Nov 2, 2015 | Blog - Mary Marcus
Every family has its own myths. One of the longest running narratives in mine growing up in Shreveport, Louisiana was my mother’s early promise as a writer. One that was thwarted, not in the usual way by marriage and having a family, but by not winning a writing competition sponsored by one of the studios while she was at USC. This is roughly how the story went. When she was in college there were two very gifted student writers. One was the novelist and screenwriter Sidney Sheldon, and the other was my mother, Ruth Futernick. According to my mother they were friends and rivals, goaded on by their famous mentor, Professor Baxter. We heard the story every time Professor Baxter hosted the Disney Family Hour. There would be Dr. Baxter on the TV, and then there would be mother’s fond recollections of his classes on literature. And how she and Sidney both vied for his favor. And how she lost and Sidney Sheldon won.
“You can still write that book!” I would tell my mother. Though we all knew that mother was never going to write her book. The most I ever saw of her writing was a few inflammatory sentences written on an Angel LP cover, in which she seemed to be writing to her boyfriend. I never figured out if the boyfriend was going on when she was married to my father or after he died. We certainly never saw any grown man around the house except Smith, who came to pick up Aline and drive her home. Or one of my father’s three brothers when they came to town to check on the store he’d left behind when he died.
When Mr. Sheldon became a famous and very rich novelist, my mother brought home his first novel, The Other Side of Midnight, forbade all of us to read it because it was so dirty, and continued on with her insistence that she was the superior writer.
I’ve never read The Other Side Of Midnight not because my mother told me not to. But because I guess I secretly knew all along my mother wasn’t telling the truth. Her friend Sidney might have been the lesser writer, but damn he was a writer. I was heartbroken for my mother that her early promise was over; while her rival’s had born such extravagant and lucrative fruit.
My mother died. And that was a long time ago.
And then, many years later, Mr. Sheldon died. His death was duly reported in the obits in the New York Times and I remember taking up the page eagerly with my morning coffee. My son was off in eastern Europe and we were briefly living in a fancy condo near Wilshire Bldv. and I was writing The New Me. I was very interested to read about Sheldon’s early life.
Here’s what I found out:
Mr. Sheldon did not attend USC. He was from the Midwest and didn’t appear in Los Angeles until long after my mother had departed. There was no rivalry. There was no early promise. My mother had made this whole thing up.
But, of course, I didn’t know that. Not when right before she died, I was home in Louisiana visiting. As it happens I was writing one of my early short stories. It was called “First Frost” and was my first experiment in writing from the male point of view. I wrote the story in long hand and typed it on my typewriter at Vogue when I was working there. The typewriters were terrible at Vogue. She was lying in her bed, and I was reading her my story. It wasn’t done. It was almost done, but not quite. I remember being so proud of that particular story. It was by no means my first story, but it was absolutely my best story so far.
“It’s a wonderful story,” she told me, “but you’ll never finish it. You’ll never finish anything!”
I didn’t say, “You’re wrong,” I didn’t say, “Why are you cursing me?” We didn’t have the kind of relationship where I was allowed to do that. Besides, she was sick. Besides, I didn’t really know about projection in those days. Or how you lay the stuff on other people you simply cannot own for yourself.
But I didn’t like it. And she was wrong, I did finish that story. I finished it. And I lost it. I have no idea what happened to it. Maybe I made her curse come true. Children do that all the time. I’m guessing my son will probably find “First Frost” in a box when I die.
Years later, when we moved to L.A., I found an old college friend of my mother’s and learned that Ma lost her college tuition at the race track and whenever she was in trouble she fell ill: migraine, ulcers, mysterious complaints with her back. My mother’s troubles started early. And the solution to those problems started early too. I have almost no memory of her when she wasn’t ill.
After I finished reading Mama the story that night, I went back to my room and I put it away. The next morning I left Louisiana. And the next time I saw my mother, was in her coffin at the funeral home.
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Oct 16, 2015 | Blog - Mary Marcus
I don’t “get” the remote control. I’ll go further than that. Only if I have detailed written out instructions can I achieve both picture and sound on the flat screen that shines in the corner of the living room mocking me. Consequently, I don’t watch much television. Which is probably good. Though sometimes, I will download something from HBO and watch it here on my little computer screen. Back in the Dark Ages, I used to enjoy flicking the thing on once in a while, back in the days when all one had to do was hit a knob and there weren’t so many channels.
