seasoning Cindy called “life changing” and poured it directly into my mouth, and then spit it out in the garbage. That’s how vile seasoning without salt is.

On my fifth day, I decided to go off the diet but still keep my calories low by finding an alternative seasoning I could live with. I bought a bottle of “Everything but the Bagel” and poured a little into my palm and then licked it out of my hand. I did this several hundred times even though I know better than to lick my hands, plus there was tons of salt in it. The reason I ate the seasoning anyway was because I decided the no salt rule was a typo.

On the sixth day, I started to think and feel differently about myself. There was some kind of metamorphosis happening although I wasn’t quite sure what it was. My skin looked more olive and I felt like I was breathing differently. I glanced up at the sun, strangely attracted to its light. I was thirsty all the time and felt an overwhelming need to stretch while wondering how long I could live on broccoli and seasoning.

“Can I have a bite of your salmon?” I asked Dan.

“I thought you’re a vegan now,” he said.

“I was but I need something to absorb my breath. It’s loaded down with powdered garlic and onions.”

“Is that what that was? Your breath?”

“Yes, that was my breath and I’m going to keep it that way. My breath is the only thing left to eat. I’m existing off the fumes.”

I could smell myself talking and I suddenly understood why my vegan neighbor was always saying things that made people run away from her. She was so hungry and miserable, and her breath was so horrible, she was incapable of having a conversation. Her bizarre statements were her only way out.

“Why are you doing this to yourself?” Dan asked.

“Because I’m a plant.”

 

Everyone knows it’s wrong to judge a book by its cover. I especially feel it’s wrong because I wrote a book that has the worst book cover of all times. It’s so bad, I actually discourage people from reading it.

“You wrote a book?” people ask. “Oh my God, can I read it?”

“I’d say yes, of course, unfortunately it’s out of print, and I don’t have any extra copies. Oh well.”

The truth is I hide my extra copies of that book in the far corner of my basement. To be fair, all of our books are in the basement at the moment because we don’t have bookshelves yet. The reason we don’t have bookshelves is because there are almost no walls in this house, and I’m afraid if I build the bookshelf downstairs there will be a flood and I will lose all of my books.

Okay, that was a lie. I’m not afraid of floods.

The truth is I decorated this house to look like a flower shop so the entire thing is white. When we finally build bookshelves, they will most likely be white. Naturally, I can only put white books on a white bookshelf in an all white house.

Most of the books in our current collection are either beige, green, red, brown, rust or teal. These are my least favorite colors and that is the real reason our books live in the basement.

However, since Covid took us all hostage, I’ve begun to rebuild my book collection. The way I collect books for this house is I go to the book store disguised in a mask and hoodie, and look for something I’d like to read. When I find something, I slip off  its book jacket (when no one’s looking, obviously) to see if the actual book itself is black or white, which are the only two acceptable book colors for this particular house. If the book is any other color, it goes back on the table, and I go home to read it on my kindle.

I’m guessing you want to kick yourself right about now for not properly researching and accidentally buying so many ugly books, but the good news is you never have to make that mistake again, because I’ve already done all of the work for you! And I’m happy to share the color of every single book I’ve bought since Covid, plus I’ll even throw in a very short review of each book, if, in fact, I’ve finished it. I’ll also list the ones I read on my kindle if I think it’s something you might want to read.

So,  here we go. Here are the books I (mostly) read and judged during Covid, according to color:

The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo: White Binding! Definitely going on the future bookshelf. Unfortunately, this book got lost under my bed at one point so I never finished it. It may have been because it was extremely long.

All Adults Here by Emma Straub: Red spine, yellow cover. Not gonna make it on the shelf. I should have read it on my kindle but I must have bought it by accident. The writing is so tight and so good I could smell calamine lotion. I don’t believe Emma Straub ever mentioned what Astrid Strick smelled like, but that’s how well she writes. You can smell her characters a mile away. You should read this book along with all of her other books just to see how good they smell. Also, this book has a very cool secret in it. I’m dying to tell you what it is, but I can’t.

 The Shape of my Head: Oh, hold on, that’s not the name of a book. That’s my next blog post.

Want by Lynn Steger Strong: Pretty Powder Blue with White Lettering. Might make an exception for this beautiful sky blue book, which I fully intend to read.

Summer Longing by Jamie Brenner: Powder Blue binding with pink front and back cover. Not the right shade of pink and I haven’t finished it either.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh: Read on my kindle and nearly passed out. If you read this book, all you’ll want to do is take pills, go to sleep, wake up when this is all over, and write like whatever her name is. This book is next level, out of this world, pure genius. I made anyone I know, who enjoys sleeping as much as I do, read it. I’m thinking of buying it and wrapping it in white paper.

Bunny by Mona Awad: I read this one on my kindle too, and I’d just like to say, it blew my mind. If you read it, you will know that was a pun. This is a beyond brilliant, slightly deranged, work of art about pretty girls who like to blow up men. It would be good to have this book in a library. Too bad.

