At times like these, your best idea, always, is to go back to the city. It’s not going to be better there, but leaving where you are is always the very first solution to any problem. Nina convinces you not to go, says she’s sorry; she goes on her date, you go to town and get drunk, which is a close second to your preferred solution to any problem. You remember nothing of this night, but when you wake up in the morning your left hand is the size of an oven mitt. There’s a dull ache, but your head hurts worse, so at first you hardly notice. At the breakfast table, Nina reports that her date was a dud again, just no chemistry with cute younger brother, really, but he’s nice and she thinks you and he really would probably be a much better fit. You’ve now had about a half ounce of coffee, enough only to look Nina in the face and hope she gets that you have problems with what she’s just said. Come on, Bets, what’s the big deal, we’ve dated the same person before. Remember Paul Pearlman? You manage a giggle. It’s hard to forget a guy whose signature move is taking you to the pharmacy to buy you a Flower Power sticker and a packet of Sen-Sen. Will we ever figure out what he was thinking? No. But we must never forget, you say. Look, it’s not Fire Island if you and your best friend haven’t had some overlap, she says. You decide it’s not worth arguing, even though you will probably have to cross cute younger brother off your list now. You’re reaching for the sugar bowl when Nina notices your hand. Betsy! What? What happened to your hand? You look down. Hm. I dunno. I think I might have fallen off my bike. I’m not really sure. It’s fine. It’s not fine! It’s purple! She rushes you over to the doctor’s cottage; he X-rays it, sees your previous fracture, notices the way you brush that off when he asks about it, says it’s just a sprain this time, bandages it up, gives you a half-dozen Darvon for the pain, tells you not to drink and to take off work for a few days. Hooray! Nina says. We can both sit on the deck and write!
This is what comes of that:
Once upon a time there was a young woman still living at home whose mom ruined almost everything. So the young woman went to Fire Island to spend the summer with her best friend, but then her best friend stole the guy she was interested in, ruining almost everything else, so she went and got drunk and broke her hand. At this point, everything was fully ruined.
Once upon a time there was a young woman who dreamed of being a writer but somehow it was her mom’s fault that she didn’t actually do it. So one summer the young woman went to the beach with her best friend to write, but she realized she didn’t have anything much to write about besides her mom ruining her life. The young woman’s second-best idea was that great writers drink, that if she took up drinking in earnest, she would soon be struck with brilliant ideas that weren’t about her mom. But when this didn’t happen, she drank more, because that’s what drunks do. They drink more. Nothing any better happened after this, believe me.
Once upon a time there was a brilliant young writer in New York City in the nineteen-eighties who was discovered walking down the street by an important book editor who could totally tell that she was brilliant and a writer just by looking at her. The important book editor told her there was an opening in the literary brat pack and that she’d be perfect for it and that he would explain over a six-martini lunch. You are expected to behave badly. It sells books, but you’ll be rich and famous. Perfect! said the brilliant young writer. She handed in her manuscript and got a six-figure advance for her first book, and was on the cover of New York magazine, which got her another six figures to pose for a liquor ad with a typewriter and shot glass. For a time she went on international book tours, had mad love affairs with everyone else in the brat pack, but then she discovered cocaine, blew all her money up her nose in just a few months, and had to move back home again with her mother. Whose fault this all was, obviously.
You knew before you started that when you try to write about me it always comes off bitter. And you are bitter, but you don’t want to come off that way. So you scrap your three paragraphs and work on your tan instead, offer to read Nina’s pages while you’re doing that.
What sucks harder than the fact that she has pages at all is that her pages are really good. You’ve always thought Nina was a better writer than you, and now you know for sure. Everything comes easy for Nina. She gets all the cute boys first, she doesn’t have to work, and she’s just naturally a good writer. It’s good, you tell her. You fear adding words to this compliment, because more words will likely indicate resentment, whether you mean to or not, will quietly or not-so-quietly attempt to diminish her confidence. So you move straight to self-pity. I suck, you tell her. What? You don’t suck! You’re a great writer, Betsy! I’m a lazy ass. I can’t just sit around and write. I have to earn money. But someday we will earn money doing this! Don’t be naive, Nina. What’s naive about it? We will! You will, maybe. We both will! You don’t know what will happen. I can’t sit around writing and calling it work. My mother will ask me where my writing paycheck is and if I tell her it’s coming in the future she will laugh in my face. She’s a singer! She started somewhere. Yeah, but that’s different. How is it different? I dunno, she told me it’s different, that’s all. Well, it isn’t different, Betsy. It’s the same.
By the end of day one, Darvon aside, your skull feels like it’s three sizes too big for your head. You’re sure one drink later tonight won’t hurt a thing. The Darvon are gone anyway.
Brava
You and Dad come back from Germany and move to Binghamton, where he has a teaching job.
— You forgot about Minnesota, Betsy.
— I’m just conflating. Nothing happens in Minnesota that’s all that different from what happens in Binghamton.
— That’s probably true.
You move into a little Cape Cod, excited to set up your first house. Your budget is still laid out down to the penny, so you sew more curtains, shop sales, make a braided rug out of wool flannel remnants for the living room, take it apart about four times until it lays flat. You fix supper for Fred most every night, broiled, buttered chicken breasts with frozen lima beans, pork chops with frozen green beans, Jell-O or vanilla ice cream for dessert, Mother’s three-bean salad in the summer, nothing fancy. Sundays are his turn to cook but he would just as soon have TV dinners, which are fairly newly popular, and which Dad considers to be one of the brilliant innovations of their time, so when his turn comes it’s either Salisbury steak with peas, mashed potatoes, and apple pie, or he’ll fix up some braunschweiger sandwiches on Hillbilly bread. For a while you’re pleased with yourself for being such a good homemaker, write letters to your mother thanking her for all the ways she taught you to save pennies, but once the place is all decorated, you’re not altogether sure what to do with your time. You’re thought of as a good faculty wife, whatever that might mean, showing up with a smile to cocktail parties in a smart wool sheath, pearls, and circle pin, and you know Dad never so much minded that you wanted a career as much as he just hadn’t fully understood what that might mean, and that he hadn’t thought about it at all before you got married. You’re not even sure how much you did, honestly. You knew you wanted more than what Muscatine had for you; that was about it at the time.