I remember a particularly wonderful Christmas Day years ago. Husband and son were off skiing. I was home alone, working on Lavina, and eating an avocado sandwich for Christmas dinner. The set we had in the bedroom wasn’t much bigger than a desk size computer screen. I switched it on to the old movie channel (no menu, no variety of dingus-es, to point and press) and there it was, “The Manchurian Candidate”: my Christmas present from the powers that be! Lawrence Harvey, Angela Lansbury with a side of avocados eaten in bed. Nothing like that will ever happen to me again.
I digress. I am not alone, in this mystification concerning the remote control. A mystification that I am sure Freud would have something topical to say about. For it is true: possessing a penis enables its bearer to wield better remote control action. Just as possessing a penis enables its user to pee with impunity in places where a woman would not dare. Just as possessing a penis enables its owner to head most corporations, direct most movies, wage a majority of the wars and to in effect: run the damn world. Badly, I might add.
I was having a real attack of penis envy during yoga late this afternoon. I couldn’t stop obsessing about the debates, and how I wasn’t going to get to watch them, as I couldn’t find my detailed instructions on how to turn the f’ing thing on. And, was too humiliated to ask my husband to walk me through the whole mind bending process once again.
“Marcus!” he had said the last time I called him at work and begged. “This is it! You have to learn. I’m done!”
And even if I could coax him into it, pretend to cry even, I would be diminished and have no moral high ground. Also, it would be highly detrimental to the domestic campaign I’ve been waging lately. One wherein I don’t make dinner anymore.
I further digress. The great thing about doing yoga at the end of one’s work day, is the physical and mental release it offers. You breathe, you move, you sweat and breathe some more, and it is just like the song says, “pack up all your cares and woe, here I go, here I go, bye bye blackbird.” Today, though the substitute teacher was great, I was sweating, the blackbirds were fluttering about, but I couldn’t keep focused with my breathing. All I could think about was how furious I was at myself because I still hadn’t learned to turn on the crappy television set. Something any of the males in the room could do without batting an eye. I decided I would go home, get Henry and we’d drive around and listen to the debates in the car. Penis envy be damned!
(Gosh I’m getting sick of the P word. It’s almost as unattractive as the V word. I further digress; how come some of the ugliest, creepiest sounding words in our language are ones attached to the sex organs?)
As it turned out, Henry and I didn’t have to listen to the debates in the car.
My phone beeped as I was driving home. After I parked the car, put up the sunshade in anticipation of tomorrow’s blast, I checked my texts.
“I left the correct remote on top of the latest NY’er on coffee tbl.. Press Power. Enjoy the debates!”
For a moment, I was absolutely sure my husband was having an affair. Why was he suddenly so solicitous?
Hillary was good. Bernie was good too and it was the first time I have ever seen him in action. A socialist anti-war Jew. Woo Hoo!
I just googled Penis Envy and in addition to Freud, Horney, Lacan and all the rest of them, there’s a whole to do about an eponymous hallucinogen.
Penis Envy Mushrooms—who knew?
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Oct 8, 2015 | Blog - Mary Marcus
Once in a while like today, I put on one of my “famous artist” shirts. I always keep them ironed and on hangers from the dry cleaners. One is from Turnbull and Asser, another is from Mr. Fish, and the third is from some Bond Street tailor and is actually bespoke. They are all I’m guessing from the 1970’s. Unfortunately the bespoke one has a small hole in the front. I keep meaning to ask my friend Valerie if she’ll embroider something over the hole.
H, who died several years ago, gave me the shirts. They belonged to her husband E, who was a well-known Abstract Impressionist from The New York School. She gave them to me after he died, because she said E liked me. I certainly liked him. He was charming, Spanish, funny and I loved his work. He was also very kind to me about my writing. Which I appreciated. He was close to a hundred when he died and was old enough to remember being in Paris at the same time as Sartre. He was always talking about Paris before the war and other topics of glamour at the dinner table. He spat when he talked and his accent was so thick a lot of the time it was hard to understand what he said. It would be a lie to say, I would rather have three of his old shirts than one of his paintings or collages, though I ended up with a collage that was hanging in my mother-in-law’s bedroom moldering away in a frame she bought at some art supply store. When she died, I got the thing reframed and it’s in my living room. It’s not, I must say, one of his best. My husband doesn’t like it at all, but I do.