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins: Reading on my Kindle as we speak. So far it’s making me feel spoiled and fat and scared. And very American. In a spoiled fat scared way. I should take a peek at this one in person too. Maybe I can make an exception.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens: Again, I read this on my kindle long after everyone else read it, but I loved, loved, loved this book so much I might buy it and put it on the white book shelf, even if it’s green like a swamp.

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Read: Read on my kindle. Best book of Covid. As soon as I started reading it, I knew I found the one. And then I discovered that Reese found it too. Good is good. I might have to buy this book some day.

The Best of Me by David Sedaris: Bright Yellow, will not allow it on the shelf unless something crazy happens. And that would only be because he’s my favorite author, next to J.D. Salinger. Speaking of which, my copy of The Catcher in the Rye is Red. (May allow it on the shelf due to my inability to move on from adolescence).

Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver: Beautiful lime green binding and white book. What a gem this author is. But I honestly can’t remember what this book was about.

Just Like You, Nick Hornby: Pink binding  Red front and back cover. Willing to make an exception and perhaps lay it flat. That’s how pretty it is, and I believe it could work with white. One of my favorite writers. I love when a writer is so good you can’t hear the words. Just the story. I wish I was Just Like You, Nick Hornby.

Touched by the Son by Carly Simon: Black book bought for me by my very smart friend who is a character in one of my books. Will definitely go on the shelf because, above all, I love Cindy Sinclair. I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that Carly Simon has all the same insecurities that I myself enjoy, which made me feel like a famous singer.

What Remains by Carole Radzwill: Another book given to me by Cindy. It’s black and white so it will definitely make it up there on the shelf. If you lived in the 70’s, are a fan of the Kennedys, or like watching the Housewives of New York, you will love this book.

Writers and Lovers by Lily King: Black with red lettering. May or may not make it on the shelf because of the lettering, but highly, highly recommend this beautifully written book about the decision to live a creative life, which is always sad.

Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan: Red all over. The whole thing, red. For some reason I didn’t finish this book even though I was enjoying it. It has something to do with a babysitter who befriends her boss and her boss’s father-in-law for a cause. I will finish this and get back to you.

Grown Ups by Marian Keyes: Black front and back cover! Winner! Also I love Marian Keyes and everything she writes. This book is about families and secrets and you will love it. Did I mention she once gave me a blurb? Definitely going on the shelf.

No one asked for This by Cazzie David: Depressing little brainiac with a knack for registering exquisite details like her father Larry David (my make-believe boyfriend). I truly love her. I read this on my Kindle. I highly recommend this if you’re in a bad mood or would like to be in a bad mood for fun.

Beach Read by Emily Henry: Read on kindle. It’s about cute competition between two cute writers.

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne: Read on Kindle. Also about cute competition but this one takes place in an office and there’s a lot of almost sex before there’s actual sex, which is probably why it became a movie.

Playing with Matches by Hannah Orenstein: Again, so cute!  About a matchmaker who plays with her matches. You’ll see. I might buy it even though I already read it on my kindle because my gut tells me it’s black or white and will Match my decor as well as the title of this book matches what’s under its covers.

Angel by Elizabeth Taylor: Not that Elizabeth Taylor, but every writer needs to read this book so you can feel like an imposter and want to drown yourself in a river. I regret to say I read this on my Kindle because I would very much  like to have this book in my house.

Here’s to Us by Elin Helderbrand: Jackpot! Pure White book, definitely going on the shelf, but I’m still reading it and having trouble remembering who’s who. At this point I’m rethinking my whole decorating philosophy. Maybe I’ll even dig my own book out of the pile of garbage in my basement.

Educated by Tara Westover: I only peaked at this on my Kindle, but I saw enough to know I already love this book. It’s clearly reminiscent of A Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. So I’m guessing in the end, our heroine will have gotten the education she so deserves and go on to write an incredible novel. I’m only guessing though, and I know I’m the last one to read this one, too, but it seems I had a lot of  very uneducated decorating to do.

 

 

 

 

Every couple has their bed time rituals. Some insist on having some type of sex every single night. Others need to actively cuddle for a few minutes before wrapping themselves up in their little couple cocoon. A lot of couples end up falling asleep watching TV, first one drifts off, then the other. And then there are the couples who often end up sleeping on the floor. Those people are drunks.

I don’t understand cuddlers. How do they fall asleep with someone else’s skin in the way?  I understand how important love is, but I prefer breathing. That’s why my husband and I are what some might call not cuddly. We tend to keep to ourselves in preparation for a long night of sleep. Our pre-sleep routine is more about “the spreading of the pillows” then spooning. “The spreading of the pillows” ritual began when we fled our New York City apartment during Covid and had to incorporate all of our apartment bedding into our beach house bedding, which left us with eleven pillows on our bed. One might think that’s excessive, but I actually know and love all eleven of my pillows. They all serve a purpose, each according to their weight and density, in the construction of the retaining wall I like to build between us. The purpose of the wall is two-fold. It provides protection from the outside world and it ensures that all pillows are easily accessible in case I change my mind about my original pillow choice in the middle of the night. There are two pillows in particular, both named Flatsy, that I love like family.  Dan mostly throws his across the room out of frustration that we have so many. I then get out of bed, collect them, and add them to my pile.