H was totally impossible. But there was also something really cool about her. She had energy, she had a certain really crude integrity and she was funny. Even if her humor was always at someone’s expense. She had absolutely wonderful taste. She could cook. She could throw a very chic party. She could laugh and make herself the center of attention. And even though she battled fat all her life, she always looked snappy in her tunics and her one piece of important jewelry. I liked it that although she went to Europe every five seconds, had eight zillion bucks, and hobnobbed with art snobs, she never lost her Brooklyn accent.
I was for a time, one of her honorary “daughters” at least that’s what she told me. I never met the other two. Being one of her honorary daughters meant, she could call at any time of the day or night, she could yell at me, she could criticize my hair, my make up, body mass (I was always too skinny) and choice of undergarments (why do you wear a black bra under a white shirt?) It also meant that I would have the honor schlepping her about. Luckily we lived on different coasts most of the time, so I only had to schlep her when I was in New York.
Her real daughter killed herself. Just as her first husband had, and in the identical manner. Sometimes when H was being particularly hideous I would understand why her daughter committed an act that would permanently render her mother unable to hurt her ever again.
Like all true blue narcissists, she had the skill of the pointed jab, the knife in just the right place designed to hurt the most! And her voice could get really scary. She loved wielding that knife. And the power of the wound that came with it.
I was getting sick of the whole thing around the time my mother in law died. And stopped calling her back. H was one of her oldest friends, and I ended up with the nasty task of telling her, and which because she was old, I did in person. I didn’t drop her, instead, I schlepped her to and from my mother in law’s funeral, and a year later to the thing that happens then. And lots of stuff in between. Perhaps because I lost my own mother very young, I have always sought some disapproving elder in my life to take her place. And in fact, H was a lot like my mother. Though H was rich, my mother was poor; H lived a long amazingly interesting life, while my mother died young and broke in Shreveport, Louisiana. And never alas, even got to Europe.
Still, H was really really nice to my son. And for that alone, I’ll always think of her with a certain fondness. H adored handsome men. When he was at college, she let him stay at her fabulous apartment at Hotel Des Artists. And even to bring friends! And when E died, he got a collage in an archival frame. Probably if my son had been my daughter she would have gotten shirts like I did if she got anything at all.
H phoned me the day she died and left a message on the machine one I didn’t end up hearing until three months after she died. “It’s me,” said the ghost voice, in its strong Brooklyn accent. “I’m calling to say I’m mad at you. Where are you? Are we up? Are we down? Call me!”
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Sep 26, 2015 | Blog - Mary Marcus
I just ordered a couple of things on Amazon. A book that’s not available anywhere else; and nose spray that is more than fifty percent less than what it is at the Whole Food market (another place I try and avoid). Otherwise and most of the time, I’m at the local bookstore and the local drugstore or the Farmer’s Market, paying my several dollars more, because honestly, if we all keep supporting the BIG A, there won’t be any more stores. They have already killed off the bookstores and the careers of thousands of writers. And we have ourselves to thank because we want to save a few dollars. Furthermore, there won’t be any more stores of any kind if we keep on with this madness. We will be a nation of villages surrounded by warehouses.
Last summer, when my husband, Henry and I were staying back east, I broke the final taboo and became a PRIME member, there were so many things we needed for that two months and local prices were more of a rip off than usual. At least it seemed that way. It was so seductive. Especially when the bargain price merchandise appeared as if by magic, overnight, on the truck. The interregnum period between the pushing of the button and Henry’s bark when the truck drove up and the stuff arrived, seemed mere hours. It was magic.
I guess I should mention that last summer, in the weeks after my second novel Lavina was published, I was wild to promote. I was writing everyone and their baby sister asking them if they wanted me to appear at their book clubs. If you know me, you know I hate to ask for anything at all. Nor do I like to stand up in front of strangers. I did a signing, I did everything it seemed but wear a freaking sandwich board with the Sienna color wash of the novel.
And needless to say, I checked my Amazon reviews, everyday, sometimes more than once a day. Sometimes twice, three times. Those stars are very vexing little things. I liked them as a child, back when there was no Amazon. Though I never garnered that many of them then either. I was restless, unhappy and read novels at night instead of studying. This summer I did not garner star hood on Amazon either. Furthermore, I was outraged when a fifteen year old kid who had written and asked me for the book he couldn’t afford to send him one and I schlepped to the post office to oblige him—thanked me by giving Lavina, three stars: WTF?
Then I started getting those little messages in my Inbox. We’d like you to rate your recent purchase of Nose Better Nose Spray. How many stars?
Please rate your recent purchase of the six-pack of Coobie Sports Bras. How many stars? Please rate your recent purchase of bug spray. Olive oil. I stopped looking at my Amazon reviews at that point. Because the truth is, I’m not a nose spray or a six-pack of sports bras. Still less, a container of bug spray. One’s choice of brassieres are very telling. But not alas a reflection of one’s intellect. You are what you spray on your body, and of course you are what you read. But it’s not the same experience. And shouldn’t be judged through an identical lens –one devised to promote sales. Nothing more. Nothing less.
FYI: The kind of nose spray I favor received 144 mostly five star reviews on Amazon. The olive oil and the bug spray received even more. The bras (I found them too hot and over padded) also received thousands of stars.
Who Nose better?
Just now I did a search and found out, one of my all time favorite pieces of literature, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (who by the way has a website, one that eerily replies if you join it). His masterpiece, in the edition I own garnered 50 Reviews, only 54% of which were Five Stars. The bug spray beat him way out. Not to mention the Coobie bras.
The sequel to the dirty grey book, one I didn’t read garnered over thirty-two thousand reviews.
The question remains: if someone resembling Robert DeNiro in a black velvet cape and little horns appeared suddenly beside me (and raised a gloved hand that stopped Henry from barking) to offer me one million stars on Amazon for Lavina, and another million for the The New Me… in exchange for my soul… what would I do?
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Sep 14, 2015 | Blog - Mary Marcus
When did grown-ups starting saying, writing, using the YAY word? Yay as in “You’re coming to town? YAY! We’re going over to so and so’s house for dinner, YAY!
Let’s have sushi YAY!
I’m having an 85th birthday party for myself, and I’m not even senile. YAY!
Your daughter is having a baby YAY. You’re having a baby YAY. My daughter is having a baby, YAY!
Didn’t YAY used to be the provenance of children jumping up and down in the playground. Or going down a scary slide. YAY! You did it. Yay, you caught that ball.
What does it mean that practically every grownup I know punctuates events far from victorious with the Y word? We’re becoming a society of onomatopoeliacs.
According to the Urban Dictionary, YAY is “used as an exclamation of pleasure, approval, elation, or victory.” It’s also slang for cocaine, mostly in the Bay Area. I live in Los Angeles. I’m not sure what it’s called here, though I used to know what to call it in New York.
All these YAYs are giving me pseudo-linguistic saturation, not to mention ADHD. Even my own current novel seems to be popping up on the screen, how many stars would you give Lavina, Five of course. Five stars. YAY!
Think of this as you’re finding things online that bring you elation or pleasure: Every time you look up anything at all, whatever you look for is yours forever after, as long as you have a web browser and a credit card. Just use your secret password (as in open sesame) and type in a few numbers, and all your wishes and desires can come true.
You can find a hook up, a la all those millions of people on Ashley Madison. You can find a high colonic practitioner within five miles of where you live. You can find your high school sweetheart and prowl how many complaints your chiropractor/shrink/Dermatologist/ acupuncturist/drug dealer has received. YAY for the Internet.
YAY is also, as I mentioned and as I’ve discovered from my intense research on Urban Dictionary, a synonym for cocaine. Am I just paranoid or will my yay searches target me as a potential drug dealer? or user?
I’d love to get high like the old days, but I’ve grown up now and left those childish things behind. SIGH. That’s another overused onomatopoeia. SIGH.
What does this have to do with YAY? A lot, I think.
Most of us so called grown ups (myself included) have been dressing like children for years. I guess it’s not really surprising that now we are talking like children as well. When I was growing up, children dressed like children, and adults did the same. Not that is was a better world; in many ways it was a worse world. But at least some things were clear. Now everyone is running around in gym clothes and sneakers. And not just in California where nobody dresses, it’s happening in New York, in London, all over the world, there’s not much difference between the everyday attire of eight year olds and eighty year olds, except for fancy dress (as in let’s play dress up!)
Don’t even get me started on emoticons. Another seductive childish new habit that has no literary value, no education or study required for understanding. In short, related to yay, without even having to spell it out. It’s like a secret code made from cartoon characters.
We are being robbed and are robbing ourselves of articulate speech when we say the yay word, when an “isn’t that just wonderful!” or “a marvelous!” or a even a “dynamite!” would do just as well and convey more nuance of emotion.