Once I’ve spread the pillows, we kind of ease our way over to our own sides of the bed. Actually it’s more like we escape to our respective night tables and cling to them as though we’re both afraid of being eaten by the alligator on the other side. So far apart are we in our quest for uninterrupted sleep that if one of our children happen to call while we’re getting ready for bed, and they want to speak to both of us, we have to go looking for the other person as though we’re trapped in a forest.

“Hold on, I know he’s here,” I’ll say.

“Wait. Where are you two?” they’ll ask.

“In bed. Why?”

In the morning, whoever gets up first reaches for the other one’s hand like they need to be rescued from a pit of quick sand, grateful the other one is still there, and even more grateful neither of us had to suffocate for love.

A friend of mine suggested I see a dermatologist for my itchy back.

Why would I do that when I have a perfectly good husband and a drawer filled with forks, knives, and scissors?

As soon as we get into bed at night, I take off my top, hold out one of each, and say, “Pick one.”

Sure it’s dangerous to ask someone to scratch your back with tools, but it’s become our little routine. No different than our daily walks, our dinners in our pjs in front of the TV, and our favorite game, “Make believe I’m working.”

“What are you doing in there?” I sometimes call out to him while he’s toiling away in the spare bedroom we recently turned into a home office.

“I’m working,” he’ll say, and I’ll chuckle. The truth is neither of us are working. I’m writing and playing with flowers most of the time, neither of which qualifies as work. And he’s in there, without any doubt in my mind, planning a massive surprise party for me, for what year I’m not sure, but I know him well enough to know he’s had something up his sleeve for the past thirty years.

When he asks me what I’m doing, I always say the same thing, “Just working on something in my head.” And then he chuckles. He knows I’m playing. I know he’s planning. I scratch his back, he scratches mine.

I am about to turn…a number…It’s greater than thirty and less than seventy and for some reason it feels like a number that a man with a beard wearing a pair of overalls should be. Not a poor, innocent girl who was just standing there minding her own business. It’s so hard to believe this happened. I really don’t want a beard.

When I was a little girl, I always wanted to be thirty-six. I thought that sounded mature enough to get any job, to wear pencil skirts, to have a husband who wears suits, and to have two adorable children. A thirty-six-year-old woman runs in high heels, wears red lipstick and dances around town with a little perfume dabbed behind each ear.

When I finally turned thirty-six, I did have two adorable children and a husband who wore suits but I hadn’t quite lost the baby weight so a pencil skirt was entirely out of the question. Also, it seemed silly to run in heels after a four-year-old. The one time I wore red lipstick, my son took one look at me, burst into tears and said, “You look like a monster.”

Forty-six came and went too, and then… some other numbers. My daughter grew up and moved to LA, and my son moved to France. And yet I still haven’t grown into that vision I had of the woman in the pencil skirt. I grew into something else: A woman who is greater than thirty and less than seventy, who’s dancing around her room, because her two grown-up (and still very adorable) children came home for her birthday.

This is the oldest I’ve ever been.

I say that every year.

But, honestly, this time it’ll be true.

I like to think of myself as the type of person who would never hurt a fly, but, this morning there was one on my laptop.  First he flew back and forth over my keys, and then he landed on my water bottle.  He walked around for a while, checking things out, twirling his little mustache between his fingers, and then he flew up to my lampshade. He rubbed his little hands on the fabric, most likely he vomited on it,  and then he took another spin around the room. He was young, spry and carefree. A “catch me if you can” type trying out his new wings. After I swatted at him a few times, he figured out that I was no match for him and he planted himself on my computer screen and just stood there reading for the longest time. I tried to shoo him away again and again, but at a certain point, he didn’t even try to get away, knowing he could. He just stood there motioning that I should get off his back.

And then I killed him.

Why did I do it? I wondered.He wasn’t a criminal. He didn’t try to bite or kick me. If someone were to ask me why I killed him, I would have to say it was because he flew around. That’s it!  That was the cause of his death. Flying.

Afterwards I couldn’t get any work done. Hours went by. I made phone calls to distract myself, but I couldn’t get the fly out of my head. I wondered if he’d eaten anything that day. I thought about how thin he looked. Was he hoping to put on weight? Was he looking for something small to eat when I thought he was reading. Did he have a girlfriend?Who were his parents?  Did he have any friends at all to speak of?

Why did God even make flies? I Googled “what is the purpose of flies anyway?” and learned they not only help decompose rotting matter, they are great pollinators.

It is now 6:17 PM and I wasted the entire day thinking about the fact that I took an innocent life. A great pollinator no less. I wondered how I could make it up to the fly community. At the very least I could make him a proper burial and put a little rotting matter on my doorstep for his friends and relatives. I think I will do that. I’ll make him a little shiva. Just as soon as I get rid of this annoying spider.