As for the emoticon frenzy, when I discovered them, I found myself sending entire text messages with rows of high heels. A writer, who is meant to be in search of le mot juste, not le emoticon juste.
I’m going to stop the use of both at once.
No Yay Sayers.
No emoticons.
At least I’m going to try.
It’s over. YAY!
😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀
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Sep 3, 2015 | Blog - Mary Marcus
For weeks now it’s been unrelentingly hot. Even four miles from the water it’s hot. The pavement is hot. If you don’t put up your heat shade your car is fusion temperature. Unless you have AC (which thank God we do) anything but cold food is out of the question. The people are hot. The trees are hot (some of them are exploding for lack of water) I’m seriously thinking of getting Henry a sunhat.
It also seems to me the drought has increased the number of homeless people, why, I don’t really know. It’s only an observation. But there are homeless people everywhere, sunburned and hot. And listless. But everybody is hot and listless, why should the less well nourished and housed members of the race be an exception?
I had parked the car on 7th near the 7-Eleven in Santa Monica, where some developer is going to tear down one of the old pre war buildings with the cool terrazzo entryway and wedding cake decorations on the front, and build yet another Italianate live and work zone with a cappuccino joint and a gym inside and charge eight zillion dollars a month in rent. Henry and I were walking on the shady side of the street when I saw him: him and his cart of possessions which included piles of clothing tied in neat piles close together, and huddled inside those belonging a dog, about the size of Henry.
The homeless man was wearing sunglasses and so was I. His face was covered in a full black coat of beard. The only parts of his face you could see were the little places of cheek at the bottom of his glasses.
I am for the record, afraid of fleas, lice, bad smells, a hand suddenly reaching out to get me, and many other things as well. I generally don’t give to male homeless individuals because I don’t want to get that close, females are a different story.
But the homeless man (who on second glance) appeared to be someone about my son’s age, wasn’t asking for money. I snuggled Henry’s leash closer and walked by. Was it the sight of the homeless dog that made me dig in my wallet when I was by then at the corner? No doubt. I didn’t have much cash, five singles, which I knew I could hand over without touching flesh. It was a skill I developed years ago and why other than the fact that I’m generous by nature, don’t give coins, because to give coins, you have to touch the palm.
I went back. Handed the bearded person the cash and he smiled. A big white smile with good teeth. His little dog smiled too.
Thanks, he said. I said, “My pleasure! And better luck!” He didn’t bless me as I’m often blessed, especially by one old woman who works the Farmer’s Market on Saturday whom I haven’t seen lately. (Do I hope she’s still alive, I don’t really know.)
He said, “My dog is happy to play with your dog!”
But I snuggled Henry’s leash up and said the truth, “Henry’s a little skittish. I don’t want him to scare your dog.”
“Hey, I get it,” the homeless lad with the thick beard said.
I knew he got it, that I didn’t want to touch him, his dog, or anything within ten feet of him. But he said it cheerfully, without making me feel guilty. He was glad to have a few bucks. He did not judge my motives. I wished I did not automatically assume he had communicable scourges to impart.
I walked away. I thought of a night many years before when my son’s Sunday school class had gone to a homeless shelter to bring dinner one really cold night. The nights here haven’t been that cold in a long time.
We had brought on instructions, these long sheets of pre cooked frozen lasagna. And the parents were busy setting the sheets out.
It was my son who noticed that the parents and the kids were setting out frozen slabs of lasagna, not bothering to use the restaurant style ovens that were right behind us. He pointed this out, and the Sunday school teacher and some of the parents put the frozen pizza slabs in the oven.
Then one of the homeless men spoke up. “Most of the time they expect us to eat frozen lasagna!”
My son had noticed before anyone else. And I was proud of him. If it still often shocks me that he is running for office as a republican, at least he’s a compassionate republican. I continued walking slowly in the heat with Henry.
I wasn’t so proud of myself, refusing to let Henry play with the homeless dog, just because I am afraid of homeless dogs, as I am of homeless people.
A typical bleeding heart liberal, that’s me. On account of my son, I’m now a registered republican, with any luck, I’ll learn compassion.
When they tear down that nice old building, I’m guessing a lot of old time tenants are going to be out of luck. I hope that young man with his dog keeps his good teeth, and gets himself and his furry friend off the street.
How exactly does one get off the street?
I have no idea.
I’m not so proud of that either.
Henry in a Sunhat, drawn by the wonderful Aimee Levy.
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